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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.
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.
Considering this is the country that put melamine in milk and cadmium in toys, this speaks volumes.
Except in those cases those things were done in violation of the law. The issue was that it wasn't being enforced, not that it was legal. Of course, that doesn't change the fact that I want to know both the "official" and the actual reasons. Oddly, the permits that are being denied are for Bt rice and phytase corn, but they continue to support Bt corn, so environment or food safety doesn't seem like it would be an actual reason, although it could be the "official" reason. A more likely scenario is politics and lobbying (or whatever the Chinese version of lobbying is, they probably just call it bribery).
What an idiotic comment. The CPC didn't authorise putting melamine in milk or cadmium in toys. Both were illegal and the perpetrators of both were brought to justice. I don't know the details of cadmium laced toys, but the ring leaders of the melamine doped milk scandal were put to death.
Your comment is as stupid as blaming the US congress for the Union Carbide disaster.
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.
Sigh.
There are many GMOs that do different things. People always talk about herbicides resistant because it sound scary. oooOOOooohhh.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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 !
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.
China - the country as a whole or its government - can not be held responsible for crimes committed by private companies or individuals. In fact, these things happened because there was not enough governmental oversight - IOW too much freedom, rather than too little. This is what used to happen in the West, when companies were similarly unrestrained by legislation; things like adding chalk to bread and water to milk. Regulation is not all bad.
As for their official justification, they don't owe us any, but it seems likely that they are worried about the behaviour of the GM companies. Although GM holds huge potential in terms of nutrition, there are many things that give cause for concern: patented genes that spread to neighboring fields, genes that provide restitence to weed-killers spreading to wild species, modifications that hinder the production of viable seeds, so the farmers have to buy new GM seed from the producers rather than growing part of their harvest on next year, etc etc. I'm sure GM would be welcome in most countries if it was not for the companies producing them.
Another thing is that the Chinese are fully capable of developing or buying the technology themselves - so why should they allow in American companies that are only intent on siphoning off as much profit as possible to their share holders?
It produces Bt, which is toxic to certain orders of insects, not to humans. And before someone comes along and says that it is still toxic, remember that gapes and chocolate are toxic to dogs, and dogs are a lot more closely related to humans than lepidopterans.
Oh, and every plant produces insecticides anyway. It's only alarming if you don't know much about plant biochemistry. Give something that can't swat back at the trillions of things out there trying to eat them a few hundred million years to come up with defenses and they develop things chemical defenses, like caffeine (yep, it has insecticidal properties, ever wonder why coffee evolved to have it right in it's seeds?), piperine (a yummy insecticide, turns out black pepper's original plan was to not have things eat its offspring), maysin (found even in your non-GMO corn) solanine (tomatoes and potatoes, don't eat this) and falcarinol (found in carrot a neurotoxin in high enough quantities).
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.
You forgot two of the best-known ones: nicotine (tobacco) and capsasin (hot peppers).
Plants are pretty much natural chemical weapons factories, as far as insects go. That's why swapping those "toxins" around isn't necessarily going to do any harm to humans, depending on the choice of toxin (nicotine would be a problem, but capsasin wouldn't be).
There are also other GM techniques that would be of great benefit that have nothing to do with toxins, such as the attempt to generate a version of rice with the C4 photosynthetic system instead of the C3, which would increase yields significantly if successful.
It produces a poison in the same sense that chocolate and grapes are poisonous (don't feed those to your dog). The Bt protein has a very specific mode of action in certain insect pests, and does not impact humans. It is not a health concern, and has been used in organic food production for decades before suddenly becoming controversial once genetic engineering got involved.
Also, that a plant produces a poison is not an alarming thing. In fact, it is ubiquitous. Chemical defenses are found throughout the plant kingdom, including in crop plants. Things like solanine in potatoes, or glucosinolates in broccoli, or even caffeine in coffee and tea (note that they are produced respectively in the seeds and leaves, two things a plant might want to defend...that humans like them for it is kind of an evolutionary plot twist) all have insecticidal properties. Anti-GMO groups love to be alarmist over the fact that some GMOs produce an additional insecticide (yes, one more, even non-GMO corn is going to have things like maysin in it) but in and of itself is not alarming. It's just preying on the ignorance of those who do now know just how many natural pesticides we consume daily.