Month: May 2022

I am sometimes asked to assist in matters which involve detection of genetically modified organisms (GMO). This is very important in some trades as many countries have lists of approved cultivars and stricly only those are permitted to be present. Organic trade is also highly sensitive to contamination by anything which is not appropriately certified as organic.

The technology to detect the presence of modified organisms, and identify any which are present, is very advanced but you need to have an understanding of what the tests are, how they work, and what they look for in order to understand what results do or do not mean. As with many things, the first step in testing is obtaining reliable samples. If the samples are not properly representative of the goods in question, the testing results will not be useful.

Anything related to genetics generally has its basis in DNA. DNA stands for deoxyribosenucleic acid and it contains the information required to make the proteins out of which life is built. The double-helix structure of DNA is like a ladder which has been twisted. The backbone structure (made up of deoxyribose sugars) forms the sides of the ladder and the rungs are nucleic acid pairs. Each chain of deoxyribose sugars has a sequence of nucleic acids, each of which is hydrogen bonded to a complementary nucleic acid on the other half of the ladder.

There are four nucleic acids, which are adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine (denoted A, T, C and G). They are known as bases. A always pairs with T, C always pairs with G. Thus if you were to pull apart the two strands of DNA and throw one strand away, the nucleic acid sequence for the missing strand can be recreated by matching to the remaining strand. This property of DNA is what makes it possible for it to be reproduced. Thus, when DNA is duplicated in a cell, this happens by the DNA splitting into two strands, on each of which a replacement complemetary strand is created. Without this property, life as we know it would not be possible.

The genetic information in DNA consists of the bases and the order in which they are found. DNA is found in the nucleus of the cells and the information in it is used to make proteins and enzymes etc. The first stage in this process is that the DNA is transcribed to RNA. A part of the DNA is separated into two strands, and one strand is used to make an almost copy of part of the DNA sequence. RNA stands for ribose nucleic acid. This is very similar to DNA except the sugar backbone is ribose itself rather than deoxyribose. RNA consists of a sequence of bases which are complimentary to the DNA it has been transcribed from, but RNA does not use thymine; instead the RNA has uracil (U). Thus a DNA sequence made up of bases such as GATTACA would be transcribed into RNA as CTUUTGT.

The RNA transcription (referred to as messenger RNA or mRNA) is then transported out of the nucleus to a different part of the cell known as a ribosome. There the genetic information is translated into the product for which it codes. To do this, individual amino acids are added to a protein chain which gradually builds up to be the product. The bases on the mRNA are taken three at a time, and combinations of bases code for different amino acids. A group of three bases is known as a codon. The table below contains the so-called genetic code – i.e. what amino acid a given codon/combination of three bases codes for.

Thus a triple which reads GCC would result in alanine being added to the protein chain, and so on. The order of the bases in the codon matters, and also it is important to note that if the “reading frame” is shifted by a base pair, the product is different. Thus CUUAGUGGU codes for leucine followed by serine and then glycine, but if a base is removed from the beginning of the sequence, the resulting UUAGUG… codes for leucine followed by valine.

This then is known as the central dogma of molecular biology, stated in very simplified form as

The arrows designate information flow. All life on earth relies on this.

As an aside, there are occasions when information flows from RNA to DNA. So-called retroviruses such as HIV contain RNA. Part of that RNA codes for a special enzyme known as “reverse transcriptase”. This converts the viral RNA to DNA which is then inserted into the target cell DNA for replication by the host cell when it replicates. Sneaky! Coronaviruses such as COVID-19 are also RNA viruses but they code for enzymes which replicate the RNA to RNA, they don’t usually get inserted into the host DNA.

GMOs and gene editing techniques all rely on modifying the DNA sequences to produce a desired product. That product will tend to involve the plant (usually) cells producing proteins the native plant type cannot or does not.

The inter-related nature of world trade is often mentioned when things go wrong. For instance when in 2021 EVER GIVEN became wedged in the Suez Canal, there were significant knock-on effects felt worldwide.

The current conflict in the Ukraine is another example. A substantial amount of grain including sunflower seeds, maize and wheat comes out of Black Sea ports. Currently a number of vessels are stranded in Ukraine ports unable to leave and caught in the conflict. The disruption to the world food supply is becoming widely known.

As an example of the consequences, take a look at the supermarket shelves for cooking oil next time you shop. It appears that sunflower oil is becoming difficult to get hold of. Instead the shelves might carry non-specific vegetable oil which may contain rapeseed oil. Fields of yellow oilseed rape plants used to be a common sight in the UK, but in recent years less acreage has been devoted to this crop because of a ban on neonicotinoid pesticides implicated in causing problems for bees. Will we start to increase the amount of rapeseed planting? Maybe.

Another alternative is palm oils. The environmental implications of large palm plantations are frequently stated and are widely accepted, but the plant does produce a number of oils which have multiple uses. However, the Indonesian government has recently announced a ban on palm oil exports. This is reportedly being put in place to ensure that sufficient supplies of oil are available for domestic use in Indonesia.

One to watch out for may be coal. The industrial revolution was driven forward by coal, and the steam railway engines which used to power across the British landscape were raised on a diet of coal mined in these islands. Heritage railways are already reporting difficulties in operating as a consequence of the bans on imports from Russia, and are even exploring using rapeseed sourced fuel. Steel producers also require coal. Earlier this year there was a temporary ban imposed locally on the export of coal from Indonesia. Will that be repeated now other sources are under pressure because of the conflict?

A possible consequence of these supply shortages and market disruption is that avoidable shortcuts might be taken in the shipment of commodities leading to problems during carriage. The carriage of coal has a number of associated hazards – self-heating, gas evolution, fires, liquefaction. Similarly, carriage of vegetable oils can give rise to substantial claims – contamination, admixture, overheating and oxidation, water damage and increase in free fatty acids.

It has recently been in the news in shipping circles that permission has not been granted for the TAI PRIZE dispute to be taken to the Supreme Court, and so the Court of Appeal judgement is the final word on the matter.

I wasn’t involved in the TAI PRIZE and I am not aware of the finer details of the case and what facts the arbitrator and judges had at their disposal. So, I’m not going to write about the TAI PRIZE, or the legal issues it deals with, but I am going to talk about soya beans and “apparent good order and condition”.

I have been inspecting cargoes of soya beans for more years than I’d like to say. It seems to be a commodity which causes a great deal of trouble worldwide. In recent years, the focus of many claims has been the trade from Brazil to China, but there have been plenty of cases involving soya beans of different origin and in different discharge ports.

As with agricultural materials generally, there is a tendency for soya beans to deteriorate microbiologically when overmoist. Unlike many other commodities, soya beans have a relatively large oil content. When vegetable oils oxidise, the chemical reaction releases heat. That means that soya beans can self-heat to rather higher temperatures than maize or rice. At elevated temperatures, further chemical reactions between proteins and sugars which result in the beans discolouring through a variety of shades of beige to brown and eventually black. These are known as Maillard reactions (nothing to do with ducks!) and they are also the reactions which take place when food is cooked.

People doing my sort of work tend to give presentations exhibiting lots of dramatic photographs like the above. They make good slides in powerpoint presentations! But these are photographs of holds in which there has been a major problem with soya beans. They aren’t representative of normal shipments.

Incidentally, the phrase “burned” is often bandied about to describe beans which are heavily darkened or even blackened. To actually set soya beans on fire requires quite a bit of effort, but it can be done. They then will burn, slowly. Heavily darkened beans where the darkness has arisen by means of elevated temperatures created by self-heating, and the Maillard reactions which result, are not burned.

And so to the “apparent good order and condition” point. This term has a legal meaning which hangs on the word “apparent” – it relates to what can be seen by normal inspections by a ship’s Master and the crew during loading.

The most recent grain case I have handled had just under 45000MT of grain loaded in 49 hours. That is on average just over 900MT an hour. A single soya bean weighs about 0.15g. So in each hour, some 6×10⁹ beans are loaded. In American terms that is six billion; in British terms six thousand million beans.

Add to that the fact that the crew member in question might be standing by the hatch looking in. The nearest cargo is several metres away. There will be a cloud of dust hanging over the hold for much of the time, and there won’t be much chance of seeing through that cloud to notice anything much about the beans.

The first thing which definitely does not come under “apparent good order” is moisture content. This is a hugely important parameter as it plays a significant role in determining whether cargo will carry without deterioration. It isn’t a visible one, except in very extreme cases.

Soya beans which appear visibly wet would have to have a moisture content in excess of 30-40% and would be visibly saturated. However, the difference in moisture levels which give rise to problems in soya bean cargoes on ships are differences between 12%, 13%, 14% and so on. These all look identical. Very often I hear mouldy or otherwise damaged grain and soya bean cargoes referred to as being “wet”. They usually are not actually wet.

So, except in extreme cases, you can’t see problematic moisture contents. Sometimes we see recommendations for having a surveyor present to take small samples and measure moisture levels. There are portable moisture meters which can be used to get a rapid result on a ship. Obtaining a sample and using the meter might take 5 minutes if the surveyor is efficient. In that time in the example above some 75MT of cargo (500 million beans) may have been loaded. As the moisture content doesn’t have any impact on “apparent good order and condition”, what do you then do with that information? If the figures are such that an expert would tell you there is a strong chance of deterioration on a given voyage, what then do you do?

The next thing which isn’t “apparent good order” is the cargo temperature. You cannot see it. Is it a good idea for temperatures to be taken during loading? Wholeheartedly yes. There are lots of reasons why knowing the cargo temperature at loading can be useful. Soya beans which are significantly warmer than ambient temperature may represent parts of a cargo which have already started to deteriorate before shipment. That is certainly something you would want to know about, and it is likely that such cargo would also have elevated levels of mouldy or discoloured beans, and in all likelihood, an unpleasant odour.

Choosing the right thermometer for a given situation is quite important. Spear probes may be necessary for some situations and these can take time to use properly. For taking rapid and plentiful readings during loading of a cargo of soya beans, an inexpensive infra-red remote thermometer gun is ideal. These only report the temperature of the nearest surface in front of the gun, but that’s fine for such situations. Accuracy down to a fraction of a degree isn’t important but a real-time indication of whether warm cargo is being loaded can be.

The next biggie which is not part of “apparent good order” is cargo quality. With soya beans, there are a number of parameters. Foreign material (you can see seed pods and other foreign material in the photograph above) is one. Dust and other foreign material is often airborne during loading and it settles into a layer on top of the cargo during a break in loading. Those layers can often be seen in and amongst the cargo when it has heated – see the top photograph earlier in this article. Sales contracts have allowances for foreign material, and also other parameters such as split beans, heat damaged beans, and so on. To measure the levels of these it is necessary to take representative samples and have them analysed. This is well beyond the scope of what would be considered part of the duties of the crew during a loading, and quality matters are not relevant considerations for “apparent good order and condition”, even though the individual items of foreign material and the split beans etc are visible to the unaided eye.

So, having discussed a few categories of issue which are not “apparent good order and condition” items, and having said that quality parameters are not, what about a part of the cargo where the beans are discoloured, or mouldy, etc? This is where it gets more complicated. An example of an assembly consisting exclusively of darkened beans, or where such beans are in a majority, is in the top photograph above and the two below.

These photographs were taken during a cargo discharge, but if a significant quantity of such beans was loaded into one part of a ship’s hold, and then that inspected, it may well be considered not to be in “apparent good order and condition”. That is because a parcel of discoloured beans does not look like a normal parcel of soya beans.

What’s the likelihood of something like that being spotted? Answering that is much more difficult. The rapid rates of loading typical at grain terminals and the dust generated make it very difficult for even gross problems such as these to be detected. It would be very easy for even a large parcel of discoloured beans to be loaded and covered with other cargo without even the most attentive crew member noticing the problem.

Experts analysing evidence from a discharge may make the judgement that the cargo deteriorated because of its inherent condition (so-called inherent vice). Deciding that a certain parcel of cargo was already damaged at the time of loading is very much harder to do. Sometimes the evidence does suggest this. It is very much more difficult again to determine whether that could or should have been detected at loading.