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Make Way For "Mutant" Crops As GM Foods Face Opposition
squiggleslash writes "The concerns, legitimate or otherwise, about genetically modified foods such as Monsanto's Round-up Ready soy-beans, may be causing unintended consequences: Monsanto's rivals such as BASF are selling 'naturally' mutated seeds where extreme exposure to ultra-violet is used to increase the rate of mutations in seeds, a process called mutagenesis. These seeds end up with many of the same properties, such as herbicide resistance, as GM seeds, but inevitably end up with other, uncontrolled, mutations too. The National Academy of Sciences warns that there's a much higher risk of unintentionally creating seeds that have active health risks through mutagenesis than by other means, including relatively controlled genetic engineering, presumably because of the blind indiscriminate nature of mutations caused by the process. But because mutagenesis is effectively an acceleration of the natural system of evolution, it's very difficult to regulate."
Is this a joke article? Please.
We've been using random mutagenesis for over 25 years now to improve seeds, and guess what, we improved our technology over time. Not only is the secondary mutation mitigated via thorough back-crossing, but these days technology moved that only the gene of interest is actually changed. Read some recent patents by Monsanto or Keygene for a clue. This article is fear mongering bullshit that would have had truth in it if it was written in 1975.
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
"It's mutantly delicious!"
is letting one corporation get a choke-hold on the world's food supply.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Question is: are the 'mutants' patent encumbered?
...that one of the "other, uncontrolled, mutations" turns out to be a cure for something." From the Roundup-resistant strawman.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
That is the nature of ALL mutations
This is the crap that these pearl-clutching Luddites actually believe. They don't even know what natural is.
Hey, let's mutate the shit out of our food. What could possibly go wrong?
This sounds like an add for Monsanto and FUD against their competitors. Notice how Monsanto's brand name is mentioned, but not those of their competitor's products brand names.
should get the death penalty.
I, for one, welcome our Soy Overlords
(Don't blame me - I voted for Monsanto)
Has everything to do with opposition to gene patents and contracts governing use of sold seeds.
Top 5 Myths of Genetically Modified Seeds
So what's the worry?
We don't let irradiated food in the marketplace without labelling for it, and since this is not patentable, it looks to me like this is more about one of two things:
1) A big FUCK YOU to consumers who do not accept patented GMOs
2) An attempt to make up a scary proposition to force people to "accept" GMOs
Neither a real attempt to make a product.
If this is so "natural", they won't be patenting the result.... RIGHT????
The same ignorant peasants opposing GM that oppose vaccination programs that oppose nuclear power?
The whole anti-GMO "movement" is funded in large part by the organic food industry. Finding themselves unable to win the race for consumer's hard-earned money by being better than their competition, the organic food industry is trying to win by tripping the other runners. There is essentially no scientific support
Monsanto on the other hand is obviously a grass roots civil movement... If it's science you want, here's some for you Precautionary principle.
If we fuck up things to eat on this planet, it's a rather big deal.
The organic industry was ALWAYS marketed as naturalness, not "better" (whatever that means).
The whole anti-GMO "movement" is funded in large part by the organic food industry. Finding themselves unable to win the race for consumer's hard-earned money by being better than their competition, the organic food industry is trying to win by tripping the other runners.
No: it has been found that the yield of GMO crops is not better then that of classical crops. Unfortunately, the original article is behind a pay wall.
'Naturalness', whatever that means too. We've been doing selective breeding on all of our foods for millennia, so I don't consider organic foods to be particularly natural either. Traditional, I'll give them that, but natural? You have to be kidding me.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
No, from the very papers you referenced, it has been found that *a single* GMO crop didn't have higher yields than classical crops. You can't extrapolate that to others.
Your generalization is like saying the inline assembler optimizations one programmer performed didn't speed up a program, so inline assembler optimizations can't speed up programs. Which is clearly BS.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
So the question is, if a GMO does not provide better yields than a traditional crop, why do farmers purchase them? They are certainly more expensive than the alternatives. With something like Soybeans, you'd be hard pressed to find many field that have non-gmo soybeans in the US.
So if your conclusions hold, either the farmers are complete idiots, or are being controlled by the illuminati.
This needs to mentioned every 5 years since most people don't realize how Europe works. The main political force in the European Union is France. The main political force in France is the french farmers. French take industrial competition to be a state affair. They do so as a matter of fact. The French industry is far behind the US industry as far as genetic engineering. This puts French farmers at a market-place disadvantage. This is the sole driving reason behind all European anti-genetic engineering propaganda. Everything else is excuses. Are there occasional problems with some ge crops? Sure. Just like there are bugs in programs. They get fixed. It's not a disaster. It's a nuisance.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
You can't extrapolate that to others.
Of course, he can. And he does. Sure he does it to support an agenda. But cherry picking science is how the anarchists manage to convince everyone that they are on the side of reason. Don't bother arguing actual scientific method with anyone against-GM-crops, pro-AGW, against-fraking, etc. They are not out to establish scientific facts. They are out to justify their own ineptness.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
The seed mutations and GM modifications are not necessarily the big deal. The big deal is that the plants have been given improved resistance to herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides, as well as the ability to make their own. So the farmer uses more and nastier chemicals on ther plants, and you wind up eating more nasty chemicals. Then you mutate into brain-dead closed-minded idiots. Oh, wait, too late. Haven't you seen the studies of lab rats, etc who have been feed gmo corn? They look horrible.
wake up and hold your nose
The concerns, legitimate or otherwise, about genetically modified foods such as Monsanto's Round-up Ready soy-beans, may be causing unintended consequences
This is all wrong and mistaken.
The concerns are legitimate. Look into "gliadin" if you do not already know. That was a product of 1976 mutagenesis experiments. People who eat it consume an additional 400 calories every day. It's popular with the food industry and it is why many people are fat.
The unintended consequences are the result of lax anti-GM regulations. Mutagenesis is Genetic Modification (GM). The problem is not that the "backlash" against transgenic Cauliflower Mosaic Virus vectors has pushed people to these crude methods, the problems are multiple and are as follows:
#1. that mutagenesis has ever been legal and has already been used to produce GM food.
#2. that gliadin-enhanced food is legal
#3. that glyphosphate (Roundup) is legal
#4. that glyphosphate-resistant crops are made via Cauliflower Mosaic Virus transgenic infection is legal.
#5. that any person who speaks English would write one word in favor of the hubris of Man and the obscure mutation of nature.
Hail to the misinformed who think agricultural mutagenesis has benefited humanity. You need to re-learn.
No, it isn't. The natural system is mutate-compete-crossbreed-mutate-compete-crossbreed-mutate-compete-crossbreed, not mutate-mutate-mutate-mutate-mutate.
What's next? Telling people who bear misfigured children due to radiation exposure "ooooh, you are so lucky: your child will be like the end product of a million years of evolution!". That's just crap.
You know, "naturalness," like smallpox, yersinia, polio and Ebola.
GM 'food' is destroy our planet and killing the population - no one can justify using them, other than to line Monsanto's pockets and give them control of the world's food supply.
http://nathanlindsell.blogspot.com/
It's not just selective breeding. Many of the varieties on offer at your local "organic" food stall are the product of radioactive mutation. There's nothing in the standards for designating food "organic" that bars using crops whose DNA has been randomly scrambled by radiation or mutagenic chemicals. So it's no surprise that many of them are.
If this GMO is the same as the ybridisation and controlled evolution that humans have been doing to their food for thousands of years, then why the fuck are they being patented?
Yours is the same apologetic bullshit that has "Your car is powered by the sun" because the oil comes from plants or animals left underground and their body chemistry was stored energy from the sun.
Nobody answers it and it's bloked to buggery, therefore how is spam still working?
For the same reason as GMOs in the USA do: the farmers are being convinced that it is beneficial.
Thing about confidence limits is that you can try to show a benefit 20 times and even if there's no benefit whatsoever, you can expect to see one false positive in the sample.
So sit on the 19 others and produce the one.
Simples.
"Natural" is nasty, brutish and short. Not to mention one hell of lot smaller population density than we have there.
Hmm.. Maybe you're on to something.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
"Organic agriculture", or as our grandparents called it: "agriculture".
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Deadly mutagenesis! Happens naturally all the time. See any number of stories of fungi becoming deadly for no apparent reason.
We use it ourselves, as others have noted.
Actually, "deadly" is just code for a failure of your microbiome to process the organics. If you have crappy microflora, don't blame the UV. Blame your diet. If you have flexible, powerful microbes, you're going to be fine.
Translated: Eat well or die, Earthling scum! (Sorry, channelling my inner Sontaran.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I have two questions for the crowd here and elsewhere who asserts GMOs are safe and haters are just paranoid fools.
1. When you go to the store and buy roundup to kill grass/weeds at your local home depot the label warns of danger of getting any on your skin suggesting you should immediately wash any off.
The only reason to modify crops to be resistant to roundup is so they can be sprayed by accident and not die. However if you do this there is no longer any incentive to keep crops from not being sprayed arbitrarily to save time/money. This means more shit we are eating contains more roundup than it otherwise would within it.
Is this untrue or unfair? Why? Please be specific.
Assuming the above is true how is ingesting food containing roundup any safer for you than getting a little on your hands while weeding the lawn? Is only the home depot purchased roundup harmful for you?
Please I just don't understand the logic... it makes no sense on its face at all. Please tell me how to make it make sense...what am I missing?
2. "GMOs are safe backed by decades of studies" I have never asserted and never will assert all GMOs are unsafe. Not all things that grow "naturally" are safe either. However GMOs are changing all the time and new strains are being constantly produced. How the hell can you just blanket assume all GMOs are safe all strains regardless of the details of each strain and regardless of studies produced before the introduction of subsequent strains?
What those crops will evolve is a mostly useless trait: radiation resistance.
I am embarrassed that so many people have opinions on this and so few have spent even 10 minutes researching both sides of this subject. I would not be surprised if there wasn't a single person on here is actually a farmer. The fact is that decrying GMO foods is a luxury of those who live in first world countries and have food. This ignorence and the fear caused by it doesn't hurt anyone but the people who need help the most, those without food. The world needs food and it needs better ways of growing that food. Mankind has been actively modifying the genetics of plants since we started cultivating land to grow food. Nature has been doing it for even longer then man. Everything you eat has been genetically modified through selection and breeding. Have you ever seen what the banana looked like before man modified its genetics though selective breeding and cultivation? http://www.bypassfanpages.com/2010/04/what-the-banana-looked-like-before-humans-started-selective-breeding/ nature can only get us so far on it's own. That is why we have brains and opposable thumbs, to improve the world around us. If you don't like the way Monsanto does business or creates products then get off your ass and develop an open source alternative to their products. Nobody is stopping anyone from developing a better system or product and sharing it with the world. You could be the worlds hero for solving hunger and be filthy rich. If you are just complaining and not working hard to present a real viable alternative for the whole world then you are wasting oxygen that could be used for people willing to actually do something.
The organic industry was ALWAYS marketed as naturalness, not "better" (whatever that means).
You must not live in Canada or have visited the EU in the last 5 years or so. They've marketed it as "better" and "healthier" for you, not sure if they still do in the EU, but in Canada they got fined for it.
Om, nomnomnom...
They talk about genetic "engineering" as if it's a precise technical operation. But my understanding is that the kind of "engineering" done is to get a plasmid with some gene and blast it randomly at the plant. Don't know how it will land, don't know where, don't know how it will be expressed. So you then grow lots of plants with this randomly inserted genetic sequence and test whether any of the plants end up having the behavior you desire and no apparent behaviors that you don't want.
"Engineering" always seemed a deliberately misleading word.
That said, I totally buy what the article said from the NAS, that the health risks from blasting genes are low, and the health risks from UV radiation to create random mutations is low.
The article didn't at all address the environmental risks of over farming due to non-enhanced crops vs the environmental risks of irradiated vs gene-inserted crops. And didn't mention any economic risks with monopolies or IP ownership of seeds themselves.
Addressing solely "health" risks at point of consumption is also deliberately misleading.
If it's science you want, here's some for you Precautionary principle [wikipedia.org].
That isn't science, it's a general policy position.
But because mutagenesis is effectively an acceleration of the natural system of evolution, it's very difficult to regulate.
Acceleration of mutation rate via intentional acts is regulatable just as acts of genetic engineering by other means, or walking across a street. There is nothing difficult about that.
it has been found that the yield of GMO crops is not better then that of classical crops
And why would it be better? The purpose of most GMOs is to lower input costs - fewer herbicides and pesticides, no need to till, etc.
That's like ignoring fuel efficiency when comparing cars - "Same top speed, so it's not any better!".
So the question is, if a GMO does not provide better yields than a traditional crop, why do farmers purchase them?
Just in case this wasn't rhetorical, it's to reduce input costs. Take the Bt trait - if the corn/cotton makes its own pesticide, you don't have to buy it separately and drag several tons of diesel-powered equipment around in circles to spray it.
Now I can get my laser eyes!
Every year, Monsanto spends more than a billion dollars promoting its business through large pay-offs into the pockets of key politicians, and bought media coverage like this in both the specialist press, and more mainstream outlets.
Here we have a play so transparent, even the average reader of Slashdot should be able to see through it. Go to Wikipedia and enter "FALSE DILEMMA". I know this as 'false dichotomy', but this snake-oil method of selling evil to the sheeple goes by many other names.
This is how little the owners of Slashdot think of your intelligence. And yet, you'll get the usual army of Slashdot's vile shills reminding you that you don't want mandatory labelling of Monsanto content in foodstuffs in the USA. And, of course, Mansanto has actually taken companies to court for voluntarily placing such information on their food labels, paying judges to declare that it is ILLEGAL for a company to tell you when their product is Monsanto free.
Monsanto is at the same level of evil as Blackwater, the oft-renamed USA government's official mercenary army organisation that has access to America's most sophisticated military equipment, and carries out atrocities for Team Obama whenever it is politically inexpedient to have the actual US military appear involved.
The history of CJD (mad cow disease- the prion infection responsible for the misdiagnosed explosion of late-life 'Parkinson's disease' seen in the USA) shows exactly where Monsanto style 'science' can lead, as does the scourge of AIDS created when safety protocols in the production of new Oral Polio Vaccines were ignored. And KNOW this. When Monsanto creates another horror story like CJD and AIDS, you will be told that the problem just magically occurred out of no-where, like the official stories behind the origin of AIDS and CJD in Man. Industrialised 'science' NEVER admits its 'mistakes', and has enough power, money and influence to ensure that self-serving falsehoods are created, and promoted by their in-pocket associates in the specialist and mainstream press.
I recall from 'high school' science that nature is affected by 'activation energies' in naturally occurring chemical reactions. Evolution and natural selection respond to many such statistical limitations. But Man can over-ride such limits in the mechanical universe, using our 'free will', and cause things to happen that are beyond the bounds of all possible probability. Therefore, what Monsanto does, it does precisely because it can have ***NO*** analogue in natural selection. And, therefore, no aspect of the natural world is evolved in any way to cope with the malicious 'hacking' that Monsanto promotes. Monsanto's work, by design, is like those 'war' trojans created by the US government to place into the computer systems of the 'enemy'. And when Stuxnet wreaks havoc across the business and civilian computer systems of the world, Obama shrugs, grins, and says "like I care". Monsanto's owners (and those Monsanto 'buys' with their dirty money) have the same attitude exactly.
Yes, one farmer deliberately selected only Monsanto seed that blew onto his land and grew exclusively that, but that's the only time anyone ever got sued. If Monsanto ever sued someone for true accidental contamination it would be cutting their own throat.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Because many GMO supporters like to claim GMOs are required and will solve world hunger because they have significantly higher yields than non-GMO crops. That is a lie for more GMOs.
While I am happy to side with people concerned with health concerns about GM, the biggest issue for me is that those people claim to enforce IP rights on what feeds humanity.
There is also the dissemination problem. Experimenting GM in outdoor fields is not responsible research, since nobody know what will happen with dissemination
We have been artificially selecting seeds for over 12,000 years now, whether we do it by genetically modifying them or chemical or some other process, the results will be the same - we will discard the selections that produce unwanted results.
We've been genetically engineering foods for thousands of years (grapes, tomatoes, ...) through the process of grafting.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
It is critical that humans not consume mutated or otherwise genetically modified plants. These might be harmful
It is likewise critical that absolutely no mutant or modified plant meke it into the food chain or breed with natural unmodified - and therefore safe foods.
Therefore we hereby declare that no further modications of foodstuffs are allowed, either through artificial or Pseudo natural means, and all foodstuffs must be extensively tested to ensure that no mutations, modifications or evolvements take place.
All foodstuffs must be genome mapped as soon as possible, and then declared as the standard.
The importance of this testing and the results ares of such importance that any food that does not conform to the standard genome mapping must be immediately destroyed.
We must rid the world of the scourge of modified food of any sort. Only then will the human race be safe from any non-standard food.
We have formed an army to ensure compliance and the safety of the human race - the Eradicorps.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I'm not sure why you're being modded flamebait, it's true. Look, for example, who was funding Prop 37. People out there know they can make money by creating and playing off fears, and that's exactly what the organic movement does. They want people to look at food and wonder if feeding it to their kids will make them sick, so that they'll pay extra for their 'better' and 'safe' foods. There's also organizations like Greenpeace who sell fear for donation money; why do you think Golden Rice, which could save thousands of lives, is such a high priority for them? Why do you think they, specifically, targeted and destroyed CSIRO's low GI wheat research field, which, if it works (and since Greenpeace destroyed the research we don't know that it does) could produce diabetic friendly bread with a direct benefit to consumers? Sure, some people might have to die, but Greenpeace & other professional activists and the organic industry have to keep that money rolling in...of course, Monsanto is the evil greedy one.
As a sufferer from Celiac Disease, I welcome anything genetically engineered that would make my life easier. I actually look forward to a Gattaca future. Imagine getting a checklist of possibilities to check for later in life, instead of dumb luck.
Because many GMO supporters like to claim GMOs are required and will solve world hunger because they have significantly higher yields than non-GMO crops. That is a lie for more GMOs.
They talk about this because GM crops can be used in areas where traditional crops will not grow. It's not all about yield per acre, but how many acres you can plant and where you can plant them.
Do you think they built the thing under specced because they were nefarious?
No.
They justified it by telling little lies to themselves about how it was right, it must be: the higher ups would not do this if it were *dangerous*.
People packing cigarettes know they cause cancer.
They need a job, however, and they rationalise it with "They don't HAVE to smoke", and elide the knowledge that the cigs are made deliberately addictive.
And so on.
That cross breeding was done by human effort. And the mutation is being done deliberately, by human effort.
So none of them are patentable, because you cannot patent a thing you discover in nature and you continue to assert that GMOs are what's been going on in nature for thousands of years.
Wow, you really do need to lay off the tin foil there, buddy.
I'm MUCH more comfortable with seeds that have mutagenesis induced by external UV than I am with seeds that have cross-species (and sometimes cross-kingdom) genes inserted into them. I would be less comfortable with seeds that have mutagenesis induced by chemical means.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
So we can keep spraying crops with glyphosate and they absorb it and don't die so we get to eat it. The way glyphosate kills plants is by interfering with the shikimate pathway. While that pathway doesn't exist in human cells it DOES EXIST in the bacteria in your gut which controls 80% of your immune system. So lets poison our gut bacteria and see what auto-immune and inflamation disorders increase.
- http://people.csail.mit.edu/seneff/
Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff, "Glyphosate's Suppression of Cytochrome P450 Enzymes and Amino Acid Biosynthesis by the Gut Microbiome: Pathways to Modern Diseases" Entropy 2013, 15(4), 1416-1463; doi:10.3390/e15041416
Download the paper and go argue with them. Eating Roundup is STUPID.
Protip: DNA is universal. There's nothing that marks any genes as being from any particular species. It's just DNA. The original species of a trait doesn't matter at all if DNA—what you're taking—is species-blind.
Whoever thinks this is a great idea, volunteer to test it :)
After all, evolution only produces better products, right?
Looking forward to results of the study.
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me