Bill would hold makers of engineered crops liable for damage

The Ledger ^ | 28 Feb 2007 | Steve Lawrence

[Carry_Okie]

In one breath you claim you're dependent upon glyphosate herbicides, but in the next, you complain about how bad Monsanto is for having developed glyphosate herbicides and in the next breath this all becomes you neighbor's fault because, apparently, he doesn't care about herbicides at all.

No, you can't read. I'm not complaining at all about Monsanto's invention of glyphosate. I am complaining that they intend to destroy its economic usefulness now that their patents have expired while cashing in on the process thanks to preferential government regulation.

If glyphosate is truly "indespensible" in your operation, it may be your practice, not your neighbor's, that fosters the propagation of resistant weeds.

You are dealing in speculation. I am dealing in facts. I don't have resistant weeds, yet. They exist, but they're not here yet. Monsanto is effectively breeding them. Got it?

Roundup is recommended for use on cropland only once each second year.

You truly have no clue what I do. There is no broadcast spraying here. It's all spot application. Some of it is overlaid. Try separating a mix of native clover, exotic clover, chickweed, native grass, and annual bluegrass and native broadleaf shrubs all in the same area on land that's too steep to till. It's a far more demanding problem than an agricultural application.

[Carry_Okie]

There are weeds that have had escapes from glyphosate applications at the labeled rate that now need increased levels.

Correct. I predicted it seven years ago.

If you dump enough glyphosate onto an actively growing plant, at the right time, with surfactant to gain translocation benefits across the outer plant membrane, the plant is going to die.

Everything around it will die too. You are clearly not familiar with dense spot applications in the wild. Variation in surface chemistries and morphologies among densely intermingled species, some pest and some desirable induces complications with which you are not familiar. For example, try a lower concentration spot application on Medicago polymorpha vulgaris vulgaris mixed in among native clovers and perrenial native grasses and what you'll do is kill all the natives and only wing the medicago. If you add surfactant and raise the concentration you'll kill everything but you'll get chickweed from the seed bank tossed into the same mess as the prior year.

An almost unavoidable consequence.

A smart IPM practitioner would...

THIS IS NOT A FARM; this is a habitat restoration project. I can't till. I can't kill everything and start over except in very specialized circumstances. Got it?

Since there are a great variety of pre-emergent herbicides out there in the most common crops, the pre-plant herbicides could be rotated every year, or rotated when the crops involved are rotated.

I'm already using spot applications of pre-emegerence herbicides. When doing so among native plants while trying to re-establish unique local species of annuals, it's a far more sophisticated mapping process than you realize.

For example: the poa annua you speak of can be easily handled in crop areas with pre-plant grass herbicides. In grass areas (ie, poa infesting other grasses, eg, a range situation), there are some new pre-plants being developed/tested that show promise.

I'm already using oryzalin and isoxaben. The latter requries a permit that cost me $500. I have to report every single application.

Glyphosate is absolutely immobile in the soil, is neutralized immediately on contact with the soil, and has no effect on animals whatsoever.

Given that I am operating in the wild in riparian corridors with "endangered" salmon, it's virtually the only herbicide I can use in many instances.

Re glyphosate, No record keeping necessary, no worry about drift issues aside from direct drift of the droplets themselves.

Every time I buy glyphosate it gets reported to the State of California.

Re 2,4-D, that requires a permit too. If I get into concentrations that are really effective, it requires that I hire an applicator. I can't. It's too dangerous.

[Mr. Lucky]

Take a deep breath.

The only reason there are glyphostae resistant plants is because Monsanto invented glyphosate. Regardless of the method of application, gylphosate resistance is effectively eliminated by rotating crops or alternating herbicides. If you're applying glyphosate as a broad spectrum, non-selective herbicide, and are unable to rotate crops, substitute some other burn down such as paraquat in alternating years.

[Carry_Okie]

First, get your license.

In California, the PCA lobbied the State so that it now requires two years of college time taking stupid courses to get the license (something virtually no PCA now in business ever did). I know it would be a big advantage and a lot less headache but I just don't have that kind of time. I wish I'd done it years ago so that I was grandfathered in.

Well, all the doggone hippy environmentalists wanted it that way in California.

The hippies are useful idiots for corporate special interests. That's how regulations really work.

As I've told many, many people who are now small-acreage landowners: if you don't get your applicator's permit, you're not a serious steward of the land.

Oh really? I've been doing this for fifteen years. I have had half a dozen visits by local botanists. To a man, they say that my property is unique, far ahead of anything being done in the entire region. We have everthing from redwood, oak woodland, buckeye & fern stands, grasslands, sand dunes, stream beds and rock walls all interdigitated into a mere 15 acres. Every species here has been photodocumented and validated. To make such a statement without having seen it, is beyond the pale. The purpose of the work is deadly serious.

There are many areas of my land that rarely need herbicides at all any more. It's so clean that I can walk for twenty yards among forty or more native plants without a single non-native plant. Now to give you an idea what an achievement that is, it was infested with everything from broom, eucalyptus, acacia, catsear, hedge parsley, bedstraw, squirreltail fescue... got it? Other areas, such as those getting bombed by my neighbor or a steep fluffy rock wall suddenly revealed to light after removing a stand of bay are more problematic. I seriously suggest that you have no clue what it is to separate Galium parisiense from needlegrass bunches surrounded by native clovers.

Third: modern herbicides (ie herbicides labeled after the mid-90's or so) are not "more toxic" than glyphosate.

Nonsense, and I've been a chemical formulator requiring USDA and FDA approvals. If you had to do what I do in applying them, for example, applying them on the end of a rope dangling over a cliff while simultaneously hand weeding, you'd understand that. As I said, the processes are complex and dangerous. Finally, the purpose of my work is to develop processes that small landowners can use, so in that respect obtaining the PCA would be counterproductive.

As to the green book, I'll take a look, but I seriously doubt it would be of much use. Most of the information I have obtained from such sources is notoriously unreliable.

[Carry_Okie]

Equine feces. It has more to do with how it has been used.

Regardless of the method of application, gylphosate resistance is effectively eliminated by rotating crops or alternating herbicides.

Now listen carefully, YOU DON'T ROTATE CROPS IN THE WILD. Alternatives in riparian areas that don't require massive bureaucracy are few. Good grief.

[Taichi]

I'm not a farmer I just put in a big garden every year. I also have a very large natural area filled with native plants that I call five acres of unmowed pasture, I don't try to tend it very often so I'm not in your position. But it seems you are addressing the issue from a different point of view than the rest of us.
I said in the beginning that I thought most of the uproar over the engineered seed had died down because the benefits were out stripping the mostly perceived problems. People were growing better crops and therefore prospering. You,no offense, seem to be taking what I would call a liberals stance and are looking for the harm as it affects you personally.
The round up resistant weeds are a problem for you,with what is essentially a flower garden. Proper farming practice avoids this dilemma and allows the crop grower the benefit.
If you are growing a native plant area then you might want to approach the weed problem with a more natural method.
Weeds are part of nature too... you should see the broom sage out behind my house, I keep telling my wife it's pretty. She's not going to buy that much longer though.

[Carry_Okie]

But it seems you are addressing the issue from a different point of view than the rest of us.

Correct. I am focused upon managing the human-wildland interface and getting the government out of that business. I want to empower landowners in a new industry: habitat management, currently the exclusive province of an armed monopolist. You can read more about that here and here.

You,no offense, seem to be taking what I would call a liberals stance and are looking for the harm as it affects you personally.

I am merely using myself as an example of a person in the restoration business harmed by preferential government regulation of Monsanto.

If you are growing a native plant area then you might want to approach the weed problem with a more natural method.

I use everything from herbicides to allelopathic chemistry.

Weeds are part of nature too...

Of the 97 species of exotic plants on our property, only 7 are benign (incapable of displacing competing native varieties).

[Mr. Lucky]

OK, so alternate herbicides. (...and if you have to get a license to do so, take the time to get one)

My point is this: Monsanto's development of Roundup as an over the crop selective herbicide has done more to improve the efficiency of American agriculture than anything else in my lifetime. 30 years ago, the notion that a farmer could not only raise a crop without tearing up the soil and exposing it to erosion, but could do so at less cost and with a higher yield than with conventional tillage would have been laughable. That's how we farm now.

[Carry_Okie]

My point is this: Monsanto's development of Roundup as an over the crop selective herbicide has done more to improve the efficiency of American agriculture than anything else in my lifetime.

Then the users can pay for the risk in the insurance to cover a potential screw-up.

[VxH]

[I'll probably regret asking, but just what "serious externalities" do you think occur when crops are cross pollinated?]

Here's a new  word for you BIOPHARMING.

How about a little Aprotinin with your cornflakes?

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=BIOPHARMING+Aprotinin

 

[Mr. Lucky]

You'll have to forgive me for not worshipping at the alter of Friends of the Earth.

[VxH]

So I take it, then, that you're OK with genetically modifying corn so that it produces pharmaceutically active proteins for medicinal purposes?

You're also OK with it if the pollen from these modified corn plants happens to make its way into fields of corn intended to be consumed as human food - Is that correct?

[Mr. Lucky]

Yes. That's correct.

[Mr. Lucky]

Yes. That's correct.

[VxH]

>>Yes. That's correct.

And when crops of corn intended for human food are pollinated  by GM pollen, and that food corn begins to produce Aprotinin, you're OK with that?

You're OK with contaminating food crops with genes that produce medicinal proteins?

[Mr. Lucky]

Your mistake is in assuming that the genetic trait you're worried about isn't quickly lost when the corn isn't specifically bred to propagate the trait.

Depending upon the definition being used, somewhere between 35% - 95% of the US corn crop is genetically altered in some form or another. Sure there's a risk of someone with a food allergy eating something he shouldn't, but to require the world to starve because someone might eat a food he shouldn't seems a little bit like overkill.

If you have a source for your concern from a legitimate agricultue publication, I would be happy to read it. Frends of the Earth is not one of those sources. I suspect none of them have ever bred corn, planted corn, raised corn, or harvested corn. They're just not much of a source for information on corn.

[VxH]

[Your mistake is in assuming that the genetic trait you're worried about isn't quickly lost when the corn isn't specifically bred to propagate the trait.]

 

Please provide data from field tests showing ZERO presence of transgenetically produced Aprotinin in unintentionally cross pollinated plants.

 

 

[VxH]

[isn't quickly lost]

Even if the trait didn't make it past the first generation (which we'll wait for you to prove) it is unacceptable for a single generation of food crops to be cross pollinated with trans-genetic medical proteins - such as the Aprotinin that is being produced in corn. If the genes are expressed in the pollinated plants, the consumer will be getting Aprotinin in the food produced from the harvested corn.

Aprotinin is an anticoagulant, what most people would refer to as a "blood thinner".

Anticoagulants are the active ingredient in some rat poisons.

So, Mr. Lucky, how much Decon can we mix in with your cornflakes?

[Mr. Lucky]

Aprotinin exists in nature. We're all exposed to it, like it or not. Whether exposure is benign, beneficial or deleterious depends upon the concentration and frequency of exposure.

If you have science to support your claim that the aprotinin found in corn, especially 2nd and subsequent generation corn, presents a public health hazard, you haven't referenced it.

[VxH]

[Whether exposure is benign, beneficial or deleterious depends upon the concentration and frequency of exposure.]

 

So OK, I guess we can mix a little random amount of Dcon into your cornflakes and then just kinda wait and see what happens.  

 

[If you have science to support your claim that the aprotinin found in corn, especially 2nd and subsequent generation corn, presents a public health hazard, you haven't referenced it.]

 

The burden of proof rests upon those who want to utilize these techniques.     IMHO it is their responsibility to do the testing to prove what they are doing is NOT a public health hazard.  The possible dangers are obvious to anyone with common sense.   It's just plain common sense to do the testing and document  that there is no danger. 

 

In fact, isn't this why food additives are under the jurisdiction of the FDA - to investigate and limit or exclude the use of harmful additives?

 

 

It appears that the major point of the bill referenced by this thread is to penalize the responsible entities if contamination does occur.

 

If there's no contamination, then there are no penalties so I don't know why, if you genuinely believe there's no problem,  you're so opposed to the proposed legislation.