The Global Spread of GMO Crops: Inherit the Wind

The Global Spread of GMO Crops

Inherit the Wind

By PETER MONTAGUE

Felix Ballarin spent 15 years of his life developing a special organically-grown variety of red corn. It would bring a high price on the market because local chicken farmers said the red color lent a rosy hue to the meat and eggs from their corn-fed chickens. But when the corn emerged from the ground last year, yellow kernels were mixed with the red. Government officials later confirmed with DNA tests that Mr. Ballarin's crop had become contaminated with a genetically modified (GMO) strain of corn.

Because Mr. Ballarin's crop was genetically contaminated, it no longer qualified as "organically grown," so it no longer brought a premium price. Mr. Ballarin's 15-year investment was destroyed overnight by what is now commonly known as "genetic contamination." This is a new phenomenon, less then 10 years old -- but destined to be a permanent part of the brave new world that is being cobbled together as we speak by a handful of corporations whose goal is global domination of food.

Mr. Ballarin lives in Spain, but the story is the same all over the world: genetically modified crops are invading fields close by (and some that are not so close by), contaminating both the organic food industry and the "conventional" (non-GMO and non-organic) food industry.

As a result of genetically contamination of non-GMO crops in Europe, the U.S., Mexico, Australia and South America, the biotech food industry had an upbeat year in 2005 and things are definitely looking good for the future. As genetically modified pollen from their crops blows around, contaminating nearby fields, objections to genetically modified crops diminish because non-GMO alternatives become harder and harder to find. A few more years of this and there may not be many (if any) truly non-GMO crops left anywhere. At that point there won't be any debate about whether to allow GMO-crops to be grown here or there -- no one will have any choice. All the crops in the world will be genetically modified (except perhaps for a few grown in greenhouses on a tiny scale). At that point, GMO will have contaminated essentially the entire planet, and the companies that own the patents on the GMO seeds will be sitting in the catbird seat.

It couldn't have turned out better for the GMO crop companies if they had planned it this way.

More...
http://www.counterpunch.org/montague01072006.html

Thats what hybridization is; Genetic modification through the proxy of selection.

You simply find a mutant gene in an existing plant that does what you want, and through crossbreeding and selection move that gene into the strain of the plant that you are currently cultivating.

The modern genetic methods, however, allow this to be done much more quickly, and allows genes from plants that cannot interbreed with your food crop, or totally synthetic genes, to be inserted into the genome of your existing hybrid plant.

Prior to understanding genetic inheritance, you had to wait for a mutation to occur in your cultivated crop, and select those plants as the seed stock for the coming year. This is how the Native Americans hybridized corn from the teonactl grass.

I'm not sure what the source of these adamant objections is. In the case of the Spanish farmer, his crop was going to command a higher price because of its being "organic" -- a not entirely meaningful distinction. Now he's being discriminated against by the anti-gene modification folks for what seems to me to be pretty shallow reasons.

But then again, I never fully understood the objections. I used to work at Colorado State University where they have a seed bank of millions of, let's call them "undomesticated precursors" to commercial grains. I always thought it was useful, but not as if it was destined to save humanity from itself.

GMDNA and natural DNA are indistinguishable according to the most mundane chemistry, i.e., they have the same chemical formula or atomic composition. Apart from that, they are as different as night and day. Natural DNA is made in living organisms; GMDNA is made in the laboratory. Natural DNA has the signature of the species to which it belongs; GMDNA contains bits copied from the DNA of a wide variety of organisms, or simply synthesized in the laboratory. Natural DNA has billions of years of evolution behind it; GMDNA contains genetic material and combinations of genetic material that have never existed.

Furthermore, GMDNA is designed - albeit crudely - to cross species barriers and to jump into genomes. Design features include changes in the genetic code and special ends that enhance recombination, i.e., breaking into genomes and rejoining. GMDNA often contains antibiotic resistance marker genes needed in the process of making GM organisms, but serves no useful function in the GM organism.
The GM process clearly isn't what nature does (see "Puncturing the GM myths", SiS22). It bypasses reproduction, short circuits and greatly accelerates evolution. Natural evolution created new combinations of genetic material at a predominantly slow and steady pace over billions of years.

There is a natural limit, not only to the rate but also to the scope of gene shuffling in evolution. That's because each species comes onto the evolutionary stage in its own space and time, and only those species that overlap in space and time could ever exchange genes at all in nature. With GM, however, there's no limit whatsoever: even DNA from organisms buried and extinct for hundreds of thousands of years could be dug up, copied and recombined with DNA from organisms that exist today.

GM greatly increases the scope and speed of horizontal gene transfer Horizontal gene transfer happens when foreign genetic material jumps into genomes, creating new combinations (recombination) of genes, or new genomes. Horizontal gene transfer and recombination go hand in hand. In nature, that's how, once in a while, new viruses and bacteria that cause disease epidemics are generated, and how antibiotic and drug resistance spread to the disease agents, making infections much more difficult to treat.

http://organicconsumers.com/ge/dangerous062204.cfm

and hazardous. Your premise is the cloudy premise that Monsanto asserts in their well funded PR blitz to camouflage the truth.

GMO's are very wicked.

Lies and Damn Lies on the Biotech Front

PR flacks and gene engineers are generating more and more column inches of print every month on the "marvels" of GMOs (genetically modified organisms) and the "scaremongering" or "irrationality" of its critics. The problem with this propaganda offensive is that Frankenfoods proponents, lacking solid evidence, are resorting more and more to outright lies and distortions to make their case. Lies and distortions include statements that all biotech foods have been properly safety tested (none have been), that biotech crops increase yields (the world's dominant biotech crop, Roundup Ready soybeans, decreases yields) or that new crops like Golden Rice will solve the nutritional deficiencies of the world's poor. When the public learns that a malnourished child would have to eat 15 pounds of Golden Rice every day to meet their needs for vitamin A, the Gene Giants will find their already limited credibility diminished even further. Another case in point is the recent scientific controversy over the genetic pollution of traditional corn varieties in Mexico, resulting from the US dumping six million tons of unwanted GE corn on Mexico annually.

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Monsanto's recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone, forced onto the US market in 1994 despite widespread consumer and farmer resistance, contains high levels of a cancer tumor promoter called IGF-1. Data previously concealed by Monsanto and the FDA, leaked by government scientists in Canada in 1998, indicated that rBGH caused cysts on the thyroid glands and infiltration into the prostate of lab rats-both warning signs for potential cancer. Genetically engineered BGH is banned in every industrialized country in the world, except for the US. Currently injected into 15% of all US dairy cows, rBGH milk is then surreptitiously co-mingled by leading dairies into most fluid milk in the US. (rBGH is banned in organic production.)
http://organicconsumers.org/rbghlink.html

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German researchers in 2000 found that antibiotic resistance marker (ARM) genes from GE rapeseed (canola) were transferring their resistance to the bacteria found in the guts of bees that had consumed the pollen of these gene-altered plants. Earlier studies in the EU found that antibiotic resistance genes found in gene altered foods and crops could likely transfer into bacteria in the human gut as well as soil bacteria. http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/genemarker.cfm
In 1999, the British Medical Association called for a global moratorium on GE crops, citing the danger of ARM genes causing disease germs to develop antibiotic resistance.

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In terms of environmental hazards, GE crops are polluting organic and non-GE crops; damaging soil fertility; killing beneficial insects and soil microorganisms; creating Superpests and Superweeds; and threatening to undermine the utility of non-GE biopesticides such as Bt sprays. Use the search engine on our website www.organicconsumers.org to find out more about the environmental damage of Frankencrops.

http://www.laleva.cc/food/frankenfoods.html

Surely they can stick their fingers in the air and feel a breeze?