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Genetically-Modified Everything
BreadMan writes "The Economist has an interesting article about how the use of GM (genetically modified) plants extends well beyond the food industry. Altered trees that make better paper, insect-resistant cotton, potatoes that contain the right kinds of starches. An interesting read to see where the industry is going in light of problems with having GM foods on the dinner table. There's more industrial uses for agricultural products than you'd think of right away, so this may be a lucrative use for GM technology."
I've always thought the ultimate use of genetic engineering would be to make puberty-free, Permacute puppies and kittens. Not only is it a lucrative market, there wouldn't be worries about the altered genes entering the natural ecosystem because of the sterility.
Back when I was a genetists (early 80's), I worked at Coors Biotech for a summer. The project was kind of interesting. Chickens that are sold in US stores had colorizers to turn the flesh pink. They were feed dafodils just prior to slaughter. We took the genes from the dafidils and splice it into algae. Worked great and I think that it was a fraction of the price of the flowers. I do not know if it is used today, but I do know that FDA did not regulate it. If it was not directly consumed by humans, it was off limits (per the reagan admin).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Some GM stuff in labs can perhaps be controlled, but once modified geness are released into the RealWorld they are very difficult to control. The risk of doing bad things is great. We already see the effects of cross contamination of crops etc.
If this goes more widespread (eg. GM trees for paper production) we can expect weird things happening (eg. say we remove some substance from trees to make them easier to process but that gene provides disease resistance etc. If that crosses into wild populations then we end up with sick forests etc).
Agriculture and food production are regulated and controlled (well to a degree anyway), industrial stuff less so. It concerns me that all the GM bads we see in agriculture will be far worse in the industrial sector.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Monsanto's GM canola has also crossbred with Canadian canola strains, making it impossible for Canadian farmers to guarentee that their canola crops are GM free, thus locking them out of the EU markets. Now, they want to do the same thing with wheat.
Leaving aside the fears and marketability problems surrounding GM plants, we still have the problem that patented plants are a huge threat to farmers. You can get in big, expensive trouble if you didn't license the genes that are growing in your field, even if you didn't plant them. If you save your own seed, and that seed gets contaminated by someone's patented, GM genes, you could loose a lifetime of work.
See what I've been reading.
Do not expect Canada or the Nordic countries to be shortly covered with GM pines; commercial use of GM trees in Europe is at least ten years off. But it is on its way.
How is it on its way? Because some guys are researching it?
Now the I can't speak for the entire world, but I live in Sweden, I know a lot of people in the paper industry, and I've personally spoken with people belonging to senior management of several scandinavian paper companies.
And they all said the same thing: They currently have no interest whatsoever in GMO trees. They're not researching for it, they don't want it. The are interested in biotech, but only to the extent that it can give them insight into how to do traditional forestry better.
Why trust them? Well, the reasoning behind this is that this industry has been harshly critizied by environmentalists for a long time. Today, they've pretty much 'cleaned up their act' (in scandinavia), aiming for FSC acreditation and so on.
They are not about to throw all that work away.
That said.. I'm personally positive to biotech, and I think that we might very well see GMO trees out there. But not in ten years time. Not in the nordic countries anyway.
Actually hemp makes great paper. It's cheaper and uses less chemicals than paper made from wood. Don't think our friends at Dow Chemical didn't know this when they lobbied to make marijuana illegal.
Help also makes great fabric for clothes, sails, even parachutes. (Of course, it was a hemp parachute that made sure George Bush would be around long enough to sell arms to Iran, funnel the profits to the contras, and have sons that would costs us billions in S & L bail outs, disenfranchise minority voters, and generally suspend the bill of right (except for the 2nd amendment of course), so I guess there is a pretty good argument that marijuana does support terrorism.)
The reason why marijuana is illegal is because the best use for the crop is to produce drugs.
Oh, man, that is so wrong on many levels. First, smoking is not the best use of marijuana. Second, if that was the case, why is tobacco legal? Or coffee? What else are people doing with hops other than make beer?
Perhaps with large capital investment in new plants, economy of scale in mass production, and refinement in the process, hemp fiber will be only slightly more expensive than wood fiber. I do work in the paper industry and know first hand the fear of possible plant closures due to the tight margins industry wide. If hemp looked promising as a low cost fiber source we, and every other manufacturer, would be raising a stink heard nationwide to get access.
uses less chemicals than paper made from wood
Hemp could save some chemical usage when it comes to wet strength additives, but that is a fairly small percentage of the whole system. The majority of chemical additives required for wood fiber paper would still be required for paper with hemp fiber.
If hemp is going to use a mechanical fiber preparation system instead of a closed loop liquor system, prepare to bite the bullet for some major energy costs.
Don't think our friends at Dow Chemical didn't know this when they lobbied to make marijuana illegal.
Dow chemical does manufacture some chemicals used in the papermaking industry (coating polymers, defoamers, biocides primarily), but is far from being one of the major players in that market. I reckon using Eka as the conspiracy name does not carry the same demonizing weight.
One acre of annually grown hemp may spare up to four acres of forest from the current practice of clear-cutting
The only clear cutting that is used to supply fiber to the paper industry comes from stands of ten year old poplars on tree farms getting the whack. The other primary wood fiber sources are waste chips and sawdust from lumber mills and post consumer (recycled) fiber. The percent of virgin, natural forest fiber used in paper manufacturing is in the low single digits.
Compared to wood, fewer chemicals are required to convert low-lignin tree-free fibers to pulp
Actually we are kinda fond of the lignin in the wood fiber. That lignin is the energy source recovered in the boilers that recycle the pulping chemicals, produce steam used throughout the plant, and generate enough electricity that we actually sell back to the market.
Less bleaching results in less dioxin
Dioxin is a ghost from the past in the paper industry. Very few mills still use elemental chlorine in the bleaching process. Quite a few still use chlorine-dioxide, but even these are giving way to newer bleaching plants based on newer technologies with zero dioxin byproducts.