Monsanto Agrees Not to Sell "Terminator" Seeds

flanksteak writes "Monsanto has bowed to pressure not to sell single-use seeds for their genetically modified crops. These so-called "terminator" seeds work only once. The resulting plants produce sterile seeds that can't be used to grow more food. This forces farmers to keep buying seed to grow additional crops. Monsanto says it's a way to recoup the cost of genetic engineering. Are we going to have to buy "seed" licenses to grow food? Read about it at the USNews Web site." On a planet covered with 6 billion humans, agriculture is our most important concern. Yes, more important than the Internet. We rarely pay attention to food-growing on Slashdot, but nerds need to eat too. (Fun fact of the day: even frozen pizza and Hostess cupcakes are made from farm products!)

Comments

Re:wow

[dingbat_hp]

The really scary issue with the Terminator gene is that of cross-pollination. No one knows how likely GM products are to cross fertilise with nearby crops, nor do they know how close they have to be to be "nearby". This is a huge question over GM in general, and the doubt is sufficient to justify a halt on the entire commercial usage of GM crops, until more is known.

If Terminator crops cross-pollinate with non-GM, then the seed from that plant will also be substantial sterile (I'm assuming Terminator is dominant, else how do they produce it commercially). This means that not only will the crop of seed purchased from Monsanto fail to deliver seed for next year, but so may the neighbour's crops. Why should any farmer or agri-business have the right to destroy another farmer's crop like this ?

(UK poster - we're scared and angry on this side of the pond, not just the duck squeezers)

Terminator Genes

[the eric conspiracy]

I just don't understand the ruckus about this. Conventional hydridized crops don't breed true; if you want to replant the same hybrid you must buy new seeds anyway.

Re:wow

[james b]

Monsanto (www.monsanto.com) make a bunch of different things, you can browse their products on that site. Now, one product is Roundup herbicide, and they market verious genetically modified crops that they label 'Roundup Ready', modified to be resistant. So farmers using Monsanto seed can spray huge amounts of weedkiller and still get a healthy crop.

The other reason for the possible success of these seeds is that Monsanto have enough capital to actually undercut any other vendors of normal seeds with seeds containing the terminator gene. They could say, "It's better! Try it!", and naive farmers would use this seed for a year, and then quite possibly when the price of buying it each year is suddenly massively increased, they find that they didn't keep any of their old seed, or that it has died and won't germinate. Then, certain farmers could be locked into subscribing to Monsanto seed each year.

When?

[Evangelion]

When corporations willingly restrain themselves, I have to ask "For how long?" What's stopping them from threatening to introduce this again in 5 years. And 5 years after that. How long before the media and people in general will ignore them doing this, because they've heard about happening so many times?

(Keep in mind what Nestle did in China - giving formula to new mothers for a few months for free - until they dried up, and then they started charging them for it. The UN pointed out to them they were violating human rights and made them stop. They started again 5 years later. What can the UN do? You can't continually work people into a frenzy every 5 years over the exact same thing.)

I have no doubts that these seeds will be back.

-- Your friendly neighbourhood cynic.

How the terminator terminates

[ai731]

The system has three key components:

1. A gene for a toxin that will kill the seed late in development, but that will not kill any other part of the plant.
2. A method for allowing a plant breeder to grow several generations of cotton plants, already genetically-engineered to contain the seed-specific toxin gene, without any seeds dying. This is required to produce enough seeds to sell for farmers to plant.
3. A method for activating the engineered seed-specific toxin gene after the farmer plants the seeds, so that the farmer's second generation will be killed.

Full technical description on the Edmonds Institute Website

ai731

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