I wonder if there are any good reasons for that. Let’s ask the internet.
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.
Ok, but at least farmers can reuse the resistant crops and don’t have to buy hybrid seeds every year because these new plants are genetically stable.
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.
Sure, let’s release organisms with precisely engineered advantages into our ecosystems, nothing could go wrong.
This implication has two problems:
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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.
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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.
Taking genes from a frog and putting them in corn seems like something that should get a bit of additional scrutiny
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.
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.
They have a disclaimer (which is not legally binding though) that they will not go after accidental cross pollination.
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.
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
There is a huge difference between not being allowed to do something, and deciding not to do something.
I don’t have a car (like most people in my town). So not allowing car ownership would be ok?
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.
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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.
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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.
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.)
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.
CRISPR is actually much cheaper than the methods used now, so there could be more participants in the market.
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.
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.
TL;dr they kinda already do.
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.
so yea, not a perfect world, but close enough
Bureaucracy destroys innovation.
Meanwhile in the US they have https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/this-genetically-engineered-petunia-glows-in-the-dark-and-could-be-yours-for-29/
The EU risks becoming a scientific backwater compared to the US and China.
We’re already decades behind SpaceX, Waymo, and the genetic engineering work.
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.
