Genetically Modified Organisms

[parsley]

charliep emailed me a week or so ago, we do every so often, and he touched on GMO's.

I think both charliep and I would agree that science moves and changes.
And change does and will come.

We care be frightened or wary
We can be cocky or cautious.

As farmers on AV, or as policy wonkers like charliep, or as regulators, or as organizations, how does agriculture best use science that has "whatifs" in it, that will end up as food on everyone's table?

it's a very serious discussion farmers should have.

[charliep]

A busy time for farmers to have this debate. Will likely post again later but this is CFIA's approach today.

<a href="http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/sci/biotech/gen/educ_postsece.shtml">CFIA</a>

[Fransisco]

I think it should all be decided with curling bonspiels.

[stubblejumper]

Who is or should be responsible for the GMO's that become weeds.

[furrowtickler]

I would rather have a GMO weed than a out of control cleaver/thistle situation caused by someone who does not control weeds at all. Just ask any liberty grower in the area. Organic cleavers/thistles are way harder to control than GMO canola - and far more costly to the enviroment and food chain not to memtion a commercial farmers pocket book. JMO. A GMO canola plant is still controled cheaply with the right herbicides or cultivator shovel. The same can not be said about the weeds spread by some organgic farms.
I am not here to pee on your parade Pars but there is two sides to every coin.

[cchurch]

I can't justify paying $30 for 5 lbs of Canola seed, when the market value is $1.30 or less, plus the cost of cleaning and treating, probably $6 dollars.

I can't begin to imagine how much GM wheat seed would cost.

On a another side-note against GMOs:

There was a massive corn failure in South Africa involving Round-up Ready Corn. It didn't seed out.

Now that is some scary stuff. Imagine growing Round-up ready Canola, and it didn't seed out. Monsanto would have your money and there is nothing you could do about it.

[parsley]

I'm not sensitive. It's a good point you made. Organics are weedy.

[may-be]

I agree furrow. Grew a crop off clearfield conola. Had to look the other way when I drove buy for the weeds. And i sprayed it twice.
Had a crop of rr canola once were 45% was not rr ready and what grew did poor. Had a crop of liberty canola once when i sprayed it i burnt it very bad from a bad batch of chemical. But I was compensated for the damages and had clean fields.

[parsley]

Let's not get bogged down in a farming systems debate. We know it well, don't we? LOL

Take off your air seeder hat for a moment, will you?

The more interesting pertinent discussion is about how to get the traits we want as farmers into plantlife.

The University has done it for years by plant breeding. We are very familiar with those kinds of results. Mostly, plant breeders have chased yield. And farmers have chased yield.
But what about other traits? What do you think about these two ways of getting traits into plants?

1.What about change coming from mutagenics which is toying around with genes in a species or something similar. Quite often uses radiation. Maybe charliep, you will elaborate on some other ways rather than radiation, sometime.

1. What about change coming from transgenics which is plunking in genes from other organisms? (Stinkweed's smell into pet dogs?

A little morning fun could come from this refering page:<p></p>
<p class="EC_style8ptBK"><strong><a href="http://www.gthread.com/genetic/">(New World Coming Up!)</a></strong></p>

[charliep]

What are peoples definition of Genetically Modified Organism. Here is
the CFIA one.

Genetic Modification (GM): A method used to alter an organism's genetic
material through any method, including conventional selective breeding,
genetic engineering, mutagenesis, etc. A GMO is a genetically modified
organism. GMO is used by some people more narrowly to include only
organisms modified through genetic engineering techniques.

Conventional Selective Breeding: A method to propagate plants or
animals sexually, selecting for certain traits (also referred to as selective
breeding). Using selective cross-breeding, people can produce different
varieties of plants and breeds of animals.

Genetic Engineering (GE): A method by which the genetic material of an
organism is changed in a way that does not occur naturally by
multiplication and/or natural recombination. For example, a method
used to directly transfer (or remove) a gene of interest from one
organism to another (also referred to as recombinant DNA or rDNA
technique).

Mutagenesis: The use of methods to physically change or "mutate" the
genetic sequence, without adding DNA from another organism. Various
chemicals and ionizing radiation can be used to invoke these changes.
"Site-directed mutagenesis" can also be used to invoke changes in
specific genes. In plants, such agents are used to change a plant's
genetic sequence, and the plant can pass on these new characteristics
to its offspring.

[charliep]

Actually the wrong guy to ask on technology. My role is simply to
listen to what people say and report.

Other things that someone like me may contribute to is having a
science based methodology for evaluating new plant breeding
methods including risk assessment. The basics are in the CFIA
document.

Other issues that will be important will be detection, tolerances and
segregation within supply chains.

A final thing that an economist might contribute to is a cost benefit
analysis of farmers new adopting biotech technologies.

With few exceptions, very few are completely opposed to GMO in the
forms described above. The issues are market access, internationally
used scientific basis for evaluating and approving and finally from the
farm side, contribution to lower risk and more profitable businesses.

[charliep]

Interesting article on the impact of biotech on trade. Note the real issue will be the adoption of technology by countries outside Europe, Australia and North America and from there, some agreement on tolerances.

[URL="http://www.seedquest.com/news.php?type=news&id_article=10195&id_region=&id_ category=&id_crop="]seedquest[/URL]

[wd9]

Perhaps charlie if the discussion was limited to transgenic species it would be a lot less confusing. or maybe i just am.

That is, taking genes from one organism and inserting into another to create a new organism not occuring or would not occur in nature. How the legislation and not only national acceptance but international acceptance of those products can be acheived.

Issues like adventitious presence of living modified organisms (LMO) can be dealt with.

Genetic Use Restriction Technologies and their applications to remove outcrossing and illegal use of technologies and also many of the export issues of LMO's. Imagine that, no volunteers. I'd buy that.

So many topics.

[charliep]

You must have been a meeting I was at with barley plant breeders and they made the same point.

A goal would be not to limit plant breeders in their access to technology and further to have internationally accepted science base rules to evaluate biotech techniques. From there, the industry needs to be able to communicate with consumers about the processes to ensure safe and nutritious food.

When I look at competitors (barley is my project by the way), I see US corn which will yield an average over 160 bu/ac (assuming no frost event) with some possibility of being closer to 170. US corn is going full bore on biotech with multiple traits.

Australia is using the full gamut of biotech solutions to improve its barley production with things like salinity and drough tolerance as important as herbicide tolerance.

Europe is working in the area of barley hybrids (or least from what I have been told).

To be competitive, western Canada needs to continue to move forward. The solution may not be transgenics but suspect the long arm of regulation may catch a lot of other bio-tech breeding ideas off side. there has to be a rule based approach based on science.

[wd9]

Much of the trait development here and internationally is thru reverse engineering in the non traditional crops. Markers are inserted in the genes desired and those are isolated and observed using traditional techniques of breeding to acheive the desired effect. Gets around a lot of regulatory issues.

Of course this method is still not able to do trans species breeding of any kind, at least none i'm aware of. Bird and fish thing.