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Cyanide-Producing GM Grass Linked To Texas Cattle Deaths
Peristaltic writes "Scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture are trying to determine if an unexpected mutation in a popular GM grass, Tifton 85, is responsible for the sudden deaths of a small herd of cattle in Elgin, Texas three weeks ago. The grass has been used for grazing since 1992 without incident, however after a severe drought last year in Texas, the grass started producing cyanide in sufficient quantities to kill a small herd of cattle in Elgin, Texas. Testing has found the cyanide-producing grass in nearby fields as well." Update: 06/23 22:59 GMT by T : Reader Jon Cousins writes with a correction that means the headline above is inaccurate for including "GM." Tifton 85, he writes, is "absolutely not genetically modified. It's a conventionally bred hybrid."
This is scary movie nightmare stuff come true!!!
Grass that kills!!!
How dare your heard of cattle defame the good name of our company by having the nerve to DIE after eating our product. You sir, will be hearing from our attorneys.
Sincerely,
The Monsanto Group
Tifton 85 is actually a hybrid of African Bermuda grass and Tifton 68, a different hybrid produced in Tifton, Texas.
It's not a GM grass.
You've got to be kidding: this report needs to be retracted as it is completely wrong. Tifton 85 is a conventionally bred grass.
It's incredibly irresponsible to print something this inflammatory and wrong. You've now aerated people all over the world with this misunderstanding, and it will continue to be flogged forever with this incorrect information.
Further, people who hear about this won't know what the real issue is and it could cause more cow deaths.
Fix or retract this article immediately.
Pull the story. Get your facts straight. This farmer needs education from a local co-op extention. Any native or hybrid (NOT GM) grass can create this condition! Those that care for truth and real data go here and learn: http://www.uwex.edu/ces/forage/pubs/sorghum.htm
A different report says this can happen in any type of grass. http://www.uwex.edu/ces/forage/pubs/sorghum.htm Young plants, including roots, and leaves of older plants contain a compound called dhurrin which can break down to release a substance called prussic acid or hydrogen cyanide (HCN). The recommendation is not to graze or cut for green chop until the plant is 18 to 20 inches tall.
work in progress
Something deadly like this could never naturally evolve in plants! This must be the work of unnatural, man-driven processes! Stop all science now! Anthropocentrism at its finest.
http://www.examiner.com/article/gmo-food-hybrid-poison-grass-that-kills-texas-cattle-not-genetically-modified
It's not GM. http://www.examiner.com/article/gmo-food-hybrid-poison-grass-that-kills-texas-cattle-not-genetically-modified
Then virtually every single crop cultivated would then be defined as "Genetically Modified" if we went along with that logic. It astonishes me that people actually think this way and it scares the shit out of me that they could ever be in a position to make policy.
No, lots of plants produce cyanide (in form of free CN ions) all the time. Its mostly poisonous because it shuts down a key enzyme in mitochondria, but plants have an alternative pathway that is not affected by it. So they can tolerate much higher levels of CN ions (they are still poisonous via other mechanisms, though).
The famous example: cassava roots.
Also:
"Moo!" (thud)
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
It's not GM. http://www.examiner.com/article/gmo-food-hybrid-poison-grass-that-kills-texas-cattle-not-genetically-modified
Let's get rid of all those awful hybrid plants and let most of the people in the world starve. We should be thankful for all the wonderful discoveries that saved billions of lives. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug
This is a cross of Bluegrass, Kentucky Bluegrass, Featherbed Bent, and Northern California Sensemilia. The amazing stuff about this is, that you can play 36 holes on it in the afternoon, take it home and just get stoned to the bejeezus-belt that night on this stuff.
You're commenting on a story about a widely distributed GM grass unintentionally producing cyanide yet still believing the anti-GM crowd must be nuts?
Yes the anti-GM crowd is nuts and this story only confirms it. The grass in this case was not Genetically Modified.
still believing the anti-GM crowd must be nuts?
Yes, absolutely. Many grasses produce cyanide (usually called prussic acid by farmers). It's common and avoidable (Pro tip: never, ever let livestock graze near cherry trees. Wilted cherry leaves contain toxic levels of prussic acid). Plus this is not a GM plant, it's a hybrid.
No, we're all commenting on a story about how grass has always done this and still does, but farmers don't pay attention in school and journalists think boring stories are more interesting if they make up a few facts like "this is GM grass and it has mutated" rather than asking a scientist who would say "Yeah, grass does that, fascinating isn't it?"
The same is sadly true for human food. If you tell average people that the sausages have a perfectly safe GM ingredient, they freak out and won't eat them. Those sausages would be perfectly safe, but they're imagining they'll grow an extra head. But drop the sausages on the floor, or let uncooked pieces of chicken drip onto them, and they're fine with that, because that's just normal everyday danger that actually exists, nothing to get freaked out about.
It does not make anybody "nuts". The information was corrected, and you can change your position after the fact.
I'm anti-GM, and this is apparently just hybridization gone wrong. If anything, this shows how careful we have to be and not proceed with such a cavalier attitude towards research and implementation. This was 20 years. Keeping this in mind, the short term gains demanded by capitalism gone wrong make it seem pretty damn unreasonable and dangerous to not test the crap out of something like this for an extended period of time.
For the record, my biggest gripe with GM is what I see as dangerously performed research (practically no containment of any kind), dangerous precedents in patent law (owning genetic sequences), using it as an excuse to saturate farms with pesticides (bad for environment, bad for food, and allows for rapid evolution of countermeasures in affected species), and its affect (by use) on seed diversity.
Not to mention the logistical nightmare of recouping research and working out ownership of something that, by its very nature, can move and "infect" other crops. Monsanto deserves to burn in hell for all the grief they have given farmers simply because of the fucking wind acting as a ninja-like salesman.
Tifton 85 was bred using PI290884, from South Africa, and Tifton 68, which is a cross between PI255450, from Kiboko, Kenya, and PI293606, from Nairobi, Kenya.
See Fact Sheet - Cynodon Dactylon
"Toxicity
Some varieties have the potential to produce high levels of prussic or hydrocyanic acid (HCN), especially when high levels of nitrogen are applied. However, instances of prussic acid poisoning in cattle grazing C. dactylon are rare. Although levels of total oxalate of >1% of the DM have been recorded, there is no experience of detrimental effects on grazing cattle. Frosted C. dactylon can cause photosensitization."
What happened at ELGIN, Texas, is just an example of a RARE event. That the field in question has been in production for 15 years, and no other sites using Tifton 85 have reported animal deaths from cyanide, proves how rare the event is.
Tifton 85 has nothing to do with the laboratory manipulation of DNA (Genes).
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
PI-290884 is the name of a sample of wild grass taken from South America. Tifton 68 is a hybrid of PI 255450 and PI 293606 which are both samples from Kenya. https://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/proceedings1993/v2-294.html
Since this was not a GMO at all, I expect this will be a big blow to conventional hybridization, right? Or are we going to apply a double standard and act as if dangers produced via hybridization should be ignored while dangers form GE (real or imaginary) are cause for panic?
Meddle with nature and suffer the concequences you say? Enjoy your teosinte and goatgrass, and your poisonous potatoes, tomatoes, and beans. Enjoy your seedy bananas.and grapes, your small sour apples, your gritty pears, and the little flower heads on the wild mustard plants broccoli and cauliflower came from.. Because to do otherwise would be messing with nature. Hope those chemical defenses that were bred out of all our crop plants don't give you cancer.