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Thanks for your reply.

Another complexity:
http://newhope360.com/food/stressed-plants-could-create-next-gen-functional-foods-say-usda-experts
"Compounds extracted from plants exposed to stressful conditions could be used to create a powerful new generation of functional foods, according to scientists.
Advertisement
A research team from the US Department of Agriculture said that these substances â" known as phytoalexins â" were naturally induced in plants as a defence mechanism against stress or fungal attack. They could also be prompted to appear using elicitor treatment and other stress inducing techniques.
In a paper published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, the scientists said that although phytoalexins had been investigated for their possible role in plant defence, until recently they had gone unexplored as nutritional components in human foods."

It's been argued by organic farmers that somewhat chewed on plants are going to be healthier for humans to eat if we are adapted to make use of these compounds. This is a potential problem with plants grown under optimal conditions in greenhouses, too.

It comes down to budget. If the plant has been bred or genetically engineered (and much of this is just conventional breeding) to put its resources into starch and sugar then it is going to be a weaker and less generally nutritious plant. I could believe what you say, that genetic engineers are not "intentionally" crippling plants, at least not any more so than conventional breeding. But the fact remains that we are still left with breeds, conventional or GMO, that are in many ways less healthy to eat. In general, nature has already created fairly optimal plants (it seems). Messing with that can push around things like risk, but you end up making tradeoffs. That may not be completely true, because look at the wonderful crops we have now from 1000s of years of breeding, but in general, it seems there may be no way to make everything better in a plant while not losing some other essential quality we may not even appreciate yet. How many phytonutrients do we really understand yet, as Dr. Joel Fuhrman talks about?
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
"Nutritional science in the last twenty years has demonstrated that colorful plant foods contain a huge assortment of protective compounds, mostly of which still remain unnamed. Only by eating an assortment of nutrient-rich natural foods can we access these protective compounds and prevent the common diseases that afflict Americans. Our modern, low-nutrient eating style has led to an overweight population, the majority of whom develop diseases of nutritional ignorance, causing our medical costs to spiral out of control. "

Monoculture agriculture (whether GMO or conventional) may produce other problems in practice, though sometimes complicated by GMO initiatives:
http://www.biotech-info.net/blind_rice.html
"The genetic engineering of Vitamin A rice deepens the genetic reductionism of the Green Revolution. Instead of millions of farmers breeding and growing thousands of crop varieties to adapt to diverse ecosystems and diverse food systems, the Green Revolution reduced agriculture to a few varieties of a few crops (mainly rice, wheat and maize) bred in one centralised research centre (IRRI for rice and CIMMYT for wheat and maize). The Green Revolution led to massive genetic erosion in farmers fields and knowledge, erosion among farming communities, besides leading to large scale environmental pollution due to use of toxic agrichemicals and wasteful use of water. "

Sometimes GMOs are taking the heat for a larger frustration with monoculture farming....

Humans have been co-evolv

because one of the most common uses of GM is to allow vastly stronger herbicides / pesticides

Many times it is the reverse. In fact, in India, the reverse kind is much more popular. That is to say, the GM advertisement says that expensive seed is more than offset by lower pesticide expense. And surprisingly, this part of the advertisement is true too.

So in India, for many crops, there is a choice between GM and poisoning water supply by indiscriminate use of (subsidized) pesticide.

Source and some other concerns http://www.biotech-info.net/bt_cotton_economics.html

Indeed, hence my usual caution in regards to GMO.

When you have the power to destroy something you have responsibility for it. Like it or not.

I'm just glade this is not the sort of GMO that they would want to release into general environment. Considering the near wipe out of terrestrial plants back in 1992 I think letting this tech out of the lab is generally a very bed idea right now.

FYI, the Monarch butterfly report showing harm was discredited due to the concentrations of pollen placed on the milkweed. It was way more than would normally by found in the wild.

And thank your for for the support.

That said, here are some links you might find informative;

Monsanto
more Monsanto
Yet more Monsanto (busy aren't they)
intersting site
Canola
GM canola in the wild
Possible wipe out of terrestrial plant life
another one

Have fun reading.

_

That specific matter has been resolved nowadays, but obviously there is no way to tell what left in store for patent holder.

The fallacy here is that this measure will do nothing.
I wish I could say otherwise, but you're wrong about that. It will do nothing to stop the production or spread of child pornography, but it will constitute another erosion of freedom of speech or information.

I wish I could say otherwise, but even this is not entirely correct. The measure will actually HELP the spread of child pornography.
It's pretty simple really:
1) Net censorship will eventually of course mean less access to "illegal" information. For example access to information deemed illegal at sites like Wikileaks.
2) Without widespread access to "illegal" information such as the illegal ACTA leaks, there will be little to no organized resistance to the ever-tightening Copyright and IP laws and treaties being signed (ACTA, GATS, TRIPS etc)
3) Strict IP and copyright laws keep third world countries poor [1]. The majority of Child Pornography stems from human trafficking from third world countries, an unfortunate risk of growing up in a third world country [2].
...

If the French Government really cared about Child Pornography, it would be taking studies like [1] below seriously and not playing cloak and dagger with treaties like ACTA.

[1]

Commission on Intellectual Property Rights declared the internationally-mandated expansion of intellectual property (IP) rights unlikely to generate significant benefits for most developing countries and likely to impose costs, such as higher priced medicines or seeds. This makes poverty reduction more difficult. The intensively researched, 180-page report is entitled Integrating Intellectual Property Rights and Development Policy. It is the culmination of much study and follows on more than a dozen meetings and workshops, 17 working papers, an exhaustive literature review of the field, visits to several developed and developing nations and a major conference. The report makes some 50 recommendations aimed at aligning IP protection with the goal of reducing poverty in developing nations. Topics include IP and health; agriculture; traditional knowledge; copyrights, software and the Internet; and the role of WTO and WIPO in advancing developing country interests. The Commission is an independent international body made up of Commissioners from both developed and developing countries with expertise in science, law, ethics and economics. The Commissioners come from industry, government and academia* (see list of Commissioners below). "Developed countries often proceed on the assumption that what is good for them is likely to be good for developing countries," said Professor John Barton, Commission Chair and George E. Osborne Professor of Law, Stanford University. "But, in the case of developing countries, more and stronger protection is not necessarily better. Developing countries should not be encouraged or coerced into adopting stronger IP rights without regard to the impact this has on their development and poor people. They should be allowed to adopt appropriate rights regimes, not necessarily the most protective ones."

http://www.biotech-info.net/independent_commission.html

[2] Third world are the major "Source Countries" of child pornography and other human trafficking related crimes.

Unlike what Monsanto said, and you fell for

[Citation needed]

• Superweeds fear from GM crops
• Destructive creation: GM superweeds
• Rise of GM superweeds
• RE: Government Study Finds GM 'Superweeds'
• "Cross-Pollination Leads to Triple Herbicide Resistance"

Crops cross pollinate, GE or otherwise. And those who complain about GE crops need to Keep It Real - we've been genetically engineering for thousands of years through cross breeding.

We have not been inserting fish genes into tomatoes, or any other foreign genes into any other plant or animal life for thousands of years. Horizontal gene transfer happens rarely in nature. Simply selective breeding as is done in agriculture and farming does not introduce genes that do not occur naturally in plants or animals into those plant and animals. All it does is amplify traits that already there. I garden and if I come across a trait say in tomatoes I grow, I currently have four different tomatoes growing in the garden, I can save the seeds from the tomatoes I like and plant them the next year. If next year I do the same and keep doing that year after year I'll eventually create my own cultivar. That's a lot different than introducing foreign genes.

Yes, I know Monsanto are dicks, and I heard about that farmer. What I don't see, however, is how this is Gore's fault

It's not Gore's fault but he supports increasing genetic engineering.

The most a quick Googling brings up is that Clinton's secretary of agriculture was opposed to it while Gore was VP - pretty weak sauce.

Perhaps you searched for the wrong things. From wiki's article on Al Gore:
"Gore was one of the Atari Democrats who were given this name due to their 'passion for technological issues, from biomedical research and genetic engineering to the environmental impact of the "greenhouse effect.'"

• Famed geneticist creating life form that turns CO2 to fuel
• Al Gore's Mealy-Mouth Position on Genetically Engineeered Food

Falcon

Ladies and Gentlemen:

You have no idea...too late. There are MULTIPLE contamination (both accidental and intentional) problems already. We are rapidly moving to biological armageddon, for a number of reasons. But heck, don't take my word for it. Google for GMO seed contamination. I hope that you will be appropriately outraged and shocked by what you discover and hammer your politicians ASAP.

Here's a couple examples:
http://www.biotech-info.net/control_issues.html
http://bioseguridad.blogspot.com/2006/05/hawaiian-papaya-gmo-contaminated-by.html
http://pubs.acs.org/hotartcl/est/99/dec/dec-news6.html

Et cetera, et cetera, unfortunately...

One important feature of the FDA's policy is that we will regulate proteins (or other added substances such as fatty acids and carbohydrates) produced by genes, that have been intentionally added to food crops, as new food additives

and

In December, Monsanto Corp. applied to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for approval to field-test and sell a new line of modified corn.

http://www.biotech-info.net/basmati_patent.html

Grown in India for hundreds of years, now the rights to grow it in the USA are owned by a US company. You grow it in USA, you have to pay the patent owning company. How can such behaviour be permitted? Your system is really broken.

Imagine if copyrights and patents never expired. If Caxton had a good lawyer 500 years ago and nobody else could get involved with any form of printing without paying his family money. If any time a child was innoculated the nurse had to pay a penny to Jenner's family or company. My fear would be a tiny elite getting richer and richer by every generation, a hereditary oligarchy. Not good.

Here's my UK perspective: until recently we had hereditary peers in the House of Lords. This meant that laws passed in the UK were decided on by an unelected, unselected group of people who made the decisions about national law that affected us all. These people (the peers of the House of Lords) were not there because they were popular, or had any special skills. They made our laws because one of their ancestors did something that impressed the King or Queen at the time: could have been 900 years ago. Maybe said ancestor hit somebody with an axe in front of the King and the King thought that was cool or funny or bloody lucky and gave him a lordship as a result. Maybe said ancestor bailed out the King's gambling debts and got a nice little estate as thanks. Said ancestor became a peer of the realm as a result and decided on the laws of the time. And his children would make the laws for ever after. So until recently, ten years ago or so, you could have a peer who was a complete fool, his father was a fool, his grandfather was a complete idiot and his great grandfather couldn't be trusted to make a better decision than your average sh*t-shovelling farm hand. No matter. If one of their ancestors had been made a hereditary peer, hundreds of years ago, just one clever bloke amongst a whole family of idiots, then all the generations for ever after would make the decisions that controlled our land. The rest of us had no say, couldn't get rid of them, had to accept their decisions. That's how the feudal lords and ladies system worked. I say this system was terrible. In the 1990s in the UK laws were decided in some cases by people who had no special talents beyond having a single ancestor who had done something significant hundreds of years before.

So the proposal that if I come up with a good idea, and corner the market in a product, or a method (or hell, a natural resource - look up Basmati Rice - grown in India for thousands of years but apparently some Texan company claimed the patent on this foodstuff! http://www.biotech-info.net/basmati_patent.html) - and that forever after everybody has to pay my children and their offspring for the right to engage with that aspect of the world - no I think that's a really bad idea. Unless you like the idea of minority hereditary elites.

I think, while in many cases I think technology is of a benefit to us, I also think that there are cases where it is harmful. We want to be selective about how we apply technology. For instance, there are drugs which have doubtless saved lives. With these drugs however, and with most technology, a person should be able to choose not to be exposed to them. No one tries for force a drug on a person, and a drug is usually used to treat a problem that exists, rather than given to everyone. Vaccines are provided to prevent diseases not currently present, however, even vaccines should be a matter of personal choice and no one should be forced to take them. The problem with GMOs is they are being forced on people who do not want them, and they are an artificial food which are being shown to have a good potential of being toxic. Furthermore, the issue of genetic pollution and the fact that crops tend to cross pollinate, endangers non-GMO fields where GMOs are not wanted, growing foods for people who do not want to eat GMOs. So the mere nature of GMO and its self replicating and transmissive quality makes it a danger to consumer freedom of choice to choose to not consume natural foods.

In regards to rat toxicity, As far as rats being intolerant of all potatoes, i am not sure about this. Rats being a scavenger species, might be equipped to handle, as such species often do, a large range of food items. I have been reading on the internet and I do see warnings to not give rats raw potatos, or green potatoes. Green potatoes are toxic to humans as well. Raw potatoes probably also would not be good for humans. Humans mainly eat cooked, ripe potatoes.

Problems have also been reported with corn and soy in rats.
http://uniorb.com/RCHECK/animalgm.htm

Also cows have been reported to die after eating GMO:
http://www.earthisland.org/project/newsPage2.cfm?n ewsID=576&pageID=177&subSiteID=44

Besides the potatos, we also have other reports of rats dying from eating GMO ingredients.
http://www.biotech-info.net/pusztai_article.html
http://www.soilassociation.org/web/sa/saweb.nsf/84 8d689047cb466780256a6b00298980/9f8d26bd0d23b83c802 5704600419579!OpenDocument
http://www.newswithviews.com/Smith/jeffrey8.htm

I do think that there is something odd going on here, and that the intolerance was likely not caused by a general intolerance to potatoes, but rather to the GMO ones. Studies which use a control group of a rats being fed non-GMO items can prove that.
I think when it comes to something like GMO, which is an artificial food, I would rather play it safe and go with the same foods humans have been eating for thousands of years, that is, non-GMO natural foods. For me, the risk in life and health is not worth it, to allow for agribusiness to make a little more profit. I do not like playing games with health and placing myself in unneeded danger, and especially with this technology, my gut instinct tells me the danger is significant and real.

I am one who would say we should not mess with the foods that we are eating, or at least, force them on people who dont want them. I am one who does support choice about what goes into our bodies, and the right of every person to refuse to put artificial substances into them if they refuse.

I do think, humans have evolved for thousands of years eating a certain range of foods and suite of nutritional components that comes from natural foods. The further we get away from the foods we have evolved to utilise and which our bodies are best equiped to handle, the less our bodi

Will tomatoes do?

For example in Africa or in Mexico or in ...

What becomes viable? Almost any manufactured product the Indian middle class want can be made in India less expensively than the US can make it [emphasis mine]

Keyword here is manufactured

Well, Bush, Clinton, Kerry & Cheney (and their ilk) would have you believe that Inetllectual Property will Save American Jobs [tm]

The sad truth is that IP is a house of cards to base you're economy on - and giving India reasons to ignore US patents is only going to hasten the end.

Essentially farming has been an open source project, done by thousands of farmers over hundreds (or thousands) of years. But because any individual variety doesn't have an owner, the existance of the plant itself doesn't count as prior art. In earlier stories on Smart Breeding v. Biotechnology or Open Source Biotechnology, I wrote about some problems with proprietary aka closed hood genetics in food production:

• Specific problems solved by genetic engineering can also be solved in other ways. Word isn't the only way to write a document. Golden rice isn't the only way to get more vitamin A to people.
• Opportunity Costs- what do you lose if you spend a big chunk of money on a single proprietary solution? You lose flexibility. Continuing with Golden Rice: sure, its gets people more vitamin A. But if instead you spend the same money to give people wider access to vitamin-rich veggies you *also* give them more of the other vitamins and phytochemicals that we've selected for in those veggies for 3000+ years.
• The food itself is secondary to locking you into a company's support products and support cycle. The problem that Montanto is trying to solve isn't "how can farmers improve crop yields and reduce weeds?" Monsanto's problem is "How can we lock farmers into using our weedkillers?"
• The proprietary product is often based on (taken from / stolen from) older open source projects.
• they're closed source, top-down implementations that lead to monocultures. For example: Andean potato farmers- they developed hundreds of different potato varieties over the years: buttery tasting ones, meaty tasting ones, ones that grow in drought / shade / various altitudes... and these potatoes could be susceptible to a particular pest (quite likely one or more of their varieties already had resistance: smart breeding is how you'd get that trait out from the one potato into the rest). A major North American company came in saying "Hey, our potato + pesticide combination is resistant to the pest. Buy both from us, then you'll have no problems. By the way our potato is patented- don't think about crossbreeding it." At the same time they launched a major advertising (FUD) campaign in major potato buying markets saying "Hey, our potato is the best most modern potato. Don't buy anything else." So farmers couldn't just patch their own potatoes- they had to buy into the product / product cycle upgrade of the NA company. Sounds familiar?
• they have all or nothing security models (they focus on zero tolerance for weeds / pests: in the long run this will be more expensive than "accept a marginal and mildly fluctuating loss" as they learned with citrus pests in California and Florida)
• They break standards. For example, BT is a bacteria /toxin used by organic farmers for decades to kill certain insect pests. At the previous rate of use- as a spray- there was a very, very low probability of insects developing resistance. Decades of use hadn't produced it. Now that BT has been spliced into crop plants, the widespread planting of monocultures of BT crops means BT resistance is increasingly likely. As this happens the non-organic farmers can move onto other pesticides. But the organic farmers whose old standard- BT sprays- will also become useless have no backup. There was no system set up to compensate these farmers from their soon to be broken standard. Nor was their any "royalty" paid to these farmers who'd discovered BT in the first place.

Yes, war is a logical outcome just like any other great epidemic and true that nuclear weapons would be a great threat. But it would not come all at once. We will suffer the affects slowly over time, we won't be seeing glaciers parking in Hudson bay suddenly one winter (as glaciers grow during abnormally cool summers and not cold winters, as they do not have a net loss in mass from summer melting.) Rising Oceans (or perhaps receding since the water would be freezing up in Glaciers) wouldn't be much faster but yes it would eventually affect shipping. We'd certainly be doing along more dregging. True, drought and famine are faster than any of them and while we have less warning for them than glaciers or ocean levels we still have more warning than ever in the past history of humanity. These things will move for drastic measures, but we have options. We can turn to GM Crops like the Golden Rice http://www.biotech-info.net/hope.html Food grown to make do with less, packed with vital nutrients in forms of common crops like corn and Soybean and Rice. We will accept the risks the Europeans so fear and success will incur some costs. Escape from our control and cross pollination would be inevetable with a global crisis occuring, and yes it will likely out compete or hybrid with tradition crops but such is the ways of survival. Its not as if the escapees, still very closely related with their base crops, will choke the life from the ecosystem it enters. Nuclear war is a very real possibility as the have-nots seem to take from the haves with what they have over them. I can think of nothing to say that would lessen the danger but utter a silent prayer that those nations technological enough to build these weapons have enough traditional military tech to take what they must without need for nukes. Though I never would for a minute think that these wars would end all of Humanity. Regrouping will be necessary, how far back we fall is up to both the depths of human darkness as much as the weather, but in time man will march his brazen technolgies,so uniquly alien to the natural order, his complex societies, and his dominated creatures, apon the frozen wastes of the north and having survived his own great extinction to again claim dominance over this world! No, this will not be this species' time! An Ice Age will not forever silence man nor would its results do the same. And certainly a MINI Ice Age will not!

You got me there, when I said studies have show herbicide resistant crops use more herbicides I got the information from different websites, so your question spurred me to check and see just what studies drew this conclusion. I found this:

Evidence of the Magnitude and Consequences of the Roundup Ready Soybean Yield Drag from University-Based Varietal Trials in 1998"

This report reviews the results of over 8,200 university-based soybean varietal trials in 1998...

Use Trending Upward
Experience in the field in 1999 suggests strongly that use of Roundup this year will rise perhaps 15 percent to 25 percent above 1998 in terms of average pounds of Roundup applied per acre. In 1998 USDA data show that the average rate per crop year for Roundup on soybeans was 0.92 pounds and there were on average 1.3 applications per acre. In 1999, use will trend upward to perhaps 1.6 applications per acre and 1.2 pounds per acre on average.

To place this level of Roundup use in perspective, in 1998 well less than 0.5 pounds of herbicide were applied to the vast majority of soybean acres not treated with Roundup. On perhaps 15 percent to 20 percent of the acres, the rate was well under 0.25 pounds. So compared to these systems, RR soybeans are heavily herbicide dependent.

Moreover, because of weed shifts, resistance, price cuts and aggressive marketing, Roundup use is bound to rise sharply in the next few years, hastening the day when farmers will be forced to seek new solutions.

What comes next is the soybean farmer's $64,000.00 question. It remains to be seen whether any company or public research institution will come forward with answers that cut to the core of soybean weed management challenges. In the current economic and policy climate, this vital task might be left to growers themselves.

It names some of the studies or trials though not all, at more than 8,000 I understand.

The only way to control weed population is by using a pre-emergent, or to weed the fields by hand

Those aren't the only methods of weed control, there are organic methods as well. Two such methods are cover crops and mulching.

Probably not. We're still learning all about various aspects of genes, DNA, and evolution.

For example, did you know that plants can activate certain genes in response to stressful conditions?

Did you know that bacteria strains can hypermutate in response to conditions in which that bacteria might otherwise die out?

Here are a few links I've just Googled. None of them are the original research papers that I read a few years ago, but they should provide any interested reader with a good starting point:

Plants activate genes

Plants and bacteria strains

Well as far as Biotechs are concerned, it is a delicate subject. When someone creates a new chemical or element (e.g. the slashdotium), there is no question about the invention factor.

But when a laboratory just decypher the gene pool of something that existed, and slightly change it to make it patentable, it's a harder question. Ex. : when RiceTech patented Basmati rice. [biotech-info.net]

This patent finally got revised but the problem is still there. As a lawyer, I just can't help but wondering how you can make it illegal not to manage your crop the way you want. Just like the rest of the IP field, the more it goes and the more we're headed to a world of licensing instead of ownership...

Just my two €urocents...

Its analogous to proprietary software: you can't just buy the algorithm: you have to buy the whole package (and support and perhaps hardware too). In much of current GM technology you can't just buy the nifty new gene, you have to buy the whole potato (w/a limited selection of potato types if any choice at all) *and* you're just leasing the potato *and* you have to keep buying the upgrades each year.

Problems with the closed-source methods of GM tech include:

• GM isn't the only solution. Word isn't the only way to write a document. Golden rice isn't the only way to get more vitamin A to people.
• Opportunity Costs- what do you lose if you spend a big chunk of money on a single proprietary solution? You lose flexibility. Continuing with Golden Rice: sure, its gets people more vitamin A, and no one wants blind babies (think of the children!). But what about veggies which already contain high quantities of beta-carotene (yams? carrots? Other richly-colored veggies and fruits filled with other vitamins / phytochemicals we've smart-bred in for 3000+ years). The royalty payments for Golden Rice could instead pay for a variety of other seeds. And if you do want to up the A content of rice, should people get to choose which varieties get upgraded?
• Useful applications get locked away. Losing a beautiful algorithm in software? Sad. Losing 100,000 lives per year?...more of a life-or-death choice. If it weren't for the facial hair application those people'd be back to injecting arsenic medicine with its 1/20 chance of death and the feel of injecting bleach.
• The food itself is secondary to locking you into a company's support products and support cycle. The problem that Montanto is trying to solve isn't "how can farmers improve crop yields and reduce weeds?" Monsanto's problem is "How can we lock farmers into using our weedkillers?"
• The proprietary product is often based on (taken from / stolen from) older open source projects. Documented cases of stealing? the Neem patent- patenting a 2000 year old method of using the Neem tree oil as a pesticide. Or the Enola yellow bean patent where an American company got a patent on a bean they'd bought from Mexican bean farmers. They then sued those farmers exporting yellow beans into the US. They're not only violating the GPL, but patenting the software they've borrowed.
• Standards for patents can be low. I argue that they're often not being novel. Take BT: is simply moving a gene that original?
• They're closed source, top-down implementations that lead to monocultures and kill off smaller but better competitors. Monocultures = bad: think 1/4 the US corn crop wiped out in one season.
• they have all or nothing security models (they focus on zero tolerance for weeds / pests: in the long run this will be more expensive than "accep

As I just referenced from telling good patents from bad patents:

Patent = a new solution to an old problem? Possibly a good patent. Patent = an old solution applied to a new problem? Probably a bad / stupid patent.

Its as if Microsoft got a patent for GUIs simply by moving them from Xerox or Mac machines into IBM machines. Or in the case of the Neem or Yellow Bean patents, its like Microsoft got a patent on Babbage engines or Turing machines- simply because the original work had been done in other countries.

I'm not taking sides, but there is definitely more than one side to this story.

This is the reply. Basically, they alledge that Percy stole the crop and planted it.

corporations which're indulging in despicable patent activities, often at the cost of developing nations and in atleast one case farmers who've been using the so called "innovation" since thousands of years. Case in point: India Fights U.S. Basmati Rice Patent .

"The parts for a DNA synthesizer can now be purchased for approximately $10,000. By 2010 a single person will be able to sequence or synthesize 10^10 bases a day. Within a decade a single person could sequence or synthesize all the DNA describing all the people on the planet many times over in an eight-hour day or sequence his or her own DNA within seconds. Given the power and threat of biological technologies, the only way to ensure safety in the long run is to push research and development as fast as possible. Open and distributed networks of researchers would provide an intelligence gathering capability and a flexible and robust workforce for developing technology."

You claim that Roundup-ready crops result in much less pesticide use.

Then you challenge the reader to "Read up on it" to prove your point. I wonder whether you yourself have read up on it.

Multiple studies have been published that show that Roundup-ready soybean crops not only have less yeild, but also do result in more pesticide use.

Some studies report 2 to 5 times more use.

Here is the PDF of one such study: pdf paper

The most important factor in usage of Roundup-ready crops and the herbicide itself is probably marketing pressure from Monsanto on growers. Unfortunately, the data for this factor is solely anectodal, but in talking to people in agriculture, it seems Monsanto has an unnerving amount of power over what we eat.

(4) Monsanto/Scott thinks that you are responsible for their inability to control their products.

Crops contaminated by GM organisms

GM Canola spreading out of control

Farmers are now suing Monsanto in self-defense, and even suing each other:

Litigation in the Wind

And it's not just pesticide resistance that is spreading:

New Scientist Article

Many crops are being engineered to produce pharmaceuticals now. Yes, chemicals with active functions in the human body. Slashdot had coverage of this in a recent story:

Would You Like Drugs in Your Rice?

<a href="http://www.biotech-info.net/basmati_patent.h tml">Here</a> and <a href="http://www.poptel.org.uk/panap/latest/lost.h tm">here</a>.

If more people followed it, then perhaps we would not have so much NOx in the air in the first place.

>>The most obnoxious (IMHO) is pushing the ongoing effort to make geographical indicators like "champagne" and "parmesan" to be protected with the force of trademarks in non-European countries.

Your absolutely right. What right does the French government have to make "parmesan" into a trademark. It's a frickin' Italian cheese after all. Or maybe you simply don't know the difference between the French government and the EU. But in any case, the US approach is much preferable. For example, instead of pursuing multilateral trade negotiations on such issues, why not just patent the foodstuff and then sue anyone who tries to import it. For example, basmati rice, as grown and eaten by billions in Asia for centuries.

>>The problem is political instability

And one way GM foods can help solve that is by allowing crops to grow in less favourable conditions. All that instability is, at the end of the day, just a hinderance to distribution. If we can make it easier to better grow crops locally, so much the better.

Also GM food can help in some other ways. You might have heard about the Golden Rice, a variety of rice that contains a high amount of A-vitamin and could be a great help to prevent its deficiency (which is quite a bit of a problem in many areas of Africa and South-East Asia).

We might not need it per se, but it sure is a nifty and useful tool to more easily solve certain problems.

Mostly, these activists are asking that we just slow down and use the Precautionary Principle when bringing out novel technologies that have the potential to interact with the world in unforseen ways. It's really just being sensible instead of rash.

The ETC group is not just focussed on technology: "The issue of ownership and control of this all-pervasive technology is paramount." Mooney has been one of the better informed observers on this issue for 20 years.

Go ahead and promote a technology without caring about its implementation; that's like running a department store with no cash registers, just a jar by the door--it won't work.

To paraphrase Vico: our skill with invention always surpasses our understanding of ourselves.

I agree that the precautionary principle is an important element in the debate about GM, but when it comes to food, it is not the most important factor. The attempt to introduce GM crops is about control of the food chain; it has nothing to do with "feeding the starving" and even the (alleged) improved efficiency and profitability is a secondary benefit, at least in the short term. It's about control. When those pesky farmers can no longer save seeds year to year but have to buy a licence (annually), then the entire food chain, from field via distribution to table is completely controlled by megacorps. That concerns me even more than the unknown effects of releasing such material into the environment

To put it another way : most people here on slashdot are appalled at the prospect of ubiquitous DRM, yet I see plenty of people missing the point when it comes to GM food.

GM crops are the Palladium of the food industry

And you know, food security is actually more important to us than listening to our MP3s and watching our DVDs.

"until contaminated foods leak into the market and people start dying

You mean like in the Showa Denko Disaster? 37 people killed, 1500 more permanently disabled. And that happened in the US. So yes, genetic engineering has already caused quite a few casualties for the American people...

You're right to be cynical, unfortunately you're being cynical about the wrong side in this debate. The truth is that Monsanto wanted to put in a "terminator" gene to control the spread of GMOs, but the luddite/green left screamed bloody murder. They claimed that Monsanto was using this as a cynical ploy to make third-world farmers dependent on GMOs, and then starve them to death unless they paid Monsanto. Fortunately they seem to be finally coming around to the realization that a Terminator gene is actually a good idea as a result of stories like this one.

Since I remembered the lawsuit by Monsanto, I entered into Google:

farmer sued genetically corn patented

And these articles came forth:

The farmer's page
Article"
Another
Another
Tale of the Absurd
Monsano wins
Commentary
and on...
and on...
Comment
Good ol' Mother Jones

Y'all see, there is a damned good chance that such corn will contaminate the other crops, and then Monsanto or whomever will own their souls. Or GNP, whatever works.

I'm surprised that the Canadian case isn't common knowledge. Then again, it wasn't exactly Evening News material for the U.S. No network news department head wants to seem "liberal" nowadays, which translates to "damned few stories critical of corporations" (balance), which of course is not connected to trying to please conservative corporate owners who have become quite.... proactive in their news departments of late.

The submitter of the item is correct in identifying IP lawsuit threats as an important datum in the decision to decline the food, even if the article cited doesn't make a point of it. An informed person would already know about the enormous lawsuit potential, and add that to the stack.

Since I remembered the lawsuit by Monsanto, I entered into Google:

farmer sued genetically corn patented

And these articles came forth:

The farmer's page
Article"
Another
Another
Tale of the Absurd
Monsano wins
Commentary
and on...
and on...
Comment
Good ol' Mother Jones

Y'all see, there is a damned good chance that such corn will contaminate the other crops, and then Monsanto or whomever will own their souls. Or GNP, whatever works.

I'm surprised that the Canadian case isn't common knowledge. Then again, it wasn't exactly Evening News material for the U.S. No network news department head wants to seem "liberal" nowadays, which translates to "damned few stories critical of corporations" (balance), which of course is not connected to trying to please conservative corporate owners who have become quite.... proactive in their news departments of late.

The submitter of the item is correct in identifying IP lawsuit threats as an important datum in the decision to decline the food, even if the article cited doesn't make a point of it. An informed person would already know about the enormous lawsuit potential, and add that to the stack.

Most of our conventional crops, including rice and wheat, assimilate atmospheric CO2 by the C3 pathway of photosynthesis, which takes place in the mesophyll cells of leaves. Photosynthetically, these plants are underachievers because, on the one hand, they assimilate atmospheric CO2 into sugars but, on the other hand, part of the potential for sugar production is lost by respiration in daylight, releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, a wasteful process termed photorespiration. This is due to the dual function of the key photosynthetic enzyme, ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco). High CO2 favors the carboxylase reaction and thus net photosynthesis; whereas high O2 promotes the oxygenase reaction leading to photorespiration. When plants first evolved, photorespiration was not a problem because the atmosphere then was high in CO2 and low in O2. As a byproduct of photosynthesis, O2 accumulated in the atmosphere and reached the present level a million years ago. Current atmospheric CO2 levels limit photosynthesis in C3 plants. Furthermore, photorespiration reduces net carbon gain and productivity of C3 plants by as much as 40%. This renders C3 plants less competitive in certain environments. In contrast, with some modifications in leaf anatomy, some tropical species (e.g., maize and sugarcane) have evolved a biochemical "CO2 pump," the C4 pathway of photosynthesis, to concentrate atmospheric CO2 in the leaf and thus overcome photorespiration. Therefore, C4 plants exhibit many desirable agronomic traits: high rate of photosynthesis, fast growth, and high efficiency in water and mineral use.

...and:

CO2 enrichment can also affect plant communities directly. For many plant species, increased CO2 concentrations lead to increased rates of net photosynthesis and improved water-use efficiency, resulting in larger plants. This effect is greatest in C3 plants and is typically small or negligible in C4 plants. Where plant communities consist of both C3 and C4 species, the different responses of these two groups can lead to changes in plant community composition over time.

Finally, IIRC, most of the biomass is C3 plants.

-- MarkusQ

If there are any real factual arguments against GM foods, by all means present them.

What about the recent unexpected contamination of natural Mexican corn by genetically modified corn? If you're not familiar with this, here's the scoop: the Mexican equivalent of the US Department of Agriculture tested some corn-seed in Oaxaca and found that it had between a 3-60% rate of transgenetic contamination from species of corn that had not been imported into Mexico.

from:
UC Berkeley
Reuters
Nature, Vol. 413, September 27, 2001

My real factual argument against GM foods follows.

One: until a GM food product has existed for a number of years it is impossible to be 100% certain what effects it might have. (Think about drugs the FDA approved as good...thalidomide for one).

Two: apparently, based on the links mentioned above, it is impossible to control the dissemination of GM foods -- even the Monsanto Terminator gene isn't going to stop corn pollen.

Thus: we can't be what effects a GM food might have on the environment.

Ergo: this is a good argument for the strict control of GM foods.

And I might add, you probably don't trust Microsoft with Passport. Why would you trust Monsanto with GM foods?

Ironically, in a story rejected by Slashdot months ago, patenting of Beans that happen to be yellow has already been allowed by our friends at the USPTO.

In this case, the patent holder didn't even do any engineering - he just picked out some yellow beans from a bunch he brought over from mexico and grew them until he consistently got yellow ones. (The 'Enola Bean', as he calls them).

'Biopiracy' indeed...

A study on Cry9c (note, not Cry9p) was done after many people complained of an allergic reaction to the corn shells. The corn was developed by Aventis Crop Science USA LP and marketed under the name StarLink(tm). There was no correlation between the response and the protein --- that is to say, the tests did not show any specific binding between the Cry9c and the antibodies (IgM) in the serum of people claiming to have a reaction. For those of you who are interested, the test is known as an ELISA (Enzyme Linked Immuno-Sorbant Assay) and nice little dots show up if the test is positive. Of course, if you don't want to believe the government, there are certainly people willing to say they're full of ... well... something not so nice. See here

FWIW, McDonald's has gone quite a ways to avoid using GE food. They have been pushing to go GE-free, which has somewhat thrown the farmers who grow genetically-engineered crops. Look here for a good article on this.

This is a lot like that old story that McDonald's uses worm meat instead of beef in their burgers. In reality, McD has more ties to the beef industry than Bush has to the oil industry, and it's probably cheaper for them to use cows instead of worms.

India Fights U.S. Basmati Rice Patent

... Basmati rice, sought-after for its fragrant taste, was developed by Indian farmers over hundreds of years, but the Texan company RiceTec obtained a patent for a cross-breed with American long-grain rice. RiceTec was granted the patent on the basis of aroma, elongation of the grain on cooking and chalkiness. However, the Indian government last week filed 50,000 pages of scientific evidence to the US Patents and Trademarks Office, insisting that most high quality basmati varieties already possess these characteristics.

... There are currently more than 200 patents granted on rice, almost exclusively to US and Japanese companies. It is currently not possible to patent staple foods and crops in Europe or developing countries but a European directive is about to change that in the EU.

The Canadian farmers started to accuse Monsanto of cross pollinating a while ago. Farmers near fields with "those gall darn ge'tic seeds" found that Monsanto seed ended up in their crop. Fears of an uncontrollable cross pollinated world of genetically altered food started to be thrown about. What happened next?

Monsanto spied on farmers, then "burned" farmers fields in order to destroy evidence. When caught, Monsanto said they were "testing" fields. Hmm, and flew night missions in Cessnas to carry out these "normal" activities. Yea... sure.

And now they win a court case against a farmer who has complained about Monsanto seed in his crop before. I don't care if the whole field is full of Genetic seed, it's still Monsantos responsibility.

Monsanto wants to own the worlds food before the farmer does. It's insidious!
They have killed before, they will kill again.
______
jeff13

And before anybody screams that genetic information is a bad analogy as well, consider that ironically enough, some corporations want to lock up that kind of information too.

They have the patent, but have agreed not to use it.