Slashdot Mirror
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."
Ever been to Mississippi or Arkansas? I don't *think* so. . .
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!
When I can buy tomacco in my local grocery store.
hot dogs why not genetically engineered food.
This article is quite typical of the conceptual problem that many people still have with breeding versus genetic "manipulation". Both methods are means to the same end, ergo the introduction of desired genes or variations thereof into an organism. Breeding takes longer and cannot be controlled to the same extent. And don't start about the dangers of vectors, unwanted integration and crap like that. Nature does that every single minute (ever heard of transposons?) and nobody is complaining about that. So, "Frankenfood"? I think not.
----- One learns to itch where one can scratch.
If they can get my kids to eat those veggies I can't seem to get them to eat...
"Dad, can you please pass the Rocky Road Brussel Sprouts?"
Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code...
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.
There's a very nice summary at the bottom of page 4. I will karma-whore it for you, since I know most people won't be able to maintain their concentration for so many pages.
How Smart Breeding Works
The mission: Develop rice that's resistant to bacterial blight and will thrive around the globe.
SEARCH Food scientists scour the rice gene bank, consisting of 84,000 seed types, in search of varieties with blight immunity.
INSERT MARKER Scientists extract DNA from selected varieties and tag the blight-immunity gene - previously identified by researchers - with a chemical dye.
CROSSBREED A network of researchers around the world cross disease-resistant varieties with thousands of local versions. With some plants, this means merely putting two varieties in a room. Self-pollinating rice requires manual pollen insertion.
ANALYZE The offspring are analyzed to detect the presence of the immunity gene. Those containing the gene are planted in a field.
TEST Mature plants are exposed to bacterial blight to confirm resistance. Those that don't die, and maintain desired traits from the local variety, are distributed. Unless
REPEAT Sometimes, the process reveals several genes responsible for a trait. Three genes confer resistance to different blight strains. In such cases, breeders repeat the crossbreeding until all genes are turned on.
END RESULT A rice plant with broad resistance to bacterial blight that will thrive in local conditions.
This just reinforces the point that genetic engineering has existed on this earth from the first time our ancestors bred dogs for obedience or put the biggest bulls out to stud.
The difference is that now, we have the advantage of looking under the hood at the genes themselves. This new data gives farmers and geneticists an unprecendented level of control in selecting for certain traits.
So jokes about killer tomatoes aside, this is a positive development. I look forward to the day when we develop robust cereal crops that can thrive in the dry, nutrient-poor soils of East Africa. Without being encumbered by patents, of course.
Where you take a mommy plant and a daddy plant and then make lots of baby plants. The you take the brother plant and the sister plant and create strange uncle Jethro who no-one in the family talks about much but HELL can he survive in hot weather.
Uncle Jethro is currently serving 25 life sentences for a string of murders in Arkansas.
I love it when people talk about "natural" a normal ways when talking about this stuff. Arsenic is a natural product... doesn't make it safe.
The key is safe and not likely to go postal like Uncle Jethro, that means long term testing and genetic strength, something tradtional breeding often fails at (potato blight anyone ?). Equally genetic engineering is not tested in the long term and we have no clue to the effects (thalidomide(sp?) anyone ?).
I want to eat a cow that is not pumped with hormones, wheat that isn't racked with chemicals... and a realisation that we can produce enough food for the world but the west subsidises farmers the way it never would do to steel (except in the US), coal, cars, manufacturing etc etc.
Maybe the solution isn't more products, its a decent and fair economic policy. Shocking I know, but more expensive plants for the 3rd world might not be what they are after, fair access to our markets might just be a better bet.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
And people will still think there's something wrong with this food, that they're somehow splicing jellyfish genes into it or something stupid like that. It makes me so mad when talking to misinformed people who get into these campaigns to ban GM food when all the food you eat is pretty much been GM'd through several thousand years of selective breeding
GM and selective breeding are two TOTALLY different processes.
Here are somes clues for you:
When a bull and a cow fuck, there is no jellyfish involved.
Tomatoes have never needed fish genes before, so why would they suddenly need them now?
I do not trust my long-term health to corporations.
Neither should you.
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)
This is all well and good untill somebody starts calling it "gene-laundering" or some other such unflattering name that implies that it's just sneaky GM, and nobody will eat this stuff either. Especially if it's essentially the same result. The real problem is that people oppose things they don't understand by default.
From the article;
[Richard Jefferson] is sowing the seeds of a revolt, citing the open source ethos of Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman as inspiration.
Does this mean we have to start calling it Gnu/tomato???
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
I for one will say that 7/10 geeks do not get their RDA of breeding. I highly recommend a government program to help furnish quality breeding partners for our Smart Masses.
:oD
We can start with a gov't grant, and turn this into a whole industry.
do() || do_not();
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
I was able to find this link that talks about the Criminal Investigation of Monsanto Corporation for attempting to Cover up Dioxin Contamination in their Products. Here is a preview of the link
"Monsanto covered-up the dioxin contamination of a wide range of its products. Monsanto either failed to report contamination, substituted false information purporting to show no contamination or submitted samples to the government for analysis which had been specially prepared so that dioxin contamination did not exist."
"Another Monsanto study involved independent medical examinations of surviving employees by Monsanto physicians. Several hundred former Monsanto employees were too ill to travel to participate in the study. Monsanto refused to use the attending physicians reports of the illness as part of their study, saying that it would introduce inconsistencies. Thus, any critically ill dioxin-exposed workers with cancers such as Non-Hodgkins lymphoma (associated with dioxin exposures), were conveniently excluded from the Monsanto study."
Note: this has been posted by r.future (a person who spends way to much time on the internet!)
The obvious answer is: genes should not be patentable.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
When a bull and a cow fuck, there is no jellyfish involved.
...unless the farmer is really kinky.
http://jesus.everdense.com/
I personally think Monsanto is one of the most evil corporations on the planet. Besides their foray into genetically modified food (I have a problem with their patents more than the final products), they are the ones who invented Nutra Sweet (a.k.a aspartame, a tripeptide with who knows what kind of long-term effects). Of course there are many devoted and ethical scientists working there, too, but the corporation as a whole has an atrocious track record.
The worst thing about the cross pollinated crops in this Canadian farmer's field was that he never had any intention of growing Monsanto's corn, but the wind blew pollen into his field, and somehow the courts decided he was responsible. How asinine.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
My fiance is a Plant Breeder who graduated from Cornell and studied for a time under Susan McCouch. There is a lot of misunderstanding of traditional plant breeding, and while this article touches on some of the more non-scientific aspects of the field, it certainly is right about breeding.
/.ers analogy:
// thisfsoidahu8903w //OWI%#H lkjh // HACK AND SLASH - INSERT RED TOMATO GENE HERE // END HACK AND SLASH
To those of you who think there is no difference between G.M.ed foods and bread foods, let me give you a
Traditional plant breeding is a little bit like editing a makefile. The breeders job consists primarilly of decoding and understanding the contents of that makefile in order to eventually modify it to turn on and off certain features.
MAKEFILE for peachtree.c
# Make sure our peaches are large
FRUITSIZE = HUGE
# Make the shelf life long so
ROTTIME = VERYLONG
# Make the item pretty
COLOR = PEACHY
All of these traits already exist in the target species, or at least in a species closely related enough to cross with it. At one time or another, they've all been expressed, just not at the same time. If you have enough experience with the plant, and know the plant isn't dangerous, you know you can incorporate these traits together into single plants without much worry.
Contrast this to G.M.ed food, which can best be described as a hack and slash modification to the actual source code.
#include peachoptions.h
peachcolor(fruit thisfruit) {
#ifdef PEACHY
thisfruit.color=PEACHY;
thisfruit.stem=SHORT;
#endif
#ifdef PASTEY
thisfruit.color=PASTEY;
thisfruit.stem=LONGER;
#endif
thisfruit.color=RED;
thisfruit.nutrition=TOMATOE LIKE;
thisfruit.stem=VERYLONG;
thisfruit.nutrition=LOW;
if (thisfruit.color==PEACHY) thisfruit.nutrition=HIGHER;
if (thisfruit.color==PASTEY) thisfruit.nutrition=HIGH;
return;
)
OK, this is all fake, but the point is, just like sticking code in software at poorly controlled places can have unintended consequences, sticking genes in to a plant's genetic sequence can also have unintended side effects.
As it turns out, nature can do something similar through the use of transposons: genes that randomly remove themselves from one part of a plant's genetic code and insert themselves elsewhere. However, the chance of producing a dramatic change is not as great, since the transposon gene is not being expressed in a completely different species from the one originating it.
Most of the time, the results from GMing are positive. But occasionally the results are negative, and the real issue is that we must implement safeguards specific to GM crops in order to protect our food supply.
Mother nature does not discriminate one corn plant from another, and many GM projects have the express purpose of introducing traits you would NOT want in your average corn field. Suppose he introduces a gene which turns the corn kernel flesh pink, making a great new popcorn for teens. Suppose this gene also turns out to cause the corn to be poisonous.
Because corn pollen is capable of traveling impressive distances, that corn gene, if not sufficiently isolated, could contaminate a large portion of this year's corn crop. It is important to note that the gene would not cause irretrievable contamination, as today's seed corn is produced in carefully isolated conditions away from stray pollen (both GM and non-GM). But this sort of contamination would cause major headaches for one harvest season, as the StarLink episode in South America demonstrated. We might not know about a given instance until after you've already eaten Corn Flakes contaminated with birth control hormones.
This contamination problem is similar to what would happen to Marijuana plants if industrial hemp were to
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:
This is just plain silly -- loose vs. well attached genes? How in the world did such nonsense get modded up? I have a doctorate in microbiology focussing on molecular evolution and it just irritates me how people are willing to believe any sort of pseudo-scientific notion if it agrees with their political agenda. Maybe you read something about it in a Greenpeace pamphlet, but that's not a good place to learn facts about science, any more than a Jehovah's Witness pamphlet.
Perhaps, just maybe, you are recalling a half understood description of transposons, which are genes that can change position in the genome but even so, 1) transposons are found in nature -- Barbara McClintock got her Nobel for finding them in corn decades ago 2) only some GM techniques use transposons. So an attack on transposons, if indeed I'm not reading more into your notion of "loose genes" than is merited, makes no sense.
But I guess it has to stop now because some company is doing it. I know you retch at the fact Monsanto collects patent royalties and it makes me sick also, but it doesn't invalidate their work. Have a look at this page or read Sagan's books for more hints.
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.
I hate such arguments. Sounds like M$ FUD. Well, if you don't produce what the EU wants, you can't complain that they won't buy it. And before you say that the whole point is that the EU isn't letting it's people have the choice - the actual point is that the people of the EU have spoken through their representative, and apparently they don't want GM foodstuffs.
And I though America was all about the free market (as in if a product is not wanted ...) ...
For myself, I do think choice is best, but I think people have the right to know everything. Thus products should be labeled if they contain GM foodstuffs. Similar to the BST situation with milk, where I believe Monsanto got it into a law that labels cannot mention BST content. There are people who want to know, so why shouldn't labeling laws enforce this?