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GM Crops Create Herbicide-resistant "Superweed"
An anonymous reader writes "According to this article GM crops under test in the UK have cross pollinated to weeds, giving them the same resistance to herbicide as the GM crops. The article also mentions that this has been reported as occurring in Canada, which like the US is well past the test stage and allows widespread use of GM crops. What's worse, in Canada crop rotation has conferred multi-herbicide resistance to some of the weeds!"
What's not immediately clear from the story is how this happened. They say they found the resistant plant in a field where GM crops were grown. They say they treated the weed with herbicide and it suffered no ill effects. But does that mean the weed got the herbicide-resistant gene from the crops or did it evolve the gene on its own, the same way that bacteria that are exposed to low doses of antibiotics can develop resistance?
I've mostly read about GM crops that are resistant to RoundUp. It seems pretty unlikely that a plant would independently evolve resistance to that herbicide. But what about the glufosinate-ammonium herbicide this plant was immune to? Is it possible that plants could evolve resistance?
Breakfast served all day!
Returning to the topic - IIRC GM crops were eventually rejected in the EU a few years ago after a lot of hoo-haa when Monsanto et al tried to railroad them through. However as others have pointed out, wind-borne pollen doesn't tend to respect national boundaries... :(
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
I can't believe this is 'new news' but... OK.
While attending Purdue we had our favorite Monsanto rep out lecturing how he invented/patented certain processes using copper on platinum. Very fascinating from a chemistry and engineering point of view.
While their, several of my fellows ripped into him in regards to some reports that ragweed had crossed with soy to produce an herbicide resistant ragweed. Cross pollination was the cause.
The rep pointed out that all 'leftover' crops are considered weeds, and to just use another herbicide to prevent the spread. Good points.
FTA:
"Farmers in Canada and Argentina growing GM soya beans have large problems with herbicide-resistant weeds, though these have arisen through natural selection and not gene flow through hybridisation. Experiments in Germany have shown sugar beets genetically modified to resist one herbicide accidentally acquired the genes to resist another - so called "gene stacking", which has also been observed in oilseed rape grown in Canada."
That's really something: even if there isn't gene transfer from related species to confer pesticide resistance, good ole evolution will take care of it.
The article includes neat things too, like superweeds causing trouble on farms (they require dirty, now heavily regulated herbicides to kill) and wildflowers (AKA "pretty weeds") picking up resistance.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
I think you'd better listen to your other half...
Women mostly treat their body as a temple.
Further, the farmers that wont take the product loose any chance to get good seeds anyway, in Canada farmers next door to test fields were suid while they were the victim of cross polination, the claim was, since your product is similar to ours (does not matter that we were the ones that wrecked your product) you should pay our IP tax.
I think you are a bit short sighted and close yourself from real problems that came from this.
Oh yes, I am not a greeny.
If people have been using this weed killer for years, it would be a strange co-incidence for the resistance gene to just show up three years after GM but not one or two. Transfer by cross fertilization looks like the most likely method, especially if the find the very same patented genes. Transfer to other people's crops has already happened, much to the dislike of those who wanted nothing to do with GM and considered it polution.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Hey, the "GM crops + Herbicide" people are just taking a cue from the big pharmaceutical companies. The patents are expiring on all of the old herbicides ....
Hmmmm ... "How do we make the farmer buy new, freshly patented chemicals from us?"
Of course not -- I don't believe anyone ever does anything out of the kindness of their heart. I have yet to meet a person (even the diehard communists I know) who don't do everything out of self sufficiency and personal profit.
You need to get out more. And open your eyes. You are living in poverty while surrounded by riches.
That's their product. Farmers don't need to buy it.
Companies selling GM seeds have a responsibility to ensure that their product does no harm to bystanders. The free market ends where my fields begin. Unless Monstanto et al can guarantee that the modified genes will not get loose and hybridize with wildtype plants in adjacent fields they are introducing harmful genes into the environment for their own benefit.
The Monsanto Terminator gene is the perfect example of this: Terminator-infected plants will hybridize with wildtype plants in adjacent fields, resulting in progressive sterilization of surrouding farms. Monsanto will use this "marketing pportunity" in the "free market" to sell more Terminator-infected seeds to those farmers.
This is evil: doing willful harm to others for personal gain.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
I heard about that and was horrified with the ruling. Monsanto has similar cases here in the U.S.
I think allowing plant patents has really caused the small indie farmers a lot of undue stress. Realize, though, I'm not against companies getting their fair share from their products, but in nature you cannot have a perfectly closed and useful system, unless you're a planet.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
but in nature you cannot have a perfectly closed and useful system, unless you're a planet.
Not even then.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I agree with you, however, Monsanto has been suing farmers who have not planted Monstano's Canola seeds yet the farmer's crops get cross-pollinated from a neighbouring Monsanto Canola field. Farmers call it 'Nature', Monstanto calls it 'Theft'.
Link? Every time I've heard this alleged, it turns out it's just some cheat farmer trying to plant Monsanto product he didn't pay for, or seeds he illegally harvested and re-planted without paying for them.
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
Clean up what exactly? There is no need to 'clean up' weeds that have resistance to a particular pesticide. The problems is entirely one for the manufacturer of the pesticide, as the chemical will no longer be as effective in the areas where the 'super weed' is prevalent.
You see, it's not as if these genetic modifications make the weed species invasive. It just gives the weed the same chemical resistance as the crop. These weeds were around previous to the use of the chemical. Now with the resistance gene they can continue to be around, even when the chemical is used. Again. Nothing to clean up.
Well, perhaps you are just worried in the abstract about some artificial genes sticking around in free-growing weeds. I'm not. Once the pesticides are no longer used, the genes will no longer confer any selective advantage. They'll then be subject to random mutations and errors and become quickly non-functional.
The problem with GM crops is that because nature is a complex interaction with thousands of variables (bacteria infects plant, gets eaten by insect, which gets eaten by frog, which gets eaten by larger preditor and so on), you have to test combinations and variables through an entire generation. The regression testing becomes a nightmare. The other half of the problem is the idiots shouting 'nothing bad will happen' when they don't know. I have an uncle who said that he didn't think that there was anything wrong with advertising on the internet, and he thought that those 'lab closet academics' who called it spam were just anti-business, and needed to cut their hair and get jobs. A few years later, he saw the problem in a clearer light (he missed it before) and began getting tired of spam. Suddenly the long-hairs aren't so dumb after all (but alas, spam is still with us). GM canola (rapeseed), got killed in Canada because no one would buy it (the farmers were wary of Monsanto's claims too). It might be possible to create safe genetically modified food, but it's a bit like adding animal waste products from rendering plants into animal feed (and getting mad cow disease as a result). For 10,000 years people just fed cows grass, and no BSE. Piss around with nature, and she will shit on you. GM crops? Sure, BUT you MUST PROVE BEYOND ANY DOUBTS that it REALLY IS SAFE FOR PEOPLE AND THE ENTIRE ENVIRONMENT! Genetic regression testing through several generations. The crop manufactures have a much much shorter profit/loss timespan and are usually unwilling to test properly. It does me little good to eat the GM wheat this week and die 5 years from now, or grow a 3rd ear, or have kids with heart, kidney or mental problems. Tinkering 'just a little bit' usually results in the 'butterfly effect' (a butterfly creates minute air currents, which under the right conditions creates a storm system which turns into a category 5 hurricane). A small genetic modification can do the same. If you aren't 100% certain, then don't do it.
"Most anarchocapitalists, like me" ....
I used to be an anarcho-capitalist, and then I grew up. Anarcho-capitalism is one of those beguiling ideologies that looks great on paper, but it useless in practice.
It's useless in practice because most of the underlying assumptions of anarcho-capitalism don't hold in practice. For example a) information is not equally available to all, b) information does not distribute equally among all, c) people do not make rational decisions (look up the research on non-transitivity of consumer preferences), etc, etc.
Before you write me off as some left wing pinko liberal, I would suggest you read some of the more recent published material on markets and topology (yes topology!) -- the Fields Institute is a good place to look for such material. They will give you a very different perspective on the market that you trust so implicitly.
In practice anarcho-capitalism is nothing more than social darwinism -- survival of the strongest, supression of the weak.
The dandelion os not native to North America - it was imported from Europe by the Pilgrims who thought of it as useful crop.
Natural selection and transmission of resistance really have nothing to do with GM crops - it is go to happen anyway, whether or not the crop is modified. And of course GM modification for herbicide resistance is only one of the ways that modification is used. GM modification can be used to add new nutritional value or other charactericts as well.
So in reality this article is just a stupid troll, which I guess shouldn't be that surprising given what goes for science reporting in this daya and age.
I don't see how that is a valid assumption to make.
I personally don't know enough about chainsaw design to look at a product and deduce whether or not the chain is going to break and tear my face open or score my shin bone. I don't know enough about centrifugal clutches to make an informed decision about how long my chainsaw will last before the clutch gives out.
I'm not sure how you expect everyone to be an expert in every aspect of purchasing and if they're not, it's their fault.
You sound like you're heavily influenced by Milton Freedman and his writing, so I'll give you a quote to refute something you said earlier about manufacturers' responsibilityDon't forget, for a completely free market to work, you need perfect information. I suggest you read the (lengthy) wikipedia entry on capitalism and take some time to think about the pieces of that entry that you don't agree with.
I think it's also fair to point out that much of what's been written by 'great minds' represents ideals. Ideals rarely work out in the real world..
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The poor farmers are in other countries that cannot afford to subsidize farming like we do here in the US. The poor farmers are in countries where they have been lured into buying into GM crops and are stuck paying Monsanto for their seeds every year which serves as a drain on the local economy. It is like the whole baby formula scandal where companies like Nestle' convice poor people that infant formula is better (and easier) than breast milk. But by the time the poor people realize that they can't really afford the formula in the long run, they find that they HAVE to buy th eforumla because the mother isn't producing milk any more. Sometimes they resort to cow's milk and really mess up the infant nutritionally.
I'm sorry, but it is sick. They export their perfectly good food and labor, and we give them "Burger King" in return.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Monsanto would probably make more from superweed than they do from wheat or corn. I doubt they'd have a problem with the ethics of the whole thing, so their management must simply not have realized that yet. Either that or they're really good at keeping secrets. I keep waiting for someone to hack the gene for THC production into an orange tree or something, too. That'll make life interesting for the DEA when someone does that...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
A couple years ago I planted petunias. They looked like normal petunias in normal colours, albeit in more variety than I remembered seeing as a kid. In the normal course of events they bloomed copiously and produced plenty of seeds; second and third generation volunteers are now all over my garden. These offspring produce flowers in all sorts of weird colours I'd never seen before (including blotched and spotted), and some of the flowers are *wrinkled*, like crumpled newspaper. Not only that, but some specimens are freeze-resistant (petunias are a perennial, but normally quite freeze-sensitive and easily killed by cold).
So I went looking for info on the weird colours, and learned that the new colours now seen in commercial petunias were created by adding a gene from, of all things, corn!! Apparently with a few more side effects than merely adding new colours to the petunia gene pool. Of course most people replace them every year so never see what happens when they're allowed to reproduce at random.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I've read that Monsanto has said it's not their responsibility to ensure GM foods are safe, that they're a business, and will try to sell as much as possible. Instead they believe the FDA should be solely responsible for ensuring the safety of their foods. In the same book I read that no tests have been done to prove that GM is or isn't safe. With such a cavalier attitude and infamous history, how can there never have been any tests done on GM food? I could understand Big Business being in the pockets of the .Gov, but what about any independent studies?