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Smart Breeding to Beat Biotechnology?
divisionbyzero writes "Scientists are developing superorganics made through improved traditional interbreeding in order to circumvent Monsanto's patents and finally deliver on the promise of genetically engineered food."
I just recently bought Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties: The Gardener's & Farmer's Guide to Plant Breeding & Seed Saving by Carol Deppe. It's a very good treatment, by a professional geneticist, on breeding your own vegetables, fruits, flowers, etc. It's a testament to the power of more natural and even organic ways of getting what you want out of plants.
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
Can someone list any meaningfull danagers of GM food, preferably with something that resembles proof. I'm not trolling for either side here I'm simply curious.
With gene manipulation for food we give anmimal and plant deseases a chance to infect mankind not only animals and plants. There is a barrier for these deseases. With GM this barrier may be torn down.
Sadly the EU approved the sale of Monsanto's gene maniplulated corn
If I can avoid GM food I avoid it because of the above reason!
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
From the article:
/.'ers know that patents tend to stifle innovation. However, maybe this is an area where it's good to have the innovation stifled (or at least slowed down) for a while. Since we're not quite sure what will happen when many of the genes inserted via the Monsanto method will do when they get out into the gene pools of wild-plants, perhaps it's good that Monsanto has stifled innovation in this area. It has caused the search for alternatives such as the super breeding outlined in the article. Of course, the other thing that was happening was that Monsanto was basically making it illegal for farmers in 3rd world countries to reuse their seed because the M company claimed that each succeeding generation contained some of their IP.
Opponents have found an ally in crop scientists who condemn the conglomerates behind transgenics, especially Monsanto. The company owns scores of patents covering its GM seeds and the entire development process that creates them. This gives Monsanto a virtual monopoly on GM seeds for mainline crops and stifles outside innovation. No one can gene-jockey without a tithe to the life sciences giant.
Of course we
Interesting side effects of Patents... I recently took an algorithms class where we were discussing various optimization algorithms. A company patented a particular algorithm a few years ago which essentially stopped all research in that direction. So researchers started looking at different classes of alternative algorithms and now have come up with a much better class of algorithms than the patented one - basically nobody uses the patented one anymore. Now, had the company not been so greedy they could have seen further development of their (very promising at the time) algorithm, but now all development in that direction has basically been halted for several years.
The reason there is such a backlash against GM is that it often involves inter-splicing pieces of gene THAT DID NOT EXIST BEFORE in this particular plant species. Careful breeding can only enhance or bring out pre-existing characteristics. The "Flavr Savr" bombed -- not just because it was genetically engineered, but because it didn't taste that great. Firm cardboard doesn't sell as tomatoes, no matter how bright red. The texture was an unexpected side effect. I am curious about one thing, however. I get the impression from these careful breeders that they are bringing out recessive traits. (Believers in evolution should have fun explaining why traits that are more pro-survival are recessive than those that are not.) Won't this result in plants that must be carefully prevented from pollinating with "mutts" - or less carefully bred varieties?
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
Remember, Khan and his followers were the products of the eugenics wars.
Khannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!
Can you imagine if the Nazis were up & functioning today? Instead of comparing the results of comparing the reactions to one twin vs. nothing to the other (as a control group) or people in general, they'd be tinkering with bio-sciences. We've all heard the stories about how close they were to beating The Manhattan Project to finishing a bomb. Imagine their same efforts devoted to life sciences. We argue about whether laws are justified regarding whether to use embryo stem cells. If the opposition were living today, they'd do whatever they wanted without regard to these rules, making steroids in the Olympics look like drinking bottled water.
Now, even though the Nazis got their clocks cleaned sixty years ago, ponder whether there are any other governments studying & building life sciences in the same fashion. It's such a new (and popular) topic it's no big deal for anyone to go to any school of choice. So we permit intentional, preplanned brain drain so they can go home, taking educational IP making a road trip to help some up-and-coming despot.
How will we find out about this? When it's too late.
I think most people are okay with plant cross/inter-breeding, after all pretty much everyone learned about it in basic biology courses (with regards to genetics, etc.). However, the new methods of bioengineering of food should be scrutinized. The infamous Monsanto "New Leaf Superior" potatoes, for example, secretes pesticide. I think that's pretty different from results from cross/inter-breeding of plants of old.
d es truction.htm
http://www.garynull.com/Documents/erf/seeds_of_
Furthermore, these new bioengineered food also have other socioeconomic consequences. Namely that farmers are not allowed to save portions of their harvest for future planting, instead, they are forced to go to Monsanto every year to get "eyes" for their planting. Monsanto is even planning to make the potato seeds sterile through bioengineering.
The health and socioeconomic effects of these newly bioengineered food should be further studied. I don't necessarily buy into the idea that people would be adversely harmed from eating them, but we don't have enough data to prove it either way as of yet. It is unfortunate that the government and FDA has been dragging their feet in this regard.
-B
Just like with proprietary software, if you see some nifty new feature you'd like to add you your own application, you can't. In proprietary software you can't just buy the algorithm: you have to buy the whole package (and perhaps the support package and perhaps the computer to run it on). In much of current biotechnology you can't just buy the nifty new gene, you have to buy the whole potato (and you only get a limited choice 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. Smart Breeding, in contrast, is a close equivalent of open source software.
Some problems with the current methods of biotech - using software as the analogy / comparison - include:
Horizontal gene transfer is a completely natural phenomenon, which is actually one of the forces behind evolution at a molecular level, While it is certainly possible that an introduced gene could be horizontally transfered, there is no reason to assume it would happen more often than with any other gene in general.
Saying, as the article you linked to says, that horizontal gene transfer of GM genes has been detected is a bit like saying people who eat carrots have been known to have strokes -- true, but deliberately misleading. But that's intentional -- The "Institute of Science in Society" isn't a real research institute, nor is the article, cleverly disguised as a real scientific publication (with references, even!) , a genuine peer reviewed piece of science.
... join a CSA. Heirloom tomatoes delivered within hours of picking. After that experience store-bought tomatoes will always taste like cardboard.
Not from me it won't. I was active trying to get people to pay attention to the threat of GM foods more than 5 years ago, but whole-heartedly support this technology, and have for years (this is rather old news).
/. before, I have been surprised how easily, and I would say uncritically, people embrace the technology. Monsanto has the same ethics as Microsoft. They promise to end world hunger when all that matters is the bottom line.
:)
Knowing many people in the "foodie" movement, and having heard organic famers describe their breeding programs, you'll find that most anti-GM activists will also support faster breeding, especially when it allows us to develop strains that are appropriate for local conditions and suitable for low-input, organic agriculture.
The anti-GM movement is not anti-science or anti-progress. It emerged out of serious concerns with corporate control of our food supply and the poor quality of the gene-splicing "science" used.
A big problem was found by Percy Schmeiser. He is one fine example of what happens when you get caught in Monsanto's lawyers cross-hairs. His crime? Monsanto's IP was in his field. No matter that they tresspassed to establish this, or that he didn't plant them, didn't want it, and viewed it as contamination of his crop... he lost his farm over this.
But the problem that made me cry foul was far more frightening than a Microsoft of agriculture wanting to control most of our food supply's IP, scary as that is. It's that you can't "undo". When you put a fish gene in a tomato, you can't take the fish gene back. If pollen escapes - if the plant is crossed with others in the field - you can't selectively remove that genetic material.
We could find a horrible allergy is introduced, a fatal toxin to some keystone critter, or a loss in yields. But once the open-pollinated strains are contaminated, how do you remove them? Go with all the commercially controlled hybrid varieties? hmm....
Contrast this to the approach described in the article. We know these genes to be quite safe, as people have been eating and growing them for a very long time. We're just accelerating breeding. It may not be 100% safe, but it's as safe as anything can be. AND we don't have to worry about corporate control of a basic resource.
When the topic of GM has come up on
When it tries to use proprietary chemicals to allow seeds to germinate, we should be appalled - the same way we are appalled at DRM. When they patent genes that were bred through generations of farmers work, it should be seen as Sun trying to hijack GPL code.
Anyhow, sorry for such a long post- the basic point being that no, most of us won't flip out and try to stop it if you call it gene-laundering
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