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."

Comments

Re:Makes it Worse!

[mordors9]

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.

environmental pollution never to vanish.

[NoSuchGuy]

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

Re:Makes it Worse!

[Brett Buck]

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

Everybody is bleeding insane

[rumblin'rabbit]

It's interesting that they refer to a food product that is, to an extraordinarily high degree of probably, perfectly safe for consumption, as a "contaminant".

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"?

Re:Makes it Worse!

[truthsearch]

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.

Do any of you really know what GM is?

[spoco2]

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?

Re:Do any of you really know what GM is?

[lelitsch]

Both are valid arguments, but they somewhat miss their mark.

Yes, GM seeds might be able to grow in marginal areas. But the vast majority of GM foods is grown in the US where there aren't millions starving. Actually, patented GM foods create a problem for farmers in developing countries since they can't keep back part of their harvest as seed for the next growing season. If they can't afford seed corn, they'll starve or have to wait for th UN air drop. I haven't seen Monsanto or anyone put a huge effort into GM plants for the Sahel or the Tibetan desert yet. And, quite frankly, improved irrigation or similar changes to production are probably much more efficient.

There are reasonably good arguments for using GM foods to help counteract nutritional deficiencies, though. Golden Rice is probably the best example.

GM foods do require stringent testing, but past experience shows that even the most stringent testing can reliably weed out all problems Two examples for failed pharmaceutical testing would be Contagan and Vioxx, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl are two examples that even if something is tested to be almost idiot proof, someone will invent a better operator. If you screw up FDA testing for medications, you can just destroy what was produced. With GM foods, you simply can't. Some will escape and multiply.

The no fish/fowl gene argument is a bit spurious. There have been experiments along those lines. But just think what would happen if pesticide resistant rice cross pollinates with weed grasses. Instant huge problem.

Re:Do any of you really know what GM is?

[PCM2]

This is a really good question. It's also a really complex one. The best book on the topic that I know of is called Lords of the Harvest, by Daniel Charles. Its a comprehensive and mostly unbiased look at the history of biotech and what it means for society and the future of food.

Charles really manages to sum up both sides of the argument pretty well. For one thing, he explains pretty much what you say Penn & Teller have said: that this stuff just ain't the demonic conspiracy a lot of people want to believe it is. A lot of genetically modified foods are produced by bombarding cells with radiation, or bathing them in chemicals that cause genes to replicate in random ways. In other words, scientists are just forcing the natural process of random mutation that occurs any time life reproduces. Very few GM organisms are created by piecing together bits of this or that -- it's too hard to do successfully.

There is something to be said for "feeding the starving," too, as you say. In certain parts of the world, certain plant diseases are so rampant that you just can't grow a lot of crops. They will grow poorly and not yield what they could in order to feed people. A lot of GM crops aim to solve this problem.

But there are more troubling aspects as well. Here at home, the reasons for using GM crops seem less cut and dried. To give one fairly benign example, a ton of work has been put into genetically modifying tomatoes -- but not to make them taste better, or to be more nutritious. No, scientists modify tomatoes so that they will have more cellulose in them, which makes them take longer to ripen and go soft. That way they can be transported farther without spoilage. Of course, it also makes them sort of taste like a piece of celery. The modifications are done solely for the business of agriculture, not for the customer's benefit.

More troubling is that many of the stated aims of biotech have not come to fruition. At one time, scientists promised that GM crops would be resilient to pests and diseases. If a boll weevil couldn't eat a certain crop, you'd no longer have to dump pesticides all over it, which would make farming more environmentally friendly! Well, that sort of happened. But the most popular GM crops of all, as it turns out, are these herbicide resistant crops like TFA talks about. These are plants that can't be killed by modern herbicides. The reason you want that is because weeds can be killed by modern herbicides. So instead of hiring people to go and painstakingly remove all the weeds from your fields, you just repeatedly spray your fields with herbicides. In other words, with GM farming you're actually using more chemicals than traditional farming. And why not? Because the same company is selling you both the GM crops and the chemicals.

And then you have the intellectual property issues. Most of these GM crops are patented. If you are a farmer and you want to plant GM corn, you have to buy it under a license from Monsanto (for example). Typically, that license will include a clause that says you can never plant corn that you grow. Got that? You have a whole field full of ears of corn, and you are forbidden to take any of that corn and put it in the soil to grow next year's crop. You must buy all your seed directly from Monsanto, year after year. And Monsanto sends people out to test your crops, too! If you're not licensed to be growing GM corn this year, and they pick an ear off one of your plants and they determine that it's GM corn, they will actually sue you. (And yes, there have been "false positives" -- false, because the farmer did not knowingly do anything wrong, because his crops were cross-pollinated through the air with GM crops.) To many people, this move toward farming as a new kind of industrial complex controlled by gigantic, multinational corporations is very troubling. To what extent is it appropriate for these corporations to control our food supply?

Anyway, that's just a snapshot

Re:Do any of you really know what GM is?

[dondelelcaro]

Aren't the 'GM' crops really just an extension of grafting and selective breeding that has been going on for thousands of years?

At what point would a fish and fruit mate?

Mating between species or varieties is not what is at issue here; that's a completely spurious objection. An appropriate question is whether there would ever be exchange of genetic material between the organisms in question. Considering the fact that it is relatively easy to get viruses to encapsulate various parts of plant and/or animal genomes, it is not inconceivable that genetic material could be shared across animal kingdoms. Indeed, many plants are quite capable of pulling in genetic material from almost anywhere. Indeed, that's how these transgenic plants are made in the first place.

You taking two or more genes from thing that would in no way be able to be breaded through natural selection.

Natural selection is an entirely separate process from the transfer of genetic material across species or from parents to offspring; bringing it into a discussion of transgenic plants and animals is nothing more than a red herring.

That being said, it is important to carefully examine and test the plants that we select for human and animal consumption, but that's something that is required even for "natural" food sources.

I've losing faith in slashdot

[Time_Ngler]

It seems that no one so far has understood the main point of the article. Its not that Bayer's GM rice is infecting non-GM rice, but an unreleased GM rice that Bayer was still working on and was not approved by the FDA, yet, has infected Bayer's already approved GM rice that was sold to farmers.

In other words, Bayer can't keep the unapproved and approved strains separate when they sell their GM products to the general public. **shudder**

Re:That would likely be a trade violation

[Mydron]

Your comments are complete hyperbole. How did this get moderated Insightful?

Japan is just as protectionist as the US. Take a look at the steel tariffs or sugar tariffs the US imposes on other countries to protect their own domestic markets for these or substitute products.

You cast your FUD in a light that suggests that genetically modified crops are obviously harmless. There is no evidence to support that notion. In fact, and you can look in the rest of thread for other examples, there are lots of reasons to believe that genetically modifying foods is a potentially very dangerous game. Some obvious reasons:

• Making crops herbicide resistant, so that we can use stronger and more toxic herbicides on our crops

• Breeding animal genes into crops makes the crop a problem for humans who are alergic to certain animal-specific proteins

• Affecting the protein chains of staple crops to simplify post harvest processing, particularly for ethanol production, could make the crop inedible

These are just some very obvious and immediate problems with genetically engineered foods. You might think that these are not severe problems. But if antibiotic have taught us anything it's that human intervention can cause unforeseen problems over the long run. Problems with unclear answers. For example, what happens when cross fertilization causes other plant organisms to also gain herbicide resistance? Do you know the answer?

What if genetically engineered crops, either through cross-fertilization or by design, become non-digestible by humans or animals? Do you know the answer?

Such possibilities are worst-case scenarios and the risk might be unlikely, but is it worth it?

Re:Makes it Worse!

[$imo]

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?