GMO corn

[rockguy]

Alan, this might sound like a total waste of time, since the damage has already been done, but how hard WOULD it have been for the companies that have released BT corn, round-up ready etc to alter those corns so that they would not cross with other corns? I mean if the pollen blows around but it is totally incompatible, that wouldn't be nearly as bad, would it? Too late now I know, just a "what if" question.

[mjc]

The problem as I see it is that any kind of 'solution' is going to affect any other corn, no matter what is done. Corn is very easy to cross and the only way that you could possibly make it so the pollen doesn't 'work' is with much more complicated and excessive tampering...and the kind I have in mind would make the yields on non-GMO varieties that pick up the GMO pollen plummet. Basically you'd have to make the GMO varieties only self compatible...but that would make any silk, on a non-GMO variety, that a grain of GMO pollen lands on NOT produce a seed.

[Alan]

Pretty much like MJC said, theres not a lot of good "other" options. The idea of using male sterile lines and pollen blocking genes has been floated by a few, but I'm personally against those ideas for various reasons.

I always figure corn outcrosses so readily for many reasons, chief amongst them, it wants to. It's promiscuous so to speak, maybe even "dionysian" considering beer and whiskey can be made of it!! More importantly though, it wants to travel, to taste new ground, and provide food for us, so, even given the dangers of GMO's, there really is no good alternative, and unfortunately we will from now on have to constantly deal with GMO contamination, the only way to hedge our bets is to learn to identify the GMO characteristics and to recover the original germplasm while excluding the GMO traits.

[spero]

I believe the producers of GMO crops WANT to see all crops contaminated, so that non-GMO is no longer an option. Note that the genetic engineers have focused largely on out-crossing crops, and that corn sent to foreign nations as food aid cannot be ground or processed before delivery. That is because they know that poor rural people will inevitably save some seed to plant, spreading the genetically engineered gene sequences around the globe.

[mjc]

I'm not sure which is scarier...that they are actively planning and executing such a move, because they feel they have IP (Intellectual Property) law on their side and can 'corner' the market through the fact that everything it crossed with is now theirs by the fact they own the patents to the genes or that the GMO varieties are being released 'because they work in the lab', with no thought of the consequences or realization of the fact the the 'real world' and lab are two different critters...a sort of blindness the seems to permeate academia/researchers. Or...exploiting the 'blindness' by the greedy SOBs looking to make a quick buck, consequences be damned.

[Alan]

I agree completely Sperro and MJC, they aren't going to stop until they have contaminated all of it. It's far more dangerous than what has been reported if only in the sense of property rights but also more than likely in it's effects on health and definitely in the effects on the land.

Personally I believe that Svalbard was built for one reason and one reason only, so more third world countries will have access to the GMO lines in exchange for their seeds and eventually all of their seed as it's only a matter of time before their lines are outcrossed.

Then you have guys like Michael Pollan, I'm not sure what to make of this guy, he has "sold" himself very well, but it's feeling more and more like a setup, particularly after recently reading about his recent meeting with Anastasia and Carol Von Mogel of bio-fortified.

Really at some point you have to ask yourself, is there a line we must cross to stop this? In France and Germany test plots have been burned and destroyed.

[bunkie]

alan, do you have a link to their meeting? or is this when they met at Chez Panisse to eat? i was reading on their blog about the restaurant meeting that they weren't sure how michael accepted them. apparently they talked alot and he just listened.

[rockguy]

OK, I am not a plant breeder, just a home gardener and seed-saver so my knowledge of all this is scanty. BUT....does all corn have the same chromosome count? Would changing that number mean the new corn would still cross with other corns?