Drug Making Genes Added To Corn Jump To Soya

Anonymous Cowdog writes "Google News turned up a scary item today: Apparently, genetically altered corn, designed not to repel pests or withstand bad weather, but rather to grow pharmecuticals (for diabetes and diarrhea) has been accidentally mixed with soy plants in the field, resulting in 500,000 bushels of contaminated soybeans being quarantined by the US FDA. Ooops. Here's the story, and here's another story about the same case. The company who brought us this nice event is called ProdiGene. Looks like they're also working on an edible AIDS vaccine (kinda makes sense, eat Tofu, enjoy free love!) Now, I was thinking, will our government protect us from doom-by-hand-me-down-genes? and on a hunch (honest!) I did this google search for keywords ProdiGene and "george w bush". Result? A not so reassuring article."

Comments

Typical FUD

[siskbc]

See, this is getting ridiculous. Posting process on slashdot:

1. Slashdotter finds distuirbing article.
2. Slashdotter doesn't read it closely.
3. Slashdotter makes gross oversimplifications, including specifically some sort of doomsday scenario.
4. Slashdotter assumes there must be some GW Bush conspiracy going on.


The sad thing is that there is potential for harm here, but the overstated claims and conspiracy theories really hurt the credibility of the posted story, which itself was good.

Made up problem

[Cpt_Kirks]

I grew up farming corn and beans. Soybeans are a broadleaf plant. Corn is a grass. Grass killer sprayed on soybeans will kill the corn plants that come up.

Also, corn grows about four feet taller than soybeans. Picking out the corn should be no problem.

Really though, GM stuff should be grown in totally separate fields and the fields kept separate.

Soybean + Corn = Plantiality?

[dlur]

Last I checked Corn and Soybean plants can't cross-pollinate. Nor do they have any other means to transfer their genes from one species to another.

I highly doubt that the Corn stalks were 'gettin it on' with the Soybean plants, spreading free love and pollen accross the species barrier. This would be like a pig mating with an elephant, and is thus merely the stuff of dreams and fantasies in a biologist's world.

It's highly likely that what actually happened was wrongly interpreted, and a totally misinformed journalist created a hyped up headline that didn't even begin to convey what actually happened. Most likely the farmers that grew the genetically altered corn used harvesting equipment (combines) which like nearly all combines are unable to be 100% effecient in gathering the crops, and as such allow some of the corn to fall back to the earth and become seed. Next year the farmer goes back in, tills up the land, plants his soybean crops in the same field, and soon enough a couple of corn stalks crop up. You'll see this in many soybean fields in the midwest, a couple of stalks of corn standing up in a vast field of what is otherwise soybeans. Even if there are few to no weeds, you'll still usually see some corn, because the herbicides are designed not to kill corn and soybeans, but everything else. When the soybeans were harvested, a couple of corn stalks were harvested along with it, even though a bean head on a combine is not designed to harvest corn, it usually is able to pull a few kernels off the cobb when plowing through the beans. Low and behold, some genetically altered 2nd generation corn gets into the soybeans. Big deal.

Re:No biological equivalent to chroot

[ThaReetLad]

Actually if you lived in europe you'd have heard plenty of screaming about GM food. Any food products containing GM material MUST (by law) say so, and many stores have stopped selling GM products at all because of consumer unease.

You say "no sane food/drug company would risk the impact of such a level of carelessness/unconcern", but many would say you were insane for making such a dangerous and naive assumption.

The big biotech companies have spent vast amounts of money on developing these new products. Do you really believe that they would be beyond "selecting" scientific data that supports claims that they are safe? All /.rs know about RIAA and their pet senators, but how many pet senators does Monsanto have and why do they need them if the food is so safe?

Well one reason they need the senators is obvious actually. They need them to force the US government to persuade the WTO, UN etc that GM food is safe, so that any country which blocks the sale of US food goods is in breach of WTO rules, and so is any country that refuses GM food aid.

Just another example of US corporate imperialism by proxy.