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CRISPR-Altered Plants Are Not Going To Be Regulated (For Now) (fastcompany.com)
Good news for people who like genetically altered tomatoes and other plants. The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it will no longer regulate them. From a report: The USDA not only rolled back Obama-era rules regulating genetically edited plants, but now it claims that plants whose genomes have been altered using gene-editing technology (read: CRISPR) pose "no risk," MIT's Technology Review reports. While CRISPR engineering is still a relatively new science whose full impact is not yet known, the USDA has decided that it is merely an innovative shortcut to the age-old practice of plant breeding.
I, for one, am looking forward to CRISPR-enhanced lettuce, at my local grocery.
Also, I'm shocked a Republican administration would do any pro-GMO move, even if they frame it as 'less regulation'.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
It just ends up as proteins and starches when you eat it. Now if they produced some kind of chemical that ended up as poisonous that's a different story. The only reason you'd prefer one over the other as an end user is either taste or cost.
It's just a more engineered version of why the Irish nearly replaced their entire crop with potatoes back in the day. They were easier to plant and produced good yield... until they didn't. Variety is the space of life after all.
I don't read AC
Lettuce in an eggplant,
Avocado!
Walking corn plants can be herded to new fields from time to time allowing the moisture and nutrient content of the soil to be scientifically replenished between field occupations without so much being wasted when splashed on the more stationary plants of today where so much evaporates off the leaves and stalks rather than getting into the soil for the roots to drink.
They also reduce the number of combines a Farmer needs, instead of needing five or six to harvest a farm working one field at a time. This will allow one to be set in a stationary position at the end of a harvest funnel, and the Corn is herded from all the fields of the farm into the combine. The combine of course is co-located with the Silo and dumps the harvested corn directly into the Silo eliminating the need for trucks to catch the harvested corn and haul it from the fields to the Silos. It will take some work training dogs to herd corn effectively as the current herding breeds tend to ignore plants looking for cows or sheep to herd.
Seriously you are really missing what an incredible idea walking corn would be.
At least until it learns how to make rudimentary tools and weapons.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
Good news for people who like genetically altered tomatoes and other plants
I defy anyone to find me a crop we raise that is NOT genetically altered. Seriously, wander around any grocery store and find me a single vegetable, fruit, grain, or protein for sale that humans have not genetically altered substantially. The only item I can think of are wild caught seafood. The only difference between them is the techniques used but they ALL have been genetically altered. Same goes for your household pet, the fibers in the clothes you wear, etc. We've been at this genetic alteration game for as long as we've been raising crops. Odds are that a good approximations of none of the food you've ever eaten wasn't genetically modified by humans at some juncture.
The USDA not only rolled back Obama-era rules regulating genetically edited plants, but now it claims that plants whose genomes have been altered using gene-editing technology (read: CRISPR) pose "no risk,"
While I'm not remotely against GMOs and gene editing, claiming that there is "no risk" given our current knowledge is more than a little absurd. Every researcher I've ever spoken with about CRISPR (my wife works with several of them) says something to the effect of "whoa that's powerful stuff... we should be careful until we understand it better". (their real concerns tend to be more in the area of bio-weapons and pathogens but crops are a mild concern of theirs) While it might turn out that there is actually no meaningful risk from CRISPR on crops, that doesn't mean we should rush headlong into the unknown without thinking through each step and making sure we know what we are doing as best we can. Modifying plants demonstrably affects ecosystems, sometimes in ways we didn't predict. Sometimes the modifications themselves aren't harmful but the actions they permit are - see modifying crops to be resistant to chemicals like glyphosate where the genetic modification isn't harmful itself but the herbicides or behaviors they facilitate clearly are harmful on some level. I see no evidence that we shouldn't use technologies like CRISPR but spending some years testing and learning seems like a practical first step and if we need some regulations to make that happen, so be it.
Just because we're doing it doesn't mean we should.
What are you talking about? We've been genetically modifying plants for as long as there have been humans and it is fine. Yes we should be doing it, we will continue to do it, and the techniques for doing it are only going to get more effective. It will be effectively impossible to feed the human population without GMOs. It's not even a choice really.
I won't be satisfied about the safety of GMO until we've had a couple hundred years of informed consent trials.
So you are saying you'll never be satisfied. That isn't going to happen. Seven billion people on the planet, widespread use of GMOs using modern techniques for decades now (plus thousands of years of older techniques) and zero evidence of any negative nutritional effects across generations. If that sort of evidence isn't good enough for you then you will never be satisfied. The nutritional question is settled for all practical purposes and any negative health effects from them that might exist are clearly extremely subtle at worst. The experiment has already been run and the evidence seems clear that GMOs aren't a nutritional health risk either in the short or long term.
Now if you want to make an argument about the effects of GMOs on ecosystems being potentially harmful then you might have an argument. There the evidence is a lot less clear and there is clear evidence that use of GMOs (think roundup ready) influences our behavior in ways that have clear and demonstrable harms both direct and indirect.
Also, I defy anyone to point out a time when Nature has allowed the mixing of tomato and frog genes to produce a superior tomato.
Your DNA is absolutely loaded with code from species that are not human. The fact that you can't wrap your brain around mixing genes from seemingly unrelated species isn't evidence of a problem. You talk about nature "allowing" things as if genetics is somehow planned. That's not how it works. Genetic code doesn't have an agenda beyond reproduction. Read The Selfish Gene sometime for a more eloquent argument.
The Zika virus wasn't a problem until genetically-altered mosquitoes were released in Brazil.
Huh what? Citation please! The Zika problem is being SOLVED by genetically altered mosquitoes that are eradicating the specific species that carries the virus. This method has been far more effective at the destruction of specific targeted mosquito species than any method in the history of mankind (maybe not as much as a nuke).
The primary reason it became an epidemic in South America is because it is very new there. It's been around for centuries in Asia but cropped up in Brazil less than 5 years ago! It was brand new to the locals' immune system and thus spread like wild fire.
I don't know if you posted in jest or accidentally but if serious, it is a major disservice to BOTH sides of the debate. This example is literally the perfect, responsible type of solutions that we HOPE to achieve with genetic modification.