It may seem odd to some that a blog that mostly focuses on controversies in modern agriculture would ask someone who studies insects to write on their site, but it’s not as counter intuitive as you think. Insects are a huge part of agriculture because they are our biggest competitors for food. One of the most common types of genetically modified corn, the various BT cultivars, were developed to fight the European Corn Borer, Ostrinia nubilalis, which is a tiny Crambid moth which burrows into the stalks of the plants and eventually kills them.

An entomologist writing for a site which explores the politics of Genetically Modified Organisms makes sense for another reason, and that’s because entomologists sometimes modify the genes of insects in order to do their work. Some of this occurs naturally, through the actions of polydnavirus particles some parasitoid wasps inject into their hosts to control the behavior, development, and immune reactions of that host. Sometimes it’s simple and artificial such as releasing insects sterilized with X-ray radiation in order to fight diseases and crop pests. Some of the things that entomologists work with aren’t necessarily insects but are used to control their populations. A great example of this is the modification of viruses as systems which are used to deliver pesticides directly to the insects rather than spraying the environment with pesticides.

What I hope to do is to use this site to educate the public about some of the GMOs you may hear about on the news, and I hope to make people realize that these are wonderful inventions that better humanity. New things are definitely a little scary at first, but education is the best way to overcome these fears.

Since this is my first post, let’s explore some really basic insect biology that might be necessary to understand parts of my posts. Insects go through two types of development: hemimetabolous, or incomplete metamorphosis and holometabolous which is commonly known as complete metamorphosis.

Here’s an example of hemimetabolous or incomplete development. The video below depicts the life cycle of a cicada which begins as an egg and then develops through a series of nymphal stages before maturing into an adult. Notice how the adults are very similar to the nymphs with the obvious exception of wings. Also notice how they have a relatively similar ecological role, both feed on sap but in slightly different areas.

This is an example of holometabolous development. The butterfly in the video has a very strange parasitic relationship with ants. This butterfly goes through four stages: egg, larva, pupa and adult. Notice how the larva looks nothing like the adult, and how the larva has a completely different role than the adult. In this case, the adult feeds on nectar from flowers while the larva is a parasite in the ant nest.

Why am I bringing this up at Biofortified?

Sunshine quinoa salad by sonicwalker. Click the photo for the recipe. Via flickr.

The prepared food from Full Yield is not your typical prepared food. “The choices may include turkey chili, quinoa salads, salmon cakes, chicken tagine, mixed bean wraps and whole-grain peanut butter cookies,” according to the Times article. Employees in the program are encouraged to eat only Full Yield items or similar whole food meals prepared at home. In these few menu items I see a swath of biodiversity, things never seen in the typical American’s diet. If the people on the program can lean about (and enjoy!) food options that are more healthy and more varied, maybe they will continue to choose these healthy varied items when they are done with the program. Maybe, just maybe, this will lead to an increase in demand for small grains and legumes and a decrease in demand for foods like feedlot beef and white bread. Maybe, just maybe, this could lead to big changes in farming.

Michael Pollan, not surprisingly, is way ahead of me on this idea. His editorial Big Food vs. Big Insurance appeared in the Times in September. Pollan argues that the proposed changes in health insurance regulation, particularly requiring companies to take everyone (no more pre-existing conditions), will cause the health insurance lobby to start fighting for changes in things like the Farm Bill. Pollan suggests: “Insurers will quickly figure out that every case of Type 2 diabetes they can prevent adds $400,000 to their bottom line. Suddenly, every can of soda or Happy Meal or chicken nugget on a school lunch menu will look like a threat to future profits.”

I agree with Pollan that national food policies have an effect on what people eat, particularly when it comes to affecting how much food costs. When we subsidize commodity crops but don’t subsidize fruits and vegetables, we’re effectively reducing the cost to the consumer of processed foods and grain-fed meat. However, I don’t think a potential battle between “Big Food” and “Big Insurance” will lead to as much change as many of us would like to see.

Kid Cuisine photo by Matt, via the very odd but quite funny review of the product on the X-Entertainment blog.

Even if food subsides and policies are balanced to make healthy foods more affordable, people will still make the choices they’ve always made. Even if healthy foods become cheaper than unhealthy food, I’m not convinced that people will choose the cheaper option. People who grew up on box mac n’ cheese and “fun-shaped” chicken nuggets will not suddenly make and eat quinoa salad (maybe quinoa needs a snowboarding penguin?). But, if their workplace encourages them to try new foods, then maybe they’ll want to try them again.

We can’t just leave it up to a few scattered employers, though. We all have a responsibility, if we want farms to grow a larger variety of crops, to eat those crops, and to encourage our friends to eat them. Yum! Quinoa salad, anyone?

Eating locally is great, but since apples only ripen once per year, and they spoil relatively fast, that means we only have fresh apples for a short time each year. That’s too bad, since apples are a wonderful crunchy snack loved by kids and adults that provide health benefits from their fiber and antioxidants.

Shipping the apples from another place (like New Zealand) extends the time that apples are available, but shipping in refrigerated containers is expensive and results in greenhouse gas emissions, and we all know that those apples from far away just don’t taste as good as local ones.

Scab Resistant Selection RS103-130. Image from "Organic Production of a New Australian-bred Scab Resistant Apple in Queensland, Australia" by Middleton, et. al

There might be a way to have local apples available for a much longer time, as well as to have apples shipped in that use less energy and less pesticides!

After more than 20 years of work, researchers in Australia have developed apples that are resistant to black spot aka apple scab, a fungus that destroys fruit and leaves. The scab resistant line, called RS103-130, also stays fresh and crunchy much longer than typical apple lines. They achieved this through some initial crosses with a crabapple species followed by years of selective breeding. The crabapple provided RS103-130 with the Vf gene complex, which has been previously used to produce transgenic scab-resistant apples, which I’ll describe in more detail shortly. You can find the Australian patent for RS103-130 at FreePatentsOnline.

In 2005 and 2006, comparison experiments showed RS103-130 to have many benefits over Galaxy, a typical non-resistant cultivar (see chart below). According to Middleton, et. al, RS103-130 has off white flesh and medium texture, is crisp, sweet, low-acid, and juicy, with a mild flavor.

Chart from "Organic Production of a New Australian-bred Scab Resistant Apple in Queensland, Australia" by Middleton, et. al.

Because of all of these benefits and the reduced pesticides needed, organic apple growers in Australia are very interested in RS103-130. I wasn’t able to find any information on whether RS103-130 has been commercialized yet, or on how long it might be before I can try them. Apparently something happened with RS103-130 lately, because stories appeared in The Independent and in the New York Daily News last week. Neither of the stories say what prompted the coverage, nor does Treehugger, which picked up on the 1st two. If you know what’s new with these apples, please comment!

My first question upon reading these articles was: why has it taken twenty years?! Selective breeding can be painstaking, especially when you’re talking trees. There is a faster way…

The HcrVf2 gene from a wild apple confers scab resistance to a transgenic cultivated variety showed that the Vf gene can be inserted with biotechnology into apple varieties (in this case, the gene was inserted by Agrobacterium tumefaciens into the Gala apple cultivar). In the introduction of this paper from 2003, Belfanti et. al point out that:

the transfer of these genes by classical breeding to cultivated apples is difficult because of the long juvenile phase, self-incompatibility, and the impossibility of exactly reproducing the heterozygous state of cultivated varieties. Starting from the wild species Malus floribunda 821 carrying the Vf gene, breeders have developed several scab-resistant apple cvs. (2), but not one has met with commercial success. Indeed, when compared with such commercially popular cvs. as Golden Delicious and Gala, the main horticultural and fruit-quality traits of these scab-resistant cvs. are notably different and undoubtedly less acceptable.

Using biotechnology, the researchers were able to confer scab resistance in one generation. In this paper, the authors don’t mention any increase in lifespan for the fresh apples – I’ll look on Web of Science for more info tomorrow. I do appreciate that the authors are hopeful for the future of apple biotech.

The cloning of an apple scab resistance gene represents the basis for further investigation of the resistance mechanism. It also represents a step toward a gene therapy (restoring resistance where lost) of the scab-susceptible cvs. that currently dominate the apple industry. This strategy will allow the transfer of resistance from a wild apple species to any commercial apple genotype while maintaining the horticultural and fruit-quality traits growers and consumers prize most. It may also be possible to achieve greater resistance durability by the simultaneous transfer of several resistance genes from wild apple species. Going one step further, it may be possible to use apple promoters and novel techniques that, by eliminating selective marker genes (38, 39), generate transgenic varieties without any foreign genes and, hence, may make genetically modified plants more acceptable to growers and consumers alike.

I’m particularly interested that Balfanti et. al mentioned cisgenics, although they didn’t use the term. There is potential to insert genes like Vf into many varieties of apples, meaning that cultivars developed for specific microclimates may be quickly made resistant to scab (and potentially given a longer shelf life) without any loss of their other traits. This is a good example of how biotechnology and breeding can have the same results – get a gene into a cultivar – although one takes much longer than the other.

“Terminator” technology, also referred to as “Suicide Seeds,” are marketing terms coined by GE opponents to reframe what is technically called Genetic Use Restriction Technology, or GURT. This technology can take several forms, the most widely discussed one was developed by scientists working at the USDA and the Delta and Land Pine company, which is now owned by Monsanto. It works by means of three engineered genes, that when brought together in one plant, they act in combination to halt the development of embryos in the seeds the plant produces. The result is a plant that produces food as normal, but does not produce fertile seeds.

For those that are interested in a full scientific explanation of the technology, you can read about it here. But in short, GURTs can be used by seed companies to protect their intellectual property by preventing farmers from saving and replanting their seeds, which has often led to several lawsuits, some high-profile. It has also been suggested that for some crops that do not get much attention from plant breeders, that it would provide an incentive for them to spend the time and money it takes to improve a crop, because they could guarantee being able to sell their seeds in the future.

The public reaction to GURTs has been to imagine that it will turn farmers into servants of the seed industry, completely dependent upon them for seed purchases year after year. It is assumed that no non-GURT seeds will be available, and that this technology will allow seed companies to tell farmers what to grow and at what price, tell people what to eat, and basically rule the world. Hyperbole aside, at the very least the worry is that it will make farmers unable to choose what to grow, or financially yoked to a large corporation. For small-scale farmers in developing countries, they worry that it will give those large companies the power to extract all the money they can, keeping them in an impoverished state.

The strong backlash against “Terminator” GURTs has likely contributed to Monsanto’s decision to pledge not to use GURTs in any of their seeds. They acquired the technology when they bought Delta and Land Pine in 2000, a cotton breeding company. Nevertheless, many people believe that GURTs are widespread in use, even Vandana Shiva seems to repeatedly indicate that she believes that Bt cotton seeds are sterile and cannot be regrown. (You would think that since preventing the use of GURTs in commercialized GE crops is regarded as a victory for GE opponents, that they would all be very conscious of its absence.)

How much of this opposition is based on legitimate fears, and how much does would it change seed buying/replanting practices on farms?

As I have said elsewhere, monopolistic control of food crops by a few companies does not sound very likely to me, since companies making GE crops are sprouting up around the world, and antitrust laws in this country and others. Not to mention that government agencies and nonprofit organizations are also working on GE crops for developed and developing countries alike. In the case of GE crops developed by companies, since they would have patents on their engineered traits, they would have the authority to require royalties for farmers to plant fields of those crops. Given that farmers today are not allowed to save GE soybeans and replant them without paying a fee to the seed company, the only difference in this situation with a GURT is that the control would be biological rather than legal.

Would it force farmers to buy seeds every year? The fact is, many farmers already rebuy seed every year. In the case of hybrid crops that have higher yields than open-pollinated varieties, the hybrid must be regenerated each year from two inbred parents (which are typically proprietary). The debate over seed saving was hashed out in the debates over hybrid corn in the 1900s, and the result is that the vast majority of corn grown are hybrids. The increase in yield and other beneficial traits outweighs the continual cost of buying the seed.

Indeed, as Raoul Adamchak explains in Tomorrow’s Table, even organic farmers often purchase new seeds every year. Whether it is an heirloom Brandywine tomato or a hybrid sweet corn, seeds bought from a company that specializes in seed production (and/or breeding) are often a good bet against a bad batch of seed. From page 133:

At reasonable prices it is easier to let the seed companies provide the seed. In addition, they generally do a better job of maintaining seed purity and quality. If hybrid prices get too high, growers can switch to [Open-Pollinated varieties] instead, and save seeds. This can be a difficult choice is a specific trait like disease resistance, size, or uniformity is needed. Yields may also be less.

Even if seed saving is possible to do, it is still economically preferrable to go with seed provided by professional seed-producing operations, aside from issues of variety and transgene patents. If the price of seed gets too high, whether genetically engineered or not, farmers will go back to other varieties that are better for their bottom line. The economics of the situation will drive farmers one direction or another. I’m no economist, but it seems that the economics of competition in the seed market will ensure that there are alternatives available, irrespective of the presence or absence of GURTs.

“Terminator’s” you Eat

There is a very widely used and accepted conventional analog of Terminator GURTs that most of us have eaten – they’re called Seedless Watermelons. These are generated by manipulating the number of chromosomes in watermelon cells to give them three copies of each chromosome instead of two. (For more on how this works, you can watch a video I made about it here.) The resulting “Triploid” Watermelons sponteneously abort their seeds, leaving a juicy, seedless fruit. The seeds have to be regenerated year after year from other plants, and farmers and consumers obviously cannot replant seeds that don’t even exist!

Ironically, while genetic engineering is not allowed in organic agriculture, Seedless watermelons are. Nevermind the fact that the chromosome numbers are artificially manipulated using chemicals – it appears that this early form of direct genetic manipulation has been grandfathered in.

My point in bringing up the seedless watermelon is this: It results in exactly the same thing as genetically engineered GURTs – and that is it effectively prevents the plant from generating fertile seeds. The argument is often made, most vociferously by Shiva, that GURTs are immoral because they interrupt the traditional practice of seed saving. Shiva and others must therefore agree that seedless watermelons are also immoral for the same reason. Why is there no call for a moratorium on seedless watermelons? Well, that would be the pits.

Anyone wonder where the seeds are in bananas? There’s another one for you. The bananas we eat are also triploid, and produce no seeds. Although you can grow new banana trees from cuttings, it doesn’t produce any seeds that you could plant. Is the cavendish banana immoral, too?

Neither of these were made with genetic engineering, which means that unless Shiva hasn’t heard of Bananas and Seedless Watermelons, that the objection is not based on its effects on seed saving but on something else.

Can you think of any more examples?

Spread of Sterility?

In the global discussion of GURTs, there is a widespread perception that the “Terminator” will get out and run rampant, killing off not only every native crop but also spreading into other species and wiping them out. This about this for a second, is it possible for sterility to spread?

Not by any genetic mechanism I am familiar with. The pollen grains from GURT crops that cross-pollinate with others will make a few sterile seeds that will not grow and so their genes will not make it to the next generation. So if you grew corn next to another farmer who grew corn with a GURT in it, some of the seeds from the edge of your field could have been pollenated by a few stray grains from your neighbor’s field. If you were growing an open-pollinated variety and saved seed from year to year, you would have a few seeds that wouldn’t grow – but only if you gathered them from the margins of your field (which is not a good idea anyway).

And as for GURTs spreading into other species sterilizing them – these claims are based on a basic misunderstanding of how evolution works. Genes spread when they provide a benefit to the organism, and sterility is the exact opposite of an advantage. Aside from the small increases that can be seen from genetic drift – a trait needs to help the plant survive and reproduce to sweep through a population, and sexual sterility by definition does not do that.

But take a look at what Vandana Shiva said on pages 82-83 of her book, Stolen Harvest:

Molecular biologists are currently examining the risk of the terminator function escaping the genome of the crops into which it has been intentionally incorporated and moving into surrounding open-pollinated crops or wild, related plants in nearby fields. Given nature’s incredible adaptability and the fact that the technology has never been tested on a large scale, the possibility that the terminator may spread to surrounding food crops or to the natural environment is a serious one. The gradual spread of sterility in seeding plants would result in a global catastrophe that could eventually wipe out higher life forms, including humans, from the planet.

It is ironic that Shiva often argues that genetic engineering and the “Terminator” violate evolution, when it is evolution that proves that her claims are unfounded.

It is possible that one of the three genes in the Delta and Pine-style GURT could mutate and not function anymore – so this style of GURT is not 100.00% fool-proof. However even in that case the remaining two functional genes would not spread sterility because you would need all three genes to bring about sterility. Still no scientific justification for Shiva’s declaration about ‘spreading sterility,’ however it is possible that a few transgenes of the other traits in the crop could still leak out on rare occasions.  At Genetic Maize Anastasia argues that a different style of GURT would be a better choice for preventing gene flow.

The prevention of gene flow is an interesting issue when it comes to GURTs. On one hand, companies want to make money selling their GE seeds and not have to chase patent infringers for saving their seeds. So the biological reification of the legal landscape seems to be what the opponents are the most afraid of. On the other hand, GURTs can be seen as a layer of protection for those who do not want to grow (or eat) genetically engineered crops.

My Mission is to Protect You

In the first Terminator film, Arnold Schwarzenegger played the enemy, a robot bent on terminating Sarah Connor before she could bear Humanity’s Last Hope. In the second film, the same Schwarzenegger instead played the part of the protector of Connor and her son. How can “Terminator” technology instead become a protector working for seed savers rather than against?

To explain this, let me turn to Jeremy at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog. Jeremy is not known for very glowing reviews of genetically engineered crops, although he has said that he tires of the same old pro-anti debate. But recently, he posted a very thoughtful rant on seed saving and GURTs:

When are the knee-jerk opponents of genetically modified crops going to realize that genetic use restriction technologies (GURTs) are their friends?¹

(…)

GURTs thus stop any characters bred into a GMO from being transferred into another variety of the same crop and into the crop’s wild relatives.

So, IIED, remind me, please: why is that a bad thing?

Does it stop the farmer saving seeds? On the contrary, it makes life easier, because the farmer does not have to worry about genetic pollution. She can, of course, still take advantage of good pollution, or introgression, if she wants to.

Does it stop her using farm-saved seed? No, how could it, when any polluted seeds are going to fail to grow. It makes using the farm-saved seed more secure.

Can she still exchange and sell farm-saved seed? You bet, and not only that, but her customers and swap-partners will be grateful that her seeds cannot possibly be polluted.

Opponents of GURTs seem to think that massive influxes of foreign pollen are the norm. They’re not. And I certainly wouldn’t want to accept, even as a gift, seed from someone who knew so little about farming and seed saving that they couldn’t even maintain their own varieties. Cross pollination from a different field is a fascinating and rare source of diversity in farmers’ fields, not the norm. GURTs pose absolutely no threat to farm-saved seed. In fact, I believe that they can enhance genetic diversity (by maintaining the separation between varieties), improve seed quality (for the same reasons) and have no impact at all on the livelihoods of poor farmers.

So you can easily see that GE crops with GURTs in them can instead be used to protect non-GE crops from cross-pollination. Indeed, as many opponents of GE crops argue that farmers are afraid of getting sued for cross-pollination, this fear would be all but eliminated if they were using GURTs. Percy Schmeiser would have remained an obscure canola farmer in Canada. He wouldn’t have been able to spray his fields and collect herbicide-tolerant canola seeds for replanting, and he couldn’t have gotten sued.

There’s something else to think about when it comes to opponents of genetic engineering. Often, the argument is made that GE crops cannot be grown unless there is a 0% risk of affecting the environment, organic farms, etc. Zero percent risk does not exist anywhere in the Universe, but this is as close as it comes. Essentially, the most hardcore anti-GE voices out there are asking for GURTs, whether or not they are aware of it. The more you demand absolute exclusion of cross-pollination in biosafety regulations, the more incentive you are giving biotech companies to develop terminator technologies. If you really cannot stomach GURTs, then maybe pushing a little less hard on absolute separation would be tactically smarter (just a little advice).

GURTs are not opposed for scientific reasons – the pseudo-biological reasons given by Shiva et al are a scientific veneer on what is really an economic argument. They fear consolidation of the seed market and corporate control of the food supply. But as Jeremy has demonstrated, the seed-saving diva Shiva might find GURTs to be her best ally in keeping a GE-free farm-saved seed supply in circulation amongst poor farmers. If a GURT can prevent the flow of patented transgenes into openly-traded seed supplies, it would instead be a A T-101 working to protect her effort from Monsanto’s T-1000. Ironic, isn’t it?

I’m not advocating the use of GURTs, lest anybody misunderstand me. (Although I could form a cogent argument in favor of GURTs in pharma-crops.) But there is more to this trait than meets the eye, and I think that it has become a lightning-rod issue that is less clear-cut than its opponents make it out to be. The Terminator can be sent to kill, but it can also be sent to protect. Discussions about the use of technology so often hinge on these kinds of dualities, which is why we need to discuss these things in a more sensible (and scientific) fashion.

I’ll leave you with Jeremy’s dynamite conclusion.

I hold no brief for or against GMOs, though I do think they have yet to prove themselves in the areas where they make the loudest claims. This is not about GMOs. It is about honesty. Any opponent of GMOs, however good the rest of their arguments might be, immediately loses my respect if they are also against GURTs.

*Arnold voice*: “Respect Terminated.”

There were a couple slight problems, such as how the article was framed at the beginning – assuming that banning GE crops protects biodiversity. But this is partly addressed later in the article. This was my favorite passage:

When the Straight arrived on a hot day in February, María Mercedes Roca, a professor of biotechnology and an outspoken advocate for GM crops, immediately launched into a defence of GM crops with an attack on conventional farming practices.

“Managing diseases the way we have done for the last four or five decades with chemical pesticides doesn’t work because we are creating resistance to chemicals,” she argued. For Roca, GM crops are an environmentally friendly technology that humans can use to meet growing demands for food.

A former member of Greenpeace and now serving on Honduras’s National Committee for Biosafety, Roca said that Zamorano has conducted biosafety trials for Monsanto. She maintained that risks associated with GM crops have been greatly exaggerated. As an example, she showed the Straight a Honduran newspaper clipping that quoted a member of parliament who claimed that GM maize grown in Honduras was linked to the spread of HIV.

Walking Zamorano’s fields, Roca listed opponents’ concerns about GM crops and then quickly explained why she has concluded that each one is baseless.

The risk of cross-pollination is nothing new to agriculture and has been dealt with for hundreds of years, she explained. At Zamorano, crops are planted at different times, fields growing different crops are separated by a minimum of 20 metres, and four-metre-high walls of king grass separate fields to catch seeds travelling in the wind.

Health and environmental concerns related to Bt-modified crops are equally unfounded, Roca continued, making no effort to hide her frustration. After more than a decade of scientific research and commercial production in the U.S., “there is no evidence that suggests that transgenic crops are worse for the environment or worse for human health than their conventional counterparts,” she claimed.

Roca conceded that the relatively high cost of GM seeds is prohibitive for many poor farmers. But she noted that nobody is forcing anybody to grow GM crops.

For subsistence farmers who don’t have access to high-quality soil, fertilizer, and irrigation, GM crops often don’t make sense, Roca said. “On the other hand, if you even have the bare minimum, it pays. And if you are an industrial producer, it makes every sense.”

A former member of Greenpeace, too! Interesting.

By William Harvey:

As I always say, “All we know is still infinitely less than all that remains unknown.” As a statement of fact, it is plainly obvious, but what is less obvious is that it also makes a splendid guiding principle for life.

I try as best I can to base my life in the best that science has to offer, but I know (more than most it seems) that often times, science does not have all the information we need to make decisions. In many areas of science, from global warming to evolutionary biology, there are gaps in our knowledge that make deciding on a course of action difficult. So I think we need to return to some of the fundamentals.

Some scientists say that we don’t know enough about global warming, that the gaps in our knowledge of climate science are too big to make policy decisions based upon it. We could just listen to the majority of climate scientists, but ‘consensus’ is not a reliable guide for truth – it merely reflects the current state of knowledge, which in science, is always changing. But what is not changing is that large corporations continue to profit off of climate science denialism, and the risk of inaction outweighs the risk of action.

In evolution, creationists often point to ‘gaps’ in evolution, such as between one fossil and another, and are fond at pointing out when a new fossil turns up that the number of gaps have increased. I think they have a very valid point, and it got me thinking about food safety in the same terms. We are currently grappling with huge gaps in our food safety net, with salmonella-contaminated peanuts and more, and people are calling for more regulations and more checks to fill in those gaps.

In the case of genetic engineering, I have come across studies that claim that GMOs are safe based upon a protein analysis here, or a microarray there. What these researchers are admitting by even doing this research is that there are huge safety risks involved in genetic modification, and they are hard at work filling those gaps in the GMO safety net after-the-fact.

Or post-mortem, I should say. A scientist and author, Jeffrey Smith, has chronicled a laundry list of food safety hazards created by genetic engineering, from dead sheep to increases in allergies. Merely from growing GMO soy in England in 1999, the harvest at the end of the season was enough to increase soy allergies by a whopping 50% earlier the same year. Genetic engineers are frantically trying to figure out what went wrong, while nations around the world (except for the totalitarian regimes of China, Brazil, Cuba, Australia, and the US) continue to reject GMOs.

How did these food risks slip through the thin safety net? Followup studies on the proteins introduced have found nothing, nor have studies that look at the changes in gene expression caused by introducing a foreign gene. Apparently, the changes caused by genetic engineering are less than those caused by traditional breeding.

But every time they close one gap, they open up two more. Sure, the gene expression is below the natural variation, but this just means that that is not the reason why GMOs are unsafe. That gap is filled, but it opens up even more gaps – researchers now have to investigate every single gene that was affected! If those genes are not sufficient to explain what we think is going on, then they have to sink deeper into the mire of endless scientific experimentation.

You may call it ‘moving the goalposts,’ but as long as science continues to not find the danger that we are looking for in GMOs, the danger must still lurk somewhere in the gaps in our knowledge. Only by knowing the totality of everything there is to know about each GMO, from genomics, to transcriptomics, proteomics, and epi-genomics, phenomics, and nutrigenomics will we ever have enough information to state that a GMO is safe to eat.

This may make the pro-biotech folks balk – how can they ever pay for all of this – but that is the genius of the precautionary principle. By weighing down GMO approval with more exacting regulatory hurdles, it will not be worth it to try to use genetic engineering at all – and the use of this corporate technology will dry up. As long as we can stay one step ahead of the science with regulatory policies, we can prevent this scourge from continuing to spread all over the planet.

William Harvey is the Director of Global GMO Policy at Greenpeace International. He makes his own Biodynamic Wine from the safety of Marin County, which is GE Free.

Well, I think if you are a plant breeding student, a breeder looking to train a new workforce, or someone who’s really just curious about how you can possibly make seeds to grow ‘seedless’ watermelons, you’ll like this video. Written and narrated by Yours Truly, and painstakingly stitched together by UW’s own Clark Thompson, with help from a whole array of resources and experts, I give you:

Pollination Methods: Cucurbits

(It may take a minute to load)

Previously, I have also completed one on corn, which you can see at the University of Wisconsin’s Plant Breeding and Plant Genetics website here. If you want to see a higher-resolution version of the cucurbit video, go here. Enjoy!

If you really like it, I would appreciate a good rating on this video on Youtube!