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China Pulls Plug On Genetically Modified Rice and Corn
sciencehabit writes China's Ministry of Agriculture has decided not to renew biosafety certificates that allowed research groups to grow genetically modified (GM) rice and corn. The permits, to grow two varieties of GM rice and one transgenic corn strain, expired on 17 August. The reasoning behind the move is not clear, and it has raised questions about the future of related research in China.
Considering this is the country that put melamine in milk and cadmium in toys, this speaks volumes.
I would like to know their official justification.
So get out, Monsanto, you dirty capitalist pigs!
Seriously, though, this means little. China will use their own knockoff version now and market it, as well.
I have been a daily slashdot visitor since about the year 2001. Just now I was redirected to a full page ad that I would associate with crappy, suspicious websites.
I don't want to be another complainer, but this site is begging me to stop visiting. I am not very happy.
Public skepticism about GMO's has been growing in China and the government there is extremely concerned with anything that can enrage popular discontent. They know and are very fearful that a movement or protests against GMO's can quickly snowball and morph into anti-government protests. China is extremely mindful of protests because its reliance on global trade and the internet means that they way it can respond is much more limited. Another Tienanmen Square would be a complete disaster with severe repercussions for the government.
Just because they currently can feed people doesn't mean that will last. There will be droughts, infestations, population increases, and more events that can be helped by GMOs. Of course China seems to have no problem destroying the environment with massive amounts of chemicals whose usage could be drastically reduced with proper science. The Chinese government seems to place a low value on an human life so maybe this is just their own sick version of population control.
The ruling party has a lot of engineers and technical people, but the corner cutting happens mostly in the construction and manufacturing industries. No, what the higher ups do is not cutting corners, but filling those industries with people they think they can get bribed from. And the mass suppression before protests get out of hand (ie, start being effective).
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
to save money
According to the info @ http://www.plosone.org/article...
The GMO rice requires much less application of pesticide than the non GMO counterparts (2 applications versus 5)
If the GMO rice is approved then the pesticide industry in China (both local / international vendors) will stand to lose a lot of sales
It could be their lobby which had killed the GMO rice
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Dude, being a ruler in China essentially means being above the law. Why bother with petty, complicated things like putting CEOs in that bribe you when you can simply appropriate public money as you see fit?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That is the reason.
Not every GMO contains nicatoids (engineers would know that). There are still some kids in China who could use yellow rice, and they definitely could export it to their neighbors.
Monsanto deserves a firey death for setting back non-psychopathic GMO's by 30 years or more.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Uh, no. You don't know how China works. Look what happened to Bo Xilai. China's ruling party has real problems, so there's no need to keep pandering to Cold War era myths about how the Chinese government operates.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
Golden rice mostly solves a problem of outsider interference without actually resolving the problem. The main reason why it's even an issue is that the IMF pressured those people to only grow cash crops with little consideration paid for the malnutrition that resulted. GMOs don't really solve that problem, they just mean that now those people are going to be dependent upon GMOs that may or may not fuck up their other crops and may or may not be as affordable in the future.
Correct. Instead of a lobby that everybody can potentially be aware of, you just pay the fine to the politician directly.
While I know the situation has improved markedly since the cold war, I highly doubt China has any serious checks and balances to prevent government corruption. I mean fuck, they have the world's largest firewall which is specifically intended to halt free speech. If you think the NSA is secretive, you know little. Unlike the NSA, the Chinese government not only has the authority to spy on your thoughts, but it also has the authority to bend them to its own will.
Seriously, toxins in the soil, air and water pollution, what a a few GM genes really going to do to life expectancy?
Anyway 'Organic' crops have a much better price, and it is cost effective for 'hand farming' when jobs go south.
They found it was cheaper to fake it from plastic.
It doesn't have any checks and balances to prevent corruption. However, those who are corrupt enough to cause trouble for the government can expect to be executed.
The firewall, I think even the Chinese government knows it's ineffective, and it certainly knows people can get around it easily enough.
As for "bend them to its will", no government can do that. It can suppress, and the Chinese government can do that quite well. But it knows well enough that if it suppresses too much, there would rebellion. The threat of rebellion runs all through Chinese history and there's always the millennia old cultural inheritance of the concept of righteous rebellion that not even the Chinese government can ignore. This was the case even during the Cold War. Why do you think they went after the Gang of Four over the Cultural Revolution?
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
less pesticide b3cause its grown into the plant. mmmm sounds like its good for you if it kills bugs it will kill you. no they dont want gmo because look at India... what is it 80 something farmers a day commit suicide because they bought GMOs and the seeds die after one planting and it cost a fortune to keep buying these junk seeds, when the alternative is natural, where upon seeds are replenished. but once you buy GMO seeds once, monsanto can come after you if there is any remnants left next season IF you dont use their seeds.
ohh wait...
You mean like wheat, a hybrid of three species, and strawberries, another hybrid?
Or corn, bred to be so radically different from its ancestral teosinte that most people wouldn't even recognize it?
Or carrots, which were not orange until humans bred them to be that way?
Or cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, kale, and Brussel's sprouts, which are all the same species with various genetic mutations dramatically altering their form?
Or apples, which are selected from somatic mutations and grafted onto root stocks?
Or citrus, which is altered through selecting radiation induced mutations?
Or pluots, which had to have their embryos cut out of the parent plant and cultured in vitro because they would have never developed naturally?
Or seedless watermelons, which are bred from chemically induced chromosome doubled watermelons?
Or tomatoes, which have genes introgessed from other wild species?
Oh, you're just referring to the thing you knew was unnatural, not all the things you were utterly clueless about. Well, since it would be such a bother to admit your initial premise and driving belief are completely inane, I'll wait while you move the goalpost to attempt to justify your irrationality.
total utter bollocks
The answer to this is very easy. It is cheaper and quicker to steal the information from the U.S. and other countries than to reproduce the 'wheel'.
The suicides aren't attributable to the failures of GM crops. GM crops, in fact, have actually resulted in drastically increased yields for Indian farmers.
http://issues.org/30-2/keith/
GMOs have no special association with neonicotinoids. Some GMO seed comes with a coating of pesticide, but so do quite a large number of conventional varieties. It's not a distinguishing selling point of GMO.
It's a ridiculous red herring.
Where does this assertion come from exactly? GMOs don't "fuck up" other crops in the same sense that conventionally bred crops don't "fuck up" other crops.
FUD about GMOs is just as bad as FUD about any other technology.
Not every GMO contains nicatoids
No GMO crop is modified to produce neonicotinoids, although some anti-GMO people have tried to conflate these separate issues because GMO crops, like non-GMO crops, may be sprayed with them.
Monsanto deserves a firey death for setting back non-psychopathic GMO's by 30 years or more.
I do not believe this is Monsanto's fault. The mainstream opposition to genetic engineering started with the Flavr Savr tomato, which was released before Monsanto released any GE crops. The blame lies with activist/interest groups like Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Navdanya, Organic Consumer's Association, ect. and other groups that saw genetic engineering as an opportunity to further their own social, political, or financial interests. Those 'psychopathic' GMOs you mention are insect resistant crops (reduced insecticide use), herbicide tolerant (sounds bad, actually results in lower environmental impact via the substitution of harsher herbicides and the promotion of no-till agriculture) and virus resistant crops, with drought tolerant corn recently approved (no independent data on its impact yet though).
Consider this; do you really think the same people who lie about university, NGO, and publicly developed GE crops are going to be honest about Monsanto? These anti-GMO groups aren't just opposing Monsanto's crops, they're opposing, vandalizing, and slandering all GE crops. Golden Rice, BioCassava, Bangladeshi Bt eggplant, Rainbow papaya, HoneySweet plum, CSIRO's low GI wheat (destroyed by anti-science thugs), INRA's disease resistant grape rootstock (also destroyed), Rothamsted's insect repelling wheat, VIB's cisgenic potatoes (also destroyed), ect. All publicly developed, all opposed (or destroyed) by anti-GMO groups. Put Monsanto's blame where it is due, but this one is not on them.
China has a growing middle class, and a growing class of perpetually single men. They need to stop the middle class from becoming so affluent so quickly (where do you park 400 million cars?), and they need to find jobs for the millions of sad horny guys who could easily become revolutionaries. If the cost of food rises a few percent here and there it bleeds excess capital out of the system, inconveniences a few on the long tail, but as a whole (remember, China thinks long-term, and like a single organism) the economy will be better off.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Why? Because it's far easier, and cheaper, for China to steam GMOs developed in other countries than develop their own.
No corruption in the Chinese government? Either you're a troll or a party member.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
In stark contrast to Western nations, China is largely ruled by qualified engineers and technicians. They presumably understand the insanity of radically undermining the technology that feeds most of the world's human beings: agriculture. Any experimentation with agriculture should be done with extreme caution, and as far as possible contained so it is reversible.
Less important, but also worth considering: do we really want a world where one or two vast bloated Western corporations literally own the food that keeps everyone alive? I don't think so.
And that's without even considering the multiple proven and documented cases of specific harm caused by GM "food".
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
No, actually: not in the least bit like any of those. Like grafting in genes from entirely different species, without the slightest idea (or any way of finding out) what the effects will be in the long term.
But that doesn't matter, does it? To those whose only reality is profit, there is no future beyond the current quarter.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Wish I had mod points for you. I get so sick of the Monsanto bashing on /. sometimes. They're treated even more unfairly than Microsoft here.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Golden rice is OPEN SOURCE. Monsanto and its lawyers are nowhere in sight. And no, golden rice has no magical effects on other species around it.
Right on schedule the moving goalpost away from 'genetically changing a plant is bad' to 'the way I don't like is different therefore bad'. If you note, you'll see that everything I mentioned are actually all quite different. Various types of somatic and induced mutations, selective breeding, biotech facilitate wide crossing/embryo rescue, artificial chromosome alteration...very different from genetic engineering, where a single well known gene is inserted. Why not lump genetic engineering in with everything else and select the chromosomal duplication to be the pariah? After all, that is also an entirely different thing, which I don't think is particularly meaningful, but means about as much as your argument. What I personally do is both more and less extreme than transgenics, depending on how you want to view it. The lumping of everything as 'conventional breeding' to make a dichotomy between it and genetic engineering is a very simplistic view.
without the slightest idea (or any way of finding out) what the effects will be in the long term.
Fallacy number two, the straw man. Do you really think the scientific community, which overwhelmingly supports GE crops (don't even try to deny this), does not pause to consider such things? Perhaps you could explain your long term fears in less vague terms?
But that doesn't matter, does it? To those whose only reality is profit, there is no future beyond the current quarter.
Sorry, the corporate card has no bearing on scientific topics. Save it for politics.
Note that GP said, less corrupt, not no corruption.
It is quite possible to be less corrupt that the US while still having some considerable corruption left.
It has to be either they have developed their own to the point they don't want competition, someone didn't get sufficiently greased or irrational fears. Bribes can trump the others so there's your reason.
Possible? Sure. Probable? No. That country's government is a cancerous polyp on the anus of its constituents.
It can suppress, and the Chinese government can do that quite well. But it knows well enough that if it suppresses too much, there would rebellion.
What counts as too much then? Because this doesn't: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I mean seriously are you sympathetic of the Chinese government or something? You'd very well have to be to believe what you just said.
The final results won't be tallied up for the next 30-40 years...
I'm betting the GMO foods will be touted as one of the worst experiments on human health in the history of mankind.
Did you even read a word I wrote, or do you think anyone who doesn't agree with you must be siding with the Chinese government?
There have been other protests and troubles since Tiananmen, and they have been largely avoiding another incident. Even the mess with the Uighurs right now. Where do you see the tanks rolling in? Do you realize parts of the country continue to open up in terms of economics AND freedom? Why did you ignore my example of Bo Xilai?
And speaking of Tiananmen, do you even understand why that even happened? They weren't doing it because they were being classical dictator villains hell bent on bending people to their will. They did it because the leaders were actually scared the protests could turn into real rebellions that would topple their power. Especially Deng Xiaoping, who was purged twice before due to the Cultural Revolution, which was in its own way a rebellion.
You need to understand Chinese political history before making assumptions that it works like a European nation. China never had the mentality of a divine right of kings.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
The Chinese government remembers the opium wars, and exploitation of China over profits, and disregard for their welfare in it. What do you think would happen with GMO plants that you don't own, and not only in the intellectual property sense, where it could be pirated, but you don't own it because it's not fertile seed, and you have to keep going back to the original manufacturer for a survival, after he successfully convinced you to get rid of all seeds able to produce fertile seeds themselves, so you no longer have a means to go back to them if seed prices go up, by, mm, say 10 million times of their present cost? And that price is not an overstatement, there is a huge amount of money to be made blackmailing the whole world's population over their stomachs. Everybody has to eat, no matter what the price, therefore the price, in absence of excess supply, which of course would be artificially created by withholding GMO seeds, tends to infinity. To withhold GMO seeds all you have to do is create artificial catastrophies around the available funds of seeds, and lose much of the supply like that. Supply/demand, with a hard demand, is a really easy way to make money if you can cut the supply hard and fast. But only after the alternatives to run to, such as traditional fertile seeds have been abandoned, and it's not possible to have them as an option.
"Sorry, the corporate card has no bearing on scientific topics. Save it for politics".
You don't sound stupid, so you must be cynical. It goes without saying that no scientific results can possibly be trusted without a clear understanding of ALL corporate influence and funding behind them. Witness, to take just one example of hundreds, the current advocacy of statins by panels of scientists most of whom have received huge sums of money from the corporations that manufacture statins.
"Do you really think the scientific community, which overwhelmingly supports GE crops (don't even try to deny this), does not pause to consider such things?"
You do make your astroturfing obvious, don't you? 8-)
1. In science, it doesn't matter in the least if anyone "overwhelmingly" supports any conclusion. All that counts is whether that conclusion is true. Copernicus and Galileo were right; tens of thousands of "experts" were wrong. Semmelweiss was right; the vast majority of the "medical profession" who had him fired, drove him mad, and had him confined in a lunatic asylum were wrong.
2. We have no way of knowing what the "scientific community" (whatever that may be) considers. All we know is what published papers say - always remembering that, when a corporation funds a study, any paper that does not suit that corporation's goals is most unlikely to be published.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
...somebody forgot to mail their bribe check to the appropriate official. Or perhaps a competitor mailed a bigger check.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Citation needed.
Seeds engineered to be artificially sterile have never been commercialized (yes the technology to make them does exist).
All the corn, soybeans, canola, and cotton grown in the US still reproduces naturally. What keeps farmers from replanting genetically engineered seeds are legal constraints (fear of lawsuits from the seed companies), not genetic constraints. If nothing else, the widely available stories about farmers who ARE sued for replanting patented varieties prove these varieties are non-sterile.
In India where IP laws are either laxer or less enforced there is a thriving gray market in farmer propagated bt (genetically engineered to resist insect pests) cotton seed. The only reasons anyone buys the official stuff are 1) the yield advantage F1 hybrid seeds have over other varieties 2) with the gray market stuff you can never be sure if it actually contains the transgenic trait or not, and it's not like you can sue the guy you bought it from if your entire crop is destroyed by boll weevils.
You don't sound stupid
He doesn't, but you do. Sorry man, you've gotten off the rails and don't understand science.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
That's a good post
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Your first point on science is idiotic. One of those things is overwhelming support of a scientific theory, which in turn may be proven wrong, and the other is overwhelming support for the science of genetic engineering as a whole. But don't let that stand in the way of your soap box.
Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
"The court heard the question of whether Schmeiser's intentionally growing genetically modified plants constituted "use" of Monsanto's patented genetically modified plant cells. By a 5-4 majority, the court ruled that it did.[1] The case drew worldwide attention and is widely misunderstood to concern what happens when farmers' fields are accidentally contaminated with patented seed. However by the time the case went to trial, all claims had been dropped that related to patented seed in the field that was contaminated in 1997; the court only considered the GM canola in Schmeiser's 1998 fields, which Schmeiser had intentionally concentrated and planted from his 1997 harvest. Regarding his 1998 crop, Schmeiser did not put forward any defence of accidental contamination.[2]"
I like how whenever the ignorant get bitchslapped with reality they never, ever, ever... can admit to learning something.
Deny, scream, "it's different when MonWalmart does it because corporations are interested in profits and small businesses are just interested in giving pies to orphans!"
While Golden Rice is not related to Monsanto, it's my understanding that the right to use it free of patent restrictions is limited, though I don't remember the exact limitations.
N.B.: Open Source doesn't mean free of patent restrictions. It doesn't even mean free of copyright restrictions. It just means that you can read the source code.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Joseph Farrell over at gizadeathstar.com has been predicting that the BRICSA nations would roll back GMOs for some time. His theory is that they will gain a huge foothold in world affairs by offering seeds below the cost of GMOs to all nations while protecting their domestic markets from competition. So far only India seems to be out of step with the plan. Expect to see more bans and a return to conventional seeds as the cost to benefit ratio for GMOs has turned bad and more of the market is demanding non-GMO foods. Right or wrong is irrelevant, you give your customers what they want or someone else will.
Why would I cite other people who are dumber than me. I'm the smartest person ever, and I cite myself.
So anyway, as far as citation goes, here's one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Youtube, titled Open Seeds: Biopiracy and the Patenting of Life.
Biopiracy and bioprospecting and biodisrespecting bla bla bla.. they invent all kinds of whacky new terms these days for plain and simple stuff of, when push comes to shove, the lowest common denominator is nomad. Nomad in intellectual property, nomad in real estate property, the only exceptions being personal belongings, such as a talizman, a feather-head decoration, your underwear and clothes, and your pocket knife, sword or gun. Stuff that's always on you. That's property. Stuff out there is hocus pocus abrakadabra. Who owns the bird song? For instance, I can record the song of a bird sitting on a tree that's growing on my neighbor's lot, but the branch the bird happens to sit on reaches into my airspace, so the bird is within my airspace, even if it's on a tree that's the neighbors. So I obviously own the recording, however if the bird is inside my neighbors airspace, he might have some claim that it was his bird, or even if a wild one, it was present on his property, therefore he wants at least a share from the copyright proceeds. What about if it was his parrot that talked inside a cage, not free to fly about and away from the property? If I record it, do I owe him anything? If not, what if I record a picture of his parrot, and if still not, what if I record a picture of his face? Does he have intellectual property rights to his face? What about faces out on an open beach, by a newsteam, don't they have to pay each of the people in the public a cut from the revenues, to compensate them for their intellectual property of their faces? What about the traffic cameras taking my picture constantly, are they not required to come negotiate a price with me for the right to capture an image of my intellectual property, my face? What if I'm not willing to sell them that right for under a million dollars, should they then stop taking my pictures? Or should I be forced to stop taking the general public's picture in open street? Two or more people at the same time? How about 1 person? You can get as complicated as you want with these things, who owns the bird song, it's all bullshit, you own your clothes unless they take it from you, you own the food that you swallowed unless they regurgitate you, you own your house unless they knock it down for you, you own the image of your face unless they take snapshots against your will, you own your dog, unless it does not want to be with you and it escapes and never comes back. Own.If you's a pimp, you own dat bootay that you let out on a loan. So dey betta have yo money, or else it's goin down.
I pay for music because I want the artists to create more. I pay for software because I want to sustain the creators to create more. But it's not like there is really this concept of "own," other than an agreement of how we all play by the rules, but then the game can be totally abused by those who tend to "own" everything. Like I don't mind people selling ownership rights to songs to be resold, but then don't go crazy and ask for a raping price for it, because then I act like the founding fathers, sending a message to King George that we don't believe in the very foundation of your claims, that it is the King's right derived from God to rule, and to collect taxes. We say everyone is created equal, and the King has no such rights that make him special from everyone else. Same can go for any kind of property rights or liberties, because they are all fluff, and get violated all the time anyway. Like keeping you hostage against your will, and forcing substances into your body that you do not wish to be there. The right to self determination. My ass. There are no rights, of any kind, including property. The only thing there is is people willing to cooperate and help each other, or not.
A lot of the time it's what somebody really wants that determines what should be done. Like if somebody really wants to "own" a song, and ask money for it, we give him money, not because he owns it, but because we want to make him happy. Or if someone wants your coat, that you're wearing, and the consequences to you of giving it away not being that great, you might want to do it to make them happy, because they will be more happy to get that exact coat they want than the lack that you suffer by not having it. Of course sometimes they might do it to fuck with you, as in your coat possesses mystical powers, so if I can get it, I take your powers with it, and similar bullshit, so in that case, under those motives you would be justified not to do it. Usually when it comes to these things, people go I live for me first, or I live for us, but I don't live for you exclusively for the detriment of me. That is normal expected behavior. And when you give away something, like make a donation, you live for us, not for me, and not for you. The only time people live for you, or somebody else, without identifying with you in any way such as my kind, is when they are about to die anyway, so whatever's left they might as well do something positive with it. But there is no such thing as not identifying with, because even when you protect the environment, or a green tree, you identify with it, as life, you're both life, and life is better than death. Or your cat, you identify better with a cat, and there are various degrees of closeness. For instance when I say white anthropologists should not pollute the Papua New Guinea people and drive them to extinction with it (as in, you ate my great grandfather missionary as the last true cannibals on Earth, so it's payback time), because I identify, or want to protect them as they are, these Papua folks, regardless of what they did 200 years ago to my ancestors, or someone more closely related to me. I'd protect them to be the way they are anot not disappear like I'd protect tigers that ate somebody similarly to them.
Have you ever considered therapy?
My karma is bad. Don't get too close!!!
The GMO crops they just banned were made in China. Moreover, ever since the 1930s, farmers have been buying new seeds every year because hybrid seeds often have very nice properties, but if you try to harvest your seeds from the crop and use them again, only half will still be hybrids. It's basic Mendelian genetics.