Kansas Agriculture Secretary Adrian Polansky and some researchers say it’s safe. But the Center for Food Safety and the Kansas Rural Center last week called on the U.S. Department of Agriculture to deny a permit by Ventria Bioscience to grow genetically modified rice in Geary County, citing the danger of genetic contamination of other crops.
Ventria’s rice uses synthetic proteins that mimic human genes. The Kansas Rural Center pointed to the inevitability of wind and wildlife carrying seed elsewhere, posing a “high risk” of contamination.
Do state officials fully appreciate the possible unintended consequences?
Posted by Randy Scholfield
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25 Comments
This is more scare tactic balony. Our food NOW is genetically modified. Brocolli and colliflower are simply different variations of the same a cabbage; genetically, they are the same plant. There is nothing remotely like corn in the wild. Cereal grains, as we know them, could not survive without cultivation; they are bred to be cultivated. Ditto bananas.
We did all that through generations of selection. There’s no difference today, we simply do through the genetic code quickly what we used to do through generations of selection of desireable characteristics.
More sky-is-falling balony.
Contaminate what other rice crops? There is no rice grown in Kansas.
GMC,
You don’t understand science. You don’t even know how to spell broccoli or cauliflower.
Broccoli and cauliflower are not genetically the same plant any more than human beings and chimpanzees are genetically the same animal. An apricot tree is not genetically the same as a peach or plum tree. An Brittany spaniel and a chihuaha are both dogs, but you can’t breed one into the other, because in selective breeding gene pools have lost genes. We believe that there was some common parent in each case, and with selective breeding, new progeny arose, which eventually lost the genetic material to be capable of back-breeding to recreate the parent.
The new GM rice strain contains human-source proteins. Essentially, human RNA for two proteins was collected from people. Using an RNA-to-DNA reverse transcriptase, obtained from a pathogenic virus c-DNA was generated from the RNA in large amounts. Then it was inserted into plant genes.
You can cross-breed plants til cows come home to create new hybrids, as was extensively done in the 20th century, and actually long ago as well, but you can’t get a human protein into a plant by any kind of selective breeding method.
Now, if we want to talk about whether anti-natural technology is acceptable, that’s a different story. We started inserting human insulin DNA, growth hormone DNA, and blood-cell growth factor DNA into bacteria long ago. We have plants with a Bacillus thuragensis gene to ward of insects. So this new rice represents this idea of emplacing totally artificial (to a species) genes.
California is at the epicenter of this thing, because that’s where genetic engineering, including GM crops, was invented, but thirty years later, large and growing numbers of Californians are demanding “heirloom” produce and organic food. Their rice farmers sell their product worldwide, e.g. to countries that don’t want GM food. They don’t want their fields to be contaminated, because they don’t want to lose customers.
This proposal to plant GM rice in Kansas doesn’t even make sense. To grow rice you have to flood fields for several weeks. Where’s the water here to do this? Kansas doesn’t have the marshes of California’s Sacramento River bottomlands, Texas or the lower Mississippi states. Is the product going to be sold to Kansans? How many Kansans eat rice as a staple? Nobody else is going to buy it, when non-adulterated rice is abundant and cheap.
Why is Kansas the brunt of outsiders’ crappy ideas? Like the one to build a coal-powered electrical plant to supply Colorado and Texas that Coloradans and Texans don’t want in their state.
Genetically modified crops do pose a danger, but not to human health. The danger is that they are appreciably more desirable to plant and/or process. This is their reason for existing. I know, that sounds like an advantage, but it’s not! When most planters come to use it instead of the wide varieties they used before, it narrows the gene pool of that species.This has already happened once, in Ireland in the 1840’s. Until then, every potato grown in Ireland was a cloned descendant of one of five potatos brought to Ireland from Peru by the Spanish in the 1500’s, an extremely narrow pool. As a result, when the blight hit, it was able to destroy nearly every potato there, resulting in famine.When we plant a wide variety of rice strains, it acts as a safety factor. A disease that affects one or two strains may not hurt the others. we lose only a part of the rice crop to it. When we have a patented GM strain that is so markedly superior in yield, say, that farmers must plant it to stay competitive, and a fungus mutates to affect that strain (fungi, and other diseases do that constantly), then an entire rice crop is lost along with all future crops, until a solution can be found. So much for rice, which is a staple crop for billions of us.The same problem exists for any GM crop, and for genetically altered livestock and pets. Nature developed wide genetic diversity and it’s worked well for hundreds of millions of years. It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature this way, and she’ll make us pay royally for narrowing that gene pool!
Who says they are going this rice outdoors?
This isn’t full scale production people. It’s a bioscience company doing research.
Hmmm… the rice produces proteins which are already present in the human body. And this is dangerous why?
Hmmm… the rice is designed to help infants recover from diarrhea. And this is dangerous why?
If these plants were designed to concentrate cyanide and arsenic in their seeds, we’d have a good reason to be concerned. But these are natural, actually beneficial, proteins.
On the other hand, Kansas has a long history of rejecting scientific explanations for natural processes, so maybe that’s why they are so easily frightened by Ventria’s rice.
“Why is Kansas the brunt of outsiders’ crappy ideas?”
Because the economic development folks of kansas are so dumb they think these crappy ideas are GOOD ideas?
Anonymous had it right. “A share of the plunder for me”!
This isnt news. Talk of this has been circulating for quite a while in the economic development and organic farming worlds.
And yes joe, they are growing this rice outside.
I have mixed feeelings about this. First, thoufg, in defense of GMC broccoli and cauliflower ARE related; along with Brussels sprouts and cabbage (family Braccia I think). Funny thing is, I like broccolli but hate the other ones (except cabbage in cole slaw)
My concern lies with the “law of intended consequences”. As with the arguements about chemical additives to foods these often are thought initially to begood ideas but then we learn more.
Remember not so long ago a ‘food oil’ they came out with was supposed to let people like me eat all the greasy stuff I crave and it would pass through unabsorbed? Seemed like a good idea until they learned more about the side effects.
MANY years ago I was involved in a small way with studies of high-lysine corn. This was modified the old-fashioned way – SEX. And, after study the product is now in production. Any way we can get our protein from grain instead of meat is ‘generally’ going to be good -particularly in third world countries.
So, I am not opposed to this ‘per se’; however I DO say GO SLOW. Cross-pollination HAS been a problem with GM; we are seeing Round-up resistent weeds in he wild now.
GMC – in your field it is innocent until proven guilty. In my field we tend to go with guilty until proven innocent. That is the conservative approach.
This is a much larger issue and discussion than a few rice plants. GMO patents are the real problem.
This year, I had to sign forms for some seeds BEFORE the companies would send them. The forms said I would not save my own seed.
I dont do that anyway, as it is too time consuming for my operation, but it wont be long before the giants like Monsanto own the farmers. And by extention, the farms and food supply world wide.
European Patent Office revokes Monsanto´s species patent on geneticallyengineered soy beans
Munich, May 3, 2007. In a public hearing at the board of appeal at the European Patent Office a basic patent (EP 0301749) of US companyMonsanto was revoked today.
Reasons were that parts of the patent were not really new and others details were not described in a way that the invention could be really repeated by other experts.
The final decision was the outcome of appeals which were filed byCanadian civil society organisation ETC Group and the European Company of Syngenta.
Further oppositions were filed orginally by the NGO “NoPatents on Life!” and four other companies when the patent was granted in 1994.
Even Monsanto filed an opposition, but then bought the company Agracetus which originally owned the patent, withdrew its oppositionand started to defend the patent.
According to Hope Shand of ETC Group, „The decision comes pretty late, 13 years after the patent was granted. But the decision to revoke the patent is wonderful news. The species wide soybean patent of Monsanto is not allowed to stand.”
In its orginal version as granted the patent covered all geneticallyengineered plant species and especially soybeans and was seen as one of the broadest species patent ever granted on plants and seeds.
(snip)
Ruth Tippe from the organisation „No Patents on Life!” says: “This is an important step against patents on seeds, because it shows that civil society will keep on fighting and can finally succeed even against powerful multinationals.”
The outcome of the procedure will not only affect Monsanto but also the European Patent Office: “It is now shown that the Patent Office isgranting patents which are covering broad sectors of agricultural diversity without real invention behind.
There are many others patents which simply satisfy the greed of companies but do not give benefits to society,” says Christoph Then from Greenpeace.
This is one of the most specious arguments I’ve ever heard.
Yes, you can breed Chihuahua’s and Brittany Spaniels – just like you can breed Wolves to German Shepherds or Huskies. They’re still dogs.
Size can make a difference in whether the breeding will be successful, but I’ve never yet heard of a single case where one dog could not be bred to another.
Regarding GMO crops directly, I have no problem with it, as anything intended for human consumption has to be thoroughly tested. I am more concerned, as Jed pointed out, that it would eventually supplant other crops, leading to the danger of single-crop famine.
Well, if those foreign genes have some unforseen repercussion and spread to wild relatives, there will be no “undoing” it.
Look at how hard it is to get rid of zebra mussels or ditch weed hemp.
I’m really not keen on things that can irrevocably change the natural environment forever.
What are the long term effects of genetically modified food on humans?
As far as people who stand to benefit telling us it’s “perfectly safe,” consider the Brook’s landfill that would “never leak” . . . until it leaked of course.
Phen-Fen was tested and found “safe” too . . . right up to the point that it destroyed people’s mitral valves.
Nuclear power was going to produce so much safe electricty in the 50’s that it’d be “too cheap to meter.” Then Chernobyl happened.
Asbestos was a miracle fire-retardant in the 50’s and 60’s. What a wonderful new product! Now we spend billions to scrape the cancer-causing crap off . . .
Etc. etc. etc.
I am somewhat concerned about GM crops. My concern is that if we use cross species (plant and animal, or whatever) genetic splicing, and it then further modifies on it’s own, what is the end result? Will plants or other animals then pass on genetic material making it easier for disease to spread from one to the other? WIll, as someone else said, it reduce the number of varieties available and a single blight or disease wipes out all of it? I think diversity is much better bet.
Sol–
That’s the point. The long-term effects are unknowable.
I read or heard (no hard facts here folks) that all the crap we are pumping into our livestock is causing problems – young girls hitting puberty earlier, their breasts growing out of proportion – and the antibiotics are causing problems as well.
Even if the GM crops are not for human consumption, it they are used in feed, then indirectly they are.
I am all for making a stronger corn plant. I am all for making rice that would sustain a drought or something. Long to short, I am for making things better for PEOPLE, just not so some fat cat CEO can get fatter. And this stuff needs MASSIVE long term testing.
The two genes added to rice are lactoferrin, which binds iron, and lysozyme, which breaks down cell wall proteins in bacteria.
The concept is to prevent or mitigate gastrointestinal infections, basically the kind you find in tropical Third World countries due to feces-contaminated water supplies.
Is this a problem in Kansas? Don’t we have modern water-treatment systems here?
There’s a lesson to be learned from widescale antibiotic use in animal feed. It initially prevents infections, then ultimately helps bacteria to develop resistance quickly. Animal-feed antibiotics are considered by most infectious disease experts to be a major contributor to antibiotic-resistant bacteria CAUSING HUMAN DISEASE.
The drug companies can keep up by inventing new antibiotics, but they are extremely expensive. It’s a shell game folks. Give inexpensive out-of-patent antibiotics to millions of cattle and pigs, generate resistance to these, and then create a new market for very expensive new antibiotics. Nice money, if you can get it.
Bacteria will generate resistance to the human anti-bacterial proteins in the rice. Then what happens? OUR NATURAL IMMUNE SYSTEM PROTEINS WILL NO LONGER PROTECT US, so WE’LL HAVE TO BUY DRUGS to fend off bacteria that our own human bodies used to do, AT NO COST.
GMC, do you want this to happen?
SolDevVB,
We are being exposed to estrogen mimics in many types of chemicals. They affect men too, lowering sperm counts, for example.
Correction. I said,
“There’s a lesson to be learned from widescale antibiotic use in animal feed. It initially prevents infections, then ultimately helps bacteria to develop resistance quickly.”
I meant to say “ultimately helps bacteria to develop resistance, and then quickly transfer resistance to other, drug-sensitive bacteria.”
It’s a lovely world isn’t it?
Whether or not it’s dangerous or not, the bottom line is that European countries actively campaign against GM products from the United States, in order to promote their own agriculture. Any equipment used on GM crops, storage facility etc… even the barges used in shipping must be used solely for either for GM or non GM product. Japan is also against American GM agricultural goods.
Sol,”It’s a lovely world isn’t it?”Well, we’ve made it this far, haven’t we?
GM crops have LOTS of unintended consequences.
Report Reveals Risks to New Zealand’s Insects and SoilsGE Free NZ press release, 3 May 2007
Plants containing “Bt” toxins could severely damage New Zealand soil, and beneficial insect populations, suggests a published review of international scientific studies.
The report by Hillbeck and Schmidt examines the published literature on Bt toxins – widely incorporated as a feature of GM plants – in scores of laboratory feeding studies.
It shows a range of important insect species including bees, butterflies and moths can be fatally and chronically affected by Bt “Cry” genes. Lady birds had increased death rates after two weeks of eating one version of the toxins.
The studies also observed that Bt expressed in transgenic plants was far more detrimental to reproduction, growth and lifespan in important insect populations. Non–target insects had a higher death rate from GM-plant Bt than the commercial Bt sprays.
The report is a strong indication that New Zealand native insect species could be severely affected by transgenic Bt (Cry gene) crops as they carry out a much bigger pollination role than previously thought. (Cronshaw T, 2005).
It also shows Bt plants put could undermine other scientific work to develop natural bio-controls for problem insects.
“Any chronic, sublethal effects of this toxin in soil or plants on non-target predator species could severely damage the management methods of bio control where predator insects are used to manage prey pests,” said Claire Bleakley of GE Free (NZ) in Food and Environment.
“Any threat to this farming method is of concern as the prey /host relationship is a major tool in IPM (integrated pest management) farming methods, which is part of our international position as a clean-and green producer.”
In New Zealand a comprehensive range of fungi, protozoa, nematodes, bacteria and predator insects moths, wasps have become available to farmers for pest control. Many of these bio control agents live in the soil and are an important part of ecosystems. This review has collated the research showing that these organisms been shown to be highly susceptible to Bt toxins.
“In light of these adverse effects authorities must require that long term indoor safety and diagnostic tools are developed for testing of these plants. The research when completed must be peer reviewed and published before any plant is allowed to grow outdoors,” says Claire Bleakley. “ERMA must not approve the field testing of Bt brassica (cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and forage kale)”.
This is one of the most interesting debate I have ever encountered about genetically modified crops. Doug especially impresses me. He,( or is it she?) flavors his comment with hard scientific facts. This is what the debate about GMOs needs.
I am not a scientist myself, but have a lot of interest about genetically modified crops. All what I am interested in is a mature debate about genetically modified crops. Let’s not rhetorize the whole debate. Were genetically modified rice to materialize, poor countries, where diarrhea is endemic, stand to gain immensely.
James,Genetic modification, in and of itself, is not a problem. A rice that saves children from diarrhea would be a miracle that would save many lives.The problem arises from the economics of GM. In order to cover the costs of development, a GM rice would have to be patented. That means that while the initial seeding takes place, it’s done with a single strain of rice. Since most third-world farmers cannot possibly afford to purchase new seed each season, and the possible new strains being developed, they will continue to reseed from the previous year’s crop. Genetically, this is putting all our eggs, and the survival of billions of people, in a single DNA basket. In the short run, this is highly beneficial, but long-term, it is a recipe for disaster of biblical proportions when an inevitable new disease evolves and wipes out the major food supply for much of the world.There are possible solutions, but they would require vast economic restructuring. Government and foundation funding for development in exchange for relinquishing patent rights so more strains could be developed quickly would help. So might delaying distribution until a safe number of strains became marketable. It’s a very sticky problem, and one that must be solved carefully. But it must be solved if we are to avoid a famine like never before!