BASF Moves GM Plant Research From Europe To US 288
ananyo writes "The German chemical giant BASF is moving its transgenic plant operations from Europe to the U.S., it says, because of widespread opposition to the technology. The company on 16 January announced that it would move its plant science headquarters from Limburgerhof, Germany to Raleigh, North Carolina and no longer develop plants solely for cultivation in Europe. The division employs 157 people in Limburgerhof, plus another 63 at facilities elsewhere in Europe. BASF said it would relocate 123 of those jobs to the North Carolina facility. In statement, Stefan Marcinowski, a member of BASF's Board of Executive Directors, cited 'a lack of acceptance for this technology in many parts of Europe – from the majority of consumers, farmers and politicians.' The company instead plans to focus on plant biotechnology markets in the Americas and Asia."
Re:Great !! 123 more jobs, (Score:5, Informative)
Humans have been growing GMO for milenia, and even have GM themselves ... if you're an adult and can metabolize milk, you're it.
Someone's trotting out this nonsense again?
There's a world of difference between selective breeding and playing mix-n-match genomes hands-on via gene-splicing.
P.S. It's "millennia".
Re:Great !! 123 more jobs, (Score:5, Informative)
Please stop with that bullshit just stop. When you use a gene gun and blast dna from a bacterium randomly into the genome of a plant species so as that crop can be doused with Round-UP(tm) [google.com] you are not doing the same thing that farmers have been doing for millennia. sorry to bust your bubble.
Re:So (Score:5, Informative)
If the UPC starts with 9, it's organic.
If it starts with 8, it's GM.
If there's another number, it's conventionally farmed.
For once, lazy programming helps slashdotters.
Re:BASF still exists? (Score:5, Informative)
Wow!
BASF still exists? To me BASF is this [youtube.com], and I haven't heard them since. :)
BASF [wikipedia.org] is the largest chemical company in the world - more than twice the size of DuPont. 2010 revenues were almost 64 billion €.
US doesn't mandate disclosure (Score:5, Informative)
In Europe the market gets to decide if they want GMO food. That happens because they have labeling and menu laws that require the disclosure. It's capitalism at work. BASF is free to grow all the GMO it wants. But they have to sell GMO to the consumers. Here in the US you can pretty much put what you want into foods without nearly as much disclosure.
Re:BASF still exists? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Great !! 123 more jobs, (Score:2, Informative)
Er, no-one claims organic food is about nutritive value. We had this straw man played out in the UK a few years ago, which left the pro-GM people with egg on theor faces. It's mainly about not pumping toxic chemicals into the land, which is bad for obvious reasons.
Re:Great !! 123 more jobs, (Score:5, Informative)
there is no "Genetic Engineering" yet, only genetic tinkering and selecting
While it is true that people have been altering crops for thousands of years (in fact, some crops, like corn, wheat, broccoli, Brussels sprouts strawberries, and tangerines were pretty much created by humans), and unless you are eating nothing but foraged foods and non-cultivated species everything you eat has had massive genetic alterations made to it via human selection, however it is not true that there are no genetically engineered crops out there right now.
There are, right now (as far as I can remember anyway), a grand total of 15 genetically engineered species with 9 types of traits that have been commercially released worldwide. Genetically engineered corn, soy, canola, cotton, sugar beet, and alfalfa are allowed to be grown in the US (some of these are deregulated in other places like Canada, Argentina, Brazil, and China too). These crops have either resistance to Lepidoptera insects (the Bt traits) or tolerance to an herbicide (the epsps gene for glyphosate or the bar gene for glufosinate), or both, depending on the crop. Also, drought tolerant corn was recently approved in the US, and a soybean called Vistive Gold that has an altered oil content. Those are your major GE crops.
Then there's two minor (relatively) crops, the Rainbow papaya (the first but hopefully not last university produced GE crop to make ti to market) and summer squash, which have genes from virus coat proteins to resist the papaya ringspot virus or cucumber mosaic virus. Another virus resistant crop was recently approved in Brazil, a bean resistant to golden mosaic virus (although it will be two years IIRC before it goes into production). There used two other horticultural crops that were GE, tomatoes and potatoes. The Flavr Savr tomato had delayed ripening traits and NewLeaf potato had the Bt trait, however, while they are still approved for sale, were taken foff the market. There is, however, the Amflora potato being grown in the Netherlands. It has altered starch content and is grown for industrial starch.
The rest are even more minor and aren't actually food crops.. The Applause rose is a GE 'blue' rose (looks more purple to me, but whatever). Once, Iran grew Bt rice, but from what I can tell (and I don't have much info on this one) they stopped growing it. In China they released Bt poplars into the wild to repopulate some deforested areas. The last one is the GloFish, which is sold as a pet.
Also, there's stuff that comes from GE microbes, for example, the rennet used in cheese making often comes from Ge bacteria.
So, that's what is currently (or was at one point) genetically engineered. There are plenty of GE crops in development or awaiting approval though, from Golden Rice to BioCassava to Arctic apples to Enviropig to 2,4-D resistant corn, and there's lots of promising research into other traits like fungus resistance and delayed ripening (food spoilage is a major problem in developing countries), so it isn't just limited to these plants and these traits. Unfortunately, overly strict regulations and general opposition & ignorance prevent the technology from being further utilized.
Re:Great !! 123 more jobs, (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, that's exactly what they do. Why do you think they wouldn't?
If you'd read the rest of his comment, it's not that they wouldn't but that they don't, mainly because it's too difficult and therefore costly. Most GM foods have been produced by bathing cells either in radiation or in chemical preparations designed to induce mutation. If the mutation seems favorable, they hang onto it. If it doesn't, they throw it away. The idea that scientists have enough control over DNA to just change bits and pieces according to some grand design gives scientists too much credit. Very seldom is it done that way. Most of the GM modifications might conceivably have occurred in nature. Humans simply select the ones they prefer, rather than letting nature take its course -- which is pretty much how agriculture has always been done.
BTW, I am not saying all GM foods are beneficial in terms of nutrition, ecology, etc. Many are only beneficial in terms of lining some company's pockets. But some people act as though GM foods are made of plastic and cyanide, when really they're still just corn, soybeans, etc.
Re:Great !! 123 more jobs, (Score:5, Informative)
USDA & FDA labeling requirements [usda-fda.com] state: "...consumers buying organic products, whether produced in the United States or imported, can be assured that the foods are produced without antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, irradiation or bioengineering.
So, yes, you can bet on "organic" being non-GMO.
Re:The Food Supply (Score:5, Informative)
GMO is not about making plants that produce more, or are resistant to cold or heat or drought.
Presently they are about resistance to insects, better weed management practices, and virus resistance, and they work.
It is the control of the food supply, that is what it is about.
You have no idea what genetic engineering is, do you? It is a technique. It doesn't want to do anything. Sure, you could say that a company wants to get larger market share, but that would be like saying that cooking is all about control because McDonald's does it.
Ask any Biologist, and they will tell you, genetically creating strains of identical plant lines to maximize a trait is a truly dangerous thing to do.
Funny, because that's exactly what many biologists working in plant science are trying to do with particular traits. That's what we've been doing for years with conventional breeding, or did you think all those plump grains and fat fruits were natural? This is not intrinsically different than altering traits via GE. And as a matter of fact, I have asked biologists about this very subject. University professors in genetics, biochemistry, plant biology, and agriculture. Guess how many of them opposed genetic engineering? None.
Whenever you take and engineer biological entities such as plants, that are gentically identical and create entire artificial eco systems that have low diversity, or in the case of GMO, _NO_ diversity, all sorts of catastrophic destruction can happen to the population.
That doesn't even make sense. Yes, lack of biodiversity is bad. Genetic engineering however is a way of improving a plant, not a system of agriculture. What you are saying is like saying that modifying cars with spinning rims means that there will only be one car on the market. Furthermore, even with GE crops, they breed the trait into numerous different lines of the crop.
Whether it be a GERM, a BUG or BAD WEATHER, having a food supply that is genetically diverse and NOT engineered is the safest and will produce the most food, consistently over a wide variety of environmental conditions.
Biodiversity is what you grow. genetic engineering is a way to improve it. That's a false dichotomy that makes absolutely no sense and could just as easily be applied to conventional breeding.
GMO has got to be the worst possible idea of all time.
Tell that to the papaya farmers in Hawaii who would no longer be papaya farmers without the GE Rainbow papaya. Tell that to the farmers in India who stole Bt cotton seeds from test fields. Tell that to the farmers all across America, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina who willingly choose to buy GE seed every year.
It isn't by accident you know, they will not put GMO labels on food. They know it is not safe, and they do not want you to know about it.
They?
GMO also is causing massive extinction rates in our grain crops from gene contamination. If this isn't stopped, there won't be any grain species left that are safe to eat.
Really? Care to explain in detail how a single new transgene could possibly do that? Because it sounds like you just made that up.
It sounds like you know nothing about biology or agriculture, but you've got conspiracies down.
Re:Great !! 123 more jobs, (Score:5, Informative)
You do of course realize that cows currently do not have horns, right?
Have you ever been to a farm?
Let me give you a hint: if it has horns, don't milk the long teat.
Cows in the US don't have horns because they can't grow them, but because they get debudded or dehorned. Cows are dehorned [wikipedia.org] on dairy farms when they're calves, so when you see them as adults they are hornless. A farm up the road from me used to have some cows with trimmed horns. This picture [depositphotos.com] shows a cow that hasn't been dehorned.