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BIOTECH Fl I I I Shareholder initiatives seek to force changes in corporate use of modified crops...
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nvestment advisers and shareholders are trying to force major food and agricultural product producers to forgo the use or manufacture of genetically modified foods. Targeted companies have included Coca-Cola, Pepsi, McDonald's, General Mills, Kellogg, Procter & Gamble, Quaker Oats, American Home Products (AHP), Dow Chemical, and DuPont, as well as supermarket chains Albertson's, Kroger, and Safeway. The weapon: a shareholder resolution that seeks to force the companies to adopt a policy of "removing genetically engineered crops, organisms, or products... from all products sold or manufactured by the company, where feasible, until long-term safety testing has shown they are not harmful." "We believe that this technology involves significant social, economic, and environmental risks," the shareholder statements read. "Our company should take a leadership position in delaying market adoption of genetically engineered crops and foods. Failure to do so could leave our companyfinanciallyliable, should detrimental effects to public health or the environment appear in the future." On behalf of its clients, Harrington Investments—which describes itself as a "socially responsible investment advisory firm" based in Napa, Calif., that works closely with the New York City-based Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR)—has advocated many of the resolutions. The resolutions have already been withdrawn at AHP, Dow, and DuPont. Where a resolution has made it to the annual meeting proxy statement, company directors are recommending against it. McDonald's response to the resolution is typical of the opposing companies in its emphasis that it requires all of its suppliers to meet government regulations. "We believe that the Food & Drug Administration and other relevant governmental agencies with scientific expertise are the best decisionmakers in this area," the company says, noting that "these agencies have repeatedly assured that there are no meaningful safety, health, or environmental risks."
Kellogg adds that it believes the proposal is not scientifically sound and would not help consumer understanding. Greenpeace has actively targeted Kellogg in its antibiotech food campaign, and the company is said to be removing modified ingredients from products in Europe, where the consumer backlash has been most intense. At Coca-Cola, the resolution was defeated on April 19, with only about 8% voting in favor. On April 28, 97% of Kellogg shareholders also voted no. The resolution was voted down by Pepsi shareholders on May 3. Annual meetings will be held at Quaker Oats, McDonald's, and Safeway later this month, and not until autumn for many others.
John Harrington, president and chief executive officer of Harrington Investments, calls the 8% of voters at Coca-Cola "significant" and notes that Pepsi shareholders voted just after the company's snack-food subsidiary Frito-Lay told suppliers to stop using genetically modified corn. "From an investor standpoint, it's like sitting on a time bomb," he adds. "We want to avoid a scenario like that of the tobacco and pesticide industries, where safety hazards were overlooked until it was too late." The goal is "not simply a vote of the shareholders, but a change in corporate direction," according to a statement issued by Domini Social Investments, King of Prussia, Pa. If corporate policy changes or management attention is gained, a resolution could be withdrawn, the firm says. If not, they hope to get enough votes to allow the resolution to appear at the next annual meeting. ICCR, along with SocialFunds.com, offers a database for tracking such shareholder resolutions. The National Corn Growers Association applauded the decision by Kellogg shareholders as an indication that there is still a market for biotech crops in the U.S. However, in light of the decision by Frito-Lay and others, the smaller, yet very vocal, American Corn Growers Association (ACGA) believes that both foreign and domestic markets are eroding. "It is quickly becoming impossible to guarantee the marketability of genetically modified food products," ACGA states. In support of the technology, 13 governors, largely from midwestern states, have agreed to form the Governors Biotechnology Partnership. Their goal is to increase public understanding and support for the benefits of agricultural biotechnology. Ann Thayer
... as Clinton Administration acts to beef up government's regulatory efforts l he Clinton Administration plans to strengthen government regulation of genetically engineered food and give consumers greater access to information about such food. Generally, industry organizations are very pleased with the plan, but environmental and consumer groups say it falls far short of what is needed to protect public health and the environment.
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Under the initiative, the Food & Drug Administration will require companies to notify the agency at least four months before the introduction of a new genetically engineered crop or product into the food supply. Until now, such notifications have been voluntary. Research data on such new foods submitted by the companies and the agency's decision-making record on the products MAY8,2000C&EN
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will be made public on the Internet. In addition, FDA will develop guidelines for voluntary labeling of foods as containing or not containing genetically engineered ingredients. The Department of Agriculture will work to create reliable testing methods to detect the presence of gene-altered ingredients. In presenting the plan, the Administration reiterated its belief that transgenic foods are safe. "FDA's scientific review continues to show that all bioengineered foods sold here in the United States today are as safe as their nonbioengineered counterparts," said FDA Commissioner Jane E. Henney. 'We believe our initiatives will provide the public with continued confidence in the safety of these foods." The initiative also calls for the Council on Environmental Quality and the Office of Science & Technology Policy to conduct a six-month review of current regulations pertaining to agricultural biotechnology, and for USDA, FDA, and EPA to expand competitively awarded research on safety issues. Last fall, the Grocery Manufacturers of America (GMA) asked FDA to make the notification process mandatory. 'We are very pleased that FDA has heard our industry's recommendations, which we believe will make an effective biotech review process even better," says Stacey A. Zawel, GMA vice president for scientific and regulatory policy. 'This will help ensure continued consumer confidence in science-based regulatory oversight." "The biotechnology industry supports the decision of [FDA] to make the approval process for foods improved through biotechnology more transparent and to also provide more guidance to the food industry with regard to voluntary claims on food labels," says Carl B. Feldbaum, president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization. Environmental and consumer groups, however, decried the proposal. "Consumers want genetically engineered foods to be safety-tested and to be labeled. This plan does not require either," says Rebecca Goldburg, a senior scientist at Environmental Defense. But she praises a part of the plan under which USDA will develop a certification program for farmers who wish to produce nongenetically engineered crops. FDA should require the same rigorous testing of genetically engineered food as it requires of food additives, says Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety. Bette Hileman 14 MAY 8, 2000 C&EN
Knot Again! A New Molecular Trefoil Nieger at Bonn and Roland Frohlich at the University of Miinster, in Germany, revealed that the surprise product was looped into a trefoil knot. "Everybody working in the field of catenanes and rotaxanes"—compounds with rings circling a linear molecule like beads on a string—"dreams of making a knotted molecule," Vogtle tells C&EN. 'Without attractive template effects between the components, however, it is considered to be rather impossible to end up with a knot." Indeed, the first successful synthesis of a molecular knot in 1989 by JeanPierre Sauvage and coworkers at the Louis Pasteur University, Strasbourg, France, depended on a copper-ion template to gather phenanthroline units into double helical arrays that were then connected into a knotted cycle. J. Fraser Stoddart, now at the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues used a different sort of template in their 1997 knot synthesis: complexes between crown ethers rich in 7i-electrons and 7i-electron-poor bipyridinium quaternary salts. The crystal structure of the new knot molecule reveals hydro———~™ gen bonding that gives clues as to how it selfSimplest synthesis to date assembles, Vogtle notes. of a molecular knot His group is now working to replace certain components of the knot with other substituents and to separate its enantiomers— like all trefoil knots, the new example is chiral. "The emergence of a molecular knot out of the rich reserves of amidebased catenanes and rotaxanes was probably only a matter of time," Stoddart tells C&EN. "Yet prizes of this kind only come to researchers with highly honed skills and well-prepared minds. The resolution of this new molecular knot into its enantiomers is awaited. It is not so obvious where this chemistry will go next, but one can anH V=0 ticipate that it will continue to catch the eye." Pamela Zurer
Take a piece of string. Cross one end over the other to form a loop. Tuck the top end down and through the loop. Fasten the two ends together and—voila!— you have a trefoil knot. That sequence is not hard to accomplish when you're working with string. It's another thing entirely when you're manipulating molecules. So it was a pleasant surprise when chemistry professor Fritz Vogtle and his coworkers at the University of Bonn, Germany, found they had synthesized a molecular trefoil knot in a single step [Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 3 9 , 1616 (2000)]. Vogtle, who is director of the university's Kekule Institute of Organic Chemistry & Biochemistry, and Ph.D. student Oliver Safarowsky had set out to make a large ring to use in constructing catenanes (interlocking rings). In addition to the expected product—an amide-based macrocycle formed from two equivalents each of a dicarboxylic acid dichloride and a diamine—they isolated 20% of a compound that contains three units of each of the building blocks. Crystallographic analysis by X-ray experts Martin
