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Scotts Testing Genetically Modified Grass
Caseyscrib writes "There is an article on Yahoo! News that talks about how Scotts is testing a genetically modified version of creeping bentgrass, popular on golf course greens and fairways, that will be resistant to a common weed-killing chemical. Environmentalists have long opposed bioengineered crops of any kind, and fear that '...if it was to escape onto public land, we wouldn't know how to control it.' It is now in the final stages of approval."
Scott makes towels. Scotts makes lawn products.
For years there have been genetically modified strains of lawn grass that only grow several inches tall, and therefore never need to be mowed. The lawnmower and oil industries have paid massive sums of money to keep this grass from being popularized, as its use would cut back drastically on fuel consumption in the U.S. and practically kill the lawnmower industry. Since home gas lawnmowers account for 50% of the carbon monoxide pollution in the U.S., this initiative to prevent the use of this genetically modified grass also has extreme enviromental consequences. Naturally, President Bush is wholeheartedly against this grass.
-Letter
Cogito ergo sum in Slashdot.
Well, suddenly the bull frogs started turning up in wet areas FAR from where they were originally introduced. No one knew that they could cover such long distances without water. Then they started eating all of the local wildlife that was smaller than themsevles: tarantulas, birds, other species of frogs, fish, etc.
1. Just build fences and keep them out, right? Wrong, the bull frogs learned to climb over the fences.
2.Posion them? How, when the poison will kill everything else too?
3. Bioengineer a poison that only affects bull frogs? On whom's dime, the taxpayers?
4. Kill them all with spears, guns, knives, and arrows? Tried that, night after night by dozens of volunteers: virtually no effect, the population held strong as ever.
But back where the bullfrogs came from, in the bayous of Louisiana, the alligators and birds that evolved alongside the frogs have no problem keeping their population in check.
Do you get the logisitical issue(s) of introducing new species into new environments (manmade or otherwise)? It is never easy to control.
Well, the real reason to be sceptical to Monsanto inserting genes that resist 2,4-TD (RoundUp, aka Agent Orange) is that it has a habit of spreading to closely related plants. In tests in Italy (more than ten years ago now) this gene successfully transferred from Rape to Wild Turnip, which is a mother of a weed to get rid of. There are several grasses that we wouldn't want to aquire this gene. (Google e.g. "wild turnip gene resistance")
As a gene resisting herbicides is a very desirable gene to have (if you happen to be a weed), you can bet your sweet ass that's it's only a matter of time before you've created the mother of all weeds. And no, burning/barriers/diging won't fix the problem.
In this case an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Stefan Axelsson
A Saskatchewan farmer has been taken to court by Monsanto because his fields had some of their genetically modified canola. The canola seems to have blown in from neighbors fields and ditches. The case has gone to the Supreme Court of Canada but I haven't heard the outcome.
--RANT-- Monsanto makes SCO look like Boy Scouts. The sad thing is that lots of farmers support them and this makes them harder to fight. Let's put it this way; I wouldn't drink the milk in Florida because of the (Monsanto) drugs that get into it. Fining Monsanto has about the same effect as fining Microsoft.--/RANT--
http://www.percyschmeiser.com/
Repeat after me: Agent Orange is in no way related to RoundUp.
Agent Orange is a mixture of 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid and 2,4 dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (reference).
RoundUp is glyphosate: N-(phosphonomethyl) glycine (reference 1, reference 2).
"Max, come over here. French-Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone." - Dutch Schultz
Yes is should.
Well, the real reason to be sceptical to Monsanto inserting genes that resist 2,4-TD (RoundUp, aka Agent Orange)
Roundup is not Agent Orange. Anyone who is remotely familiar with the use of these two products should be able to figure out that their active ingredients are quite different.
In tests in Italy (more than ten years ago now) this gene successfully transferred from Rape to Wild Turnip, which is a mother of a weed to get rid of. There are several grasses that we wouldn't want to aquire this gene. (Google e.g. "wild turnip gene resistance")
Doesn't anyone find it a little odd that this this is supposed to have happened in some small-scale test done ten years ago --- and it hasn't been shown to have happened since, even though millions of acres of roundup-ready oilseed rape have been planted and harvested over the last several years?
No, it's unfortunately not FUD. Sure, we *could* make it vunerable to cooking oil (well, I don't know that cooking oil is a good example, but we certainly could make it vunerable to other chemicals) but unless it's profitable, we won't.
We can also make plants that don't produce viable seed, and we do so because it is profitable.
However, we don't make plants that don't produce pollen. It's more profitable not to. If we did, companies couldn't sue people whose plants were accidently pollinated by GM plants for using GM technology without paying licensing fees.
It's sort of like people being sued for including source code from other projects without paying fees (or otherwise violating license agreements)...if bits of source code just randomly wandered about and inserted themselves into other programs without human help.
This is already happening with other crops, it's not a theoretical problem. I don't particularly see why this couldn't possibly happen with this grass, either.
Legislation could help this, but doesn't stop the environmental problems. The issue isn't killing these plants (in which case your ideas would work pretty well) but in killing these plants without killing all the other plants around them.
Actually, Kimberly-Clark makes paper products under the Scott brand since 1995.
> I'm suprised this stuff isn't copy-protected
Never a truer word said in jest: the genome is most likely patented, so if you grow this (even accidentally, e.g. wind pollenation) you can be sued by monsanto.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
You can be mindful of what corporations are currently doing, but your complete lack of background knowledge makes your beliefs dangerous.
Monsanto didn't insert a gene that resists glyphosate (RoundUp), because their plant is a loss-of-function mutant. They did it through insertional mutation, using either forward (sequence not known) or reverse (sequence known) genetics methods. They isolated a mutant that was resistant to glyphosate and clapped their hands and cheered.
RoundUp Ready beans have a mutation in the gene, making the resulting enzyme product non-active. In other words, they changed that part of the enzyme to be a NOP, halting the metabolism of glyphosate into something that is lethal to the plant.
Agent Orange has nothing to do with RoundUp, and others have addressed that.
-- I'd say your post was about 3 monkeys, 18 minutes.
Check out the "Terminator Gene" if you are tempted to think this stuff is FUD. Look into the Gypsy Moth or Killer Bees. This isn't some computer code you can just delete. It hangs around in the environment.
The morals of Monsanto Corp the owner of the gene and the Roundup herbacide in question are beneath contempt. They were intending to release into the environment a gene which could have ended the genetic line of all plants not under their control. It took massive pressure to stop the Terminator Gene.
Seeds are not the only means for spreading these genes. Pollen has continental range. Migratory birds often carry these seeds and pollen. The range here by accident (look up fire ants) is global.
Being a "Green Revolutionary" I like modern farming practices generally. In this case the benefit of the doubt should always rest with the "Greens" they are right here.
Monsanto is suing farmers for breach of patient rights if crops are found on their farm which contain the gene talked about here. Even if the gene arrived as wind blown pollen the courts are ruling that the royalties are due. Even if the gene is only a small fraction of the crop this is enforced. This essentially gives Monsanto ownership of all crops in North America. This is the reason most of the world does not want GMO crops or foods. It violates even the most basic of common law rights to be able to reproduce ones own crops or plants.
The FUD here is entirely by Monsanto and their allies. Those who ignorantly think this is some "Free Enterprise" situation need to rethink their position.
Genetic Engineering is the single most powerful science mankind has ever handled. It has great potential for good and equally great potential to eradicate life from the planet. Handling and containing and carefully managing it should be viewed to be at least as important as the issues involved in NUCLEAR ENERGY safety.
The Behavior of Monsanto Company tells us that they are quite willing to do almost anything and do any damage without regard to the consequences to others. Such behavior should be regarded about like Witchcraft was viewed during the middle ages in Europe. It took massive outcry to stop them from the "Terminator Gene" though it could return at any moment.
Legislation needs to be passed and means to control such needs to be made manditory. The problem here is that this is a "cookbook" science requiring little in devices and little in technology. Imagine if Al Qaeda got into this kind of coding.
In geek terms this is a hacker writing virus to take control of your computer and make all of your property his.
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
If history is any guide, it is protected, but not like you'd think.
Essentially, it sounds like Scotts is producing a "roundup ready" (rr) grass.
The scam works like this: Monsanto owns patents on the most widely used herbicide in the world (roundup). They also own patents on Roundup Ready crops (wheat, soybeans, canola...). They sell the seeds to farmers who can now safely spray their crops to keep the weeds down.
So lets say you own the farm next to a RR field and grow the same crop (but not a monsanto version of it). Natually, some seeds will find their way onto your property so your field will be contaminated. Next season you replant from what you produced last year - well NOW you have some rr crops.
Monsanto hires private investigators to tresspass on your property, take some of your wheat, soybeans, whatever, and take them back to their lab to test. If they find you have rr crops, then, my friend, you just got 0wn3d! That's right, farmber bob, they OWN YOUR CROPS! And don't think that being in Canada or Europe gives you immunity - for the most part, it doesn't. Monsanto is trying desperately to get it's GM seeds to propogate throughout the world so they'll be able to permanently extract licensing fees from farmers (that's right - you license their seed for a year, you don't buy it).
Having trouble swallowing that one? Try this on for size.
I don't see how changing the players changes anything. The rules are the rules and Scotts can do the same thing Monsanto does.
Lest you think this is coming from some wack-job leftie environmentalist, it ain't. I just think that Monsanto is every bit as evil as MS - even more because they're mucking about with the food supply - which means peoples LIVES!
Textbooks and Open Educational Resources
Their closed-source version is a variant of better dog food.com where they don't just sell you the dogfood. The dog can only eat BDF.com dogfood *and* you only lease the dog *plus* you only can get poodles (and they'll sue you if poodle puppies show up in your neighborhood). 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?"
Think of it like a bug patch. Imagine we find a major vulnerability, solved by upgrading some software. The open source method might be to make that software available for people to patch into whatever software they're currently running. The closed source version would be to 1. Sell new software that works with the patch 2. Sell the patch, 3. Insist that all old software is dangerous and outdated and should never be used in business. (4. and then later on when a new worm comes out, a huge percent of programs can be hit all at once due to the monoculture).
With Andean potato farmers this is exactly what happened. You have farmers who've 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: another story). 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?
Or look at "golden rice." Who can argue with preventing blindness from vitamin deficiencies? Do you want Blind Babies??? But is upping the vitamin A content of rice the best method to get vitamin A to people? What about veggies which already contain high quantities of beta-carotene (yams? carrots? Other richly-colored veggies and fruits?). 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?
And sometimes they're breaking standards while they're at it, (think like what VeriSign did recently with their redirect). 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.
Comparisons between genetic engineering and selective breeding are just false. One is manipulating a natural process while the other is inserting foreign DNA into a plant.
Actually, there are numerous natural processes that can insert foreign DNA into an organism. Many viruses do this. The notion that "natural" is somehow safer has no rational or scientific basis. The effect of a gene, whether generated by natural or artificial mutagenesis or by transgenic modification is determined by what proteins it codes for and what those proteins do. The rational approach is to look at the function of genes instead of obsessing about their origin.
I saw a presentation at CMU given by a researcher working on creating genetically engineered bacteria to help clean up polluted ground water. She was receptive to questions of the "What about superbacteria?" type, but seemed genuinely amused as she related stories of getting the engineered bacteria to survive even in carefully controlled lab conditions.
As far as the "modified genes spreading" theory, genetic flaws are not contagious -- how many people can claim to have gotten Lou Gehrig's disease as a result of bacteria spreading around bad genes?
Somebody get that guy an ambulance!