GM FOOD COMPOSITION

FW Jansen van Rijssen PhD

GMASSURE GM Food Safety Training

23 – 25 Nov 2015

4

Cottonseed oil from GMO cotton?

• Voluntary – Trading– Environmental impact– Biological variation as benchmarks

• Regulatory – Variety registration– Labeling (Codex Alimentarius)– Food safety

• Research

Why compositional analysis of conventional crops?

• COMPOSITIONAL ANALYSIS– Concentration of components (nutrients, anti-

nutrients, toxicants) and more recently more awareness of allergens

• NUTRITIONAL ASSESSMENT– In vitro assays (digestibility)– Wholesomeness – nutritive value and

performance.

Tendency for more detailed information

Conventional methods:

COMPOSITIONAL ANALYSIS OF

CONVENTIONAL CROP FOOD

PRODUCTS IS IMPORTANT

GM FOOD ANALYSIS

SEED DEVELOPMENT • Molecular Biology• Genome plasticity

AGRONOMIC AND PHENOTYPE ASSESSMENT• Comparative

analysis• familiarity

FOOD ANALYSIS• Codex

Alimentarius• OECD

PROBLEM FORMULATION

FOOD ANALYSIS

INTENDED/UNINTENDED EFFECTS ?

FOOD COMPOSITION -SAFETY ASSESSMENT OF GM FOODS

• FAO/WHO Codex Alimentarius Commission ad hoc committee (1990 , 1996, 2000),

• OECD 1993 onwards

Test• Critical compositional elements of

the modified variety

Comparator• Non-GM variety with history of safe use• Near isogenic line grown under identical conditions.

References • Conventional varieties or hybrids that are grown commercially in

the geographies of the field trials.

Materials For Analysis

Comparative approach• Most appropriate strategy for the safety /

nutritional assessment of GM-food • Focus on determination of similarities and

differences between GM-food and conventional counterparts

• Not a safety assessment in itself but a key step in the process of safety assessment

GM-food crops: FAO/WHO & OECD

(EFSA, 2008)

COMPOSITION ANALYSIS

CODEX ALIMENTARIUS

WORKING PRINCIPLES FOR RISK ANALYSIS TRANSGENES/GMO

COMPARATIVE APPROACH

TARGETED APPROACH• Near(est) iso-line• Critical components• Characteristics of the crop• History of safe use• Safety assessment

HISTORY OF SAFE USE

• The USA Food and Drug Administration (US-FDA): “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) ‒ for food or food additives, which includes a long history of use or by virtue of scientific information about the nature of the substances, their customary or projected conditions of use, and the information generally available to scientists about the substances .

HISTORY OF SAFE USE

• The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) accepts that a “long history of use is a reassuring and practical starting point” for evaluating the safety of GM food and has prepared a number of guidelines in this respect.

History of Safe Use (Constable et al 2007)

• History: Correct identification; Biology (origin, genetic diversity); Length of use; Geographic/demographic distribution of use; Details of use; Evidence of adverse effects; Reliability of data

• Safe: Composition (especially toxic, allergenic, metabolic, nutritional and antinutritional components as well as health compromising compounds). In silico tests (e.g. structural homology to known allergens or known toxins); In vitro tests (e.g. serum screening, digestibility tests); Animal studies (toxicology and nutrition studies); Experience from human exposure; Clinical studies; Epidemiological evidence.

• Use: Type/purpose (e.g. as a food, ingredient, supplement or pharmaceutical).

Safety: • “..it is a judgment, it is value

laden… ..understood within contexts of society, culture, politics , and economics’ (Wolt, 2008)

• Reasonable certainty of no harm (OECD, 1993)

Risk: • “ ..there is always a degree of risk..” (Wolt, 2008;

Querci et al., 2010)

ISSUES: History of Safe use ?

“History of safe use” of

CASSAVA Containing

CYANOGENIC GLYCOSIDES ?

CYANOGENIC GLYCOSIDES (addendum)

CONSENSUS DOCUMENTS

Contents of consensus document• ABOUT THE OECD • FOREWORD • PREAMBLE • THE ROLE OF COMPARATIVE APPROACH AS PART OF A SAFETY ASSESSMENT • ACRONYMS • SECTION I –BACKGROUND• 1. General description of cassava • 2. Production ..... • 3. Processing and Use • 3.1 General human and animal consumption • 3.2 Human food processing • 3.3 Animal feed processing• 3.4 Range of industrial food products • 3.5 Ethanol production and animal feed by products ‐• 4. Appropriate comparators for testing new varieties • 5. Breeding characteristics screened by developers ..• SECTION II –NUTRIENT• 1. Unprocessed roots and leaves .• 1.1 Proximate composition

Contents of consensus document

• 1.2 Carbohydrates • 1.3 True protein (amino acids) • 1.4 Lipids • 1.5 Minerals • 1.6 Vitamins • 2. Processed cassava products • SECTION III –OTHE CONSTITUENTS R • 1. Anti nutrients ‐• 1.1 Tannins • 1.2 Phytic Acid • 1.3 Oxalate, Nitrate, Polyphenol, Saponin, Trypsin inhibitor • 2. Toxicants • 3. Allergens .• SECTION IV SUGGESTED CONSTITUENTS TO BE ANALYZED RELATED TO FOOD USE ‐• 1. Food uses and products • 2. Suggested analysis for food use • SECTION V SUGGESTED CONSTITUENTS TO BE ANALYZED RELATED TO FEED USE ‐• 1. Livestock feed uses • 2. Suggested analysis for feed use • SECTION VI – REFERENCES

Constituent/analytes Fresh leaves Fresh roots

Proximate X X

Starch X

Fatty acids X X

Amino acids X X

Mineral X X

Vitamins X X

Cyanogenic glycosides(linamarin and lotaustralin)

X X

HCN X X

Tannins X

Phytic acid X

Food constituents to be analysed in fresh roots and leaves of cassava (OECD, 2009)

FOCUSSED APPROACH“SEARCH LIGHT”

Constituent/analytes Fresh leaves Fresh roots

Proximate X X

Starch X

Acid detergent fibre X X

Neutral detergent fibre X X

Calcium X

Phosphorous X

Cyanogenic glycosides(linamarin and lotaustralin)

X X

Tannins X

Phytic acid X

Feed constituents to be analysed in fresh roots and leaves of cassava for f(OECD, 2009)

VARIATION OF NUTRIENT CONTENTS IN FOODS (INFOODS)

Nutrient contents in foods can vary significantly because of:environmental, genetic and processing influences such as feed, soil, climate, genetic resources (varieties/cultivars, breeds), storage conditions, processing, fortification and market share;

Distribution of Maize Protein Values in ILSI Database

Distribution of Protein Values in ILSI Database

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

5 7 9 11 13 15 17

Protein (% dw)

Nu

mb

er

of

Sa

mp

les

Argentina

EU

United States

Natural Variability – Conventional Maize Hybrids

Asp Thr Ser Glu Pro Gly Ala Cys Val Met Iso Leu Tyr Phe His Lys Arg Trp

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

Mg/

gm fw

Amino acids

7 Varieties, 6 Locations, 1 Year

(Reynolds et al., 2005).

Variety Place mg isoflavones/10 g

Hardin Girard, IL 47 aHardin Urbana, IL 82 aHardin Pontiac, IL 156 bHardin Dekalb, IL 171 b

Hardin Urbana, IL 116 aAmcor Urbana, IL 150 bCentury Urbana, IL 250 c Sprite Urbana, IL 309 d

Isoflavones in soybean Are physiologically active

GGenetics & environment (Eldridge and Kwolek. 1983)

Parrot

Changes within this range are normal (and safe)

Number of crop plants

Metabolic changes

Not metabolic changes

10 25 19

- OMIC: Metabolic Pathways

Number of publications comparing GM and non-GM crop varieties with or without intentional metabolic changes

(Ricroch et al., 2011)

• Natural variation explain most transcriptomic changes among maize plants.... (Coll et al., 2010)

• Gene expression profiles of GM.... Comparable with non-GM...” (Coll et al., 2009)

• Micro-array analyses reveal that plant mutagenesis may induce more transcriptomic changes than transgene insertion (Batista et al., 2008)

• Transgenesis has less impact on the transcriptome of wheat grain than conventional breeding (Baudo, 2006)

• Global transcriptome profiling is a poor predictor of the secondary effects of transgene influencing abiotic stress tolerance (Chan et al., 2012)

-OMICS

Increased safety assessment?Single traits

Comparative approach

Compositional assessment

Metabolic pathways

Metabolic pathways

PLACE FOR / OF OMICS - STUDIES ?

References

• Constable, A, Jonas, D, Cockburn, A, Davis, A, Edwards, G, Hepburn, P, ..., Samuels, F 2007, ‘History of safe use as applied to the safety assessment of novel foods and foods derived from genetically modified organisms’, Food and Chemical Toxicology, vol. 45, pp. 2513–2525

• Rachel S. Meyer1,2, Ashley E. DuVal3 and Helen R. Jensen (2012)Patterns and processes in crop domestication:an historical review and quantitative analysis of 203 global food crops ,New Phytologist ,196: 29–48

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