Cyanide-Producing GM Grass Linked To Texas Cattle Deaths 305
Peristaltic writes "Scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture are trying to determine if an unexpected mutation in a popular GM grass, Tifton 85, is responsible for the sudden deaths of a small herd of cattle in Elgin, Texas three weeks ago. The grass has been used for grazing since 1992 without incident, however after a severe drought last year in Texas, the grass started producing cyanide in sufficient quantities to kill a small herd of cattle in Elgin, Texas. Testing has found the cyanide-producing grass in nearby fields as well." Update: 06/23 22:59 GMT by T : Reader Jon Cousins writes with a correction that means the headline above is inaccurate for including "GM." Tifton 85, he writes, is "absolutely not genetically modified. It's a conventionally bred hybrid."
Holy f*** (Score:3, Interesting)
This is scary movie nightmare stuff come true!!!
Grass that kills!!!
Re:Holy f*** (Score:5, Funny)
Ever seen Reefer Madness (1936)?
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yes. I have this on my server, if anyone wants I can set it on a tracker - it's public domain so no problem.
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Ever seen Reefer Madness (1936)?
Yes, but I was pretty well baked at the time...
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you can have a no-moo lawn
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Re:Holy f*** (Score:5, Funny)
This is amazing. I mean this is like something from The Onion. Except its real.
Fortunately, onions have sulfur not cyanide.
Re:Holy f*** (Score:5, Informative)
Why, cyanide production is common in lots of plants. Cattle sometimes die from eating too many cherry tree leaves. I don't understand the whole problem. Put plants under stress and they will produce more secondary metabolites for a multitude of reasons, including herbivore protection.
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cherry stones, apple pips, orange pips... most fruit seeds have prussic acid in them.
yeah, except for the true part (Score:5, Informative)
Re:yeah, except for the true part (Score:4, Funny)
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Damn. I was just pulling my pitchfork and torch out of the shed. Thought it was interesting; should have done more research.
Stay negative; just with the old hybridization-method they managed to create something that in field conditions produced enough cyanide to kill a cow. Now consider GM crops, including possible hybrids, and if they're more or less likely to have unintended consequences. Yes, they're the most tested seeds and plants ever, but we test medicines too and there are occasional failures... also boxes of pills are easier to recall than plants from the wild.
Re:yeah, except for the true part (Score:5, Informative)
just with the old hybridization-method they managed to create something that in field conditions produced enough cyanide to kill a cow.
Cyanide poisoning is apparently a potential problem with any variety of grass, not just the hybrids.
Re:yeah, except for the true part (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say GM is less likely to cause such things. Why?
Well, when you hybridize you're "patching in" shitloads of other genes in an attempt to get the trait you want. GM is much more targeted, therefore much less chances of something you didn't want coming over.
Of course, in both cases you'll still have the problems that might come up because of a lack of understanding in the trait you are after. If a gene that makes wheat grow faster makes it build up toxins, it doesn't really matter how you got the trait in there, because it's the trait itself that is at fault!
Re:yeah, except for the true part (Score:4, Informative)
That's a nice theory, but in reality they gene engineer entire strands of DNA in most cases, not just a few targetted genes. So our current level of GM technology is no better than old fashioned hybridization in terms of targetting specific traits.
Worse, we really don't have a detailed understanding of genetics and their interactions. We know that specific genes affect traits, but we don't know how all the genes that affect those traits interact. We are jumping the gun with our current efforts, and it is not only possible but very likely that we're going to create some truly monstrous mutations in the near future.
Worse, we have no idea what the long term interactions of the GM genetics will be. GMs are not sterile. They are mixing with native crops and infesting the gene pool; Monsanto and others rely on that infestation to sue farmers they claim are "stealing" their technology when their pollen infests neighbouring crops, and blocking farmers from using their own crops as seed stock.
Personally I have far greater faith in the productivity of "land race" genetics produced by self-seeding crop land with last year's seed for 15-20 years sequentially. You end up with a plant that is tailor grown for the specific environment, whereas a GM crop is a shotgun approach that is tailored for a specific trait rather than the general growing conditions of the environment.
As far as I'm concerned, GM crops to date have one purpose and one purpose only: to sell more pesticides and herbicides.
Re:yeah, except for the true part (Score:5, Insightful)
Damn. I was just pulling my pitchfork and torch out of the shed.
That right there sums up the problem with the GMO debate (well, one of them). Caring about the process, not the product. You can bet your ass that none of the anti-GMO groups out there are going to see this and other problems [nap.edu] that have arisen from breeding (like the Lenape potato and high psoralens celery) are going to take this story and call for more stringent research of conventionally bred crops where heaven only known how many genetic changes may be happening. No one is going to say that breeding is unpredictable with dangerous results,or that is should be labeled, or that it should be banned until the precautionary principle proves a negative, or anything else people say about GMOs, but if this really were the product of biotechnology, you know damned well that is exactly what they, and many others, would be saying.
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Re:yeah, except for the true part (Score:5, Interesting)
There are actually some people who oppose hybrids already. I've encountered some real extreme heirloom crop zealots who believe that hybrids are generally bad things. Funny enough, people once said of hybrids, unknowingly foreshadowing what would later be said of GMOs, that they 'did violence to the plant' and they would 'befoul the soil'. Of course, we know know that hybridization ranks right up there with vaccination in terms of life saving technologies, and I have no idea how anyone could oppose something that the world could not get by without. Well, without being ignorant anyway, which no doubt they are.
Fun fact: once there were people who opposed grafting, which is now used for pretty much every fruit tree. Johnny Appleseed was actually one of the, who believed that grafting was against the will of God, or some nonsense like that. He was something of a religious nut. Ironically because the trees he spread were seed grown and not grafted, they were only good for making applejack (well, I guess you could make other things out of them too, but take a wild guess as to what most people did with them back then). I guess grafting was ungodly but getting hammered on that stuff wasn't.
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I do agree with that. I personally like them because they tend to have unique traits not usually found in the widely grown hybrid lines (for example, I've got heirloom purple broccoli, white watermelons, and exceptionally tasty orange tomatoes that I grow) and the ability to save seeds and maintain the line for a long period of time is nifty. When I support hybrids & GE crops and talk of their benefits I do not mean to imply being dismissive of heirlooms. They've got some genetic diversity that coul
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And historically, where do you think your heirloom varieties came from? A: From the selective breeding and hybridization efforts of the distant past. They didn't all just magically appear as sports in someone's garden.
Oh, and what *is* a sport? A: an unexpected mutation or accidental hybrid. Many sports of the past are the heirloom varieties of the present.
While I agree with you about the quality and value (both as food and historically) of heirloom varieties, let's not kid ourselves that they're not the pr
Re:yeah, except for the true part (Score:5, Informative)
Here in Canada the tank of milk is sampled before it even leaves the farm. If it's contaminated they get hit with a heavy fine and the tank is dumped, for about 12k+ in losses for a single tank.
It's in the best interest of the farmer to isolate every cow with mastitis or a high somatic cell count from the line as the testing can easily determine even a small amount of those contaminants.
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Whoops, minor error. Very clearly no editorial bias here, right?
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Selective breeding is nothing more than GM on a low-tech scale. Please.
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Selective breeding does not make plants RoundUp-resistant. Monsanto modifies the genes of the plants in specific ways that do not occur randomly in plant genomes.
Re:yeah, except for the true part (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, it can and has produced roundup resistant plants, both through deliberate breeding programs and through basic natural selection in the fields.
GM can do things that wouldn't happen in nature and it can be a problem. That just isn't an example of it.
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OK, You tell me the procedure for mating a cucumber with a salmon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogenous_retrovirus [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer [wikipedia.org]
Virus infects salmon, new virus being produced ends up incorporating part of salmon DNA, virus gets passed to cucumber, virus inserts salmon DNA into cucumber and it ends up incorporated into it's genome, new offspring has genetic material from both cucumber and salmon. In practice, there may have to be a number of intermediaries there, but that's the idea, and it's 100% natural, and has happened numerous
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The Roundup resistant gene was found in nature, and Monsanto just copied it into soya beans. There are also plenty of weeds that have naturally generated a resistance to Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup.
Dear Mr Abel (Score:5, Funny)
How dare your heard of cattle defame the good name of our company by having the nerve to DIE after eating our product. You sir, will be hearing from our attorneys.
Sincerely,
The Monsanto Group
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I didn't realise FunnyJunk was in the GM business.
Re:Dear Mr Abel (Score:5, Informative)
You'd be amazed by all the completely natural plants that cattle will eat and that will kill them.
Re:Dear Mr Abel (Score:5, Informative)
A) Tifton85 isnt a Monsanto product
B) Tifton85 isnt a GM product-- its a hybrid
C) Some plants actually do produce cyanide, and they dont have to be GM to do so.
Re:Dear Mr Abel (Score:4, Informative)
/s/The Monsanto Group/University of Georgia/
University of Georgia at Tifton and USDA, Monsanto is not involved at all.
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The food you eat is usually made from sterile seeds.
Emphasis mine.
There is no chance of it mutating. I hope there are lawsuits too, but not because what I eat is GM, but because the cattle were pretty much poisoned and the owners should be compensated.
Wouldn't a supposedly sterile plant spontaneously producing viable seeds actually count as a mutation? I recall something like that actually happening some years back, when gmo's were all the rage (erm...being raged about). 'Fraid you might have to use your own Google-fu on that though.
Does this mean the end of gmo's? Nope. Are most of them safe? Probably. Does this mean that the anti-gmo folk were wrong? Not all of them apparently...
Except it isn't GM grass. (Score:5, Informative)
Tifton 85 is actually a hybrid of African Bermuda grass and Tifton 68, a different hybrid produced in Tifton, Texas.
It's not a GM grass.
Except that.. (Score:2, Insightful)
These two grasses likely would have never been close enough in nature to influence each other. While genetically modified doesn't technically include selective breeding, I would argue that we are still screwing with nature and creating something that wouldn't have otherwise occurred naturally. That's how we should be defining 'Genetically Modified.'
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Then virtually every single crop cultivated would then be defined as "Genetically Modified" if we went along with that logic. It astonishes me that people actually think this way and it scares the shit out of me that they could ever be in a position to make policy.
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by literal definition, all our cultivated crops *are* genetically modified. From high-yield wheat and rice crops, to triticale* and rape, to grapes and oranges, apples and potatoes. All selected for yield, biomass, taste, texture, use in processed food and in their raw forms, we as a species have been fucking with genetics in levels from cross-pollination to interbreeding animals and injecting chromosomes into cells in the lab, for thousands of years.
*an entirely manmade hybrid of durum wheat and rye, devel
Good plan. (Score:5, Insightful)
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It has never actually been proven that Green Revolution agriculture saved one single life, but it has been proven that Green Revolution agriculture has numerous significant drawbacks and has done massive damage to our long-term ability to produce food [wikipedia.org]. The end result of Green Revolution agriculture will be that all crops will have to be produced hydroponically, and in greenhouses.
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You need to read Feynman's talk on cargo cults, you're failing.
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There's a moral point to be made here, and it lies not with people who make it possible for others to live longer, richer, better fed lives. The bad people are those who irresponsibly create offspring they cannot support, offspring who will never be able to support themselves.
A second moral point is that those who blame innovators in agriculture for some mythical future Malthusian disaster are more than just bad, they're evil.
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So what you are saying is that those people and their kids, are, and forever will be, a burden on society because you have determined they, are, and forever will be, unable to add positive contributions to society. It appears from your argument have prejudged the currently poor/hungry in a way that society has determined to be morally wrong. The same way that it is "wrong" to be prejudice of any ethnic minority. Welcome to the real world where everyone is pretty unique, and in reality, you are a minority. Y
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I hope you've never eaten corn in your life, then. Or wheat. Or tomato. Or basically any commercially grown crop. Because that would make you a filthy hypocrite.
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We've been screwing with plants in this way for millennia. Almost every plant and animal you eat has been screwed with this way. Without it, humanity wouldn't have survived.
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Hey your facts are getting in the way of the usual anti GM circle jerk around here!
Re:Except it isn't GM grass. (Score:5, Informative)
CAPTCHA? (Score:2)
I guess those cows failed the Turing test...
BS (Score:5, Informative)
You've got to be kidding: this report needs to be retracted as it is completely wrong. Tifton 85 is a conventionally bred grass.
It's incredibly irresponsible to print something this inflammatory and wrong. You've now aerated people all over the world with this misunderstanding, and it will continue to be flogged forever with this incorrect information.
Further, people who hear about this won't know what the real issue is and it could cause more cow deaths.
Fix or retract this article immediately.
Pull the story. Get your facts straight. This farmer needs education from a local co-op extention. Any native or hybrid (NOT GM) grass can create this condition! Those that care for truth and real data go here and learn: http://www.uwex.edu/ces/forage/pubs/sorghum.htm
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So? That's really not all important at the time being. Whether it's conventional or not, the grass needs to be firebombed before it's allowed to spread any further.
No, I'm not kidding.
It's reputedly a cold intolerant grass which has high yields. That means it spreads quickly and will only become more prevalent as the world warms. Supposedly, this is an actual mutation and not just a short-term response to the severe climatic stressors.
If it spreads, it will not only kill off one of the most effective and i
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So? That's really not all important at the time being.
No it's very important. A major piece of misinformation like that is enough to cast doubt on all aspects of the story.
Maybe I'm being alarmist, but to me, it's better safe than sorry - sorry being a desert planet. :(
The "think of the children" approach?
Re:BS (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe I'm being alarmist, but to me, it's better safe than sorry - sorry being a desert planet.
You are being alarmist and it is not better to take drastic action unnecessarily than to know what you are doing. You are not going to get a desert planet from this. They are testing to see if it's a mutation because the weather events were not the ones they would have expected to produce cyanide. Production of cyanide by grasses is known and understood, this just happened unexpectedly and in combination with poor animal husbandry.
It's not the only pasture crop that can kill cows if you put them in hungry to fresh grass, either. Even lucerne and other legumes can kill cows by releasing gas and foam in the stomach. I hope you don't think we should kill all legumes just in case.
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Newsflash: Several plants-- even some grasses-- produce cyanide in response to stress.
http://www.gainesvilleregister.com/local/x1255111318/Cattle-deaths-blamed-on-natural-poisoning [gainesvilleregister.com]
What is really being displayed in these posts are the dangers of being both opinionated and ignorant.
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Lets hope Monsanto can quickly genetically engineer this dangerous hybrid grass to something safer before it destroys the world!!
Realistically though, their business model would be more likely to come up with cyanide resistant cows as a more marketable solution...
Re:BS (Score:5, Informative)
Pull the story. Get your facts straight. This farmer needs education from a local co-op extention.
Cyanide poisoning in veterinary medicine:
Cyanides are found in plants, fumigants, soil sterilizers, fertilizers, and rodenticides (eg, calcium cyanomide). Toxicity can result from improper or malicious use, but in the case of livestock, the most frequent cause is ingestion of plants that contain cyanogenic glycosides. These include Triglochin maritima (arrow grass), Hoecus lunatus (velvet grass), Sorghum spp (Johnson grass, Sudan grass, common sorghum), Prunus spp (apricot, peach, chokecherry, pincherry, wild black cherry), Sambucus canadensis (elderberry), Pyrus malus (apple), Zea mays (corn), and Linum spp (flax). The seeds (pits) of several plants such as the peach have been the source of cyanogenic glycosides in many cases. Eucalyptus spp , kept as ornamental houseplants, have been implicated in deaths of small animals.
The cyanogenic glycosides in plants yield free hydrocyanic acid (HCN), otherwise known as prussic acid, when hydrolyzed by Î-glycosidase or when other plant cell structure is disrupted or damaged, eg, by freezing, chopping, or chewing. Microbial action in the rumen can further release free cyanide.
Apple and other fruit trees contain prussic acid glycosides in leaves and seeds but little or none in the fleshy part of the fruits. In Sorghum spp forage grasses, leaves usually produce 2-25 times more HCN than do stems; seeds contain none. New shoots from young, rapidly growing plants often contain high concentrations of prussic acid glycosides.
The cyanogenic glycoside potential is slow to decrease in drought-stricken plants containing mostly leaves. Grazing stunted plants during drought is the most common cause of poisoning of livestock by plants that produce prussic acid.
Frozen plants may release high concentrations of prussic acid for several days. After wilting, release of prussic acid from plant tissues declines. Dead plants have less free prussic acid. When plant tops have been frosted, new shoots may regrow at the base; these can be dangerous because of glycoside content and because livestock selectively graze them.
Ruminants are more susceptible than monogastric animals, and cattle slightly more so than sheep. Hereford cattle have been reported to be less susceptible than other breeds.
Cyanide Poisoning: Introduction [merckvetmanual.com]
A history of cyanide poisoning generally, and a good read: Cyanide Poisoning [army.mil]
Some common cyanogenic edible plants reported to cause cyanide poisoning include cassava, sorghum, sweet potatoes, yams, maize, millet, bamboo, sugarcane, peas, lima beans, soybeans, almond kernels, lemons, limes, apples, pears, peach, chokecherries, apricots, prunes, and plums. Cassava (manioc) and sorghum are staple foods for hundreds of millions of people in many tropical countries and are blamed in part for the high incidence of central and peripheral neuropathies in those areas.
Since the time of ancient Egypt, plants containing cyanide derivatives, such as bitter almonds, cherry laurel leaves, peach pits, and cassava, have been used as lethal poisons. Peach pits used in judicial executions by the ancient Egyptians are on display in the Louvre Museum, Paris, and an Egyptian papyrus refers to the "penalty of the peach."
Re:BS (Score:5, Insightful)
--Tifton 85 is a conventionally bred grass.
-Monsanto's team of hired spin doctors are working some overtime this weekend.
How is correcting a major factual mistake in a story "spinning" anything?
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Looks like crap from CBS (Score:5, Informative)
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This was something I was wondering.
Even though I don't doubt this happened, the whole summary and concept sounds too much like a cheap scare tactic. The mechanisms for cyanide production had to come from somewhere. The cyanide production had to either be natural to the plant strain originally or involved with whatever was added. What you say is similarly true for yeast. Fermentation of alcohol has to occur in anaerobic environments as otherwise yeast produce other compounds. Still more research needs t
This proves science is bad (Score:4, Insightful)
Something deadly like this could never naturally evolve in plants! This must be the work of unnatural, man-driven processes! Stop all science now! Anthropocentrism at its finest.
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It's as if producing cyanide has some sort of adaptive advantage to the grass. Why would Gaia do this? It's those evil scientists.
Here's some propaganda from HowStuffWorks, pretending that clover does the same thing:
"Some species of clover developed a mutation that caused the poison cyanide to form in the plant's cells. This gave the clover a bitter taste, making it less likely to be eaten. However, when the temperature drops below freezing, some cells ruptur, releasing the cyanide into the plant's tissues
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Correct. A good many plants create their own natural pesticides. Yeah, I know, citation needed, but google your own damned results, I'm not your high school biology teacher, dammit!
Nice try CBS, but it's not GM (Score:5, Informative)
NOW they'll get off my lawn! (Score:5, Funny)
Also:
"Moo!" (thud)
More mutations required (Score:2)
It's not GM (Score:5, Funny)
This is a cross of Bluegrass, Kentucky Bluegrass, Featherbed Bent, and Northern California Sensemilia. The amazing stuff about this is, that you can play 36 holes on it in the afternoon, take it home and just get stoned to the bejeezus-belt that night on this stuff.
This is Genetic Modification (Score:2)
Selective pressure hybridization is just a really low-tech form of genetic modification.
Saying this is not a GM crop is misleading.
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Ahhh, so we've been doing GM for thousands of years then?
Well good. Because now there's nothing new for the "Greenies" (who are more about control and stopping science than helping the environment) to complain about.
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So having kids is GM too, then?
Guess a few people would get a stroke if they knew that.
Of course it is. What makes it worse is that it is a combination of GM and human cloning.
Grasses producing cyanide is not new or unknown. (Score:4, Informative)
Tifton 85 was bred using PI290884, from South Africa, and Tifton 68, which is a cross between PI255450, from Kiboko, Kenya, and PI293606, from Nairobi, Kenya.
See Fact Sheet - Cynodon Dactylon [tropicalforages.info]
"Toxicity
Some varieties have the potential to produce high levels of prussic or hydrocyanic acid (HCN), especially when high levels of nitrogen are applied. However, instances of prussic acid poisoning in cattle grazing C. dactylon are rare. Although levels of total oxalate of >1% of the DM have been recorded, there is no experience of detrimental effects on grazing cattle. Frosted C. dactylon can cause photosensitization."
What happened at ELGIN, Texas, is just an example of a RARE event. That the field in question has been in production for 15 years, and no other sites using Tifton 85 have reported animal deaths from cyanide, proves how rare the event is.
Tifton 85 has nothing to do with the laboratory manipulation of DNA (Genes).
2,4-D, Most Forage Grasses, and Drought Conditions (Score:3)
Most forage grasses (such as Tifton 85) produce prussic acid (HCN) in the young plants and new shoots.
The level of prussic acid reduces as the plants mature, but the reducion of prussic acid levels is much less during drought conditions.
When establishing a forage plot, it is comon practice to apply the selective broadleaf killing herbicide 2,4-D. A side effect of 2,4-D application is an increase in prussic acid levels 3 hours and 6 hours after application.
The combination of drought conditions and 2,4-D application, as well as early grazing on this plot are likely to be the culprit here.
In terms that the slashdot crowd can understand: Operator Error and Not Reading the Documentation are likely to be the cause.
And yes, I am an Agricultural Worker.
(Also, I know how to google for facts before I post.)
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I wouldn't be so quick to sound the death knell for GM. Some of the companies in the industry have been producing killer crap for a long time.
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Unlikely this will affect GM since this grass is a hybrid, not a GM product.
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Re:meddle with nature and suffer the concequences (Score:4, Insightful)
Since this was not a GMO at all, I expect this will be a big blow to conventional hybridization, right? Or are we going to apply a double standard and act as if dangers produced via hybridization should be ignored while dangers form GE (real or imaginary) are cause for panic?
Meddle with nature and suffer the concequences you say? Enjoy your teosinte and goatgrass, and your poisonous potatoes, tomatoes, and beans. Enjoy your seedy bananas.and grapes, your small sour apples, your gritty pears, and the little flower heads on the wild mustard plants broccoli and cauliflower came from.. Because to do otherwise would be messing with nature. Hope those chemical defenses that were bred out of all our crop plants don't give you cancer.
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I buy a bag of Golden Delicious, or Granny Smith, or some other breed.
That is probably the worst example to use. A lot of the apples you eat are actually bud sports. Basically, when a bud develops, sometimes there is a mutation in the cells that the bud originates from, resulting in a mutated branch. sometimes these have desirable properties, and are cultivated, but go labeled as the original cultivar, for example, that Golden Delicious might actually be a Gibson Golden Delicious [orangepippintrees.com], and you'd never know because they aren't labeled. You didn't even know that bud sports were
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Once you open Pandora's box, you can't shut it again
So let's nail it shut with a few facts from a random but reputable source on the subject of prussic acid poisioning [unl.edu], ....
1. Sudangrass, forage sorghum, and sorghum-sudangrass hybrids are often used for summer pasture, green chop, hay, or silage. Under certain conditions, livestock consuming these feedstuffs may be poisoned by prussic acid (HCN).
2. Exposure to excessive prussic acid--also called hydrocyanic acid, hydrogen cyanide, or cyanide--can be fatal. However, producers can manage and feed their liv
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Well, knowing how plants do spread over time, this could be catastrophic unless it is quarantined. We've already seen what happens with an invasive plant species. [wikipedia.org]
This could be an ecological disaster. The grass isn't "new", and this wasn't a test case. It's been sold to farmers since 1991. https://www.google.com/#hl=en&safe=off&sclient=psy-ab&q=Tifton+85+bermudagrass [google.com]
It's clearly for farming, but I wonder how much has ended up around residences also. In any case, this could be really bad.
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Not GM grass. Naturally bred hybrid. The headline is 100% wrong.
Perhaps you should read the actual article before posting. And, BTW, the first non-PDF result of your posted google search says specifically that it's a hybrid not a GM strain.
If you're actually "not a anti-GM nut" you should act like one.
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You're commenting on a story about a widely distributed GM grass unintentionally producing cyanide yet still believing the anti-GM crowd must be nuts?
Yes the anti-GM crowd is nuts and this story only confirms it. The grass in this case was not Genetically Modified.
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Feeding cattle a hybrid between conventional bermudagrass and a cyanide-producing stargrass strain is not GM. Just unfortunate.
The stargrass produces cyanide to protect itself from insects, for those who believe in evolution.
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You're commenting on a story about a widely distributed GM grass unintentionally producing cyanide yet still believing the anti-GM crowd must be nuts?
Since the grass in question isn't genetically modified, yes - some of the anti-GM people are nuts enough to try to use this to slam GM.
Re:Ok, now THAT is a cool sci-fi story (Score:5, Insightful)
It does not make anybody "nuts". The information was corrected, and you can change your position after the fact.
I'm anti-GM, and this is apparently just hybridization gone wrong. If anything, this shows how careful we have to be and not proceed with such a cavalier attitude towards research and implementation. This was 20 years. Keeping this in mind, the short term gains demanded by capitalism gone wrong make it seem pretty damn unreasonable and dangerous to not test the crap out of something like this for an extended period of time.
For the record, my biggest gripe with GM is what I see as dangerously performed research (practically no containment of any kind), dangerous precedents in patent law (owning genetic sequences), using it as an excuse to saturate farms with pesticides (bad for environment, bad for food, and allows for rapid evolution of countermeasures in affected species), and its affect (by use) on seed diversity.
Not to mention the logistical nightmare of recouping research and working out ownership of something that, by its very nature, can move and "infect" other crops. Monsanto deserves to burn in hell for all the grief they have given farmers simply because of the fucking wind acting as a ninja-like salesman.
Re:Ok, now THAT is a cool sci-fi story (Score:5, Informative)
still believing the anti-GM crowd must be nuts?
Yes, absolutely. Many grasses produce cyanide (usually called prussic acid by farmers). It's common and avoidable (Pro tip: never, ever let livestock graze near cherry trees. Wilted cherry leaves contain toxic levels of prussic acid [answers.com]). Plus this is not a GM plant, it's a hybrid.
Re:Ok, now THAT is a cool sci-fi story (Score:5, Informative)
PI-290884 is the name of a sample of wild grass taken from South America. Tifton 68 is a hybrid of PI 255450 and PI 293606 which are both samples from Kenya. https://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/proceedings1993/v2-294.html [purdue.edu]
Re:Ok, now THAT is a cool sci-fi story (Score:4, Insightful)
No, we're all commenting on a story about how grass has always done this and still does, but farmers don't pay attention in school and journalists think boring stories are more interesting if they make up a few facts like "this is GM grass and it has mutated" rather than asking a scientist who would say "Yeah, grass does that, fascinating isn't it?"
The same is sadly true for human food. If you tell average people that the sausages have a perfectly safe GM ingredient, they freak out and won't eat them. Those sausages would be perfectly safe, but they're imagining they'll grow an extra head. But drop the sausages on the floor, or let uncooked pieces of chicken drip onto them, and they're fine with that, because that's just normal everyday danger that actually exists, nothing to get freaked out about.
no, they are still quacks. (Score:4, Informative)
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There exist plants which don't crossbreed naturally but lab chimeras can be created from them so being a hybrid doesn't necessarily mean that it's not GMO.
Re:no, they are still quacks. (Score:5, Insightful)
GM, in effect, is this process on steroids. - "BUT IT'S NOT ACTUALLY GM!!!!111" exit is just grasping for straws.
What about the "lots of naturally occurring grasses do this, it just doesn't make the news" argument?
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Now, we put that on steroids. I would expect a random mish-mash of new characteristics along with some or all of the characteristics of the parents. That's what the steroids analogy does for me.
Genetic modification, in contrast, usually involves isolating the gene se
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The process of hybridization is one of breed a hybrid, check the offspring for the desired trait, keep at it until you have some successes. But wait, even when you have the success in getting the trait, you aren't done. You may need to strengthen the trait as it could be too feeble or recessive, and you tend to ha
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Except that, as noted above and in the revised summary, its not GMO.
Which demonstrates perhaps that the real danger isnt GM, its overreaction, bias, and preconceptions. Oh, and editorial failure.
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Ah yes, because a substance that doesn't become toxic until digested it is fine...
Re:It was already in the genome (Score:5, Interesting)
The famous example: cassava roots.
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1) Cyanide compounds are not necessarily poisonous. Most organic compounds with bound CN group are totally harmless.
2) Your organism can tolerate fairly large amounts of CN ions just fine. In fact, it's produced as a by-product of several normal biochemical reactions.
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Ah, so this is why Monstersanto doesn't want GMO's labeled... Pride in what one produces be damned.
1. It isn't from Monsanto.
2. It isn't GM.