Freethought & Rationalism Archive

ps418 · 10-31-2003, 06:26 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by simian
Well, progress I guess. So we can agree now that allergens will be in these pharm crops?

Well, leaving aside for a moment that fact that the natural environment is already chock-full of allergens, the review article goes out of its way to say that each case has to be considered on a case-by-case basis for safety concerns. If there's reason to think that a given pharm crop is dangerous to humans, its not going to be approved.

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I have no doubt that the drugs, used as drugs will be extensively tested. What I have a concern about is if these crops are planted near enough to food crops for pollenation to occur.

Well, for one thing you could use a non-food crop as a 'vehicle' for the pharm, so that there is little or no possibility of hybridization with nearby food crops. Or you could use a food crop as a vehicle, with the rule that the pharm crop could not be grown within a certain distance of their fod-crop relatives. Or you could engineer myriad technical barriers to such hybridization.

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The fact that the crops are being tested for effects on herbivores and insects tell me that there is at least the possibility of them being in an "open" environment. If the genes are transerred (and expressed) in a food crop, there are huge dangers. I tend to use corn for examples for 2 reasons: it gives huge yields, so is a tempting crop for pharms, and the pollenation distance is potentially huge.

Stewart et al (2003) give an interesting review of these issues. They use genetic data to assess the risk, by crop, of introgression of transgenes into their wild-type relatives. One thing that is clear is that some crops are much more safe than others.

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In contrast to previous approaches, we focus on whether introgression to wild relatives will occur when crops are genetically modified. We are specifically interested in transgenes, not endogenous crop genes, and in empirical data rather than models. Using this approach, we consider transgenic crops that are grown in regions away from their wild relatives � for example, soybean in the United States � not to be risky and therefore place them in a lower risk category than Ellstrand et al.29. We have assessed the molecular evidence for crop-to-wild introgression in these crops, together with others that are potential targets for genetic modification. On the basis of this assessment, we divide these crops into four risk categories for the introgression of transgenes: very low risk, low risk, moderate risk and high risk. Other authors30, 31 have used a similar risk-assessment categorization approach, as well as a detailed decision-tree-based risk-assessment categorization methodology32.

Very low risk crops. There is no molecular evidence of crop-to-wild introgression in soybean (Glycine max), barley (Hordeum vulgare), finger millet (Eleusine coracana), pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum), common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris), peanut (Arachis hypogaea) and potato (Solanum tuberosum). The lack of evidence is notable in some cases, given the evidence of genetic compatibility with wild relatives. In soybean, for example, the crop G. max and its wild relative Glycine soja are highly similar at the genomic level33, and several studies34, 35 have shown introgression of DNA from G. soja into G. max. So far, there are no reports of crop-to-wild introgression in soybean, although it is unclear how many attempts there have been to assess this. Similarly, in peanut, it is clear that genes can be introgressed from wild to crop species36, 37. In the common bean, a phaseolin protein marker has been found in what seem to be wild crop hybrid swarms in the Andes Mountains38. However, molecular evidence shows that Andean and Mesoamerican bean landraces in Chile are genetically distinct from one another and there is no evidence of introgression between them39. This genetic differentiation indicates that introgression is limited to the geographic centre of diversity.

We suggest that the transgenic forms of these crops are at a very low risk of introgressing their transgenes into wild populations. Given this fact, we believe that most transgenes could be safely engineered into these very low risk crops.

Low risk crops. Some crops have been shown to introgress genes into wild relatives at low levels. Although such rare events could be evolutionarily important, in these cases the biology and distribution of wild relatives can alter and often moderate any ecological risks. So, engineered crops such as corn, rice and cotton do not seem to pose large risks for agricultural or ecological stability. Therefore, transgenes could be engineered into these species, although as a precautionary measure the release of transgenic lines should be restricted to areas in which the wild relatives do not occur.

Corn (Zea mays ssp. mays) can hybridize with interspecific wild relatives, that are known collectively as teosinte40, 41, from which it was domesticated 9,000 years ago42. However, gene flow seems to be primarily unidirectional from teosinte to corn43, with insignificant levels of introgression from corn to teosinte40, 41.

Molecular evidence for rice (Oryza sativa) introgression is limited compared with morphological data sets (for example, see Ref. 44 and references therein). However, studies of natural weedy Asian rice (O. sativa) populations showed isozyme introgression into local populations of wild Oryza rufipogon in Thailand45, 46. Controlled F1 field hybridization studies47, 48 between crop rice and O. rufipogon indicate that hybridization rates are low (1�2%), partly because competing crop pollen on the flowers of the wild species acts as a barrier to hybridization47. However, some gene flow between the crop and the wild species, as well as gene flow among other wild rice species, can occur48. Nonetheless, analysis of miniature inverted-repeat transposable elements (MITEs) shows conserved patterns among rice species and ECOTYPES, which indicates that there is little introgression over an evolutionary timeframe49.

They go on to discuss various stategies to further reduce the probability of introgression of transgenes into wild relatives, for instance, engineer male sterility. And another example is to engineer the plant to produce an inactive precursor of the desired pharm that must be modified, after extraction from the plant, before becoming pharmacologically active.

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Several male-sterility systems that target pollen have been developed to limit or control gene flow. In one system, which has been commercialized in canola, the barnase gene under the control of a tapetum-specific promoter causes pollen or male sterility. Barnase, which is a cell toxin, kills the cells that would otherwise lead to the production of viable pollen by flowers. Fertility might be restored using the barstar gene, which encodes a barnase-specific inhibitor87. Another system relies on constitutive expression of the Agrobacterium rolC gene for sterility. When plants that express this gene are crossed with plants with rolC in an antisense orientation, fertility can be restored88. An alternative strategy relies on site-specific recombination to remove the transgenes from pollen (Ref. 89 and Y. Li, manuscript in preparation).

Controlling the fertility of embryos and seeds, although generally regarded as a better target than pollen fertility, has been a more controversial measure for limiting gene flow. A patent was issued in 1998 that described methodology to chemically control genes that effectively prevent seed germination. The technology, unfortunately dubbed 'Terminator,' was not further developed because of a highly publicized controversy90. Strategies that are based on the control of embryo and/or seed fertility have now become known as GENE USE-RESTRICTION TECHNOLOGY (GURT)91. One example of such an approach is that in which a blocking sequence � a recoverable block function (RBF) � that prevents some essential physiological function in the host plant is inserted, which results in reduced embryo viability91. As the name implies, the effects of the block can be removed to recover viability.

The repressible seed-lethal (SL) system is another GURT92. In the SL system, the transgene is linked to genes that control seed germination (but do not alter the ability of the crop to set seed) in a repressible construct. When plants that contain this construct are crossed with those that are transgenic for a repressor construct, seed lethality is turned off and seed germination is normal. So, if lethality and repressor constructs are separated during mating, the resultant seeds do not germinate. However, this system is only effective when one of the two genes is present in a haploid gamete. This is not the case for all interspecific hybrids. For example, unreduced gametes are frequently observed in interspecific hybrids between canola and other Brassica species94.

Stewart et al, 2003. TRANSGENE INTROGRESSION FROM GENETICALLY MODIFIED CROPS TO THEIR WILD RELATIVES. Nature Reviews Genetics 4, 806-817.

Patrick

contracycle · 10-31-2003, 06:57 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by ps418
[B]For a very simple, very obvious reason that I've already been pointed out several times. To quickly and cheaply produce needed drugs, to save lives and years of life. [/b

You;re not answering the question I asked, merely citing your nominal motivation again.

Given that we know such transferes occur, do you not consider it futile to claim that no transfers will occur from modified organisms? If so, what is the basis for the claim? If not, what is your basis for decalring it safe?

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Obviously its not an either/or proposition. I do support spending more of my tax money on drugs. But whether anyone wants to accept it or not, the price of production will always limit access to some extent, and potentially pharm crops can dramatically reduce production costs, resulting in more people getting access, and in more health care dollars being available for other needs (drug expenses are huge proportion of all health care expenses). Its elementary economics.

Yes, as in elementary school. I'm well aware that an increase in productive cpaacity should drive down price. But this does not happen if the phramaceutical companies argue that other people should not be able to produce a drug in order that the pharm co can make a profit on its reserach investment.

This has been a huge ongoing issue with aids drugs. It;s not as if the western economies could not provide drugs; its not as if thwe African countries could not manufacture the drugs. Only property law prevented it being down, and it took years of ranglin - during which many thousands died - to get consent for production now. And even now, the drugs may not reach their intended recipiens but instead be sold back into the Northern economy.

There is no PRODUCTION problem, and there are no barriers to distribution that increased production efficiency would solve. As such, the imnmediate benefit obtained by this proposal is basically nil, and it does not warrant the substantial risks.

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No, by comparison to random mutation and natural selection, genetic manipulations to produce pharm crops would be about as specific and selective as you could possibly get.

Only once. As soon as they are growing, they will be subject to external evolutionary pressures. Can you guarantee what those pressures will be, and what the organisms response will be? No you cannot. Could you even provide a probabilistic model of what path those developements will go down? I'm not aware of any such extant research.

But we CAN guarantee that the modification will escape its limited zone, because we are not really isolating them sufficiently. Do you expect that a modification, merely by virtue of being human-made, will be immune to evolutionary pressure? Such a vast risk with such trivial benefits is not a sound decision.

contracycle · 10-31-2003, 07:00 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Majestyk
Hysteria vs. Science. No matter how many times we see it manifested in history, we just can't stop ourselves from engaging in it.

Quite so.

Force-fed a diet of hype

The verdict of the market means nothing to the GM industry and its government friends

George Monbiot
Tuesday October 7, 2003
The Guardian

It is curious that this government, which goes to such lengths to show that it responds to market forces, appears to believe, when it comes to genetic modification, that the customer is always wrong. Tony Blair may have spent six years rolling back the nanny state, but he instructs us to shut up and eat what we're given. The public has comprehensively rejected the technology; the chief scientist has warned that pollen contamination may be impossible to prevent; the field trials suggest that GM threatens our remaining wildlife. Yet the government seems determined to force us to accept it.
The best way of gauging its intentions is to examine the research it is funding, as this reveals its long-term strategy for both farming and science. It seems that the strategy is to destroy them both.

The principal funding body for the life sciences in Britain is the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). It is currently funding 255 food and farming research projects; 26 are concerned with growing GM crops, just one with organic production.

We're not talking about blue-sky science here, but research with likely commercial applications. We should expect it to respond to what the market wants. The demand for organic food in Britain has been growing by 30% a year. We import 70% of it, partly because organic yields in Britain are low and research is desperately needed to find ways of raising them. Genetically modified food, by contrast, is about as popular with consumers as BSE or salmonella.

This misallocation of funds should surprise us only until we see who sits on the committees that control the BBSRC. They are stuffed with executives from Syngenta, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals, Merck Sharp & Dohme, Pfizer, Genetix plc, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Celltech and Unilever. Even the council's new "advisory group on public concerns" contains a representative of United Biscuits but no one from a consumer or environmental group. What "the market" (which means you and I) wants is very different from what those who seek to control the market want.

All the major government funding bodies appear to follow the same line. The Homegrown Cereals Authority spends �10m of our money every year to "improve the production, wholesomeness and marketing of UK cereals and oilseeds so as to increase their competitiveness". It lists 67 wholesome research projects on its website. Only one is designed to increase the competitiveness of organic farming. The Meat and Livestock Commission funds no organic projects at all, but it is paying for an investigation into the potential of the gene whose absence causes "double muscling" in cattle. Deletion of the gene leaves the animal looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger, though with rather more brains. When pictures of a double-muscled bullock were published recently, the public responded with outrage, especially when the welfare implications were explained. It is not easy to see how the results of this research could or should ever be commercialised. But the commission regards the possibility of engineering cattle with a defective muscling gene as "an exciting development".

These distortions are as bad for the scientific community as they are for farmers and taxpayers. As consumers continue to insist that there is no future for these crops in Britain, the heads of the research institutes are now warning that British scientists will be forced to leave the country to find work.

Michael Wilson, the chief executive of the government-funded body Horticulture Research International, recently told the Guardian that "Britain is lining itself up to become an intellectual and technological backwater". If so, it will be partly as a result of his efforts. Wilson, who describes himself as "evangelical" about GM, has spent the past three years switching his institute's research away from conventional breeding. He can hardly complain about the brain drain when he has tied the careers of his scientists to a technology nobody wants.

"The way things are going," according to Christopher Leaver, the head of plant science at Oxford University, "plant biotechnology is going to be stillborn here." Well, the way things are going is very much a result of the way he has directed them. Until this summer, he sat on the BBSRC's governing council. At the university, he has engineered a brain drain of his own by closing the Oxford Forestry Institute (perhaps the best of its kind in the world) and shifting the focus of his department from whole organisms and ecosystems to molecular biology and genetic engineering. Undergraduates want to study whole systems, so the few remaining lecturers with this expertise are massively overworked, while the jobs of the rest are threatened by the lack of demand for the technology he favours.

The shift is not entirely the fault of men such as Wilson and Leaver. The government's research assessment exercise, which determines how much money academic departments receive, grades them according to the numbers of papers they produce and the profile of the journals in which they are published. You can spend 30 years studying the ecology of coconut pests in the Trobriand Islands, only to discover that you can't publish the results anywhere more prestigious than the Journal of Trobriand Island Coconut Science. But a good genetic engineering team can publish a paper in Nature or Science every few months, simply by repeating a stereotyped series of tests.

Because they cannot persuade us to eat what we are given, many of Britain's genetic engineers are turning their attention to countries in which people have less choice about what or even when they eat. The biotech companies and their tame scientists are using other people's poverty to engineer their own enrichment. The government is listening. Under Clare Short, Britain's department for international development gave �13m to researchers developing genetically engineered crops for the poor nations, on the grounds that this will feed the world.

Earlier this year, Aaron deGrassi, a researcher at the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University, published an analysis of the GM crops - cotton, maize and sweet potato - the biotech companies are developing in Africa. He discovered that conventional breeding and better ecological management produce far greater improvements in yields at a fraction of the cost. "The sweet potato project," he reported, "is now nearing its 12th year, and involves over 19 scientists ... and an estimated $6m. In contrast, conventional sweet potato breeding in Uganda was able in just a few years to develop with a small budget a well-liked virus-resistant variety with yield gains of nearly 100%." The best improvement the GM sweet potato can produce - even if we believe the biotech companies' hype - is 18%. But conventional techniques are of no interest to corporations, as they cannot be monopolised. If the corporations aren't interested, nor is the government.

Those of us who oppose the commercialisation of GM crops have often been accused of being anti-science, just as opponents of George Bush are labelled anti-American, and critics of Ariel Sharon anti-semitic. But nothing threatens science more than the government departments that distort the research agenda in order to develop something that we have already rejected.

http://education.guardian.co.uk/high...057666,00.html

ps418 · 10-31-2003, 07:35 AM

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Originally posted by contracycle
You;re not answering the question I asked, merely citing your nominal motivation again.

Not so. I answered your question very directly. Your question was:

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. . . if it already happens in nature, why make it happen faster and with stuff that we design?

And I answered directly. My motivation and the answer to "why do it" are exactly the same thing -- to produce drugs and therapeutic proteins cheaply.

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Given that we know such transferes occur, do you not consider it futile to claim that no transfers will occur from modified organisms? If so, what is the basis for the claim? If not, what is your basis for decalring it safe?

Who is making such claims? Not me. I never said that it is safe, period, and I never said that transfers would not occur. Each pharm crop would have to be considered on a case by case basis. Likewise, I can not know that a harmful gene in the natural environment is not going to be transferred via completely natural means to a food crop and make people sick. Everything we do has risks. All I said is that the benefits are likely to far outweigh the risks.

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Yes, as in elementary school. I'm well aware that an increase in productive cpaacity should drive down price.

Good. I'm glad you agree with this.

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But this does not happen if the phramaceutical companies argue that other people should not be able to produce a drug in order that the pharm co can make a profit on its reserach investment.

As I undersand it, pharm companies have monopoly on drugs they R and D'd only for so many years. After that, other companies can produce it too, and then you get competition. Once you get to that phase, you still have production costs limiting availability.

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This has been a huge ongoing issue with aids drugs. It;s not as if the western economies could not provide drugs; its not as if thwe African countries could not manufacture the drugs. Only property law prevented it being down, and it took years of ranglin - during which many thousands died - to get consent for production now. And even now, the drugs may not reach their intended recipiens but instead be sold back into the Northern economy.

You're leaving out an important factor -- production costs. Yes, there are all sorts of barriers to getting HIV drugs to African countries. One of them, and important one, one that will never go away in a world with finite resources, is production costs. Obviously if production costs are lower, you can get more drugs per healthcare dollar, and help more people with a limited healthcare budget.

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There is no PRODUCTION problem, and there are no barriers to distribution that increased production efficiency would solve.

Yes, and for most drugs nothing on the technological table has anywhere near the potential to increase 'production efficiency' as does pharming.

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But we CAN guarantee that the modification will escape its limited zone, because we are not really isolating them sufficiently. Do you expect that a modification, merely by virtue of being human-made, will be immune to evolutionary pressure? Such a vast risk with such trivial benefits is not a sound decision.

You've failed to make a case for either 'vast risks' or trivial benefits; you haven't even explained why I should be more worried about serum albumin or erythropoietin or interferon being transferred from a pharm to a food crop than I am about, say, a ragweed or peanut allergen or toxin being transferred naturally to a food crop. I could see your point if we were talking about genes that increase the fitness of the plant and are likely to be selected for, or genes whose protein products are toxic to humans.

Patrick

MortalWombat · 10-31-2003, 08:11 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by simian
Well, progress I guess. So we can agree now that allergens will be in these pharm crops?

That is not what I said. There is a possibility that a protein expressed in a pharm crop could be an allergen, but since the vast majority of all proteins are not allergens, I wouldn't say that allergens necessarily will be in pharm crops.

ps418 · 10-31-2003, 08:17 AM

Contracycle,

I'm interested to hear what you think about using GM to increase the nutrient content of food crops, which could be enormously beneficial in some areas of the worls. To me this seems like a case where some simple, targeted modifications are likely to have huge benefits with little or no countervailing risks. But I'd like to hear your thoughts on this. Maybe you have a compelling argument against this that I haven't anticipated.

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Over a third of the world's population suffers anemia for lack of iron. Half are at risk for numerous diseases because they get too little zinc. A fourth receive so little vitamin A that they suffer incredible rates of blindness and death. But with help from a $25 million Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grant, a new international consortium called HarvestPlus will combat these afflictions by encouraging production of fortified crops.

Initially, the three aforementioned nutrients will be developed, with the six targeted crops being: beans, cassava, corn, rice, sweet potatoes and wheat. "We don't just want to produce more food; we want to make it better food," HarvestPlus spokeswoman Bonnie McClafferty told me. "It's giving the nutrition community another tool to help."

Plant "biofortification" need not be biotech; it refers to any process increasing the nutrition of crops. But biotech is the quickest, surest way of achieving the organization's honorable but admittedly lofty goals � hence the angst and anger of anti-biotech activists.

Patrick Mulvaney, of Britain's Intermediate Technology Development Group, told the U.K. newspaper The Guardian that "Mr. Gates is investing in hi-tech solutions for a serious problem that could be solved by investing in proven methods."

What does Intermediate Technology offer instead of biotech? It encourages such "solutions" as "improved soil usage" and "irrigation," as if nobody had thought of these before. Apparently "Intermediate Technology" means "no new technology." That indeed is a major driving force behind anti-biotech activists in general. To them, all that is new is bad.

But while biotech is hi-tech, it's also proven. The most famous example is golden rice, developed by Swiss researcher Ingo Potrykus and other researchers.

Rice is a staple throughout much of Asia and Africa, but contains no vitamin A. According to the World Health Organization, vitamin A deficiency contributes to approximately two million deaths and 250,000 to 500,000 cases of child blindness annually.

Potrykus spliced into rice two genes from the daffodil (giving it its golden color) plus one from a bacterium to give the grain beta-carotene. The body converts beta-carotene to vitamin A.

But rice diets also cause iron deficiency. Perhaps a fifth of all maternal deaths are caused by a lack of iron. Rice contains the mineral, but not in a form our bodies can absorb. So Potrykus and colleagues inserted a gene from a fungus, which makes the iron in the rice useable. Finally, they added a gene from the French bean, doubling the amount of iron in the rice.

Golden rice is now being specialized for planting in different parts of the world.

Bio-agricultural companies are also developing other vitamin A-enriched plants, including golden canola (for cooking oil), and golden mustard (used as cooking oil in India and elsewhere). The Monsanto Company is donating its golden corn research to ProHarvest.

In parts of Africa, a high beta-carotene sweet potato is already being eaten.

Let them eat liver!" the wealthy, corpulent Vandana Shiva says of the mostly poor and largely vegetarian population of India.
But in what smacks of Marie Antoinette's mythical sneer of "Let them eat cake!" upper-crust, upper-caste Indian biotech basher Vandana Shiva blasted golden rice, saying better alternatives are "liver, egg yolk, chicken, meat, milk and butter." This assertion from the obese Ms. Shiva is even more ludicrous considering the predominant religion in India is Hinduism and many Hindus will eat neither animals nor animal products.

Plants that Will Save Lives and Eyes

Patrick

simian · 10-31-2003, 09:52 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by MortalWombat
That is not what I said. There is a possibility that a protein expressed in a pharm crop could be an allergen, but since the vast majority of all proteins are not allergens, I wouldn't say that allergens necessarily will be in pharm crops.

Is casein an allergen or not? Is it one of the compounds being looked at in the articles provided in this thread?

From:
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPa...rg1177_fs.html
provided by Patrick on the first post on this thread:

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Other proteins of medical relevance. Plants have been used to produce several other proteins with direct or indirect medical applications. These include the milk proteins -casein and lysozyme, which could be used to improve child health

Now, as I said, I can't claim much knowledge about beta-casein, but casein as a food ingredient is an allergen.

Simian

simian · 10-31-2003, 10:01 AM

Patrick,

What you seem to be posting is domesticated crop to wild relative transferal of genes. That is not my concern here. My concern is transfer of genes from a domesticated crop modified to carry a known allergen to a domesticated crops that is free of the allergen currently.

Yes, distance helps. But do you really think it is possible to get the 250 mile plus barrier that may be necessary to keep corn pollen from pollenating non-pharm crops is feasible, let alone possible? (much shorter for wheat, much, much shorter for soy - but gene transfer does occur - Monsanto has sued at least once for a crop getting cross-pollenated with a neighbor's field (although the farmer in question used Roundup to ensure his surviving crop was Roundup Ready without the liscencing fees, from what I understand)). This means a circle 500 miles in diameter from the pharm corn crop. Or, if there is a single pharm corn crop planted on the middle of the KS/NE border, no other corn can be grown from some distance into SD and into OK, not to mention about 50 miles into each MO and CO.

Planting these crops in the open scares the living bejesus out of me. And that is just with pollenation, not counting the given there will not be dedicated equipment used to plant, till, and harvest - equipment that cannot be completely cleaned, causing some level of carry-over in subsequent fields.

Simian

MortalWombat · 10-31-2003, 10:33 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by simian
Is casein an allergen or not? Is it one of the compounds being looked at in the articles provided in this thread?

Yes, you are correct. I had overlooked that. An allergen, casein, is proposed to be produced by pharm crops. I suppose I was focusing on your use of the plural -- allergens, thinking that you implied many allergens would be produced.

ps418 · 10-31-2003, 11:19 AM

Quote:

Simian:
Patrick,

What you seem to be posting is domesticated crop to wild relative transferal of genes. That is not my concern here. My concern is transfer of genes from a domesticated crop modified to carry a known allergen to a domesticated crops that is free of the allergen currently.

Well it is very much relevant. Its relevant because those types of genetic analysis it allows you to get some estimate of the rate of past gene transfer between the crops/species of interest, and for safety reasons you'd prefer as pharm crops those that show very little evidence of such transfers in the past. This is discussed in the review by Stewart et al.

Quote:

Yes, distance helps. But do you really think it is possible to get the 250 mile plus barrier that may be necessary to keep corn pollen from pollenating non-pharm crops is feasible, let alone possible?

If you look at the articles Ive posted, you'll see the distance is hardly the only strategy for containment, and not the most significant one. And obviously corn is not the only 'vehicle' crop that can be used. And, again, by far most of the proteins that are being discussed would not be toxic to humans even if they did come into contact them.

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Planting these crops in the open scares the living bejesus out of me. And that is just with pollenation, not counting the given there will not be dedicated equipment used to plant, till, and harvest - equipment that cannot be completely cleaned, causing some level of carry-over in subsequent fields.

I understand. However, what scares the bejesus out of me is that lots of people will die or suffer needlessly because we do not take advantage of all the tools at our disposal. Certainly there may be risks, as I've said, but I definitely have the impression that to ban all pharm crops would be a case of straining a gnat and swallowing a camel.

Patrick

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10-31-2003, 10:01 AM	#28
simian Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: St. Louis, MO area Posts: 1,924	Patrick, What you seem to be posting is domesticated crop to wild relative transferal of genes. That is not my concern here. My concern is transfer of genes from a domesticated crop modified to carry a known allergen to a domesticated crops that is free of the allergen currently. Yes, distance helps. But do you really think it is possible to get the 250 mile plus barrier that may be necessary to keep corn pollen from pollenating non-pharm crops is feasible, let alone possible? (much shorter for wheat, much, much shorter for soy - but gene transfer does occur - Monsanto has sued at least once for a crop getting cross-pollenated with a neighbor's field (although the farmer in question used Roundup to ensure his surviving crop was Roundup Ready without the liscencing fees, from what I understand)). This means a circle 500 miles in diameter from the pharm corn crop. Or, if there is a single pharm corn crop planted on the middle of the KS/NE border, no other corn can be grown from some distance into SD and into OK, not to mention about 50 miles into each MO and CO. Planting these crops in the open scares the living bejesus out of me. And that is just with pollenation, not counting the given there will not be dedicated equipment used to plant, till, and harvest - equipment that cannot be completely cleaned, causing some level of carry-over in subsequent fields. Simian

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