Judge Rejects Approval of Engineered Sugar Beets 427
countertrolling writes "A federal judge has ruled that the government failed to adequately assess the environmental impacts of genetically engineered sugar beets before approving the crop for cultivation in the United States. The decision could lead to a ban on the planting of the beets, which have been widely adopted by farmers. Beets supply about half the nation's sugar, with the rest coming from sugar cane. The Agriculture Department did conduct an environmental assessment before approving the genetically engineered beets in 2005 for widespread planting. But the department concluded there would be no significant impact, so a fuller environmental impact statement was not needed. But Judge White said that the pollen from the genetically engineered crops might spread to non-engineered beets. He said that the 'potential elimination of farmer's choice to grow non-genetically engineered crops, or a consumer's choice to eat non-genetically engineered food' constituted a significant effect on the environment that necessitated an environmental impact statement. There's still hope, isn't there? That we can at least get this stuff labeled properly?"
Forget the Beets! (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Forget the Beets! (Score:5, Informative)
Well, sort of. I myself think all of the anti-GMO crap is BS fear mongering. Having said that, Monsanto is run by a bunch of assholes. They created the terminator corn, that sought to protect their " intelectuall property" by creating corn that wasn't fertile. So you couldn't grow corn, harvest it and then plant the seeds for another crop. ( Note they did remove it from the market place over widespread criticism. )
From Monsanto's perspective, growing corn from seed that was grown from their seed is theft. You do not have the "right" to plant that. You must buy new seed from Monsanto.
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Not just that, but if your field is 'infected' by their gene, it is you who must destroy your whole crop, and they are not paying any penalty for ruining your income.
Re:Forget the Beets! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's pretty unfair to criticize something that started out a safety feature and morphed into something that turned into a way of enforcing a license agreement.
And then turned into a way of sueing other farmers because their fields where next to someone who had the terminator corn - also causing that person to not have enough for the next year.
Re:Forget the Beets! (Score:5, Informative)
Food Inc.
The Omnivore's Dilemma
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#As_plaintiff [wikipedia.org]
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Monsanto v Schmeiser [wikipedia.org]
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For decades companies would use radiation to induce random mutation, then search for offspring that had desirable properties. That's not labeled GM, but it IS "genetically modified".
Is having plants full of random mutations of unknown sort really better than plants with carefully controlled modifications? Your already getting the former at every meal.
Re:Forget the Beets! (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the main complaint against Monsanto is that they sue you if you save the seeds from your GM crops, they sue you if you operate a seed-preservation business (whether it's for GM crops or not), and they sue you if seeds from GM crops make their way into your fields, as plants often do naturally.
In short, they're patent-wielding litigious bastards. If their position wasn't opposite that of environmentalist, Slashdot readers would be on the anti-Monsanto bandwagon like white on rice.
Secondary complaints are that their safety and environmental impact studies are suspect. These studies are fairly important when you're performing drastic biological change in a small number of generations. (Non-GM plant engineers do the same sorts of studies, but when the term "GM" is added, suddenly it's unfair government regulation.) They're also creating a significant risk of destroying genetic diversity, made worse by the fact that they own patents controlling the genotypes that are hedging out the others. Crop genetic diversity isn't just important in some hippie "plant multiculturalism" sense -- it's important if you plan on your children being able to eat in the future.
Re:Forget the Beets! (Score:5, Insightful)
--In short, they're patent-wielding litigious bastards.--
I can't mod you any higher or I would, but this is true.
--If their position wasn't opposite that of environmentalist, Slashdot readers would be on the anti-Monsanto bandwagon like white on rice.--
I could have said that better but would have had to curse to do it.
I'm not really against GM stuff as such. I don't see the big deal except with what you have already stated.
Re:Forget the Beets! (Score:5, Insightful)
To explain this in simple terms:
- Today's genetically modified insect repellent high yield crop might be tomorrow's "mana from the gods" for some crop pest or other.
If one plant in a crop which is composed of plants all sharing the exact same DNA is/becomes susceptible to one kind of crop pest/disease (which is bound to happen sooner or later since said pests/diseases are also exposed to evolutionary pressures), then the whole crop will be susceptible.
Biodiversity (even amongst the same species of family of plants and animals) makes our crops more resistant to this kind of scenarios.
Due to the way GM plants are created and the fact that things like terminator genes mean that for many GM plants natural reproduction is not viable, the number of DNA variants for any given GM species is limited and no natural evolution can take place. The result is whole fields covered in what essentially are clones (or a small number of variants) year-in-year-out, while the local pests/viruses/bacterias are evolving/adapting to be able to eat/infect that very small genetic pool of plants.
If on a wider scale a specific strain of a GM plant (say wheat) becomes a large percentage of the total crop of that kind of plant, then the conditions are set for a full-blown collapse of most of a year's crop of that plant at a global (or at least continental) level - for example having 90% of the wheat crop in both South-America and North-America die because those 90% are all a single kind of GM-wheat for which a highly deadly disease has just evolved.
Re:Forget the Beets! (Score:4, Informative)
To a certain point, this is feasible, but generally manufacturers don't just stick to one single strain GM crop. In one of my classes back in college we discussed Monsanto and some other GMO manufacturers in the US. While they did develop strains that were more prominent than others, theywere continually working to create new strains so that this precise scenario would NOT occur. If I were a farmer, though, I would ensure that I was not using the same GM corn that all of my neighbors were, just to make sure that this didn't happen to me.
Re:Forget the Beets! (Score:5, Insightful)
Rewind back in time: Not too long ago the world was certain that food contained just a couple of nutrients (now thought of as being 'macro'nutrients). Protein, Fat and Carbohydrates. Food scientists believed that as long as you got enough of the proper balance of those 3 nutrients then you'd be a healthy, happy person. People still got sick. In fact, those who followed this diet religiously got sicker. Fast forward a few years. Food scientists now know that in addition to these macronutrients there were also micronutrients that were essential to human health (vitamins). Fast forward again to the current day. Food scientists now know that there are other things in play. Such as omega fatty acids (which we are only now finding out that its not really the amount of fatty acids that is important, but the ratio of one kind to the other), certain 'helpful' bacteria, etc.
My point is, we are always absolutely convinced we understand nutrition, but it always turns out that we are missing countless valuable information. White bread exists because we discovered long ago that if you remove those worthless vitamins and minerals then you could improve the shelf life*. Margarine replaced butter in many households because at one point we decided that trans fats were bad for you and trans fats were perfectly fine. Babies that are given infant formula (one of the most complex and ever changing food products that exists) still don't thrive as well as babies that are breast-fed.
GMOs are a bad idea because we're assuming we know whats good for us (and we've proven time and time again that we know shit all). We're constantly breeding out traits that we view as insignificant in favour of yield and pest resistance and studies have shown that crops grown in 2009 contain significantly fewer nutrients than they did even just 20 years ago. America, relative to the abundance of food that is grown there is one of the most undernourished countries in the world. Genetically modifying food just makes it that much easier to fuck around with things that we don't fully understand.
*one of the way shelf life is improved is because the little creatures that feed off if it fail to thrive because the nutrients are just not there. If fungal spores refuse to consume it then what the fuck are we doing choosing it as our preferred type of bread? Shouldn't this be a hint?
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Alright! All you physicists out there, stop! You don't fully understand what you're doing, so experimenting will hurt us all in the long run. Doctors, you too. No more surgeries, no more medications until we know EXACTLY what's going on in the human body.
Ok, so that doesn't make sense, right? We need doctors to do their jobs, even if they aren't 100% perfect, because being wrong on occasion is better than doing nothing at all. There is often a benefit to continuing experimentation or implementation, even if
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There has been a resurgence of breast-feeding for quite some time. But not every baby can be breast fed. Not all mothers can breast-feed their children even if they wanted to.
one of the way shelf life is improved is because the little creatures that feed off if it fail to thrive because the nutrients are just not there. If fungal spores refus
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At the end of the day, when the beets are processed and the sugar is produced into nice little bags for you to buy in the grocery store, no genetic material is left in the sugar.
A good chemistry lab should be able to easily prove that there is no chemical difference between sugar produced from GM beets and non-GM beets. Anti-GM fear mongering over sugar is not science based.
Almost (Score:3, Interesting)
You can scratch that "safer foods" part - no evidence to support that. In fact, one might try to argue that roundup-ready foods are full of pesticides which is another level altogether from the food modification itself. The other thing is that they are known to go after people who had their crops unintentionally cross pollinated with their proprietary crops.
Their goal is to make money by taxing f
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Roundup is a non-selective herbicide, not a pesticide. Planting "Roundup Ready" crops means I can spray my entire field with a 60-70 foot boom sprayer and not care when it gets all over the post-emergent crop plants. The crop will be immune to the Roundup (glycophospate), and the weeds will die. In the olden days, you had to cultivate between rows to tear up the weeds, and it was pretty much impossible to get at the weeds that were inline with the crop (from a tractor at least).
Re:Forget the Beets! (Score:5, Interesting)
There are a number of complaints against Monsanto, such as dumping of PCBs, in Wales, encouraging residents in Alabama to use known PCB-contaminated soil as topsoil, creating and marketing toxicins such as PCBs and DDT knowing they were toxic.
Right now, though, the greatest danger with this company is that they are pursuing control of world food. They already control the majority of all soybeans and corn in the US.
I guess that you're American, though, in which case your country benefits economically since the rest of the world has to pay you for IP, similar to the situation with Microsoft, BSA, RIAA, and MPAA, companies and organizations your government will do anything to benefit since your trade depends on IP.
Don't be surprised if people in the rest of the world doesn't buy the propaganda though. And it doesn't have anything to do with the quality of the end product, it's the business methods that I object to.
Re:Forget the Beets! (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. I'd rather see a hundred major corporations go bankrupt than see one of them control the food supply and there's nothing "anti-capitalist" about saying so.
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Take a listen to This American Life [thisamericanlife.org]'s podcast this week (Show #168) titled "The Fix Is In". Most of the episode is about Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), and a single instance of price fixing and collusion for a single farm product/food additive. I wouldn't call it "one" company controlling everything, but there is a definite oligarchy.
Re:Forget the Beets! (Score:5, Insightful)
OMG, some company wants to make money by making farming more efficient , eco friendly, and create safer foods.
Run for the hills.
You do knwo that is the only complaint against them, right. "They make money, therefore there bad" is a weak ass argument.
More like "they would like to control the food supply, in much the same way that Microsoft now controls the desktop operating system industry". Some of us find that prospect a disturbing one, and a hard look at Monsanto's business tactics and their allergy to full disclosure does not comfort us one bit. Honestly, I don't know where you get this idea from that the only reason why someone would dislike a company is that they are successful at making money. I am sorry but it sounds like a sound bite from a talk radio show host, not a serious attempt at reasoning. How they go about making that money and how their methods might negatively affect others, either directly or by setting undesirable precedents, is the issue here.
... safer foods" would not be eager to label them as such and in fact has fought tooth and nail to prevent any sort of product labels that would identify the fruits of their labors. The only conclusion that makes sense is that they know some people don't want GMO foods and the like and believe that their desire for additional sales volume overrides the average person's right to know what they are buying (or to not purchase something they don't want). The problem with that is that once people no longer know what they are buying, all free-market concepts of "what the market wants" go out the window and you can accurately say that at least some of their business is built on deception.If anyone stands up and suggests that maybe this isn't the best way to do things and that maybe we should question the motives of people who do things this way, would you really suggest that the company's profitability is the only possible reason for doing so? Could you do that with a straight face?
If you want a starting point that you can plug into Google while you disabuse yourself of any concept of this company's benevolence, I have three words for you: bovine growth hormone. This would be very much like telling someone to learn about Microsoft and how they do business by studying their interactions with the ISO concerning OOXML, except in Monsanto's case the controversy was not about a standards body but instead, the major media.
If you're more subtle you could also ask yourself why a company with "more efficient, eco friendly, and
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You are probably right. There probably would be in an event if there were labels on the packaging. But that would still be stupid, because, look, sugar is sugar. It doesn't have in
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Another Monsanto gem is their law suits of suing farmers for retaining harvest seeds year over year instead of buying them from Monsanto, claiming patent infringment.
While often "making profit == evil" is the attitude we come across in slashdot conversations, there's actually some merit here. Monsanto has had a fairly long and unpleasant history of the things they're doing in the name of profit.
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Actually, yes. They are referring to granulated "table" sugar (aka sucrose) when they use the word "sugar". It is a case of colloquial vs scientific speech and definitions.
Re:Release the bats! (Score:5, Informative)
Fructose is a monosaccharide and is derived primarily from glucose extracted from corn. While there are natural sources of fructose, corn isn't one of them.
I was disappointed (Score:2, Funny)
Most food we eat is genetically modified (Score:3, Insightful)
It was just modified by farmers over a longer period of time using human (i.e. unnatural selection) to bring out certain traits.
The only difference is in the people doing the modification and the techniques used.
Just like dogs have been genetically modified to produce everything from chihuahuas to great danes.
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"The only difference is in the people doing the modification and the techniques used."
And the results being things that haven't evolved. And the fact that the radical changes that can happen with genetic engineering might not be best thing if they got into the wild.
It's not the same, really.
Do we really have the confidence in our understanding of genetic mechanisms to rule out harmful side-effects?
And that's not even to mention stuff like the Terminator gene, the GM equivalent of server-based DRM. If a crop
Re:Most food we eat is genetically modified (Score:5, Insightful)
Definition of evolution: change in the gene pool of a population from generation to generation by such processes as mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift.
Eg Delta, change, any change good or bad. You people need to get off of the soundbite train and get a grasp on what evolution is.
Re:Most food we eat is genetically modified (Score:5, Insightful)
Direct insertion of DNA sequences from other species is different to breeding and selection.
End of story.
By all means get pissy about the definition of evolution, you're just trying to play semantics that have nothing at all to do with the argument at hand.
And I wish you people would stop "you people"'ing me. For god's sake, it's as if you people are incapable of addressing individuals.
Re:Most food we eat is genetically modified (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Most food we eat is genetically modified (Score:5, Informative)
Direct insertion of DNA sequences from other species is different to breeding and selection.
End of story.
Beginning of story, actually.
Viruses are not precisely reliable. They'll frequently inject genetic material into a cell but then the reproductive phase will fail. This can cause cancer, various metabolic faults in the cell including immediate cell death, or frequently nothing at all because the genetic material will usually remain inert. Usually it's nothing to worry about because it's just one cell.
But what if the cell is a reproductive cell that turns into a zygote, forming an embryo? What'll happen is that the viral DNA will get replicated into every cell in the embryo --- including the embryo's own germ cells. This means the change will breed true. Viral DNA has now part of the animal's bloodline. It's rare, but it happens --- and the viral genetic material may not stay inert; it's frequently coopted and used. Apparently it's fairly well proven that the genetic sequence that protects babies from the immune systems of their mothers was stolen in this way from a retrovirus like HIV.
But this also works in reverse. A virus can attack a cell, reproduce, and accidentally scoop up host DNA. Now the animal's genetic material has entered the viral bloodline (as it were).
Add the two together, and what do you get? A mechanism for directly inserting DNA sequences from one species to a totally unrelated species. And it's all completely natural.
It's called horizontal gene transfer [genomeweb.com].
That's just animals. Plants are even worse --- they're extremely lax about cellular security, and will happily swap genetic material with organisms nearby. If you look on the verges of fields planted with a pesticide-resistant crop, you can frequently find unrelated weeds that have become pesticide resistant themselves; they've snapped up the useful genetic sequences from the crops nearby. I don't know if they've found the mechanism for this yet --- anyone know?
Re:Most food we eat is genetically modified (Score:5, Insightful)
Direct insertion of DNA sequences from other species is different to breeding and selection.
Of course it's DIFFERENT, duh.
Your burden of proof is to show us it's WORSE. So far you haven't done that. You've just laid out a lot of scary language designed by Greenpeace to frighten people who don't know jack about genetics or science-in-general. You'll find the audience here is not the man-on-the-street.
So, go ahead, prove that using GM to obtain specific traits is worse than breeding for specific traits. Prove it.
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Re:Most food we eat is genetically modified (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess that the worst problem with these technologies is monoculture.
But monoculture has nothing to do with genetics. Nothing at all. For example, most plantations growing bananas are a monoculture, but they aren't genetically modified at all.
So you're basically saying, "I have absolutely no evidence that GM is worse, but here's a completely unrelated example that has nothing to do with GM." We're not that stupid, buddy, bring facts or go home.
Re:Most food we eat is genetically modified (Score:4, Interesting)
"I do not know you as an individual so I cannot say 'you'."
Yes you can, you were replying directly to my post
However, I can address the population that uses the phrase that you have used as that population I have had many experiences with.
No, you can make assumptions and generalisations based on what you think I'm like due to a combination of life experiences and media characterisation. This gives you an excuse to address stereotypes and straw-men rather than the content of my argument.
And it does have quite a bit to do with the argument at hand, artificial selection and natural selection are all mechanics of evolution and a means to change genetic material. Semantics matter, no educational debate can be had without an agreement of terms. In this particular instance, to say that artificial selection isn't evolution negates your argument. Personally I blame poor teachers and pop culture for indoctrinating you into believing otherwise.
I didn't say anything about artificial selection not being evolution. I was talking about deliberate chemical or viral manipulation not being the same as either form of selection.
I'm sorry if that was ambiguous, I didn't think it was *that* ambiguous though.
Re:Most food we eat is genetically modified (Score:5, Informative)
Do we really have the confidence in our understanding of genetic mechanisms to rule out harmful side-effects?
Turn that question around: What are the side effects of non-GMO crops? How do you know that this mushroom is safe to eat, and not that one? It's very simple: people tried them, and they discovered that this particular type made them sick and die. At least GMOs get tested for this in a lab before they're released into the environment.
Keep in mind that with GMO crops you're taking two things: corn and chrysanthemum, for example, and pasting them together to create corn with a borer-resistant root. It's not like that mix is going to result in corn that grows gills and glows in the dark. So you test the corn that comes out, and if there's no permethrin in the kernels, what difference does it make to you in the food chain? None.
The radical greens who try to scare people about GMOs play upon people's gullibility. They want us to not understand that we animals don't merge with the DNA of the foods we eat. Our stomach acids break the cells down, and our bodies collect and use only the raw nutrition components. If it didn't work this way, eating a cow could give you hooves, or eating corn might make a tassel grow out of your head. For those bits of food where the digestion process opens the cell walls, the same digestion process breaks up the DNA into amino acids. The undigestible bits come out the other end.
I do agree that the Terminator gene is as evil as DRM, but from a humanity/political point of view, not from a scientific view.
Re:Most food we eat is genetically modified (Score:5, Insightful)
Do we really have the confidence in our understanding of genetic mechanisms to rule out harmful side-effects?
Turn that question around: What are the side effects of non-GMO crops?
Almost all of this debate misses the fundamental point of introducing alien species (and that's what GMO crops are... we've just refined the granularity of introduction to genetic fragments rather than a whole creature). Toads would not have been a problem in Australia or pigs in Hawaii, had they evolved there, naturally. They problem is that it takes centuries for an ecosystem to adapt to even the smallest change in an existing species and millennia or much longer to adapt to major changes.
In short, it's not the evolution of the crops that's in question, but of the environment around them and how it will respond.
We're currently at the "what could possibly go wrong" stage, and companies like Mosanto correctly point out that they'll go out of business if they need to wait for 100 years to see what the results of their tinkering might be, but are we protecting a company at the cost of our future health and well being? We literally have no idea.
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Farmer A plants seeds with a GURT trait like Terminator (nevermind where he got it since the technology was never commericalized). Some small amount of contamination drifts out of his field and into the edge of farmer B's. Those few seeds obviously won't germinate. Farmer B is either forced to marginally increase his sowing density, or use seed from the center of his field, or the center of his property which has no contamination. Either is that great to farmer B (although mos
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Just like dogs have been genetically modified to produce everything from chihuahuas to great danes.
Indeed, take a look at this scientific video of a freak accident [todaysbigthing.com] that somehow avoided natural selection. At one point in that beast's ancestry it was a magnificent wolf or even dingo.
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Hey - If the world didn't have chihuahuas, what would we feed our great danes?
Joke aside, even we're genetically modified these days. The human race is getting taller pretty quickly. Not to mention that boobs and wieners are getting bigger just because of latent biological drives that happen to encourage breeding behavior. But if it happens in a lab, it's evil. If it happens in a bedroom, it's natural. And if it happens in your garden, even the smelly hippies like it (OK - they like the bedroom stuff t
Re:Most food we eat is genetically modified (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Most food we eat is genetically modified (Score:4, Informative)
Except that the latest crops are now patented. If someone's crops get pollinated with the patented strain, even unintentionally just by wind from a neighboring field, then he can be sued by the inventor and subjected to license fees.
Re:Most food we eat is genetically modified (Score:5, Interesting)
He's referring to a case in Canada. Monsanto claimed he had gotten hold of some Roundup Ready rape seed, and used it to grow a seed crop of his own. Monsanto has the patent on that, and farmers are required to pay Monsanto a fee when they grow it. This, btw, is long established practice - the first patent was granted Burpee for the Red Delicious apple tree, and every single RD Apple tree in existence is a graft linking back to that tree - and if an orchard decides simply to graft from one they have already and establish 50 more trees, they still owe Burpee the license fee. Same with hybrid roses.
The farmer claimed that it was wind blown pollen from a neighbor's field that contaminated his seed crop. A couple of things that came out at the trial were that
a) it wasn't a scattering, it was a whole field, and
b) it occurred over multiple seasons, which negated his claim that he didn't know.
c) Despite Monsanto's claims, contamination by windblown pollen can occur.
Best guess is that he DID have a small patch of seed corn contaminated with the RR variant, but instead of destroying it and claiming damages from his neighbor, he selectively harvested it and planted another seed crop with it. Which is illegal, and he knew it. But since the story had the words "Monsanto", "GMO", "contaminated", and "farmer" in it, we wound up with most people forming opinions like the GP. If it would have been one of Monsanto's other patented but NOT GMO strains, the story wouldn't have gone farther than the local grange newsletter.
Monsanto sucks for plenty of other reasons than using 50 year old precedent to enforce plant patent rights against someone who violated them.
Re:Most food we eat is genetically modified (Score:5, Informative)
Look, he wasn't caught because Monsanto was rooting around testing people's crops. He was caught because Monsanto noticed he was buying vast quantities of Roundup, which was weird. Further investigation revealed the farmer was spraying Roundup indiscriminately over his crop.
Now, if your crop doesn't have the Roundup Ready gene, spraying it with Roundup kills it. So this farmer knew that the crop he was planting was all Roundup Ready. Then when he was caught, he then made up a cock-and-bull story about inadvertent contamination in hopes that he could avoid the legal consequences of deliberately, intentionally, and systematically violating Monsanto's patent.
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Truly we have two absolutely morally bankrupt individuals here. You and R2 above.
How did he get hold of the seed then? Did he steal it from someone?
No, his fields *were* cross contaminated one year, he harvested HIS seed replanted HIS seed next year as is typical of 90% of cropping farmers and found that it had been cross pollinated with a RR crop.
Apparently according to Monsantos great defenders SEE and R2 he should have burnt his first years crop which WAS contaminated by his neighbours crop and dumped
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"But there are plenty of cases of farmers having to pay license fees for "stealing" monsanto GM seeds and being unable to prove that they're innocent despite the distinct possibility of cross-pollination."
Please cite some example cases.
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most of the genetic code across all living things is exactly the same
Re:Most food we eat is genetically modified (Score:4, Informative)
There have been reported cases of Horizontal gene transfers caused by viruses and bacteria in Nature.
Some genes are thought to be transferred across plant/fungi/animal boundaries by certain pathogens.
Granted it takes a log time for such gene transfers to contribute to useful attributes for the target organism.
But this discovery of Naturally occurring Horizontal gene transfer is causing some issues in Molecular evolutionary genetics.
I can back this up (Score:3, Informative)
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Um No. Those don't exist (Score:5, Informative)
Unless you were at one point a grad student who engineered them yourself (or worked in a lab with someone who did) you've never tasted a GM strawberry.
If I'm wrong please point me toward where I can buy the GM seed for either of those.
For the record the only GM fruit or vegetable anyone will probably encounter right now would be a papaya from Hawaii engineered to resist papaya ring spot virus, as GM papayas were introduced after ring spot virus decimated the conventional papayas.
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The Biotechnology Industry Organization maintains a list of GM seed on the market here:
http://www.bio.org/speeches/pubs/er/agri_products.asp [bio.org]
Strawberries and tomatoes are indeed present.
Those are in development, not avaliable (Score:3, Informative)
Just to be clear I'm not saying there will never be GM tomatoes or strawberries, just that you can't eat them today. So while you or others may feel tomatoes today are less tasty than they used to be, the fault doesn't lie with genetic engineering since the ones everyone is eating haven't been touched by the technology.
Thanks for the link though. It's a great resource.
Re:Most food we eat is genetically modified (Score:4, Informative)
Sounds like you are talking about hothouse vegetables and fruits grown out of season or ones from another region that are picked well before ripening to increase shelf life. As stated in another reply these are not GM crops.
Re:Most food we eat is genetically modified (Score:4, Interesting)
Well good! (Score:5, Insightful)
Now I'm not all that fussy about not eating bio-engineered food. But I think that biodiversity is a Good Thing, and that it's probably a good idea to preserve some uncontaminated stock (the old adage of "work on a backup" applies doubly when you're dealing with your food supply).
Add to that the way a lot of the bioengineering agritech firms love to assert copyright over their "intellectual property" (plant genetic material), whether or not the farmer actually wanted it or if it was undesirable cross-pollination, and I say good for Judge White.
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What they really need is to make the biotech patents on crops only applicable for 5-10 years, that way it drives the bio-tech companies to come up with new stuff and we are not permanently patenting life.
I understand the need for them to 'protect their research investment" but it should definitely expire. We also need to make the law so it can't be abused like Disney abuses the copyright laws on nearly 100 year old cartoons.
10-15 year max patent on the genes while being "researched or tested". Which conv
Why do you care? (Score:2, Troll)
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Re:Why do you care? (Score:4, Informative)
If you want a ton of specifics (just too many to list here) about GM food and it's health effects, there's a good documentary (which also covers how farmers get screwed) call "The Future of Food" located at TheFutureOfFood.com.
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"Call me a "green" if you wish..."
No, but I'm afraid the "woo" may be strong in you...
"...but lab results on some of the genetically modified food have shown stomach cancer in lab rats."
Do you have a citation, maybe to a good published study?
"You think this federal judge ruled against the crop without any reason at all?"
He didn't rule against the crop. He just said that you couldn't claim that there was no significant environmental impact. So an EIS is needed. I would disagree, but I'm not the judge...
Pe
Re:Why do you care? (Score:5, Informative)
Now that studies are being done, GMO's are shown to cause increased allergenicity, as well as other problems:
"Animal studies consistently indicate serious health risks associated with GM food, including infertility, immune system dysfunction, organ damage, and increased mortality. Smith warns, "The only published human GMO feeding study confirmed that genes from the genetically engineered foods transfer into intestinal bacteria of humans and that these genes continue to function."
Re:Why do you care? (Score:4, Insightful)
And do you know who [responsibl...nology.org] are you quoting? Here's a subtle hint: their home page has "GMFree" as a part of the URL. Painting "Institute for Responsible Technology" on the side of their building doesn't mean they are actually performing responsible scientific studies.
Their front page is filled with alarmist rhetoric like "Everything you HAVE TO KNOW about Dangerous Genetically Modified Foods" and "Expert Jeffrey M. Smith, author of the #1 GMO bestseller Seeds of Deception, and Genetic Roulette, presents shocking evidence why genetically modified crops may lead to health and environmental catastrophes, and what we can do about it." Does a responsible scientific organization use "Dangerous", "shocking", and "catastrophe" to frame the debate?
Every single paragraph on their site is devoted to anti-GMO propaganda such as "No GMOs" and "Healthy Eating Begins with Non GMO food!"
They're every bit as neutral on the subject as Monsanto. You can bet that any study they quote has been cherry picked to support their position, and that no studies that might show contrary evidence are supported.
These guys ARE the radical greens who hate GMOs because "they're not natural", not because they understand it.
And just to be clear, I'm not employed in the agri-business, but my wife is. She works for an organic grain wholesaler, so I've learned a bit about the industry, and about the people who work in it. Their entire business model is built upon making sure people freak out when they hear the letters "GMO".
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
None of this is at issue here. It's the bio diversity or future lack of it that is in question, because of what?
The company's aggressiveness in enforcing their patents that's what. Pollen blows with the wind but yet they expect you not to save seeds, not to let it out of your property and things that are just plain impossible. As a matter of fact the makers of the GM corn here should be hit harder than GM beets. If someone saves a seed to replant and it has mingled by accident with another farmers GM corn,
Sugar is a purified product (chemical) (Score:4, Insightful)
This is on par with banning sea salt because they came up with a more efficient evaporation process. With the exception of turbinado (i.e. raw sugarcane extract) and molasses, white cane/beet sugar is 99%+ pure. Who cares if the DNA of the plant is different from the previously "genetically modified" breed of sugar beet? Sugar Beet is right up there with modern corn, strawberries and wheat in terms of plants that have been bred to produce 1000x what the plant produces naturally in the wild. There is no DNA in white sugar, and any that was in the Turbanado or Molasses was destroyed in the boiling process.
Re:Sugar is a purified product (chemical) (Score:5, Informative)
Not even the summary says anything about end product safety. The concern is environmental impact, which has nothing to do with what the beets are eventually turned in to.
the pollen factor (Score:5, Insightful)
So let's change the law (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So let's change the law (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:the pollen factor (Score:5, Insightful)
I think a fairer system is that Monsanto (or whoever) pay to replace the farmers stock with non-GM modified seed of the farmer's choice and provide remuneration for the lost yield. If the farmer refuses, then the patent holder can break out the lawyers and commence legal action.
That way the patents are protected and the incentive to develop new GM technology remains; but third parties are not punished for something that isn't their fault. It also provides an incentive for patent holders to be careful about how their product is dispersed: contaminating a large commercial farm could prove very costly.
As simple as possible ... (Score:4, Insightful)
I see a lot of "it's just sugar" or "everything's genetically modified" arguments cropping up here; it's really not that simple. Plants are surprisingly "promiscuous" (follow this thread for a number of, no doubt, terribly ribald comments on *that* one). Traits adopted by one set of plants can make their way over [wikipedia.org] to others of the same or different species. Depending on what traits are being modified, this can be a bad thing; consider that Roundup resistance in weeds is not just a result of selective pressure, but of the movement of genes from Monsanto's Roundup resistant seed stocks to neighboring plants.
Yes, this sort of "gene flow" happens in the soi disant natural world as well, but, like CO2 production, modern technology allows us to make bigger, more significant differences over a much shorter period of time. Caution is appropriate here.
welcoming our sugar beet overlords (Score:3, Insightful)
But Judge White said that the pollen from the genetically engineered crops might spread to non-engineered beets.
The United States court system is protecting us from miscegenated sugar beets?
Arguments in favor of genetic purity are no more valid when applied to sugar beets than when applied to people.
Progress blocked for all the reasons (Score:4, Interesting)
This is human progress. These rulings about genetic engineering are foolish because they defend intellectual property for the expense of feeding people. The problem isn't the genetically engineered crop - its clearly better. The idea that humans should not be allowed to alter genes in the environment is stupid. Genes are altered all the time by everything, whether or not people do it is quite alright because we are not somehow separate from the eco-system.
The problem is financial: it's that Monsanto and others have a habit of showing up on your doorstep with a bill because one of their genetically modified seeds may have blown onto your doorstep. If you modified the laws so that people who GM stuff blown onto their land could just use it, or, if their crops were dimished by the GM, they could sue, then you would not have this problem. It's like that for regular seeds. Why not be that way for anything else?
I'm in strong favor of intellectual property rights, but clearly, intellectual property rights should not trump the rights of land ownership.
GE isn't the problem. Genetic code as IP is. (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem isn't so much the engineering. That's just applying new technology to the age-old practice of agriculture.
The problem is that Monsanto (and others) want to control the rights to the genetic code they produce. This puts them in the position to benefit from the natural spread (through pollination) of their intellectual property. Yes, they produced the code originally. But that code replicates naturally! It's like the New York Times coming after you for licensing fees because you have copies of their photos in your browser cache.
There's tremendous potential for abuse in allowing a company to own genetic code in this way. How long before someone starts secretly creating viruses and blights in order to wipe out crops that happen to be missing a patented resistance gene?
I'm just a dump web guy, and not particularly evil. If I can cook up that scenario, you can bet that it has crossed the minds of executives at Monsanto.
Re:oh noes genetically engineer food!!1!! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:oh noes genetically engineer food!!1!! (Score:4, Informative)
I suggest you read your own link. "Organic" labelling does not just mean "without pesticides", it also usually includes "not genetically modified".
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Prove the "better" and "healthier" comments, and this whole issue dissapears in a puff of logic. And no, "a press release by a GM company said so" isn't proof.
Re:Of course you can get it labeled (Score:5, Insightful)
This is getting to be less and less true, regardless of how "cheap" you are, and that's the point.
There was an article in Wired a while back that dealt with genetically engineered beef, going in depth into the whole process by which it's created, interviewing the farmers and other people along every step of the chain. The upshot was that it's basically impossible *not* to buy genetically engineered beef these days, because there are so many people out there who don't follow what few rules there are, there's so little enforcement and such big financial incentives for breaking the rules. (Nobody wants to buy cattle with stringy beef when it's next to a bunch of other cattle that are plumped up artificially.)
And the thing you have to remember is that once you've contaminated the chain, it's impossible to uncontaminate it. It's like trying to remove paint thinner from a pitcher full of drinking water. Once it's in there, it's almost impossible to separate it again. If you have one genetically modified bull producing offspring with non-modified cattle, all of those offspring will then be genetically modified, and nobody knows about it. They will then have their own offspring, and REALLY quickly you will have an entire system full of contaminated beef.
All anybody wants is the choice to eat this stuff or not. And that's being taken away with the lack of rules, the lack of oversight and the lack of labeling. Nobody is saying this stuff shouldn't even be on the market, we're just saying it needs to be labeled, and separated from the natural stuff.
If you feel that way, then you pay for it (Score:3, Insightful)
There is absolutely nothing stopping you from paying for meat certified not to be from modified stock.
Would you argue that non-Kosher food should have to be labelled as such? If not, why should I have to pay to accommodate your superstitions?
Re:Of course you can get it labeled (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
So what? The farmer was just doing what farmer's have done for centuries! Every year farmers would save the seeds from the tastiest/most productive/most robust plants and use them as seeds for the coming years. It is only through thousands of years of this process that we have gotten the crops we have today. Why should a farmer stop using the methods botanical husbandry that have been employed for the entire existence of his profession just because his neighbor decided to stop and use GM crops instead?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The biggest black market in the United States is the sale of unpasteurized milk. It just shows you how far people will go to do stupid things because they think every advancement made by man is bad.
Re:Of course you can get it labeled (Score:4, Informative)
[CITATION NEEDED]
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
The biggest black market in the United States is the sale of unpasteurized milk.
Little known fact- you know all that gang violence on the US-Mexican border? Milk smuggling.
They can't (Score:4, Informative)
The case you're thinking of involved a farmer who specifically gathered cross pollinated rapeseed and selectively bred them for the Monsanto gene. He wasn't sued for genetic drift.
Oh, and linking to hulu is a real jerk move. They block non-Americans.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
As usual of Monsantos defenders you neglect to mention that the seed he gathered was HIS SEED to start with on HIS LAND that was pollintated by the fancy new Monsanto Round Up Ready crop next door.
What should he have done? Burned his fields, dumped his seed stores and packed up and moved into town because someone planted a Monsanto crop next door? I'm sorry but there is a 100% chance of cross pollination and if you retain a percentage of your seed each harvest for next year then that's OBVIOUSLY going to c
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
*All* crops cross pollinate. Why should GM growers be held to a higher standard?
Because they're covered by patents.
If you really want crops without any cross contamination, you can grow them in a sealed hydroponic facility.
Exactly. Which is what Monsanto should be requiring of their customers, instead of waiting until cross-pollination occurs then suing for patent infringement.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"The difference is the methods involved, where people artificially interfere with breeding and natural selection by means of selecting crops themselves or directly cut and paste genes to that effect."
And that's the whole point. You want to be logical, OK. Let's be logical and scientific about it:
History has shown me time and again that giant multinational corporations are more concerned with doing things the PROFITABLE way, which is not necessarily, the safest/smartest/cleanest/healthiest way. So WHY should
Reading TFS isn't that complicated... (Score:3, Informative)
The concern here isn't over contamination of the end product, but the environmental impact of growing the crop.
Everything we eat is GM. Everything. (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you eaten wheat? Corn? Beef? Chicken?
All of these products were genetically modified by people long before we knew what genes were. In its natural state, wheat blows away in the wind, leaving no food to eat. Mutant strains kept the seeds, and we cultivated those. Mutant strains developed by Borlaug in the 1950s saved millions from death and billions from starving.
Cows are domesticated from aurochs, now extinct. Wild corn is an inch long and hard as a rock.
Everything we've eaten for millenia has been genetically modified for maximum yield and higher efficiency.
We just have different tools now. What if they'd used phenotype selection to create a super-sweet beet instead? Would that be a problem? Eventually Mostanto could create a roundup-ready corn using artificial selection, the same way we've been doing it since we dug furrows in Mesopotamia.
Would that be fine? Is it just the tool that's the problem or is it hysteria at anything that's genetically modified and labelled as a Frankenfood by enivronmentalists?
For the record, I am a vegetarian.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure, most of what we eat has been modified, over time, by selecting for traits we need.
Same goes for pets. However, a product created by GM in a lab has the potential for far less genetic diversity than selecting for something by natural processes.
Say a lab GM's some corn, gets the perfect genetic set, and sells clones of that one perfect set. Its so perfect that everyone is the world starts using it. Along comes a disease that happens to really decimate just that 'one perfect set' of GM corn. There goe
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Hybrids aren't generally sterile.
But first generation hybrids don't generally breed true.
The second generation will have each individual expressing a random mix of traits from ether of the parents. Often individuals will resemble one grandparent more then the they resemble the first generation hybrid.
This is how companies like Monsanto stayed in business until genetic engineering came along.
Finally the low flavor quality of some hybrids is not because they are hybrids. It's because they were select
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't tell the sugar farmers in Florida and Southern Texas (not to mention all of the sugar beet farmers) that their crops don't exist. It will just ruin their fantasy! Nobody likes a killer of a good fantasy!
Re:Stupid Science! (Score:4, Insightful)
which seems to be what a lot of the Earth Firsters really want, as long as they continue to reap the benefits of civilisation...