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Genetically Modified Canola Spreads To Wild Plants
eldavojohn writes "A research team conducting a survey has found that about 86% of wild canola plants in North Dakota have genetically modified genes in them, and 'two samples contained multiple genes from different species of genetically modified plants.' Canola usually has little competition when cultivated but does not fare well in the wild. The Roundup Ready and Liberty Link strains of genetically modified canola appear to be crossing over to wild plants and helping it survive. The University of Arkansas team claims that the ease in which genetically modified canola has 'escaped' into the wild should be noted by seed makers like Monsanto because this is proof that it will happen."
Reader n4djs notes that Monsanto has been known to sue farmers for patent infringement when their crops unintentionally contain genetically modified plants.
For infringement of intellectual property. The judge put a restraining order on the bees to remain at least two hundred yards away from all Mansanto plants and fined them $2,320 for each unlicensed strand of DNA collected from Mansanto plants and distributed to a competing plant.
My work here is dung.
im repeating this over and over whenever similar nonsense comes up. there is no evading capitalism come to this point. from property rights, to ownership of ideas, to ownership of genes, and then to ownership of entire species. if you 'let businesses be', this happens.
this, has to be the point where the sane realizes that this does not work.
Read radical news here
1. Enforce strong patent system
2. Spread patented genetic material all over domestic agriculture
3. Sue farmers
4. Profit!!!
You might want to see the film Food inc. which will give some background about Monsato and the rest of the "modern" food industry. The funniest thing is that in their response to the film Monsato even directly admits they require farmers saving seed to provide "samples for testing". That's right; if you have nothing to do with Monsato, you still have a duty to provide them with samples of your seeds so that they can be sure you haven't "infringed their intellectual property rights".
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Prince Charles must prove his claim that GM crops could cause a global environmental disaster, Monsanto has challenged.
Cylon Number Six of Monsanto Public Relations said it was their "moral responsibility" to investigate whether genetically modified crops, fully owned and patented to the hilt by Monsanto, could help provide a suitably profitable solution to hunger in the developing world. Monsanto famously protect their hard work, having sued and won for patent violation when their seeds have blown onto another farmer's land.
"We see this as part of our Africa strategy," she said. "It's easy for those of us with plentiful food supplies to ignore the issue, but we have a responsibility to use science to get our hooks into the less well off where we can. We certainly wouldn't drive them off their land, they're too useful to us as labour. It's in their own best interest. I think of it as the 'Corporate Man's Burden.'"
Nestlé has also urged the European Union to review its opposition to GM. "People are starting to think Monsanto are a bigger bunch of bastards than we are, and we can't have such strikes against our public image go unchallenged."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
So what's the risk of gene transfer giving us "Roundup Ready" kudzu, poison ivy, etc. in the near future?
The NPR story (first link) was a real whitewash compared to the U. Arkansas press release (second link). The NPO story does not mention the fact that in some places where the roadsides are sprayed the genetically modified canola was the only thing left growing. And it downplays the risk of the genes spreading to other plants.
...their wealthier cousins from LA came a-visiting, enhanced and all.
Patent infringement is a civil cause of action for which damages (not fines) are awarded and injunctions (rather than restraining orders, which are a specific type of injunction unrelated to patent law) may be ordered.
But yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if Monsanto sued the bees. Or the nearest convenient beekeeper, for that matter.
It's a good thing this absolutely positively can NOT happen. It's what we were promised. It's what Monsanto told the FDA and it's what the US is telling every-which nation they're trying to push GM foods to.
Nothing to see here. It's not possible. LALALALALA
My problem has always been this. If a pharma company releases a drug that is later proven to be a bad idea then you can do a recall and destroy all known stocks. With GM crops you can't do this as once it is in the wild it is in the wild. The TFA has proved my basic point.
I also have the feeling that less time has been spent trialing GM crops compared with drugs.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Monsanto failed in making the genetic material specific, now the mutating
monster is loose and a mono culture is upon us. They should be taken out and shot,
ALL of them. It is too late, but I would get some satisfaction if all Monsanto
board members, past and present, and All workers for Monsanto were removed from
the gene pool. Bad or terrible karma?? Who cares when most slashdotters are morons.
So AOL lost 86% of its customers since 2001 and now 86% of wild canola contain genetically modified genes? Something fishy is going on!
Reader n4djs notes that Monsanto has been known to sue farmers for patent infringement when their crops unintentionally contain genetically modified plants.
This might have happened, but the Percy Schmeiser case is not such a case. The Supreme Court of Canada found that Schmeiser deliberately harvested and planted his field with seed which he knew had Monsanto's genetic modifications.
It rather scares me that one of the leading anti-GMO spokesmen is someone who deliberately planted his field with genetically modified seed and then lied about it when he got caught.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Slashdaughters, let us avoid the tendency to take the focused ruling in a specific legal case and spread it over our most elaborate paranoid fantasies. We need to force our enemies to do that. They won't be able to enforce the legal rulings in their favor over more than a few isolated cases. Each new case will make their overall position appear more extreme and convince more undecided people that they are a lost cause. We have successfully used this tactic on the record industry; now the farmers can use it on the bio-engineered seed industry.
We need these news items to bring attention to the real problems in agriculture. The biggest problem is that it is over-dependent on fossil fuel for the supplementary necessities of large crop yields. Mainly fertilizer, but also for farm machinery use and post-harvest transportation of food (which has a short period between being ready-for-harvest and losing its nutritional value). Any disruption in the oil delivery process would not only disrupt our transportation, it would disrupt our food supply. Our food depends on these clowns in the Middle-East and psychopathic oil companies, not on Monsanto bullying poor farmers.
We can't feed our population without the oil to make the fertilizer, run the harvesters, and truck the produce. If oil goes to $250 a barrel, then a few months later gas goes to $7 a gallon, and ramen goes to $1 a packet. People, and that includes people like you, will start shoplifting, then start looting, then start shooting. Monsanto employees will be doing the same thing, too. Nobody will have much use for any kind of intellectual-property horseshit when their real property starts going up in flames.
At the present, keep up with the seed-bank bio-diversity people. Don't get distracted by lawyers and sensationalism-mongering journalists. Keep it real and only use fools for cheap entertainment.
Sounds like someone should send them a bill for cleaning it up.
1) They do a hell of a lot of trials on GM plants. They do a hell of a lot of trials on plants period, but more on GM plants because additional agencies are involved in oversight.
2) We've always been modifying plants for a long time.
If you think the foods you get in the store are "natural" as in "The state in which they exist without human involvement," then you are wrong. We've been doing crude genetic engineering for hundreds of years. It started as simply using plants that were more desirable. If a particular plant was more desirable than others, its seeds got more use. It got refined a bit when Gregor Mendel helped everyone understand how genetic traits work. People got better at cross pollinating plants to get desired traits, and doing things like grafting (cutting off a part of a desired plant and fusing it to another).
As an example, go look up a wild banana. They are not what you find in the supermarket, they are squat, thick, and full of hard seeds. That is how bananas were in the wild. They were engineered by humans, though various means, to be easier to hold and have no seeds. There wasn't any direct genetic manipulation, they were created before that, but it was selective engineering of their genetics going on.
What is going on now is just a further refinement of that. Now there is more direct control over the desired genes, and there is less chance undesired traits make it in. No, it is not 100% risk free. Nothing in the world is. However it is pretty safe over all. You may notice that people are not dying from this, we haven't had an epidemic of many people becoming ill or dying because a genetically engineered food was introduced that had adverse side effects.
Caution is needed, of course, as with anything we do. However fear is unwarranted is is basically just Luddism, just fearing things because they are new.
Why didn't Monsanto or whoever the designer was make the plants unable to breed with wild crops? There are many, many ways they could have accomplished this.
Now we know the real story behind honey production being down (or so it seems in stores) http://tinyurl.com/23hmznl ...its probably not good to get a genetic alteration overload via ...honey intake... just leave it to the bees, corporate and crops... to genetically alter us all.
The World According to Monsanto http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-world-according-to-monsanto/
Turns out wild rapeseed (pre-canola varieties) are toxic to humans. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canola
Better to have domestic, edible cultivars leaking genes to the wild than the reverse. Or maybe we should eliminate wile rapeseed unless Greenpeace can prove the genes will never transfer and are of no harm.
Is it bad that the plants have escaped or is it bad the some American corporation is going to make less money next year?
No sig today...
Really. I am no tin foil haberdasher, but Monsanto steamrolls through farm country like a nasty hay-seed (pun intended) Napoleon. And if you think they don't have numerous rural Congress folks in their pockets, please think again. Your food chain is far scarier than most know. I can't say I have some terrible fear of some horrid mutated crop gone wrong, but I can say I fear the corruption of democracy and our food supply that Monsanto perpetuates.
Sig Registration Form 34c_766(a) submitted to Ministry of Signature Management. Approval pending.
There is no such thing! There is such a things as CANOLA oil, which is made from rapeseed. CANOLA is a word made up of Canada Oil. It is not a particularly good oil for huma consumption to begin with, let alone GMO version. The thing is it's cheap and plenty and it's hard to find food that does not contain it. Do some research on Canola oil and you will not want to eat it in the first place.
Despite the level of corruption, you find that in generally free societies which are all capitalist based economies (they have varying levels of regulation, but a free market is always the basis) there is the least corruption of any system. Central economies tend to be the very worst. After all, when the people doing the watching are the people with control, well there is something of a conflict of interest, isn't there? It's not perfect, but it is the best we've yet come up with. Doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement or that vigilance and regulation aren't needed, but trying to say "Oh capitalism is the problem," shows a good deal of ignorance of history and current events. As power concentrates, corruption tends to go up and in command economies, you have a hell of a concentration of power.
Say I'm in my basement (well, I'm always there so that's a given) and I "create" a dandelion that is resistant to all known forms of weed killer and I release it with a giggle into my back yard, obviously in a few months/years every dandelion in the neighborhood is of my variety. Is this illegal?
How about if I only like to look at grass that is purple (ignoring the fact that purple grass would probably just up and die, but for arguments sake lets say it thrives) and I release that into the wild, maybe by throwing a few seeds along all the borders of my property with the intent that it will cross the property line? How about if I didn't mean for it to do so? Is that illegal?
Now say I run a company that makes weed killer and I release a variant that is _only_ susceptible to my weed killer? Is this illegal?
I'm not arguing for or against what Monsanto is doing and merely questioning the legality of releasing modified plants into the wild, of which can reproduce on their own for my personal benefit (monetarily or asthetically). I'm honestly curious here.
Whats going to happen next? Copyrights on marijuana strains?
If you've looked at it, you've probably seen that most anti-GMO rhetoric is scare tactics and wild "what if" scenarios. There is very little serious criticism along the lines of "This is a good idea but we need to be more careful, additional safeguards are needed," or "This is a bad idea and here's the scientific evidence as to why." It is mostly knee-jerk scare crap.
As such it shouldn't be a surprise that many who are drawn to it are in it for the wrong reasons. It isn't logic informing their decision. Thus it isn't surprising that some people involved might have an axe to grind, rather than legitimate concern.
Canola was created by man by selectively breeding varieties of rapeseed to produce an edible oil product. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canola)
So Monsanto genetically modified it, to promote the use of Round-UP (tm) - not to improve individual plant yields/nutrition, but to make it easier to control weeds. 80%+ farmers have planted it, and now it has escaped into the wild.
Here is the story NPR did on this a few days ago - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129010499
"Wilkinson says that just because the plants are genetically modified, doesn't mean they'll be more successful than wild plants. In this particular case, herbicide resistance will provide little edge to plants growing in areas that, almost by definition, don't receive many herbicides. "It's very difficult for either of these transgene types to give much of an advantage, if any, in the habitats that they're in," he says, referring to the genetically modified canola."
I hate Monsanto and GM because of their legal views and actions on DNA patents. I also hate how their products require tons of chemicals to grow and how it gets into the environment. I hate it how it promotes growing "all one type of plant" which turns niche problems and pests into giant clusterfucks because of the lack of biodiversity that would have naturally kept the problem in check. Google "pig weed" which is now ultra resistant to all known herbacides thanks to GM/Monsanto. The list goes on and on.
There is no such thing as a canola plant. Canola is an acronym for "Canadian Oil Low Acid". Canola oil is derived from the seeds of the rape plant.
Take a look sometime at Monsanto's corporate history. What is it about this company's culture that attracts so many sociopaths into upper management?
I mean can you honestly trust a plant that produces rape seed?
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
http://deltafarmpress.com/mag/farming_high_incidence_arkansas/index.html
It's glyphosate (Roundup) resistant. That doesn't mean you can't kill it, in fact the article lists several existing herbicides that kill it.
It just means Roundup doesn't (usually) work on it. So that means farmers in some areas no longer have the option of planting Roundup resistant crops and then hosing down their fields with Roundup. Note that this is no different than the situation before Roundup was invented. So Monsanto hasn't set farmers back, it's just that the advance Monsanto created for farmers is losing its value.
So how can you say farmers are worse off with Monsanto inventing Roundup and then having it lose value 40 years later than if Monsanto had never brought Roundup to market at all?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
What happens when patented genes have spread to all plants?
We'll then have to pay a Monsanto tax on all the food we buy, like the Microsoft tax when we buy Android phones from HTC and Samsung.
I have the terrible feeling this dispersal of patented GM genes is intentional, for just this scenario.
i'll make the bold statement first: Genetic Modified foods needs to be banned under the Geneva Convention as Biological Weapons.
now we justify that.
we've now seen yet more evidence of what should have been blindingly obvious to absolutely anyone - namely that GM crops are uncontrollable and out-of-control.
the risks associated with cross-pollenation are just... immense. think about it. GM crops are quotes designed quotes to be stronger, better, resistant to X, Y and Z. ordinary evolutionary steps simply cannot keep up: thus, thanks to cross-pollenation, "wild" crops - nature's crops - will be displaced.
BT Brinjal in india is a type of plant that has 2,500 indigenous varieties, some of which are vital for medicinal purposes. monsanto has been trying to get a GM variety introduced into india, and there have been riots over it. why? because the indigenous varieties will be unable to survive.
by introducing "patented" crops, a sovereign nation can be "taken over" by threat of not complying with international patent and copyright agreements!
and, god help that nation if the GM crop happens not to do well under certain conditions, such as drought. 20 years ago, i heard a story (no GM crops involved) where US-derived corn was introduced into an african country where the indigenous corn had as little as a 15% yield. within three to five years, the massive yields of the US-derived corn, introduced under some stupid NGO programme, had replaced the native corn.
and then there was a drought.
nobody had any food. the US-derived corn was incapable of growing without good irrigation, whereas it turned out that the indigenous corn comprised some ten to fifteen different genetic varieties - hence the reason for the poor yield. yet of those ten to fifteen different genetic varieties, some were good at growing in flood conditions, some in drought, some were more resistant than others to local pests...
it was years before the food supply was re-established.
now amplify that effect - that risk - with GM food substances.
so it's not a joke: the introduction of Genetic Modified food substances is insanely dangerous, and should be banned outright, world-wide, before it's too late.
you've been warned.
The roundup-ready gene patent has already expired. We are currently multiplying roundup-ready Canola seed for Pioneer Seeds on a couple hundred acres.
The real issue isn't the patents at all but the fact that the scientists found was that these genes are now found in most of the volunteer Canola growing. And the volunteers were found in some cases miles from where any Canola has been grown in a farmers field. This tells us that not only is the round-up ready gene travelling to other plants naturally, it's also travelling tremendous distances. So we have to be careful what we do with genetic engineering. Much more careful than we thought we had to be in the past.
The fact that the specific round-up ready genes are in the wild volunteers doesn't bother me that much. If you have to use a herbicide in another crop, any broad-leef killer will work. The risk of Canola being a super weed is overblown. Canola is already fairly hardy and aggressive; these resistance genes don't really affect that that much. Grass can easily out-compete Canola. In fact I've see Canola deliberately planted in the ditches of newly-constructed roads because it gets going fast and provides ground cover to prevent erosion, etc. Then a year later the grass that was also planted has taken over and the Canola is gone, without any herbicides.
We're getting out of the GMO seed multiplication business, though. Mainly because it's hard to control volunteers in other crops such as peas, which can contaminate the seed crop; with commercial, we don't typically care that much about the volunteers. We'll still grow the GMO'd varieties, but commercially (for crushing, not seed multiplication).
they better sue north dakota for stealing their intellectual property.
lose != loose
you're making some incredibly dangerous arguments in favour of GM (Genetically Murderous) crops.
if there was a way for Genetically Murderous crops to be contained - and the OP demonstrates that it is not possible to contain Genetically Murderous crops - then you would be correct in your incredibly dangerous arguments.
have you heard about how much difference that cross-breeding of wolves into dogs over millenia _actually_ made to canine DNA?
have a guess at how much difference it made.
it was believed to be 5%, by many scientists.
then they did a better analysis, and it was believed to be only 1%.
then they did a much more comprehensive analysis, and found only recently that the difference in DNA is:
zero percent.
i'll say that again.
the difference was found to be ZERO percent.
cross-breeding does NOT introduce new genes. cross-breeding merely "activates" or "deactivates" existing genes - switches them on or off, according to random selection and the incoming pollen / seed / sperm / etc.
Genetically Murderous DNA changes are completely different: introducing or removing genes that nature has, through evolutionary forces (call it god if you like, i don't care, it's all the same), put there for a reason.
so for you to say "there's nothing to fear because it's all new" is just absolutely fucking stupid of you, and you deserve to die in agony from being poisoned by a Genetically-Murderous crop designed to produce some drug cross-pollenating with some food that you eat, and your gut bacteria adapting that Genetically-Murderous DNA into its own (which has been proven to have happened already with Genetically Murderous Soya) and your gut bacteria continuously pumping out a drug which poisons and eventually kills you.
God damn. Why do you haste the English language so much?
people like e.e. cummings and unity100 help speed up language change because it's about time. georgian, for instance, has already done away with capital letters entirely. standard english already got rid of them on common nouns, as did danish in 1948. the romance languages don't capitalize date parts or nouns and adjectives of nationality. sometimes we need a little haste to finish the job and keep our lead over german.
Since the genes involved significantly limit a farmer's legal ability to save seeds and commercially breed their plants, it seems that Monsanto SHOULD be on the hook to buy 100% of their devalued crops at full market value and the cost of re-planting with suitable uncontaminated seed. They should also have to pay for any potential value any farmer's own breeding program might have yielded. Monsanto should additionally be on the hook for "rounding up" (pun intended) 100% of the weeds and wild growing canola that have acquired their patented genes AND for any damage they might cause in doing so. Lather, rinse, and repeat until there is not one single strand of their patented DNA to be found.
When you claim to own a lifeform (be it a strain of canola or a dog) you become legally responsible for anything it does and for keeping it under your control.
Considering bananas are sterile, and propagated vegetatively (ie no sex, and the resulting plants are genetically identical) they're one of the few examples you could have picked that is NOT the result of centuries of selective breeding.
Bananas are one of the crops that stand to benefit the most from genetic engineering because there's no way to introduce disease resistance or other new traits through conventional breeding. In the US that's not a big deal, but bananas in Africa are the primary food source for whole countries, and are constantly being attacked by devastating diseases like Black Sigatoka. So there's an example of how the technique of genetic engineering stands to benefit someone other than Monsanto. (And note that the attempts to produce varieties of banana resistant to Black Sigatoka are being run by non-profits and government scientists, particularly those of Uganda).
The bananas you see at your local supermarket are already produced using vast quantities of highly toxic fungicides, which barely impacts the price you pay in the checkout lane, but can cause real problems in the banana producing countries, which are predominantly poor, generally have far fewer and less strictly enforced regulations on pesticides.
Great point that point that these patents are starting to expire.
Out of curiosity I heard Monsanto had put out a second-generation round-up ready trait (that of course lets them reset the patent clock, but is also supposed to increase yield more). Do you have a sense that many farmers are going to shell out the money for RR2 or do you think will most stay with the first generation round up trait, either from saved seeds, or other seed companies like Pioneer?
For causing an infestation of what Monsanto actively refers to as their intellectual property. If it is their property then it is their responsibility to identify and eradicate 100% of the wild canola that is infested with modified DNA.
Make those guys pay, it is only fair that if you benefit from intellectual property laws you should also assume the responsibility that goes with it!
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Although I agree 100% on the form, I disagree on one point which is important : there is way WAY difference between crossbreeding to get a better plant as it was done in past centuries, and say, putting fish genes in potatoe, which would be theoretically possible (even if not interresting). Saying we have been doing it for century compeltely miss that we are now openning to combination which would have been impossible to get with normal breeding.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Where's the law when the rich cheat, lie and steal? Everybody knows how Monsanto corrupts the system but nobody does anything.
Way to go law enforcement!
This makes a lot more sense when you call so-called "canola" by its real original name, before the PC marketing dept got its hands on it: rape. What the hell did you expect it to do to nature?
Perhaps my best idea yet:
If Monsanto wants to claim that they have patented gene XXX in plant Foo, then bless their money-grubbing little hearts. I say, go for it!
In crime scenes, DNA evidence is used to identify persons of interest -- you know, people that were there, bystanders, perhaps a victim or two, and potentially, the perpetrator.
When Monsanto releases a GM plant, I assume that they patent the gene, the position, the encoding, and so forth. In giving this information to the Patent Office, they've given the public a free copy of the DNA fingerprint for one of their lab creations.
If a given state is having issues with hard-to-kill weeds, perhaps because they were contaminated with GM material from Monsanto plants, then I would suggest that they bring in a forensic team and "DNA fingerprint" the plants. If one of Monsanto's patented genes appears, then I suggest that the state charge Monsanto with littering. I'd suggest that they bring one littering charge for every 'tainted' plant that they find. Oh, and of course, all that DNA testing is expensive, so I'd charge them for that as well.
Sure, Monsanto can turn around and try to find and sue the particular farmer whose crop of GM plants were the culprits that contaminated the weeds, but my guess is that such a thing would be much harder to discover and to prove in a court of law than the State's simple case of showing that the GM gene is in the weeds.
Outcomes?
We have an interesting triple of outcomes here:
1) Unsuccessful in suing farmers, Monsanto gets bled dry from littering costs.
2) Successful in suing farmers, Monsanto sees farmers getting scared enough to stop buying from them.
3) Monsanto gives up patent control on seed, to avoid prosecution
Outcome #3 is particularly interesting.
Of course, I don't think that any of the politicians and DAs in the US have big enough balls to actually go forward and confront Monsanto like this, which is really too bad...
coding is life
Its a damn rapeseed plant and people better damn well learn to call it that!
Canola oil is a marketing thing, it has been renamed and rebranded as Canadian Oil. It comes from the Rapeseed plant and is more often associated with Canada than the USA.
At first glance this would seem a minor error but I submit that it is an intentional mistake by people who are opposed to GM crops which have been around longer than recorded history. If it were not for GM broccoli, cabbage, Kohlrabi and many other plants would be identical. Yes today science has found ways of designing things that would previously taken generations to accomplish.
Please people stop with the FUD and FEARMONGERING.
I am concerned about the patent , and also concerned by the spreading of the gene in the environment as the article is one example. I think you are under estimating the inclusion of gene which don't even belong to the taxa as a potential factor for problem. That has never happened before. We are not speaking of breeding to get some aprticular gene, we are not speaking of genetic deribation through mutation, we are speaking of really putting gene which would not have come in million of years of mutations, if ever. Underestimating that, when people VERY OBVIOUSLY see you would not ever get that results with cross breeding, flame up the fear of people. So it is quite problematic when it is equivalenced to breeding, because it is not. Mind you that does not say anything about risk.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Does this not mean that by failing to protect their patent and allowing in to invade natural stock the genes are now public domain for everyone to use?
It seems there's a whiny article about Monsanto on every website I read these days. GMO crops are here to stay because they're necessary to feed all the people in the world. Deal with it.
Search for "The Best and Worst College Degrees by Salary" with Google. Would you be surprised to find Horticulture listed at #6, with a median starting salary of $37,200 and a median mid-career salary of $53,400. Engineering pays (and somewhat thus smart Physicists who understand engineering) and Computer Science pays, along with business degrees and professional graduate degrees (Doctor, Lawyer). Yeah, the sciences suck.
However, if you bought a Monsanto GMO and grew their plant, they would argue while you have the right to the natural genes of the seed you did not re-license the genetic modification for a second year. They did not sell you the seed for your own use, they only granted a license to use the product for that year to produce a plant. Thus, if you wish, you can pay them for the your own seed and then can use it - or you can just buy the seed again from them - whatever you find more profitable. Just like software - you don't buy it, you license it.
Most of us simple lay-folk call it something else. Renting.
Now the horticulturalist is using entirely natural processes. They don't take the gene of a deep-sea fish, stick it into a bacteria, culture it, then extract it to inject into a plant seed. A deep sea fish could never inject its DNA into an orange to act as a natural anti-freeze for the fruit. Thus what a horticulturalist does could easily happen by chance and thus was deemed unfit for patents. That is why he isn't an idiot for not making a lot by using selective breeding to create a new variety of apple.
Is your shift key broken or did a capitalized letter run over your dog? I'm not the sort of person to jump down someone's throat for making a grammatical error. Errors are, after all, unintended -- and I, like most, make them all the time. But what I find much harder to ignore is a person who simply decides to ignore a grammatical convention as a matter of style or lazyness, especially when doing so saves him no time and only serves to give the writer a douchey affectation.
Grammatical conventions exist for a reason. It's significantly harder to parse a paragraph of text when you can't tell at a glance where sentences are beginning and ending. Perhaps you read one word at a time, but many of us parse text in larger chunks and simply leaving out punctuation, or, in your case, capital letters can significantly slow down the speed at which a person is able to read what you have written.
It's not saving you any time. It doesn't make you seem laid back and informal. In fact, unless you are trying to impersonate a 12 year old girl, its not doing anything for you. If you are not a 12 year old girl, and the person reading your post knows this, then he/she will likely assume that you are a douchebag. Please bear this in mind in the future.
Monsanto Canola = Rape seed !
.
- aqk
F U
Well I want to see a class action by farmers against all the bioengineering companies for complicit environmental contamination of the natural gene pools.
We have to remember that genes are not only transferred by sex/pollination but also by horizontal gene transfer with pests, parasites and diseases. If the bio companies can't prevent this then their products should not be on the market and should only be utilized in isolated environments. Unless of course they give up their patents and are globally approved by the majority of nations to modify the natural gene pool.
Please note that I am pro genetic engineering. And companies should make money for it. I just don't like corporate abuse.
Why do you think there is a vast store of non-hybrid seeds stashed away in a ice frozen vault somewhere around Greenland or wherever they store it. One of these days, we are going to monkey around with nature too much, and nature is going to fight back and blow the whole shooting match up. If any humans survive, at least they can clean up the mess these gene splicers cause.
I'm just curious how you can have "Wild" canola.
As I understand it Canola is a man made Hybrid of Rapeseed. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canola). Wild, to me, implies "all non-domesticated plants..." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildlife) while a "Volunteer is a plant [usually desirable in other settings] that grows on its own, rather than being deliberately planted by a human farmer or gardener." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunteer_%28botany%29) So, are we talking about Genetically modified crops replacing previously "escaped" hybrids volunteers of the same species, or am I missing something?
Weren't we told that these organism are perfectly safe - that they would never survive in the wild ? Is Monsanto, which has made a practice of suing farmers who inadvertently found patented organisms - what a farce ! - growing in their fields, going to sue the state of North Dakota for allowing these organisms to grow in cracks in their highways or in ditches along the sides ?... Henri
I realize that big money is behind Monsanto, but, in principle, shouldn't the farmers who plant non-Monsanto Canola be able to sue when they find their seeds cross-pollinated with GM Canola? It seems to reason that it's one thing if a farmer is cultivating the licensed product, violating Monsanto's patent rights (under current patent laws), and quite another if Monsanto is polluting the farmer's seed base. I would think it only is fair that Monsanto would have to replace their contaminated seeds with non-GM seeds of the same variety the farmer planted, or at least provide the farmer with a waiver to grow canola from his own seed as an alternative, if the farmer feels he wants to grow the cross-pollinated stuff.
Sorry guys but canola is generated name (Canada Oil, because Canada is one of the biggest producer)
Canola is one of two cultivars of rapeseed or Brassica campestris (Brassica napus L. and B. campestris L.). oil
So what is the issue about a canola seed? is not such a thing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canola
Can anybody check the text before posting it
from the article in the original post:
"Moreover, two samples contained multiple genes from different species of genetically modified plants. "It indicates that these things are probably self-perpetuating outside of cultivation and have been there for a couple of generations at least," Sagers says.
Since some of the plants contained traits from different varieties of GM'd plants. The only way a plant could have ended up with both traits would be if the traits had been transferred via pollen.
So Schmeiser could have been correct in his claim.
Actually... State maintained oligopoly of the privatized monetary system is closer to the mark.
Did you know the monetary system had been privatised? Did you notice?
Credit is largely the key to the problem.
Central banks support commercial banks, prevent them from failing when they make poor decisions, which means commercial banks have little to fear over extending their ability to create credit (we're at a ratio of 50 fake euros to 1 real euro by now (the US is much the same)). The result is that companies can simply use ever growing swathes of credit to wipe out their competitors. In fact; it's a necessity of the system. You have to do it to them before they do it to you; grow or fail.
Without central banks propping up failed private banks, the ability for corporations to raise large amounts of credit to buy up their competitors would be removed.
Don't expect this process to stop though, it's been ongoing for 300 years and is in the interest of the people at the top that we end up with a world bank propping up commercial banks world wide who in turn, prop up huge multinational corporations.
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The Canola plant is a derivative of the Rapeseed plant. Rapeseed plants (the original source of canola oil) have high levels erucic acid, which is toxic in large amounts.
Erucic acid is not toxic. That's bunk science. Mustard oil is 42% erucic acid and it has been regularly consumed by Asian cultures for a long, long time with no ill effects.
"The effects of erucic acid from edible oils on human health are controversial. However no negative health effects have ever been documented in humans." from Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustard_oil
Erucic acid in food : A Toxicological Review and Risk Assessment . Technical report series No. 21; Page 4 paragraph 1
http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/_srcfiles/Erucic%20acid%20monograph.pdf
"Liechtenstein is the world's largest producer of sausage casings, potassium storage units, and false teeth."
The farmers need to sue Monsanto for contaminating their "organic" crop with their "undesirable" genetically modified gene and "ruining their ORGANIC BUSINESS!" Similar to all other POLLUTION. ===
Some might reasonably argue that there has been corruption since before anything "human" arrived on the scene, for varying definitions of "corruption":
http://www.google.com/search?q=chimpanzee+prostitution
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."