And yet if you read the recent GD thread on this topic, you will note that anti-GM Luddites such as griffin1977 were demanding that the Terminator gene be used in all GM crops, and that Monsanto’s refusal to do was destroying farmers’ future self-determination. I kid you not, that was exactly his contention.
Damned if they do, damned if they don’t it would seem.
Insofar as GMOs encourage/enable modern industrial farming practices (less fertiliser use fertilizers, fewer or no pesticides, increased benefit from internal inputs, increased yield, zero-till cultivation), they increase biodiversity and indisputably aid the environment through habitat conservation, runoff prevention, increased resistance to disease, and decreased reliance on fossil fuels.
While there are two sides to the argument, only the positive effects of zero-till cultivation, increased yield and reduced fertiliser and pesticide use have been definitively established.
Actually, IME most Dopers have no problem coping with adult dosage levels of polysyllabicism and don’t find long words intimidating. But if anyone needs a particular post rephrased at the children’s dosage level, they should feel free to request it.
Of course, “superweeds” in themselves aren’t doing any harm to the environment or producing any toxins. The potential hazard they pose is the use of more damaging herbicides by farmers trying to eradicate them.
LOL yes. What could possibly be harmful about genes from a bacteria that produce resistance to an important weed killer spreading in the wild plant population. :rolleyes:
Wait, what? You do realize that a huge, huge number of scientific studies involve doing exactly this: modifying bacteria to express resistance genes. It’s routine.
One could argue that perhaps we should look for solutions that don’t involve dumping tons of “an important weed killer” into our collective waterways each year.
Currently, when we want to control pests with chemicals, we spray shitloads of the chemical onto the crops. Only a tiny, tiny percentage of these chemicals make it into the interior of the target pest organisms. The vast majority ends up on the food, or other parts of the plants, on the dirt, or washed into the local water supply.
With a GM crop plant, the pesticide can be engineered to be created only when the plant is under attack. Thus, when an insect bites into a leaf, that leaf responds by making some pesticide - a tiny fraction of a percentage of the amount we now use. That pesticide makes it into the bug in question, it dies.
Now, one predicted problem is that if those genes escape into wild relatives of those plants, or into other fields of non-GM crop plants, thus increasing the selective pressure on the pest bugs, encouraging the development of pesticide resistance, thus making the pesticide useless sooner than it would have been.
No, our crops were native species somewhere at one time. They have evolved in lockstep with the evironmental factors that control them since 10,000BC and earlier. When we brought over wheat to North America, for example, we also thoughtfully brought the insects and rats that kept it in check. The maize eveolved by the cultivation by the southwest and Mexican Indians also evolved in generations with its parasites, insects and other control factors.
As an example of exactly what you are being condescending about, the Irish potato blight famine - an alien crop introduced, a fairly monocultured crop unchallenged by traditional controls, suddenly comes in contact with a blight (literally) that destroyed much of the fabric of a nation and created one of the major migrations of out time, matched perhaps only by the effect of sheep in Scotland… Baaa…
Similarly, we have salmon, some genetically modified to grow at an excess rate, being grown in fish farms on the west coast. Guaranteed some will escape into the wild, or their genes will. Could faster-growing, semi-alien salmon displace much of the native west coast salmon stocks, already under stress? hen, when they have their “potato blight moment”, will we fondly remember there used to be salmon on the West Coast?
Yes, most crops are alien in some other locations, but as a result we HAVE seen some serious disasters for just that reason - including stupid “oops” moments like the introduction of cows to a continent with no dung beetles… Cattle in North America passing tuberculosis to wild deer and moose, etc.
I made some valid points- completely alien plants / animals / microbes, the monoculture problem and the risk of genetic spread; plus the issue that life should not be easily patented. It should not be illegal to breed what you have simply because someone else “owns the rights”.
If you can address those issues maybe you can contribute to the discussion.
Uhhh… there is a huge difference between modifying bacteria to express certain genes more than others and throwing all your dice in and hoping it comes out okay. They already have the genes they are trying to get expressed (not that I think such activities are without risk).
I am against GMOs in every way, they could destroy all natural food forever, but I’m not getting involved in this debate as I find them painful and not worth it for me at this time.
And yes, agriculture and artificial selection is destroying natural food also, but at a much, much slower pace. It would take millions of years for them to change the way they are genetically modifying them if it were possible at all. But I am against agriculture and artificial selection.
Thank you. Someone grasps the concept of comparison and analogy. Zebra mussels and rabbits and poison toads and asian carp and feral cats are just the more interestingly spectacular screw-ups in non-GMO introduction of species without natural controls. At least we know what takes them out, we just have to decide if it’s a good idea to introduce other predators to a fragile ecosystem. (The list of Australian screw-ups is already long).
Just because “yeah, Timmy destroyed the ecosystem twice with non-GMO organisms” does not mean Freddy can do whatever the heck he likes with GMO organisms. Any mother will tell you that. The theory is to learn from history or be doomed to repeat it (in summer school).
Basically, you cn’t even raise normal crops any more if you want to, since the weeds are resistant to a much higher level of weedkiller than any non-GMO crop, thanks to all the farmers around you who used that patented GMO crop.
The trouble is that there is no indication that there was any transfer of genetic material from the round-up ready crops to the weeds. The weeds just developed a natural immunity to Roundup. You will eventually have the same problem with any weed you try to control with herbicide with or without GMO. We have the same problem with antibiotics without GMOs.
Except for wild caught fish and wild picked herbs everything we eat is genetically modified. And mostly randomly so, rather than in a targeted way. And all the domesticated plants were never tested for toxicity. Just realize that cabbage, kale, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, and a few other varieties are all the same species and look nothing like sea cabbage (thought to be the wild progenitor) to realize how much more or less random genetic modification has gone on in the last several thousand years. I see absolutely no reason to fear GM foods. I do, however, fear Monsanto’s “ownership” of the seeds.
Funny, but actually on-point. Charles Perrow, the father of Normal Accident Theory, regards systems in which consequences cascade geometrically as the riskiest. The two he singled out as of most concern are nuclear (because of chain reactions) and genetic manipulation (because organisms have the potential to breed in a chain-reaction-like geometric rate).
The real problems are indirectly attributed to GMO. First, they could use heavier quantities of Roundup because the crop was more resistant; secondly they practised no-till farming, as these GMO crops were intended, thus not ploughing under weeds exposed to the herbicide, failing to break the development cycle of roundup resistance. It’s not genetic transfer, it’s the law of unintended consequences. And by geometrical progression, these results are spreading to farmers who did not use the GMO crops.
As I said, crops developed by humans (unnatural selection? Intelligent design?) evolved in step with their natural predators, diseases, and other controls, one random but selected genetic change at a time.
Not tested for toxicity? What do you think 10,000 years of farmers, plus the absinthe drinkers of Paris, were doing? They just spared the lives of millions of lab rats.
The problem with GMO is that we have to tread very very very carefully. There are stupid unanticipated(?) results like accelerating the development of resistant weeds. There could be bigger problems. Even I don’t believe “toxic to humans” is a result of a crop modification. The problem is that we introduce a huge change in the genetic makeup of an organism so quickly that its natural predators are no longer capable of containing it. (In some cases, that’s the goal). Also, the labs of Monsanto probably chage a few dozen seeds, then these dozen go on to be the source for a continent or two of crops - a pretty definite case of monoculture, a severe lack of the genetic diversity that allows many species to resist new threats.
Is no-till farming really more likely to develop resistant weeds? I’ve never heard that before. I don’t understand how it would work, could you explain it a bit more?
The CBC article says that the superweeds are resistant to herbicides, so the only way to get rid of them is to plough them under. Presumably with no-till, the weeds were left to finish their lifecycle to seed; with tilling, they often were ploughed under and chopped up before they could propagate.
md2000 and Lestrade, my memory reaches back to the development of no-till (and limited-till) farming, with some degree of accuracy.
It was a trade-off from the beginning. You could cut down on the number of fuel-thirsty passes through each field, but to do it, you needed to increase your use of herbicides. So, new planting machines were designed to plant seeds in a field that hadn’t been plowed and disced.
Limited-till was similar, but you made a pass with a shallow sweep plow just deep enough to cut the roots off the weeds and last year’s crop. Still, lots of herbicide.
Baaa…