A dozen years after a customer revolt forced Monsanto to ditch its genetically engineered potato, an Idaho company aims to resurrect high-tech spuds.
This month, tuber-processing giant J.R. Simplot Co. asked the US government to approve five varieties of biotech potatoes. They’re engineered not to develop ugly black bruises. McDonald’s, which gets many of its fries from Simplot, rejects those. They’re also designed to have less of a natural – but potentially cancer-causing neurotoxin – acrylamide.
Much has changed in 12 years, according to the Boise-based company.
Unlike transgenic varieties Monsanto sold in the 1990s using genes from synthetic bacteria to kill insect pests, Simplot’s new “Innate” brand potatoes use only potato genes.
Haven Baker, Simplot’s Yale and Harvard University-trained vice-president of plant sciences, said his scientists journeyed inside the vegetable’s genome to “silence” unwanted attributes, while making sure it remained 100 percent potato.
“You’ll never get as much beneficial effect from traditional plant breeding,” he said. “And it’ll take twice as long.”
Those in the industry remember Monsanto’s ill-fated foray and say Simplot’s major challenge in avoiding a similar fate is ensuring its product is acceptable among growers, processors and, ultimately, people eating it.
“Unless your customers are prepared to embrace this product, it’s not going to be successful,” said Frank Muir, president of the Idaho Potato Commission that represents Idaho’s $3 billion industry. His group, whose website boasts Idaho potatoes aren’t genetically engineered, hasn’t weighed in on Simplot’s endeavor.
Baker said with Simplot’s new potatoes, growers would earn more money with less wastage from bruising, something that can affect up to 5 percent of their harvest. Additionally, the spuds are designed to produce acrylamide levels so low they skirt California’s strict, voter-mandated cancer labels on french fries and potato chips, he said.
Joe Guenther, a University of Idaho professor of agricultural economics, in 2011 won funding from Simplot to survey potato industry players about re-introducing genetically engineered potatoes into the food chain. His conclusion: It could succeed, provided potatoes were modified with potato genes, not foreign micro-organisms that in the 1990s spawned terms such as “frankenfood.”
“The Monsanto product crossed that species line,” Guenther said. “The exciting thing about the Simplot product is, it stays within the potato species.”
