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Starving Nation Turns Down Bioengineered Corn
The Washington Post has a story about Zimbabwe turning down shipments of genetically engineered corn, even though the country is experiencing a severe drought and starvation. Zimbabwe is afraid some of the corn will end up planted instead of eaten -- and growing patented corn is a no-no, of course! If the corn is planted even once, it may contaminate all future crops grown in those fields or any fields nearby, leading to huge lawsuits - and then the fields are contaminated, exacerbating the food shortage. So, starve or be bankrupted, and Zimbabwe appears to be choosing, "starve". Tons of ethical issues here, which have hardly been touched upon in the U.S. press.
As usual, slashdot editors fail to see the larger picture.
The problem here is not about patents - it's about
Europe's refusal to import genetically modified food. Europe is Zimbabwe's primary export market.
If Zimbabwe's crops were tainted, they could lose their primary source of revenue.
Furthermore, Zimbabwe is willing to accept the corn if the US will agree to mill it before shipping. The additional cost of milling is minimal, but is not covered by the aid package. Classic snafu.
Concerns over bio-engineered corn may be the excuse he gives in public, but in reality he is using food as leverage over his political opponents. It has been reported that he has halted shipments of food into areas that did not support him in the recent elections. It also ties into his siezures of white owned farms. Apparently he is trying to starve his country.
the president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe is the same guy that told his people that it was OK to kill white farmers and take their land. He also rigged the last election to keep himself in power. I'm not suprised that he'd ignore the starvation of his own people to show the world how 'powerful' he is.
The famine in Zimbabwe is mostly the creation of one man, el presidente for life Robert Mugabe. Mr. Mugabe tried to circumvant the constitutional limits on his terms by inciting black on white genocide. This has turn Zimbabwe, once the breadbasket of the Southern African countries into needing to import food just to survive.
Seriously, even if God should rain mana onto the starving masses, the problem is still there. I see no future for that country as long as the thugs are in charge.
This is already being done, especially with test crops, or valuable strains. However, cross-pollenization is still a problem - normal crops can get tainted with engineered genes just by being planted nearby.
Ideological distortion that benefits the right: "ignorant 3rd world government listens to tree-hugging granola crunchers and selfishly lets its own people starve."
Ugly, complex reality: if Zimbabwe's own corn crop were adulterated with GM corn, they could lose their primary market for food exports, Europe, and then could end up suffering more down the line; if they get their local production back on track, the survivors would probably better off not having GM corn in the fields. I have always felt the complexity trumps ideology, and this is a classic instance of it.
There isn't any other kind. Corn as we know it today did not exist at all until it was selectively bred for several dozen generations. Prior to about 7000 years ago, there was no such grain.
I realize, of course, that GE as used here means "trans-species", which is just a newer form of selective breeding.
Corn is good for making farm animals gain weight very quickly. Works on people, too. In a way, the farm animals are lucky, because they are killed and eaten before they have a chance to develop heart disease, arthritis, diabetes, and other maladies caused by excess carbohydrate consumption (especially grains, which were not parts of the human diet prior to about 7000 years ago).
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Famines happen, but actual starvation generally only happens when its in a tyrant's political interest for certain people to die.
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I am Jack's writable stack pointer.
And from the article:
Doesn't sound to me like everyone from the USA side says IP concerns are stupid. There were a number of people (Americans) quoted in the article who said that the Zimbabweans are rightfully concerned about future lawsuits brought by US corporations if cross-pollination occurs. Now, who is it who needs to RTFA?
And what in world do other people's opinions have to do with Slashdot's right to point out interesting stories? I don't care if everyone in the world disagrees, if the slashdot editors (or anyone else) feels they have something to say, they should say it.
Also, keep in mind that Mugabe ordered a halt to the winter wheat harvest in June. This is part of a plan that will redistribute 95% of commercial farmland. Some 60% of commerical farms, 2,900 farms, where ordered to halt work. This was done during a food shortage, with the country on the brink of salvation. The plan is redistribute the commecical farms from white to black ownership. In practice, the land becomes gifts for Mugabe's cronies. Cereal production has fallen 67% since 1999-2000 accoridnig to the World Food Program, and will certianly tumble further.
Rather than looking for grand conspiracies by US firms to starve Zimbabwians, look at the corrupt government of Robert Mugabe. It seems unlikely that someone who has wrecked such havoc on his nations agri-business would be interested in protecting his crops for the European market. If he is, then its the nature of the dictator to set absurd priorities.
Give a man a genetically engineered fish, he eats for a day. Teach him how to grow genetically engineered fish and then sue him for "stealing" your "intellectual property".
Seriously, the jury is certainly not in yet on genetically engineered foods. It could be found to affect intelligence, safe reproduction, or cause cancer. Calling it "food" may be a bit optimistic.
Coding Blog
Zimbabwe is a country towards the bottom tip of Africa. It's above South Africa which is the Southern most country.
Nominally it's a democracy - a long and vicious war was fought against the colonial-style white dominated government to gain democracy. However the winners, lead by Robert Mugabe, crushed any opposition soon after independence in a terror campaign involving at least tens of thousands of murders.
In recent years another generation of oppostion has arisen. Mugabe is still president; he recently won an election that was marred by intimidation, the large-scale use of terror as a political weapon and the persecution of the opposition. Despite this, and huge electoral fraud, the opposition hold a significant number of seats in parliment.
One of Mugabe's chief tactics in the recent election was to support land reform. Even after more than 20 years of indepence, white people still own most the farmland in Zimbabwe. Mugabe supported a campaign to drive farmers and their workers off their land, and the government has passed laws to seize farms from their owners which are now taking effect. Many of the farms seized have been re-distributed to members of the government. (Corruption is rife; amazingly president Mugabe was the winner of the first lottery!) As a consequence, Zimbabwe which previously had an agricultural surplus (agricultural produce was one of their major exports), now has a huge deficit.
Whilst the drought is a regional problem, a huge amount of blame can be laid directly on Mugabe. His farm policies and use of terror have hugely exacerbated the problem, his war in a neighbouring country has wiped out the Zim dollar and made it impossible for Zimbabwe to afford to import food. In a saner world he would be standing trial on many counts.
Readers should take the claims of not wanting to use genetically modified wheat because of contimination with a whole shipload of salt. Nothing that he or the Zimbabwe government says can taken at face value; you can only judge by his actions, which speak nothing about caring for his nation.
ok, a few things. first, any company that GE's food products does one thing first of all. make them sterile!! ;) have to buy every year or you grow nothing!
what the hell is the point of creating a great strain of a plant that someone only has to buy once. much better to have agricultural assurance
on top of that, the fear of GE crops for the most part is unfounded and ignorant.
for example, BT corn was given all sorts of crap for possible killing monarchs. however, it was basiclly unfounded paranoia based on one crappy study that was completely worthless. (the scientist himself said it was pointless to draw conclusions from, his first test was just to see if Bt would do anything)
on top of that, no one seems willing to accept the fact that if the corn didn't have Bt in it already, farmers would just be spraying the corn with pesticide. which do you think is worse, a perfectly targeted weapon or one of spray and pray?
by putting the Bt straight in the corn you keep it from getting to beneficial insects, from running off the plants when it rains, and you don't have to keep reapplying it any time a new infestation occurs
as a whole, GE plants cut way back on dangerous pesticides, and are likely much better for people overall
the only thing better, IMO than GE plants would be pure organic grown plants. problem with them is that yeilds are so low you can't support the population on them.
i used to work at a bio research facility, and i can tell you right now the shit they spray on the plants that you eat is waaay worse than anything they're trying to put straight into the plant.
and if you think that 2 second rinse job you gave that fruit or veggie before you ate it cleared it all off, you're delusional.
Interesting.. as some posters have pointed out, Zimbabwe's government is a bunch of thugs. But in America, the corps are the thugs:
The article then mentions how Monsanto says the "policy would be adapted to accommodate local traditions in other countries". I'm not a farmer, and I'm certainly not a modern farmer dealing with this patent nonsense, but it strikes me as pretty damn fucked up that saving food seed from year to year is now illegal and considered a quaint "local tradition" in a few backwards third-world countries.
Though I suppose they should be thankful that King Monsanto is merciful enough to "accommodate" this "local tradition" of growing plants from your own seed. As soon as Zimbabwe is finally paved over and the shopping malls put up, we can revert back to the usual policy.
When will the "intellectual property" madness stop?
Let us suppose that I am growing 'normal' corn while my neighbor grows GE corn. Let us also assume that I make a habit out of saving 5-10% of my crop for replanting three years later, after a year of soybeans and a year of alfalfa, and that my neighbor is on a similar schedule.
Let's start in 2000 with both of us planting corn. My corn has no GE genes in it; my neighbor's corn has some GE genes in it, which are covered by patents held by Frankenfood Inc.. That year some pollen from my corn invades my neighbor's field and vice-versa. Come harvest time, I harvest my corn and my neighbor harvests his. I save my 10% for replanting, and in 2003, I plant partially GE corn. My corn is now covered by patents held by Frankenfood Inc, unbeknownst to myself.
Have I invaded on Frankenfood's patent?
Do I owe Frankenfood Inc. royalties on their IP?
If so, do I owe them in 2003, when I use the seeds; or do I owe them in 2000, when I first harvested and sold those GE seeds to the general public?
Let's suppose that the cross pollenation occurs over long distances .. that the GE corn was grown in Zimbabwe and that my corn is grown in Chile, but that the cross-pollenation happens anyway due to a jet stream. Zimbabwe has a royalty-free license to use Frankenfood's GE corn. Chile does not even use Frankenfood's GE corn. Do I still owe them royalties?
Can they get an injunction ordering me not to plant my corn or to destroy a corn crop that I've already planted? Can they back it up with guns if I refuse to obey?
Can they sue my country under NAFTA or GATT and bankrupt the treasury?
These are the kind of issues that I think people are worried about.
Finding God in a Dog
blammo!
A bunch of corn will germinate that cannot reproduce, which it will pass on to its children, and so on, until the world is completely filled with infertile corn.
Oh wait.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Best evidence we have is that prior to the agricultural 'revolution', the maximum lifespan was around 70-75 years. The *average* was lower, due to infant mortality, and accident (hunting was a hazardous job). But those folks who managed to get past childhood diseases were actually likely to live to a ripe old age, provided they didn't get eaten by something. Take a look at this article on Dr. Loren Cordain's research on that topic.
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Until 1960, American cars had chrome. They had chrome everywhere you could put chrome. They had chrome around the windows, long, wide solid strips of chrome all around the body outlines, big solid chrome hubcaps, chrome grilles, chrome!
A large part of that chrome came from Rhodesia, which is, guess where?
Civil unrest in Rhodesia led directly to shortages of chrome, and American cars suddenly had far, far less chrome in 1961 than they did in 59-60.
The country hasn't had a minute of peace since then. In the last few decades, Africa has basically fought World War III, in both political and sociological terms.
The only explanation I can find for the perception gap is that, while most people in the Rhineland were light skinned, most in the Congo basin are dark skinned.
Seriously, a full scale war has been fought, and tyranny won, and the west doesn't give a f?ck.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
...and you're not an economist?
In 2002, I plant natural corn, using seed kept from last year's harvest. My neighbour upwind plants GM corn bought from Monsanto. During the year, pollen from his corn blows across my field. My harvest at the end of the year seems normal, but in 2003, 1/3 of the corn I plant does not grow, and a small percentage of what does grow produces grossly deformed kernels which I cannot sell, and would have to locate and remove by hand if I wanted to make my massively reduced corn crop saleable.
Note that, not including the cost of removing deformed kernels, my costs have not changed but my take is down 30%. If my margin was 20%, I just made a minus 10% profit that year. Since it's not economical to hand-pick deformed kernels, I just made considerably less.
Oh... wait...
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
All the fuss is because if the trojan corn somehow gets planted and grows, then that represents unlicensed used of the product and Zimbabwe's corn can't be sold because the crop was "stolen" from Monsanto or Ortho or whoever's GM seeds it came from.
Even if the corn manufacturer didn't come after them for theft, Zimbabwe still wouldn't be able to sell ANY of their corn to countries that don't accept GMO food becuase they're very picky about tiny amounts of contamination. It's kinda like to be "organic" fruit or the fields have to have been free of pesticides for thee years -- only then do they say it's organic. Before that it's transitional.
Now, I have strong feelings about GMO foods. It's one thing to cross this rose with this rose and make a new rose. It's something else when you splice a gene from a salmon into a strawberry. Maybe it's no different from a functional biology perspective but to me, selective breeding is very different than molecular level manipulation of DNA.
The other thing is: how do we know this stuff is safe? Who tests it? What is so wrong with non-GMO food that it's reached the end of its useful lifespan and needs to be "overclocked" to provide any value?
And this whole concept of the "terminator" seed, one that only grows once, and the seed it produces is sterile. I don't think I'm being alarmist whey I say I'm very concerned about those kinds of seeds being introduced in the wild. Who is to say it wouldn't cross-breed with "normal" plants and keep them from reproducing? Don't many of the variations in life around us stem from mutations or genetic mishaps of one form or another?
If you want me to believe that GMO food is just fine, then I need to see empirical data. Show me leukemia rates for children who eat "normal" crops and ones who eat GMO. No such studies exist, to my knowledge. I'm not going to just take the word of the salesman that the product is safe, and the USDA shouldn't either.
Give a man some corn, and you feed him for a day. Teach him to plant it, and you'll be feeding him for 25-to-Life.
In 20 years time, the anti-GM people will have 'won'. Automated genetic sequencing will allow standard Mendellian techniques to be much more precisely targetted.
Before GM, researchers irradiated a bunch of seeds to induce mutation, then planted them. Then cross-pollinate plants with interesting characteristics. Rinse and repeat.
With gene sequencing and modelling software, the cycle time can be reduced (ie, you don't have to grow the corn to see how it will turn out). Whammo, GM without GM.
Of course, it's actually worse, because they're be undesired mutations in the crop as well as the ones they were trying to induce. But they'll be able to sell it as "organic' GM free.
Humans have been doing GM work for 10,000 years now. There is no such thing as wild corn, for instance. The scientific method did much more to improve the rate of change than tools like genetic modification.
Bryan
I don't know enough about this situation to be able to say whether this is a reasonable decision in the short term or whether it will condemn millions of people to starvation. If it's the latter, I think we are morally obligated to donate food products, not give these people loans.
In the long term, one way or another, poor nations must eliminate their dependency on food imports. They need to address their internal social and political problems, they must work on infrastructure, commerce, and population planning. And they need to develop crops domestically that work well within their countries.
The European Union has rejected genetically engineered food based not on any reliable scientific studies but on public and political pressure from small special interest groups.
Yes, and they are right to do so. Perhaps this has become an unfamiliar concept in the US, but by and large democratic governments are supposed to listen to their citizens. A large majority of EU citizens do not want genetically modified food, and there is no economic reason to do so - the EU already produces far more of most foods than it requires to feed itself. So much so that in fact the EU spends a lot of money paying farmers NOT to grow certain crops - because some countries within the EU are more efficient than others, and having massive surplus generated by these countries would kill agriculture in some of the less-efficient EU countries. Using GM crops to increase yield would only exascerbate this problem. Perhaps you think this is a stupid idea and that the free market should sort it out, but most Europeans would disagree - national identity is a key issue within the EU, and part of that national identity in most countries is being able to feed your own population. In addition, since most of the GM crops developed so far are US in origin, use of GM crops widely would change the balance of trade negatively. Instead of the seed company->farmer relationship being entirely intra-EU trade, it changes to a drain of money from the EU to the US. So both the EU agriculture and financial bigwigs are against it, because it would cost them more money.
Because of this slightly funny way agriculture works within the EU, gains in yield from GM foods would be unsellable, and since the GM seed is more expensive, and is a recurring expense due to the inability to use saved seed, GM crops actually end up in less profit for the EU farmer, who is on average quite poor anyway. So the farmers are against it too.
There is also the cross-pollination problem, as illustrated by the Canadian farmer that some other have written about, who suffered exactly this problem. Once GM crops are established in an area, it becomes impossible for non-GM crops of the same species to grow in that area without becoming 'infected' by the genes of the GM crop. The GM seed producer can then clamp down using patent laws and extract money from farmers who weren't even growing the GM crop in the first place - because patented genes from the GM crop end up in the genome of non-GM crops. It could become an effective non-governmental 'tax' on all EU farmers, and worse, chances are it wouldn't even be collected by an EU company but rather a US one.
The fact that most EU consumers would rather die than eat genetically modified food is helpful to EU farmers and ministers in banning widespread use of GM crops and keeping the ban in place, but it's not the key issue here.
It isn't that the EU is behind in genetic research and is playing Not Invented Here - after all, 1/3 of the human genome project was done in the UK, not to mention that the structure of DNA was discovered there too. The EU could develop its own GM crops, which would sidestep some of the issues but not most, and indeed it is and has. But still the ban on commercial GM agriculture remains, so these crops remain research tools, and have met with fierce opposition wherever they have been test-planted.
Has there been ANY reliable scientific study relating ANY harmful effects to bio-engineered food?
As far as I'm aware, no, not directly. However, research in this area is still young, and more importantly, mostly corporate-funded. It's the same kind of situation as with the pharmaceutical industry - we ingest these substances, so we'd better make damn sure they're safe, yet most of the research is funded by the companies that want approval. I shouldn't have to remind you that the pharmaceutical industry managed to get things like thalidomide on the market, and no-one had any credible evidence (that hadn't been suppressed) against that for several years after it was available on the market.
It was interesting to read that somehow two extra genetic fragments that shouldn't have been in the genome of the Monsanto GM soybeans ended up there. Are we really sure we know all the knock-on effects? What else was missed? What if those genetic fragments had coded for a protein that switched off one of the human body's immune responses to cancer, or were themselves carcinogenic? Unlikely perhaps, but it took 3 years after commercial growing of these crops had started for the discovery to be made. Are you willing to take the risk, just so some company you've never worked for, never met anyone from, never bought anything from and which could well not even be in your own country or continent can make a few extra dollars for their shareholders?
Perhaps the general mistrust in the EU of genetic modification is due to other food safety scares like BSE, caused by considerably less obvious tinkering than with genetic modification, but with the same aim - increasing efficiency and yield. The US hasn't had to deal with a food scare of similar scale, which is perhaps why the US public are so dismissive of the dangers. From an EU perspective, it seems the US consumer simply doesn't care what they eat, as long as it's cheap. The widespread use in the US of growth hormone to fatten livestock is another example of this, but this too is banned in the EU and repugnant to EU consumers.
There are indirect environmental reasons to dislike some GM crops too. As an example, take Monsanto's GM soybeans, which are resistant to the Monsanto weedkiller Roundup (glyphosate). Here is a product that is designed to encourage use of Roundup and to allow farmers to spray willy-nilly without worrying about the effects it will have on their crop. If this doesn't mean farmers end up using more weedkiller than they would have done with a non-resistant crop, I'll eat my hat. The farmers are supposed to do this - it maximizes their yield. Goundwater contamination beckons...
As an EU citizen, I am very glad that the EU has rejected genetically modified food, and I am glad that Zimbabwe has taken the same viewpoint, whatever I may think of their political leadership. GM foods are being used as a tool of economic imperialism, encourage environmental bad practice, encourage patent system abuse, are insufficiently tested and understood and simply aren't necessary. Chalk up another one on the US image problem score board.