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Scotland To Ban GM Crops
An anonymous reader writes: Scotland's rural affairs minister has announced the country will ban the growing of genetically modified crops. He said, "I am concerned that allowing GM crops to be grown in Scotland would damage our clean and green brand, thereby gambling with the future of our £14 billion food and drink sector." Many Scottish farmers disapprove of the ban, pointing out that competing farms in nearby England face no such restriction. "The hope was to have open discussion and allow science to show the pros and cons for all of us to understand either the potential benefits or potential downsides. What we have now is that our competitors will get any benefits and we have to try and compete. It is rather naïve."
Aren't all crops genetically modified?
Do these people want us to go back to the Stone Age? Because that's what's going to happen.
These people are opposed to any progress that might actually solve the problems we face, which only leaves us with the option of going backwards.
I'm more concerned with pesticides/herbacides/whateveracides than GMOs.
We started engineering our food when we started farming 10,000 years ago.
Anyway, not sure how this will play out if Monsanto buy out Syngenta and asset strip it then Scotgov has 400 redundancies at Grangemouth to deal with.
"The hope was to have open discussion and allow science to show the pros and cons for all of us to understand "
Unfortunately, this argument isn't about science. It's about the ability to patent and control crops. GMO crops are safe and effective, the use of them are only bad in the long term effects of politics and big money.
I guess Scotch made from organic wheat will be better for my liver?
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
I don't think the world is quite ready for genetically modified haggis.
#DeleteChrome
If they really wanted clean and green produce, the production efficiencies and resilience to disease of GMOs can't be beat. I'd love to have enforced GMO labelling so that I know which food is safe to eat and can avoid the "organic" crap that will inevitably turn into a pile of brown mush before the week is out.
TFA:
"The Scottish Government will shortly submit a request that Scotland is excluded from any European consents for the cultivation of GM crops, including the variety of genetically modified maize already approved and six other GM crops that are awaiting authorisation."
The rest of the world calls that corn. We've been genetically modifying it for all of recorded history.
Thank you.
Lots of people like to say things like 'there is no evidence that GMOs are dangerous.' But that is mirroring the hippy-dippy types who say that anything 'natural' is healthy.
Just because no one's found a problem with the corn that most of us have been unknowingly eating for decades, that doesn't mean the latest and greatest GMO won't have its own unique risks. The more GMOs that are engineered, the more chances there are to screw something up.
Crops from Toyota and Ford will remain welcome in Scotland.
The SNP, naive? Who'd have thought!
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
Scotland's rural affairs minister has announced the country will ban the growing of genetically modified crops. He said, "I am concerned that allowing GM crops to be grown in Scotland would damage our clean and green brand, thereby gambling with the future of our £14 billion food and drink sector."
Oh he's gambling with their food and drink sector but not in the way he thinks he is. Simply banning these crops in the absence of actual evidence of their harm will definitely cause an impact but probably not a positive one. I understand taking reasonable steps to evaluate the effects of new(ish) technologies but slapping a blanket ban on something without any actual evidence of harm seems rather short sighted. This is exactly the sort of thing that you need to have a rational and evidence based debate over. Not a fear motivated ban.
Not to mention burning witches.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Why you just leave us Mericans to be poisoned?!?! Asshats!
I hear they will start throwing shoes into looms
Not to mention burning witches.
Start? This is scotland, they do this already
They completely miss the real point of GMO.
Monsanto sells herbicides, which also kill pollinating bees, so you can't get seeds for free next season.
Monsanto also sells seeds, so you don't need bees to pollinate your crops, you can just buy them from Monsanto.
Get it?
Jeffrey M. Smith (born 1958) is an American consumer activist, self-published author, and former politician.
He attended Maharishi University of Management, and participated in a TM-Sidhi program yogic flying demonstration
Wow
Since you're all "rational" food science experts here on slashdot, can one of you professors explain to me how splicing the DNA of different species together applies as a "rational" thing to do? Oh right, it isn't. Perhaps America could stop wasting (throwing in the trash) over 40% of our food, and exporting over 80% of our crops, this "feed the world" movement that has spurred the GMO industry will look inward and realize how fucking stupid it is.
You get the science you pay for. And who's paying for it? Why, it's Monsanto! Do you see any non-profits who can buy a comprehensive study disproving Monsanto claims? Is there an elected official who will support an investigation of Monsanto? (Try to find one who doesn't get support from the company.) As usual, when a controversy arises you can usually follow the money to see who is behind the 'facts' we are presented with.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Only the ones that float on water
Hi there. I'm a big-time sustainability nerd. In fact, it's literally part of my job description. I have friends throughout the industry-- energy, transportation, water, land use, etc. I have a couple friends in the food sustainability area and they're vehemently divided on the viability of non-GM crops in the modern world. Me? I can't be bothered to care too much. I don't have the time in the day to figure out how to best grow free-range battery chargers for solar chickens. I need to leave that to someone else. I'm happy that someone has volunteered to be the test bed for this experiment.
is worrying about the effect of GM food on public health.
Lots of people like to say things like 'there is no evidence that GMOs are dangerous.' But that is mirroring the hippy-dippy types who say that anything 'natural' is healthy.
That is a bad attempt at conflating two things that have nothing to do with each other. Saying there is no evidence of GMO crops being dangerous is (thus far) an accurate statement of fact. Doesn't mean or even imply there isn't something we don't know yet. But claiming GMO crops are dangerous when you have no evidence to support that claim is not remotely the same sort of statement as asserting that all "natural" things are healthy. One is a correct statement of the absence of evidence of harm and the other is an assertion of faith clearly contradicted by known facts about what is actually harmful. Saying there is no evidence that GMOs are dangerous does not imply that there will never be any such evidence. To use a poker analogy you play the hand you have until the known facts change. Anything else is irrational.
I don't remotely qualify as a "hippy dippy type". I very much have a scientific thought process on this. If there is some evidence of harm or even a credible model of potential harm then by all means let's slow down and figure out the best way to proceed. So far that doesn't appear to exist except in the mind of certain people. Their fears might even come to pass - I'm not dismissing the concern at all. If there is evidence of harm then I assure you I'll be first in line to mitigate that harm but until that day I'm going with the evidence over the fear.
I don't know how governments think they can just legislate a potential problem away when it comes to nature. The world does not have isolated bubbles when it comes to crops. Sure, you can ban the seed but that doesn't stop the change. Look at Mexico, GMO corn has been banned there for years yet they are still infected from the US. You can't control pollination.
Triticale is a hybrid of wheat and rye developed in Scotland and Sweden during the 19th century. While not a GMO, it is similar in being a manmade crop. I suppose Scotland's ban on GM crops outlaws the possibility of subsequent genetic modification that could produce quadrotriticale. Phew! I, for one, am glad Scotland is taking steps to protect Earth from a Tribble invasion.
This could benefit Scotland in that "grown in Scotland" could mean more value to the a consumer. Putting the science issues aside for the moment, a certain percentage of consumers don't like GM food. Sometimes zigging when everyone else is zagging gives you an edge.
Table-ized A.I.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2015/07/are_gmos_safe_yes_the_case_against_them_is_full_of_fraud_lies_and_errors.html
It basically outlines why blanket GMO bans are wrong-headed, and goes through all of the pseudo-science and double standards that are applied to oppose GMOs at the expense of reason.
The article speaks to what's being discussed here: round-up ready crops may not be morally/scientifically appropriate, but that is just small portion of the GMO market. A blanket ban would prevent nutritionally enriched, allergen reduced, and pest resistant (where the pest can be insect or fungus or some other disease; not the same as herbicide resistance) GMOs that don't automatically promote monocultures or spread resistances into the wild.
Monsanto (or ADM, or whoever) is just a small subset of the GMO market, so if you're problem is with them, specifically target them with the legislation.
Looking at changes to an entire nations food source is most certainly gambling, and based on the legal antics of the GMO players running the game today, what you label as a fear motivated ban others simply call common sense.
"Common sense" is based on evidence and good judgement. This is not common sense as it doesn't involve evidence, sound scientific advice or even a reasonable model of harm. If they want to treat GMO techniques with the sort of rigor they do drugs (plenty of testing of safety) then I don't have a principled objection to that provided the rules are vaguely sane and uniformly applied. But that isn't what they are doing. Just a blanket ban while dismissing the fact that all the evidence that so far shows no harm isn't common sense - it's idiotic.
Common sense is the "gut feeling", the "instinct", embracing all the cognitive biases and flaws in our human psyche while ignoring evidence and science and sound logic. Which of course makes it poor judgment, not good judgment.
Think Monty Hall problem. Common sense would tell you to not switch, when in fact you should. Even PhDs argued against switching.
The things we eat are things that we have discovered -- pretty much through fatal trial and error -- do not kill us, not things that are inherently good for us. There line between healthy vs. unhealthy is not the same line as naturally occurring vs. genetically modified or bred. A lot of people may wish that it were, because that's simple and easy, but wishing doesn't make it so.
Here is a not-at-all exhaustive list of naturally growing things that you should not eat:
Mature Asparagus - The berries of the mature plant are poisonous, containing furostanol and spirostanol saponins. Rapid ingestion of more than five to seven ripe berries can induce abdominal pain and vomiting.
Amanita Phalloides - Commonly known as the death cap, the fungus is highly toxic, and the toxicity is not reduced by cooking, freezing, or drying.
Jequirity - The attractive seeds (usually about the size of a ladybug, glossy red with one black dot) contain abrin, a ribosome-inactivating protein related to ricin, and very potent. Symptoms of poisoning include nausea, vomiting, convulsions, liver failure, and death, usually after several days.
White Baneberry - All parts are poisonous, especially the berries, the consumption of which has a sedative effect on cardiac muscle tissue and can cause cardiac arrest.
Sabi Star - The toxic sap of its roots and stems is used as arrow poison for hunting large game.
Honestly, just getting nutrition without getting acutely poisoned is a huge accomplishment in itself. Achieving optimal nutrition is a nice-to-have, but there's a point of diminishing returns once you've achieved sufficient nutrition, which, fortunately, we've done in first-world countries.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Terminator. Seeds.
modifying haggis only makes it angry...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Do you have any quotes or actual figures regarding Scottish farmers disapproval of the ban? Of course TTIP will make it impossible for sovereign governments to implement such legislation.
That means they can still export their crops to the European mainland, while noone wants the English Monsanto food. The English can try to export it to the US, that's about the only country where they eat that stuff.
Besides thistles?
Just stick a label on GM products. How difficult can it be?
Pretty easy to ban crops when you don't really have agriculture other than sheep :p
If raw food item A is vulnerable to pests, and raw food item B produces a protein that pests don't like, why not splice the ability to produce that protein into item A? Is that any different from eating a meal where A and B are mixed together on your plate?
So I don't quite know what the submission is trying to say with their "statistic". After all, we neither have a direct democracy which would be a tyranny of the majority, nor do we have policy driven by the average joe's "feelings" on a science subject.
The problem with GMO is the commercial nature of it that makes it Agri-business.
And all intensive farming methods have done is demand a higher and higher use of chemicals to make up for what is being taken out of the ground and not replaced, for an actual reduction in the yield (though less than the reduction you could expect dropping the current net-negative methods without re-improving the soil before starting again).
Natural modifications spread slowly at a speed that the rest of the biosphere ALSO modifies itself. That modification may not be safe or wanted, but the change happens slowly enough that we can spot the trend and avoid the end result.
UN-natural modifications dump a superabundance and are no different in their insecurity to the biosphere as the introduction of cane toads to australia or cats to indoneisan islands have been.
But rolling out very slowly the changes removes all "profitability" from a GMO scheme. So will never be used.
It's maddening the way the discussions around GMOs are always directed by Monsanto's PR firm and never address the bigger issues.
Based on science I believe GMOs are fine to eat. Based on science I believe GMOs are a danger to the environment now and the food supply later.
We're talking about plants that can't be killed by Round-Up, until you know, evolution, and now we're seeing super-weeds that are round-up resistant. Farmers are resorting to using even more dangerous poisons on crops to kill off what Round-Up no longer can.
And GMOs work so well we're creating monocultures, because profit, and monocultures are a damned stupid thing to do.
If you don't want to ban GMOs, could we at least ban monocultures? And PR firms?
Make the damn crops grow legs and a GPS sensor to lead them right to the supermarket shelf (tell you what, put in a credit card reader, and it can march straight to your fridge), and the turn the cows into self slicing meat. Let's make this stuff work for us for a change. This is what science is supposed to do. Put my steak, on the table, at the push of a button dammit!
Oh, let's get really creepy. Modify the food to grow in our stomachs, so we don't have to eat at all. In fact we can modify ourselves to be the food, and the brain will just absorb the body for 80-90 years, leaving nothing to waste.
Why isn't it?
If raw food item A is vulnerable to pests, and raw food item B produces a protein that pests don't like, why not splice the ability to produce that protein into item A? Is that any different from eating a meal where A and B are mixed together on your plate?
Oh, so that's how gene splicing works! You just get two different things together and shuffle them around a bit! Who'd have thought?
Similar to the upcoming US election results
There is an exemption in patent law for farmers saving seed (and selling the produce for consumption).
But if you sued me for the ball rolling on my lawn after you threw it over by accident because it is supposed to be rolling on YOUR lawn, not mine, then why is that fine?
The problem is that your analogy sucks.
Plants breed. The FARMER doesn't make a copy, THE PLANTS DO. And plants can't be sued.
I'm still waiting for someone on the anti-GMO food side to explain what, precisely, they mean by "GMO" foods.
- Is it any genetically-altered food? In that case, EVERY apple, corn, grain, etc that's not entirely synthetic is technically "genetically modified" from its original wild form. Humans have been doing that long before Mendel explained the mechanisms.
- is it lab-modified plants? Because then that would EXclude Roundup-Ready, which I believe the first generations were developed by (more or less) drenching plants in Roundup and just re-breeding the ones that lived.
I can't quite seem to understand what GMO means, exactly, except by a very subjective yardstick of "that icky franken food" which is meaningless, claddistically.
-Styopa
http://www.nature.com/news/seed-patent-case-in-supreme-court-1.12445
You don't get it, they don't have to have a monopoly to control it.
They control between 60 and 80% of the market, that eliminates a huge amount of govt oversight into their business practices.
They are an index fund which means when their stock goes down, the smaller competitors goes down much more.
Which means that being a monopoly isn't necessary, it's just necessary to be the biggest player in the market. In fact they don't have to even be bigger than the others combined, just the biggest, lets them meet their end goal.
Being bigger than all others combined lets them the senators and congressmen in their pocket to stay in their pocket and nobody else's.
I can't tell where you're pointing that sarcasm.
The only way to feed the population now is with engineered crops. 100% organic cant keep up with the demand of all these hungry mouths...
He was deliberately attempting to acquire the gene without paying for it
This, in a nutshell, is my problem with GMOs. Nobody should have to pay for genes, period. Exclusive ownership of lifeforms and genes (which after all are just information) is wrong. It's that simple. If we allow this, and we do, we venture out on a very dark and extremely slippery-sloped road. Not buying GM-ed products is a way of protesting the "life can be IP" meme, which is why I support labeling laws despite the fact that I don't believe GMO food is harmful. It's about ethics and the future, not public health.
With crops the downsides can not be measured. The upsides can be crudely measured. In a way it is the exact opposite of the problem with bars and night clubs. The downsides of a bar are easy to see. Alcoholism, traffic wrecks with drunks, fights and drunken behavior are all part of allowing bars and nightclubs and frankly good jobs in bars and nightclubs are often few and not really good at all. But there is no way to measure the good that is done. Business deals and relationships struck up in bars and clubs might be super important for a community and just might out weigh all the bad. And even the negatives can have an upside. if it wasn't for alcohol arrests we might not be able to afford our police department. Alcohol use creates jobs for judges, police, rehab workers, hospitals, car body shops, ambulance workers, jail guards and even funeral home workers. I wonder if we could ever afford to eliminate alcohol which is nothing more than dope in liquid form.
banning gmo products doesnt make any sense... we have been genetically modifying organisms since the dawn of animal husbandry... you know that thing that is one of the first techs in civilization? literally ALL of the food we eat has been genetically modified at some point.
This country has systematically prevented African americans and native americans from taking part in the political process in Scotland. Just look at the population of Scotland. The land is full of lilly white crackers. If I did not already know from Fox and CNN that the United States is the most racist country in the universe where black babies are regularly raped even b4 they are born, I would say that Scotland is even more racist than the USA. Thanks to the USAian media, though I know this is not the case. That does not change the fact however that we need to encourage Scotland to stop discriminating against African amercicans. African American lives matter even in Scotland. Scotland needs to elect an African American as the next king of scotland
The fact is that it costs US agribusiness dollars in lost opportunity to sell their wares, and that is the reason for us all to mandate GMOs be accepted everywhere and that we MUST NEVER let anyone know if there's GMO foodstuff in their food.
Not to feed the starving billions, but because the bottom line profit is affected.
And not merely "Stuff we can eat", but PRECISELY.
Tell you what, if nobody knows what GMO is, then I ask you HOW THE HELL CAN WE PATENT IT THEN?????
Greetings from Hungary! We have banned GMO at the national level years ago. The country has fertile lands, so it makes no sense to demand even more yield from the soil at risk of the unexpected. (Considering Uber execs are choir-singing saints compared to Monsanto execs, that unexpected probably wears horns on his head and has feet of goat...)
IP = intellectual property
But somehow, we're supposed to believe you when you say it's not "property".
EPIC FAIL
Posting anonymously as I just moderated...
First, this move by the Scots is purely symbolic at this point and of no practical consequence. The Scottish government plans to use new EU rules allowing member states to opt out of cultivating EU-approved genetically engineered crops. There is only a single genetically engineered line being commercially grown in the EU right now, i.e., Monsanto’s insect-resistant YieldGard Corn Borer (MON810) maize. But, maize (corn) is not grown in Scotland, where the main crops are barley, wheat, oilseed rape and potatoes. Approval of other GE crops have been stuck in the EU regulatory process for well over a decade.
Second, though "genetically modified" has a legal meaning in the European Union (Directive 2001/18/EC of the European Parliament), it is best to discuss the technique as "genetic engineering" because that is more accurate and avoids disingenuous arguments, e.g., "aren't all crops genetically modified?"