by frog
There it was again this week, nestled into a little side bar on A3 of the Dom Post. “GE onion field test” Once again, while most of the media is busy watching the new masters of the Executive Wing, ERMA is quietly saying ‘yes’ to a GE future for New Zealand.
It can only end in tears for our clean green image, as scientists try to eliminate the tears from onions using genetic engineering. TVNZ reports about it here, with video.
This follows hot on the heels of the decision last week to approve the release of a genetically modified horse flu vaccine.
As Jeanette said last June:
“All GE organisms raise the possibility of horizontal gene transfer where genetic material from one species jumps across to another unrelated species, by a process other than usual reproduction. Can this happen inside the horse, and affect a longer lived virus, which perhaps then infects other animals?
“It seems incredible that with our experience of rabbits, possums and didymo, ERMA could approve a GE organism throughout the land without thought of long-term consequences. Why pick an invisible little virus that we can’t find if we need to?
“If the Government is so keen to destroy our GE-free status, my choice would have been something we can actually keep track of, like an elephant.”
Destroying our clean green image and our GE Free status on a ‘what if’ hypothesis is irresponsible to say the least. It is the road to perdition. As Dr Elvira Dommisse says in the first video, cross contamination will almost certainly occur. Why can’t we keep it in the lab?
Published in Environment & Resource Management | Health & Wellbeing by frog on Fri, November 28th, 2008
Tags: dr elvira dommisse, ERMA, flu, GE, horse, onion, release, vaccine
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Luddites.
I, for one, welcome our triffid overlords….
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If genetic engineering had actually delivered on any of its early promise, you could call me a luddite. But there is no evidence of that fact, just heaps of evidence to the contrary. Such hubris to think we can do it better than nature/evolution can. Want to put evolution on steroids? Fine. But don’t cross transgenic lines that nature wouldn’t, IMHO.
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If only you had some ability to alter the governments course. Oh well, I guess you are destined to stay on the outer for ever.
Our clean green image is a myth. We are and always have been much dirtier, save for the fact we are the size of Britain with 5% the population.
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I don’t want to comment on the substance of this post, but I think your evolution defense is problematic Frog.
As you rightly seem to assume, evolution isn’t going to save us, or the planet, in a reasonable timeframe. However, you then suggest “evolution on steriods”. This sounds horrible, suggests evolution is some sort of slothful constant and opens up its own ethical issues (maybe we could breed all the seeds out of bananas and all the libertarians out of New Zealand.
As a society we need to decide if we do the “no nukes” thing, or we accept that the “precautionary principle” would/will occasionally allow some developments given scientific and bureaucratic randomness, creating more or less risk of a stuff-up. I’m sitting on the fence.
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We can, and have been doing better than nature/evolution can, and we have been doing it for many years? Where do you think all the new plant varieties have come from over the last 200 years? Just freaky nature.
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sweetdisorder – I disagree with your assertion. We have put nature/evolution on steroids over the last 200 years, by enhancing natural selection to magnify traits we like, but we have not broken her rules. This I approve of. Want to do enhanced selection using the latest genetic science? Great. I approve. Want to transfer genes between species that nature wouldn’t do on her own? I don’t approve, except in the lab under strict controls.
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JamieS – See my comment to sweetdisorder. I don’t think we’re talking at cross purposes here. By steroids I simply mean that we enhance natural selection to get the traits we want – a technology that may help us recover the balance of nature that we have so far destroyed, without breaking it by introducing entirely perverse organisms that could not have occurred in our natural environment.
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Frog, what has been achieve in all the years of opposing GE? Nada. Why do you think opposing it for another 10 years will change anything. I think you need to come up with a new strategy. The more you go on about anti GE, you come across as a party anti science. Frankly, if i were you I would be having a word in the ear of your leaders, as they say perception is reality.
Okay, i take your point about the gene transfer. The funny thing is in all the years this (GE) has been an issue, you are the only one who has explained this point to me. If this were a marketing campaign, then it is a dismal failure.
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Both the rice plant and human brain carry the same genetic material. Mother nature has frequently crossed genetic material.
Transferring genes between unrelated species is only possible because of the genetic similarities of all living organisms
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I would not be so quick to make a distinction between conventional breeding using artificial selection and GM. Take the broiler chicken for an example. the modern day broiler is a genetic freak that would not survive in the wild. It is genetically manipulated to be so clinically obese that its heart and legs cannot cope with the strain. As a result, 36% of broilers in New Zealand are in constant pain from lameness for the last week of their lives and given both the numbers involved (83 million in New Zealand alone) and the severity of the pain, one animal welfare expert described the broiler chicken as the single wosrt example of the inhumanity of one sentient creature towards another.
But the broiler chicken got than way through conventional breeding, not GM
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Our current understanding of genetics is rather similar to attempting to design a locomotive by studying railroad tracks.
Life has been a continuous process since it first emerged on earth and the idea that this can be “engineered” reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of living systems. They are not designed – they exist as a continuous process that is self-similar through time.
We now know for example, that while Lamarck in the simple sense was wrong, DNA is nonetheless modified by its environment. This happens in the short term as a result of the fact that the epigenetic network is constantly changing, and in the long term as a result of the modification of this network by environmental factors.
The biggest risk of GE is that it is completely unpredictable whether a genetic change that appears low risk now will remain low risk in the future. This is basic problem with humans – we forget the aphorism that absence of complete proof (of risk in this case) is not the same as complete proof of absence (of risk, again).
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splicing and re-fusing genes so that onions can be drenched in Roundup and survive – brilliant! We need this, so bad!
The humble vegetable – let it be.
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frog,
You really are on the wrong side of GM technology. Your reaction is the very essence of ideology – you’ve made up your mind that GM is bad, and then fit the facts around that, rather than a dispassionate review of the risk/reward trade-off.
Firstly, you say it’s hubris to say we can do better than nature/evolution. The fallacy here is evident: Just look at how different all our food crops are from their wild ancestors. Evolution selects for different features than humans, so we’re always going to do “better” than evolution.
Second, you seem to indicate that the majority of GM is trans-genic, i.e transplanting genes from one animal to another. This is false. The vast bulk of genetic modification involves selection of ideal traits within a species. Why would you oppose this form of modification?
Do we have any instances of the fear-mongering scenarios of franken-food and superweed scenarios coming true, and wrecking havoc on the environment? It just hasn’t happened. Even if it had, that would be an argument for regulation and control, rather than an outright ban.
Also, we need to balance the risk against the reward. New Zealand is a country whose economy is dependent on agriculture. We can’t afford to slip behind in technology and productivity – we’ll become poorer and poorer. I for one do not want that.
Finally, have you considered the potential for environmental and human benefits arising from GM? From the ability to do more with less (so lower impact on the land), better pest resistance (use less insecticide) to the direct human health benefits such as food fortification and the potential for xeno-transplants… GM is a technology that holds out huge promise to better humanity.
I guess I’m part of the demographic that cares intensely about the environment, but I am not prepared to take anti-scientific positions (so yes, I am concerned about global warming) nor am I prepared to sacrifice economic prosperity unnecessarily. The Greens’ positions on these issues make it impossible for me to vote for you.
Cheers
Kelsey
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There is potentially a substantial difference between what we’ve done for the last 200 years, and what we are capable of over the next 200 years.
Current GE technology puts “natural selection” into hyperdrive.
The problem with this?? Nature generally made small incremental changes over a long period of time. And not in isolation.
All the other species around one changing organism were able to change at the same time, and under the same prevailing conditions. As a result species have “co-evolved”. In many cases this has led to a synergy, instead of just competition.
GE puts the advantage of a single plant or animal species way ahead of the advantage of the community of organisms around it.
That is where nature did it better…tiny changes over a huge amount of time.
No “scientific” lab can duplicate that, and it is a total joke that these modified onions are supposedly surrounded by cages that won’t allow any of the pollinating insects to escape. Yeah right.
However…if they want to use GE to produce an onion that grows on the moon I don’t have a problem with that.
The driver for these experiments has more to do with increasing the corporate bottom line than feeding the world.
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Genetic Engineering advocates have some real problems admitting that almost the entirety of GM production is related to making strains of sterile seed that can be doused with gobs of poisons, with farmers having to pay three times, for the seed, for the poison and for the next years seed because the damned stuff is sterile. In other words, it is entirely a commercial proposition.
——-The crop yield isn’t greatly increased…
http://www.soilassociation.org/web/sa/saweb.nsf/7626dec679c2455580256de2004bae42/3cacfd251aab6d318025742700407f02!OpenDocument
http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/WhoBenefits_PR_1_9_07.cfm
http://update.unu.edu/archive/issue16_11.htm
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/exposed-the-great-gm-crops-myth-812179.html
http://www.non-gm-farmers.com/news_details.asp?ID=2007
—–and the weeds and bugs develop immunity anyway…
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=genetically-modified-crops-survive-weed-whacking-herbicide
and there is evidence that the genes cross boundaries in unexpected ways. I regard this as weak but not yet small enough to be ignored
http://www.mhhe.com/biosci/pae/environmentalscience/casestudies/case15.mhtml
That problem is compounded by the fact that THIS country, a thousand nautical miles from the nearest source of GE material is the only place on the planet that can realistically maintain non-GE status. We SHOULD be last, and there should be damned good reasons that go beyond the ideological “we can’t afford to slip behind in technology and productivity” in this particular area. Other technology is able to be accepted, rejected, removed if necessary, but Genetically Modified flora and fauna once released CAN NOT BE UNRELEASED. It is a one-way-street. IF the world decides there is a market for non-GE crops and foods (and there are a lot of people who regard them as suspect) we stand to make more money off being able to supply THAT than the non-existent incremental improvement in crop yield that Monsanto salespeople lie about.
Xeno-transplants provide new disease vectors so that virus infections can cross previously unbreakable species boundaries.
Evolution plans further ahead than humans… or rather it doesn’t plan, it adapts over a much longer time period.
The person on the wrong side of GM *IN NEW ZEALAND* is not Frog. This is the LAST place on the planet where GM should be released.
respectfully
BJ
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I can’t see ge surviving too far into the future as frog mentioned before it has not delivered on its promises. And ge is very dependent on oil based farming. With the future of oil in jeopardy there will be a radical change in farming techniques and I think factory farming -save the chickens-and ge will be out and another method for growing food will be in, and ge will not be a part of that method of farming. We just have to wait and hope ge doesn’t do anything really silly before oil gets too expensive to run tractors.
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Kelsey, I’m a green voter and member, and I have a certain amount of sympathy with your position. I think arguments against GE would have a lot more strength if they clearly distinguished between scientific, values, and politico-economic arguments. To me the last group, and some of the first, are the most convincing, but don’t automatically discredit all GE experimentation and trials.
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Meant to say, there is some good consensus building discussion after this review of a recent BBC programme on GM – though how anyone can make a programme on GM without talking about Monsanto, etc, is beyond me.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2008/nov/26/gm-foods-horizon-jimmy-doherty
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Picture the non-hybridised, ge-free carrot growing in the field – anything amiss? Nope. Can it be grown without herbicides, pesticides, rodenticides, fungicides and vermicides? Yep. Will it be good to eat? Yep. Does it need to have its genes spliced and remixed? Nope. Not at all.
Picture a bean …
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Most of the ‘benefits’ of GE simply aren’t there. Take a look at the farmers in India that are killing themselves in droves – not only can they not afford to keep buying seed but the seed they do plant takes more water to grow.
Monsanto and their ilk have been found lying time and time again – so why should we trust them anymore?
The last thing we need is our seed and our birthright owned by private interests.
It also makes good business sense for NZ to remain GE. Since the rest of the world has GE then better for NZ to remain with a niche than to try and compete head on with the US and others.
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Good point BJ. You’d think they would have learnt a lesson from the introduction of possums, weasels, ferrets,cats, etc etc, but apparently not.
Anyone who encourages GE in NZ is, in my view, effectively working against the conservation principles of DOC and others.
Are we supposed to be showing respect and nurture to indigenous species or not?
Surely acceptance of GE is to shut ones eyes and mind to the reality that many organisms are too small to see.
Just because we can’t see genes, viruses or bacteria etc, does not mean that they are trivial.
Sure, nature changes things over time, but the Monsanto/GE propositions have such a huge potential to negatively alter the balance that it amazes me that so many people cannot see the likely outcomes.
How long before large tracts of land get sprayed routinely with Monsanto pesticides, just because the Monsanto seeds planted there can withstand the spray? Who has the ability to ensure that spray stays inside a 5 wire fenced boundary and leaves the neighbours crops alone??
Did we learn nothing from the painted apple moth fiasco in Auckland? Who enjoyed the taste of Foray48B??
One of New Zealands major selling points has been cleanliness and healthiness. Is this no longer of any value to our exporters? We should be concerned if that is the case.
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greenfly
There is only one thing that stops your comments from being the reality of New Zealand – fashion!
The carrot you describe is the very one I buy in the local farmer’s market. Me, and a few hundred others who don’t care what the good carrot looks like (Asians in the main) or don’t have the money to pay for the ‘pretty’ ones in the Supermarket!
Mainstream New Zealand (WASP middle class, income circa $80k per earner) doesn’t want to eat ‘ugly’ food. Hence everything that makes it onto the greengrocery shelves of the supermarket looks like the food in childrens’ books! If it takes gene manipulation, including splicing the plants you want to perpetuate and artificially pollinating them as well and ‘engineering’ ‘the market’ will do that to achieve a higher return on their expensive farm, distribution system and retail store!
How will we reeducate society?
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We re-educate society with blogs like this, and with counter-GE media stories about natural farming methods. A lot of the hype is about How Great the Science Is – look what we can do! We can splice genes! The media needs to run stories about agriculture that doesn’t rely on GE and science that doesn’t have nice-looking food as its main outcome.
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