Slashdot Mirror
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."
Well then we (the US Govt) can say that we have officially approved the GM rice and therefore it really is safe (trust us, we say so). Then we can threaten and bully other countries into allowing its export to their country, otherwise face trade sanctions or a trip to court. Meanwhile our country gets to face greater and greater amounts of herbicides and pesticides going into our ground water.
Genetically modified food/crops/animals once released into nature are like an environmental pollution.
Only this pollution will never vanish, because these organisms are "genetically engineered" with a dominat special (=patented) gen that will be reproduced and breed with other species.
Monsanto vs. Farmers
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
Why do you think it's contaminated? It's different. I fail to see why anyone is happy having rice with unintentional, random genetic changes (i.e. natural rice) and concerned over intentional changes.
brett
If the product is found safe, their bans would be unscientific and they would potentially be in violation of various treaties.
Japan in particular is bad about banning foods at the slightest hint that there could possibly be an astronomically-unlikely problem, in order to protect their domestic markers (ie, their Social Security system). Never mind that a Japanese is a million times more likely to be killed by a stingray on the way to the store to buy the rice than they are to be killed BY the rice.
GM foods are to Europe what creationism is to America - an affront to reason, science, and honesty. At least creationism makes an interesting allegory, though. All the anti-GM food movement does is get people killed (by driving up the costs of food and reducing yields).
And other people think 9/11 was planned and executed by the U.S. government.
Meanwhile people fight to make creationism part of the high school science curriculum.
And many consider homeopathic medicines, also known as "water", as effective treatments.
Gives me a migraine. Where did I put my "head-on"?
Imagine your crops now someone else's IP and you need to pay royalties. Imagine your crops now 'designed to work' with specific fertilizer.
GM crops may or may not be bad for humans, but they may be bad for the crops and they tend to contaiminate natural breeds which we know have long term sustainability.
Add to that the fact that this particular GM crop in question is one which is designed to be sprayed with herbicides. The GM crops might be bad for other crops, and the herbicides might be bad for us.
On the other hand it might all be okay, too. The problem is we can't trust anyone to actually tell the truth about that because there's so much profit involved.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
No one knows if there's a difference between genetic modifications made by humans and those made by nature. It's possible human methods introduce side effects that nature does not. It's also possible we make a modification that would be suppressed if it happened naturally, but instead gets exaggerated because we're controlling its reproduction. We can't control natural random genetic changes, but we can control what we do.
Developers: We can use your help.
I mean really, you all talk about glowing green, getting two tounges etc.
I caught my first episode of Penn & Teller's Bullshit the other night, and it just so happened to have a piece on GM food.
Some clips:
A short clip outline
The entire segment
It painted a pretty good argument FOR GM food... to feed the millions who are otherwise dying because it's hard to get crops to grow in their parts of the world.
Aren't the 'GM' crops really just an extension of grafting and selective breeding that has been going on for thousands of years?
Please enlighten me if I'm wrong, but in their piece they/those they interviewed stated that two of the things I thought were true about GM foods aren't:
* GM foods contain genes spliced from frogs/fish/other animals: Apparently bullshit
* GM foods don't require any testing/checks before being used: Also apparently bullshit, that they are more heavily regulated than any other food.
Is this true, or have Penn & Teller hoodwinked me?
In other words, Bayer can't keep the unapproved and approved strains separate when they sell their GM products to the general public. **shudder**
Did you think what you were saying at all?
Problem 1: Weeds are becoming more and more resistant to pesticides
Problem 2: Actual crops cant take the amount of poison that takes to kill the weeds.
Solution: Gemodify crops also to be more resistant -> use more pesticides
Profit.
No other problems, right?
this rice is engineered to be more resistant to poisons sprayed on the fields to kill off weeds. Do you grok this yet, the word "more"? Now tell me braniac, have you been genetically modified to be more resistant to poisons lately? You know, the food you eat will have more poisons in it and on it, and your water supplies get more heavily contaminated? Are you aware of glycophosphates and what they actually do, how long they last?
You GM proponents are just so dense, it's like you can understand technical concepts perfectly well up to a certain point then get a case of the chronic dumbs. Remind yourself to not bother to play chess, it's a waste of time for you, anything past two steps is too much of an effort. Here's another one, they use genes from different species and even different genus and transplant them around. This is for you other neurons who don't get it and keep hyping that word "hybrid" in every thread about GM crops because you saw that word on your mommy's package of garden seeds. Transplanted genes from different genus's DOES NOT HAPPEN in nature, get it? It is not something plant growers have been "doing for hundreds of years" or anything like that, and it doesn't happen in nature.
This is Island of Dr. Moreau scary stuff and we are barely scratching the surface with it and anyone who states it's all perfectly safe is a LIAR, because we, the collective scientific community we, don't know, it's all too new, just too damn new. They state it might be safe, because they stand to make billions from it and it helps them garner planetary food monopolies, and that's what this is all about, transnationals getting to the point the can monopolize the global food the same way they do with mainstream entertainment, or the MSM news, a handful of large companies ownzoring it. Is that what you really want? Really? Have you looked at the actual economic ramifications of using heavy GM seed, especially for developing nations? First year, slight crop yields, they might break even cost wise. Second year, a loss, because they have to rebuy the seeds, at triple the cost, when before they could save their own year to year, now it is illegal for them to do so.. By the third or fourth year, bankruptcy, ownership changes hands, goes upstream into fewer hands. Get it yet? It's an economic scam!
I'm in ag, I can tell you right now, GM seed is putting more farmers out of business then the strong dollar is, and who knows what it will do long term with the health of the humans on the planet. Mono culture and heavy use of chemicals has contaminated the planet for some short term gains of mostly water puffed food, and GM seeds are a way to apply "vendor lock-in" to that most critical human need, food.
I do not believe GM is a safe technology, and I feel safer eating natural foods. GM food is artificial, even more so than foods that have additives added to them, since they have been manipulated at the genetic level.
Humans have evolved for thousands of years eating natural foods with DNA codes by nature. The idea is the further we move away from nature regarding what we put into our bodies, generally, the harder it becomes for the body to make good uses of these nutrients. The human body has evolved to be able to process naturally coded foods for thousands of years, suddenly changing this is a dangerous proposition, especially since we really dont have much of an idea what we are doing, and scientists, as much as they like to think they know everything, likely no very little about why nature does things a certian way. It could be one small gene here or there that a scientists may consider useless, but which activates some seemingly useless or unimportant feature, but which in fact can cause a whole range of subtle problems for those who eat these foods. I do believe that the GMO organisms can be significantly different and have unexpected effects, caused by unusual protien structures, that perhaps we are unable to process well.
There could very well be complex interdependancies for genes and a gene could have all sorts of functions that we have absolutely no idea about. Modifying one gene for all we know could have a cascade effect throughout the entire organism which are entirely unpredictable to us. The DNA system, we think we can understand, but I believe that its workings may be so subtle and there are so many things we do not know, that our tamperings with it could have unintended consequences. GE is an unpredictable and dangerous game, tampering with nature like this, and may have harmful effects.
Scientists as well are known to use virus and bacteria DNA in the process of inserting genes into an organism, and some of the virus and bacteria DNA can be inserted along with it. As well, we are taking genes out of fish and crossing species boundaries, breaking a natural limit, doing something that has never been done before, mixing genes from completely different organisms. The effects of this are all unpredictable, and it adds FAR more uncertianty to me than just eating the same naturally programmed foods we have been eating for thousands of years. There are all sorts of new dangers and novel potentials that are being introduced here that didnt exist before, that could cause chaos.
Scientists have indeed programmed their organisms and have noted totally unexpected results, potatoes that were way too starchy but lacked other nutrients for instance. Certian types of GMO corn have been shown to possibly trigger allergies. There were numerous reports of corn allergies in individuals who were eating taco shells believed to have been contaminated with star link corn. What if there are other effects from this food which may be effecting people, but which may not be associated back with GMOs as being a cause?
There is a study where it was found that since 1994 when GMOS were introduces in the US there has been a 10 fold rise in food related illnesses in the USA. But, in Sweden, where GMOs have been banned, the rate of food related illnesses have stayed the same. It seems suspicious to me.
You say that the natural programming process is random, but we really dont know that. There could be a reason that nature uses very specific DNA patterns in an organisms. Nature may do things in a very subtle way, that we dont understand, too subtle for our understand, but which is essential to the easy digestion and good nutrition of our food. Perhaps, there is a metaphysical force behind the programming of the DNA that makes sure it is programmed in beneficial ways.
The fact that the natural coding process is completely out of our control is actually a comforting thought to me, since I know nature doesnt have an agenda, perhaps an agenda to create a crop that is ultra resistant to pestic
What happens when all of the genetically engineered crops contaminate all of the natural crops and down the road we must rely 100% on big corporations to provide seed.. which of course likely requires a much more hefty fee than natural product? Natural seed being something that you cannot get sued for growing without permission, of course..
What happens when all of the natural species are wiped out by the GE stuff and we end up with a handful of varieties of plant that are only distinguished by their immunity to disease or compatibility with the designers insecticide instead of their taste, or beauty or longevity on the shelf? Only one kind of corn, only one kind of rice, only one kind of pea. Bring on the GE stuff, sounds like a much simpler world!
The issue of world hunger is an distribution one, not a production one. The federal government today pays millions of dollars for farmers (large corporations now days) to either let a crop rot in the fields, not grow a crop, or not distribute a crop. There are actions by the UN trying to stop this practice. I don't have the link any longer but there have been studies produced by Harvard I believe that prove that we can produce enough food to feed the world, we just can't get it to the people that need it.
He used a common allergy as an example to convey the idea. Think about how much worse it would be for someone with an uncommon allergy. As you say above, no GM producer would produce a crop that spread a common allergy. Its not just a possibility, but an eventuality that a GM producer would produce a crop that contained an uncommon allergy, whether they know it or not at the time.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Ok... if you patent a GM crop, then, yes, you can own the patent. BUT, you must realize that if your seed becomes intermingled and/or cross pollinates with plants whose seeds you did not engineer or are not GM, then you are out of luck. You should not be able to sue every farmer whose crop your GM patented gene shows up in. Biology is not the same as machinery...it is alive. If you don't like it, then you are in the wrong business, because you will never be able to meep 10 0% control over your crop and its pollination. If you don't want your work to show up in other fields, then YOU MUST bear the entire cost of constructing, operating, and maintaining a fully-closed agricultural system.
P.S.: I would greatly appreciate any of Monsanto's GM seed that was accidentally dropped off of their trucks. If it fell of their trucks, then it can legally be considered abandoned and relinquished of any ownership, and is therefore, fair game as salvaged property. I want only verifiably abandoned seeds, or information where I can pick up some of these seeds, either off of roadsides, or of farmers whose fields have become accidentally populated by these seeds. It would be *MUCH* appreciated!
-----
Sig Sauer
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Meanwhile, people all around the world are sick, malnourished, and dying.
Did you know that in the US, half of all the food we produce goes to waste?
It's a myth that people are starving because they don't have sufficiently magical crops to grow. There is far more than enough arable land to feed everyone in the world fully. What's lacking is the infrastructure, education, and technology to create and manage good farms. These things cannot be genetically engineered, and they don't need to be.
As long as the third world is being actively exploited by first world nations, multinational corps, and corrupt local governments, there will be starvation - with or without GMOs. The GMO debate is just a convenient way to distract people from the fact that we have had the capability to feed the entire world easily for decades now, and choose not to.
Although GMOs will not solve world hunger, they do have a fair possibility of exacerbating it, by destabilizing ecosystems. Introduce any crop radically different from what normally grows in an area, whether it's genetically engineered or even just a natural crop from a different continent, and you're setting yourself up for potentially disastrous trouble.
Grow them in those, "starving" countries where if they fuck up thier ecosystem it really doesn't matter given thier ecosystem aparently doesn't have the food they need
What a touching way to phrase the suffering of millions. Unless a particular gene bestows an INCREDIBLY advantageous attribute to a crop (like, say, the ability to fly), the gene's ecosystem penetration will remain minimal. If the advantage isn't powerful enough to make all other versions of the crop "obsolete", this "contamination" will increase biodiversity, not lower it.
I have yet to see such a a "doomsday" supermaize-quatrotriticale hybrid. Scientists appear to be focusing efforts on silly things like Vitamin A-enhanced rice to prevent childhood blindness in developing countries instead.
The big draw suposidly for these crops has been to help fend off world hunger, but what country are they being grown in? The grand ol' land of glut.
After you harvest food, you can move it. Notice how the grand ol' land of glut (forgive me for assuming you refer to the USA) was responsible for 61.8% of the world's food aid in 2002 (the most recent statistics I could find / are availble), donating more than the rest of the world combined.
Besides, what would it say if we refused to grow the crops that are supposed to be the salvation of the starving? If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for us.
Besides, research like sub1a gene modification that allows rice to survive for weeks underwater addresses a problem the US lacks - namely, that of having the bulk of it's farmland flooded for weeks at a time.
Alergic to fish? Guess what? Damn good chance your alergic to said food contaminated with such genes
Now that's just silly.
Granted, soybeans with Brazil Nut genes have caused allergic reactions in those allergic to Brazil Nuts. Remember that the allergy is not caused by the nut itself, but by a single protein known as methionine. Also remember that DNA is nothing but a template for protein creation - every gene you have operates through protein manufacture. And, of all the genes in the Brazil Nut, only the one that synthesize methionine is responsible for the allergy.
In other words, you're not allergic to fish. You're allergic to parvalbumins, and only the genes directly responsible for creating these proteins have the chance to cause an allergic reaction.
we've been selecting from natural evolution what crop survived better (which would have happened anyways)
We haven't been breeding crops to find the ones that "survive" better. Presumably the ones we've been breeding through the millenia survived just fine before we started breeding the ones that were already surviving.
What we've actually been doing is breeding tobacco varieties that taste better and tomato plants with larger fruit and soybean with better nutritional value as livestock feed. Presumably cows would be unable to effect their own multivitamin-related desires on soybean evolution with direct human interation.
DATABASE WOW WOW
Biotechnology has been around forever. People aren't bystanders in the environment. Natural is slow, arificial is fast. That's the only real difference.
Biotechnology created domesticated animals, beer, cheese, yeast, penicillin, corn, lettuce, potatoes, and almost everything else remotely edible or good for us. Breeding is just another way to do GM, albeit slower.
The only serious threat is, "changing things quickly might cause problems quickly".
Banning a food for the sake of some theoretical worst case scenarios shouldn't be taken seriously. Think of a lawyer convicting somebody with imaginary evidence in court; that shouldn't happen either.
Importing plants and animals from other countries can cause serious environmental damage in some places. (nutria, aussie cats, etc.) But the world hasn't ended. A gm product is more likely to survive poorly or be a pest than global exterminator.
Besides, any life fragile enough to be done in by GM shouldn't still be around (roadkill?). Survival of the fittest, for darwin's sake!
An agro company can already patent their seeds or animals, they just have to prove those things have some unique trait they own (if that). Genetic engineering just makes getting unique traits easier.
Nature could make the equivalent of any "new" creature we make artificially. Whatever gets created, you could find a similar natural counterpart at some point in history. To think we could even create some brand new gene is improbable. Nature's constantly mucking with DNA all the time, and througout the history of all life on earth. How genes are combined in an organism can be unique, but not truely original. Since we're not creating the whole shebang, it's unlikely a dangerous and radically new organism will ever be made by us.
My point is, if it's not unique genes in a totally unique organism, it could just as well have spawned naturally at any time. At least if we created a monster ourselves, we'll be half prepared for it.