The problem isn’t GMO, the problem is the type of changes big agritech is making.
Take, e.g. Clearfield Rapeseed: It’s a herbicide-resistant strain, non-GMO, bred by BASF, and resistant against Clearfield, another BASF product. Thing is: Rapeseed is a brassicaceae, and they really like to exchange genes cross-species. There’s tons of wild plants (“weeds”) that are brassicaceae, in fact if you don’t happen to be growing it rapeseed itself is a rather nasty weed. Which means that once that resistance is out there that stuff can’t be killed by stuff that doesn’t kill literally everything. Brassicaecae seeds can also stay dormant in the soil for years, making it even more nasty.
My state’s agricultural ministry got wind of the stuff, quickly decided “that’s insane we need to outlaw it”, then quickly hit their head against the EU legislation which doesn’t distinguish by impact on nature or environment or economy, but by GMO status. Instead they then flooded farmers with brochures telling them just in how much shit they would be should that stuff escape from their fields and other farmers demand compensation for loss of income etc.
The thing is: That stuff doesn’t even make sense for BASF. “Sell resistant strain and a herbicide along with it” makes a lot of sense for chemical companies (and all big agritech are chemical companies), “spread that resistance throughout the whole environment” doesn’t because who’s going to buy their herbicide when it becomes ineffective. They really dropped the ball on that one, failed ecology 101.
Speaking of “we’ve got a hammer, where are the nails”: Golden rice. The problem isn’t that rice doesn’t contain carotene, the problem is that there’s people so piss-poor they can’t afford half a carrot, onion, some garlic, and a spoon of beans with their bowl of rice. If you want a solution that is the problem to fix.
This is the kind of stuff actually modern agritech comes up with, problem being: It’s not a thing you can earn money with as a company as there’s no products to sell, definitely none you have a monopoly on, so those companies have literally zero incentive to research that kind of thing. Farmers don’t have the funds (even in the west, they’re getting squeezed by supermarkets and Nestle etc), but you know what, states already have universities. Give them a couple of fields to mess around with and you’ll be surprised by what they come up with.
That is irrelevant to the effective ban on gene-editing and CRISPR though. They can do the same thing with hybrids, etc.
Anti-GMO sentiment was able to get so big because people know that there’s something fishy going on with industrialised agriculture, and a ban was easy to enact because it’s saying “not more of that stuff” and “shut up bloody lobbyists”. It was politically possible even if misguided and not doing it would’ve been worse, not (necessarily) in terms of agriculture but politics and with that the future of agriculture: It’s high time the regime changes to an impact assessment and doesn’t only cover GMO but also conventionally bred crops, but without the current GMO rules it’d be practically impossible to enact against the agritech lobby flanked by under-informed farmers.
I do agree with some of your post though, but even efforts to control fertiliser over-use are really difficult to manage.
Fertiliser over-use is currently solving itself: Fertiliser costs lots of money and no farmer wants to use more than necessary and you can get systems that analyse a satellite image and program your machine to deposit the stuff exactly where it’s needed, and only there, off the shelf.
Of course better soil management and ending import-dependent agriculture completely is a much better idea (phosphorous mines won’t last forever and why the hell aren’t you pulling your nitrogen out of the air), but at least critters will be able to live in drainage canals. Editing nitrogen fixing into a crop would be an interesting idea. Or engineering a symbiote that can do it to get along well with the crop, that kind of thing.
This handling of new technology’s has always been like that. The first nuclear reactor was build bevor they knew if it even works. No body thought twice about the danger. The difference here is that it benefits poor people more than rich so most people don’t care really.
In the case of most non-competitive mutations we know exactly what happens. Because this argument is so old, we now have detailed study’s on gene mobility like vitamin A enzymes. Because the plant can’t use that much of it, the gene is silenced very quickly. That means that your crops will yield yellow and white seeds. The farmers have to plant only yellow ones ore the genes can hardly be found on his field after a few generations.
No technology inherently benefits poor or rich people. If this is used commercially, it will cause ecological harm, because the people using it make no money from caring about ecological impact.
Also I’m mainly annoyed at the idea that more precise genetical engineering = less danger.
I think EU should start creating genetic enhanced Seeds. Let’s not have a private Company do this. And once the Seeds are developed, make everything public and drop the patent. So everyone can produce them.
I have no Idea if this is how Things like this work, tho.
As of September 2014, the European Union had authorized 49 GMO crops, which include various types of GM maize, cotton, oilseed rapes, soybeans, a sugar beet, bacterial biomass, and yeast biomass. The seeds are developed by private companies, however applications for the authorization of a GMO for cultivation must be submitted to a competent authority in an EU Member State. Then, the report is sent to the European Commission and other EU Member States for even more checks. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) also can intervene if they believe it could be hazardous.
petunias
Wood co-founded Light Bio with two of the researchers behind this work, Karen Sarkisyan, a synthetic biologist at the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences in London, and Ilia Yampolsky, a biomolecular chemist at the Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University in Moscow.
Aha. It’s true that it’s easy to get money for startups in the US doesn’t mean that the US comes close to Europe when it comes to primary research.
Waymo
wake me when Waymo is cleared for level 4 autonomous driving in a jurisdiction that doesn’t simply rubber-stamp anything silicon valley does.
SpaceX
ESA is on a different development cadence than SpaceX, it’s not like they haven’t done the maths on reusable rockets: Back when the current gen was developed it would’ve been more expensive per rocket. Also SpaceX’s launch prices are subsidised by the US government overpaying for their launches.
Well, surly this technology is used to improve the crops to be resistant to weed pressure and not just to sell more herbicides. Let’s ask the internet.
Almost all of these criticisms are basically “GMOs are somehow considered tainted or something, so we need to prevent them from mixing with non-GMOs” which is an ideological premise, not based on facts.
Regarding herbicides/pesticides: actually GMO eggplants in Bangladesh save lives because they need less spraying.
So all that’s left is policy issues and FUD. And political problems have political solutions.
The post says that targeted mutagenesis is safer than non targeted. The criticism you mentioned - very one sided btw - holds true for both cases. You are right with your criticism on GMO’s but radioactivity Is a worse option than Crispr.
I admit, my arguments were cherry picked. I just wanted to provide a few counter examples to show that there are reasons for being skeptical of GMO crops. My biggest concern actually isn’t food safety or environmental impacts but the previously mentioned intellectual property implications. I don’t want Bayer to own certain genes making it illegal to plant seeds from apples I bought at the store.
No, unfortunately it does. GMO crops could make this even worse because they may pass their genes to wild plants through gene flow. The ‘owner’ of that gene could then require a licensing deal for the use of these plants as well.
A big problem is that farmers are not allowed to use the corn and and grain which they grew themselves on their own field as seeds. When they buy the engineered seeds and accompanied pesticides they are forced to do it every year.
That’s a dangerous development in my opinion. You must not centralise seed production in that way.
Plus: the Roundup stuff really doesn’t look healthy to me.
That is the same for all crops though - including those modified as hybrids, or by mutagenesis, which are allowed.
I agree that patents shouldn’t be allowed on genetics (and software for that matter) - but that’s unrelated to the specific gene editing ban here (CRISPR, etc.)
It’s about the creation of artifical markets - Allowing patents on genetic modifications in lifeforms so that one can sell something that basically copies itself if you provide it with a place to grow (exclusively) and some water and light. It’s highly problematic.
It’s uncritical to play that utilisation rights game with music and videos and other works of art. No one starves to death from not listening to music. But you shouldn’t play that game with food sources.
Which is more of a problem with the expensive methods, that are used right now. With CRISPR there would be a market for other viable mutations, which are not patented.
A big problem is that farmers are not allowed to use the corn and and grain which they grew themselves on their own field as seeds.
There is so much wrong with this claim, not least of which is that it’s about a century out of date and straight from a marketing playbook by “organic” associations.
1: most farmers don’t save their own seeds. They haven’t for a century, because it’s pretty hard to do right, so they simply buy seeds from a seed company. Even the ones using heirloom seeds do this.
2: almost every modern crop is a hybrid, including the ones that aren’t GMO. Hybrid crops are created by crossing two specific parent crops (say short leaf variant, crossed with long stem variant, to produce a hybrid with both traits). This hybrid will only produce 25% hybrid seeds itself though, so saving them is useless. This applies to basically every commercial non-gmo crop
Ah, I thought this one was pretty obvious, but let me add point 3
3: every single modern cultivar sold the past half century has had intellectual property agreement attached to it. You’re not allowed to save modern non-gmo seeds either.
it was not obvious to me. I am still in doubt thought.
is there a source?
(I am especially sceptical about the quanifiers. “every sjngle,” is a very strong statement. “You’re not allowed to save modern non-gmo seeds either.” implies, that there are no non-gmo seeds, that the farmer could sell, which is also a strong statement)
“You’re not allowed to save modern non-gmo seeds either.” implies, that there are no non-gmo seeds, that the farmer could sell, which is also a strong statement
No, there definitely are, but most aren’t modern. You’re allowed to do whatever you want with seeds that aren’t covered under IP laws, like heirloom seeds. The problem is that those (by definition) aren’t the latest and greatest, so their yields will be lower, they’ll be less hardy, etc.
I’m sure there will also be open varieties, but the problem is still that seed saving is difficult and costly, so most farmers will buy seeds. And the people selling those seeds get less money from selling the old seeds. And that’s bad, but not a GMO-only thing.
I don’t mean to sound like a Monsanto shill, but farmers are not forced to use those seeds. They could use their own seeds if they wanted. But the GMO crops are so much more efficient that they are worth the cost.
Also Monsanto has people go out and collect samples off farms that didn’t buy their seed and then sue them into either submission or destruction if they don’t pay anyway. So yeah, it’s cheaper either way to just buy their seed.
Possibly, but there is no proof of this. In all the court cases Monsanto has won (which is apparently all of them), the defendant was trying to scam the company.
No, that’s a lie. Monsanto may have characterized it as “scamming,” but I don’t give a fuck about monopolists’ opinions and neither should anybody else.
Even intentionally preferentially gathering and replanting “Monsanto’s” “patented” seeds is not wrong, end of!
These are public court cases, Monsanto isn’t characterizing anything. The ones I’ve seen are deliberate attempts to use the seeds without paying. Do you have examples of a farmers livelihood destroyed by Monsanto? Because it doesn’t seem good business to me for them to attack random farmers. I implore you to look at the link I posted or google it yourself.
Ok, again, no one is forcing these farmers to use the seeds. They have every opportunity to use their own heirloom seeds that they can replant forever, but they don’t because even when paying for seeds the GMO ones bring in more money. It’s a business, if they want to use them they need to pay. It’s ok to fundamentally disagree with seeds as a service but recognize (as the courts did) that this applies to all IP. Just owning a product doesn’t give you the right to duplicate and redistribute it.
My knowledge stems from just my memory of one or two documentations I watched. But there they stated that the gmo advantage is just a marketing lie in the long run, because nature adapts and yields decrease and herbicide/ fungicide usage increases.
Is there a study that shows that gmo performs better (yield wise, impact on the fauna, toxicity) than all other approaches?
Bt Eggplants in Bangladesh have higher yields and need less pesticide, which saves the lives of farmers who are too poor to buy protective gear and now need to spray much less pesticide.
Thanks. That’s interesting. The outcome looks positive regarding the yield sold/ha and spray of pesticides.
I wasn’t able to find the duration of the study and an answer to the question: Are the improved yields/ reduced pesticide results stable over multiple years (1/5/10 years after the switch to Bt brinjal)? I searched for year and duration in the text and wasn’t able to find it. But I’m at my mobile phone atm. 😒
Yep, I’m not necessarily worried about health effects, it’s the whole thing about corporations suddenly owning the copyright on plants and forcing farmers to buy seeds instead of keeping seeds like they used to.
Nobody’s forcing farmers to buy seeds. Seed sellers are asking farmers to pay if they want their seeds.
Farmers could grow their own seeds and use those. It’s just that nobody does because buying highly productive cultivars is more profitable for them, even after they’ve shared that extra income with seed producers.
This is a exclusive problem for the US. A County with a working justice system would acknowledge biological gene mobility and the natural reproduction cycle. That means farmers will be able to grow plants out of their own seeds as well as cross the mutants with relatives to keep the benefits alongside biodiversity. This is of course no business model but open funded research could do it as well.
Most scientists have a strong opinion against herbicide resistance (like round-up, round-up-ready). These genes are very quickly found in other plants do to gene transfer so it’s only a short short sighted solution.
PS: Glyphosate is the best herbicide we know. Your argument is valid for all herbicides but with roundup the least.
The US does have IP exceptions for plants used only internally to develop new variants. The news stories where a seed company sues a farmer are all about selling product commercially.
Though those laws are far less robust than in much of the world.
Both work, smart is more of a colloquial meaning here and a joke, while knowledgable is more formal and literal. Also my generation uses self deprecating humor to communicate quite a bit
Basically… The theoretical risk of a mutation occuring that is unwanted. Here is the thing that graphic hides though. With gene editing it’s a company that decides what is desired and what is off target. And we all know that big corporate is primarily interested in making more money. Not the well being of the people.
Additionally, the graphic oversimplifies things as well. The resulting genetically modified crop is often not even all that close close to the same as the non-GMO, as seen by studies such as this one:
Basically; GMO soybeans contain proteins which differ and also include additional proteins. This can cause allergic reactions to modified soy where non-modified soy might not cause an issue.
Monsanto supposedly even knew about these proteins and higher risk of allergic reaction and chose to not disclose it. (I saw some research that mentioned this years ago… It’d be hard to find the exact source I read back then.) This specific paper, which talks about additional proteins and side-effects brought in by the new transgenic splicing, also explicitly states that Monsanto did studies themselves and failed to report relevant findings:
Obviously, other methods can also change proteins too, but these papers show it isn’t as clear cut as the graphic in the original post claims.
Along these lines, here’s a study that finds differences not just in soybeans grown organically versus ones treated by glyphosate (Monsanto Round-Up pesticide) but also between GMO and non-GMO crops, both treated by the pesticide.
But, yeah this is just a long way of agreeing with the parent post and saying that the end goal is to make the plants resistant to poison, not to make them better for humans, all to make more money. (In this case, Monsanto is even double-dipping by selling both the pesticide and the crops tailor-made for the pesticide.)
Other GMO crops might be closer to the original crop and might also actually be beneficial for humans without drawbacks. However, Monsanto’s soybeans are problematic, and other crops might be as well, especially if they’re made by companies who have money as their primary goal.
Even more reason to legalize precise gene editing. It’s cheaper than the other two methods, because you don’t need years to create something usable. Cheaper means more companies can play around with it, creating more competition and probably better results, not just better resistance to the pesticide the same company sells.
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