Europe's Sensible Answer to Biotech "Contamination"

The (bogus) issue of biotech "contamination" of organic crops has been discussed a couple of times on Hit & Run. It seems that European regulators are more or less in agreement with proposals that I made some years ago.

According to Reuters,

Europe's farm chief defended her plans to permit more genetically modified (GMO) content into organic farming on Monday, saying it would be too costly for farmers to achieve higher purity in their organic produce.

Questioned about her draft law that would allow products with up to 0.9 percent of GMO content to retain a label of "EU organic", EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel said the recommended labeling threshold was a realistic one.

"It's a standard threshold in the regulation," she told a news conference, referring to the 0.9 percent label level that is already enshrined in current EU law on biotech food and feed.

"We live in the real world. The lower we go (on a threshold), the more expensive it will be for organic producers. We have to find the right balance," she said.

I predict that one day biotech and organic farming will be combined in the most nature friendly farming system ever devised. You heard it here first.

Once again, no biotech crop stocks were flogged in this blog item.

Comments

[mediageek]

Dave W. accussing Ronald Bailey of being a corporate shill in 5...4...3..

[Phil]

Dammit, mediageek, you beat me to it!!

[Ironchef]

"too costly"

Bah - screw 'em. They should make it 0.00% content of GMO in "organic" foods, no matter how costly. Then let them take the hit in the market - where they deserve it.

[Realish]

Seems odd for a libertarian to advocate government regulations that explicitly allow one producer's product to degrade the quality and market viability of another producer's product.

Seems almost like your fevered antipathy toward organic food takes priority over your libertarian principles.

Why, one might almost say that *most* libertarians are libertarians until their own pet projects and obsessions are threatened by the free market.

[R C Dean]

*most* libertarians are libertarians until their own pet projects and obsessions are threatened by the free market.

Gosh, Realish, I think Ironchef was just arguing for truth in advertising - I mean, if (BIG IF) the government is going to regulate labelling, it should at least do so in a way that isn't misleading.

[Mr. Nice Guy]

You people don't get it. Genetic engineered stuff is done, in, like, corporate laboratories by bald white guys in lab coats. They don't care about the earth or babies or other stuff. All they care about is making money. They don't care that this stuff WILL MAKE PEOPLE SICK because IT IS NOT NATURAL.

Nature was here before us and nature will be here after we are gone so think about it.

[Realish]

RC Dean, I was talking to Ronald.

Mr. Nice Guy, again, your contempt for biotech opponents seems to be getting the better of your libertarianism.

Just because you guys think arguments against biotech food are bad doesn't mean that government regulations should bias the market in favor of biotech.

Let biotech producers produce biotech crops and organic producers produce organic crops. Don't let either of them fuck with the other. Label them clearly. And let consumers decide.

What's the problem?

[nofrontin]

I'm still reeling from the fact that Ronald Bailey voted for Bush in '04.

[Jennifer]

I must agree with Realish: I think biotech is a wonderful thing, but why shouldn't people who want to avoid it be able to do so? There is a market for organic food, and people who want to undergo the additional expense of raising it now have no legal basis to protest cross-contamination?

[mediageek]

I seem to recall that there is actually some dispute as to whether there even is such a thing as biotech contamination?

Is it a documented phenomenon? If so, how widespread is it?

[Jennifer]

I seem to recall that there is actually some dispute as to whether there even is such a thing as biotech contamination?

I believe so. I recall a case a few years back where Monsanto had a field of GM corn that cross-pollinated with the regular corn on a nearby farm; Monsanto was actually able to sue the farmer on some sort of patent-infringement grounds and win.

[John]

The bottom-line is that there will always be a niche in the market for products that allow the more erudite "educated" and "scientific" liberals we are always hearing about to pay twice the price for an inferior product so that they can be safe in the knowledge that their foods do not contain pixy dust "cough" I mean pesticides and chemicals. For this reason organic foods will always have a significant and lucrative market. So Realish, I wouldn't worry too much about the government tilted the market against organic foods. There is an endless supply of wealthy angst ridden greens waiting to be customers. What was it that Barnum said was born every minute?

[Ed]

Let the markets decide does not apply in a world of tariffs, quotas, regulations, Farm Ministers and Technology Czars.
Sorry.

[Jennifer]

John, your post would have been far more effective if you hadn't included digs about liberals and greens. It's always political with you, isn't it?

[Cap'n Obvious]

What's the huhu about "pure" genetic lines anyhow? Reminds me of "racial purity" arguments. In reality it seems to me that all genetic lines get crossed eventually, or were thousands of years ago. Its like the argument for preservation as opposed to conservation; as in, "things are the way they ought to be at such and such point in time (which point in time is decided by none other then ME) and no deviation from that static point in time is permissible." Like trying to stop coastal erosion.

If people want "organic" foodstuffs, they can grow it themselves. They're just fooling themselves if they think that some gubmint stamp is what they need to be "healthy and natural."

[zach]

*most* libertarians are libertarians until their own pet projects and obsessions are threatened by the free market.

Are we going to see some version of this argument in every thread now?

[Eric the .5b]

biotech is a wonderful thing, but why shouldn't people who want to avoid it be able to do so

The semantics of it bug me, especially when we're contrasting plants that have been selectively bred for centuries (and in many cases exposed to hard radiation in order to cause mutations) to genetically engineered plants.

I think they'd be better off abandoning a government-defined definition of "organic" and get various food organizations to devise criteria for certificates they bestow on crops. Something like Underwriter's Laboratory for plants. They can have a "Hard-Core Greenie" certificate for plants that are essentially wild (though I couldn't name such a food crop off the top of my head), "Breeding and/or Radiation Only" for most crops, and "Frankenfood That Hasn't Attacked the Village Yet" for GMO. 😉

Naturally, that would be orthogonal to the usual questions of organic vs. non-organic crop production (pesticides, etc.), but that's a detail.

[Eric the .5b]

Let the markets decide does not apply in a world of tariffs, quotas, regulations, Farm Ministers and Technology Czars.

Then let's get rid of those.

[Qbryzan]

I believe so. I recall a case a few years back where Monsanto had a field of GM corn that cross-pollinated with the regular corn on a nearby farm; Monsanto was actually able to sue the farmer on some sort of patent-infringement grounds and win.

Jennifer, if this is the case you're talking about, it was just a bit more complicated (the crop in question was 95+% "contaminated", more than would happen by chance):

http://reason.com/rb/rb040401.shtml

[SPD]

Eric,

Your solution is both reasonable and well-written. Prepare to be attacked.

[Jake Boone]

The problem with allowing people to seek legal remedies for cross-pollenization is that really, we've gotta sue the bees (or train them to respect property lines). If I've got a garden full of some fancy kind of inbred rose, and my neighbor raises just plain ol' run-of-the-mill roses, and one of my roses gets knocked up by one of his so that the offspring is a filthy, filthy hybrid*, well, that's just part of how things go in nature. I wouldn't think I have some sort of cause for action against him.

Likewise, if my carefully-nurtured fancy rose pollen gets stuck to a bee and ends up giving my neighbor half-fancy roses, well, I don't see how that's his fault, or that I should (under any reasonable judicial system) be able to sue him for patent infringement.

The only way I figure I could pursue judgement against my neighbor in the first case is if I somehow had pollen classifed as a pollutant. But if I did that, my neighbor could sue me right back for letting my fancy inbred pollen pollute his all-natural, non-inbred garden.

(Of course, part of me wants pollen to be classified as a pollutant, since I have particularly vicious hay fever, and would stand to make millions in lawsuits against local grass seed producers.)

*I know, flowers don't get "knocked up." But I was having fun, so I won't apologize.

[SPD]

Q,

There's also this, in case anyone's interested:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc._v._Schmeiser

[Jennifer]

I think they'd be better off abandoning a government-defined definition of "organic" and get various food organizations to devise criteria for certificates they bestow on crops.

That's fine, but my concern (and perhaps I am misunderstanding the matter at hand) is that if I am growing organic corn which gets cross-contaminated with GM corn, it sounds like I can't sue over this, but basically have to just suck it up.

I think the anti-GM business is nonsense, but I also think kosher or halal diets are nonsense; that doesn't mean that a person who wants to avoid pig meat should have no recourse if someone contaminates their kosher or halal meats with lard.

[Eric the .5b]

Prepare to be attacked.

I always am.

[R C Dean]

Label them clearly.

My point exactly - label them so organic means frickin' organic, not partly organic and partly genetically engineered. The fact that the government mandates the labelling makes the fact that the label is inaccurate and misleading even worse.

[Jennifer] recall[s] a case a few years back where Monsanto had a field of GM corn that cross-pollinated with the regular corn on a nearby farm; Monsanto was actually able to sue the farmer on some sort of patent-infringement grounds and win.

Monsanto won because there wasn't any "cross-pollination" in that case - the only way the guy's field was going to contain 99% Monsanto-patented genes was if he planted Monsanto seed, not because some Monsanto pollen happen to drift his way.

[Eric the .5b]

my concern (and perhaps I am misunderstanding the matter at hand) is that if I am growing organic corn which gets cross-contaminated with GM corn, it sounds like I can't sue over this, but basically have to just suck it up.

No, it means you could still sell it as "organic".

[Eric the .5b]

"Prepare to be attacked."

I always am.

I mean, I always do. Darn ambiguous passive tense.

[fyodor]

The cross-polinization matter is a classic case of ambiguous property rights. Is it the biotech farmer's responsibility to prevent his crops from getting into his neighbor's organic crop's genetic material, or is it the organic farmer's responsibility to protect his crops from biotech genetics if he wants to keep his crops free of them, if the biotech farmer is doing nothing more than farming. There really is no answer from a strictly libertarian perspective, which posits an undeniable right to one's property but is not involved with defining the boundaries of that right. I'm sure people here will have no problem devising analogies that back their particular view of the matter, and you may be right. Bailey, IIRC (too lazy to RTFA at the moment) made an argument that it was the organic farmer was the responsible party. If you tell me or him that he's wrong, please RTFA first. For myself, I think it could go either way, I'm not enough of an expert in property rights minutae to say. But I think I can safely say that that is what it comes down to. Not dissing organic farming as being for elites, nor claiming that true libertarians would be for freedom of choice, as true as that is so far as it goes. This is just one of those inevitable neighbor problems.

[Jennifer]

No, it means you could still sell it as "organic".

But it would not be "organic" insofar as my customers are concerned. That's the part that is giving me problems. This strikes me as no different from the government saying that if my kosher meat is contaminated with pig fat, I can just call it kosher anyway.

[R C Dean]

Jake, no one ever has been liable for cross-pollinating their neighbor's crops, or for having their neighbor cross-pollinate theirs.

[R C Dean]

if I am growing organic corn which gets cross-contaminated with GM corn, it sounds like I can't sue over this, but basically have to just suck it up.

Yup.

The alternative is to hold everyone responsible for the consequences of pollen driftage, meaning you can sue your neighbor because his pollen got on your plants, and he (or the owner of the genes in that pollen) can sue you for misappropriating their (genetic property.

[zach]

There really is no answer from a strictly libertarian perspective, which posits an undeniable right to one's property but is not involved with defining the boundaries of that right.

Political libertarianism is the act of defining the boundaries of that right.

[Eric the .5b]

Jennifer, to answer your previous question, the article says nothing about it allowing or disallowing suing for cross-contamination.

This strikes me as no different from the government saying that if my kosher meat is contaminated with pig fat, I can just call it kosher anyway.

I'd agree.

[SPD]

Aren't there ways, if they choose, in which farmers can put up protective barriers to keep out as much intrusive pollen as possible?

[Eric the .5b]

Giant screens maybe a hundred feet high (I'm not sure how how pollen goes in the wind)? Possibly, thought it would be pricy. Still, it does seem a fair burden if you want to insist that the genetic code of your pollen-fertilized plants must be unspoiled from now on.

[Lowdog]

C'mon, it's .9 percent. The organic guys can still call it organic, and the people who buy organic have to trust that the company did it's best to make it as organic as possible.

Besides, look at what Ron really says: "The (bogus) issue of biotech "contamination" of organic crops..."

I think the reality is that naturally, contamination really isn't a problem.

[Eric the .5b]

Questioned about her draft law that would allow products with up to 0.9 percent of GMO content to retain a label of "EU organic",

One unasked question - 0.9% is a lot of genes for most creatures. Are there any Monsanto products that actually have more genes than that changed from the base plant?

[SPD]

Lowdog,

Personally, I think 99.1% is pretty good for purity content. Granted, it's no Ivory soap (99.44%), but...

[Jennifer]

If .9 percent of your genes were altered, that would be more than sufficient to make you an official "mutant." Isn't there only a two or three percent difference between the DNA of humans and chimps?

[ChicagoTom]

Aren't there ways, if they choose, in which farmers can put up protective barriers to keep out as much intrusive pollen as possible?

Aren't there ways in which farmers can put up protective barriers to keep their intrusive pollen IN ?

To me it is the equivalent of pollution. It isn't the responsibility of everyone to protect themselves from polluters, its the reponsibility of the polluters to to make sure they aren't emitting the pollutions or controlling the emissions. Why doesn't the same standard work for farmers / crops? Why should the person who doesn't want the pollution have to jump through hoops?? It should be the responsibility of the one who seeds/pollens are blowing in the wind to keep it out of the air.

It's the emitter who is the problem here, not the the one who has to deal with the emissions. This whole "tough shit" attitude towards the guy who doesn't want his neighbors crap in his garden doesn't make any sense.

[Jennifer]

From a Google search:

It has long been held that we share 98.5 per cent of our genetic material with our closest relatives. That now appears to be wrong. In fact, we share less than 95 per cent of our genetic material, a three-fold increase in the variation between us and chimps.

Okay, so .9 percent is still anywhere from fifteen to twenty percent as much as the difference between a human and a chimp. Still pretty significant, I think.

[Eric the .5b]

Aren't there ways in which farmers can put up protective barriers to keep their intrusive pollen IN ? To me it is the equivalent of pollution.

Except that these farmers welcomed the pollen from their neighbors beforehand. It's as if they had animal herds they let run loose, mating freely with their neighbor's livestock...but then started objecting when the Monsanto ranch set up shop.

[Lowdog]

But even for pollution, the regs probably don't require 100% purity.

I hate just saying "tough shit", but it doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me in this instance. Especially if the contamination doesn't really occur naturally, or at least not to any large degree. I'm with SPD that .9 percent is not that much.

But again, aren't factories allowed to pollute a little bit? There is an artificial threshold for polluting, why not for organic purity?

[happyjuggler0]

Natural isn't all it's cracked up to be. Regardless of the relvancy to this discussion I think this interview should be read by all lovers of organic food.

http://reason.com/amesint.shtml

Below is a mere snippet.

But the control. which people should have thought of but they didn't, is what about all the chemicals in the natural world? People got in their head, well, if it's man-made somehow it's potentially dangerous, but if it's natural, it isn't. That doesn't really fit with anything we know about toxicology. When we understand how animals are resistant to chemicals, the mechanisms are all independent of whether it's natural or synthetic. And in fact, when you look at natural chemicals, half of those tested came out positive.

Of course. almost all the world is natural chemicals, so it really makes you rethink everything. A cup of coffee is filled with chemicals. They've identified a thousand chemicals in a cup of coffee. But we only found 22 that have been tested in animal cancer tests out of this thousand. And of those, 17 are carcinogens. There are 10 milligrams of known carcinogens in a cup of coffee and that's more carcinogens than you're likely to get from pesticide residues for a year!

Reason: Why not conclude that you shouldn't drink coffee'

Ames: But half of all the things tested are coming out positive. The point isn't to worry so much about cups of coffee, but to rethink what we're doing with animal cancer testing We're eating natural pesticides, which are natural chemicals that plants use to try to kill off insects that try to eat them. And we eat roughly 1,500 milligrams of them per day. We eat 0.09 milligrams of synthetic pesticide residues. So we're talking about incredibly tiny amounts of synthetic pesticides, and yet the same percentage of natural chemicals come out positive.

The moral of the story is that good is good, and bad is bad, and natural and artificial have both.

[jp]

Eric the .5b -- "passive" is a voice, not a tense. (I correct you because I admire your work.)

[Jennifer]

Except that these farmers welcomed the pollen from their neighbors beforehand

True, but it's the GM cross-pollination that is causing the problem. Their neigbors beforehand presumably didn't have GM food.

[Eric the .5b]

"passive" is a voice, not a tense.

Quite right, thanks.

[Eric the .5b]

"Except that these farmers welcomed the pollen from their neighbors beforehand"

True, but it's the GM cross-pollination that is causing the problem. Their neigbors beforehand presumably didn't have GM food.

The "problem" is defined by the farmers. The cross-pollination, if it's even happening, isn't being alleged to harm the crops. It's being alleged to make the crops ideologically less suitable.

To mix examples, it's as if beef ranchers were up in arms because Monsanto brought in pigs, which local beef afficianados thought made cattle not kosher merely by being within ten feet. (I know this isn't a definition of kosher - or at least I'm pretty sure it's not - but bear with me.)

[Ethan]

When anti-GMO folks call GMO foods "Frankenfoods," don't they place themselves in the role of the irrational mob wielding torches and pitchforks? In other words, the stupid people who are too blinded by prejudice to see the truth? I never got that. What am I missing here?

[ChrisO]

Eventually, we will be solar-powered robotic hybrids that only need the occasional oil change. So why worry?

[downstater]

It's being alleged to make the crops ideologically less suitable.

which would make them commercially less suitable to those in such a market for pure food, no?

[happyjuggler0]

I suggest having three categories of food.

1) Strict Organic. This means 0% artificial pesticides and 0% GM.

2) Rational Organic. Less than 0.9% of GM, and whateveramount is of artificial pesticides is currently legal for the definition of organic.

3) Farmer and Poor People Friendly. This encompasses everything else.

[T Bone]

Even if we agree that it's the "emitter who is the problem", saying that there shall be no emission allowed whatsoever is absurd. There are, I gaurantee it, molecules of pig on every bit of kosher meat. The impossibility of keeping every molecule in it's 'place' should not invalidate the possibility of something being kosher or 'organic'. We need practical definitions, then.

Is .9% practical? Anyone w/ a good knowledge of genetics have an answer? And, is it that .9% of the genes overall need to be 'unmodified' -- seems like a ridiculous definition -- or that .9% of the crop is allowed to have measurable GMO contamination?

[Eric the .5b]

which would make them commercially less suitable to those in such a market for pure food, no?

It would, but the reasonable counter is that the ranchers need to confine their cattle if they want to keep them from coming into contact with someone's pigs roaming the, er, French prairie. They can't just allow the free mingling then demand a particular competitor keep its critters hermetically sealed.

[Jennifer]

The "problem" is defined by the farmers.

I think the problem is more defined by the customers who do not want any GM products in their food. Which again I agree to be irrational, but no more so than a kosher person wanting all traces of pig fat out of their diet.

[ChicagoTom]

Another thing I dont quite understand...

Let's assume that I am a farmer, and my crops get contaminated with these GM pollens through the air or whatever and these GM crops start "cropping up". Now when these crops give off seeds, and I replant them, why is it acceptable that I can be sued by Monsanto for infringing on their patent?

It seems a bit odd to me that not only do I have to protect myself from these pollens if I don't want GM crops, but even if I didn't care one way or another, there still is this burden on me to make sure that no GM seeds are being planted.

So basically the burden is on any farmer to protect against this crop and to actively police and make sure that there is no contamination else I run the risk of getting sued.

I mean if these GM seeds contaminate my crops, eventually, year after year, if I am replanting seeds in general there is a pretty good chance that a significant percentage will be GM. Maybe not in year 1 of contamination, but in year 5 or six of replanting.

[ChicagoTom]

Even if we agree that it's the "emitter who is the problem", saying that there shall be no emission allowed whatsoever is absurd.

Saying there should be no emission is absurd, but it isn't absurd to say that these emitters need to do things to keep the emissions to a low level and them having to eat the cost of doing so. No one is advocating 0 tolerance of any crop emissions, but I would bet my right arm that not too many people on this board even believe there should be any emission regulation on the GMO farmers.

[Eric the .5b]

Which again I agree to be irrational, but no more so than a kosher person wanting all traces of pig fat out of their diet.

Kosher food production requires adherence to many rules. People producing kosher food follow those rules, exerting effort to carefully keep pork and other forbidden things out. They don't run around demanding that they should have to do nothing while anyone producing gentile food needs to raise pigs underground in sealed caves.

[Eric the .5b]

I would bet my right arm that not too many people on this board even believe there should be any emission regulation on the GMO farmers.

Not without evidence that it's happening as you describe (which several people here argue against) and that it's harmful to other farmers' plants, no. You won't find tons of support for regulation for the sake of regulation here.

[MP]

which would make them commercially less suitable to those in such a market for pure food, no?

There is no such thing as pure food.

[Eric the .5b]

Put another way, if organic farmers are marketing based on the special purity of their product as compared to others (where "others" is "most farmers"), it's up to them to ensure that purity.

[fyodor]

Ethan,

When anti-GMO folks call GMO foods "Frankenfoods," don't they place themselves in the role of the irrational mob wielding torches and pitchforks? In other words, the stupid people who are too blinded by prejudice to see the truth? I never got that. What am I missing here?

That's a funny observation. But I think implicit in the story of Frankenstein was that there was something inherently heinous in the "unnatural" creation that was Frankie's monster, even if one empathizes with the monster himself, since, after all, it wasn't his fault. I don't know if the mob is supposed represent irrationality so much as an overweening welling up of moral outrage. FWIW.

[fyodor]

No one is advocating 0 tolerance of any crop emissions, but I would bet my right arm that not too many people on this board even believe there should be any emission regulation on the GMO farmers.

As I've stated previously, I'm not sure. Is that pro or anti your right arm?

[downstater]

There is no such thing as pure food.

okay, thanks.

[WLM]

"There is no such thing as pure food."

Yes there is. Even the most chemically-enhanced Twinkie is, technically, "pure food".

[Eric the .5b]

Only if you unwrap it, WLM!

[R C Dean]

Now when these crops give off seeds, and I replant them, why is it acceptable that I can be sued by Monsanto for infringing on their patent?

Leaping Jesus, don't you people read RTFP? No one has ever been sued for such cross-pollination.

No one here is advocating that anyone be sued for such cross-pollination.

I doubt anyone could be sued for such cross-pollination.

[ChicagoTom]

I doubt anyone could be sued for such cross-pollination.

That's not what I got from this wikipedia article which someone posted above in the comments.

Here is the money quote IMHO :
Regarding the question of patent rights and the farmer's right to use seed taken from his fields, Monsanto said that because they hold a patent on the gene, and on canola cells containing the gene, they have a legal right to control its use, including the replanting of seed collected from plants with the gene which grew accidentally in someone else's field. Schmeiser insisted his right to save and replant seed from plants that have accidentally grown on his field overrides Monsanto's legal patent rights. Canadian law does not mention any such "farmer's rights"; the court held that the farmer's right to save and replant seeds are simply the rights of a property owner over his or her property to use it as he or she wishes, and hence the right to use the seeds are subject to the same legal restrictions on use rights that apply in any case of ownership of property, including restrictions arising from patents in particular.

Now granted this is in Canada, and I don't know for sure how it would be different here in the US, but the point is just as I said. How is that a fair system? In a setup like that, it is in Monsanto's interest to try and contaminate as much as possible and then try and sue and collect (since there is a precedent) anyone who may have been contaminated and didn't take proper steps to purge their crop of Monsanto's seeds.

[happyjuggler0]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto

Essentially, a part of Schmeiser's canola crop, grown from seed he had bred over many decades, was accidentally contaminated with Monsanto's GE canola, likely by seed escaping from passing trucks. Schmeiser discovered the crossbreeding, collected the seed, planted it the next year, and harvested that crop. Both the case, and Monsanto's ultimate victory, were widely misunderstood. In fact, the infringement finding solely concerned the fact that he had knowingly replanted the crossbred seed he had collected. The court did not impose punitive damages on Schmeiser, as may have been expected in a patent infringement case, and the decision did not absolve Monsanto of responsibilty for genetic contamination, or even consider that aspect. The case did cause Monsanto's aggressively litigious tactics to be highlighted in the media over the years it took to play out.

My take on it is that he knew which seeds were which, for the most part, and chose to replant those seeds and then sell the final product, much like someone who copies a CD and sells the copy. If it was simply a case where some of his product was contaminated, and dispersed to make it impractical to seperate the two types of seed, then he would be in the right. Of course I didn't read the whole opinion or the court transcripts either.

I also think Monsanto is stupid for letting lawyers run the company to the extent they do. Bu that said, they are in a sue or be sued environment, so it is not too surprising they take this tack.

[SPD]

What I gleaned (I never get to use that word) from the Wikipedia article was that it was proven that the farmer in question, Mr. Schmeiser, had knowingly planted the Monsanto strain of canola and sold it as his own crop.

In essence, it would be the same as recording your neighbor's loud music on your stereo, then selling it as your own album. I think that's the same principle at work -- I think.

[RexRhino]

To me it is the equivalent of pollution. It isn't the responsibility of everyone to protect themselves from polluters, its the reponsibility of the polluters to to make sure they aren't emitting the pollutions or controlling the emissions. Why doesn't the same standard work for farmers / crops? Why should the person who doesn't want the pollution have to jump through hoops?? It should be the responsibility of the one who seeds/pollens are blowing in the wind to keep it out of the air.
Because it is impossible to prevent cross polination in nature. There is no way one could grow any crop, and in any way, shape, or form prevent that crop from polinating with another crop. What you are asking, then, is to ban GM crops. Period, end of story.

Now, since even the most rabid anti-GM people can't show one single case where GM crops harmed a human, GM crops have a 100% safety record. Now, literally BILLIONS of dollars has been spent in order to test these crops for safety to humans, animals, and the surrounding envoirnment, and they are as safe as normal crops (not that normal organic crops are good for the enviornment, they are usually worse if they increase land usage). Virtually nothing in the history of technology has thus far been as safe as GM crops. The anti-GM arguement that "well, we don't know what these things will do when they get into nature" is not a valid arguement either, because we know even less what will happen with non-GM mutation breeding, which is used for 100% certified organic stuff.

So you are asking for us to ban one of the most promising new technologies, that has been proven safe time and time again, because some people find it fashionable not to consume the product. Sorry, people are going to have to deal with it.

Lets pretend I have a peanut alergy (now, the peanut analogy is not a good analogy, because peanut alergy is an actually scientificly documented medical problem as opposed to people's problems with GM crops which have no basis in any fact whatsoever). Now, I can have bad reactions to even the slightest traces of peanut. Even being near a person who had a peanut butter sandwich the day before is enough for me to break out in hive lets say. Now, do I have a right to demand that no-one who in any way, shape, or form comes in contact with me avoid eating peanuts? NO!

Likewise, just because you have some quasi-religious negative view of GM, doesn't mean you should get to ban the technology!

Let's assume that I am a farmer, and my crops get contaminated with these GM pollens through the air or whatever and these GM crops start "cropping up". Now when these crops give off seeds, and I replant them, why is it acceptable that I can be sued by Monsanto for infringing on their patent?
YOU CAN'T!!! In fact, the one and only lawsuit based in this, the legal decision was explicitly that you can't get sued for cross-polination. That wasn't even what the guy was being sued for! The whole issue was manufactured.

[terry]

RexRhino:
"Because it is impossible to prevent cross polination in nature. There is no way one could grow any crop, and in any way, shape, or form prevent that crop from polinating with another crop."

So what does everyone think of pharmacrops ?
(Crops that are genetically engineered to produce pharmaceuticals) Could regular crops be contaminated by these pharmacrops?

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/8123/8123biotechnologya.html

RexRhino:
"Lets pretend I have a peanut alergy (now, the peanut analogy is not a good analogy, because peanut alergy is an actually scientificly documented medical problem as opposed to people's problems with GM crops which have no basis in any fact whatsoever). Now, I can have bad reactions to even the slightest traces of peanut. Even being near a person who had a peanut butter sandwich the day before is enough for me to break out in hive lets say. Now, do I have a right to demand that no-one who in any way, shape, or form comes in contact with me avoid eating peanuts? NO! "

What if you were extremely allergic to peanuts, you ate some carrots that were genetically modified to contain peanut genes, had a mild reaction, but didn't know why since these carrots where not labelled as GM.

Actually a similar situation actually came about when genes from the brasil nut were added to soybeans.

http://pewagbiotech.org/buzz/display.php3?StoryID=13

[plunge]

I'm sort of surprised that a normally so science-savvy bunch is so dismissive of the idea that genetically modified plants and animals could pose potential health and ecology risks.

There's nothing inherently dangerous about genetically modified plants and animals that isn't just as potentially dangerous about natural animals. I have no crunchy granola feelings about mother nature here, and I've never sought out "organic" anything (though John Stosell did not exactly convince me that the anti-organic movement is in the least honest either).

But its simply undeniable that splicing a gene out of one species and putting it into a completely different species can have any number of unintended side effects, as anyone who has studied genetics knows full well. And genetically modified plants and animals have no track record, and in many cases are, by law, treated as if they are exactly the same thing. Plop a fish gene into a tomato, and you don't have to bother seeing if it does anything different when eaten, or whether its various hybrids once it gets out into the "wild" will go something else different, and so on. As far as the law in many places is concerned, you've just got a tomato. But in terms of genetics, that's plain ridiculous.

People here laugh at creationists. But then they suddenly turn around and laugh at the idea that massive functional genetic changes unknown to any evolutionary process have any unintended consequences beyond the benefits we were looking to get. That's a pretty stunning disconnect with the realities of biology.

I'm all in favor of GM. But to pretend that GM poses no potential dangers to watch out for and is 100% safe and can thus be legitimately hidden from consumers or loopholed past reasonable ecological and health/safety regulations? That's as bat shit insane as anything that comes out of Pat Robertson.

[Contains Less than 50% Peanuts]

If they know the percentage contamination they ought to require that on the sticker. Then the government isn't the one setting a safety threshold. Rather, then it is the market setting the threshold one food purchase at a time on an individual decision by individual decision basis. Decentralized and libertarian choicey goodness!

[Dave W.]

What I gleaned (I never get to use that word) from the Wikipedia article was that it was proven that the farmer in question, Mr. Schmeiser, had knowingly planted the Monsanto strain of canola and sold it as his own crop.

This part seems important to me. here is what the Canadian Court said about whether the farmer had knowingly helped the contamination along:

"Schmeiser never purchased Roundup Ready Canola nor did he obtain a licence to plant it. Yet, in 1998, tests revealed that 95 to 98 percent of his 1,000 acres of canola crop was made up of Roundup Ready plants. The origin of the plants is unclear. They may have been derived from Roundup Ready seed that blew onto or near Schmeiser's land, and was then collected from plants that survived after Schmeiser sprayed Roundup herbicide around the power poles and in the ditches along the roadway bordering four of his fields. The fact that these plants survived the spraying indicated that they contained the patented gene and cell. The trial judge found that "none of the suggested sources [proposed by Schmeiser] could reasonably explain the concentration or extent of Roundup Ready canola of a commercial quality" ultimately present in Schmeiser's crop ((2001), 202 F.T.R. 78, at para. 118)."

To try to unpack this:

- the Court decided the seeds had been purposefully planted was indicated by the 95%-98% figure

- 95%-98% would not occur from passing seed trucks, the source of the admitted, albeit limited, contamination of the farmers lands

- so we know the farmer planted the patented seed types, but that leaves the question of whether the farmer knew he was planting patented seed types

- because there was some limited contamination that the farmer investigated and confirmed in a knowing way the year before, this circumstantially suggests that the farmer knew what he was doing intellectual property-wise when he planted his forbidden 95-98% crop the next year.

Dave W. comment:

If I understand the case correctly then the result looks good to me. It looks like the farmer both realized that the seed was patented and intentionally planted it anyway.

What kind of scares me about the case, though, is that it looks like the court would have found infringement even if he didn't realize that the seed was contaminated or patented. In other words, if the farmer had accidentally planted contaminated seeds, without any particular reason to expect that they had been contaminated by the trucks of Monsanto's licensees, then the farmer still would have been liable for infringement. That would be a troubling result.

[RexRhino]

I'm sort of surprised that a normally so science-savvy bunch is so dismissive of the idea that genetically modified plants and animals could pose potential health and ecology risks.

Do you know how they develope new breeds of plants when they don't use "genetic modification"? They take plants, seeds, or whatever they are using as a source, and either expose it to massive amounts of radiation, or soak it in some toxic chemical, which causes the DNA to be damaged and hence causes crazy amounts of mutation (plants, being less sophisticated than humans, can survive all sorts of mutations that would be "cancer" in humans). They then take this mutated plants, and plant them out in a field somewhere, and watch what happens. None of this is regulated, controlled, or supervised by the government in any way... I could go out and do this in my backyard garden (well, not me, I live in an apartment, but you get the picture).

We then watch whatever happens to the plants out in the wild, and we take the plants and rebreed them if we find the mutations are favorable... and then we re-mutate those plants, re-breed, re-mutate, forever and ever. When we do this, we are putting mutated plants out in fields, where they can be completly released into nature. And they can be strangely mutated in ways we can't even begin to imagine because the process is totally random!

In case you decide to be alarmed by "mutation breeding", know that this isn't anything new. Machu Pichu seems to be a place a mutation breeding for the Incas (the farms around thier mountain temple/obersvatories were in a pocket climate, and so were warm enough to grow despite being high up where there would be more radation.). And there are plenty of all-natural carcinagens that one can expose to plants to cause all sorts of wierd mutation. Normal "organic" wheat is such a fuckin' genetic monster, that it actually has a genome 4 times the size of a human genome!

To put it simply, we have been genetically modifying plants for generations. EXTREME, UNCONTROLLED, genetic modification released directly into the wild with zero thought and protection to the consequences. The only difference between modern "genetic modification", and the old school genetic modification in "mutation breeding", is that in mutation breeding the results of our genetic modification will be totally and completly unknown, and most of the time harmful... where as in direct genetic modification in the lab, we have some idea of what the genetic modification is going to do.

GM technology was created as a SAFER ALTERNATIVE to the current system!!! The old fashion "organic" way of doing things is orders of magnitude more dangerous then "genetic modification".

[Terry]

RexRhino:

"GM technology was created as a SAFER ALTERNATIVE to the current system!!! The old fashion "organic" way of doing things is orders of magnitude more dangerous then "genetic modification"."

So does that mean you support the unregulated cultivation of pharma crops ?

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/8123/8123biotechnologya.html

What those wooley headed people from Anheuser-Busch are up to:

http://deltafarmpress.com/news/050411-busch-refusal/

"If, as planned, Ventria Bioscience?s pharmaceutical rice varieties are planted in the Missouri Bootheel, Anheuser-Busch has announced it won?t buy any rice grown or processed in the state. Anheuser-Busch is the largest domestic consumer of rice."

[plunge]

"The only difference between modern "genetic modification", and the old school genetic modification in "mutation breeding", is that in mutation breeding the results of our genetic modification will be totally and completly unknown, and most of the time harmful... where as in direct genetic modification in the lab, we have some idea of what the genetic modification is going to do."

None of this has anything at all to do with what I said. Mutation breeding and GM have the same problem: presenting the public with something that purports to be a tomato that is, in fact, not the same thing as a tomato. You also don't seem to realize that there is a big genetic difference between mutation breeding and GM. In mutation breeding, the code can't change all that much in a functional way: while you may have speeded up the creation of variation, you haven't necessarily speeded up useful evolutionary change, and what you do get is still gradual and within the parameters of the species.

With GM, you are sticking entire functional sections of code into places they've never ever been before: a completely different context of proteins, cascades, and genetic machinery. That represents leaps quite unlike anything we've ever seen in evolutionary history outside of viruses and we suspect early life (though back then there wasn't anywhere near as much variation to play with).

Again, the problem is not that the danger is too horrifying to countenance, but rather that we cannot act as if there was no difference at all. Passing off food to consumers without letting them know that its not the same thing they are used to is just deceptive. Pretending that there is no difference is unscientific.