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

[Xicor]

certain companies that create genetically modified plants have left a bad taste in our mouths. and the problem is the government seems to support them even though they are total assholes. i dont mind the premise behind genetically modified foods... i mind the fact that companies can modify their strain of a plant to be incredibly dominant, which then spreads into other areas, giving the company grounds for a lawsuit. that being said, i think a lot of ppl dont like the idea of genetically modified foods because "humans shouldnt be playing god"... i believe they are under some misconception that there is a god playing a direct part in the evolution of plants and animals.

Re:nature and consumers

[Z00L00K]

Genetic modification is in itself neither good or bad, it's all the question of which genetic modification that is done and the effects of it.

One problem that is common today is that there's a tendency to only grow a few very high-yielding crops in large volumes, and that means that if some disease starts to adapt to a certain crop then there's a risk that it can have a big impact.

Nature itself has a tendency to adapt, it's a continuing arms race between pests and crops, but when humans are involved the natural evolution is taken out of the equation.

Re:nature and consumers

[lxs]

Nature doesn't care whether you live or die, so it is free to modify plants and animals at random even if a mutation breeds an organism that ends up killing off half the species on the planet. Humans are responsible for any harm that they end up causing their fellow creatures so it's right that we hold them to a higher standard.

Re:nature and consumers

[Xicor]

or we should learn to mimic nature and not care if we kill off a species or two

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

[Mitchell314]

The majority of a plant's genome comes from [parasitic] vectors, not from beneficial mutations to the plant (the grey area being whole-genome duplication). And fish *are* animals. You're welcome.

Re:nature and consumers

[GrumpySteen]

You might want to take a look at how much of your DNA you share with a banana before asking for examples of plants having animal and fish DNA. Plants don't have to modify themselves with DNA from animals because a lot of that DNA is already there. Yay for evolution and common ancestors.

Re:nature and consumers

[lxs]

What if it's our species that we end up killing off?

Re:nature and consumers

[Anonymous Coward]

That did happen before. But like over a billion years ago.

Plants and "animal" species (bacteria at best) commonly shared material with each other purely because of how early and primitive life was back then.

These days it is stupidly rare, if even possible at all, for it to happen naturally because a lot of life is now discrete and secured against stray DNA and RNA from inserting itself in willy-nilly. (besides viruses, of course)
Given what we know, it could happen, but the chances of it are absolutely tiny. About as much as we know for life to evolve to a sufficiently smart enough state that they can leave a planets atmosphere. (which we don't really know, humans are pretty damn retarded to be honest, I'd be surprised if we weren't the slow kid in the galactic life class)

Shotgun DNA insertion isn't that bad either, as long as the DNA itself actually survives.
For a start, it adds more complexity to the genome, and variety, and generally that makes things more stable against viruses with time.
Imagine if all humans were to die from a simple flu? That is what bananas are like right now. (and Bees too, in a sense, they are weak to an ecosystem change and aren't adapting quick enough)
By adding shotgunned DNA in that fixes the problem and adds possibly random other strings of DNA in too, it will create a genome down the line that will likely separate in to a distinct breed, some might die, some won't.
And the important part, some might develop natural immunities to potential evolutions of future viruses and weaknesses.
That alone is worth it.

Variety makes life survive. It is evolution 101. Same reason incest is bad, because it just ends up amplifying problems because no new DNA is being added to the pool. New DNA that could fix major problems and stabilize a dying species.

These are fruit. Not sentient life. If it was sentient life, then it would maybe be a different thing.
If oranges were to suddenly develop rogue scales out of nowhere, that wouldn't be that big a problem, kill that line, done.
If a human were to grow scales, then that would probably be a problem.
But we are only dealing with fruit. If it makes the thing survive, makes it more stable and doesn't cause any toxicity, insert damn alien DNA in to it as long as it works.

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

[SlashDread]

You are correct, on the surface of things.
However the anti-GMO argument is not just "GMO is always bad for you". It just states, that GMO is a way to uncertain technique at this moment to blindly risk the worlds food supply.

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

[Charliemopps]

What if the GMO crop saved millions of lives? Golden Rice, for example, is a huge boon for poor subsistence farmers in Asiatic countries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice

Re:nature and consumers

[cheesybagel]

I am fine with GMOs like golden rice. They basically added some genes to enable production of beta carotene on rice. Sweet potatoes already had beta carotene but they cost a lot more to grow. I am more skittish with the pesticide resistant genes since with horizontal gene transfer the resistance may pass to weeds and make the pesticide basically useless.

Re:nature and consumers

[the eric conspiracy]

That story is over. GMO has been in large scale production for decades now with no negative effects. The bogeyman isn't there.

Re:nature and consumers

[Rockoon]

You might want to take a look at how much of your DNA you share with a banana before asking for examples of plants having animal and fish DNA

Funny that you mentioned banana's. Ever notice how banana flavoring tastes nothing like a banana that you can buy? Thats because the banana that tasted like that (the Gros Michel) were wiped out by Panama Disease. We now eat Cavendish bananas, which is also at risk from the same disease.

Gros Michel
Cavendish
Panama Disease

Re:nature and consumers

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Sure there are lots of scary looking methods of splicing DNA, but those are all done experimentally for research purposes. Those don't ever make it to your dinner plate.

You know the human body contains 3 complete genomes from viruses and about a hundred thousand or so incomplete ones. One of these virus genomes includes genetic material that transcribes to create a critical reproductive function that we could not live without today, and it came from some other animal. So indeed, humans themselves carry DNA from some other animal, and in fact depend on it. In fact, 8% of our genome comes from foreign sources.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/science/12paleo.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2012/06/14/we-are-viral-from-the-beginning/
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/10/the-lurker-how-a-virus-hid-in-our-genome-for-six-million-years/

GMO has the potential to reduce the need for farmland, which if I were an environmentalist I would be ecstatic for because that means tearing down less forest land to create farms to feed people and end world hunger. In addition, it will make food much less expensive which means your bargaining power goes up, which means less poor people.

In commercially sold GMO, all they do is modify a very tiny number of codons to make the plant resistant to glyphosate. That's it. During natural reproduction, plants go through thousands of mutations, mutations much larger than this one, and we haven't the slightest clue what these mutations do. Yet making a small tiny change where we know exactly what it does has people like you raging? Why? Especially given that the chemical composition of the food that ends up on your plate is not chemically distinct from non-GMO based foods.

I don't know what GMO did to ruin your life, but having a vendetta against it because you're ideologically opposed to it doesn't do anybody else any favors. In fact, it does the world a disservice akin to the new rise of smallpox due to the FUD campaign against vaccines. In fact I'd say it's equally destructive.

Please stop spreading FUD about GMO. Thank you.

Re:nature and consumers

[the eric conspiracy]

Nature is full of extinction events. There is no particular reason to believe that anything that nature does will be beneficial to people; it's a wholly random thing.

The idea that nature is something uniformly beneficial is silly and naive.

Controlling the environment became the lot of man when he learned to make fire. Genetic engineering is just the latest manifestation of this.

Re:nature and consumers

[linuxgeek64]

DNA isn't really a species-specific thing. There's no way you could tell that a sequence of DNA from a starfish was actually from a starfish without comparing it to the DNA of other starfishes.

And extra DNA doesn't cause mutation. Mutagens, radiation and miscopying cause mutations. Additional DNA is usually far more beneficial than harmful, because it can provide extra resistance to pathogens, as #44406327 said.

Also, jeez, you sound like a conspiracy theorist.

Re:nature and consumers

[Pinky's Brain]

Bees are mostly weak to nerve toxins designed to kill insects, a big surprise I know.

Re:nature and consumers

[the eric conspiracy]

It does happen in nature... For example the sea slug learned to incorporate plant DNA and thereby became photosynthetic.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16124-solarpowered-sea-slug-harnesses-stolen-plant-genes.html#.UfVDwY1wqPA

The GMO head in sand types vastly underestimate the mobility of DNA in nature.

Re: nature and consumers

[Culture20]

I'm not sure that applies. Spinach copies it's DNA into a foreign host using a totally different mechanism.

Is that Volcano Bicep Syndrome you're discussing?

Re:nature and consumers

[Khyber]

Wrong.

Go take yourself a trip to the Citrus State Park in Riverside, California, and go learn about the history of the orange, which came from Brazil.

Re:nature and consumers

[Culture20]

Huh, I always assumed the fake Banana flavoring was a result of "close enough, lets ramp up production and market the hell out of it" rather than actually tasting like an existing fruit. Like all of the "grape", "strawberry", "watermelon", and "cherry" flavors.

Re:nature and consumers

[Culture20]

People have been cross breeding animals and plants since agriculture was first invented, always trying to get better traits. Mules are the most commonly known example

Minotaurs are the second.

Re:nature and consumers

[Culture20]

I am more skittish with the pesticide resistant genes since with horizontal gene transfer the resistance may pass to weeds and make the pesticide basically useless.

I believe you mean herbicide.

Re:nature and consumers

[Bartles]

Luddite.

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

[93 Escort Wagon]

I am more skittish with the pesticide resistant genes since with horizontal gene transfer the resistance may pass to weeds and make the pesticide basically useless.

"May"?

Re:nature and consumers

[Anonymous Coward]

China, but nice try. They are hybrids made by man.

Go read a book and educate yourself.

Re:nature and consumers

[Luke has no name]

Modern tomatoes suck.

Re:nature and consumers

[bigfinger76]

So because we don't know, we shouldn't do it? You do realize that you're essentially voicing an argument against science in general, right? If humans followed this line of thinking, we'd never have come this far in the first place.

Re:nature and consumers

[Dputiger]

"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."

Challenge Accepted.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23166508

Bdelloids!

Of ~29,000 matched transcripts, ~10% were inferred from blastx matches to be horizontally acquired, mainly from eubacteria but also from fungi, protists, and algae. After allowing for possible sources of error, the rate of HGT is at least 8%-9%, a level significantly higher than other invertebrates.

They haven't had sex in 80 million years. 8-9% of their genome is made up of sequences captured from all of the above sources. They've got plant DNA right in the middle of their animal DNA, and they've got the DNA of multiple other microinvertebrates mixed up in there, too. They're also enormously resistant to radiation.

I believe this satisfies your criteria. But speaking to the larger point, you need to get over the idea that your DNA is some kind of pristine paradise. It's more like a hoarder's paradise shot through with fragments of viruses, bits and pieces from other species, and vast swaths of code that don't actually *do* anything -- they're just there. The degree of genetic bloat in a species varies enormously, the Norway Spruce has a genome of some 20 billion base pairs (we have just 3 billion). We both have the same number of protein-encoding genes -- about 30,000.

Re:nature and consumers

[ColdWetDog]

Fatality!

Re:nature and consumers

[sasparillascott]

Probably this can be traced to the fact that the scientists/companies doing GMO work are often doing it for enormous profit - and that profit wants to be served (solution pushed as "what we need") whether its actually a good idea for the population paying for it or not. This is a huge change from science of 30 years (and before) when scientists tried to stay disconnected from the commercial side of things. There are no impartial players in this area these days.

People have wisely grown quite skeptical of such proposed solutions. JMHO...

Re: nature and consumers

[Oligonicella]

That doesn't even make sense. Spinach doesn't copy its DNA into a host. Spinach has no host. If you're referring to the fact that humans are moving spinach DNA into the orange, then you are apparently only concerned about the mechanism, not genetic modification per se.

Re:nature and consumers

[CrimsonAvenger]

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.

Yes, and it's well known that selling poison disguised as food produces both goodwill in the market and many repeat sales...

No, the people modifying food aren't saying "we don't care how many people our product kills, so long as we make a metric buttload of cash".

What they're generally saying is "if we can find a way to produce more food, cheaper, we can make a metric buttload of cash"....

Re: nature and consumers

[Jon Abbott]

Artificial banana flavoring is synthetic isoamyl acetate, amyl acetate and other compounds, whereas actual bananas likely contain hundreds of distinct flavor compounds. Isoamyl acetate by itself is often described as tasting like banana and pear, or Juicy Fruit. My guess is that artificial banana flavoring just isn't as complex as what bananas produce (no pun intended).

Re:nature and consumers

[nospam007]

"Just because something is modified by humans doesn't mean it's bad for you. It might be! "

I will sure be bad for sales in Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia.

Re:nature and consumers

[Artifakt]

With the current blight threat to Cavendish bananas, the last GMO related action was to splice some pepper genes into them. If I remember correctly, two of three tested genes didn't modify flavor, while the third added a peppery taste and was dropped. That sounds as though the researchers there are not "shotgunning" genes around. It's hoped the two remaining pepper genes will armor the plants against the current threat and at least some others. The real solution is probably to get several different blight resistant bananas and 'interweave' the fields so that they help slow the spread of anything new in the way of fungi and blights - but that would mean a fair portion of people would have to prefer the Cavendish or some other breed, such as the Goldfinger, even with the Big Mike back. You might try to get your hands on some Goldfingers though - I think they are starting to be sold commercially in parts of southeast asia and as far into the new world as Honduras, just not in the US yet.
            Now you have me picturing bananas with enough starfish genes they grow suckers on the tips and crawl about - so for all this talk about bananas, I'm not going to go have one - thanks!

Re:nature and consumers

[pspahn]

...and is as tasty as any modern tomato.

WTF are you talking about? Modern tomatoes have been selected mainly because they ripen uniformly, are more resistant to damage during shipping, and also more disease resistant. They ripen uniformly because they have a lower sugar content and therefore a blander taste.

Compare your run-of-the-mill roma tomato with any prized heirloom variety. The roma has been so hybridized that it has certain desirable features, but taste is not one of them. A nice heirloom variety, on the other hand, will have a sweeter, richer taste, though, the downside is that they damage more easily and have less disease resistance since they are simply one cultivar.

Re: nature and consumers

[the eric conspiracy]

> It's taken us 100 years to realise CO2 could cause us a few problems.

Wrong. Generation of CO2 was understood to have potential for climate change LONG ago. Tyndall knew of it as early as 1862. Fourier speculated on it in 1820. Arrhenius did the first predictions of the greenhouse effect in the 1890's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_effect

Science is not as stupid as you seem to think. Fundamental knowledge of physics and chemistry allows prediction rather than dependence on mass experiment to see results.

Re:nature and consumers

[Cyberax]

Try abandoning a tomato plot to nature. It'll be extinct next year.

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

[Type44Q]

Also, jeez, you sound like a conspiracy theorist.

Stop saying that like it's a bad thing. To those who've been in a position to actually learn a few things, it makes you sound like a brainwashed idiot.

Re:nature and consumers

[pspahn]

In the same way a Granny Smith apple is "made by man"?

I was always under the impression that citrus was similar to apples in that, yes, very specific cultivars we have now were selected by man for their useful traits, and those cultivars have been grown since discovery; however, it was not man that "made" the fruit, Mother Nature made the fruit and we simply selected and continued cultivating the varieties that we liked.

Calling that "man-made" seems disingenuous.

Re:nature and consumers

[cyber-vandal]

However the multinational corporations (and their pet politicians) currently pushing this have shown time and again that they cannot be trusted to give a shit about people's welfare. Until that changes expect GMO to be viewed with extreme suspicion.

Re:nature and consumers

[cyber-vandal]

Imagine being suspicious of secretive multinational corporations. we all know they only have our best interests at heart after all,

Re:nature and consumers

[pspahn]

Even if you are correct, you're not going to get people to agree with you (that is your goal, isn't it?) if you act like a smug know-it-all douche nozzle.

The trolling bit stems from how you present your argument. Spewing xenophobic trash at people is a good way to get labeled "troll" or "flamebait", because that is what you are doing.

When I read your comments, I'm picturing a caricature of Woody Allen, arms flailing, walking around in circles just looking for someone to bitch at. Interestingly, I briefly talked with a person over the weekend that was acting this way at the bar. Not coincidentally, he was pretty much sitting by himself the entire night.

Re:nature and consumers

[CanadianRealist]

He said very clearly what he was talking about:

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

Heirloom tomatoes are modern, just not mass produced. They are still the result of people using selective breeding to improve on what they found in nature. Wild means what grows naturally, on it's own. Consider for example wild bananas from which people cultivated modern bananas.

Re:nature and consumers

[geekymachoman]

Yeah. It's a question between trusting nature and/or humans. The idea of GMO is ok but that's not a problem.
There may be variables that humans are not aware (yet at least) that can have unexpected consequences. I'm not sure I or my family want to be guinea piggies because monsanto's ex-ceo (or a lobbyists, can't remember) is a current ceo of (US) FDA.

When I buy oranges that are naturally grown, I know what I'm getting.

Everybody is aware that there are stuff that are lethal to humans but at the same time they are not lethal (in fact are nutritious for example) for other species. You seem to talk from a perspective that mother nature/earth should adjust everything to human needs. The stuff that are 'good' for us is a no risk thing.
Onions, apples, oranges, cows, pigs, etc. in their natural form is proven to be part of who we are. We wouldn't be here otherwise, so I know what I'm getting when I'm buying such products. There are hundred thousand years of my ancestory to prove that this is what my body needs. Genetically coded like "this".

GMO ... yeah, the idea is great and should be pursued but not when money and power it's all that matters. The masses usually pay up. With their health in this case.

There's a reason GMO is forbidden in EU and many other countries. /sarcasm/ Must be because of all tin-foil guys running EU.

I'm sorry if you don't have a choice, but there ya go.

Re:nature and consumers

[Mateorabi]

Worked well for tobacco.

Re:nature and consumers

[hibiki_r]

Well, some do. The breeding used to make a tomato more productive and easier to bring to market from afar also made it suck. It's no different than dog breeds that have problems brought along with the traits that the breeder wanted.

There's plenty of effort today towards making tastier tomatoes. The best thing we can do is just refuse to buy shitty tomatoes.

Re:nature and consumers

[dcooper_db9]

Tomatoes were introduced to Europe when the Spanish brought them back from Mexico, so it's hard to know how many hundreds or thousands of years they've been cultivated. Pre-industrial revolution tomatoes could be grown with minimal cultivation and were much tastier than modern supermarket varieties. Until recently new varieties were developed through sexual reproduction and took many years. Sexual reproduction corrects for deficiencies that would make a plant vulnerable to disease. If you're developing a new variety for tougher skin or larger size the plant has to _also_ survive year to year.

DNA technology allows scientists to take a shortcut that has already had consequences. About five years ago a new disease called Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus was introduced here in North Carolina, as well as other states. The first year the entire crop of tomatoes rotted on the vine. Within a few years scientist at the University of NC introduced TSWV resistant varieties. These new varieties still get the disease but they survive it. I now pay ~$5 per plant rather than paying ~$5 for a flat. So what did the scientists do to develop these resistant tomatoes? It turns out that almost every heirloom variety already had the resistance. It was just the new, genetically modified varieties that had lost their resistance. So the scientists isolated the resistance gene and spliced it back into other varieties. The result is a tomatoe that's smaller, a little tougher, but resilient. And also a lot more expensive.

If we keep going down this DNA modification path we're going to eventually kill off a critical crop. If we wipe out one year's corn or wheat we're going to experience starvation on a scale larger than the potatoe famine.

Re:nature and consumers

[Proteus]

Show many ANY time in nature where plants have modified themselves with ANIMALS and FISH

That's the Naturalistic Fallacy. Just because something doesn't occur in nature (I'll concede the term "in nature" as meaning "not done by humans") doesn't mean its bad, and just because something does occur in nature doesn't mean it's good.

Your exact argument could be applied to anything artificial: show me ANY time in nature where animals have harnessed electricity to build general-purpose information-processing devices and network them together, for example. Yet I don't see you crying for dismantling the Internet.

Show me ANY time in nature where animals synthesize chemicals that narrowly target diseases, and thus vastly improve their ability to survive. But you're not crying for the end of synthetic medicines.

Show me ANY time in nature where water is systematically treated to destroy infectious agents before it's consumed. But you're not crying for the end of water-treatment facilities.

Show me ANY time in nature where animals engineer vehicles to make transport faster and easier. But you're not campaigning for an end to bicycles.

Re:nature and consumers

[CanadianRealist]

Are you sure you replied to the correct post? I said absolutely nothing in favour of GMO plants and I'm pretty sure I didn't say anything that calls for the hostility in your post.

I was commenting on the difference between wild plants versus cultivated ones. That was the point of the GP of my post, but missed by the parent post which compared two different cultivated plants - the heirloom versus the mass produced one.

Re: nature and consumers

[Proteus]

Spinach doesn't copy its DNA into a host.

No, but viruses often incorporate DNS from hosts, so a virus could grab DNA from spinach and inject it into an orange. That's what dgatwood is talking about -- viruses do this all the time, copying DNA between hosts. Humans are just doing what viruses do already, but with more precision and less randomness.

Re:nature and consumers

[sjames]

I am also skeptical of GMO safety. I believe it CAN be safe but not thet it is necessarily safe, particularly when we let irresponsible corporates do it.

But it appears that this really is an example of GMO or nothing for oranges.

Re:nature and consumers

[ArcherB]

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

The currant tomatoes are wild and quite tasty. Matt's Wild Cherry is one of my favorites.

Re:nature and consumers

[g1powermac]

Heh, no, not always. Have you ever grown a large plot of tomatoes? During harvesting you always end up losing a few, the tomatoes subsequently rot, and the seeds go into the soil for the following year. They then sprout in the spring, but only the hardiest remain after the late frosts and generally crappy spring weather (for tomatoes that is). These tomatoes sprouted in a field that I planted a cover crop over in the fall/winter and didn't do a thing to the field till just recently. No watering, fertilizing, or care. I even cut down these tomatoes with my lawn mower to kill off the over wintered cover crop. So, I ended up with over a dozen super strong tomato plants that look healthier than anything I got growing at the moment.

Re:nature and consumers

[sjames]

Except that ultimately, golden rice is more PR than boon.

Briefly: you need fats of some sort to absorb vitamin A and rice doesn't have any. Also, though the amount of vitamin A is enhanced, you'd still need to eat 2 kg/day of golden rice to get enough. There are plant sources that can provide enough, but rice (golden or otherwise) isn't it.

Re:nature and consumers

[sjames]

It already happened.

Re:nature and consumers

[bluegutang]

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

Just like Einstein said (incorrectly) that "God does not play dice with the universe", some people object to "playing God" even though they aren't religious. What I think they mean is that if we were omniscient and knew all the possible consequences of an innovation, including any black swan events, we would be safe doing it. But since we don't know, we may are better off not getting into a potential mess that we don't fully understand. For the record, I think GMOs are well enough understood and the benefit-to-risk ratio high enough that such a "playing God" argument does not work here.

Re:nature and consumers

[plopez]

pesticide is the generic term and includes animal poisons.

Re:nature and consumers

[Cyberax]

Yes, "within a year" is a bit of hyperbole. In your case wild plants simply didn't have time to outcompete them, but if you'd just let your field to overgrow with weeds - even these plants would have died pretty soon.

I've actually read a paper about 5 years ago about the abandoned cultivated lands. Basically, all of the crop plants die out within a couple of years. Some recently-domesticated plants like raspberry can survive much longer by abandoning human-selected adaptations. Spice plants (mustard, dill, spearmint, peppers) fare the best.

Re:nature and consumers

[Cyberax]

There is a BIG fucking difference between looking at a row of plants and choosing which one looks the best or tastes the best and growing that next year versus making a frankenstein monster of starfish, grasshopper, and tomato.

How about taking a row of plants, irradiating them with high doses of radiation or watering them with potent chemical mutagens and then selecting the best mutants? Cause that's how the modern cultivars are made!

Oh, and in this case you don't even need to test them - just make sure that seeds don't glow in the dark and you can sell them. With whatever induced genetic defects - like lowered protein content (modern wheat) of almost dysfunctional fat-producing genes (corn). Oh, and during these manipulations your plants sometimes might acquire foreign genes from bacteria, close-related plants, viruses, etc. Hope that's OK.

Re:nature and consumers

[interkin3tic]

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.

I had fish with asparagus the other day. It was pretty tasty. Is there supposed to be something inherently wrong with mixing species?

Re:nature and consumers

[AmiMoJo]

It's more than just a vague feeling that humans should not "play god". A lot of this stuff is basically self-certified. The manufacturer does the research, devises the tests and administers them to show that it is safe for human consumption. The regulators don't have the resources to do big, long term trials and besides which the GMO companies are not willing to wait decades for the results.

Chances are most of it is fine, but as we have seen in the past with various pesticides and herbicides sometimes they get it wrong. When it does go wrong no-one is responsible and at best you are looking at decades of litigation before you see any compensation, and of course your health is ruined.

In other words people don't trust the companies involved, they don't trust the regulators and they don't trust the legal system. On top of all that we don't really need GMO in the west. If anything demand has shifted towards more natural products - normal size organic fruit and vegetables grown with minimal chemicals. Some people claim we would need even fewer chemicals with GMO but actually most of it is just making crops resistant to the particular herbicide/pesticide that the company sells so farmers can go nuts spraying it around liberally to maximize profit per square metre of land.

Re:nature and consumers

[Miamicanes]

> If we wipe out one year's corn or wheat we're going to experience starvation on a scale larger than the potatoe famine.

It depends. Corn probably has a fair amount of headroom, just because *so much* of it gets used to make ethanol & high-fructose corn syrup. The likelihood of "an entire year's crop" getting wiped out is pretty slim. The majority of corn might get grown in places like Iowa because that's where it's the cheapest and most cost-effective to grow it, but there were wholesale crop failure in places like Iowa and Nebraska one year, you can BET farms in Florida, Arizona, and California that wouldn't normally bother would seriously consider growing it for a season or two. The likelihood of some virus or insect making its way from Iowa to California or Florida within a single year is pretty slim, especially if farmers in those states were determined to keep their own fields quarrantined.

In countries like the US, the biggest fights would be between farmers and companies like Monsanto if, for example, they had a strain of corn that wasn't affected, but couldn't be supplied in full commercial quantities for a year or two. You'd have farmers cloning sprouted plants, Monsanto sending out the lawyers with C&D notices, and farmers introducing refused purchase orders in court as evidence that Monsanto suffered no actual damages since it was unable to actually fill their orders as placed.

An equally bad problem (if asymmetric-impact) would be if some virus or pest suddenly wiped out an entire generation of "Round-Up Ready" crops, forcing large-scale commercial farms to go back to more conventional strains... and try to raise, tend, and harvest them with a labor force that no longer exists, and expensive capital-intensive machines that were no longer relevant. This scenario would have almost no impact on farmers in central Africa who can't afford large-scale capital-intensive farming techniques anyway, but it would be devastating to American agribusiness.

The truth is, though, that nothing short of outright war between equally-potent nation states occurring SIMULTANEOUSLY with crop failure is likely (in the US or Europe, at least) to have the kind of devastating impact some like to predict. Fresh vegetables, fruits, and grains would become expensive overnight, but there's actually a pretty huge amount of highly-processed food already in the pipeline, stored in warehouses ready to ship to Sam's Club & McDonalds, and the actual impact for most Americans (the majority who wouldn't even know what to DO with fresh food if you put it on the kitchen counter in front of them) wouldn't be an immediate crisis so much as a long-term lopsided increase in food prices that began months after the actual crop failure, and persisted even longer after it was resolved.

Suppose tomatoes had wholesale crop failure for several years nationwide. The most immediate consequence? Restaurants would quit putting sliced and diced tomatoes on food unless you specifically asked for it. If it persisted, they might start to charge extra for them as a premium ingredient (a-la-bacon). Ketchup and spaghetti sauce? Please. They barely have statistically-meaningful amounts of actual tomato in them to start with. In the US, at least, they're basically artificial flavoring, high-fructose corn syrup, tapioca, salt, spices, and FD&C Red #40. Add hot peppers, reduce the tapioca & guar gum, and it's taco sauce. You'd see restaurants quietly deprecating chunky salsa, replacing it with melted cheese and red goo with the consistency of spaghetti sauce, and gleefully advertising their new, improved CheesyZingySalsa.

Wheat would be harder to replace... but so much wheat is grown around the world, the main consequence of wheat failure in north America would be the disappearance of wheat from African supermarkets, and American restaurants suddenly becoming VERY enthusiastic about their new "low-calorie, low-fat sandwich wraps".

Corn? Well, for starters, probably half the corn grown in the US ends up as

Re:nature and consumers

[ChromeAeonium]

And despite this, there are no protests against the conventional breeding which developed those varieties of tomato, although strangely has there are protests against the genetic engineering that could help to fix the problem.

Re:nature and consumers

[ChromeAeonium]

I am more skittish with the pesticide resistant genes since with horizontal gene transfer the resistance may pass to weeds and make the pesticide basically useless.

That's pretty unlikely. What is happening however is that over reliance on herbicide resistant crops is creating weeds that are resistant to the herbicides, which is a very bad thing because the herbicide resistant crops have been very beneficial for farmers and the environment (a lot of people like to hate on them, but they have helped replace soil damaging tillage and harsher herbicides...blind anti-agrochemical idealism won't make the weeds pack up and move).

I don't think that's a good reason to oppose such crops any more than you should oppose AIDS treatments because similar events occur. It just means we need more widespread use of better weed management practices. Over relying on a single mode of action herbicide is the problem. In the future, the best thing would be to see crops resistant to multiple modes of action of herbicide so that a weed would need a multiple mutations in order to develop resistance (of course, in the deep future, it would be nice to see allelopathic GMOs that would require no inputs to fight off weeds, but I don't see that happening in the foreseeable pipeline)

Re:nature and consumers

[ChromeAeonium]

The anti-GMO movement started by opposing the Flavr Savr tomato, which was developed by a fairly small company. It continued to oppose the GMOs of not only large companies like Monsanto and Syngenta and small companies like the Arctic apple developed by Okanagan Specialty Fruits, but universities like the Rainbow papaya, NGOs like Golden Rice, and government bodies like the wheat developed by CSIRO in Australia that some Greenpeace thug destroyed. By and large, the anti-corporate angle is nothing more than a facade for anti-science.

Re:nature and consumers

[ChromeAeonium]

leaving something powerful like genetic modification of organisms in the hands of corporations (with their well known behavioral disorders [siivola.org]) is really a very bad idea.

Then tell the anti-GMO movement to stop promoting stronger and stronger regulations that only allow the large companies to bring a GMO to market. There's plenty of great university developed GMOs, it's just that none of them can jump the regulatory hurdles because of the overly restrictive regulation. Even something like Golden Rice is still dealing with that non-sense.

So I'd be OK with banning GMOs until we find a better way of organizing such dangerous endeavours

Replace GMO with vaccine, pharmaceuticals, or even Wi-Fi to see how bad of an idea that is.

Re:nature and consumers

[g1powermac]

Ahh yes, I can see that with trying to compete against native plants. However, the interesting part is, with tomatoes anyway, that the whole nightshade family has very little representation in the native weeds here in the state of Kentucky. I've only identified a few different species growing on my land and the only one that has any strength to really compete is horse nettle. I've rarely seen black nightshade, and it seems to barely compete. So, I'm thinking the whole nightshade family doesn't compete that well over the long run in this area. Now, for the brassica family (ie, mustard, broccoli, canola, etc), I've got plenty of native brassica weeds. I have seen some of my kale going wild and easily establish itself as a weed. This family is much more 'weedy' and can easily compete. And of course, you got 'wild carrot', ie Queen Anne's lace, and its poisonous cousin, Poison Hemlock. These two will readily establish themselves in wild fields, and I can easily see regular carrots doing the same if we ever let them go to seed. So I think alot of competition ability of our regular crops depends on family basis.

Re: nature and consumers

[slew]

Science is not as stupid as you seem to think. Fundamental knowledge of physics and chemistry allows prediction rather than dependence on mass experiment to see results.

Although there are "successful" predictions, there are also misses. Like all human endeavors, sometimes we cannot escape our own stupidity. Often we know less than we think we do.

Science has predicted ice ages, Malthusian famine, aether wind, Le Verrier's planet Vulcan, Lowell's Martian canals and other non-occurrences.

We can also find single scienctists on both sides for the fence like thalidomide and debendox. Even double nobel prize winner Linus Pauling had his Vitamin C moments...

Of course there's actual outright fraud too like N-rays and various vaccine studies (e.g., Andrew Wakefield). The jury is out on cold fusion...

Although I believe science nets out for the positive, and kernels of knowledge can provide hints of things to come, there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of any endeavor in which humans are involved. Like the common investment platitude, past performance does not necessarily foreshadow future success so you should do your own research.

Re:nature and consumers

[ChromeAeonium]

certain companies that create genetically modified plants have left a bad taste in our mouths

The constant stream of fearmongering, conspiracies, and other nonsense hasn't hurt either.

i mind the fact that companies can modify their strain of a plant to be incredibly dominant

That is kind of a misconception. It isn't as if there is some genetically engineered variety that is spreading all over, it is that genes can spread, and transgenes are no exception. Genetically engineered crops are no different than any other crop except that they possess a few additional genes. The only reason you thing there is some super plant is because of how it is often portrayed.

giving the company grounds for a lawsuit.

Only given certain conditions, those conditions being the intentional selection and reproduction of transgenic material, which is quite a bit different than anything accidental.

Re:nature and consumers

[LordLucless]

Not as much as ancient tomatoes did - many of those were toxic.

Re: nature and consumers

[ozydingo]

Heh, and look how dutifully our governments and corporations are responding to that knowledge of physics and chemistry.

Science is not stupid. However, science doesn't know a lot, and claiming otherwise is the work of first-years and undergrads. Do you really think we have anything close to a complete understanding of our digestive systems? (Not that I am arguing any ill-effect of GM foods, but my question stands as stated)

Re:nature and consumers

[12WTF$]

When I buy oranges that are naturally grown, I know what I'm getting.

RTFA please.
Your naturally grown oranges are suffering an insect-borne bacterial disease that is killing the industry, by stunting/souring the fruit.
The current BAU solution to this problem is: more insecticide. Much more.

Hope you enjoy your orange juice, now you know that it contains 3x as many pesticide residues.
The GMO technology is about saving orange juice as a product, by inserting a gene from spinach.

Monsatan really sucks. More about patent raping for $billions than better food.

Re:nature and consumers

[ChrisMaple]

It's very tiring to read this lie repeatedly.

Although the Gros Michel was been exterminated in many areas, it's still being produced in Malaysia and Thailand. Why didn't you read your wikipedia citation?

Re:nature and consumers

[ChrisMaple]

The roma tomato is not representative of modern tomatoes in general, because it is optimized to be used in sauces: it's meaty and somewhat rugged.

That said, my favorite tomato is the Amish heirloom "brandywine", large and fairly tasty, but somewhat less disease resistant than modern varieties.

Re: nature and consumers

[Blackeneth]

We don't know the long term effects of say, introducing Buffalo Wings to the American diet either.

Or the long term effects of creating jobs where you sit in a chair all day.

Plus, how do we know that some change won't be beneficial over 10, 100, and 1000 year time periods, but totally screw you after 10,000 years? We had better prohibit all change until we know for sure.

Wait, prohibiting change is itself a change. Maybe the government should regulate it. Wait, do we know the long term effects of government?

Damn, you'd better sleep outside tonight. Tomorrow you can root for grubs and forage for berries. It's the only way to be sure you're safe. If you get eaten instead by a wild animal, be assured that this is completely natural.

Re:nature and consumers

[Thangodin]

And don't forget that there is a natural source of radiation--the Sun. And all of this happens with that too.

Oh, but it's natural. That makes it much better than GMO. Yeah. So is cyanide, mercury, cancer, and bubonic plague.

By the way, genetic modification is the one source of mutation where we know what effect it has, because we are actually trying for it. Random mutation can produce anything, including produce that is highly toxic.

Re:nature and consumers

[ChrisMaple]

Apple trees can easily last 50 years in an abandoned orchard; it happens all the time. Blueberries need no help whatsoever.

Re:nature and consumers

[Thangodin]

You're talking about monoculture. This is the rule with crops bred the old fashioned way, not the exception--the orange crop is a monoculture, and that's why they're having this problem. Bananas are having the same problem. We've actually gone through three types of bananas. There is a blight that is wiping out the current monoculture, and after that, there will be no large sweet bananas unless we engineer something that can resist it. This has absolutely nothing to do with genetic modification.

Re:nature and consumers

[Thangodin]

GMO does not mean Monsanto, unless you have a large anti-GMO movement. The anti-GMO movement is the best friend that Monsanto ever had. Thanks to you guys, Monsanto will rule the agricultural world.

Here's how it works. A small company engineers a new crop that can be grown in third world conditions and dramatically increase the food supply. But they need to obtain clearance, which, thanks to the anti-GMO movement, they can't get. For that they need lots of money and lawyers. So they go broke, Then Monsanto comes along, buys the IP for a fraction of what it took to produce, and they do have enough money and lawyers. And because there is actually nothing wrong with GMO foods, they win, because unlike anti-GMO activists, the court has to listen to the facts, and Monsanto brings it to market--probably modified to be a terminator crop (by the way, Monsanto did not invent this, and many of the seeds that you buy for you garden will not produce offspring.)

So keep up your good work. Monsanto thanks you. Without you, they could not do what they do.

Re:nature and consumers

[the plant doctor]

It already happened*.

*citation needed

Re:nature and consumers

[the plant doctor]

I've ready plenty about this woman, yes, she has a PhD, but she's a physicist. I don't publish articles in her field of work because I'm not qualified too.

Citing her work is about as convincing as citing the Séralini paper, IMO.

Re:nature and consumers

[ChrisMaple]

And what if it kills many millions of people?

The same argument can be made for any change whatsoever, or no change at all. Unless you have some specific, detailed mechanism to support your fearmongering, you should be ignored.

Re:nature and consumers

[sjames]

here

Re: nature and consumers

[dgatwood]

With the caveat, of course, that what we're doing does not necessarily have to result in a viable organism. That's the aspect of GM foods that is potentially dangerous. It would not be that surprising if some of these GM crops became sterile in a few generations, or otherwise mutated in a way that made them unsuitable for use as food crops. If that happened on a small scale with viruses, it would be no big deal, because they almost certainly would not supplant the viable variants (which would continue to be planted). Were it to happen on a mass-produced scale, however, the problem would be much more serious, because you would run the risk of basically losing the original, viable variants.

Re:nature and consumers

[The Cat]

For people like you, science is religion. Anything that is done in the name of "science" is automatically good for everyone.

See the history of the last 1000 years for why "anything done in the name of _____ is automatically good" is a bad idea.

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

Re: nature and consumers

[elgo]

If the judge will so easily see that GMOs are OK, then shouldn't the smaller mom-and-pop company have an easier time getting clearance for their GMO product in the first place? Oh wait, they have nasty laws and regulations to contend with... I don't know, my friend. You really seemed to tie yourself in knots with this little parable, without arriving at a point of any consequence. I know you're not an industry shill because you wouldn't last more than a day. I don't see the harm in GMO products being labelled, so consumers can make an informed choice. If GMOs are a-OK, why did companies like Monsanto campaign against GMO labeling in California? The argument that genetically modifying organisms is the same exact thing as selective breeding is flat-out wrong, and only serves to underscore a near-complete lack of comprehension about the issue. Looking over this thead, there are surprisingly few misinformed militant anti-GMOers, and a disheartening amount of pro-GMO shills using strawman arguments. I suppose that's what money buys you these days... that, and triticale with octopus genes.

Re:nature and consumers

[sFurbo]

A lot of this stuff is basically self-certified. The manufacturer does the research, devises the tests and administers them to show that it is safe for human consumption. The regulators don't have the resources to do big, long term trials and besides which the GMO companies are not willing to wait decades for the results.

How is this different from any other new cultivar? Yet I don't see the same uproar regarding any other new cultivars.

Re:nature and consumers

[sFurbo]

Onions, apples, oranges, cows, pigs, etc. in their natural form is proven to be part of who we are. We wouldn't be here otherwise, so I know what I'm getting when I'm buying such products.

Firstly, non of the things you mentioned are anything like their "natural" form. They have been shaped by selective breeding for millennia, and continue to be so, so even if you had proof that they were what you needed, say, 200 years ago, that says very little about the cultivars you can buy today.

Secondly, all that has been proven is that these things aren't sure to kill you before you get children. Bracken is considered edible in many cultures, yet is carcinogenic. This leads to a higher incidence of certain cancers in these cultures, but not enough to make them die out, so it keeps being on the menu.

All in all, "we have always eaten X" is a very bad argument for continuing to do so.

Re:nature and consumers

[blackest_k]

Getting it wrong happens, CJD or mad cow disease is a consequence of feeding cattle with sheeps brains.

I don't know of anyone personally who has died of this yet but I know I am disqualified from being a blood donor in Ireland because of it - having spent too long living in the UK. I know Mit Romney is making money from it as his group has just bought a company that was set up to source blood plasma from outside of the UK (around 30% of the plasma needed). Because of the news of this sale I know none of the blood plasma used in the UK is from UK donors any more.

CJD takes a long time to show up in people and it seems that the risk of passing on the infection is quite real. I think that the current policies in place are aimed at taking the disease out of the population eventually. However given that contaminated blood is an accepted method of transmission what are the chances of a mother passing CJD to her unborn child? How long is it going to take to eliminate CJD from the general population?

Taking a guess, that the window for being infected closed in the mid 80's anyone alive in the UK at that point of time could be carrying CJD, and with a typical life span of around 80 years that would mean the quarantine will need to be in place for maybe the next 50 years as a minimum.

Now given that wasn't genetic engineering that went wrong just a poor assumption that a sheep disease couldn't pass to cattle and from there into the general population. How sure do you need to be in order to ensure the safety of a GM product? There is plenty of evidence to suggest that we are not as smart as we would like to think we are. I doubt you can find anyone who has worked in research or development that hasn't a tale of screwing up at some point.

We can't even manage finance right. we've managed to pollute our food supply with mercury. We do insane things like over fish our sea's and then we throw dead fish back into the sea because they are the wrong fish. We have cane toads killing australia's wild life because that wasn't thought through either.

Now when it comes to the choice to eat GM food or not, the situation in America is that you do not get a choice as it's an unknown quantity every time you go shopping since labelling isn't allowed that I think is wrong.

I have one little quirk I don't like banana's, can't abide them, the smell makes me queasy. I don't buy them, i don't eat them. I don't think they are harmful in anyway I just don't want to eat them. Should I be forced to eat banana's? If the answer is no then why force people to eat GM foods by refusing to identify them?

I have no doubt that GM food will produce useful results, I am pretty sure there are going to be bad results too, even the best researchers at Monsanto will have tried and failed and then tried something different the failures are noted and discarded. That's just the way things are, develop and refine till we get a working solution.

If you want to be part of some big companies field testing then tuck in, but personally I'm not happy with my exposure to CJD thanks to other field tests and I'd rather not.

Re:nature and consumers

[sFurbo]

selling plants that won't seed to the third world

Do you have a place where I can read more about that? All I can find is a Nature News article where somebody speculates that they might do it. And, of course, an over-the-top, inflammatory slashdot article about the article.

Re:nature and consumers

[rmstar]

Replace GMO with vaccine, pharmaceuticals, or even Wi-Fi to see how bad of an idea that is

Can't you read? I said "dangerous endeavours". You can leave the development of a better teddy bear to private enterprise, but there are things that you shouldn't leave to them.

In fact, pharmaceuticals aid more my point than they weaken it: Recall all the news on invented illnesses, manipulated clinical trials, creation of meds that are not better than existing ones but much more expensive. Etc.

Wi-Fi: inoccuous. Vaccine: not without problems, historically. And most of the good stuff was developed at universities.

Re:nature and consumers

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Labeling is stupid because it does nothing but add to the FUD.

That's like when San Fran tried to force wireless companies to label the radiation output of cell phones. It's a figure that is ultimately useless and does nothing for public health, but it creates a psychological effect that causes customer demand to shift anyways, so we could end up in a situation where cell phones are more expensive and possibly heavier because they have to add some kind of shielding or whatever to make a meaningless number go down.

All of that so that some derps have an excuse to complain about their "electromagnetic allergies."

Not only that, but the space on food labels is limited. As a kidney patient I have to concern myself daily with how much protein, phosphorus, potassium, and sodium I consume daily. Only one of those items are required to be on the labels. If I consume too much potassium in a day, I am dead as a doornail (the amount contained in three large potatoes is enough) and listing the potassium content on foods is entirely optional.

Believe me there are far higher health priorities than GMO labeling that already don't make it onto food labels. The FDA knows that label space is limited, and they can't possibly expect every food manufacturer to cater to every possible dietary restriction that somebody might possibly have, so they keep the most important ones as requirements and list the rest as optional. And I'm not even the worst - people on dialysis have even tighter dietary restrictions. I think their plight is probably a bit more important than those silly little electromagnetic aller - Oops sorry, I mean GMO fears.

As for making genes unpatentable - if they're found to be naturally occuring, they can't be patented. Period. SCOTUS killed that on June 14th. Now artificially created genes, I think those are worthy of patenting. SCOTUS agrees.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/06/130614-supreme-court-gene-patent-ruling-human-genome-science/

What you're doing is constructing protein structures - the DNA is just the information that tells how to transcribe them. Creating innovative protein structures is something I'd definitely call a work of art, and is absolutely non-trivial and definitely research intensive and time consuming (costly too.) Being able to figure out how they fold and interact with one another isn't exactly simple arithmetic, as is often the case with say software patents. It would be pretty damn lame if you poured your life's work into the cure or biotech invention of the 22nd century and somebody just rips it off for free, and you have nothing to show for it.

And read my article by the way - the terminator genes already exist and there is a patent for them. But the one company who holds that patent has said it has no intention of ever using it. Will they keep that promise? Who knows. But in the mean time, nobody else can without their permission.

Re:nature and consumers

[quantaman]

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

I support GMO food but this line of defense has always struck me as a bit suspect.

Natural genetic modifications are random, most are completely useless, a few mildly bad, and a smaller handful mildly good.

Even when we're using controlled breeding we're still constrained by those natural mechanisms which aren't terribly precise or effective.

Genetic modification allows us to change the genomes directly and that's a much more effective tool. Say you want to make a pest resistant tomato and screw up so the pesticide ends up in the fruit.

If you do that with breeding it will take a really long time, and you'll have a long period of tomatoes getting mildly more poisonous where you can catch your error.

Do it with genetic modification you can have a poisonous tomato in one generation.

I still think they're a really good idea, but we need to recognize that our ability to screw up improves with our toolbox.

Re:nature and consumers

[jandersen]

Very true. And besides, they want to add spinach genes to oranges, which makes a lot of sense; that way they will become STRONG, as we all know. what could possibly be bad about this?

Re:nature and consumers

[Rockoon]

Which lie is that?

It seems to me that you are reading more into what I said than what I actually said. My wikipedia citations say what I said, for instance "In the 1950s, Panama disease wiped out the Gros Michel banana, the dominant cultivar of bananas, inflicting enormous costs and forcing producers to switch to other, disease-resistant cultivars."
Perhaps you may not agree with the "wiped out" wording, but its the accepted wording in this case. Your agreement with it is not important to reality.

Re:nature and consumers

[Joey Vegetables]

Christ called His followers to live according to His standards, not to judge others for failing to live up to theirs. I am generally opposed to suicide in any form, for all of the traditional reasons, yet I accept that there may be circumstances that might justify it in specific cases. I for instance will not consent to medical treatment under any circumstances unless it will preserve my ability to work. I do not wish to be a burden to my family, and it may well be that I die unnecessarily for that reason and that some might even consider it suicide. Likewise I have decided that, courage permitting (I will not pretend to actually have it until I've demonstrated that, which I haven't, yet), I will willingly give my life to save the life of any innocent person if I'm able to, and I will risk it if necessary in order to fight against injustice, oppression, and tyranny. Again, some may consider this suicide, and they are entitled to their opinion, but what I fear having to explain to God one day is not that I risked my life to do what was right, but rather that so often I did not. Yes, absolutely, I believe God decides our fate; yet, our own circumstances and our decisions, right or wrong, are part of the means by which He does so. If we wish to convince others, it is better to demonstrate by our example, than to condemn them for making choices we don't agree with.

Re:nature and consumers

[dcooper_db9]

I am talking about monoculture and it has everything to do with genetic modification. The banana, the orange and the potatoe all have one thing in common. They are all assexually propagated. The Cavendish banana was threatened by Panama disease. New varieties were developed that were resistant but now they're threatened by Black Sigatoka fungus. Most varieties outside of the Cavendish strain are resistant to both diseases. Now scientists are working to isolate the resistance gene and reinsert it into the Cavendish banana varieties. Sexually propagation ensures that strains that aren't resistant to disease don't survive to reproduce. By manipulating DNA we're creating huge monocultures and exposing our seed crops to the types of problems we used to see only in assexually propagated plants.

Re:nature and consumers

[bigfinger76]

Yeah, I clearly said that science is infallible... And to look back 1000 years, I'd say science has an overall good track record. Sure, there have been missteps, but this irrational panic is a bit silly. But just call me names and get angry.

Re:nature and consumers

[sjames]

Is that you Marie?

Re: nature and consumers

[zipn00b]

Yes. Viral replication needs name resolution too..... :P

Re:nature and consumers

[zipn00b]

Still would be nice to have some sort of labelling though. If we're going to be in a free country it's nice to have true freedom to select what we want instead of "some big mix of GMO and non-GMO from 20 different countries" which we often get nowdays. Even if there's no GMO in it most commercially grown stuff is so mixed which is why nasty cases of e. coli, salmonella, etc. are so difficult to trace. And that goes for not just fruits and vegetables but meat as well - ESPECIALLY ground meat. Typical food labelling in the US sucks big time right now and even buying "organic" with the requirements supposed to be in place there could get interesting as big food producers keep trying to mess that up. Sad thing is not everybody is in a position to go to a real farmer's market or belong to a co-op or grow their own so they're pretty much at the mercy of the big agro-corps who buy politicians....
Anyhow I'd love to see an example where a random mutation that has occurred naturally has ever produced anything toxic. The current methods of DNA modifications are not truly known to be with no ill effects for long-term either for the plants themselves or for those who consume them. All we really know is that some very big money is going into the process and when big money goes in the end result for the consumer is not necessarily for the best. SO informed choice is even more a concern here but I'm big on making informed decisions anyhow like did this come from a local grower or someplace halfway around the world? I've seen the labelling on some foods from other countries and, especially in Europe, they seem to include more of that sort of info than we get in the US.......

Re:nature and consumers

[zipn00b]

And to make it even worse some of the DNA manipulation is geared towards allowing heavy use of various insecticides and fungicides and such or have them 'built-in" to the plant so we're ingesting THAT stuff as well. Topically applied *icides at least can be partially if not completely washed off while those that are genetically implanted can't be yet the pro-GMO lobby seems to think we don't need to know about that either since it's been deemed "safe".

Re:nature and consumers

[zipn00b]

And that's exactly what they're doing - HOWEVER some of that cheapness is artificial because of the subsidies involved. The subsidies seem to be some sort of sacred cow and everybody is scared to touch them because it's made out like the family farmer will suffer. The reality though is the family farmer is damn near non-existent nowdays and odds are can't qualify for those subsidies thus it's just the huge corporations getting them so things like GMO corn can be sold to cattle "farms" for LESS than actual production cost and yet the corn producers are making a profit because of subsidies. And the most amazing thing is a lot of junk food is so cheap due to the subsidies and yet real, high quality FOOD often doesn't qualify for those subsidies and thus is more expensive. I personally think we need to kill the subsidies and have some decent labelling and let the market sort out what's viable instead of artificially making a market for things like GMO. Let people decide for themselves if they want to consume it. Some of the GMO is probably just fine but not let us CHOOSE?????

Re:nature and consumers

[mattack2]

Do you take aspirin? It has a lot of weird side effects (both good and bad) that are being found out often. Yet hasn't it been an overall good thing to have it?

Yes, I think there probably will be bad things that happen due to genetically modified foods, just like there have been bad things that happen with a lot of things. I still think being able to do it can create better foods.

I would be willing to have GMO foods be labelled, if there were NO exceptions (like there were on the CA Prop, so of course I voted NO). That's still fear-based labelling, since there's no proof, but just like people pay more for "organic" foods with no benefits, maybe eventually I'll get the stuff with GMO cheaper than non-GMO stuff.

Re: nature and consumers

[perceptual.cyclotron]

Indeed. Horizontal transfer is of considerable importance in deep history. We owe the very success of early life to those promiscuous pinko prokaryotes. If life had all been tight-assed access-controlled information-hoarding zealots with their fancy 'nuclei' and compartmentalized machinery, I doubt they'd have gotten very far in the early days...

And what the hell is a 'fish gene' anyway? We're talking strings of 2 bit characters. For all the reams and reams of 'junk' / 'non-coding' DNA out there (the noble Norway Spruce has more than 6 times as many base pairs as a human), I'm expected to believe that some subset of a fish is actually unique? That every part of a fish genome has some ethereal 'fish-ness' to it?

Sometimes... Sometimes I don't understand people.

Re:nature and consumers

[cyber-vandal]

Not in my case. In my case it's a reasoned opinion based on corners being cut in the name of profit. Now I didn't know about all those but when a member of my government speaks up in favour of it, then I know there's something fishy going on.

Re:nature and consumers

[hairyfeet]

Notice I get modded down for daring to point out that there is no way in hell for "selective breeding" to mix fricking insect and plant? Man this place is becoming more of an elitist circlejerk by the fricking day, I swear you better kiss the groupthink around here, buy the corporate bullshit or the asskissers have a royal damned shitfit.

What I find ironic is its the right wing "corporate yay!" types which are the ones AGAINST the free market because like you I would have ZERO problem with GMOs if it was labeled so I could CHOOSE what I did and did not eat but that would hurt their profits don't ya know, can't have an informed populace making informed choice, why that is how a free market works instead of a corporatocracy, it can't be allowed!

Re:nature and consumers

[uninformedLuddite]

At least it is a mistake we wont make twice.

Re:nature and consumers

[uninformedLuddite]

It is definitely not irrational. This is a threat to the food security of an entire planet. There have been open air fields of corn grown that have contained genes specifically inserted to kill human sperm. Certain species of scientists(thankfully not all) cry that correlation != causation but do we have to see South America die off before someone says let's be careful as there appears to be a correlation between levels of corn consumption and declining fertility levels in those groups? Maybe a better idea is to put HFCS in everything, damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead.

I haven't bothered to put any links in this comment specifically because those that care already know these things and those that don't couldn't give a rats anyway.

Re:nature and consumers

[uninformedLuddite]

There are a hell of a lot of sockpuppets pushing agendas here these days.Most corporate agenda pushers have a high UID.

Re:nature and consumers

[uninformedLuddite]

CPA Order 81 -- It may not be plants that wont seed just that you cannot use the seeds if they do

Re:nature and consumers

[uninformedLuddite]

http://www.grain.org/article/entries/150-iraq-s-new-patent-law-a-declaration-of-war-against-farmers -- here's a link

Re:nature and consumers

[sjames]

Most people find the *citation needed* meme a bit smart-assed, so I replied in kind (but made it useful just in case).

Re: nature and consumers

[Spottywot]

I have the feeling that so many people have a false impression of what genetic modification is, which is based on some poorly thought out Sci Fi plot from years ago.

Re:nature and consumers

[hairyfeet]

Thanks I KNEW something funny was going on because unlike my little stalker, who ALWAYS follows his modding down with a round of "die you fat fucker die" AC posts these seem to be VERY "corporate yay!" including corps that traditionally are fricking hated more than the Klan around here, companies like Halliburton, Monsanto, Goldman Sachs, these are NOT the kinds of companies that the left libertarian leaning Slashdot tends to favor.

Anyway thanks for confirming it, I smelled something hinky but just figured i had a new stalker but browsing at -2 I see that a LOT of rational informed posts that aren't "corporate yay!" are getting modded down and you are right, they are all followed by VERY high UID posts spouting bullshit, like the one here that compared GMO to selective breeding...yeah, you show me a single case of farmer bill selectively breeding INSECTS into his corn? Then I'll buy it, otherwise its bullshit.This would be like saying since we have had transplants in the past chopping up prisoners to make Frankenstein monsters would just be an extension...no, its really NOT, really not anything alike at all.

Re: nature and consumers

[hairyfeet]

Nice to see I'm not alone in the "WTF people" attitude, if GMO is fine and dandy why not let the free market decide? the free market is supposed to be the end all of the right wing, yes? then why is it ONLY when the free market gives an advantage to a megacorp is it good, when it gives choice to the consumer its bad?

As far as "selective breeding" bullshit? I have an easy answer for that one friend, feel free to use it...show me ONE TIME, just once, in the entire history of the planet that farmer bill managed to mix INSECT DNA into his corn crop through selective breeding like Monsanto did with their corn? then i'll be happy to STFU, but until you can show me that one case i'm throwing a flag, shilling on the field.

Re:nature and consumers

[Khyber]

"The fact is, the fruit that we know as oranges didn't exists without genetic modification by man."

Your fact is bullshit. The oranges we have were found in nature, and those particular traits carried on via cloning and creating a monoculture. No genetic modification done at all.

Go take a trip to the ORIGINAL parent Navel Orange trees at the corner of Arlington and Magnolia in Riverside, California. Yet again, more plaques describe the finding of these in South America, being shipped up to Washington, then brought down to California.

Now, that's not to say some new cultivars are not genetically modified. We've got oranges with pomegranate genes inserted so they produce a red fruit similar to a blood orange but with more of the vitamin content you'd find from a pomegranate. But the fact of the matter is, the navel orange is not a GMO. The valencia orange is a hybrid, simply created via cross-breeding. Emerald oranges are native to Thailand. India has its own natural and sweet orange crop. Not many commercially-available cultivars are GMO, at all.

Re: nature and consumers

[the eric conspiracy]

Science has predicted ice ages, Malthusian famine, aether wind, Le Verrier's planet Vulcan, Lowell's Martian canals and other non-occurrences.

Science has predicted none of these. Every single idea in that list is either the result of media hyperbole or simple hypothesis made to attempt to explain known phenomena. A prediction based on established theory is VERY different from a hypothesis or worse media speculation as in the case of the so-called ice age.

Re:nature and consumers

[Agent0013]

You seem to be contradicting yourself.

In addition, it will make food much less expensive which means your bargaining power goes up, which means less poor people.

Do I think Monsanto is in it to end world hunger? Nope. They're in it to make money, just like any other business.

If Monsanto wants to make profit, they will charge as much as they can. That does not make food cheaper.

GMO has the potential to reduce the need for farmland, which if I were an environmentalist I would be ecstatic for because that means tearing down less forest land to create farms

But commercial GMO will not be created to benefit society. Just like cures for diseases are not researched by commercial drug companies, only treatments that will be life-long. The GMO you will see created is like the Roundup-Ready, spend more money on things to keep them going. Try looking into how bad the "Green Revolution" turned out for the third world countries where it was implemented. Farmers are killing themselves in mass quantities because they cannot farm their land anymore. And it seems you won't mind if that happens elsewere.

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.

Here you are with diseases and as a society we have cancer rates climbing and you don't see any problem with poison in our food. Try looking at the rate of miscarriage in the farming industry when the animals are fed GMO food. It may surprise you.

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.

The scienctific studies were complete BS on that. They looked at one thing only, nutrition content. Did they check for the difference in pesticide and herbicide levels? No. Also, check out the profitability of a small farm per acre compared to a large commercial farm. Link: $1400/acre compared to $35/acre.

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.

And the strawberry is the most important food to get organic variety of because of the amount of poison it absorbs. You should seriously look at the food you are putting into your body as you are probably killing yourself. I guess you don't care how sick you are as long as you save your penny. Did you forget to calculate the medical costs. I think that is called "penny wise - pound foolish"! I am happy you are happy, as the sooner you types kill yourselves off we can fix these problems with our food supply.

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 might be wrong under the assumption that either there's a corporate conspiracy, the illuminati, or something equally stupid out to

Re:nature and consumers

[sFurbo]

That's interesting, thank you.

However, it is neither plants that won't seed, as you concede, nor is it the action of companies, and AFAICT, no law suits have been made on the basis of CPA order 81, so it isn't "selling plants that won't seed to the third world and suing if they do somehow manage to get any seed".

Re:nature and consumers

[Khyber]

No, in this case the hybridization was done by grafting, not genetic modification. Again, you know NOTHING.

Re:nature and consumers

[jwhitener]

"Glyphosate doesn't end up on our dinner plates in any significant quantities, so it's not a problem."

Like overuse of antibiotics, overuse and especially non-targeted use of Round-up is now producing Glyphosate resistant weeds. It is going to end up being a chemical arms race.

I think informed people understand that GMO foods are not dangerous in and of themselves, but rather the agricultural practices that commercial farms are using are often not sustainable, often hurt rivers / fish with run off, etc...

If we could combine good land management with good GMO use, it would be acceptable to a lot more people.

Re:nature and consumers

[uninformedLuddite]

While you say it may not be the action of companies I would be willing to bet the entire contents of my miserable bank account that they had a very big hand in it.

Re: nature and consumers

[Proteus]

Nice catch -- tired fingers and a long discussion about DNSSEC...

Re: nature and consumers

[Proteus]

you would run the risk of basically losing the original, viable variants.

I don't follow that reasoning. How does a synthetically sterile strain put the existence of viable strains at risk? It's not like it can reproduce and overwhelm the viable strains...

Popeye meets Anita Bryant

[ColdWetDog]

No. Cannot and Will Not go there.

Re:Popeye meets Anita Bryant

[ISoldat53]

Donald Duck Oranges will have to change it's name to Popeye.

GMO is scary... for now.

[Lairdykinsmcgee]

Genetic modification of crops in a formal sense scares people for now. But, this is a young technology, and current genetic modifications are made, to a certain extent, blindly. While these modifications have known effects, they are also bound or at least potentially bound to have unknown effects as well. The reason, however, that these do not scare me so much is that this technology will only progress, and we will only gain a better understanding of how these modifications are affecting our crops. Hopefully, we can make decent decisions ab out regulating this in the mean time, but I think it won't be terribly long before we can make genetic modifications that are solely safe and hopefully better for consumers. In terms of the historical progression of agriculture, there has never been a time in human history that we have NOT modified the genes of our crops; only, we have done this through controlled abuse of the relatively quick and convenient evolution of crops given their short lifespan (new generations are quick to rise). Barely anything we eat today would be naturally occurring in actual nature. We designed these things to occur through comparatively (to GMO) crude methods. Bigger watermelons, redder strawberries, beefier wheat, or what have you. GMO could be the next step in this progression of healthy and nutritious foods IF done correctly. All the same, with knuckle-heads controlling the direction of GMO, it could have vastly different and unknown consequences. I'm simultaneously nervous and interested to see where it goes with a little more time.

Re:GMO is scary... for now.

[Xicor]

yea, i dont think anyone has forgotten the killer bee incident.

Re:GMO is scary... for now.

[dragonsomnolent]

Actually Killer Bees are Africanzied Honeybees, they scientist who created them cross-bred the two species in hopes of making a more resilient honeybee. I suppose he succeeded, those killer bees are quite tough to take out (unless you have a flamethrower). http://lmgtfy.com/?q=killer+bees

Re:GMO is scary... for now.

[Xicor]

the "killer bee" was a genetic crossbreed between a docile honeybee who doesnt make much honey and an african honeybee that is incredible agressive but makes a lot of honey. the attempt was to create a bee that was docile but created a lot of honey, but instead, it created an incredibly agressive bee that doesnt make honey. it wouldnt have been a problem if someone didnt break into the lab and "accicdentally" let the queen loose. now we have a ton of africanized bees out there that kill people who come near their nests

Re:GMO is scary... for now.

[ChromeAeonium]

Which was the result of good old fashioned conventional breeding, not genetic engineering. Funny how only one of those draws controversy.

Re:GMO is scary... for now.

[Xicor]

conventional breeding is still genetic engineering... albeit oldfashioned.

Orange juice sucks anyway

[WillyWanker]

Once you understand how commercial orange juice is made I guarantee you'll never want to drink it again.

Re:Orange juice sucks anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. It's called Solyent Orange.

Re:Orange juice sucks anyway

[msauve]

It's not as you imply - juice losing it's flavor due to storage, then being artificially flavored.

Really, all you had to do was read the article to find that nothing nefarious is going on:

nearly all of Florida's juice [is] a blend of just two [varieties]: the Hamlin, whose unremarkable taste and pale color are offset by its prolific yield in the early season, and the dark, flavorful, late-season Valencia.

So, they get a bunch of unflavorful juice from one variety in the spring, store it, then mix it with flavorful juice from another variety when it's available later in the year. That's bad, how?

Re:Orange juice sucks anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be naive, how can diluting something with a juice you say is unflavorful give you a full-flavor OJ?

http://www.westfalia-separator.com/applications/beverage-technology/fruit-and-vegetable-juices/citrus-juices.html

They extract essential oils and each company has their own master perfumer to make it taste the same. Just like they do with scotch. Blend and add color.

Re:Orange juice sucks anyway

[eriks]

It's a bit more than just that. Look at the "Not From concentrate" section of this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_juice

and you'll get a better idea of what's done, though there is more explicit information available if you're interested.

The "Flavor Packs" they use are technically "natural" since they're derived from oranges, but the whole process sounds pretty nasty to me. I'll continue to just eat in-season fresh oranges or squeeze them myself for juice, and eat different fruits when they're not in season.

Re:Orange juice sucks anyway

[MightyYar]

Orange juice is so sugary that you shouldn't be drinking enough of it to affect your health one way or another. I had some today because someone made us breakfast. I don't know where it was made and I don't care - it was a rare and tasty treat.

Re:Orange juice sucks anyway

[msauve]

Wait until you realize how they make bread. They put fungus in it, and the holes are their farts!

Re:Orange juice sucks anyway

[westlake]

Once you understand how commercial orange juice is made I guarantee you'll never want to drink it again.

Heh.

Each fall as kids we picked up "drops" off the ground for delivery to the cider mill --- a little rot, a little bruising, and the occasional worm just made for a better flavor.

Re:Orange juice sucks anyway

[Twinbee]

Can you give more info, or better yet, a video?

Re:Orange juice sucks anyway

[WillyWanker]

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/16/dirty-little-secret-orange-juice-is-artificially-flavored-to-taste-like-oranges.aspx
http://science.discovery.com/tv-shows/how-do-they-do-it/videos/how-do-they-do-it-how-is-orange-juice-made.htm
http://www.foodrenegade.com/secret-ingredient-your-orange-juice/
http://organicplanet.blogspot.com/2011/08/citricy-secrets-truth-about-orange.html
http://gizmodo.com/5981057/the-secret-algorithm-that-controls-everything-about-orange-juice

Re:Orange juice sucks anyway

[zygotic mitosis]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyW7JVjYoYU

Don't see anything terrible there. You are talking out your ass.

Re:Orange juice sucks anyway

[WillyWanker]

Do you really think you're going to get the full story on a Discovery channel program? What they call "orange juice" is stripped, distilled, warehoused for months, and then has orange essence added back in to replace all the flavor they stripped out. It's nasty.

But hey, go drink it. No skin off my nose.

And when the new orange dies?

[Shoikana]

Why don't they work on a cure for orange greening? If they don't know the nature of the disease, who's to say that in 10 years the new orange won't be susceptible to a new or mutated disease? And then where are we?

Re:And when the new orange dies?

[Z00L00K]

This is happening all the time in nature, so that's nothing new.

The big problem is that humanity has been influencing the crops that we grow for such a long time now to obtain higher yields that some other parts like disease resistance has been put on hold.

Re:And when the new orange dies?

[HiThere]

Sorry, but the big problem is monoculture. This results in an entire crop being (nearly) genetically identical. THIS results in all plants being susceptible to the same invasive organism...of course it's also what makes the taste, shape, etc. so predictable, and until the invasive organism arrives, that's quite advantageous.

Re:And when the new orange dies?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Wish I had mod points today... because you've hit the nail on the head. Monoculture is the fundamental problem here.

Re:And when the new orange dies?

[manu0601]

Agreed. I would just add that GMO may temporarily fix the problem, but it worsen it in the long run as that push from monoculture to monoclonal culture.

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!

Re:Genetic Roullette

[jcaplan]

The effect of a genetic modification depends on what was changed. Some genetic modifications have given clear and reasonable cause for concern. In the case of Monsanto's "Round-Up Ready" seeds, greater use of pesticides (Monsanto's "Round-Up") on crops is possible. Pesticide exposure is a serious risk for farm workers as well as the environment and a point of reasonable concern for consumers, though low-dose toxicology is tricky business. Another problematic modification is the addition of BT toxin genes to crops. Although, BT is approved for use in organic produce, the chronic low dose of BT toxin is a problem because it allows pests to evolve to become resistant to this useful compound more easily than would occur with occasional external application of higher doses. BT toxin resistance has already developed in India in response to crops incorporating the BT gene. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacillus_thuringiensis It would be reasonable to expect more widespread resistance to occur with continued use of crops with BT genes.

The use of the spinach gene to give bacterial resistance to orange trees mentioned in the aricle does not have these issues. The article notes that this bacterial resistance gene is widespread, existing in variants in many plants and animals. Also, having orange trees with this gene would allow for reduced use of pesticides, which the article notes have tripled in response to the encroachment of the insect which carries the bacterium responsible for the destruction of the orange trees.

I would argue not for a ban on genetically modified organisms, but for careful scientific review on a case-by-case basis whether a modification carries a net benefit, not just on whether a particular crop is safe to consume. A serious problem with previous approvals is that they ignored effects like evolution of resistant organisms and incentives to use more pesticides.

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.

Re:Symptom of monocropping

[kamapuaa]

But the basic premise of agriculture conflicts with a diverse ecosystem. Farmers could plant a jungle, but their yield would be far lower & subsequently costs would be a lot more, I doubt it would be possible to sustain 7 billion people that way.

And all that to prevent using GMO crops, which are totally harmless to our health.

Re:Symptom of monocropping

[HiThere]

Monoculture is important. (In an earlier post I made this very point.) But almost equally important is rapid transportation. This allows infective organisms to spread world-wide VERY quickly.

Re:Symptom of monocropping

[kamapuaa]

People are spooked at GMO, just as people are spooked at lots of stupid things. The answer to mass hysteria isn't to play along with it. People don't want to consume MSG or artificial sweeteners, even though these are well studied to have no effect on our health. Fat is terrible and we should eat as little as possible to be healthy, only it's the building block of human hormones, many nutrients need fat to be absorbed, and meta-studies don't show any relation between cardiovascular health and getting too much saturated fat. People need to eat vitamins, even though it's been very well established they are (slightly) detrimental to our health.

Re:Symptom of monocropping

[Anonymous Coward]

AttillaTheNun here, posting anonymously from my phone.I rerspectfully disagree. Given aqual acreage, yields of a single crop such as oranges would probably decrease, total yield would be comparable if not greater, without the neeeds for expensive inputs and risks of a singler monocrop.

Sepp Holzer's farm in Austria is probably one of the most productive per acre in europe. Want an example of a large acreage american farm that switched from the typical monocrop of corn or soybeans to a more sustainable polyculture? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb_t-sVVzF0&sa=X&ei=vEz1Uf_BL8G8yAGZ6oCIBQ&ved=0CBAQqwQ

Re:Symptom of monocropping

[ebno-10db]

But almost equally important is rapid transportation.

What do you mean by rapid? Ships, even sailing ships, are plenty fast enough to spread all sorts of agricultural pests.

Re:Symptom of monocropping

[Type44Q]

How dare you come on here spouting common sense! :p

Re:Symptom of monocropping

[hibiki_r]

You know genetically identical monocrops came way before GMOs right? This is especially easy for trees, where very old techniques let you make trees that are genetically identical to one you bred normally.

It's a bit harder with annual plants, but that's how any seed seller operates: Genetic modification is way too expensive and low yielding to be a key part of seed production. What the industry does today is helped by genetic sequencing, so that you can actually tell if a plant is as inbred as you want, but after you figure out your base inbreds, turning a few bags of seed into thousands that are practically identical is something that can be done very easily.

Now, if instead of clones, you are only worried about too big an extension of land using the same crop, you can mix those up regardless of whether the seeds come from your garden or from big agrobusiness.

Re:Symptom of monocropping

[drinkypoo]

But the basic premise of agriculture conflicts with a diverse ecosystem.

Congratulations, you just demonstrated the depth of your ignorance.

Farmers could plant a jungle, but their yield would be far lower & subsequently costs would be a lot more, I doubt it would be possible to sustain 7 billion people that way.

The truth is that biointensive organic agriculture without machinery or indeed tilth permits greater yields per acre. But you're just repeating some things you think you heard because you're unwilling to accept that the current system is insane. It is.

Re:Symptom of monocropping

[ChromeAeonium]

This smells like a scheme to make GMO crops more acceptible to the public

Science is not a conspiracy.

Here's an alternative - replace monocrop orchards with polyculture farms (i.e. food forest) that are based on the same principles of natural ecosystems.

Would you be equally opposed to conventional breeding for disease resistance? I'll bet you wouldn't.

Re:Symptom of monocropping

[RivenAleem]

The famine in Ireland, caused in part by potato blight striking a specific strain of potato (the Irish Lumper), is a great historical example of this.

Re:Symptom of monocropping

[HiThere]

Sailing ships could spread SOME agricultural pests, but many died en transit. Many more than with steam ships and airplanes. And cars, and trains, and...

The key here is rapid. Just what *is* rapid depends on the hardiness of the pest in adverse environments. But if it's really hardy, and you don't live on an island, it's been there all along (excluding direct actions by humans...see passenger pidgeon).

A balance has to be achieved

[houbou]

It might be worth it, after all, what's the point of having this knowledge and not use it.

Re:A balance has to be achieved

[plopez]

Why not? Look at all those chemical agents that went unused. What a waste.

Seriously, just because you can does not mean you should. In many things.

Re:Bullshit

[daninaustin]

Did you even read the article? The infection is all over the wold. Brazil, Iran, China, etc.

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?

Re:nature has variation

[markdavis]

>"Apparantly the orange industry isn't on speaking terms with the banana industry."

LOL!!

OK, that isn't quite what I meant, but very funny

Re:nature has variation

[Miamicanes]

> And perhaps that is because they plant millions of the same species/strain with no natural variation?

Actually, it's much worse than that. The evolution clock for Florida's orange trees stopped DECADES ago. Florida's citrus trees are pretty much ALL clones. I don't think it's even possible to grow a viable orange tree from seeds anymore.

Re:"root" cause of this problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

show me an orchard without disease

[mounthood]

Somebody has to speak for these oranges. You all got on this website for different reasons, but you all come to the same place. So now I’m asking more of you than I have before. Maybe all. Sure as I know anything I know this, they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten, they'll swing back to the belief that they can make oranges...better. And I do not hold to that. So no more running. I aim to misbehave.

Don't like GMO? Look at the alternative

[EmagGeek]

No oranges.

The idiots that oppose protecting a worldwide food crop from certain extinction because they're scared of science ought be ignored flat out in this case.

Re: Genetic Roullette

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a trained geneticist and have been involved in genetics/genomics research for more than 20 years. I can categorically assure you that this book is complete and utter nonsense; in this particular case the one-star reviews are bang on.

Not a result of monoculture:

[arielCo]

Quoth 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.

Deal with it: there's no all-wise Mother Nature who has arranged for the perfect harmony of all beings. Species evolve taking advantage, in spite of, or in a mutual-benefit relationship with other; and then sometimes because the other simply isn't around. Previously isolated species may meet, and whole taxa may thrive or perish.

Citrus greening disease has been around for a century across species, and it's incurable. The alternatives are 1. eradicating the pathogen (good luck), 2. eradicating the vector (even harder, and craptons of pesticides are required), 3. making the vector immune (read: genetic manipulation), or 4. making the plant immune (again, genetic manipulation). Pick your poison.

Re:Not a result of monoculture:

[Twinbee]

How about 5: Farming indoors with artificial sunlight ?

Re:Not a result of monoculture:

[arielCo]

You're funny, but I want to do the numbers ... some cultivars claimed to get 100 tons/acre of Valencia oranges at the trees' peak*. At 60% juice content (optimistic), that's 60,000 liters/acre-year. How much for a 1-acre (63 m square) sealed greenhouse with filtered air? You can take it from here, but I guess our screwdrivers are getting expensive that way. (:

* http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/orange.html#Yield

Re:Not a result of monoculture:

[Twinbee]

It's impractical now, but when/if we get almost free limitless energy (which granted may not happen for centuries), stacked floors packed out with CFL bulbs as light would make a lot of sense.

Actually, I recall certain food is already produced in this way today, so maybe we're half way there already.

Re:Not a result of monoculture:

[arielCo]

I wasn't talking about artificial sunlight (why wouldn't you use a transparent/mesh ceiling?), but investment in infrastructure and maintenance. At any rate, indoor crops are high-yield, like mushrooms and pot. 14 High-Tech Farms Where Veggies Grow Indoors - Gizmodo

Re:Not a result of monoculture:

[The Cat]

You know we used to think we would never get rid of the crickets in our store. They were "incurable" too.

Until we turned a half-dozen tree lizards loose.

Not another chirp. Ever.

Re:Not a result of monoculture:

[arielCo]

From that link:

They also soaked infected periwinkle cuttings in different chemical compounds and found that two of them performed well as potential HLB treatments.The team published the results in the journalPhytopathology. Duan emphasized that the results are limited to greenhouse settings and that the chemical compounds, penicillin G sodium and biocide 2,2-dibromo-3-nitrilopropionamide (DBNPA), must still be evaluated in field trials and approved for use by regulatory agencies before commercial use is possible.

From Wikipedia:

DBNPAor2,2-dibromo-3-nitrilopropionamideis a quick-killbiocidethat easilyhydrolyzesunder bothacidicandalkalineconditions. It is preferred for its instability in water as it quickly kills and then quickly degrades to form a number of products, depending on the conditions, includingammonia,bromineions,dibromoacetonitrile, anddibromoacetic acid.[2]DBNPA acts similar to the typical halogen biocides.

IANAB, but this could do the trick; I'm not too hopeful for penicillin as more than a stopgap.

At any rate, odds are that some problems will only be solved by GM. We'd better understand and regulate before harm is done.

Fortunately...

[Type44Q]

Not clear if consumers will go for it though.

Fortunately most of them will never know. :p

Re:Fortunately...

[ebno-10db]

Not clear if consumers will go for it though.

Fortunately most of them will never know. :p

Why is that fortunate? Do you fancy yourself part of a technocratic elite that always knows best? Label the stuff and let people decide for themselves.

Re:Fortunately...

[plopez]

You just got whooshed...

Re:Fortunately...

[Type44Q]

Why is that fortunate?

/sarc ;)

Re:Genetic Roullette

[JDevers]

I agree with your point, but to be fair Round-Up (glyphosate) is an herbicide and not a pesticide. I know, sounds like semantics, but making good arguments but messing up the details makes your point less salient. Glyphosate is also one of the safest herbicides in wide spread use, numerous studies have shown little if any long term adverse side effects and while acute toxicity is a possibility it is extremely rare and almost certainly an issue of a accidental extreme exposure. Natural resistance to glyphosate is the REAL reason to not want it used so widely. It is an extremely useful herbicide and to apply it when MANY alternatives exist because it make life easier than those alternatives is poor agriculture.

Re:Genetic Roullette

[HiThere]

Basically I agree with your points. My feeling, however, is that new GMO products should be treated the same as new drugs. One can argue that the controls should be tighter, as they expose more people to the change. Often the changes created by a new GMO organism are greater than the change in a new drug (which is often just tweaking to preserve patentability).

I think this means that I'm in favor of tighter controls on GMO organisms than you are, but I'm not sure, as I also favor looser controls on new drugs (than are officially in place...I'm not considering here that drugs tests are run by the people who will profit from finding them safe and effective).

Re:Genetic Roullette

[the eric conspiracy]

Nonsense. Roundup Ready technology REDUCES pesticide use. Furthermore the active ingredient in RoundUp is perhaps the least toxic to mammals of any pesticide ever developed.

http://foodsafety.ksu.edu/en/article-details.php?a=3&c=16&sc=129&id=484

Re:"root" cause of this problem...

[Khyber]

Key word: CULTIVATED.

Bet you there's plenty of wild citrus that is immune to this, given it's guaranteed to have wildly different DNA versus the mono-culture cloning of the same plant over and over again.

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

[Pope Raymond Lama]

H.I.F.T.F.Y.

Monocultures

[techneeks]

are the real issue. If you plant 1000's of acres if one thing you are likely to have your crop wiped out by one disease that easily spreads. Use spacer crops to avoid spread of such diseases. I know it doesn't really fit with our ways of thinking but ... nature does it this way. Why not mimic it?

Re:Monocultures

[vux984]

are the real issue. If you plant 1000's of acres if one thing you are likely to have your crop wiped out by one disease that easily spreads. Use spacer crops to avoid spread of such diseases

Well it managed to spread to florida from ascia so if an ocean and a continent wasn't enough of a space I'm not sure what a field of pears is going to do.

Re:"root" cause of this problem...

[russotto]

They may be evil moustache-twisting gene splicers, but they're not idiots. If there were a wild citrus species which was immune, they'd be mining it for genes.

"improperly tested"

[SuperKendall]

"new and improperly tested food"

What the hell does that mean?

New GMO food is tested out the wazoo. Existing GMO food has been tested now by hundreds of millions of people with no ill effect.

The jury is in, has gone home, and written the tell-all book. GMO food is safe and it's madness not to support making food safer and healthier in this way.

Re:"improperly tested"

[sjames]

of course, it was also claimed that the added genes would NEVER get out of control, yet they have several times. That's why we have weeds that contain the roundup resistance from canola and how GMO corn approved only for livestock found it's way into corn for human consumption.

Part of the problem is that it can become irrevocable. For example, engineer corn to express an insecticide that is 'harmless' to humans. Skip forward a decade and we discover it causes cancer ( a common enough late discovery) but, OOOPS, all the corn has it now. We can starve or get cancer.

Re:"improperly tested"

[sFurbo]

Part of the problem is that it can become irrevocable. For example, engineer corn to express an insecticide that is 'harmless' to humans. Skip forward a decade and we discover it causes cancer ( a common enough late discovery) but, OOOPS, all the corn has it now. We can starve or get cancer.

Or get an old cultivar from a seed bank. It will take a few years to get enough seeds, but it won't be much more difficult than that. I believe that this is especially true for corn, where no wild form exists in most of the world.

What we can't so is take the genes out of the environment. If we figure out that it leaches to the ground water, there really is nothing we can do about it. However, this also goes for all the much worse natural insecticides out there, so I am not sure how likely this is to be a bigger problem than nature already is.

Re:"improperly tested"

[sFurbo]

Let me start by saying that we should not only rely on one cultivar, to avoid the kind of situations you outline, regardless of whether the loss is due to disease or to discovering that they are toxic.

Natural toxins tend to degrade in the environment

As a researcher that has a past in investigating the fate of natural products from common cultivars, allow me to say that no, not all of them do. Not to the degree that we demand new pesticides do, anyway. Or they do, but the degrade into something even worse. Or they leach into the ground water before they are degraded.

Re:"improperly tested"

[sjames]

I agree that we should not be so reliant on a single cultivar, but the fact is we frequently are. Corn is one of the current favorites. There is no such thing as high fructose wheat syrup :-)

Re:"improperly tested"

[sFurbo]

There are often several cultivars of each crop (I am not aware of the situation with corn, so I am speaking generally), which can have different properties, so that can help somewhat, depending on how different they are.

As for high fructose wheat syrup, it is normally just called glucose fructose syrup, and it is used extensively in Europe. The difference is due to farming subsidies, where the US subsidizes corn, leading to corn syrup being cheap, while the EU subsidizes wheat, leading to wheat syrup being cheap. AFAIK, both are overall more expensive than cane sugar, so, absent farming subsidies, everybody would use cane sugar, leading to more efficient global farming. But no, the politicians must have their pork barrels, and farmers are good at protesting *sigh*.

Wouldn't have monoculture without GMO fears

[SuperKendall]

replace monocrop orchards with polyculture farms

The ironic thing if scare-mongerers like you were not drumming up fear of GMO foods, every orchard would probably have many different varieties of even a single crop, each with a different GMO variant to test out some new flavor or ability.

GMO fears are what is leading to monoculture, because you are blocking scientific progress on any possible changes that can be made to food crops.

Re:Wouldn't have monoculture without GMO fears

[mdielmann]

Google wheat varieties, and gmo wheat varieties. From what I can see, there are a handful of GMO wheat varieties, about 2 dozen non-GMO varieties (start with wikipedia and branch out). Something tells me that non-GMO isn't quite the same thing as monoculture. Not too surprising to some of us - they don't even sound the same.

Re:GMO Oranges? Altering a Fruit's DNA To "Save" I

[interval1066]

"It became necessary to destroy the town to save it."

Re:Genetic Roullette

[ebno-10db]

Round-Up (glyphosate) is an herbicide and not a pesticide

Herbicides are pesticides. Pesticide is a very broad term. You may be confusing it with insecticide.

Diversify

[Flwyd]

Or they could, y'know, plant several varieties of orange trees to hedge against a narrow epidemic. Like, say, a parasite that his spinach really hard...

Re:Diversify

[vux984]

Or they could, y'know, plant several varieties of orange trees to hedge against a narrow epidemic. Like, say, a parasite that his spinach really hard...

Great idea. If only it was a narrow epidemic. But its not, so know what?

This particular disease affects every single citrus plant out there. Not just all varieties of orange, but also lemons, limes, grapefruit. Doesn't matter what you plant, if its citrus this disease will kill it.

Re:Diversify

[The Cat]

Wow, that's fascinating. You know what's even more fascinating? That this happened eight years ago and I've never heard of it before.

I read international news every fucking day.

Re:Diversify

[The Cat]

It hasn't been covered much, considering it threatens the survival of a double-digit percentage of our food supply.

The Problem With GMO

[SuperCharlie]

The problem with GMO is not the science of it, not the benefit of it, it is that GMO is driven by short term profit, plain and simple. If a company can splice in a beneficial trait for short term profit, they will do it. No questions.

The problem arises in not requiring or possibly even being able to conceive the mid or long term consequences.

An example is a story I read a few years ago... basically an ecosystem had collapsed because of the elimination of wolves. The strange part was that the system was collapsing because of the rivers running dry. An excerpt from Here
The chain of effects went roughly like this: No wolves meant that many more elk crowded onto inviting river and stream banks. A growing population of fat elk, in no danger of being turned into prey, gnawed down willow and aspen seedlings before they could mature. As the willows declined, so did beavers, which used the trees for food and building material. When beavers build dams and make ponds, they create wetland habitats for countless bugs, amphibians, fish, birds and plants, as well as slowing the flow of water and distributing it over broad areas. The consequences of their decline rippled across the land.

The point being, we are introducing unexpected consequences to a system that has come to balance over millions of years.

Its not the Oranges today we should worry about.. its the new breed of resultant pine trees in 20 years that kill all the butterflies and cause the grass on the plains to stop growing... wild example.. but did you really think exterminating wolves would make the rivers run dry?

Selective breeding != GMO

[msobkow]

There is a world of difference between selective breeding for desired traits and GMO technologies that insert foreign genetics.

Re:Selective breeding != GMO

[sFurbo]

Exactly what are these differences? Except for more control over the process with GMO, and a wider selection of genes, I don't see only technical differences that is not relevant for the final product.

Re:Selective breeding != GMO

[uninformedLuddite]

I think one of the differences he would probably be referring to is that you cant get an asparagus and a stick insect to breed. Are you being obtuse or were you dropped on your head as a child?

Option 5

[msobkow]

Selective breeding of disease-resistant plants instead of monoculture of juice oranges.

Re:Option 5

[arielCo]

How would that work? Both the article I linked and TFA (quoted) say it affects citrus plants in general: mandarins, Seville oranges, navel oranges, juice oranges... the only reason it hasn't gone global is that the vector bugs are more-or-less heat-sensitive. And it was described way before monoculture of citruses was a thing.

Short story: citrus as they exist now are kinda screwed, and this time our only fault is (possibly) helping spread the disease. Either we let them get screwed, spray the bugs and bacteria to extinction, or tweak evolution a bit.

Re:Option 5

[msobkow]

The key point is cultivated citrus. That isn't to say there aren't wild species and strains which have developed an immunity to the problem. But without investigating those wild species, we're doomed to the naval gazing failure of thinking that which we grow commercially is the only thing that matters for breeding.

Re:Option 5

[arielCo]

Got it. That's interesting, but I would curb my hopes. If the damn bug infects *different species*, how likely is it that a yet-unknown variety will be resistant, let alone a variety for each species? Of course monoculture is unwise, but diversity is in no way a guarantee of success.

We already have several GM crops in full production and chances are that you and I have eaten some of them, processed or fresh. I'm more concerned about unforeseen environmental effects (horizontal gene transfer) and proprietary genomes including Monsanto-esque shenanigans.

Alter DNA to save it?

[plopez]

Isn't that an oxymoron? Sort of like "we had to destroy the village in order to save it". Once altered it is no longer the same plant.

Re:to the moderator who modded me down

[yndrd1984]

If you believe I am incorrect, please reply with a rebuttal with primary sources that prove me wrong.

From your own citation [118]: "It may be that some Roundup Ready seed was carried to Mr. Schmeiser's field without his knowledge. Some such seed might have survived the winter to germinate in the spring of 1998. However, I am persuaded by evidence of Dr. Keith Downey, an expert witness appearing for the plaintiffs, that none of the suggested sources could reasonably explain the concentration or extent of Roundup Ready canola of a commercial quality evident from the results of tests on Schmeiser's crop. His view was supported in part by evidence of Dr. Barry Hertz, a mechanical engineer, whose evidence scientifically demonstrated the limited distance that canola seed blown from trucks in the road way could be expected to spread. I am persuaded on the basis of Dr. Downey's evidence that on a balance of probabilities none of the suggested possible sources of contamination of Schmeiser's crop was the basis for the substantial level of Roundup Ready canola growing in field number 2 in 1997."

In case it isn't clear: you can't be successfully sued for accidental gene transfer.

otherwise, you are in violation of the moderator rules and I'd be more than happy to report you so that your moderation privileges are revoked.

I can't tell be sure if this is wild bluster, trolling, or stupidity - but it's likely all three.

Happend with the papaya in Hawaii

[structural_biologist]

A similar situation occurred with the papaya ringspot virus threatening to devastate the papaya industry in Hawaii. However, in 1998, researchers developed a genetically modified papaya resistant to the virus, and this scientific development has been credited with saving Hawaii's papaya industry. Perhaps this offers some hope for a good outcome in using genetic modification to solve the problem of citrus greening.

Re: To all you GMO fans out there

[Blackeneth]

"labeling the food" does nothing except enrich trial lawyers. So you protect yourself by labeling *every* food product with "contains GMOs".

Just like everything in California has a label on it saying this product has chemicals in known by the State of California to cause cancer.

Software analogy is a plant (computer) virus

[giantgeek]

Would a technological analogy to releasing GMO plants be releasing a (for profit) computer virus? We can't depend on an AVG environmental virus scanner or the for profit corporation that sold the GMO to repair our damaged environment after all of the oranges (or other species) are infected/damaged with genetic programming side effects.

Who does code reviews on GMO's???

And then

[The Cat]

Suddenly! In 2013! At the height of public controversy over genetically modified food, the entire orange crop is affected by an incurable disease that can only be cured by genetic modification!

Aside from the fact that the incurable disease was cured, does anyone recognize pure bullshit any more?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Bullshit

[The Cat]

So the little insects flew all the way across the Pacific Ocean?

Re: Genetic Roullette

[Blackeneth]

Farmers have to buy new hybrid seed every year too. Are hybrid seed companies "monopolizing" food production too? Or is it simply that farmers like the properties of the hybrid plants, so they choose to buy seed every year?

Re:Monoculture is not Monocrop

[SuperKendall]

current GMO is not at all aimed at diversity.

No, it is not, THAT IS MY POINT. It cannot be when everyone is so afraid of GMO that they pile regulation on top of regulation.

In reality right now, each and every farmer could be exploring GMO in their own crops, bringing about a variety and diversity of food products the like of which the world has never seen.

The reason most farms do not avail themselves of this diversity is short-term thinking

No, it's because grafting is an incredibly slow and time consuming process that is done one plant at a time.

And for some crops there is very little diversity in natural crops to graft with, GMO opens up a far vaster range of possibilities.

Real competition, ending farm subsidies to millionaires/billionares

That is so hilarious when the regulations making GMO so hard are the reason the large companies own farming now! Only they can afford the tremendous costs to make GMO hybrids that work best in the field.

You (and the rest of the GMO alarmists) are the ones supporting Monsanto.

How surprising, alarmist bullshit from an AC

[SuperKendall]

Several studies have showed already that monsanto has lied about for example how the herbicides are not taken up by our intenstines.

Why am I not surprised that this comes from an AC, with no links whatsoever to provide proof?

Re:"root" cause of this problem...

[Khyber]

" If there were a wild citrus species which was immune, they'd be mining it for genes."

Not necessarily. It'd cost a huge fortune to mount a global hunt for wild species with immunity. Cheaper to try to engineer it yourself.

Source: Research director for multinational horticultural corporation.

Re:to the moderator who modded me down

[yndrd1984]

Canola POLLEN can travel for kilometres, therefore his fields could have been accidentally contaminated in the previous generation

Nobody disputes that. Small amounts of gene flow are expected and aren't a legal issue.

he plants next season's crop full of GM genes and bam, field of roundupready canola

Not a whole field full. And remember that it was the "concentration or extent" that the judge was citing, not just that the RR trait showed up.