Unapproved genetically modified wheat from Monsanto found in Oregon field

Washington Post ^ | May 30, 2013 | Steven Mufson

[Ron C.]

Japan, the largest market for U.S. wheat exports, suspended imports from the United States and canceled a major purchase of white wheat on Thursday after the recent discovery of unapproved genetically modified wheat in an 80-acre field in Oregon.

How the altered crop made its way to the Oregon field remains a mystery. The strain was developed by Monsanto to make wheat resistant to the company’s own industry-leading weed killer. Monsanto tested the type of altered seed in more than a dozen states, including Oregon, between 1994 and 2005, but it was never approved for commercial use.

Yet the Agriculture Department reported that recent tests identified the strain after an Oregon farmer trying to clear a field sprayed Monsanto’s herbicide, Roundup, and found that the wheat could not be killed.

The report rattled U.S. wheat markets. In addition to Japan’s action, the European Union, which imports more than 1 million tons of U.S. wheat a year, said that it was following developments “to ensure E.U. zero-tolerance policy is implemented.” It asked Monsanto to help detection efforts in Europe.

[MarMema]

Most studies seem to show an enhanced toxicity because of the adjuvants. And that makes sense since that is what adjuvants are supposed to do, be enhancers. To suggest it is only the adjuvants involved in any kind of cell death is not going to fly far.

Dish soap doesn't have warnings on it for skin irritation last time I checked. Nor do people swallowing dish soap suffer from renal impairment and sometimes death.

People who have deliberately swallowed Roundup have died in a few hours. I seriously doubt a surfactant did this.

Soap is intended to kill bacteria, not human cells in culture - which none of us have sitting around on our kitchen counters, and admittedly can be tough to keep alive at times ( unless it is the HELA immortalized line, ha ha - that's a great book btw!)

Oh and back to the original topic, which was I think damage to reproduction, here is another mention of it. hope this link works

[Neoliberalnot]

Typical retort from a lib failing to recognize a simple typo. Get real.

All the available scientific papers I have read indicate there is nothing wrong with GMOs. We have been consuming such for about 2 decades without ill effects in humans and animals. The fear-mongers are largely led by crooked lawyers making money from bogus lawsuits—of course, what is new here. We have been genetically modifying plants for thousands of years in the field and just because we move to a more efficient and selective method by doing the same on a bench-top in a lab is little different.

Again, lawyers bringing bogus, but money-making, lawsuits is the biggest driver for opposing GMOs.

[Texas Fossil]

Yes, there was a study done in Colorado which found some cross pollination was possible for up to a mile from the variety tested for cross pollination.

They were testing the gene for round up resistance. They sprayed fields in the area around the test plot and the variability of cross pollination was amazing.

General conclusion was that cross contamination in handling was a major issue that is hard to address. I am aware of that. We plant, grow, store and process our seed on our own farms. We are the only ones who handle it, Planting through point of sale. If I have contamination, it is our fault, not that of others. I know how careful we are and we seldom have issues.

[Cold Heat]

Soros is obsessed with only one thing, making profits. His gifts to liberal groups and his efforts to strengthen liberal press agencies are to establish socialism in the US. Because he is a liberal. In the Gates family.....Melinda is the liberal, Bill just goes along. What you don't understand about the uber rich is that much of what they do regarding liberal causes is to keep the poor and the ignorant rabble from coming up the driveway with torches and pitchforks. It's a tactic. With some exceptions and that is why you can't pigeon hole them. Soros is indeed a dangerous man, but the Gates's are just pitiful people with far to much money. And Warren Buffet is a old fool who has lost his ability to insult people and enjoy it. He just rolls with the flow. Trying very hard to act and look like a normal guy so that the pitchforks don't come after him too.

They all have nothing to worry about from conservatives. The people they worry about are the liberals who will eat them if they disappoint.

[Neoliberalnot]

There have been many long-term studies on GMOs. Simply check the literature for yourself. I agree that most people eat too many processed foods and not enough fruits, vegetables and lean meat. My Dad always said if it comes in a bag or a box, don’t eat it. GMOs does not mean processed—they too can be unprocessed and healthy to consume.

All the available scientific papers I have read indicate there is nothing wrong with GMOs. We have been consuming such for about 2 decades without ill effects in humans and animals. The fear-mongers are largely led by crooked lawyers making money from bogus lawsuits—of course, what is new here. We have been genetically modifying plants for thousands of years in the field and just because we move to a more efficient and selective method by doing the same on a bench-top in a lab is little different.

Again, lawyers bringing bogus, but money-making, lawsuits is the biggest driver for opposing GMOs.

[Valpal1]

No patent is forever. Plant patents are good for 20 years, no renewals.

http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/plant/#2

Stop spreading incorrect information like it’s truth.

[Black Agnes]

The Gates do nothing but spend their money teaching impoverished women to abort their unnecessary children.

http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mos/mos_07billionaires.html

“Who is the biggest funder of anti–people population control programs in the world? If you answered “the U.S. government,” you would be wrong. A small group of the world’s wealthiest individuals and their foundations collectively fronts more money for the abortion, sterilization and contraception of the human race than Washington.

This billionaire boys club includes such plutocrats as Bill Gates (No. 1 at $63 billion), Warren Buffet (No. 4 at $28 billion), and Ted Turner (No. 25 at $9 billion).

These men all have billions on their minds, and not just in their bank accounts. They believe that overpopulation is the greatest threat to the planet, “the single most important issue facing mankind today,” brays Ted Turner, founder of the Cable News Network (CNN). “

You’re thinking of the Bill Gates we all knew and lampooned back in the 80’s and early/mid 90’s. Once he got admitted to the world elite he changed. Bigtime.

As for Buffet:

” Buffet’s favorite charity, at least to judge by his giving, is an obscure entity with the studiously neutral name of International Projects Assistance Services (IPAS). According to a Business Week report, the foundation’s “1999 contribution of $2.5 million is part of a five–year, $20 million commitment, which will enable IPAS to double its capacity.”

Double its capacity in what? Aborting very small babies up to twelve weeks of age by means of a hand–held suction pump, that’s what.

As it turns out, IPAS is the principal manufacturer and distributor of the manual vacuum aspirators, or MVAs, used by the UN Population Fund, and other groups. This deadly device is actually a manually operated suction pump that can be used perform, in IPAS words, “elective abortion through the first trimester.” When the tip is inserted into the uterus, and the operator pulls the plunger on the 50 cc syringe, enough vacuum is created at the tip to suck a tiny baby right out of her mother’s womb.4

Nor is IPAS’s abortion advocacy an anomaly. A list of Buffet’s charitable contributions read like a veritable rogue’s gallery of abortion promoters and providers. Such groups as the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, and Pathfinder International figure prominently. And in a particularly nasty twist, his funding to Planned Parenthood is specifically earmarked to enable particular clinics around the country to perform abortions.5

What would possess a man of obvious intelligence and untold wealth to spend tens of millions of dollars to finance aggressive programs of sterilization and abortion? To put it even more bluntly, why is Warren Buffet obsessed with ridding the globe of “excess” baby humans?

Unlike Turner, Buffet doesn’t bare his soul every time he opens his mouth. Yet the two may have more in common than it appears. His biographer, Roger Lowenstein, reports that Buffet has “a Malthusian dread that overpopulation (will) aggravate problems in all other areas — such as food, housing, even human survival.” And like Turner, Buffet not only rejected, but developed a strong antipathy to, his parent’s Christianity. “

[Black Agnes]

Define ‘long term’. 90 days is not long term.

Try f3 intergenerational studies. Any of those you can find right off the bat?

[Neoliberalnot]

She isn’t interested in the science. I have conducted quite a number of toxicity studies on other chemicals. As you state, glyphosate is about as toxic as table salt.

[Black Agnes]

If you’re going to talk about someone it’s simply polite to ping them.

Have you tested glyphosphate in vivo for more than 90 days.

Yes. Or no.

Have you done multiple generations of in vivo studies.

Yes. Or no.

I’d be happy with an f3 study but f2 would suffice.

[P-Marlowe]

I am opposed to GMO food, and especially the GMO round up resistant foods on several grounds. First of all wheat is the most important food crop in the world. I fear that one of these GMO herbicide resistant wheat seeds is going to either be found to be inherently carcinogenic or that after being saturated with herbicides it will mutate into not only a herbicide resistant wheat seed, but mutate into a food that is actually poisonous.

Then this seed could ultimately implant itself in non GMO wheat fields (as happened here in Oregon) and them the entire world’s wheat crop could be rendered poisonous.

Monsanto is busy playing God. The end result of every endeavor to play God results in the player becoming the servant of Satan.

Cross breeding is using God’s creation to better his creation. GMO methods are dangerous and IMO immoral.

Better Living Through Chemistry? Perhaps. Or perhaps the end of Civilization.

[surroundedbyblue]

I haven’t heard of any lawyers suing GMO producers. Can you enlighten me & provide me with a few cases??

Thanks

[Texas Fossil]

I was not aware that plant patents had 20 year life span. I have never grown seed that is patented. I have a real issue with patenting a species. Life is NOT CREATED by man.

I deal daily with PVPA requirements. They have a 20 year lifespan. And then it becomes public domain.

Are you in the industry?

There are some stiff requirements to be granted protection even for PVPA. But, my experience is that it is not in fact as hard to comply with as the general reading of the law suggests. I have seen some varieties that were horrible that were granted protection. And they were not unique enough in my observations to warrant it.

This is all too often not about improving the product, but about the money string.

[Black Agnes]

I was told the same thing by my pediatrian about BPA. She called concern over exposure to BPS so much ‘plastic hysteria’. Told me there were NO studies indicating it was a problem.

Actually it IS a problem. Turns out none of the studies were intergenerational studies. The one that is indicates it might be a BIG problem. And possibly a reason why there are increasing numbers of infertile 20 somethings.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0055387

For exposure toxicity, f3 studies are the gold standard. If you can’t find one of those for glyphosphate or GMOs you can’t really say they’re safe.

[Mr. Lucky]

All cultivated crops are the result of plant mutation.

[Neoliberalnot]

Good post and a voice of reason. Some of these posters preaching against private enterprise are talking points lifted from left-wing nutjobs.

If people are worried about some company, don’t buy their products. Governments killed in excess of 100 million innocent people in the 20th century. How many did Monsanto kill, but hey, let’s go after “evil” Monsanto. Go figure.

[roamer_1]

Humans have been altering the genetic inheritance of crops and animals for thousands of years. [...] It’s all been modified. Genetically speaking.

No. Husbandry is different than genetic engineering - Husbandry does not allow the crossing of genus... the 'kind' is organically preserved by natural processes.

As in the days of Noah...

[Neoliberalnot]

Good job. We know this, but too many people don’t. I am surprised that this many freepers have been living under a rock of ignorance.

[Carry_Okie]

The bugs in your gut run the whole show.

"Bugs" are critical to a lot more "shows" than that.

A petri dish with this or that cell line isn’t the whole story wrt exposures via diet. There are literally thousands of microbes in your gut. We’ve cataloged very few of them. And what we’ve found is revolutionary. As it turns out, we need them for our own genetic expression and health.

Really, I don't need your "instruction" on this topic. You quite apparently don't know what I do much less what I advocate.

I was writing on this topic of the ecological damage portended by RoundUp ready products fifteen years ago. I was writing about relationships among sheath bacteria, ruminants, and weather five years ago. That study is why my daughter is studying host-specific soil microbe/plant root relationships at Stanford now. She'll be working in a lab dedicated to that study all summer. I've been reading the papers she finds interesting all year. You don't need to tell me about intestinal microflora.

I am not an advocate of RoundUp ready. I don't know where you got the idea that I was. Here's the point: Antibiotics aren't good for you, yet sometimes they can save your life. The same is true of soils, weeds, and herbicides. Weeds can disrupt the entire microbial chain that produces soil. It is true that herbicides can damage soil microbial communities. Which is worse? Nobody knows. We know even less about soil microbes than we do about what is in the animal gut. I have put 25 years of arduous labor restoring native plant habitat. NOBODY has done it as effectively as I have. I have university researchers and professionals visiting my place from hundreds of miles away.

RoundUp was critical to my success. This year, I used less than a quart of it on 14 acres. I don't like using it, but sometimes it is necessary. What I can tell you is that a landscape once overrun with weeds and possessing buy 60 species of plants is now 99.9% native with 371 species of plants, many of which require specific soil microbes to breed. Hence, those bacteria must be there.

What I don't like is Monsanto leveraging protection the public offered them wrecking a very useful tool any more than I appreciate condescending fear mongering from people who clearly have no interest in dealing with relative risk, pretending that there is such a thing as a 'no risk' option. Got it?

The amount of tilling farmers were doing to soils before the invention of RoundUp Ready products was VERY damaging to soil microflora, soil structure, and soil retention. The introduction of RoundUp ready products has vastly reduced much of that damage. That much is proven. True, the long term consequences are not known. So far, I'm not seeing much more than activist fear mongering driven by wealthy foundations with an interest in reducing global population by any means, including starvation.

What has not been admitted by the agricultural community, including many scientists, is the critical need for a pastoral rotation in soil development. Even then, one cannot simply plant grasses and expect the soil microflora to operate correctly. Post disturbance annual forbs play a critical role in developing that soil microbial community.

Guess who is the only researcher anywhere in the Western United States who possesses a landscape wrecked for 200 years by weeds that is now dominated by NATIVE post-disturbance annual forbs? That would be me.

If you knew how much work it is to crawl on your hands and knees for a decade doing work nobody else will do, if you understood the drive it takes, you would have been a bit more circumspect and a lot less condescending.

I grow my own heirloom vegetables and eat them within 30 minutes of picking because the chemicals they produce in response to picking are FAR WORSE than any pesticide available. These chemicals are for the most part, untested, yet they have stood the test of millennia for their ability to deter pests. That is why so many insects are host-specific; their larvae are tolerant to the toxins. You eat 5,000 to 10,000 times by weight naturally occurring carcinogens compared to synthetic chemicals. And yes, this information has been around for over 20 years.

This is about relative and competing risks among numerous hazards. Yet when has life been any different? I own a patent on a business method to manage those competing risks, a system of which a corrupt and incompetent monopoly government is incapable.

I'm going back to my Bromus carinatus harvest. I do it with a hand sickle, a plant at a time. It's going to be over 90° today.

[Cold Heat]

Cigarettes had sutff added to the formulation to make them even more addictive

Really!

It amazes me that you could be on this forum and enjoy it....

But then it seems a lot of people are here because of social reasons and not political.

BTW....the additive case was totally taken out of real context and they made a mountain out of nothing. All quality companies do this, and the small ones really can't afford to they control quality more through their repeated tobacco blending with out doing anything more. This results in occasional batches that are not up to snuff, so to speak.

All the cigarette company did was to monitor the nicotine content in the product they sold and try to make every batch to the same specifications of quality. Since tobaccos vary from growing season to season farm to farm the company had to spend some effort blending and sometimes used additives to guarantee product quality. There nicotine levels were no higher or lower than anyone else's. Just consistent from batch to batch, season to season, year to year, in tar, nicotine, taste. There is no benefit to increasing nicotine levels beyond the advertised amount as more nicotine beyond a certain level can make you sick, or worse you buy less cigarettes. It was a ridiculous assertion!

As a smoker, I know perfectly well that nicotine content varies with brand. Consistency is much more important than content to me. But for the record I smoke Marlboro reds...the short ones in a box. (and I like it)