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Bayer Petitions For Approval of Biotech Rice
br_sjrpreto_sp writes to clue us to an article on Foodnavigator.
Agro giant Bayer Crop Sciences has petitioned the US Department of Agriculture to approve a genetically modified rice variety that has been at the heart of a recent contamination scandal. From the article: "Marketed under the brand name LibertyLink, these [varieties] were engineered to tolerate the toxic herbicide glufosinate ammonium. The company in July notified the US regulatory body that it had discovered trace amounts of an unapproved GM rice in samples of commercial rice seed." After the contamination scare, the market for US rice tanked as European countries imposed import limitations. When rice producers sued Bayer, the company responded with this request to the USDA. The petition is open to public comment until October 10. Comments may be submitted via the Internet at www.regulations.gov — search keyword APHIS-2006-0140."
Is there any evidence to suggest that GM crops are bad for humans?
Yes.
A major problem is allergies.
Much of genetic engineering for crops consists of copying a gene or set of genes from one species to another, in order to confer its advantages on the engineered organism. This results in the engineered plant making a set of protiens (and their fallout products) that were previously lacking in that organism.
Now suppose you're violently allergic to, say, some cell membrane protien in peanuts. Eat a trace of a peanut and you end up in the hospital. Eat a handfull and you might suddenly die. But if you avoid peanuts you're fine, right?
Then suppose somebody discovers that this protien confers a resistance to a quickly-degraded herbicide that gets most of the weeds that currently infest corn, wheat, and soybean fields and rice paddies. So they clone it into corn, wheat, soybeans, and rice. This produces new strains that are easier to grow: Plant 'em, spray once with the herbicide to kill the weeds but not the crops, and get high yields with little effort. The new strains are cheaper to grow and quickly displace their competition.
And now you're deathly allergic to peanuts, corn, wheat, soy, and rice.
Or at least to the GM versions of the corn, wheat, soy, and rice.
But you can't tell from the labeling which strains of corn, wheat, soy, or rice are in any given product you buy.
And once they're growing in the fields, they produce polen that fertilizes OTHER corn, wheat, soy, or rice. A few generations later even some "unmodified" strains (such as those grown by the organic farmer in the next field downwind) will contain it. If the advantage is sufficient it becomes pervasive.
That's just one example. Iterate for other sources of useful protiens. Iterate using animals. Iterate for genes that produce powerful hormones or drug precursors, which may affect you when consumed orally. Iterate for airborne allergens. And so on.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
We're uncomfortable because by and large the intentional changes tend to be a) more extreme than any single random change; b) patented meaning that companies like monsanto can then come along and sue anyone whose crops are 'contaminated' with by the crossover DNA; and worst c) The companies that make these as a rule do a terrible job of identifying the long-term consequences. A cursory glance at the history of human changes to the environment (e.g. introducing unkillable predators and then spending money to eradicate them, killing off birds, causing starvation due to a poor understanding of the tech) bears this out.
One key problem with many of the GE crops is that they are engineered not to breed naturally. As a marketing point this makes the company the sole source of new seeds. Practically speaking this sets up a problem if the engineered crop contamninates other crop sources preventing them from breeding. Unless seed is available we face the prospect of crop deaths and widespread starvation. For the company that might seem like a financial win but for the rest of the world it is hell.
To put it another way: A lot of changes are unsuccessful and potentially dangerous. Unintentional (read natural) changes cannot be stopped and indeed are often beneficial. Intentional changes are more likely to be dangerous and can be stopped so they should.
Read up on what they are doing.
The basic premise involves DNA testing the seedlings just after they sprout.
They can then remove the ones which do NOT contain the feature and splice those.
They don't have to wait for the plants to fully develop before deciding which strain to develop.
liqbase
I fail to see why anyone is happy having rice with unintentional, random genetic changes (i.e. natural rice) and concerned over intentional changes.
Apparently because you know nothing about how many GM foods are created: by the introduction of powerful mutagens, either chemical or radioactive.
Simply because a change is intentional does not mean it is non-random, and GM foods are created with a variety of techniques whose sole purpose is to induce particular, commerically valuable, changes that could not be created economically by hybridization or selective breeding, as has been done for thousands of years.
So if you really feel like eating something that has been produced by a novel, essentially experimental process, whose consequences we've not quite worked out yet because it hasn't been around for that long, go right ahead. Just do it on your own time, in your own fields, on your own table, thanks. I know from thousands of years of history that the minor random genetic changes that come between generations are very, very unlikely to do me any harm.
But do please get back to me in a few thousand years, when you've built up a reasonable amount of data on Deadly Poison Ready wheat and the like.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Hmm, you obviously know absolutly nothing about GM crops. Apart from that your argument is completely absurd!
Why on earth would someone develop a GM crop that is resiliant to a herbicide and then not use that herbicide? That makes absolutly no sense at all. GM crops drastically increase the use of herbicides, the only way they could reduce them is to make the GM crop resiliant to all infections and pests - basically impossible.
When using GM crops, the standard procedure is to drop tonnes of the herbicide on the crop, knowing that the crop will not be damaged. Many of the potent herbicides in use in the USA do however cause damage to the health of local people and the enviroment.
Starvation throughout the world has NEVER been a matter of not enough food. It has always been a matter of distribution. Continuing conventional breeding techniques shound have no problem keeping pace with world pop growth.
GM will only replace all other food IF we allow it. All we have to do is pass laws that says NOT IN OUR FOOD.
Microsoft "donates" their software to schools, etc. all the time, but we all know their real intentions for doing that.
The problem doesn't really come from Europeans not purchasing the rice (It's designed to be processed into a medicine, not eaten.) The problem comes in when farmers are trying to grow organic and non-GM, but their crops are cross-fertilized by the GM crops, destroying the market for their product. And then Bayer turns around and sues the victim of the cross polinization for IP theft.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
we've been selecting from natural evolution what crop survived better (which would have happened anyways)
Wrong, "natural" variants are not going to make oversized tomatoes, or huge watermelons etc etc because they are a waste of energy for the plant to produce and so will be outcompeted by natural variants. Humans have over the centuries, selected for new variants of edible plants etc by in some cases mixing species (modern wheat strains are a mixture of at least 3 original wheat species). Almost all consumable plants are the products of human selection and these strains would not survive in the wild. As an example, commercial corns (and many, many other plants) are produced by the crossing of two inbred lines producing a hybrid that has very high crop yield. The creation of inbreed lines that can outbreed for only one generation requires some fairly advanced genetics.
They are splicing in genes from otherwise incompatible plants and fish and still want to do more. Alergic to fish? Guess what? Damn good chance your alergic to said food contaminated with such genes.
What? Unless you are allergic to the product of that gene then you will (and more importantly) your body will not detect that the gene has originally come from fish etc. Just as your body cannot tell when it eats chicken that the chicken DNA includes segments that have had their origins in viruses, fish, amphibians, reptiles etc. Yes all DNA of higher organisms contains integrated viruses amongst other things. You see there is no magic quality that follows DNA around like a passport telling what its distant origins are. A gene incorporated into any organism will take on the DNA modifications of that organism. You body cannot differentiate it. Besides, our digestive system has evolved for the purpose of breaking down all macromolecules to their constituent parts (including DNA). That is why no cow has emerged that can photosynthesize despite the vast tons of grass consumed by cow-like creatures over the millions of years. If you have evidence to refute this then let me know as I am a research scientist with 20 years experience and would love to do some research that is so opposite to everything that is known about molecular biology that it would guarantee a nobel for me.
This rest is the usual self contradictory fear, the ecosystem will be destroyed unless we stop what we're doing. You might be interested to know that all the modern strains of every damn crop do not, repeat do not compete well in the wild. Yes our modern strains do well in well fertized, irrigated, pest-controlled environments but when grown in marginal lands, the wild-type strains just crap all over them. You see we haven't been able to make a plant that can take over the world, just plants with high yields in optimal environments.
I think this discussion is missing a bit of scope. This isn't a problem with GM crops, it's a problem with ALL crops, natural selection or GM. If I grow a new, totally natural variant of grain, I own it. And the same contamination laws apply. If I patent it, and it ends up in someone's crop, I can sue them. Even if it was the wind, not file-sharing (RIAA joke, sorry).
The problem is agricultural laws, not GM in this case at least.
Also, While I didn't RTFA (it's blocked behind DOIM) I think the fact that this crop can't breed was buried earlier. All "Jurassic Park" quotes aside, this crop can't breed, and thus won't drive out natural breeds, or kick your dog, or get your daughter pregnant.
A little bit of their GM seed blew off of trucks and onto the fields of a farmer in Canada. Monsanto found traces of GM plants on the farmers land (without his knowledge or permission, which in the U.S. we call trespassing), sued the farmer, and cost him his life savings, and he had to destroy all of his seed. He was a real farmer who rotated his fields with a variety of seeds to maintain the soil. He lost literally generations worth of seed, a devestating loss.
What you are saying is pure propoganda... The farmer in Canada didn't just have seen blow into his field, but he then replanted the seed, and then falsly signed a contract that certified he was selling licenced Monsanto product. He also signed a contract falsly certifying that he was using the Montsanto seed in order to purchase pesticides only designed to work with the Montsanto seed. He also had informed all his employees that the seed being used was official Montsanto seed.
The court in Canada EXPLICITLY said that he was not being punished for the seed blowing into his farm... he was being punished for falsifying contracts falsly claiming that he was using Montsanto seed. He was actively, and outright, falsifying contracts, and commiting criminal fraud. The case had nothing to do with GM crops.
People are NOT allergic to peanuts. People are allergic to specific protein produced by peanuts. Just because you MAY borrow a gene from peanut does not mean you will automatically inherit the allergic protein as well.
In fact, since the peanut allegen is so well know, there is NO POSSIBLE way the GM producers will add such annoying protein to a modified rice. Why would they? They would liable for MILLIONS in damages (for knowingly adding stuff).
GM is effective because it is targeted, not a scattershot like breeding is. There is greater chance that you will produce a harmful allergic product using the traditional breeding method then target gene changes (because we only use genes where we know what their effect is).
FUD BS like yours is why there is unhealthy fear of GM products in the world today. Your FUD has no basis in science. Give me just ONE example where GM product caused allergic problems, just ONE!
Your post is nothing but a Troll and should be labeled as such.