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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."
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.
Ever seen Reefer Madness (1936)?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
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
This is amazing. I mean this is like something from The Onion. Except its real.
Fortunately, onions have sulfur not cyanide.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
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
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."
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.
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.
GM, in effect, is this process on steroids. - "BUT IT'S NOT ACTUALLY GM!!!!111" exit is just grasping for straws.
What about the "lots of naturally occurring grasses do this, it just doesn't make the news" argument?
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.
Why, cyanide production is common in lots of plants. Cattle sometimes die from eating too many cherry tree leaves. I don't understand the whole problem. Put plants under stress and they will produce more secondary metabolites for a multitude of reasons, including herbivore protection.
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