The great GM debate

[KG Steve]

Hi Folks

The topic for debate in our Over The garden Fence feature this month is genetically modified foods. If they became available for use on your plot would you grow them if they brought advantages such as pest resistance or higher yields? Would you refuse to use them under any circumstances? Would you buy ready-made foods from the supermarket if they had GM ingredients? Perhaps you think GM is a great innovation that could help us feed the starving millions?
Let us have your views and we'll publish a selection on the pages of the August issue.

[oldherbaceous]

I'm just off to clear the Anderson shelter out, in readiness!

[glallotments]

I really don't know enough about genetically modifying and what it exactly entails but I would be against anything that disrupts the balance of nature. For instance if we didn't have any greenfly that would have a knock on effect on our bird populations. Also I would be against anything that would create a super-plant that out competed indigenous plants if it escaped into the countryside.

On my plot I don't really see a need for GM. One of the reasons for growing your own is to produce food as naturally as possible. Crossing plants already is being used to improve disease resistance, yields etc.
As for buying ready-made foods from the supermarket - I would need to know more about it than I do at the moment and understand the actual implications without any hype or scaremongering either way.

I do think there could be a good reason for growing GM if it managed to produce food for people in parts of the world who are not as lucky as we are with our food supplies. If it is a choice between GM and starving I guess I would be happy to have GM foods.

[alan refail]

Short answer: No.

Rather longer answer: Apart from the ongoing trials of GM potatoes at the Sainsbury laboratories, I am not aware of any other developments which are aimed at domestic garden crops. I very much doubt whether the very considerable amounts of money need for research would ever be put into anything other than major commercial crops. And I wouldn't grow those varieties any more than I would grow more than a very few F1 cultivars. There is plenty of variety in open-pollinated garden crops and good husbandry (organic or otherwise) can take care of most problems.

At the same time I have little sympathy with uninformed eco-warrior automatic opposition to GMOs. But I sure wouldn't fancy growing GM potatoes anywhere near their garden!

[Nature's Babe]

Nature has served us well since time began, why disrupt what is a proven tremendous workable system, with such diversity, choice, and variety, just to line the pockets of Monsanto. I check all food and reject it if GM.
GM-linked pesticides (present in all these crops) actually end up inside the body of the consumer and in a pregnant consumer also in their unborn child. These toxins have been linked to allergens and to birth defects.

ref Aziz Aris and Samuel Leblanc, 2011, Maternal and fetzl exposure to pesticides associated to genetically modified foods in Eastern Townships of Quebec, Canada, Reproductive Toxicology online

http://www.usherbrooke.ca/gnec/pj/Artic ... PDF%29.pdf

[Johnboy]

There is so much rubbish written about GM from the anti lobby it is something to be believed.
GM is a useful tool in the geneticists armoury but was never intended to be his/her only tool. It can be used quite safely to short cut a process that may be undertaken by normal hybridization by as much as 20 plus years.
The only reason the Organic faction took to demonizing it was because they very early on realized that should it really become popular Organics would be finished. To me that is the plain simple truth.
If a company was to produce a Brassica that was immune to White Fly and The Cabbage Whites you try and convince me that there would not be a rush to buy the seed! I would try to be first in the queue.
As it is I use very few hybridized seeds because I produce many for my own use. But there is a need for GM to play it's part in agriculture NOW.
There is an awful amount of ignorance about regarding GM and if people were prepared to look at the good it can do rather than the this perpetual rubbish put about by the anti lobbyists and the demonizing were to cease you might come to understand what a wonderful tool it can be and as global warming really takes a hold more and more geneticists will take it up.
There are now so many companies worldwide that are producing GM seeds it is total nonsense to continue to perpetually blame Monsanto.
Sadly, because of what has now become apparent that GM will not kill us all, which most sensible people knew already, Europe is only just begining to take it up. I sincerely hope that we do not live to regret not taking it up years ago.
JB.

[Geoff]

GM varieties are not that significantly different to other highly bred varieties to worry me.
If garden friendly varieties became available that offered significant advantages without disadvantages such as cost, flavour or short harvesting season I would probably grow them; the GM Potato project looks the most likely to deliver.
We buy very few ready-made supermarket foods so the only one I am likely to come across in the near future is baked beans. I could also eat some GM fed meat, though most of our meat comes from local traditionally raised animals.
This is where my only reservation about GM kicks in. The majority of current commercial GMs seem to have developed to go with a management regime that involves large doses of herbicides; you have to be worried about residues and environmental impact. This is NOT a failure of GM technology but of its application. If more sensible research lines (like the blight resistant Potato) were followed it could be a great innovation to feed the world but probably requires the injection of non-commercial research funds to make it happen.

[peter]

Bottom line?
Profits, a freely reproducing GM variety that did not need the grower to apply a proprietry product during the growing cycle?
No income beyond the initial sale of seeds, no return on investment, no interest.
It is commercial organisations doing this, not Greenpeace, who if they did could be altruistic, do the naturally resistant to x y & z, patent the variety and then offer it to humanity in general for free.
Plus garden sales, way too smallscale for these firms to bother with, also have an inbuilt anti-GM bias, we buy seeds for ease, trueness to type and reliability of germination, we grow our own to know how it was grown.
Personally I would be tempted by naturally resistant varieties, but would worry what gene had been spliced in to achieve it, so on balance would not grow GM.

[Johnboy]

Good morning Peter,
Bottom line profits! Of course profits come into the equation because they are the total basis of trade. You go to work and at the end of the week/month and you get paid so are you suggesting that Geneticists should be any different to you.
I suspect that you are referring to Round-up ready crops and your common sense should tell you that these seeds are for agricultural purposes only and would never be offered to home gardeners.
The vast majority of GM seeds are the result of modification from genes within the species range. These crosses could probably be carried out eventually by conventional means but the time factor is against us because the cost of say 20 years of experiments in a laboratory would cost an awful lot of money.
Take the on going experiment with blight resistant Potatoes which caused so must hullabaloo on this forum last year. The nearest thing that is being done by normal hybridizing is the Sarpo Range of Potatoes.
It has taken something like 40 years of work so far to produce this range of Potatoes. The snag with these Potatoes are that they have to be new varieties and there have been various comments with regards to their taste. By GM, if the trials are successful, these Potatoes of existing well tried and tested Potatoes could be on the market and ready for everybody to grow within five years. Would you take the opportunity to grow them?
Many scare stories appear from very obscure places and they trial a GM product but what I would suggest is that these people run parallel trials on existing crops and publish those findings as well before they start their scare mongering. This means that conventionally hybridized crops should come under the same scrutiny as GM.
JB.

[Geoff]

For anybody who has any doubts about plant breeding and its natural progression to GM they should watch "Botany : A Blooming History" Part 3 "Hidden World" still available on iPlayer. (The rest of the series is pretty good too).

[Mike Vogel]

And the final 10 minutes of "The Wonder of Weeds,", which I've just been watching on BBC4 tonight.

This is what GM should really be about: breeding varieties which can resist disease, drought, etc, NOT about making weed-killer resistant varieties and then blasting weedkiller all over the place, to kill the weeds and poison the soil.

[Nature's Babe]

Looking at my garden today, organic now for many years, there is a natural balance of predator / pest so no real pest or disease problems, everything is flourishing despite the long drought and the recent rains have helped. My broad beans still show no sign of blackfly towards end of harvesting them and I never even bothered to pinch out the tips! Even the slug and snail problem is well controlled now thanks to my ducks appetite for them. It's economical because I save most veg seeds from year to year. I can't see any benefit in paying for expensive GM seeds and weed killer. Weeds are useful sources of humus and nettles etc make wonderful liquid feed, as long as I don't let them seed, and some are nice fresh greens for my chickens, why buy those things when so much is available for free? All garden plants evolved from weeds,and many medecines too, who knows what potential still lies undeveloped in those still classed as weeds ? Seeds are our heritage, carefully selected and improved, handed down from generation to generation freely, if they had not done so there would only be weeds to genetically modify. As more and more traditional open-pollinated varieties disappear from the catalogues to be replaced by overpriced and overhyped hybrids, so biodiversity shrinks. Our seed heritage is important as gardeners we should be saving seed and keeping it alive freely as generations before have done The other advantage of saving seed is that it adapts to local climate and conditions, seed we buy in may not be so well adapted. Also when saving seed we can select to improve a strain, and pick out any interesting sport or trait to develop "Whoever controls the seeds controls a people's ability to feed themselves." :: The Guardian

I watched and enjoyed that program too Mike.

[Johnboy]

Hi NB,
You seem to be tucked-up in your little world and very content that the whole world should follow your shining example. I am very happy for you to be this way but the rest of the world holds many starving people and much as you would like it to be your method of gardening, however much it suits you simply would only lead to mass starving if adopted internationally.

As more and more traditional open-pollinated varieties disappear from the catalogues to be replaced by overpriced and over hyped hybrids, so biodiversity shrinks.

Certainly open pollinated varieties are disappearing from the seed catalogues which to me is very regrettable but is inevitable as Agriculture and Horticulture progress in search of super-seeds so the old varieties are out matched in performance. I would suggest to you that biodiversity is not shrinking and the choice that you have has not diminished simply changed to a form that is not accepted by you and some others. I appreciate that this is not what you want and nor do I really but I'm afraid that it is time you and I become a little more realistic and to pick on GM as something the world doesn't want or need is simply closing your mind against scientific progress.
You are always suggesting that we should care for the wellbeing of our grandchildren and you must try and put yourself into the future, their world, when you and I have gone to gardens new, and that future will not be squabbles between Organic or Conventional because both methods will have been superseded. Whether by GM or a new form of High Tech Hybridizing is something you and I will never know. Whatever it is we must not stand in the way.
Nobody is suggesting that you should not do as you are doing but you must have an eye on the future although you may not be a part of it.
JB.

[Nature's Babe]

Johnboy I am not tucked up in my own little world but take an interest worldwide and regularly contribute to those who do help in those situations, and I notice it is often education and simpler technologies that really help them to help themselves. Tying them in to expensive seeds and herbicides and fertilisers and imposing our technologies before they have the education and knowledge to deal with it is not always helpful and often detrimental, just look at the work those charities are doing they are giving them the education and tools to help themselves. Often the GM crops take big swathes of their land, employ dirt cheap labour and it is imported back to the west. I beg to differ, science tells us that diversity is in decline and
loss of plant biodiversity disrupts the fundamental services that ecosystems provide to humanity.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 153116.htm

[peter]

The range varieties offered in seed catalogues is declining because each producer has to pay a whacking great fee every year to register each variety.

So if they don't sell enough of variety X they stop paying the fee and are no longer allowed to list it.

Another benefit brought to us courtesy of the EU.