Genetically Altered Canola Is Now Interbreeding with Non-Modified Types in the Environment at Large — the U.S. Department of Agriculture Once Pretended this Would Not Happen

07 October 2011

Does corporate money routinely overwhelm regulators’ scientific common sense?

What follows is not an argument against genetic manipulation. The desirability of modifying agricultural crops in favorable ways is obvious.

For example, corn that has been engineered to include Bacillus thuringiensis protein-coding genes resists damage from the European corn borer. I’ve written about that here.

And, since “Bt” is “natural” and wide-spread, one can argue that adding Bt-producing genes to an agricultural crop is not especially likely to cause catastrophic ecosystemic effects.

On the other hand, manipulating plant genes to include properties not obviously already extant in nature understandably concerns people.

For example, organic farmers and some consumers worried about herbicide-resistant alfalfa:

What would happen to the ecosystem if it spread?

What impact would such “contamination” have on organic alfalfa growers?

What about the animals and people that eat it?

The United States Department of Agriculture ignored these concerns. It approved the release of glyphosate-resistant alfalfa without government regulation, even to the point of letting one of the plant’s self-interested manufacturers write the “safety” guidelines for planting the experimental crop. I wrote about that here.

At about the same time, an Oregon scientist (Dr. Carol Mallory-Smith) found that a similarly engineered bentgrass had escaped its supposed “experimental” confinement and was growing willy nilly many miles away. I examined that issue here.

And, two days ago, another group of scientists reported that herbicide-resistant canola has not only escaped its agricultural fields, but is breeding with non-modified canola plants to produce never-before-seen canola strains.

In other words, if one is inclined to sensationalize, this is the paradigm for Hollywood’s “where will it end” horror genre.

Even if one is not inclined to dramatize, we have to ask, “What the heck were you guys thinking?”

Canola as the environment’s GMO (genetically modified organism) canary

Here’s what the canola team found:

The escape of GE [genetically engineered] B. napus [canola] in North Dakota is extensive. . . . Brassica napus was present at 45% . . . of the road survey sampling sites.

Of those, 80% . . . expressed at least one transgene:

41% . . . were positive for only . . . glyphosate resistance;

39% . . . were positive for only . . . glufosinate resistance;

and 0.7% . . . expressed both forms of herbicide resistance, a phenotype not produced by seed companies . . . .

Among the archived specimens, 86.8% were sexually mature varying in developmental stage from flower bud to mature fruit with seeds.

At the time of roadside sampling, in-field canola was non-flowering having matured to the 4-leaf to pre-bolting stage . . . .

This striking difference in flowering phenology suggests that flowering canola in roadside habitats may have originated from the previous generation's seed bank rather than from seed spill during the current growing season.

These results support the hypothesis that roadside populations of canola in the U.S. are likely persistent from year to year, are capable of hybridizing to produce novel genotypes, and that escaped populations can contribute to the spread of transgenes outside of cultivation.

© 2011 Meredith G. Schafer, Andrew A. Ross, Jason P. Londo, Connie A. Burdick, E. Henry Lee, Steven E. Travers, Peter K. Van de Water, Cynthia L. Sagers, The Establishment of Genetically Engineered Canola Populations in the U.S., PLoS ONE 6(10): e25736. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0025736 (05 October 2011) (paragraph split)

But the badness doesn’t end there — the team suspects that the United States is paying less attention to GMO environmental risks than other nations are

The canola team said:

Reports in Canada of feral populations of GE canola emerged soon after its commercial release there.

Confirmation of GE pollen and crop movement among fields in Australia, U.K., Germany and France and Japan followed shortly thereafter.

Ours is the first report of feral canola in the U.S. more than a decade after its commercial release.

This delay raises questions of whether adequate oversight and monitoring protocols are in place in the U.S. to track the environmental impact of biotech products.

“But, Pete, who cares?”

Not only do these genetic changes affect the crops involved, they potentially affect the ecosystems in which the modified plants appear.

Like climate change, this represents another grandiose experiment on a planetary scale.

Yet the public, for the most part, seems oblivious. At least theoretically, what you don’t know can hurt you.

The moral? — When institutions have been captured by stupid people or financial greed, we’re in trouble

Supposedly, institutions exist to magnify our individual intelligences and control our baser impulses. When they do the reverse, we’ve got significant problems.

Institutionalized stupidity is the bane of humankind.

PeteFree.com

Genetically Altered Canola Is Now Interbreeding with Non-Modified Types in the Environment at Large — the U.S. Department of Agriculture Once Pretended this Would Not Happen