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GMO Wheat Found Growing Wild In Oregon, Japan Suspends Import From U.S.
An anonymous reader writes "NPR reports that an Oregon wheat farmer found a patch of wheat growing where he did not plant. After RoundUp failed to kill the plants, he sent them to a lab for testing. Turns out the wheat in question is a GMO strain created by Monsanto but never sent to market. Oregon field trials for the wheat ended in 2001. 'Nobody knows how this wheat got to this farm. ... After all such trials, the genetically engineered crops are supposed to be completely removed. Also, nobody knows how widely this genetically engineered wheat has spread, and whether it's been in fields of wheat that were harvested for food.' The USDA is currently investigating and says there is no health-risk. Meanwhile, Monsanto has released a statement and Japan has suspended some wheat imports from the U.S. 'The mystery could have implications on wheat trade. Many countries around the world will not accept imports of genetically modified foods, and the United States exports about half of its wheat crop.'"
We'll have to wheat and see what their report says...
1. Create Genetic Engineered Crops
2. Crops perform better than natural crops, crowding them out both in the marketplace, and in the wild.
3. Profit!
4. Engineered crops later found not suitable for human consumption
5. Famine.
http://rt.com/usa/monsanto-bill-blunt-agriculture-006/
The Senate is considering repealing, I'm sure this will add fuel to the fire. But as it stands Monsanto is imune from liability.
So, has the farmer been sued by Monsanto yet for copyright infringement?
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
THIS may be the proverbial straw that breaks the back of big-business GMO.
If farmers can't sell their wheat, then they will stop buying GMO seed. It's a perfect storm for the way market forces shape products and individual actions.
Now the US can take all that wheat they can't sell and turn it to ethanol. Ethanol is a great idea I'm sure they will make tons of money.
How long until Monsanto sues the state of Oregon?
(and no I'm not serious)
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
From what I understand Monsanto regularly successfully sues farmers found to have patches of their genetic intellectual property growing in their fields. If a product that never made it to market is self-seeding - does this not suggest that all of their previous success in arguing that their product should be controlled by the farmers fall apart?
Someone should tell them that wheat pollen is distributed by the wind.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Interesting point.
It'll make someone ('s lawyers) millions, I'm sure!
I think that you have it backwards. Monsanto's modus operendi is to sue the farmers who have the impertinence to steal this technology from them and allow it to grow on their land. Normally a farmer who allowed these seeds to land on his property would be taken to court and made to pay the fees associated with using the seeds and then not allowed to use the seed without paying the license fees. Damn nature and her propensity to reproduce.
Believe nothing -- Buddha
Since Monsanto is not known for their honesty or ethics, I'm sure it was spread deliberately in an attempt to force the government to approve it.
Prosecute Monsanto for failing to keep its wild (animals) under control.
It's obvious. Pollen from "real" Monsanto plants was cross contaminated with native/non-monsanto plants. This is a natural occurrence in nature when spread via bees, wind, etc. Monsanto is set to pretty much regulate the food supply through the courts once everything has been contaminated with GMO pollen.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Some wheat scarcity would do good for my state (Kansas) ... down with GMO! Up with wheat prices!
My only real issue with GMO is the company that designs it claiming infringement when it's their own damn plant's fault that it spread with the wind into another farmer's field.
This reminds me. To all you haters saying that the US does nothing but import and it's a suicidal economic structure, read that last line. We import cheap plastic crap and clothes and toys from China and export a gigantic supply of food around the world. Yeah, electronics' sourcing are a bit of a problem but other than that, our exports are quite important. That's why Monsanto should really stop fucking it up. I hope the government fines them the entirety of the lost sales.
all hail the legally-mandated monoculture food supply owned by a single company
innocuous. you use that word, but I do not think it means what you think it means.
Also, for once an article needs a whatdidpossiblygowrong tag instead of a whatcouldpossiblygowrong one.
No, Oregon has a lawsuit against Monsanto. Was this wheat ever approved for consumption or was it just approved for growing? Either way Japan at least is not buying Oregon Wheat and the contamination is from a discontinued crop from *12 years ago*!?! Monsanto's fucked, Oregon is just the right mix of Portland Hippies and Rural Rednecks to kick those assholes square in the manjunk for this move - it's a bipartisan agreement. As much as I think people are irrationally scared of GMOs I definitely want to see them taken to task for this.
Last I read, one of their patents is already past its date (2011), and the other is up next year. Monsanto has pubicly stated they will not fight this, which i can only assume means they will have some slightly different strain that will then be patented, and a new herbicide and or pesticide that isn't compatible with the old strain, while they stop producing roundup.
That said, someone will produce roundup, and someone will continue to produce the old strains too. We might see a dramatic uptick in GM crops after next year.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
next story will be about Monsanto suing this guy for not paying for a license...
and maybe this is the case I've been waiting to see:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3745109&cid=43711491
>The organic farmer selling non-GMO crops who sues for damages
>'cause his plants are cross-pollenated by a neighboring farmer using
>GMO seeds who doesn't follow the guidelines for planting a barrier row
>of non-GMO plants around the edges of his field.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Their statement is basically "this is the first time this has happened and we're just as surprised as you are."
Of course, all previous cases involved them blaming farmers for covertly planting the crops while the farmers insisted the seeds blew onto their land. (You know, how wheat evolved for thousands of years to spread.) In other words, this is the first time that they can't pin it on the farmer.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Another new technology claimed to be totally safe and absolutely under control that yield a new unknown and unexpected effect. The human race will probably not survive long enough to his own errors to reach the level where his global conscience and individual action are compatible with the ecosystem of the Earth.
Simply put: human fail miserably to manage process that span longer than a his own lifetime.
But as it stands Monsanto is imune from liability.
Except that's not actually what the legislation does, but hey... FUD is always good, right?
Really, section 735 just stops the judicial system from interfering with the regulatory process. This is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the courts can't stop farmers from planting questionable crops. On the other hand, the courts can't be abused by farm-sponsored activists to slow down approval for crops that are tested and shown to be perfectly safe. Unfortunately, both of these situations happen routinely.
The article you linked says that the provision "grossly protects biotech corporations such as the Missouri-based Monsanto Company from litigation". However, this statement is incredibly misleading. The provision protects Monsanto from the delays of litigation affecting their product's approval. They're still liable for anything they were last week, but now the court can't say "We don't know what's going on, so we're overruling the experts and banning the scary technology".
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Countries refusing American wheat has to hurt the bottom line for some farmers - and most farms are part of huge companies these days so finding a lawyer shouldn't be hard.
Or did the government grant them immunity?
Actually scratch that, without even checking I'll go with the government has granted Monsanto immunity to do whatever it likes.
Monsanto should simply be held fully responsible for any negative financial impact this might have on the American wheat industry. They, of course, should be able to pursue the recovery of funds from any negligent license holders, but the ultimate responsibility is theirs.
We are approaching the point where a grad student, or even a gifted high school student can cook up something genetically dangerous, then release it out his/her bedroom window.
A politician (I think it was John Brennan) recently said something like this, "Society must learn to deal not only with radical groups, but also with individuals feeling isolated and discontented. By 2030, such individuals will be able to create world threatening pathogens at home." Sorry, I don't have the link to the source.
I think he is right. It is futile to focus enforcement solely on those like Montsanto openly digging with genes. Millions of people are being educated in life sciences. We must look much deeper at what makes people like Timothy McVeigh so angry and alienated.
The democratic system where the majority rules 100% of the time guarantees that there will be individuals who are on the losing side 100% of the time and whose voices are never listened to. How are they supposed to feel?
-1, Obvious
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Nearly the exact same language was included in a draft Agriculture Appropriations bill in June 2012. If it's a defense from Monsanto, it's not due to a bit of wheat "reported months ago".
Did you really think Congress would move that quickly, even for Monsanto's money? Ha! They're not nearly that competent.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Heard a story on the radio (CBC) the other day about scattered incidents being observed in several states this year of Monsanto GMO corn crops with insecticide engineered in to stop rootworms losing effectiveness as the rootworms have developed immunity. So now farmers are paying more for their seed AND having to deal with the rootworms with traditional insecticides.
We'll have to plant something more profitable than wheat, and the price of wheat will go up everywhere but here.
Every one of those cases that I've seen has involved someone who knew that they were using a Monsanto product and were fully aware of the patents at hand. I'm not fond of Monsanto's practice, but the farmers were on shaky legal ground to start with.
In this case, one of Monsanto's (presumably patented) development products got out. I wonder if there's a case for invalidation based on negligent behavior allowing it out into the wild. Some level of doubt can be applied to products brought to market, but for those that never should have left a controlled environment, there may be other legal issues at hand.
I also wonder if there's not a chance of this being a random mutation. Does Monsanto put markers in its products that could be used to determine this?
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Careful then, doing so could grow some GMO weed...
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
You don't think if an "innocous strain of wheat" can escape from a lab into the wild any strain of wheat could? Or is that impossible because Monsanto wouldn't hand "get out of lab" badges to agressive and unconsumeable strains?
bickerdyke
Monsanto has a history of suing small farmers out of existence, including farmers that wanted nothing to do with Monsanto and wanted nothing to do with them but happened to have seeds or pollen of GMO plants accidentally make it onto their land. They are a predatory company that have arranged the "Intellectual Property" so that they can have a constant revenue from locked-in farmers. They could be considered a foreshadowing of how all corporate structures will work 20 years from now. I care *a lot* about that.
Weeds that have evolved glyphosate resistance have become a serious problem. Are they sure this wheat didn't evolve its resistance naturally?
This should show that the main risk of genetic manipulated plants is NOT that eating them may or may not be harmful , but that you might not be able to control their spread.
bickerdyke
Seriously; Japan won't allow the import of GM'ed wheat, but this is the country that created square (seedless) watermelon?
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Did you really think Congress would move that quickly, even for Monsanto's money? Ha! They're not nearly that competent.
They are, however, that corrupt.
Also, for once an article needs a whatdidpossiblygowrong tag instead of a whatcouldpossiblygowrong one.
I'd opt for a whatcouldpossiblygrowwrong tag.
I think USDA's charter is to say there is never any healthrisk in any food originating in the US.
Sounds like a conspiracy theory and this wheat was literally "planted". If someone is playing the commodities stock and they knew, this could mean big money.
No poison jet did ever wither
more of devil's seed than mine
the wine and beer that urg'd me hither
do rush out of me as brine
in which your pickled shame shall slither
to oblivion's rock-faced shrine.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
When you don't know, its Monsanto!
DNA is the marker.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Did you really think Congress would move that quickly...
*cough* AUMF *cough* Patriot Act...
When it comes to protecting power, congress can be 'faster than a speeding bullet'.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
What concerns me a lot more than GM grains is the crap they're putting into meat. It's enough of a concern that countries have taken to
banning American-raised beef.
In a really weird turn of events this could be very good for the anti-GMO movement. Imagine:
1. GMO wheat found in the wild in the USA (maybe Oregon wheat field...)
2. Foreign countries ban USA wheat (maybe Japan, Russia, Europe...)
3. Consumers boycott wheat.
4. Walmart and other big sellers declare they are verifying that their products are GMO free (on the horizon...)
5. Monsanto looks at its navel and implodes.
Presto, magic, we're GMO free!
It is obvious if you grow GMO plants outside they will eventually spread no matter how many precautions you take, this is just simple nature and evolution.
Please note Roundup itself is not so innocent and it'll only be a matter of time before it is going to be banned at least in the EU.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Where have I heard this before? oh yeah:
"The kind of control you're attempting simply is... it's not possible. If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, uh... well, there it is." Dr. Ian Malcolm
Anybody think we ought to start shooting Monsanto's lawyers & VPs for the good of everyone?
Whenever I see anyone advocating such things ("Off with their heads!", "Revolution!", "Up against the wall, muthafsckers!"), the first thing that occurs to me is, "You first."
How revolutionary do you feel now, Anonymous Coward?
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Anyone care to guess how the FDA determined that GMO foods are safe? They "consulted with experts." Those experts? Oh yeah.... Monsanto.
And seriously, when the Dairy people keep telling the USDA people that we need more milk in our diet eat year, you have to be a little suspicious considering the source. And Monsanto claiming their stuff don't stink? Why should we expect any other answer?
How are drug trials run? I suspect they are more rigorous and performed by independent testing people. Why has GMO foods gotten a pass on this process?
Really? That sounds like copyright, where how you created something is what matters to whether or not it's a derived work. With patents, a completely independent implementation is still infringing, if in the end, it's the same mechanism. It doesn't matter how you got there. If you breed (rather than synthesize) Roundup Ready, it's still Roundup Ready. No?
...
The Roundup Ready patent has always struck a chord with me as a programmer, maybe because it parallels some things that happened to us. You could look at Roundup Ready as an interoperability requirement, something that is needed, in order to be functionally compatible with Glyphosate -- sort of like how you have to implement LZW to be able to read a GIF image.
(I'm not saying it's a perfect analogy. There are various differences. The big one up until 2000, was that lots of GIFs were in the wild and they could come from anywhere, whereas Roundup was single-source due to its own patent. So the "need" to be compatible with Roundup was more dubious than GIFs. But when the Roundup patents expired, the situations became much more similar, and Glyphosate could be argued to be almost a defacto standard.)
Since anyone is allowed to make or use Glyphosate, and it's pretty common and widely-deployed, its situation is a lot like a world where many users are sending you GIF images that you need to read, and the government is there, telling you that you're prohibited from doing so. I can sympathize with farmers a lot, when they say they ought to have the right to make plants which are compatible with a (now) non-proprietary weedkiller.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
...and so it begins.
On the other hand, I love your analogy! I'm going to steal that and use it in future arguments, it's classic =)
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
The farmer sent samples of these curious plants to , a scientist at Oregon State University who has investigated other cases in which genetically engineered crops spread beyond their approved boundaries.
This has to be called out since /. routinely scoffs at any study remotely connected to anyone who might benefit from the results. It seems from this that the folks involved in this discovery have their own agenda. I'm not saying the info should be discarded, just that there could be more going on than the article spells out. Let's keep an eye out.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
I would be interested to see the findings related to what this wheat was engineered to do, as well as how far it has spread. The 'gluten-free' diet has been gaining a lot of popularity lately, and a lot of people who do not have Celiac disease swear that avoiding grains like wheat makes them feel a lot better. I wonder if it is possible that this 12-year-old mutant strain is related to that sensitivity somehow?
Since when does one need evidence to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt that plays on irrational superstitions about modern technologies?
Liberty in your lifetime
The USDA is currently investigating and says there is no health-risk.
Remain calm! All is well!
They'll snatch the money from your hand faster than you can see, but as to doing actual work, even if it was bribed and paid for, their fat asses don't waddle all faster than a snails pace at best. Not to mention, all the ones that didn't get paid off who try to slow things down as incentive for the delivery of their own Benjamin Salad.
That's sounds funny, since when the judge is no more...what, a judge?
No doubt, the sub-sub-sub contractor that was supposed to actually destroy the plants didn't quite understand the interpreter or the INS found them before they could finish.
'Organic' goes beyond genetic modification though. It attempts to classify pesticides and herbicides into "natural" and "unnatural" categories without really trying to measure their effect on either the environment or (in residue) on humans.
Even more stupidly, it tries to do the same thing with fertilizer. This is very similar to herbalists who refuse to take chemical X but are happy to eat an unstudied plant extract that contains chemical X plus a whole lot of other unknown and untested junk. In the case of fertilizer, chemical X is nitrogen. Instead of focusing on the very real environmental (and health?) hazards of fertilization and designing an intelligent solution, certain methods are simply deemed unnatural and the downsides of fertilizing with manure (cost, carbon emissions, disease) are ignored.
The anti-GMO aspect of the organic movement is just a symptom of a larger neo-Luddite movement, which is being greatly helped by Monsanto continuing to be an asshole.
There you go... as one of my favorite scientists once claimed "Life will find a way!"
Monsanto will allow it to get banned as soon as their next, newly patented, product is ready for the market.
No. You may be surprised to learn this, but patents apply to you and do not require your explicit consent. All government requirements apply to you without your consent. That includes the requirements that allow you to "own" land in the first place. You are just picking and choosing which ones you like and which ones you don't.
Farmers around the world already deal with Roundup-resistant strains of weeds. It's not impossible or perhaps even unlikely that, with the widespread use of glyphosate, some resistance among crops would appear.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
...uh...will...uh...always...find a way...hmm.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
The USDA's experts. Genetically-modified food is GRAS, but the crops fall under the authority of the USDA. The FDA only really gets involved for the different chemical effects of the genetic engineering, and that's a separate issue from being patentable. The USDA covers the growing process, the FDA covers what's being eaten, and the patents are on the genetic mechanism that produces the desired effect.
I'm not a geneticist, chemist, or a farmer. I can't tell you with certainty how Roundup works, but I do know enough (from my time in the pocket of Big Pharma) to make some reasonable illustrative (and grossly oversimplified) examples:
Let's suppose that a particular herbicide works by breaking apart a particular protein holding together cell walls. Spray it on plants and you get a nice cytoplasmic jelly. To make crops that are resistant to that herbicide, a GMO company alters the genes for the enzyme that assembles that protein, so the final protein works the same to hold the cell together, but can't be disrupted by the herbicide. That works, and the altered enzyme is patentable. As far as the USDA's concerned, the crop needs testing, because the resistance to herbicide could lead to more of the herbicide in use, which must be studied. The FDA only cares that the enzyme and protein both break down by stomach acids as expected, so they don't need much testing. The patent office allows a patent on the modification to the enzyme, since that's the mechanism.
After further research, a different GMO company finds an alternative: The introduction of a second enzyme, found naturally in beef, that will alter the protein only in the presence of the herbicide. The protein is assembled naturally, then modified when the herbicide's applied, then returns to normal once the herbicide has degraded. Now the USDA cares, because of the earlier herbicide-use issue and the new enzyme's presence. The FDA doesn't really care at all, because the new enzyme is already considered safe, and its behavior is understood well enough to know that it's safe by the time it's actually eaten. The patent office allows a new patent, because though the effect is the same, the mechanism is completely different.
Hopefully that illustrates the different jurisdictions of the groups involved.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
"GM doesn't cause allergies or any other known negative reactions in people."
should be fixed to "GM is tested to catch eventuel allergy to people. Which is why GM soy with nut growth protein was stopped and never marketed : it was actually provocating allergy reaction in nut-allergic people". See Wiki on GM soy for reference.
Otehrwise , I fully agree with you : GM are "generally" safe. I don't care if my wheat is GM or not.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
We are not going to do anything effective to halt CO2-influenced global climate change. So, we'll need GMO crops that can withstand our increasingly destabilized climate. In 20 years, I predict the new GMO tornado-resistant tomatoes will make our current grocery-store red rocks seem soft and toothsome by comparison.
That was very informative. I would mod you up but I'd rather discuss. I'm not a geneticist, chemist, or a farmer either but you seem to know more about it than I do. I'm curious about what exactly is patented. Is it the enzyme, the dna sequence, the method for gene transfer, all, or some combination? I'm okay with the process being patented but the enzyme and dna could occur through natural or artificial selection. It seems possible at least that non-GMO varieties could develop the same enzyme, not through cross-pollination, but from exposure to the Round-Up herbicide.
:)
I recognize that at least in the U.S., where even non-GMO crops are likely clones, there is probably not enough variety in the gene pool to make the necessary mutations to resist Round-Up without careful breeding. It would appear that weeds develop resistance which implies the possibility that weeds do not care about patents
Is it illegal to breed Round-Up resistant corn if it results in the production of the same enzyme?
The rest of your comment shows that you do not, in fact, understand.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
[citation needed]
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
1. Seeds can lay dormant for 7 years. He may not have planted it that year but he or the previous owner planted it at some point
....the planted a kelated strain to replace the manganese that RoundUp strips out.
2. It wasn't growing wild. The author is an idiot
3. When a farmer grows like that
This is why people who don't know jack about farming should STFU because they don't know what they're talking about and the public freaks out because they don't know jack about farming either.
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
Reducing Japan imports? Tokyo looking for more bright ideas for yen intervention using wheat?
Iregardless of what Monsanto has done to the wheat, guess what, wheat is a hybrid, grass, oates, rye and barley and its been around for 5000 years. Ya, a 5000 year old GMO, not done in petri dishes but still a geneticaly modified food, and we've been eating it since mesopotamia was an on going concern. There is nothing natural about wheat, so why is this more recent gmo such a panic? Also on a side note, I suspect it came from an old stock that didnt get returned to monsanto in 2000 and the adjacent road to the field it was found in, it probably was the one to the local garbage dump.
We ban import of all Toyotas until they lift their ban! :-)
Really, cause most of the cases. The farmers still deny it. I believe one did state that he had a patch that seemed more resistant. And therefore used that area for seeds for the next year.
But if Mosanto can't control their dogs. They should be put down. And Mosanto claimed there was no way infection could be attributed. They showed their scientific evidence and studies (all since proven wrong).
No meager farmer could produce counter evidence. It was an abuse of the legal system. Which is truly all our courts are for. We don't have a justice system, we have a legal system.
Really, cause your whole comment shows you're stupid. You declared the above comment as lacking understanding and failed even provide one argument as to why.
Frankly, I think all the farmers sued, should file a class action lawsuit seeking $50 billion in damages.
Google....
It's quite well documented. And seriously, how much is Mosanto paying you Kurzweil Freak. Cause I see you posting lame comments in Mosanto's support. And you dismissed a whole other post by someone without making
[Cited KurzeweilFreak = an ass who can make any citation to a post, but demands one for a well documented fact.]
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3804725&cid=43883477
But I guess I'm just stupid for allowing things like "facts" to cloud the issue instead of just spouting out propaganda to stick it to The Man.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
Wheat is crap and not fit for consumption by man or beast. Think I'm kidding? I'm not! The only reason it got into the food supply was that it was practical for consumption for troops. You know, the people who probably won't live too long anyway. Not planning on dying soon? Don't eat wheat!!!
Social Credit would solve everything...