Biotech Rice Saga Yields Bushel of Questions for Feds

[nosmokes]

if you don't wanna register w/wapo you can use the link for OCA in my sig line

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original-wahington post
Biotech Rice Saga Yields Bushel of Questions for Feds
USDA Approval Shortcut Emerges as Issue

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 6, 2006; A03

When the biotech company Bayer CropScience AG requested federal permission in August to market a variety of gene-altered rice, it assured itself a small, unwanted place in history: the first to seek approval for a genetically engineered food that was already -- illegally -- on the market.

Now, as federal regulators consider that belated application, they are finding themselves under scrutiny, too -- from scientists and others who say the 20-year-old system of biotech crop oversight is failing.

The Bayer lapse is the latest in a string of problems, critics note, including taco shells and other foods contaminated in 2000 with unapproved StarLink corn, the accidental release in 2002 of crops engineered to make a pig diarrhea vaccine, and the growing prevalence of "superweeds" that have acquired biotech genes that make them impervious to weed killers.

Federal officials are still investigating how the experimental "LLRICE601" escaped from Bayer's test plots after the company dropped the project in 2001. When they announced 10 weeks ago that the unapproved variety had become widespread in the nation's long-grain-rice supply, countries around the world blocked imports from the United States, rice futures plummeted and hundreds of farmers sued Bayer.

Bayer's response -- a hasty application for government approval, expected to be granted within weeks -- has been greeted with concern by many agriculture experts who fear that the action, though likely to ease Bayer's legal woes, will make matters worse for farmers and the environment.

~snip~
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complete story here

[Kagemusha]

1. Messy as it is, the real bottom line is whether it's safe or not.

If it's safe then the concerns are legal in nature, not a matter requiring a public health panic. It's still emphatically not good legal or scientific practice from the get-go. Still, unless there's some evidence this is dangerous, it's more a matter of principle - not that I want to dump on matters of principle at all - than a public threat.

The bigger problem is obviously: ok, this is where we are - where do we go from here?

[populistdriven]

3. Even many biotech engineers don't get this:

When you dump new genes into an organism the result is not predictable, it is not a 'clean' experiment. While the desirable characteristics may be displayed, the resultant organism (if viable) always produces thousands of new proteins that it never produced before. Many of them are misshapen and prion-like. Some of them may be prions. These are responsible for most of the allergic reactions that have been documented with GM foods. The researchers are paid to not worry or think about these issues and if they do they have gotten fired.


It is playing russian roulette with our food. If you thought worst-case-scenario for mad-cow disease was scary (luckily it didn't work out that way) then the potential for a far, far worse disaster looms with GM foods.

[Kagemusha]

4. So uh how does this potential not exist with natural variants?

You know, cross-breeding plants and so forth.

[populistdriven]

10. this is discussed in one of the articles I linked to the genes that are inserted are unstable

they rearrange themselves even after the organism has been deemed 'safe' - the one by Jeffrey Smith

"Unfortunately, there is a feature about GM crops that makes even follow-up studies a problem. In 2003, a French laboratory analyzed the inserted genes in five GM varieties, including Roundup Ready soybeans. <14> In each case, the genetic sequence was different than that which had been described by the biotech companies years earlier. Had all the companies made a mistake? That’s unlikely. Rather, the inserted genes probably rearranged over time. A Brussels lab confirmed that the genetic sequences were different than what was originally listed. But the sequences discovered in Brussels didn’t all match those found by the French. <15> This suggests that the inserted genes are unstable and can change in different ways. It also means that they are creating new proteins—ones that were never intended or tested. The Roundup Ready soybeans used in the Russian test may therefore be quite different from the Roundup Ready soybeans used in follow-up studies.

Unstable genes make accurate safety testing impossible."

[Kagemusha]

12. You in no way answered my question.

It's ok, I'm not taking this personally, and you are making a case I am not exactly being paid to refute that it's pretty difficult to say that all GM food can't have any "unknown unknowns" in it like Rumsfeld would say. But you're not gonna get anywhere with me by suggesting that change is unnatural in nature and only occurs because of the introduction of man-made changes. That seems very unscientific to me, no less so than Intelligent Design theory.

[populistdriven]

14. Read the complete article, This doesn't happen in natural variants

It is implied

Why would GMO scientists use a certification methodology if natural cross-bred variants were unstable? That would tend to make it a possibility that the coded proteins in GMO unstable. They didn't expect this. The method wouldn't be expected to work all the time and would make certification using a single point in time impossible. They not only expected it to work they had no reason to believe that the proteins would change over time. The fact that they didn't expect it at all implies that this does not normally occur.

If you want proof that would require more research than I have time to do at the moment.

[Kagemusha]

15. You're asking me to assume. You're upset when GM scientists assume.

No reason to believe that the proteins would change over time? Huh? Ever heard of mutation? Natural cross-breeding? Emergence of new species? Um whatever. You're assuming that certification required to please skeptics and people outright afraid of this stuff is required because they know FOR SURE that there's a danger. You're asking me to assume this with you. No thanks!

I care for results, not assumptions.

[populistdriven]

16. no need to get pissy, i have an advanced science degree but am too busy to research this for your

benefit - do it yourself - plonk

[Kagemusha]

17. Then don't try logical fallacies because they save time, please.

I'll retain an interest in this issue and the science involved. But I'm not gonna accept "well there must be something wrong or they wouldn't be doing safety testing" as a logical premise. I'm sure the EU wants this stuff tested whether or not there is any logical basis to presume potential harm, purely because of politics and hysteria. Paranoia is irrelevant to whether the stuff is actually harmful or not.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

5. Where are you getting this information?

Jeremey Rifkin?

[populistdriven]

6. There are plenty of resources, here is one:

The health of newborns might also be affected by toxins, allergens, or anti-nutrients in the mother’s diet. These may be created in GM crops, due to unpredictable alterations in their DNA. The process of gene insertion can delete one or more of the DNA’s own natural genes, scramble them, turn them off, or permanently turn them on. It can also change the expression levels of hundreds of genes. And growing the transformed cell into a GM plant through a process called tissue culture can create hundreds or thousands of additional mutations throughout the DNA.

Most of these possibilities have not been properly evaluated in Roundup Ready soy. We don’t know how many mutations or altered gene expressions are found in its DNA. Years after it was marketed, however, scientists did discover a section of natural soy DNA that was scrambled <12> and two additional fragments of the foreign gene that had escaped Monsanto’s detection.

~snip~

Rather, the inserted genes probably rearranged over time. A Brussels lab confirmed that the genetic sequences were different than what was originally listed. But the sequences discovered in Brussels didn’t all match those found by the French. <15> This suggests that the inserted genes are unstable and can change in different ways. It also means that they are creating new proteins—ones that were never intended or tested.


http://www.newswithviews.com/Smith/jeffrey8.htm

[populistdriven]

7. tons more detail on 'unknown' proteins in this study

http://gmopundit2.blogspot.com/2006/02/analysis-of-pusztai-study-on-gm.html


40+ articles just from 2006 here http://www.gmwatch.org/archive.asp

[populistdriven]

8. Found the original article that I read - Its Good!

Kirk Azevedo is the researcher...


http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=6942

In the summer of 1997, Kirk spoke with a Monsanto scientist who was doing some tests on Roundup Ready cotton. Using a "Western blot" analysis, the scientist was able to identify different proteins by their molecular weight. He told Kirk that the GM cotton not only contained the intended protein produced by the Roundup Ready gene, but also extra proteins that were not normally produced in the plant. These unknown proteins had been created during the gene insertion process.

Gene insertion was done using a gene gun (particle bombardment). Kirk, who has an undergraduate degree in biochemistry, understood this to be "a kind of barbaric and messy method of genetic engineering, where you use a gun-like apparatus to bombard the plant tissue with genes that are wrapped around tiny gold particles." He knew that particle bombardment can cause unpredictable changes and mutations in the DNA, which might result in new types of proteins.

The scientist dismissed these newly created proteins in the cotton plant as unimportant background noise, but Kirk wasn't convinced. Proteins can have allergenic or toxic properties, but no one at Monsanto had done a safety assessment on them. "I was afraid at that time that some of these proteins may be toxic." He was particularly concerned that the rogue proteins "might possibly lead to mad cow or some other prion-type diseases."

Kirk had just been studying mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) and its human counterpart, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). These fatal diseases had been tracked to a class of proteins called prions. Short for "proteinaceous infectious particles," prions are improperly folded proteins, which cause other healthy proteins to also become misfolded. Over time, they cause holes in the brain, severe dysfunction and death. Prions survive cooking and are believed to be transmittable to humans who eat meat from infected "mad" cows. The disease may incubate undetected for about 2 to 8 years in cows and up to 30 years in humans.

~snip~

[leftchick]

13. roundup ready soy anyone?

:puke:

Not to mention how it has affected the environment as well.

[populistdriven]

9. tobbaco plant with firefly gene

photo taken with a normal camera (full spectrum)



http://www.biocrawler.com/encyclopedia/Genetic_engineering

[ThomCat]

2. The corporation will suffer little or nothing

and the farmers and consumers will get massively screwed, again.
x(

[populistdriven]

11. US rice has been banned by the largest worldwide corporate buyer of rice