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Activists Destroy Scientific GMO Experiment
Freggy writes "In Belgium, a group of activists calling themselves the Field Liberation Movement has destroyed a field which was being used for a scientific experiment with genetically modified potatoes. In spite of the presence of 60 police officers protecting the field, activists succeeded pulling out the plants and sprayed insecticides over them, ruining the experiment. The goal of the experiment was to test potato plants which are genetically modified to be resistant to potato blight. It's a sad day for the freedom of scientific research."
That sounds like terrorism to me. "Stop making GM plants, or we'll fuck your shit up."
Destroying a potato field... WHAT'S NEXT??? This is just more evidence of how badly we need the Patriot Act.
They sprayed herbicide, not insecticide.
Open-field testing of GM plants is an inconceivably bad idea. Fifty cops can't stop cross-pollination with unmodified crops.
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
I think the submitter of this article is a little unclear on the concept of what companies like Monsanto are trying to do, they are trying to control the food supply, to get a "piece of the action" like a Mafia every time you take a bite of food, and no one who doesn't pay them will have food. They are evil, and this little incident is nothing compared to what should be done to those parasites on humanity. Think of Monsanto and their ilk as the MIAA/RIAA of food.
Monsanto is all that anyone needs to say these days to show what is most wrong with GM foods. I'm sure all sorts of amazing and magical things can come of GM foods research. But when it is used as a weapon to destroy people and to control something as vital as food for humanity for profit, I have to say NO MORE GM FOOD. Once the problem of commercial exploitation is resolved, then let's revisit the many potential benefits of GM foods.
And before anyone says "profits pay for the research" I will just say I don't care. Find another way that doesn't involve using the results to dominate and drive private farmers out of business and off their land.
What, exactly, do you eat then? All food (save perhaps wild meat) has been genetically manipulated since humans settled down and started farming about 10000 years ago.
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
I don't care for the tactics used here, and of course many researchers in this area really are just legitimately working on ways to increase food yields.
On the other hand, there really are plenty of rapacious Monsantos and wannabes out there, who have quite legitimately given the whole thing a bad name. So I do understand the backlash.
Honestly, they'd do a lot better to try and get genetic patents eliminated. That's what causes a great deal of the harm here, whereas those interested in altruism or a reasonable profit don't need them. Unfortunately, those aren't so easy to uproot as a potato.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
The argument against GMO is that it's not just a natural selection process aided along by humans who see the end result of those genetics before choosing the next step, it's that we're taking genes and modifying them without knowing the exact changes made. We can make many permutations of the potato via GM, and have no idea what they'll end up as. However, if we go and use the traditional methods, we see exactly what we're getting, and know to a greater extent that there aren't unintended consequences.
And at this time in my life, I want freedom to eat non-GMO food.
Then go resurrect some crops from fossils a few thousand years old. Genetic modification through selective breeding has been around for as long as agriculture. Direct modification is the same in kind if not in technique. i.e. instead of breeding Regular Tasty Potatoes in the same field as Hardier Smaller Potatoes for a few years and replanting the ones with the least blight, you instead figure out how the hardier variety are resistant, isolate the genetic sequence(s) responsible for this, splice them into your Tasty Potatoes, and breed those for a while to make sure nothing untoward happens. The crops destroyed were at that latter stage.
Personally, I'd rather eat 'GM food' that requires a lower number and quantity of pesticides than other crops of the same cost, especially when 'Organic' food requires a massive increased land-area and other resources to farm (and thus a higher direct sale price). Then there's the GM foods needed to prevent starvation in countries where regular crops just do not provide enough nourishment to sufficiently feed their populations.
This is separate from Monsanto et al's massively dickish moves in attempting to patent genetic sequences and impose ridiculous 'licensing terms' on crops.
You can QQ about the moral implications of scientific progress all you like, but you won't be stopping it. Don't like stem cell research because it is an affront to God? Don't like genetics research because it isn't natural? Tough tiddly winks. It takes one researcher spending time on a subject, doing it right, and publishing their results. There is no stopping science.
If you are so terrified of a universe humans understand, shed the hypocrisy. Shut off your computer and all your lights. Refuse antibiotics next time you have a major infection. Reject models like the heliocentric solar system, gravity, electromagnetism, and all the rest.
Having a powerful model for genetics has the potential to outshine all the theories mentioned above in practical use for human life. It will doubtless be necessary if ever we get off our asses and go to the stars.
Apparently you haven't heard of things called hybrids. Have you ever eaten a blood orange? How about a grapefruit? Both of those exist because someone intentionally cross-fertilized fruit bearing plants (which for those of you who don't know is the process of inserting genes from one species of plant into another species of plant in order to create a third species of plant with characteristics from both parent species).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Nonsense. With 'traditional methods', you still have the chance of spreading a dangerous recessive gene across the entire population, or even a dominant gene that later becomes a disadvantage as the environment changes. There are countless examples of food crops becoming extinct in large regions as a result of this. Take a look at the ancestry of a 'French' grape vine some time...
With GM crops, we are less likely to see that, because we're tweaking smaller numbers of genes at a time.
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About 20% of the potatoes on the field have been destroyed, the researchers who are involved say that the end result is not too bad. There is however a lot of damage on the infrastructure.
The Flemish government will spend 250,000 Euros to keep the experiment on track
One researcher of the Catholic University of Leuven participated in the destroying. She will be punished by the university.
Bart Staes, a member of the European parliament for the Flemish Green Party, called the action "a democratic form of protest" and "civil disobedience". The Flemish Green Party distances itself from his statements.
The scientists have not yet decided if they will sue the protesters. They will decide this after they have seen the police reports.
Coverage in English on Flemish public radio/television. (The word "Flemish" is used so often in this post because Belgium is a federation, and the action was in Flanders.)
1) the total number of lawsuit Monsanto has files against farmers is in the low hundreds. (And most of these were for saving patented seeds to replant the next year. Which I still think is an abuse of intellectual property law, but has nothing to do with cross pollination).
2) Different plant species have different rates of outcrossing (mating with another plant instead of itself). A corn plant for example, will mate almost entirely with other corn plants and very little with itself. A tomato will mate almost entirely with itself.
3) Potato plants are at even less risk of outcrossing because they are propagated clonally. Potatoes from one year are cut up and planted in the ground to grow next year's crop and produce plants genetically identical to their single parent. No mating = no cross pollination.
In conclusion it seems likely you have not taken a course in biology since high school (which you likely slept through) and despite clearly feeling very passionate about the debate on genetic engineering, have not bothered to inform yourself on the issue, despite abundant and diverse sources of information.
No :-)
In my defence, painting protests as terrorism is all too common nowadays:
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"I want freedom to eat non-GMO food."
You have that freedom. Grow your own veggies. Eat 'em.
Gene splicing is not the same thing as evolution.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
You are correct that "The wheat and corn from 50 years ago is NOT genetically modified in the modern sense of the word" however I believe the point the GP was making is that the changes made by artificial selection were equivalent to, if not greater than, those that are now being produced with genetic modification "in the modern sense of the word."
The genome of B73, a completely un-genetically modified variety of corn, was published back in 2009 and I've had my head buried in it ever since. I've seen broken genes, moved genes, genes missing the sequences that should control when and where they are turned on, even frankenstein genes assembled from the pieces of other genes. All these changes occurred naturally in individual corn plants and are found today in B73 as the result of either artificial or natural selection.
For example, and yes, this is real, they make crops that have weaknesses so that you need to buy more pesticides of the kind they sell.
Citation needed. I know there are GM crops resistant to certain herbicides, but in the absence of those herbicides they grow identically to their unmodified siblings. I don't even know how an effect like the one you describe could be produced. But if you can back it up I will certainly look into it.
I do not think many slashdotters would understand, that world over, resistance to bio engineered and gene modified plants is mostly due to business reasons.
Or the "Monsato" model.
Most GM food is owned by corporations.
They sell you seed, and you grow the plants.
Then you need to buy seed again the next year.... and so on.
So as local less hardy varieties vanish, the corporation can set its own prices.
Traditionally, farmers buy seed just once, and then keep reusing in normal circumstances.
GM model is trying to alter whats being done for many millenia.
Its more difficult than making old world studios embrace the internet.
So around all this, you have a whole slew of conspiracy theorists and wack jobs who basically add fuel to the fire.
So here is the opposition.
In countries where farmers are a powerful vote bank(eg India), govt mostly does the GM corp kicking here and there.
In the west, I guess, its the activists.
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Bad day for scientific research? No. It's set back of limited duration.
Is GM food "bad"? Dunno, jury's still out on that and it really depends which camp you want to listen to.
Is the licensing and patenting of GM crops bad? Oh hell yes. The goal of "crop lock-in" is real, demonstrated and rather scary IMO.
Would this be a good time to discuss licensing or policies to halt this type of corporate behavior? Definitely. In fact it's so long overdue we may have passed the tipping point five years ago.
For your consideration:
Haitian rice
Monsanto Lawsuit / canola
Monsanto Lawsuit / soybeans
Patented disease
University gene patents
I think that this imbroglio underscores the need to limit or do away with gene patents, as there is little chance that the men in white coats (or the ones in black suits that pay them) will stop their tinkering, and I'm not sure that it needs to stop.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
Other than, "it's new and people don't fully understand it" ? Or, ?
If people had that same mindset/fear of the unknown that they did when penicillin and vaccines came out, I think we'd be seriously fucked as a human race.
I seem to remember the potato blight being a terrible thing that killed millions of people in the Irish/Scottish/European famines. And I personally know a family in Newfoundland who were farmers - several years back their potato crop contracted late blight, antifungals didn't help, they lost the crop and ended up bankrupt at the end of it. A blight resistant strain of potatoes seems like a pretty fantastic idea to me.
Besides, the more food that we grow that doesn't need antifungals, pesticides and other "of course they're toxic, they wouldn't work otherwise" chemicals sprayed on it for it to grow, the better. I'd eat a GM vegetable any day over that.
(Mind you, I'm personally against engineering salmon to be 10 times bigger and growing them in offshore fish farms. Grow that shit in an inland fish farm where it's guaranteed that they won't take over and fuck up an ecosystem.)
Well in Canada consumer groups wanted the government to require genetically modified foods to be labelled as such - so consumers could choose. The government refused. Why? Because people might be scared off and not buy it.
Part of me doesn't like the kind of mob action described in the summary but OTOH if governments are going to choose the well being of corporations over the rights of citizens to know what they are eating... it kind of seems like they are asking for this sort of thing to occur.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
after seeing what the genetically modified crap monsanto propagates around (curiously after a while the crap propagates itself without help from anyone), this is a win for my stomach.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/01/13/0328221/Organ-Damage-In-Rats-From-Monsanto-GMO-Corn?art_pos=1
https://www.facebook.com/notes/wood-prairie-farm/the-complete-text-of-dr-don-m-hubers-letter-to-usda-secretary-vilsak/197340006962367
http://vimeo.com/22997532
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The absence of control over the cross fertilization from GM plants is a legitimate issue that is thus far not adequately addressed.
People breeding pure strains that are inadvertently contaminated from adjacent GM plants may see their business destroyed with no recourse. This has happened in the case of some orange growers. It also is a concern for those seeking to market GM free vegetables that command market premiums.
Thus far, the proponents of GM plants have essentially had a free ride on this issue and no consequential damages have been paid. This is unjust, as it puts the burden of adjustment on the injured party, rather than on the originator of the damage. When the law acts thus unjustly, people will respond similarly.
I would not be happy either if someone moved a contamination source into my neighborhood and told me that adjusting to it was my problem.
Nah, make them work for local farms for 8 weeks. They'll perhaps learn the meaning of hard work and humility.
We are talking GM crops here. Surely a more elegant solution would be to make the crop protester resistant? Once we have Triffid(TM) Potatoes they'll be no more problems with annoying protesters.