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!"

Comments

Neat Details

[putko]

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.

Re:This has nothing to do with genetic modificatio

[radtea]

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.