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Genetically engineered crops

12:52 / 14.02.02

I'm not very clear on this issue. These are plants that are engineered to grow faster, or to grow in bad conditions, or to yield larger fruit, etc., right? And people oppose them? Am I missing something obvious? Are these altered crops unfit to eat, or carcinogenic, or something else terrible? Or do people just distrust genetically tampered food?

I apologize for my ignorance. Does anybody have any info that can help?

13:10 / 14.02.02

There are so many problems with GM crops... here are a couple:

a) they are usually patented by a company, which has several implications: when the genes from the engineered crop are cross-pollinated with crops in other fields (becasue unfortunately no one has engineered bees which only pollinate certain grain strains...) the companies can sue the owners of the affected crops (hello, Monsanto); engineering crops can mean that only certain pesticides are effective, which means farmers are forced into using said pesticides (produced by - wait for it - the same companies or their affiliates); the companies can make the crops non-reproducing, forcing farmers to buy seed year after year; the price forces farmers who cannot afford the grain to use less productive strains, meaning they lose out to their competitors... and so on.

b) as I mentioned earlier, cross-pollination is pretty inevitable, so intorducing engineered crop strains means that it is highkly likely that engineered genes will transfer into the existing biosphere and compete there, which will affect the balance of the ecosystem in who knows what ways (see also the effects of hormones in the water on fish, etc etc)

c) if they can have an effect on the food chain, they may well end up having some kind of effect on humans. Funnily enough, govt reassurance on this point has failed to convince people so far.

13:19 / 14.02.02

My personal feeling about this stuff is that

a) is a problem
b) is a question of assessing the crops (like you would with any other weed or kind of plant live) and assessing the risks.
c) seems to me to be scaremongering - all kinds of 'natural' plants are assessed every day to see if they're good or bad to be eaten. there doesn't seem to me to be much difference here...

13:22 / 14.02.02

Yes - I'm with you on a) and c), but I do think problem b) is more than just a question of assessing the crops - you'd have to be pretty bloody sure that they wouldn't affect biodiversity in any adverse fashion (which might happen if a disease-resistant crop got 'out of bounds', as it were, and became so successful in a region that it crowded out indigenous plants).

13:53 / 14.02.02

I think genetically-improved crops are a great idea, as long as they are stringently tested before release. The biggest problem ( as KK said), and something we have to fight to prevent, would be patents being filed by profit-led entities.
One of the scariest things surrounding GM food is the media hysteria, but that seems to be par for the course.
<slight tangent>
<div class="gibber">
I picked up a book in the library called 'Forbidden Science' about how important scientific advances have been, and still are, suppressed because they are too controversial or 'impossible'. The first example was the scientific community dissing on Farraday cos of his discoveries. At the time it seemed too ridiculous to be true. Deffo gonna go back and read more of that book.
</div>
</slight tangent>

pointless and uncalled for

13:56 / 14.02.02

quote:Originally posted by Buk:
The biggest problem ( as KK said), and something we have to fight to prevent, would be patents being filed by profit-led entities.

And what about genetic patents being held by governments.

Remember that the US government is or at some stage was trying to patent a womans blood cells.

13:59 / 14.02.02

Intriguing...
Thanks for the feedback -- I hadn't heard any of this before.

[offtopic] Reread my initial post. (sigh) My rambling and childlike message is why I post less in the Switchboard and more in Conversation. Oh well. [/offtopic]

Regrettable Juvenilia

14:20 / 14.02.02

Dean from MakeZine, a lurker and infrequent poster here, quoted something Chaia Heller (someone I don't know anything about, to be fair) said in a zine interview, which sums up very well some of my problems with the anti-GM crops movement/point of view (although I do see Kit-Kat's points a) and b) as very important, and so am sort of anti-GM crops myself):

quote:Heller has been asked about how a lot of the opposition to genetically modified food is based on a gut feeling that it is "gross."

. . . people find GE food to be 'icky' and monstrous and weird. If you analyze this . . . what you find is that every culture has a way of organizing its social realities by constructing taboos that are basically boundaries, culturally constructed categories that should not be transgressed. And when people think about transgressing that boundary, they usually feel disgust. . . It hits what you would call a 'cultural nerve.' There is an 'ick' factor. . . [discusses how GE foods may in fact be dangerous]. However, the real danger is to base the rejection of cultural or technological practice on a gut feeling, on a feeling of transgressing a cultural taboo, because this brings us to make naturalistic arguments, which itself creates a barrier against transgressing many inappropriate barriers or taboos in today's society. The problem is that I don't believe that you can base a politics on a cultural response, because sometimes they are right and sometimes they are not and they are inherently subjective and cultural and do not make a good ground for a political argument because they can lead in reactionary directions. I don't believe in naturalistic arguments against cultural practice. I believe in social and political arguments against cultural practice. So whereas I understand, anthropologically, why we want to call these 'Frankenfoods,' I see that to be dangerous, because there are some very right wing elements, which are very drawn to this issue on these same grounds.

14:55 / 14.02.02

More pernicious than GM foods are some other agri-business practices, including loading up poultry (especially) and beef with anti-biotics, and the feeding of animal-product feed(there is a specific name for this, but I forget) to other animals instead of vegetable matter (this has the effect of introducing more antibiotics into cattle, and accounts for the spread of BSE). This is why most US beef can't be exported to the EU. Ironically, using not-to-be-otherwise used byproducts of the meatpacking industry is good conservationism.

What about irradiating meat to kill germs (e.coli, etc.)? Is there a rational reason to fear this?

[ 14-02-2002: Message edited by: Todd ]

16:29 / 14.02.02

Fly, the 'zine snippet recalls Marshall Sahlins on classification of animals as food. The interviewee here seems to be saying that, at least for anglos and us hicks, the idea of eating GM foods is similar to that of eating horses or dogs.

One of the problems with GM stuff is that it undergoes very little testing before release. As soon as someone figured out how to jam salmon genes into tomatoes, they went into production. It's now fairly difficult to find non-gmo corn and soybeans, which for meat-eaters is an even larger problem: see feed.

Most folks want 1) labelling of GMO products, then 2) testing and standards for said before introduction... Neither seems bad, but neither exists either. The label Frankenfoods is, as always, the way to get press, and a decent metaphor for the ambiguous nature of the unknown quantity.

Irradiation is meant to prolong shelflife, but it also changes the structure of the food, and leaves it irradiated. There are (US) gov't standards for acceptable levels of radiation, but again, the ammount left in food varies, and it's not been thoroughly tested.

Good environmental policy would be no meat farming... which, of course, is another topic altogether.

"I'm recycling the animals." - CM Burns

17:27 / 14.02.02

Personally, I don't have a problem with salmon genes in my tomatoes - what I have a problem with is the sterile corn Monsanto undercuts the market with. By sterile, I mean the seed is productive and ultra cheap, but will only grow for a generation. Next season, you need to buy the seed all over again. So, like buying stuff on credit cards, your initial outlay is way more affordable, but you just keep on keep on paying.
And then, you see, when the bees bring those sterile genes into non-sterile, natural varieties, you can wipe out a non-Monsanto-buying farmer's crop. And then see that farmer sued for using those copyrighted genes without a license. (Admitted, that's an exaggeration, but it's certainly possible.)

I guess I'm not as concerned with the food chain as with the reproductive chain.

17:56 / 14.02.02

quote:the feeding of animal-product feed(there is a specific name for this, but I forget) to other animals instead of vegetable matter (this has the effect of introducing more antibiotics into cattle, and accounts for the spread of BSE).

Now that is a very good example. BSE was caused by feeding animals other animals. This seems to be taboo to us, a type of cannibalism, and therefore it feels natural that a terrible disease grew out of it.
Of course that is nonsense, but it links nicely with the hysteria surrounding 'Frankenfoods'. It seems intuitive that there is something wrong about it and that something bad will happen.
The popularity of organic produce is linked to this as well.

18:02 / 14.02.02

When have you seen a cow eat a chicken or a sheep by itself, Buk?

18:06 / 14.02.02

Or, indeed, chickens grinding up their neighbors bones for dinner?

grant:

quote: from Owning culture
Monsanto shares this conception of seeds as industrial products that are the same as other inventions, and it has prosecuted numerous farmers for violating its intellectual property rights... By 1998, the company made out-of-court settlements with over 100 farmers, settlements whose terms included payement of penalties (upwards of $35,000), the destruction of crops grown from saved seeds, and an agreement that allows Monsanto to inspect a farmers property in the future.
stats gathered from Farmers Weekly, among others

Monsanto hires Pinkerton detectives to track the genetic material found in their seeds, sponsors a watchdog hotline, and was, at time of publication, actively following leads in 20 of the 29 soybean-producing states.

One of their profitable products is Roundup Ready Soybeans: genetically engineered to react only to Roundup Herbicide. They have barred other herbicides from entering the market on the grounds that testing of new products on RRS constitutes intellectual property infringement.

The European Patent Office and the USPTO have granted some staggering patents including: Agracetus - "for all future genetic alterations of soybeans using the company's method or any other method that might be developed; "all fruits and vegetables that are engineered to produce proteins that make them more sweet."

Delta & Pine Land, "terminator technology" innovators, intend to target primarily the southern hemisphere in order to protect US technology. Legal and food chain implications: cross polination basically starving subsistence farmers, and narrowing biodiversity.

In the last century, 97% of vegetable varieties, and 86% of fruit varieties that existed in the US (in just seed-houses) have become extinct. Worldwide, 75% of the diversity in the 20 most imoportant food crops has disappeared.

Buk, you'll need to explain this:
quote: The popularity of organic produce is linked to this as well.

How?

I have a lot of contact with organic growers, retailers, and purchasers, and I hear a lot more political arguments than dubiously moral ones.

[ 14-02-2002: Message edited by: [Your Name Here] ]

18:21 / 14.02.02

Personally, what I find revolting is that we develop technology to create more/bigger food products and yet we don't use it to feed starving people. What a waste.

tom-karika nukes it from orbit

18:37 / 14.02.02

quote: Or, indeed, chickens grinding up their neighbors bones for dinner?

Yes, grim as it sounds, chickens will peck at the corpses of other chickens if they are left on the ground for long. It doesn't do them any good though.

I have a huge problem with the people who wreck and burn test crops of GM food. The real problem is the stuff which has gone beyond the 'test' stage without being tested, which is in the fields right now. Destroying the test crops just encourages the biotech firms to skip the test stage, and does more harm to what may turn out to be a good technology for coping with drought and population growth in the future.

18:42 / 14.02.02

quote: Most folks want 1) labelling of GMO products, then 2) testing and standards for said before introduction... Neither seems bad, but neither exists either. The label Frankenfoods is, as always, the way to get press, and a decent metaphor for the ambiguous nature of the unknown quantity.

Last year, I had the opportunity to listen to a speaker from the FDA. She said that her institution's position was that companies should only be forced to give information regarding proven health or nutrition issues. So, you probably won't see too much government enforced labeling in the future.

In addition, it was my understanding (though it has been a while since I heard the seminar) that GM food has to meet requirements for several different organizations in order to be placed on the market.

[ 14-02-2002: Message edited by: Thiazi ]

05:07 / 15.02.02

quote:Buk, you'll need to explain this:

How?

I have a lot of contact with organic growers, retailers, and purchasers, and I hear a lot more political arguments than dubiously moral ones.

Yeah, that does need explanation. I think I will start another thread on this and we can discuss it there. Could be really interesting.

Disco is My Class War

02:50 / 16.02.02

The Critical Art Ensemble respond very interestingly to GM stuff. I'm not sure if it's on their website but I posted an explanation of the project on my blog in October -- link here (ignore the other rambling, please.)

Also, their project Genterra is pretty interesting anyhow; look at www.critical-art.net and go to the Biotech Projects section. It's very Flash-heavy.

K for Karika said:

"I have a huge problem with the people who wreck and burn test crops of GM food. The real problem is the stuff which has gone beyond the 'test' stage without being tested, which is in the fields right now."

It's my understanding that people aren't just burning test crops but are also burning real live 'in the field being grown' GM crops. Steve from the CAE was very much against crop-burning in the talk I went to, mostly because he thought it lent green activist an 'image problem'. I found it incredibly short-sighted and pretty American-middle-class of him to suggest that. Crop-burning is often the only possible way for poverty-stricken farmers to resist the ravishes of GM crops on their subsistence. Peasant farmers in Brazil do not have access to their own labs, and often don't even have the power of democratic votes or parliamentary inquiries that are anyhow proving totally useless in places like Australia.

shirtless, beepers and suntans

04:25 / 16.02.02

i recall reading an article about another possible wrinkle of this issue.

the sale of genetically souped-up seeds to "less fortunate" nations. since the plants can't (as far as i know) reproduce old-school, any country that buys the seeds once has to keep buying 'em.

the suckers.

04:36 / 16.02.02

Most of them don't exactly have the option, or won't once the pollen enters the ecosystem.