Slashdot Mirror
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."
Just ask Gregor Mendel.
And here I thought GM plants only produced vehicles... I tell you what, I learn something new every day
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.
GM plants can be VERY beneficial if modified correctly. This crop can be used as a fuel source, replacing oil-based gasoline. Get the yield high enough my GM'ing, and it becomes a great replacement - less pollution, more energy independence on any country capable of producing crops, and an industry that may finally get agriculture off the government dime.
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.
I don't thing GM things are any more or LESS dangerous than nuclear research. If we allow corporations to do as they please, they will find the easiest way to maximum profits.
This did not used to be so bad. But today the shortsightedness, or rather the self centeredness of the modern executive can be very dangerous to the publics health and the publics wallet.
Basically, the show says that the people against genetically modified food don't know the facts and say that it isn't monitored by government agencies, while it is infact monitored by the FDA and EPA. Furthermore, genetically modified foods are solving the problem of world hunger by producing more output per area and being more resilliant in harsh climates.
Personally, I believe genetically modified plants are required to sustain life on earth with our current population.
What color was the chicken flesh originally?
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.
Yup. Just like grapes.
-Peter
Mark my words: once someone invents a way to have ordinary looking house plants produce your narcotic of choice, the drug war will finally be over.
Unfortunately, Hemp and Marijuana are not the same thing.
Hemp has many industrial uses for the oils and high strength fibers. It also contains such trivial amounts of the psychoactive chemical THC that nobody could possibly get high off of it. Thje saying goes that trying to get stoned on hemp is like trying to get drunk on non-alcoholic beer.
It also contains higher concentrations of a chemical called cannabidiol (CBD), which actually counters the effects of THC... so smoking industrial hemp would more likely get you UN-stoned (and deathly ill, I'd imagine).
Hemp can be used to make anything that's currently made of cotton or wood, perhaps of lower quality but certaintly of lower cost.
Marijuana, on the other hand, has no commercial value other than as a drug (illegal or otherwise).
=Smidge=
Catgirls.
Fah.
50 weeks out of the year they'll scratch you silly if you try to make a move on them, and when they *are* in heat you end up burned out and drooling while they go wandering around the neighborhood, yowling in frustration and dropping thong for anything with a Y chromosome.
Cleaning? Cooking?
Yeah, right.
Clean themselves, maybe, but you know who is going to be scraping the hair balls off the carpet, right?
And the way they run to your side and stare at you like you're God when you use the can opener, that's cute and gratifying at first, but after a few times you realize they're actually in awe of the can opener.
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?
I'm not religious, so I'm not saying "Don't play God", but it is the height of arrogance for scientists to say they understand genetics sufficiently to control GM. 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.
Funny how you say that they don't understand genetics, yet that is what they do for a living. I would venture a guess that they understand it just a wee bit better than YOU do. I also find the GM argument to be odd that people will say "You have to prove that it isn't harmful". To which scientists provide evidence that shows no harmful effects in studies. For some reason, that doesn't seem to be good enough. Sure, there is limited concern because for most of us, it is somewhat of an unknown. The idea of GM things are a little scary to us. But this is what they do. Your subject suggests that they don't understand their life's work. That is ridiculous.
You could almost liken it to the GPL. Don't release your software under the GPL, you don't know the ramifications of doing so. Don't treat GM products the way MS treats the GPL.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
No, he is saying that genetically modified organisms have not passed the "global test" of natural selection. When only the strong survive, those that survive are strong. Simply taking an organism that has one or two good traits and making it the "preferred" organism of that type MAY be overlooking some serious flaws that are introduced or simply not taken seriously enough to change the strong traits. This results in serious fuckups if something bad should happen. The case of the disease immunity was only one item. What if you have a plant that proliferates with little sunlight and water? It could choke out other plants and kill an ecosystem.
There are bacteria that can generate small amounts of hydrogen gas. If genetic engineering can make these bacteria much better at this function, we will have very good renewable energy source.
Hydrogen is a very poor source of energy - it's energy density is very low. (it takes 1/3 of the available energy in the hydrogen just to compress it to a liquid!) It's explosive. It's very inefficient.
Better to consider alge that produces bio-diesel - much denser, more compact, no expensive compression, no equipment retrofitting... the list of benefits goes on and on....
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Actually, Canola is differentiated from Rapeseed by having 2% Erucic Acid content, thus being safe for human consumption. Also, it stands for "CANadian Oil, Low Acid". Dammned yanks get the credit for everything...
"Imagine a world where all the seed you have cannot be used again next season because it is someone's IP."
This is already happening. Many agricultural seed products from ADM and others can only be germinated once, and will not reproduce naturally, meaning you have to buy new seed every year.
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.