Smart Breeding to Beat Biotechnology? 322
divisionbyzero writes "Scientists are developing superorganics made through improved traditional interbreeding in order to circumvent Monsanto's patents and finally deliver on the promise of genetically engineered food."
Smart Breeding? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Smart Breeding? (Score:2, Insightful)
Remember the X-Files e
Re:Smart Breeding? (Score:2)
Think of the Children (Score:2, Insightful)
First it was the pea pods...
Then it was the people
All the remained were Pod People
Breed your own! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Breed your own! (Score:5, Informative)
I encourage everyone in the /. community with a green thumb to support the biodiversity of the un-patented plant realm of heirloom crops (especially food crops). The day we can't save our own seeds w/o paying royalties to Monsanto is a day I dread.
Come on (Score:5, Insightful)
But I guess it has to stop now because some company is doing it. I know you retch at the fact Monsanto collects patent royalties and it makes me sick also, but it doesn't invalidate their work. Have a look at this page [firstscience.com] or read Sagan's books for more hints.
Re:Come on (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. That's 10,000 years of nature at work, with a little guidance from us humans. If there was a cross of wheat strains that just wasn't "right" by nature's standards, it wouldn't even be propogated (though the cross might grow). That's why I like heirloom varieties, versus hybrids and GE varieties -- they've stood the test of time within Nature's machinery.
I don't have a problem with "unnatural" food, in the sense that (as you correctly point out) that the chickens and cows we have today (of which we raise both, BTW) resemble very little of what their non-slective-bred ancestors from 10,000 years ago were like. Sure, a modern breed of chicken might not be able to survive in "the wild" (having bred out the traits that make survival easier), but those chickens can procreate with natural, sexual reproduction. That, in and of itself, is a validation by nature that what you have is still "right" in the biological sense.
I do have a problem with the "unnatural" varieties that are simply not possible when left to natural procreation processes.
I'll trust the milk of my family's Jersey cow, with a few hundred years of good old-fashioned breeding pedigee to back it up, whereas I won't trust milk from Super Cow v2.05 (Patent Pending) produced in a test tube in 1997 by some multinational agri-corp.
Now do you understand my objection? One is relatively tested and blessed "safe" by nature, whereas the other hasn't.
Re:Come on (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact is, the whole argument about "natural" versus "unnatural" is really an emotional one. Yes, there are real, scientific concerns regarding some of this work (eg, plants which produce their own pesticides creeping into the wild fauna, or genetically engineered fish escaping and fscking up the ecosystem), but the idea that, somehow, "natural" seeds, milk, etc, are "better" is really just irrational fear (or a misplaced sense of superiority... which is, I suspect, the case here).
I mean, what *actually* makes your family Jersey cow any more superior to Super Cow v2.05? What if the Super Cow produced milk that extended your life span by ten years, prevented cancer, and made your toast in the morning? Would you still argue that good ol' Bessy was superior just 'cuz of that precious "good old-fashioned pedigee (sic)"?
Re:Come on (Score:3, Insightful)
Hybrids have a foot in both camps. The offspring of a hybrid can reach maturity, so it's okay in a sense. However, hybrids cannnot themselves procreate, which is nature's way of saying it wasn't really such a good idea after all.
Take mules, a c
Re:Come on (Score:3, Insightful)
You
Re:Come on (Score:3, Insightful)
Who said anything about hybrids? AFAIK, most seedless species are just selectively bred regular varieties... correct me if I'm wrong.
offspring of a hybrid can reach maturity, so it's okay in a sense. However, hybrids cannnot themselves procreate, which is nature's way of saying it wasn't really such a good idea after all.
Oh please, Nature is not a thing. Things are either sterile or not. Their "value" as a species hardly has anything to do with it. What if yo
Re:Breed your own! (Score:3, Insightful)
Ignorance is bliss, unless that ignorance tosses your company's bottom line to the bottom of a pit...
Wake me up (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wake me up (Score:3, Informative)
I eat (Score:4, Funny)
GM food (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:GM food (Score:4, Insightful)
GM and selective breeding are two TOTALLY different processes.
Here are somes clues for you:
When a bull and a cow fuck, there is no jellyfish involved.
Tomatoes have never needed fish genes before, so why would they suddenly need them now?
I do not trust my long-term health to corporations.
Neither should you.
Re:GM food (Score:2)
So they can swim, dummy!
Re:GM food (Score:5, Funny)
Re:GM food (Score:2, Informative)
Selective breeding has nothing to do with the transgenic techgniques used in GM crops. It makes me so mad when GM apologists offer up this tired and inaccurate canard.
When you crossbreed tomato strains, all the genes in the hybrid were in the tomato gene originally; the same cannot be said of transgenic
Re:GM food (Score:2, Informative)
Uhmmmm to put it simply, simplify, simplfied, NO. What you just stated is nonesense. How is this informative? This is in no way informative, misleading yes, informative no. The poster does not understand how Transgenics works. A
From someone who has a doctorate in the field... (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps, just maybe, you are recalling a half understood description of transposons, which are genes that can change position in the genome but even so, 1) transposons are found in nature -- Barbara McClintock got her Nobel for finding them in corn decades ago 2) only some GM techniques use transposons. So an attack on transposons, if indeed I'm not reading more into your notion of "loose genes" than is merited, makes no sense.
Re:From someone who has a doctorate in the field.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Saying, as the article you linked to says, that horizontal gene transfer of GM genes has been detected is a bit like saying people who eat carrots have been known to have strokes -- true, but deliberately misleading. But that's intentional -- The "Institute of Science in Society" isn't a real research institute, nor is the article, cleverly disguised as a real scientific publication (with references, even!) , a genuine peer reviewed piece of science.
Other issues. (Score:3, Insightful)
Although I have concerns about splicing 'alien' genes into food crops, this isn't my main issue with GM crops.
It is morally repugnant to me to allow the patenting of food. It is blindingly stupid in my opinion to allow patented foodstuff to become the main body of supply for us.
Furthermore, the main advantage with many of the GM crops is not that they are in some way better for us, but that they are resistant to more powerful pesticides and herbicides than non-GM plants, enabling the fields to be bli
Re:Other issues. (Score:2)
How is it immoral for companies to benefit from new products that they have created? They are only patenting new creations, not existing crops, which will of course remain patent-free. If the company starts charging too much for its new crops, farmers can always switch back to the 'natural' variety.
And what do you think it does to biod
Re:Other issues. (Score:3, Insightful)
How is it immoral for companies to benefit from new products that they have created? They are only patenting new creations, not existing crops, which will of course remain patent-free. If the company starts charging too much for its new crops, farmers can always switch back to the 'natural' variety.
Food is a necessity of life, like water. I find it dubious in the extreme that a small group (in this case, certain companies) would be able to control the supply of a necessity of life. Farmers will not necc
Re:GM food (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:GM food (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.garynull.com/Documents/erf/seeds_of_
Furthermore, these new bioengineered food also have other socioeconomic consequences. Namely that farmers are not allowed to save portions of their harvest for future planting, instead, they are forced to go to Monsanto every year to get "eyes" for their planting. Monsanto is even planning to make the potato seeds sterile through bioengineering.
The health and socioeconomic effects of these newly bioengineered food should be further studied. I don't necessarily buy into the idea that people would be adversely harmed from eating them, but we don't have enough data to prove it either way as of yet. It is unfortunate that the government and FDA has been dragging their feet in this regard.
-B
Re:GM food (Score:2)
You bring up a very good point . . . I read an article that proposed the question:
If a natural famer plants crops that cross breed with his neighbor's GM crops a
Re:GM food (Score:5, Insightful)
question has already been answered (Score:5, Informative)
I personally think Monsanto is one of the most evil corporations on the planet. Besides their foray into genetically modified food (I have a problem with their patents more than the final products), they are the ones who invented Nutra Sweet (a.k.a aspartame, a tripeptide with who knows what kind of long-term effects). Of course there are many devoted and ethical scientists working there, too, but the corporation as a whole has an atrocious track record.
The worst thing about the cross pollinated crops in this Canadian farmer's field was that he never had any intention of growing Monsanto's corn, but the wind blew pollen into his field, and somehow the courts decided he was responsible. How asinine.
Re:question has already been answered (Score:2)
I know the case you refer to. Worse than Monsanto demanding payment for growing their crops, was that he was an organic farmer growing for the non-GM market and export (here in Europe we still refuse to import unapproved GM crops and there's F. all market for them with the public anyway).
So in one strike he's losing his livelihood and being sued by a giant corporation.
Monsanto is bad news.
Re:GM food (Score:3, Informative)
Summary: A Canadian farmer alleges Monsantos GM seeds blew in to his field, now Monsanto is demanding royalties.
In the new GM world, you no longer buy seeds, but rather you buy licenses to grow certain crops. Once biotech companies control the distribution, they will vertically integrate with large farms and push small farmers out of the market once and for all.
Choice Quote: "This patent makes us more profitable
Just wait for the DMPA (Score:2, Funny)
You think I'm kidding, don't you?
A real snake? (Score:2)
Sigh... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sigh... (Score:2, Insightful)
The genetic manipulation that they refer to in this article is the idea of taking a gene(s) from a completely different species, and putting it into whatever they are manipulating. The breeding they refer to is not the traditional breeding we've practiced for thousands of years, but rather looking at all the genes available for all possible breeds of a plant and tagging it. Then they do crossbreeds and check for the gene, and if it is present, then growing the plants
Re:Sigh... (Score:5, Informative)
In fact it is theorized that longterm use of antibiotics causes natural good bacteria found in the body that are selected for antibody resistance to pass this resistance on to infectious disease bacteria in the body through transposons.
Transposons are natural . . . but that doesn't mean that they don't cause problems. Additionally transposons in multicellular organisms are limited to the same species and are subject to natural selection before a large population is released to the environment. This is a natural buffer that limits the ability of transposons to maniplulate a species' genotype. GM foods are not subject to these natural limits on transposons.
Laboratory GM is not the same as the effect of transposons in nature. To say otherwise suggests a gross misunderstanding of transposons.
Additionally, breeding is not the introduction of desired genes or variations thereof into an organism. Breeding does not introduce genes into a population. It also does not introduce variations of the gene into the population. This is the falacy that many GM fans seem to believe. They are convinced that breeding somehow creates genes or modifies them . . . this is absolutely untrue.
Breeding selects for desirable genes that already exist in the population. Genetic modification introduces desired genes or variations thereof. Breeding and introducing genes into a population are not at all the same thing
Re:Sigh... (Score:2)
Re:Sigh... (Score:2)
Re:Sigh... (Score:2)
Re:Sigh... (Score:2)
Very true but They do lots of good things as well sometimes its important to migrate genes form one species to another. It can prevent mass extinctions. The issue is as the parent poster points out is nature has a system that is very very complex and over the long haull it never has failed, which is not to say there are no short term problems. There are extinctions all the time there is also speciation happening all the t
kinda premature, statement, don't you think? (Score:3, Insightful)
What you're saying is true--that both breeding and inserting genes into an organism other ways both modify the genome, but that doesn't mean they have "the same end." We don't know nearly enough about genetics to say that. Look at the differences between clo
Re:Sigh... (Score:2)
Pizza flavored brocolli? (Score:5, Funny)
"Dad, can you please pass the Rocky Road Brussel Sprouts?"
Re:Pizza flavored brocolli? (Score:2)
by some miracle of chance, your sig works perfectly with your post
Can someone list the danagers (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Can someone list the danagers (Score:3, Informative)
Yes I can infact list the dangers of genetically modified food. and they are as follows:
Genetically modified foods have not been around long enough yet to have any long term effects on humans scientifically confirmed... would you randomly go to a chemlab and mix a bunch of vials together and drink it?
Whereas we know the long term effects on un m
Re:Can someone list the danagers (Score:5, Insightful)
And that is my #1 issue with GM foods: not the frankenfood FUD, but instead the excessively greedy corps like Monsanto who would be able to concentrate wealth & power [blogspot.com] like you wouldn't believe.
Also, organic food simply taste better.
Organic food also isn't sustainable; organic food can't feed the world [acsh.org].
--
Re:Can someone list the danagers (Score:2)
Bullshit [foodfirst.org].
We now are, and have been for a very long time, producing more than enough high quality food to feed all of the worlds poor. There are problems with distribution of the available food, but the truth is that much of the world's food is destroyed in order to keep prices up. the only solution to those two problems is not going to be found in patent-burdened trans-genic crops, but through programs like the one written about in
Re:Can someone list the danagers (Score:2)
As anyone who has even a little familiarity with horticulture knows, the problem lies not with the type of fertilizer being spread, but with lack of sane agricultural practices that large (corporate) farming and chemical fertilizer use encourages.
The best method of obtaining well fertilized soil in one's feilds is not through the use of high-nitrogen fertilizer, but through the ocasional cultivation of crops that form a symbiotic rela
Re:Can someone list the danagers (Score:3, Insightful)
go buy some gmo fruit and then some natural organic of the same
well in the US at least it's not labled so how do you tell.
Actually I don't agree with this one
would you randomly go to a chemlab and mix a bunch of vials together and drink it?
If you think that's how genetic modifications are arrived at and released into the food chain then you really need to ask why it costs so much to develop and test the stuff. Just zap a few dozen chickens with ionizing ra
Re:Can someone list the danagers (Score:5, Informative)
Other dangers from this this [netlink.de] article come to include:
Here [cqs.com] is yet another article that you can read on this topic.
Re:Can someone list the danagers (Score:3, Interesting)
They're patented, and usually barren. This is the biggest problem. If you think software patents are bad, well bio patents are a million times worse.
Re:Can someone list the danagers (Score:5, Insightful)
The main reasonable objection I've heard is that, because you're splicing genes from wherever you please, you can no longer tell by inspection whether or not you'll be allergic to any given food. While the "splicing fish genes into vegetables" is an extreme example, it gets the concept across. IMO, this isn't likely to occur accidentally (you know what genes you're copying, and so would know when you're copying something that codes for an allergen). However, it would still occur, and so presents a concern.
A secondary objection is that it's very difficult to grow samples of an engineered crop without it spreading out of the controlled area or cross-pollinating with other nearby compatible plants. This means that if you do, for instance, engineer a strain of wheat that makes anyone with a peanut allergy keel over and die, there's a significant risk of that strain propagating into mundane wheat fields, with un-fun results. Engineered strains are usually specifically designed to be hardier than normal strains (that's why we're engineering them), so they will be competitive with normal strains in the field.
That having been said, I think that genetically engineered crops are inevitable, and mostly beneficial. When this becomes a tried-and-true technology instead of an experimental one, the fuss should die down.
Re:Can someone list the danagers (Score:2)
Some believe that engineered crops are only beneficial to the corps that create and patent them. Most debates I've heard on the issue center around the facts that (1) we have enough food-growing capacity to feed everyone; and (2) people starve in the world due to lack of money to buy food and/or that delivery of said food is fouled up by political hindrances.
I suppose that capitalists would argue that
Re:Can someone list the danagers (Score:2)
Here's an economic one - many people in poorer parts of the world now suffer malnutrition of various forms because where once they grew a variety of staple foods to provide them with a balanced diet, they now grow only the current cash crop for export. So for a common example, this means rice for breakfast, rice for lunch, rice for everything really.
Why don't they
Re:Can someone list the danagers (Score:2)
Right. After a few decades of use, I'm sure genetically engineered crops will be as uncontroversial in the future as nuclear energy is today.
Re:Can someone list the danagers (Score:2)
Re:Can someone list the danagers (Score:2)
Well, other than the supposed health fears, most of the controversy I hear about over GM crops is the concern of cross breeding with non-GM crops or weeds [osu.edu]. In the case of the weeds article, the that pesticide-resistant genes manage to make it into weeds, which farmers obviously do not want resistant to weed killers.
For another argument, just do a quick search on "sterile genetically-modified" to find a whole bunch of stuff. The main concern I've read
Only one real danger (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Can someone list the danagers (Score:2)
There is an article at Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] on this subject which lists some of the arguements given for and against the agricultural use of genetic engineering. In a nutshell, those opposed to the practice worry about engineered plants escaping the field and growing in the wild and becoming a sort of noxious weed [wikipedia.org]. Advocates of the practice say that the genomic changes made to plants are relatively small, and are comparable to traditional breeding methods.
I'm graduating next week with a bachelor's in biology. The
Re:Can someone list the danagers (Score:5, Informative)
1) Crossbreeding into non-GE crops.
This is extremely common with wind-pollenated crops such as corn and other grasses. A recent example was a cross of a GE crop for feedstock crossing into corn for human consumption, was known to produce an allergic reaction in humans. This got into Taco Bell foods. Additionally, it is a pollutant to the gene pool, and the farmers and companies are not responsible for keeping it under control.
2) Effects on the environment
A recent GE corn, designed to resist insects, dropped pollen on nearby milkweed plants. The pollen was poisonous to insects and ended up wiping out the monarch butterfly population in that small area. It could end up an environmental nightmare, but the companies producing this have no idea of the impact. A plant could potentially end up contaminating all crops, especially if it grew as a weed and could outcompete all untainted crops. Pollen is tiny and potent, and can travel thousands of miles over wind or animals.
3) Effects on others
As stated, GE crops pollute the environment because they are not controlled. Produced in a sealed lab, it has little chance of escaping. But all GE crops should be viewed as potential pollution, simply because their pollen can blow into your yard, and contaminate your crops.
4) Legal issues
If your crops become contaminated through no fault of your own, it's very possible -- even likely -- that you'll have to destroy your crops for violating patents or pay license fees, or be basically shut down from legal suits. In other words, everytime a gene is spliced in, that food item is patented and any violation of that patent can be prosecuted. This violation can even happen if your plants happened to crossbreed and incorporate that gene. Intent is not figured into patents... if you invent something completely on your own that is patented, you lose. If you grow something without a license that's patented, you lose.
5) Social issues
Other issues are social, such as the painful idea of corporations owning the rights to grow food. But let's say you practice vegetarianism because you happen to believe in it (for whatever reason). What if GE tomatoes incorporate a fish gene? Is that tomato suddenly non-vegetarian? Let's say you know that GE tomatoes might have fish genes so you avoid them and look for items marked "organic". WHOA THERE... the corporations have lobbied congress to bastardize the concept of "organic" (to make it meaningless, basically allowing full use of pesticides, etc) and even pressed the FDA to disallow labelling things as organic or produced without pesticides. This last part is one of the worst things about patenting foodstuffs -- the corporations want their actions hidden, and will pay lobbiests millions to get laws passed protecting them from people that simply want to know what their eating.
Re:Can someone list the danagers (Score:2)
I wish it were that simple. I'll check back here to see if some enterprising person finds such an animal, but my first thought is "Not no, but hell no."
Any well funded, independent lab worthy of such a study will cost $$$$.
Such a lab will be "liable", so if their findings can be used to hurt the business interests of a large agriculture corp. an army of lawyers will descend upon them with such fervor that collapsars will ps
Re:Can someone list the danagers (Score:2)
When George Bush says America wants X we don't say "wow, almost one whole person, I wouldn't call that everyone". You want they should all turn up. I don't think they'd all fit in the cab.
but I think taking a look at people like greenpace is enough to make a person feel that GM food is perfectally fine.
Yeah, that's logical. But I'm sure some of our smarter readers will find some flaw in your argument.
My mother used to work for Genentech befo
For those who won't RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
How Smart Breeding Works
The mission: Develop rice that's resistant to bacterial blight and will thrive around the globe.
SEARCH Food scientists scour the rice gene bank, consisting of 84,000 seed types, in search of varieties with blight immunity.
INSERT MARKER Scientists extract DNA from selected varieties and tag the blight-immunity gene - previously identified by researchers - with a chemical dye.
CROSSBREED A network of researchers around the world cross disease-resistant varieties with thousands of local versions. With some plants, this means merely putting two varieties in a room. Self-pollinating rice requires manual pollen insertion.
ANALYZE The offspring are analyzed to detect the presence of the immunity gene. Those containing the gene are planted in a field.
TEST Mature plants are exposed to bacterial blight to confirm resistance. Those that don't die, and maintain desired traits from the local variety, are distributed. Unless
REPEAT Sometimes, the process reveals several genes responsible for a trait. Three genes confer resistance to different blight strains. In such cases, breeders repeat the crossbreeding until all genes are turned on.
END RESULT A rice plant with broad resistance to bacterial blight that will thrive in local conditions.
Technology has gone full circle (Score:2, Insightful)
150 years later and we have a new fancy name for selective breeding and we've gone full circle . . .
Deja vu [slashdot.org]
A Good Thing (Score:5, Insightful)
This just reinforces the point that genetic engineering has existed on this earth from the first time our ancestors bred dogs for obedience or put the biggest bulls out to stud.
The difference is that now, we have the advantage of looking under the hood at the genes themselves. This new data gives farmers and geneticists an unprecendented level of control in selecting for certain traits.
So jokes about killer tomatoes aside, this is a positive development. I look forward to the day when we develop robust cereal crops that can thrive in the dry, nutrient-poor soils of East Africa. Without being encumbered by patents, of course.
Re:A Good Thing (Score:5, Informative)
What you describe is selective breeding . . . it has existed for a long time. But this is using naturally occuring genes in the genepool and selecting for them through mating within a species or closely related species.
Taking a gene from a firefly and implanting it in a tobacco plant to create glowing tobacco, or creating a brand new modified gene that does not exist in the natural gene pool is also genetic engineering. The statement
The difference is that now, we have the advantage of looking under the hood at the genes themselves. This new data gives farmers and geneticists an unprecendented level of control in selecting for certain traits.
is true but not comprehensive. It ignore the concerns of the alarmists. We aren't just looking under the hood . . . to use your analogy, we are taking parts one vehicle and force fitting them into another. And we are coming up with new parts that don't exist yet and fitting them into our existing vehicles. The alarmists beleive that we don't know what effect these new vehicles will have on the environment
Re:A Good Thing (Score:2)
However, "force fitting" genetic material is not what this article is about. But, of course, this is Slashdot, so I'm sure you've RTFA...
Re:A Good Thing (Score:2)
uhhh rtfa? It's all about selective breeding.
The parts are from the same model vehicle. From the article, the idea is to manipulate genes that already exist, by using very specific selective breeding. That's considerably different than making glowing tobacco, which is probably not possible using this technique unless the genes to glow somehow exist already.
Traditional Inbreeding.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Where you take a mommy plant and a daddy plant and then make lots of baby plants. The you take the brother plant and the sister plant and create strange uncle Jethro who no-one in the family talks about much but HELL can he survive in hot weather.
Uncle Jethro is currently serving 25 life sentences for a string of murders in Arkansas.
I love it when people talk about "natural" a normal ways when talking about this stuff. Arsenic is a natural product... doesn't make it safe.
The key is safe and not likely to go postal like Uncle Jethro, that means long term testing and genetic strength, something tradtional breeding often fails at (potato blight anyone ?). Equally genetic engineering is not tested in the long term and we have no clue to the effects (thalidomide(sp?) anyone ?).
I want to eat a cow that is not pumped with hormones, wheat that isn't racked with chemicals... and a realisation that we can produce enough food for the world but the west subsidises farmers the way it never would do to steel (except in the US), coal, cars, manufacturing etc etc.
Maybe the solution isn't more products, its a decent and fair economic policy. Shocking I know, but more expensive plants for the 3rd world might not be what they are after, fair access to our markets might just be a better bet.
So maybe Monsanto has done us all a favor? (Score:5, Interesting)
Opponents have found an ally in crop scientists who condemn the conglomerates behind transgenics, especially Monsanto. The company owns scores of patents covering its GM seeds and the entire development process that creates them. This gives Monsanto a virtual monopoly on GM seeds for mainline crops and stifles outside innovation. No one can gene-jockey without a tithe to the life sciences giant.
Of course we
Interesting side effects of Patents... I recently took an algorithms class where we were discussing various optimization algorithms. A company patented a particular algorithm a few years ago which essentially stopped all research in that direction. So researchers started looking at different classes of alternative algorithms and now have come up with a much better class of algorithms than the patented one - basically nobody uses the patented one anymore. Now, had the company not been so greedy they could have seen further development of their (very promising at the time) algorithm, but now all development in that direction has basically been halted for several years.
Re:So maybe Monsanto has done us all a favor? (Score:4, Informative)
That's just the tip of the iceberg. Monsanto is pure, undiluted, genetically modified evil. They make Microsoft look like a playful puppy. Here' s an example:
There is a dairy farm in Maine (or maybe Vermont, I don't remember), a decent place (as far as these things go). Now these farmers leaned a bit to the hippy side of the fence, and decided not to use the RBGH (Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone), which is owned by Monsanto. It is used to boost milk output, and the FDA says that it is safe. As a matter of fact, there is no test that can distinguish between the milk of treated and untreated cows. Of course, these farmers were proud of their little hippy dairy, and righfully so. They made a good local product, delivered fresh, for a fair price. They decided to promote the fact that they did it all without hormones. So on their bottles, it says: "We do not use RBGH on our cows". That's it. Nothing saying that RGBH is bad, or that it will turn you into a tentacled monster. What does Monsanto do? They launch a legal campaign to make it illegal to state that you do not use RBGH. They claim that by pointing out that it is not used, you are claiming that it is bad. Now call me crazy, but I believe that I have a right to know what goes into my food.
So yeah, fuck Monsanto. A multi-billion dollar corporation versus a handful of country farmers that just want to run their farm their way. Real fair fight, isn't it?
Re:So maybe Monsanto has done us all a favor? (Score:2)
Re:So maybe Monsanto has done us all a favor? (Score:2)
Perhaps, but the effect would have been the same money-wise. In this case it was a fairly small company. While they did get some license fees early on in the life of the patent, my understanding is that nobody even wants to pay the fees anymore because there are free alternatives which are now better. Essentially, the patent drove innovati
GM has more unexpected side effects (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:GM has more unexpected side effects (Score:3, Insightful)
Yet it works for strawberries... I think that the lack of flavor is just an add on to an already sad story. They didn't succed because of the GM, and to make matters worse they didn't taste good. Hell, bigger and better looking sells every other thing in the produce department, why would tomatos be any different? Most people don't know what a fresh grown tomato tastes like anymore anyway.
Re:GM has more unexpected side effects (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why farmers (that can afford them) buy need seeds/seedlings from Monsanto and friends . . . to make sure that they have a type that is genetically predisposed to express certain desired but uncommon traits.
Re:GM has more unexpected side effects (Score:4, Informative)
I'll bite:
It doesn't have anything to do with evolution. Evolution works by natural selection. The breeding of crop plants works by "assisted selection": people set out to select for specific traits that make the plant more attractive as food.
The traits that promote plant survival aren't necessarily the traits that promote plants people want to eat.
In addition, as explained in the article, we have been breeding these things for years, essentially selecting for the traits we want without regard to whether they are good for plant survival. The trait we selected for decreases insect resistance? No problem, we'll just add more pesticides to the crops.
Of course, I'm oversimplifying a bit. But it sounds like you have a bias against evolution anyway, so I don't think its worth my time to attempt a discussion of the interplay between natural selection and crop breeding.
Re:GM has more unexpected side effects (Score:2)
Nothing (including evolution) prevents a less desired trait from being dominant. In fact it's quite common. Huntington's Disease and Marfan Syndrome for example are both autosomal dominant disorders.
The question you're really trying to ask is: why are autosomal-dominant disorders as common as they are, since presumably, carriers would weed themselves out more quickly than carr
Re: GM has more unexpected side effects (Score:2)
Anaerobic bacteria might beg to differ, but they appear to have found niches of their own.
Such as Congress?
Until... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Until... (Score:3, Interesting)
Knowing many people in the "foodie" movement, and having heard organic famers describe their breeding programs, you'll find that most anti-GM activists will also support faster breeding, especially when it allows us to develop strains that are appropriate for local conditions and suitable for low-i
Just wondering (Score:5, Funny)
[Richard Jefferson] is sowing the seeds of a revolt, citing the open source ethos of Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman as inspiration.
Does this mean we have to start calling it Gnu/tomato???
Re:Just wondering (Score:2)
Breeding in General.. (Score:5, Funny)
We can start with a gov't grant, and turn this into a whole industry.
One more reason to hate Monsanto. (Score:3, Informative)
"Monsanto covered-up the dioxin contamination of a wide range of its products. Monsanto either failed to report contamination, substituted false information purporting to show no contamination or submitted samples to the government for analysis which had been specially prepared so that dioxin contamination did not exist."
"Another Monsanto study involved independent medical examinations of surviving employees by Monsanto physicians. Several hundred former Monsanto employees were too ill to travel to participate in the study. Monsanto refused to use the attending physicians reports of the illness as part of their study, saying that it would introduce inconsistencies. Thus, any critically ill dioxin-exposed workers with cancers such as Non-Hodgkins lymphoma (associated with dioxin exposures), were conveniently excluded from the Monsanto study."
Smart breeding? (Score:2)
No differerence between GM and Breeding? NOT! (Score:5, Insightful)
To those of you who think there is no difference between G.M.ed foods and bread foods, let me give you a
Traditional plant breeding is a little bit like editing a makefile. The breeders job consists primarilly of decoding and understanding the contents of that makefile in order to eventually modify it to turn on and off certain features.
MAKEFILE for peachtree.c
# Make sure our peaches are large
FRUITSIZE = HUGE
# Make the shelf life long so
ROTTIME = VERYLONG
# Make the item pretty
COLOR = PEACHY
All of these traits already exist in the target species, or at least in a species closely related enough to cross with it. At one time or another, they've all been expressed, just not at the same time. If you have enough experience with the plant, and know the plant isn't dangerous, you know you can incorporate these traits together into single plants without much worry.
Contrast this to G.M.ed food, which can best be described as a hack and slash modification to the actual source code.
#include peachoptions.h
peachcolor(fruit thisfruit) {
#ifdef PEACHY
thisfruit.color=PEACHY;
thisfruit.stem=SHORT;
#endif
#ifdef PASTEY
thisfruit.color=PASTEY;
thisfruit.stem=LONGER;
#endif
thisfruit.color=RED;
thisfruit.nutrition=TOMATOE LIKE;
thisfruit.stem=VERYLONG;
thisfruit.nutrition=LOW;
if (thisfruit.color==PEACHY) thisfruit.nutrition=HIGHER;
if (thisfruit.color==PASTEY) thisfruit.nutrition=HIGH;
return;
)
OK, this is all fake, but the point is, just like sticking code in software at poorly controlled places can have unintended consequences, sticking genes in to a plant's genetic sequence can also have unintended side effects.
As it turns out, nature can do something similar through the use of transposons: genes that randomly remove themselves from one part of a plant's genetic code and insert themselves elsewhere. However, the chance of producing a dramatic change is not as great, since the transposon gene is not being expressed in a completely different species from the one originating it.
Most of the time, the results from GMing are positive. But occasionally the results are negative, and the real issue is that we must implement safeguards specific to GM crops in order to protect our food supply.
Mother nature does not discriminate one corn plant from another, and many GM projects have the express purpose of introducing traits you would NOT want in your average corn field. Suppose he introduces a gene which turns the corn kernel flesh pink, making a great new popcorn for teens. Suppose this gene also turns out to cause the corn to be poisonous.
Because corn pollen is capable of traveling impressive distances, that corn gene, if not sufficiently isolated, could contaminate a large portion of this year's corn crop. It is important to note that the gene would not cause irretrievable contamination, as today's seed corn is produced in carefully isolated conditions away from stray pollen (both GM and non-GM). But this sort of contamination would cause major headaches for one harvest season, as the StarLink episode in South America demonstrated. We might not know about a given instance until after you've already eaten Corn Flakes contaminated with birth control hormones.
This contamination problem is similar to what would happen to Marijuana plants if industrial hemp were to
Re:No differerence between GM and Breeding? NOT! (Score:3, Insightful)
Pollen isolation is probably impossible, depending on plant breed etc. Some pollen is tiny, light, and can stay viable for quite a while. For pollen to blow thousands of miles is completely possible.
GM vs Selective Breeding: a thought experiment (Score:2)
Lets say that the state of California collectively wakes up and knows it should be strong like Schwarzenegger [schwarzenegger.com]. Comparing the two methods:
Biotech today = closed source. That's the problem. (Score:5, Interesting)
Just like with proprietary software, if you see some nifty new feature you'd like to add you your own application, you can't. In proprietary software you can't just buy the algorithm: you have to buy the whole package (and perhaps the support package and perhaps the computer to run it on). In much of current biotechnology you can't just buy the nifty new gene, you have to buy the whole potato (and you only get a limited choice of potato types if any choice at all) *and* you're just leasing the potato *and* you have to keep buying the upgrades each year. Smart Breeding, in contrast, is a close equivalent of open source software.
Some problems with the current methods of biotech - using software as the analogy / comparison - include:
An easier way to get good tomatoes... (Score:3, Interesting)
Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
I hate such arguments. Sounds like M$ FUD. Well, if you don't produce what the EU wants, you can't complain that they won't buy it. And before you say that the whole point is that the EU isn't letting it's people have the choice - the actual point is that the people of the EU have spoken through their representative, and apparently they don't want GM foodstuffs.
And I though America was all about the free market (as in if a product is not wanted ...) ...
For myself, I do think choice is best, but I think people have the right to know everything. Thus products should be labeled if they contain GM foodstuffs. Similar to the BST situation with milk, where I believe Monsanto got it into a law that labels cannot mention BST content. There are people who want to know, so why shouldn't labeling laws enforce this?
Makes sense to me... (Score:2)
In today's world the ability to hunt, kill, & drag it home isn't as important as the ability to earn cash. Trump has cash and will almost certainly be able to make sure his kids live thru adolescence. Evolutionarily speaking, he's a good bet.
Practically speaking, what I just said is a load of bull and everyone knows it. Oh well. I'm not bitter.
Re:All Seed and Trait Businesses already do this. (Score:2)
I would disagree that it is an example of opensource. The idea of traditional open source is that anybody has access to the source code. Not just educational institutions and/or somebody specifically registered with certain institutions such as the National Corn Growers Association.
Re:All Seed and Trait Businesses already do this. (Score:3, Informative)
Agreed. How about anybody with a web browser [nih.gov]? In true open-source fashion, you may need to compile the genome yourself from its components, but with over 2,000,000 nucleotide sequences, over 7,500 peptide sequences, the complete genome of Zea mays' chloroplasts, etc. to work with
Re:why the hating on Monsanto? You Bet! (Score:2)