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Dodging the Negative Reaction To GE Crops
BINC writes "Wired has an article up today entitled 'Selective Breeding Gets Modern.'" From the article: "Genetically modified food has gotten a chilly reception from consumers, especially in Europe and Asia. Just last week, Japan suspended imports of American long-grain rice after authorities discovered that a genetically modified variety had accidentally mixed with conventional rice. To skirt such problems altogether, biotech companies are creating superior plants using genetics technology that is advanced but which falls short of grafting genes from one organism into another."
A process which takes the best of the natural world and the best of our scientific processes and gives natural selection a helping hand.
Because the desirable features all come from varieties of natural crops, the chances of three headed luminous offspring appear unlikely.
When they were first talking about skin colour of wild plants I thought it was a waste (because you can see the fruit colour), but they are sequencing the saplings of these plants before they have grown enough to bear fruit. It allows them to tell within days which of the crop has the desired features.
I just wonder how many samples it take to identify a marker though - you can't use a single sample and must really DNA test an entire range of pre-categorised samples.
I wonder if any of the seed banks will allow their stock to be tested?
This is in effect similar to the genetic testing of embryos for certain high risk hereditary diseases, but goes to show just how cheap and "normal" DNA testing has become.
liqbase
...what the problem is with technology that can produce vast amounts of nutritious food that can feed people who may otherwise not have access to such a resoruce?
Nothing's wrong with that.
What people fear are unforeseen long-term consequences of messing with genetics and releasing the results of that into the wild. Once it's out, it's extremely difficult to undo any damage.
Interesting perspective - I never thought of that. You are a lot more likely to die on the way to the grocery store in a car crash then to have fish DNA that has been spliced into your tomato make a transgenic leap into ragweed and make your lungs glow. Or something like that.
To be fair, I don't think that the objection to engineered crops is their safety - I think most of the objection comes from the conduct of the companies that control the resulting seeds, and the risk of the spliced genes "infecting" the environment. Both objections actually have some grounding in reality, but the obvious solution is increased public-sector research, and I don't see much of a push for that from the anti-GE crowd. It's a shame, because public research is what gave us the green revolution of the 60's.
If I'm wrong and the main popular objection to GE food is food safety, then you are completely correct in your characterization of those people having their danger-o-meters calibrated wrong.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I think part of this is somewhat like the battle between closed source and open source.
With normal fruit/vegetables, you have seeds and can grow them freely and as you wish.
With GE crops, the seeds of the fruit/vegetables either come out sterile and you are dependent on the company to provide you with more or the seeds are okay but you have to license it from them to be allowed to use it, sort of like how you could theoretically put Windows on unlimited PCs with just one CD but the BSA will come knocking.
I think this is part of the backlash and I don't blame farmers/people not wanting any part of it.
GE foods available for purchace are never harmful to humans.
What a bold an unfounded statement.
They are tested extensivly before release.
So are drugs, and yet we have huge scandals every few years because someone made a mistake.
So, while GE foods could pose health risks (both to humans and the enviroment), they usually don't.
They usually don't? How do you know? How long has GE food been around, and to what extent has it been produced? We don't have enough empirical data as of yet to come to the conclusion that they are "never harmful to humans".
Its not the first time tested substances have been found to be bad for us.
Waiting until after the defects start coming in with something as dangerous as GM crops would be horrific, not least how would you REMOVE it from the earth after its cross pollinated?
Fully natural hybrids have been used and tested for millenia and are PROVEN (you and I wouldn't be here without it working) to work, the methods described in the article are just a fine tuning of that.
If we can get ALL the same benefits of GM crops without randomly inserting DNA from who knows what then I am all for it, this article would appear to make GM foods days numbered - its just not worth the risk in my eyes.
liqbase
GE crops are patented and trademarked. You can't independently grow these foods, prices are completely insulated from traditional agricultural pricing mechanisms and the danger of these corporations dumping vast amounts of GE crops at a loss only to make it up by raising prices and exploiting the monopoly they just gained later on is obvious, and very real.
Not to mention the terrible weakness and loss of variety that will result from basing entire food chains only on the single strain that provides the biggest profits for the corporation who holds the patent on the crop.
Basically, it comes down to an issue of trust. And no, i don't trust Monsanto to act ethically, fairly or honestly, and I have no trust in the governments that supposedly provide the checks and balances on these companies either.
GE food would probably be fine under the following conditions:
No patents on genetic sequences.
No forced sterilisation of seeds.
If these GE foods really are that good, why can't they compete on their merits with other foodstuffs instead of having all these additional 'GRM' - genetic rights management mechanisms added.
Thats my big beef with GE foods, its got nothing to do with productivity or efficiency. People have been growing their own food for thousands of years - widespread GE foods would essentially criminalize that activity.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
How about just wanting to lead a healthy 100% natural life
Yes, how about that. Get back to me when you are naked, living in the forest, gathering fruits and berries for food.
Yes, that's what GE companies have always promised. However, read this:
The world produces enough food right now to feed everyone on the planet. So why aren't they getting fed? The problem is within capitalism and the distribution system.
GM food will not solve either capitalism or the distribution system's problems.
What GM food will do is to pollute the world's plants by gene migration from GM plants to other plants (already seen and documented) and impact us in many unforseen ways (e.g. the butterflies dying from GM-altered plants).
And, of course, GM food will also shift power to corporate agribusiness in a huge way, which is the real reason the US gov't pushes GM crops.
In our puppet state of Iraq -- one of the areas where agriculture literally originated -- US-imposed laws now forbid Iraqi farmers from harvesting seeds from crops to use to plant next year.
Not all of the opposition to GM crops stems from "...asshole science-fearing luddites."
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How about all of the farmers getting sued for infringement by Monsanto because Monsanto's GM crops contaminated the farmer's own crops?
Start here:
(http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rl
or here's this:
" The real possibility of interbreeding is dramatized by the defense of farmers against lawsuits filed by Monsanto, the agribusiness company most involved in research and development of genetically modified crops. The company has filed patent infringement lawsuits against some farmers. Monsanto claims that the farmers obtained Monsanto-licensed genetically modified seeds from an unknown source and did not pay royalties to Monsanto. The farmers claim that their unmodified crops were cross-pollinated from someone else's genetically modified crops planted a field or two away.
Percy Schmeiser has been farming in Saskatchewan, Canada, for 53 years. He has served in the Canadian Parliament and been a mayor. Instead of retiring, he has spent the last several years fighting Monsanto after having been sued for patent infringement. Schmeiser grew canola plants on his farm, over the years developing his own seed that was resistant to diseases common in western Canada.
Property rights
In 1998, he was sued by Monsanto, charging that Schmeiser had infringed on their patent by growing genetically altered canola--Monsanto's Roundup Ready--without paying their technology fee. Schmeiser claimed he had never purchased seed from Monsanto. The suit went to trial in June 2000 in the Federal Court of Canada. The judge ruled that it didn't matter how Monsanto's genetically altered canola got onto Schmeiser's land, that any conventional plant that cross-pollinates with the genetically modified plants becomes Monsanto's property, that patent infringement had taken place and that Schmeiser must pay his 1998 profits from his canola crop to Monsanto." This is from here: (http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/
So maybe you want to change that last declaration a little, unless you are truly that stupid...if so, nevermind- you're as closed minded as your "asshole science-fearing luddites", and a troll not worth having a discussin with.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Am I the only one wondering exactly when General Electric started growing crops?
I remember there was this outcry against Monsanto in India quite a few years (4-5) ago. The plan was to release designer seeds with much better characteristics than natural varieties but these seeds would feature a "Terminator" gene (no I promise it was called that I don't have a very large tin foil hat). The gene would prevent future seeds produced by the crop to be viable. Their buisness model was thus that you bought the seeds from Monsanto every year.
Most farmers in India are poorer than most of you can imagine and save some of the seeds from one years crop to reuse the next. There was also some concern that the Terminator gene would find its way into the natural crop varieties and render them useless. This in particular reeks of a company creating something principally to safeguard its profits without there being any actual value added to the farmer.
I think the result of the mess was Monsanto stopped testing it and I think later stopped developing it. That a company would try to develop something like this makes me actively distrust them and its no wonder that a lot of people are scared of genetic engineering. A lot of these groups also tend to be very secretive treating some of their research as trade secret. This is definetly what I'm used to in physics and its definetly not how science should be done. Perhaps its just me but I'm much more skeptical of research done by groups that seem primarily motivated by profit.
I'd worry that a lab environment is just too controlled and the nature has a lot of unplanned for scenarios which may end up producing unintended consequences. I've some respect for their ability to identify what a particular gene as they are doing in the present articles research - I'm more skeptical of their ability to predict what that gene will do if it is suddenly found in another species say. And no matter how extensive your lab trials become they do not address very slow processes which may well occur with GE crops. This selective breeding is less controversial but I'm no biologist and I can already see that there might be a risk with a lack of genetic diversity and that leading to an increased susceptability to disease.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
it is a stupid statement, a more correct statement would be "GE foods are not more harmfull than non GE foods."
If non GE foods were never harmful, I would never want anything else either. un-modified food crops have been introduced in lots of places with disasterous results to the native plants, and wildlife. Because their is still alott more attention paid to GE, and those introducing them, they know 1 mistake in these early stages would be disasterous to them.
their are so many people with food alergies regardless of the foods background (not to mention cholestrol, fat, diabiates) their is very little food that could fit the category "never harmful to humans."
Why is it that the same people who want to embrace the wholesale slaughter of embryos to drive stem cell research - which is genetically engineering drugs - get up in arms about GE food?
Seems to me that these folks just value their dinner more than their humanity
Massive difference. That "engineering" was based on crossbreeding phenotypes, not genotypes. Modern genetic "engineering", is based on crossbreeding of genotypes, whos phenotypes are not even able to crossbreed. Moreover, the phenotypes created are not even subject to rigorous study before being chucked out to pasture, in a process more akin to introducing rabbits to australia than breeding two types of pig.
May the Maths Be with you!
The real problem is Intellectual Property. The stuff is patented. It's entirely possible to contaminate a crop with patented seeds. You are then guilty of patent infringement unless you buy a license to grow the stuff.
As for the grandparent post "technology that can produce vast amounts of nutritious food that can feed people who may otherwise not have access to such a resoruce"
Naive bollocks. The current GM crops which are around are designed to sell extra weed killer. They are designed to marginally reduce the costs of producing the crop.
There is no problem growing conventional crops, we can grow the stuff easily. The problem is stopping western farmers dumping their products on third world markets at far below cost. Destroying the local market for locally produced food, thereby driving local farmers out of business and off the land. The famines, are caused by US and EU farming subsidies.
Deleted
The problem was that they didn't want their food supply coming under corporate control.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Of course, selective breeding already 'pollutes' the world's plants by gene migration via cross-pollenation (seen, documented, and well-understood by the world's gardeners - or did you think roses came in all those colours by chance? most are hybrids with other flowering plants). The butterfly thing was, if not exactly 'forseen' by the people who made it, pretty bloody obvious. The plants were designed to resist insects by generating their own insectisides, insectisides kill butterflies anyway with traditional farming, it's reasonable to expect that the new technique would still kill butterflies. I expect the company who produced that crop was unsurprised by this result. If you want to make war on insectisides, go ahead - but don't blame it on 'GM food'.
Realistically, most of the current gene-splicing techniques aren't doing anything that couldn't be accomplished with traditional selective cross-breeding, they're just massively cheaper and faster and more reliable (it can take years of careful work to breed a particular trait into a plant, particularly if you have to cross several species to get it; gene splicing can do it in a few weeks or months). Our gene splicing technology is not currently at the level where you can stick cow genes into a tomato plant and expect it to produce milk; the species being spliced must be approximately similar before you start, so we're mostly limited to what could be done with careful breeding. Farmers and gardeners have been cross-breeding plants and animals for centuries, and it hasn't wrecked the world yet. The current practice of careful study of the impact of gene-spliced crops, through controlled field trials, is a sound one, and far more careful than people have been about introducing new lifeforms into the wild in the past (rabbits in
And in the meantime we continue to poison existing crops with chemical fertilizers and pesticides. That doesn't make me feel any safer.
GMOs don't decrease the use of chemicals. Actually some GE crops are made so more chemical input can be used. Such as Roundup Ready seeds Monsanto sales. They made it so farmers will use their use Roundup herbicide. Since the seends are immune to Roundup farners can drown their crops in the herbicide thus increase it's usage.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Some more educated people, yes. But most just fear that their food is going to be poisonous. It drives me mad -- all the things the body can take (e.g. dozens of units of alcohol), but suddenly a few genes changed in some existing plant/animal, and people think they're going to grow a second ass or turn into a shark by consuming the stuff.
A few genes? Such as the gene in brazil nuts that codes for the protein that causes allergic reactions to people allergic to brazil nuts? Or the one that cause allergies in people allergic to peanuts?
I don't see the public saying medicine should be banned due to the evolution of superbugs that can spread out of the hospital environment
The ban on improper use of antimicrobes such as antibiotics yes. There are now strains of TB, as well as other bacteria, microbes, and viruses that are resistant to antibotics that were previously effective drugs. The misuse of antibotics will only accelerate the spread of these.
FalconShould there be a Law?