Secrets of the Soviet bioprom
Why Russia does not produce its vitamins today
Academician Viktor Tutelyan – about why Russia does not produce its vitamins, amino acids and other products of the biotechnology industry, and whether there are chances not to completely lag behind the countries of the West and China.
Photo: Federal Nutrition Research Center,
biotechnology and food safety – VM.
Viktor Tutelyan, head of the former Research Institute of Nutrition of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, is one of the leading Russian experts in the field of nutrition and toxicology. Last week he gave a lecture at the conference "Postgenomic Technologies" dedicated to the centenary of Academician Georgy Scriabin. Tutelyan told how Russia has lost its biotechnologies and has become dependent on the West and China to provide vitamins, amino acids and proteins.
Half a kilo of beef or fifty tons of yeast
"Soviet industrial biotechnologies, which provided the country completely with vitamins, amino acids and animal feed, originate in the mid-1960s. Their founders were actually three academicians – Alexey Pokrovsky, Lev Ernst and Valery Bykov, as well as academician Georgy Scriabin, who combined their efforts and created a huge network of 70 institutes, departments and industrial enterprises," the scientist says.
As today, officials of relevant departments did not always understand why biotechnologies are important and why they need to be engaged in them. Scientists, according to Tutelyan, had to spend a lot of time and find a way to clearly show party functionaries the importance of these technologies for the development of the Soviet Union.
"In 1960, the question arose, how can humanity develop and not die of hunger? Without a new technological order, as we realized then, it would be impossible to solve this problem. We needed to find a way to increase the level of production productivity not by several times, but by orders of magnitude," adds Academician Bykov, Minister of Medical and Microbiological Industry of the USSR in 1985-1989.
According to him, scientists brought this idea to the leadership of the CPSU, demonstrating how quickly ordinary animals and microbes produce biomass. A cow weighing 500 kilograms produces about 500 grams of protein per day, while yeast of a similar mass produces about 50 tons of protein. This convinced party leaders not only to develop biotechnology, but also to ask scientists to think about the synthesis of food directly.
As Tutelyan noted, all Soviet bio-industrial projects developed in such a way that the safety of production and use of such products was always put first, and only then scientists thought about increasing the efficiency of the production of useful substances and solving other problems.
Sometimes the situation developed in such a way that at the first stages of the development of the bioprom, many experimenters tested their products on themselves before they began to apply it in other sectors of the national economy.
"When I was a graduate student at our institute, across the street we had a canteen where we were fed pork and other food grown on the products of our microbiological synthesis for six months. Our health was closely monitored, noting all changes in biochemical parameters. As you can see, nothing has happened – I'm still alive," the scientist recalls.
Thanks to this, in a very short time (less than two decades) Soviet scientists, engineers and agro-industrialists created the basis for the transition to a new technological way of life in the "GMO age".
"Until 1990, biotechnologies were developing very rapidly – by the time of the collapse of the Union, we were producing about 1.5 million tons of feed protein, providing 100% of the needs of livestock and poultry, as well as six thousand tons of vitamins and amino acids. In 1994, the State Duma destroyed all this with a stroke of the pen," the academician explains.
The forgotten history of "Bush legs"
"What happened in 1994? The State Duma of the first convocation stepped on the rake for the second time, which we embarked on in 1948, when genetics was declared a pseudoscience. Both Academician Bykov and I participated in discussions with deputies and could not convince them that our amino acids and feed are not dangerous for animals. The "elected representatives of the people" decided that it was necessary to repurpose production," the scientist continues.
According to the academician, this fateful decision of the Duma led to the fact that all Russian poultry and animal husbandry virtually ceased to exist, and then the markets were filled with "Bush legs" and other foreign products.
"After 1994 in Russia has not produced a single gram of fully domestic vitamins. This is a real crime. It is only necessary to impose sanctions on these raw materials, we will be left without vitamins and amino acids, and the agro-industry that has begun to develop will roll back. Russia will not be able to survive wars and catastrophes, during which an influx of vitamins and amino acids is constantly required," says Tutelyan.
Today, this problem, as the academician notes, is very acute both for the scientific community of Russia and for the authorities, and they are actively trying to solve it. In recent years, dozens of regulatory documents have been developed that allow for such research and stimulate them, which allows us to hope that we will not fall behind forever in this area.
"The last law on GMOs, adopted two years ago, alarms us because it introduces a ban on the production of biological products in Russia. On the other hand, it allows us to conduct research and register new products, which is a very reasonable thing," Tutelyan emphasizes.
According to him, it makes no sense to completely ban GMOs – today Russian scientific institutes have developed the strictest and most effective system for checking all potentially dangerous properties of genetically modified products. It actually guarantees that Western or Chinese varieties of transgenic plants, animals or microbes that pose a threat to humans simply will not get to the market or into the body of consumers.
As Tutelyan notes, each new variety or strain of GMOs undergoes a multi-stage safety check both at the development stage and already during field trials. These checks last at least two to three years, during which scientists try to find all potentially dangerous changes in the work of cells at the gene level, conduct tests on animals and analyze all the proteins that are produced in their tissues. Only one product out of ten thousand, according to the academician, reaches the last stage of testing.
"In fact, we are looking for a black cat in a dark room, even in cases when it is most likely not there, using all possible methods and 20 years of experience that we have accumulated in Soviet times. Today, all foreign GMO producers are afraid of us, and they actively prevent the transfer of our experience to those colleagues who could use it in other countries," Tutelyan notes.
As the biologist notes, there is no real alternative to GMOs today – transgenic animals and microbes can produce unique antibiotics, proteins and other substances important for medicine. GMO plants, in turn, yield about three to five times more yield than their "organic" varieties, and at the same time they are not infected with fungal toxins that are dangerous to humans.
As Academician Bykov added, today the biotechnology market in the USA alone is estimated at $ 270 billion, and by 2020 it may reach the trillion dollar mark.
"I would like to hope that we will not step on the rake for the third time and will not ban GMOs. It will be a disaster, and we will forever lag behind the leading countries in the field of biotechnology. Fortunately, there are many sensible people in the Duma today who understand this, and failure in this area will mean that we will take not one, but many steps back," Tutelyan concludes.
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26.09.2017