SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
High Country News reports:
[...] Scotts got permission from the USDA to plant larger fields for seed production. Farmers sowed 80 acres of bentgrass in Canyon County, Idaho, and 420 acres in Jefferson County, Oregon, north of Bend. The Oregon Department of Agriculture picked the site - an irrigated island in the sagebrush sea - to keep the plant far from the Willamette Valley. There, on the western side of the mountains, farmers grow forage and turf grass for a $1 billion-a-year seed industry.
Then two windstorms swept through the eastern Oregon fields in August of 2013, scattering flea-sized seeds well beyond the designated control area. Roundup-resistant pollen fertilized conventional bentgrass plants as far as 13 miles away.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
GMO Grass is Creeping Across Oregon
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 58 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Small change can often be found under seat cushions.
-- One of Lazarus Long's most penetrating insights
(Score: 2) by ledow on Monday July 02 2018, @12:44PM (11 children)
What they said would happen in terms of distribution, quite obviously that happened. Unless every field was contained in a hermetically-sealed lab, that was inevitable. As such, that's why it took lots of testing to prove this stuff doesn't actually operate any differently to normal crops, in all respects except for those it was designed to change.
For DECADES wild crops and non-GMO have been being cross-pollinated from GMO crops. Nobody has ever denied that's happened. In fact, Monsanto are famous for them pursuing it and trying to get those farmers to pay even though they didn't ask for it to happen.
The fear-mongering comes from "this stuff is somehow magically worse than 'normal' crops". That's always been there. It will always be there. It's also not inherently true (there's certainly the theoretical potential for someone to make a crop designed maliciously to cause some effect, but that's true whether or not my sandwich came from GMO ingredients or not).
What's NOT true is that those crops are in any way harmful to humans (extensively tested by now because most humans are eating them), or that they are damaging the environment (if anything, they are saving crops from pests and weeds!). Certainly they're not damaging anything more than just plain old farming ever did anyway (destruction of habitat, etc.).
And, as people are finding out, the inevitable cross-pollination means that ALL crops are getting those genes (which they could have from naturally occurring mutations just the same). Hence that gene is advantageous, hence eventually everything will have it, hence pests and weeds will evolve (they are already) to compensate.
GMO is just a human-triggered shortcut in evolution to aim at a particular purpose. It's nothing that couldn't, or doesn't, happen every single day naturally. But for a short time, we can use it to our advantage, no different to growing potatoes that resisted bugs naturally, or growing fruits to provide more of what we need.
The fear-mongering isn't coming true. What the scientists always told you would inevitably happen, hence why they tested everything, first came true. And the next stage came true too (those same GMO become prevalant and then quickly useless as natural selection takes hold).
The question is really, do you want to listen to the fear-mongers who don't understand what they're dealing with? Or the scientists who accurately predicted exactly what would happen?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @12:58PM (6 children)
Except the testing is,
FDA: did you do testing?
Company: yes
FDA: ok, good to go!
Err, contradicting much?? *MONSANTO* denied that! That's what they argued in courts. And they ended up with lots of money because of those lies.
No it's not. Anyway, seems wasting my time rebuking all these categorical falsehoods.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Monday July 02 2018, @02:08PM (4 children)
Yes, seems like your time would be better spent educating yourself about the subject. In the definition of evolution, it requires inheritable traits that are mutable between generations and selection. GMO provides a new process for generating the former and agricultural practices routinely provide selection as they have for thousands of years.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by EETech1 on Monday July 02 2018, @11:56PM (3 children)
What bothers me Is not the fact that the GMO plant doesn't die when they cover it with poison...
It's the fact that they seem to think it's just fine to cover my food with poison before selling it to me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @04:41AM (1 child)
So you're afraid of chocolate because it's poison to dogs? Insects aren't human. However, everyone keeps ignoring all the additives they add to the poison to make it easier to spread. That's where the issues are. Plenty of studies have shown that the chemical is safe enough for humans. Plenty of other studies have shown toxic results from those who apply the product and work around it. If you pay attention, the safe studies and toxic studies are studying two different things even through everyone and the media uses the same name for everything. Since no one is lying and both sides have valid proof on their sides, everyone's arguments go nowhere and nothing changes.
(Score: 2) by EETech1 on Tuesday July 03 2018, @05:39AM
No, I'm not afraid of chocolate, but if someone genetically engineered a dog that shit something that looked like chocolate, smelled like chocolate, and even tasted like chocolate, would you mind if this cheaper dog shit chocolate was served to you instead?
Would the fact that it's actually dog shit bother you?
And I don't know why it matters that insects aren't human?
As far as arguing about if the binder is more dangerous than the chemical within it that destroys cell replication, I'm sticking with my original opinion that not having the poison on your food has to be better. I guess it's a bonus that they won't be spreading around the toxic binder as well. Ditto for everyone not poisoned applying these totally safe chemicals.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 05 2018, @12:21PM
While that's an interesting mental trainwreck to watch, why do you think they'd spray an herbicide on a plant right before they take it off the lot and put it on your plate?
(Score: 2) by ledow on Monday July 02 2018, @03:00PM
And they do anything differently for non-GMO food?
And it's not quite automatic approval:
https://www.fda.gov/Food/IngredientsPackagingLabeling/GEPlants/default.htm [fda.gov]
Monsanto quote? It'll be on a court record, yes? That their plants could NEVER spread in any neighbouring field? You'll have that as a legal statement read in court?
(P.S. Let me just say, Monsanto are the devil-spawn, I hate them, and I know geneticists who hate them for vastly different but also similar-base reasons: They're only interested in money. So don't listen to one company's marketing. Listen to scientists. As we said all along that the seeds would spread into the world once you have the very first open-field trial).
And, yes it is.
You rebuked nothing. You provided no source or pertinent data.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2018, @01:12PM
The fear mongers obviously because it gets more page views.
I think this is a built in feature to human behavior as they become too rich. The guilt takes over.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 02 2018, @02:56PM
When it becomes an invasive exotic and disrupts wild ecosystems (more than ordinary crops already do), yeah, it's worse.
These things are generally designed to be hardier than normal crops, so if they succeed in that goal then when they get out in the wild they are worse.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday July 02 2018, @10:37PM
GMO is a human triggered shortcut in evolution that you can be charged for whether you want it or not, and which has been developed to achieve corporate goals, and which has not been acceptably (by me) tested for harm.
There's also the matter that proving one particular strain harmless wouldn't prove a separately developed strain harmless. And that things act and develop differently when exposed to different environment. Natural varieties have all been seen (and sometimes adapted to) under a wide range of different conditions. Et multitudinous cetera.
GMO is not guaranteed to be either good or bad. It isn't even guaranteed to be different, except that it can be patented (in which case anything that a standard breeder comes up with that is legally equivalent is in violation of the patent).
I'm much more concerned about the legal landscape surrounding GMO products than I am about the ecological one, though I am also concerned about that.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 03 2018, @08:43AM
This is a weed when it shows up in a wheat field or whatever your normal crops is. A wheat that is resistant to your weed killer (Roundup).
So yes, this stuff is "somehow magically" worse than normal weed.
Which is exactly what the "fear-mongers" have been screaming for years.