GM potatoes
Moderators: KG Steve, Chantal, Tigger, peter, Chief Spud
There is a point in Peter's argument which I wish to question. Take any living thing and section it down in this instance to gene level. As we now know a gene is a pattern of DNA, composed of many subsections. Individually it is not the subsections themselves which give the identity to the gene, its properties. It is a bit like the data in the computer, basically it is nothing more than just a series of 0's and 1's. Now at what point of subsectioning is there no identity of the original lost. Clearly there must be a huge number of places in the whole chain in which you could identify a part of a group such as in binary 0101 or 1100, for example. To say that at any such level it identifies a scorpion, a snowdrop or a mouse is clearly ridiculous, the source identity is totally lost. Yet in the argument here such identities are being freely bandied about. I heard that we as humans share huge amounts of the genetic pattern of the mouse. That does not make us mice.
Allan
Allan
It doesnt make us mice Allan but by the same token the vast majority of dna that we share we therefore can get from other humans and the bit that we can't should be kept to the mice as it is obviously different to human dna whether stripped down to its base level or not. Its that small percentage of difference in dna that makes species distinct and should be kept so.
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Mike Vogel
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At the risk of appearing 2 years behind the conversation, I'd just like to take up JB's point about terminator seeds. In the "Organic Way"s last issue [p.18] we read that, while it is true that the government has supported the UN Biodiversity convention's imposition of a moratorium on this technology, the biotech. companies are busy obtaining patents and last october the first European patents on terminator were granted. What's more, the UK govt wants to plan for GM and non-GM coexistence from 2009, which could provide a way in for terminator technology in the guise of a biosafety tool.
What angers me in all this is not the scientific exploration, but the inevitable secrecy of it all. Ordinary people like us will not know if a terminator, or GM, crop is grown next to ours. If you are trying to preserve a heritage variety, all your efforts could be rendered worthless and you won't even know till it is too late. So yes, don't blame the scientists; it's the sinister forces within the big companies that need constraining. Not necessary all the companies or all their personnel, but it needs just one for the rot to start.
Regarding Alison's point: I agree with the principle. However, I don't think I even mind if the modification of one plant [soya] is triggered by genetic material from another [petunia]- it's all good veggie stuff. But what is a vegetarian to do if the genetic material used in modification is taken from animal DNA?
I also feel that to oppose GM to Organic is misleading. If some material or other is genetic, is it not ipso facto organic? As I've said, I'm not a scientist and am lost when it gets too technical.
mike
What angers me in all this is not the scientific exploration, but the inevitable secrecy of it all. Ordinary people like us will not know if a terminator, or GM, crop is grown next to ours. If you are trying to preserve a heritage variety, all your efforts could be rendered worthless and you won't even know till it is too late. So yes, don't blame the scientists; it's the sinister forces within the big companies that need constraining. Not necessary all the companies or all their personnel, but it needs just one for the rot to start.
Regarding Alison's point: I agree with the principle. However, I don't think I even mind if the modification of one plant [soya] is triggered by genetic material from another [petunia]- it's all good veggie stuff. But what is a vegetarian to do if the genetic material used in modification is taken from animal DNA?
I also feel that to oppose GM to Organic is misleading. If some material or other is genetic, is it not ipso facto organic? As I've said, I'm not a scientist and am lost when it gets too technical.
mike
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peter
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Piglet's reply says succinctly what I would have if I had not been at a christmas do last night. 
I would add that with annual crops any decent plantsman should be able to breed a new variety or dozen during his working lifetime
, it is commercially driven impatience and greed driving GM currently. 
That vast majority of dna we share with a mouse or a chimp is what links us together as mammals, giving liver, kidney, stomach, skeleton, etc, going back down the evolutionary process, the percentage we share with an ameoba encodes basic cell design and function. That small percentage that differentiates us from a mouse and that even smaller percentage that differentiates me from Piglet and Allan is what makes ME.
Each segment on its own does not achieve anything, it is just a complex chemical. However when "spliced" into a longer version, within a living cell that is then used as the basis of a whole new organism, it instructs that cell to direct the development of said organism in a particular way.
The section being spliced in is only tiny, but so is the amount that makes one plant different from another plant, relative to what makes it a plant. It is the un-anticipated effect of that tiny change that worries me.
The "new plant" may well not be what was desired, I suspect the failure rate is high and that what initially tests as a success in the petri dish, may be a useless organism in other ways when tested in the sealed greenhouse. What emerges into field scale trials is still on trial, remember that point when reassurances about impact are trotted out by "interested parties".
"Pollen only travels a few hundred metres", pardon me but that is baloney. As the son of an bee-keeper and keen watcher of historical and natual history programmes, bees will travel miles to a good source and pollen is found in the arctic ice. Remember the BBC news story earlier this year about the yellow rain, birch pollen from scandanavia coating the eastern regions of the UK. Do you start to sneeze in the spring as you drive along, then smell that sickly smell, well before you catch sight of the incandescant yellow field of oilseed rape, all of the above well outside the UK GM-crop safety barrier/margin?
Will splicing snowdrop into potato enable potato to hybridise with daffodil? I do not know, but I bet nor do the confident scientists. Some testing indicates that herbicide resistance bred into GM crops grown in Canada is appearing in the weeds growing near those fields.
To take it a little further, strip us down far enough and all you would see would be some chemicals from the periodic table.
Life is the miracle that animates it all, be it random chance or the deity of your choice that caused it.
I would add that with annual crops any decent plantsman should be able to breed a new variety or dozen during his working lifetime
, it is commercially driven impatience and greed driving GM currently.
That vast majority of dna we share with a mouse or a chimp is what links us together as mammals, giving liver, kidney, stomach, skeleton, etc, going back down the evolutionary process, the percentage we share with an ameoba encodes basic cell design and function. That small percentage that differentiates us from a mouse and that even smaller percentage that differentiates me from Piglet and Allan is what makes ME.
Each segment on its own does not achieve anything, it is just a complex chemical. However when "spliced" into a longer version, within a living cell that is then used as the basis of a whole new organism, it instructs that cell to direct the development of said organism in a particular way.
The section being spliced in is only tiny, but so is the amount that makes one plant different from another plant, relative to what makes it a plant. It is the un-anticipated effect of that tiny change that worries me.
The "new plant" may well not be what was desired, I suspect the failure rate is high and that what initially tests as a success in the petri dish, may be a useless organism in other ways when tested in the sealed greenhouse. What emerges into field scale trials is still on trial, remember that point when reassurances about impact are trotted out by "interested parties".
"Pollen only travels a few hundred metres", pardon me but that is baloney. As the son of an bee-keeper and keen watcher of historical and natual history programmes, bees will travel miles to a good source and pollen is found in the arctic ice. Remember the BBC news story earlier this year about the yellow rain, birch pollen from scandanavia coating the eastern regions of the UK. Do you start to sneeze in the spring as you drive along, then smell that sickly smell, well before you catch sight of the incandescant yellow field of oilseed rape, all of the above well outside the UK GM-crop safety barrier/margin?
Will splicing snowdrop into potato enable potato to hybridise with daffodil? I do not know, but I bet nor do the confident scientists. Some testing indicates that herbicide resistance bred into GM crops grown in Canada is appearing in the weeds growing near those fields.
To take it a little further, strip us down far enough and all you would see would be some chemicals from the periodic table.
Life is the miracle that animates it all, be it random chance or the deity of your choice that caused it.
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Your criticism of oilseed rape as GM would not apply to potatoes as they can be restricted to vegetative propogation. It illustrates that each case must be examined on its merits, not banning GM as a whole.I don't see GM being banned throughout the world now.
Allan
Allan
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peter
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Allan wrote:Your criticism of oilseed rape as GM would not apply to potatoes as they can be restricted to vegetative propogation. It illustrates that each case must be examined on its merits, not banning GM as a whole.I don't see GM being banned throughout the world now.
Allan
Two points Allan.
They still flower.
On your last sentence, I totally agree, I would just like to see the control of it taken away from the agribusinesses and given to an unbribable, totally honest, altruistic philanthropist.
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People being people, surely it will only be a matter of time before some government or other will use gm and make a non leathal weapon to starve out another country. Imagine GM Japanese knotweed being spread all over the Lincolnshire fens. The costs of bringing it under control would be crippling.
And believe me, I bet that some obscure government department has thought of it. Far fetched I admit.
Or is it
.
And believe me, I bet that some obscure government department has thought of it. Far fetched I admit.
Or is it
.Human DNA has already been used in other animals in the US and patented.
GM is now nothing to do with plants but a way to control food supplies. It doesn't have to be gm japanese knotweed just any country upsetting the US would have their seed allocation lowered or prices pushed higher to bring the country back under the yoke.
It is already illegal to save your own seed in Iraq.
Pete
GM is now nothing to do with plants but a way to control food supplies. It doesn't have to be gm japanese knotweed just any country upsetting the US would have their seed allocation lowered or prices pushed higher to bring the country back under the yoke.
It is already illegal to save your own seed in Iraq.
Pete
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"To be a successful farmer, one must first know the NATURE of the SOIL" Xenophon , Oeconomicus 400 B.C.
"To be a successful farmer, one must first know the NATURE of the SOIL" Xenophon , Oeconomicus 400 B.C.
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"To be a successful farmer, one must first know the NATURE of the SOIL" Xenophon , Oeconomicus 400 B.C.
"To be a successful farmer, one must first know the NATURE of the SOIL" Xenophon , Oeconomicus 400 B.C.
I don't believe that the scientists working on GM haven't taken this into account already, that is if it is a valid argument.The trouble is that these days there are too many pseudo-scientists around, just because they have white coats on.
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peter
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Allan wrote:I don't believe that the scientists working on GM haven't taken this into account already, that is if it is a valid argument.The trouble is that these days there are too many pseudo-scientists around, just because they have white coats on.
Hmmmm, very PC of you Allan
.
Darling, the pseudo-scientists have come to take you away.
Darling, the men in white coats have come to take you away.
Euphemisms eh.
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Allan wrote:
I don't believe that the scientists working on GM haven't taken this into account already, that is if it is a valid argument.The trouble is that these days there are too many pseudo-scientists around, just because they have white coats on.
Which post are you replying to here Allan? Also what are you going on about anyway.
If anyone doubts the idea that the scientific establishment (including peer review journals such as Nature et al) are not seriously influenced by commercial interests, then they would do well to read the history of the use and manufacture of partially-hydogenated veg oil and 'trans-fatty acids'. Concerns about this were first raised in the 1960's, but due to massive food industry investment in industrial plants to produce this stuff, any research questioning it's safety for human health was critisied/ridiculed/suppressed and careers were blighted. Guess what, in the last decade or so things have changed. To the point where a number of countries have banned the stuff (New York did recently), and most food manufactures are phasing out it's use. It just happens to coincide with the end of the useful working life of a lot of the production plants...
I don't believe that the scientists working on GM haven't taken this into account already, that is if it is a valid argument.The trouble is that these days there are too many pseudo-scientists around, just because they have white coats on.
Which post are you replying to here Allan? Also what are you going on about anyway.
If anyone doubts the idea that the scientific establishment (including peer review journals such as Nature et al) are not seriously influenced by commercial interests, then they would do well to read the history of the use and manufacture of partially-hydogenated veg oil and 'trans-fatty acids'. Concerns about this were first raised in the 1960's, but due to massive food industry investment in industrial plants to produce this stuff, any research questioning it's safety for human health was critisied/ridiculed/suppressed and careers were blighted. Guess what, in the last decade or so things have changed. To the point where a number of countries have banned the stuff (New York did recently), and most food manufactures are phasing out it's use. It just happens to coincide with the end of the useful working life of a lot of the production plants...
Hello everyone,
Can I ask another (probably very simple, excuse me if I appear thick!!) question?
I think what I was puzzling over is why are the Government trialling GM potaoes for blight resistance which then presumably won't be eaten when individual growers are already growing and eating the Sarpo variety? Why can't these just be grown commercially?
Thanks for the interesting debate!!
June
Can I ask another (probably very simple, excuse me if I appear thick!!) question?
I think what I was puzzling over is why are the Government trialling GM potaoes for blight resistance which then presumably won't be eaten when individual growers are already growing and eating the Sarpo variety? Why can't these just be grown commercially?
Thanks for the interesting debate!!
June