Sun, Sep 19, 2010 page12

• Technology helps China brace for population growth

  Genetically modified and cloned food often brings out the squeamish in us, but many say such technology may help to ease food insecurity and that China could take a lead role in the development and acceptance of GM products

  • By Tan Ee Lyn / REUTERS, BAIHUA, CHINA
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  Chinese geneticist Du Yutao (杜玉濤) peers at an ultrasound monitor scanning the underbelly of a pregnant sow — one of China’s latest technological tools to feed its people better.

  The 20-odd hogs at this farm in Guangdong Province in southern China are no ordinary pigs, but rather surrogate sows carrying cloned piglets.

  With a population projected to grow to 1.44 billion by 2030 from 1.33 billion last year, according to World Bank figures, Beijing is hunting for cutting-edge technology to provide better quality food.

  

  China’s first cloned pig, stuffed and displayed, is seen in front of a researcher working at the Beijing Genomics Institute in Shenzhen on July 23.

  PHOTO: REUTERS

  Du’s colleagues are cloning pigs at a laboratory an hour’s drive from the farm. They remove DNA from skin cells taken from the ear of a prized boar and transfer them into pig egg cells cleared of their nuclei. The resulting embryos are surgically implanted into surrogate sows.

  “Now we import valuable boars from Denmark and the US. They are costly to buy, transport and susceptible to a lot of disease during transportation,” said Du, head of cloning and genetic engineering at the Beijing Genomics Institute. “With this technology, we can import small numbers of pigs and mass produce them in China.”

  And international experts believe China can take a leading role in promoting the eventual acceptance of cloned animals and even transgenic — or genetically modified (GM) — produce.

  Ingo Potrykus, the retired, Swiss-based co-inventor of vitamin A-packed “golden rice,” said China could fill a void in securing widespread use and recognition.

  “To revolutionize regulation ... it needs a lead country to do so, which is politically and economically independent of the GMO [genetically modified organism]-hysteria of the West,” Potrykus, whose invention has proved essential for rice-dependent countries, wrote in an e-mail. “China would have this potential and China could benefit a lot because China has a lot of food security problems ahead.”

  Potrykus knows a great deal about the difficulties of winning acceptance for GM and cloned products. His variety was withheld from the market for 10 years because of regulations surrounding transgenic food.

  At the institute’s laboratory, another geneticist, Zhang Gengyun (張耕耘), is working with colleagues on flasks containing rice saplings. They want to identify gene segments in rice that are behind high yields and better root systems, so that more rice may be produced using less land and water.

  China has few conventional tools. It needs to feed 22 percent of the world’s population but has only 7 percent of the world’s arable land. Its water resources are meager — amounting to 25 percent of the per capita world average. And a quarter of its water is so polluted it is unfit even for industrial use.

  China’s grain harvest stood at 530 million tonnes of grain last year and it will need to increase annual supply by 4 million tonnes over the next 10 years. Beijing imported US corn for the first time since 2006 and is the world’s top buyer of soybeans.

  China’s per person consumption of meat is 70kg a year, of which 54 percent is pork. That will soar with rising incomes reflecting more affluent areas like Hong Kong, where per capita meat consumption is 120kg a year, according to Rabobank.

  “The government wants to secure food supply. The demand is for fresh meat,” said Jean-yves Chow, senior industry analyst at Rabobank in Hong Kong. “It doesn’t want to rely on meat imports.”

  The problem is not China’s alone. Leading economist Jeffrey Sachs published articles in Nature magazine in July calling for serious preparations to feed a global population that will grow to 9.1 billion in 2050 from 6.8 billion now.

  GM technology will help, he said, but its consequences on human health and the environment must be closely monitored.

  The US is a world leader in producing GM crops and the US Food and Drug Administration has already approved the sale of food from clones and their offspring, saying the products were indistinguishable from those of non-cloned animals. It is yet to rule on whether genetically engineered fish is safe to eat.

  In China, Du’s department has set up a unit to commercialize cloning and she expects that meat from the offspring of cloned pigs will be on the Chinese market in “a few years.”

  Her department is working with China Agricultural University on more muscular and less fatty transgenic pigs — genetically modified rather than cloned — by knocking out the MSTN gene that inhibits muscle growth.

  Zhang’s team hopes to identify the genes they want and transfer them into target rice species in three years using conventional breeding. That, he believes, will skirt whatever fears Chinese consumers may have.

  “That is not genetic modification. It is conventional breeding ... within 10 years, we can have environmentally friendly species that are water and fertilizer saving,” he said.

  China’s Agriculture Ministry declined to comment on how stringent new regulations on cloned animals or transgenic products are likely to be. It has, however, suggested an open approach in certificates issued for experimental planting of transgenic rice in recent years, according to Chinese press reports.

  Du said China’s State Food and Drug Administration will need to approve products derived from cloned pigs and any transgenic produce before they are allowed on the market.

  While experts say meat from cloned animals is no different from naturally conceived animals, Du said more safety assessments were needed for transgenic products.

  “Transgenic animals have potential risks. It needs a long time to evaluate before they can get into market,” she said.
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