h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What's"Gerrof moi laaaaaaan!" in Latin

*Tries to resist the temptation to come up with a really awful pun*
*Succeeds - but it wuz close*

You were lucky .

That is probably the most significant point about this whole debate.
We should all look at who would benifit from the introduction of GM food crops and who whould suffer.

In the richer countries we have the ability to effectively complain but starvation in poorer countries has been shown to be a problem of
distribution rather than absence of food world wide.
The "green revolution" crops produced more bulk but reduced disease resistance. The expence of the seed caused many smaller
farmers to be forced to become labourers in others fields.
Those poor farmers and their families did not have our access to the media etc.
Is there any reason to believe that GM crops will make improve things for those who need it most?

Of course we should have proper scientific (uninterupted) tests before GM foods are widely introduced. It may even be possable to devise them to satisfy a larger percentage of the public. However the speed and sequence of the tests must be modified to allow time for adverse effects to be seen and considered.
Multiple tests, running at one time cannot possably maximise scientific understanding of how to set up suitable controls or minimise risk. What high speed testing can do is maximise multinational profit.

If there are problems which show up later the profits will already have been made.

No, that's not what I'm saying at all. The crop tests were not destroyed because a company is seeking increased profits. They were destroyed because the test sites themselves were unsafe. At the site where the protest occurred, there was an organic farm just down the road, the owner of which will now lose his livelihood because his fields are too close to the GM crops and he will no longer be able to market his produce as organic.

In what sense are Monsanto's crops cheaper? Possibly cheaper for the industrial farmer, yes, since they can buy and sell in bulk. But the seeds are not cheaper than conventional seeds, and for most Monsanto seeds you have to keep going back to them to buy new seeds for the following year, rather than using seeds harvested from your own crop, meaning that farmers become dependent on Monsanto.

And as you say, who know how long people like this have been testing these crops without telling us, since companies like this have a long tradition of using third world countries as guinea pigs for their "research products".

It would indeed be nice if GM foods were an improvement in terms of quality over normal foods... but my point, really, was that it doesn't matter whether they are or not... not that feeding the hungry doesn't matter, it's just that GM foods may not be the way to do it... and if they are, the techniques of genetic modification will likely have to be honed for years before such a solution to the worlds' problems could be produced...

In fact, I see here a problem which affects pretty much all discussion about GM foods... the fact that they're all lumped together as GM foods. I mean... you could, theoretically, genetically modify some wheat to the extent that it becomes a hamster. What I'm trying to say (in my own special way ) is that the potential of gentic modification is almost as infinite as the potential of life itself (no, that's not a real infinite - it sounds good though, doesn't it ) - so to pass judgement on what may be happening now under the label "GM foods" is being a little short-sighted...

What would be neat is if something similar to the "open source" movement in the computing world happened in the agricultural world... it's going to be a group of people without business interests at heart that solves problems of food shortage, I think.

Exactly. It could be several decades before the true cost of GMOs is realised, and were this a new drug, it would require a good half decade of independant government testing before that drug was approved, and look how many of them have side effects turning up decades after release.

GM crops are not going to suddenly cause a calamity. The effects will be felt years down the line when half a country is planting a single type of crop which can be hit by a single outbreak of a disease, and hey presto - Irish Potato Famine Mk II.

The current testing procedures are designed esssentially to satisfy the minimum government requirements in the quickest possible time.

Personally I am far more in favour of France's not only anti GM, but also anti Industrial Farming stance. In France taste is seen as more important than quality. And before anyone rants about it'd be nice to be in the position to worry about taste. The world already produces more food than its population can sensibly eat. The problem is that the rich countries won't give any to the poor countries, because that would deflate the crop prices in the rich countries, and then they wouldn't make big profits.

Even some coutries where people are starving produce a surplus of grain, but they sell it abroad for profit and arms rather than giving it to their own people, e.g. Etheopia in the 80's.

Me ager fugere!!!!

It is a good point that there is a great difference between different types and approaches in GMOs. Everything from chickens with 4 wings to pot eating fungi. It is true that some present far more dangers to the environmet than others, and that some are merely speeding up the process of selective breeding.

I am not anti GM per se (Vah! Denuone Latine loquebar? Me ineptum. Interdum modo elabitur.), in fact I can't wait until I have a me-clone waiting to provide me with a new liver when mine inevitably packs in. However, science should not allow capitalism to dictate its timetable. Scientists are naturally cautious and with good reason. Things do go wrong, and the more advanced science gets, the more chance there is that things will go permanently wrong. In addition, non-scientists have a perpetual ability for taking wonderful scientific advances and turning them into methods for controlling or killing their peers.

We may have the technology, but can we be trusted with it?

I thoroughly agree with what you have been saying, testing is all important. And also that the multinationals are trying to bring their crops up to the minimum standards that the governments set. What many fail to realise is that GM foods have the potential for a global effect. Once a gene is in a new organism it could potentially change and evolve in a completely new way. I use the term evolve in the sense that there could be mutations within the gene in as little as 10 generations, assuming the gene is not essential for the organism to function. If the gene is essential to the organism has a stronger dependence on that particular gene, because if it stops working it dies. If the gene is not essential it doesn’t matter if there is a mutation in the gene because the organism will survive. The result is that we SEE more mutations, and therefore there is a greater potential for problematic side effects.

On another note an example of a good cock up is T-toxin. This is a natural insecticide produced by a fungus, it is harmless to humans. If you wish to know insects have a acidity of pH4 in their stomachs and T-toxin works well at this level, but the human stomach is 100 times more acidic at pH2 and T-toxin is destroyed. It was cloned into wheat as a trial, trying to make the plants produce their own insecticide and so lower the costs of farming while increasing production. A good idea in theory but, the insects which ate the plants all died, except for a few which were immune. They had a naturally occurring mutation which changed their stomach acid level. Within a year all the insects in the area were immune rendering the crop useless.

A similar effect can be seen in hospitals where the over use of antibiotics results in the breeding of “supper bugs” which pick up and share immunities to the antibiotics. Evil little buggers aren’t they.

And a few other little facts you may wish to know

1 – I actually do think that GM foods are a bloody good idea, if they are tested right.

2 – The human body consists of a completely separate set of atoms every seven years. I.e. I don’t have a single atom in me that has been there for more that seven years. The ones that stay the longest are probably the ions that make up bones.

3 – The Yeast used to brew beer, wine and all spirits has been modified and selectively bread for over 50 years and no one has ever complained about that.

Sorry about the lecture, but this is home ground for me.

I agree we need to have some independant testing of the GM species that will be created,
without their destruction by vandals. It needs to be independant of the companies that would sell
them, otherwise we could end up with the same results as with ciggarets where the producers
knew about the side effects and dangers for over 20 years before it became public knowledge.
'Tho the problem is that if the same thing happened with a GM crop that is capable of breeding
with other plants, by the time we found out the effects would be irrevocable.

Now there is actually a problem with cloning DNA into plants. Some species have a nasty habit of knowing when a gene is not natural to them and can chemically alter it to stop it being used, it can take then a couple of generations but they do do it. I'm no plant specialist so I don't know how wide spread this is among our green and leafy friends. There has been some discusion about whether to make all GM crops sterile to limit the possibility of spreading rouge DNA around. However this would mean that the large multinational drug companies would have to keep producing the seeds for the farmers to buy and grow. And this is exactly what they wan't, to have most or the planet dependant on their products to provide our daily bread.

But they are probably also my future employers. I'm not bitter, no, not at all

GM Foods can be fun, only the other day I drove past a sign that said "CATCH YOUR OWN STRAWBERIES".

Its nice to see mt esteemed colleague Menzarse getting in on the act. As he quite rightly pointed out the little green fellows can be quite canny. I think the hysteria started with the rats. They were fed GM Potatoes, however there is a small point in case here, public perception is that the GM was something that would be used in every day food - wrong. The GM was a known toxin, only used to see if the method of produciton would work. In addition how healthy would you be when only fed on spuds?? This is why the report has been rubbished and should not under any circumstances be considered a good example of GM foods.

Indeed there could be concern over whether plants could cross pollinate and so cause problems, unlikely if the crops in neighbouring fields are of a different species and hence would probably not flower at the same time. Also people say things like, why put a fish gene in a banana? A gene is only a sequence of chemicals, almost all organisms share these chemicals, so whats the difference between a banana gene and a fish gene? Nothing to the banana really and so it ceases to be a fish gene. Its just a tool in the new banana's tool box, much the same as when dog breeders breed in new characteristics!!

Lets not bring beer into the argument, its far to divine for that and should only get undying allegience from the public.

This seems to be the nub of the problem, trust. I'm amazed how much support the *principle* of genetic modification is finding here - I thought that part was much more contentious.

The problem is that the only people that are doing useful genetic research - and (is everybody reading?) *that* is what matters, not feeding the third world - are the very people that we don't want anywhere near it - profit making trans/multi-nationals. So what do we do then?

First, let's clear up a distinction. When you say, "can we trust ourselves?", do you mean humanity on the whole or profit making biotechs? Former - yes - we have to (and we're still here after hundreds of years of Science's 'mistakes'); Latter - maybe not - so what do we do?

Exactly, and that's why that particular GM test site was targetted. Becuase there were crops within 1 mile of the site with which the GM crops could cross pollinate.

Sorry, someone's got to defend Direct Action here.

Talking of potatoes, I've just found this little news item, and I would concur that this is a good use for GM, using small numbers of GMOs to help non-GM crops:

A potato genetically-modified with jellyfish genes which glows when it needs watering is created by Edinburgh scientists.

The team believes the plant will prevent overwatering at time when the world's water resources are being more and more heavily used.

The fluoresence is produced by the jellyfish gene.

This is activated in the plant by the production of abscisic acid, which the plant uses to rearrange its cells to prepare for a shortage of water.

Genes taken from jellyfish allow the plants to fluoresce
However, Professor Tony Trewavas from the University of Edinburgh, is aware of some people's concern about GM crops.

He told BBC News Online: "People are worried, but these potatoes will never enter the food chain. They are sentinels and would be put in separately and harvested separately."

Speaking at the British Association's Festival of Science in Sheffield, UK, Professor Trewavas said that just sowing eight plants per hectare would allow a farmer to monitor the whole field.

Potatoes are often over-watered

The potatoes will not glow to the human eye however. The light is produced by absorbing a narrow wavelength of blue light, which is re-emitted as yellow.

A small detector, built by the Scottish Agricultural College, spots the yellow light and sets off a green signal which says "water me". If no signal is showing, then the plants have enough water.

"The problem at the moment is that farmers don't know how much water is needed - they just pour it on," said Professor Trewavas.

Six-year wait

"We believe our system would save farmers about £270 per hectare in terms of reduced water use and reduced fertiliser applied.

"You don't have to put as much nitrate on if you don't over-water and run off lots of your minerals."

Experiments so far have been confined to greenhouses and it will be about six years before the glowing potatoes go on sale.

Future plans are to include slightly different fluorescent proteins which will report on the plants' nitrate, phosphate and sucrose status.

I wonder if they'll also go on sale in clubs? Largin' it with yer glowin' spud!!

I don't think we can truthfully seperate one from the other. We the poeple, are also the people who work for / are affiliated to / run / condone large, money-hungry, evil, Ming-like (*deep breath*) Multi-National biotech companies. We cannot absolve ourselves from our complicity with what the companies our social structures have spawned.

We vote twice a decade for a continuation of capitalist democracy (mainly because the TV's better), so we should not be suprised that our corporations are more powerful than our governments.

Where was I? Oh yes, trust. I agree completely, and this has almost always been the case with science, that the people we would want to be kept furthest from new technology, are the one's busy testing on indiginous tribes in the South Pacific / their own soldiers / their own poor people.

And I don't think the rest of us are very trustworthy either. 99% of us will do whatever the papers/TV/government/Posh Spice tell us we ought to be doing. The rest of us are far too busy whingeing in on-line forums to get off our arses and make a difference .

However, do we actually have to go down this road at all? GM like many of science's research areas are humanity in a rush trying to run before they can walk, trying to find the short-cut, the easy way out, rather than doing a bit of hard graft.

If we spent as much money researching how plants and their pests interact we may find we do not need high yield, poison spitting corn cobs after all. (I'm posting an article down the bottom, this tirade has got far too long already)

This is a recent press article highlighting that organic growing methods may be better suited to encouraging sustainable development in developing countries than intensive farming methods, and also that until governments get their acts together no amount of food is going to stop people starving, as many of us in this forum have already been saying.

Organic farming could produce enough food to feed large populations, according to British scientists at the Festival of Science in Sheffield.

It may be environmentally friendly, but advocates of modern intensive farming methods say that "going organic" will not produce enough food to feed large populations.

But the British team say the lower yields from organic farms can still be profitable once the savings on chemical additives such as fertilisers and machinery are taken into account. And they say organic farming could be viable even in developing countries if the political climate is favourable.

In developed countries, organic food is increasingly in demand. It is perceived by many as being healthier, and free from chemical residues from pesticides and fertilisers.

Although organic farms achieve only 60 to 80% of the yield of high intensity conventional farms, some of these losses can be offset against savings on expensive fertilisers and insecticides.

Could organic crops feed the world?
Most organic farms in countries like Britain and the United States are still fairly small in size. Dr Liz Stockdale, of the Institute of Arable Crop Research in England, believes organic farms could be economically viable on a much larger scale, even in developing countries with large populations.

"In less developed countries, countries where the conventional agricultural systems aren't that intensive to start with, we can see that conventional systems and organic systems actually can match yields very closely," she said.

Dr Stockdale says this is because conventional farms in poorer countries tend to use less expensive machinery and chemicals, putting them more on a par with organic systems.

Growing the right crops

But she says the lower yields of organic farms in any country could be greatly increased as scientists learn more about controlling insects and disease without chemicals, and find the right crops to suit a particular region's pests and climate.

"One of the main problems isn't getting the total yield, it's getting marketable yield, yield that consumers are quite happy to buy. And that's because quite a bit of that crop is damaged by pests or disease, just on the surface but not affecting the quality for eating, but the way it looks".

"So just improving ways of trapping pests is the one that makes us money."

But Dr Stockdale says farmers can do only so much in producing enough food to feed the world; governments have a role to play as well.

Conventional farms, she says, often produce too much food - leading to produce being grown for human consumption in Western countries frequently being fed to animals.

Until governments tackle the social and political factors involved in poverty and effective food distribution, she says, millions of people will continue to go hungry.

I read an article in New Scientist about how difficult it is to test for toxins in food... the main reason being that *whatever* you feed rats it seems to shorten their lifespans, and if you feed them enough for them to get a decent dose of the toxin it can shorten their lifetimes quite considerably... the bottom line is, eating too much is bad for rats and probably for you, whether it's GM foods or not...

All good stuff. The promises of "feeding the multitudes" style immediate benefits are, however, no more than eye candy, IMO - sweeteners to ease the passage of some highly controversial research past a tarot waving, X-Files glued public. If the scientists behind the biotechs were honest and owned up that they really haven't got a clue what the benefits will be, but that they're sure that they'll be huge, how far would they get? How many of our greatest discoveries were the result of accidents and spin-offs from from research programmes initially intended for something completely different?

Grain distribution in the Third World is irrelevent here - it's really to do with what we'll learn about genetics, research that would make Mendel weep, without going anywhere near a human embryo, that is important.

There, my bias revealed Had you guessed?