GMO Oranges? Altering a Fruit's DNA To Save It

biobricks writes "A New York Times story says the Florida orange crop is threatened by an incurable disease and traces the efforts of one company to insert a spinach gene in orange trees to fend it off. Not clear if consumers will go for it though." The article focuses on oranges, but touches on the larger world of GMO crop creation as well.

Comments

nature and consumers

[Anonymous Coward]

Nature has been genetically modifying fruit for millions of years. Genetic modifications can be good, bad, or some of each.

Just because something is "natural" doesn't mean it's good for you. Many natural things are quite deadly. Just because something is modified by humans doesn't mean it's bad for you. It might be! But you don't know that just because it's "genetically modified".

Re: nature and consumers

[dgatwood]

Show many ANY time in nature where plants have modified themselves with ANIMALS and FISH and then and ONLY then will I buy your bullshit, because in case you ain't been keeping up on current events they have been mixing everything from starfish to grasshopper into plants to increase yields and make them grow larger.

Happens all the time between animal and bacterial species when viruses attack, and to a lesser degree with plants. A virus damages the DNA of the cell, and brings with it DNA from whatever animal or plant produced it. And there are other mechanisms that can produce similar results. See Horizontal Gene Transfer for more info.

Re:nature and consumers

[Cyberax]

Show me a wild tomato that can grow without human cultivation and is as tasty as any modern tomato.

What? You can't do it? How about wheat? Or potatoes?

ALL of our current crops are genetically-manipulated wild types that usually can't survive in the wild.

Re:nature and consumers

[rmstar]

Just because something is modified by humans doesn't mean it's bad for you. It might be! But you don't know that just because it's "genetically modified".

In principle, that is correct. OTOH, leaving something powerful like genetic modification of organisms in the hands of corporations (with their well known behavioral disorders) is really a very bad idea.

And one of the primary negative aspects of the startup way of advancing science and technology is that after some point companies have a very strong incentive to lie, disinform, and cut all sorts of corners to make their product happen, because otherwise they go broke. That's ok with apps and other inocuous stuff, but something potentially dangerous like GMOs should not be done this way.

The situation is essentially the same as with nuclear power. Yes, it is theoretically possible to do it safely, but not in practice. So I'd be OK with banning GMOs until we find a better way of organizing such dangerous endeavours (could be a long time, though. I'm not aware of anyone thinking in that direction).

Re:nature and consumers

[Mike Frett]

All of you are forgetting something, very rarely these days are things done to help or save people. In todays world, if something is made, it's only because someone thinks they can make a lot of $ with it. Consequences are an afterthought.

Re:nature and consumers

[pspahn]

i think a lot of ppl dont like the idea of genetically modified foods because "humans shouldnt be playing god"

I presume you mean people like my grandmother? She and I had a conversation one day about assisted suicides. She's terribly Christian, and took the stance that even though this poor bastard had ALS and decided to end his days before the financial and emotional burdens became too much for his family, he was doing the wrong thing because "he was not letting God decide his fate".

Which is complete horseshit.

If he would have simply let God decide his fate, he would have passed long ago since he wouldn't have had any medication, or the ventilator, or other modern medical advancements to prop him up artificially.

I understand her argument, and why she believes in it, I just simply think it's hypocritical.

Re:nature and consumers

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Well first of all, no, I am not a paid Monsanto shill. I know, shocker. No, I'm a network engineer who recently came down with kidney disease due to a freak allergy condition, and in that process have done all kinds of research about proper nutrition (I have to baby my metabolic system as part of managing my chronic kidney disease.) In addition to that, I have a very diminished ability to work, so my wallet is tight. Therefore, I have a vested interest in nutritional food being available on the cheap.

Beyond that, I have no dog in the agriculture industry. None. I'm not invested in any company, I own no stocks, I don't work for any food related business, I don't have any friends in the business, and I don't have any relatives in the business. Zero ties, period.

First, nearly all of your claims have been pretty well established as false, especially the ones about terminator genes:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/top-five-myths-of-genetically-modified-seeds-busted

Do I think Monsanto is in it to end world hunger? Nope. They're in it to make money, just like any other business. However through their developments, the farmers are able to grow crops at a reduced overall cost per yield in addition to higher yields in general; in other words your food costs less and there is more of it. This is why Monsanto products are sought after. Do we use more glyphosate based pesticides? Probably. Given that we have created a situation where the plants we want are immune to them, and it kills the plants we don't want, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest that we now make more of them. Why, did that surprise you? If it did, that doesn't say much about your intelligence. Glyphosate doesn't end up on our dinner plates in any significant quantities, so it's not a problem.

The organic industry hates Monsanto because now they have to compete with their prices. And it sucks for them particularly bad because organic farming has otherwise very high profit margins, but its costs will never go down, even though it is already scientifically proven to offer zero health or taste benefit over any other form of farming. You know why the costs for organic will never go down? Because it is technologically capped - i.e. there are strict limits on what kinds of technologies they can use for their farming. Worse is that the organic crops will continue to adapt to the pesticides they use, which means they'll always need to use larger quantities of them as time goes by since they can't use synthetic pesticides (which is why modern farming uses far less pesticides than organic already.)

The organic industry isn't suing Monsanto because they want to protect you from bad food, they're suing because they want to protect their revenue stream long term. How you like that one? Whole Foods is in it to make money as well. And what do you know, I don't shop there because I can't afford their food. I've found that a wal-mart strawberry tastes the same as a whole foods strawberry, only costs about half as much, so I shop there. Does that anger you? Makes me happy to be honest, because as the saying goes: A penny saved is a penny earned.

Fun fact: Since the 1950's, the food yields from American farms has increased 300% while the landmass required to produce them has only increased 12%. Not true of Organic though - organic farming requires increased landmass at a closer to linear scale. And as if that isn't enough, organic farming will continue on that trend. Contrary to popular belief, organic farming is unsustainable.

The anti-GMO movement in my mind equates to the following:

anti-vaccine movement
9/11 conspiracy theorists
moon landing hoaxers
chemtrail fearmongerers

Yes, it being anti-GMO is every bit as unreasonable and even harmful as all of the above things to me. To me there is no difference, all of these people conveniently ignore any evidence that they

I only eat natural foods..

[Anonymous Coward]

You know the kind that have been selectively bred over thousands of years and would never have happened by chance. The kind that are now grown in huge monocultures that are all susceptible to the same diseases like these oranges. I don't want people messing with my food!

Symptom of monocropping

[AttillaTheNun]

As stated by others, this is a natural phenomenon and is only a problem for modern industrial agriculture practices, especially those based on the mass monocropping of a few select breeds to feed the world. Putting all of our eggs in a few baskets is just ignorant. An ecosystem requires diversity to survive.

This smells like a scheme to make GMO crops more acceptible to the public, suggesting only science can save the oranges and therefore we'll just have to get use to the idea of GMO crops, as if there were no other viable alternatives.

Here's an alternative - replace monocrop orchards with polyculture farms (i.e. food forest) that are based on the same principles of natural ecosystems. Their diversity is what has allowed them to survive just fine without human interaction for longer than we've been around to fuck up the works.

Re:Symptom of monocropping

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA:

“In all of cultivated citrus, there is no evidence of immunity,” the plant pathologist heading a National Research Council task force on the disease said.

nature has variation

[markdavis]

>"Florida orange crop is threatened by an incurable disease"

And perhaps that is because they plant millions of the same species/strain with no natural variation? Haven't we learned yet how bad that is?