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- To: Multiple recipients of list GARDENS <G*@LSV.UKY.EDU>
- Subject: Are we going to far?
- From: J* M* <J*@BROWN.EDU>
- Date: Tue, 1 Apr 1997 05:35:14 -0500
- References: <GRAND%LISTS.GARDENS.109780@brownvm.brown.edu>
I was reading Science News today and came across a shocking article. I am very distressed that this research will effect the way we eat and even on what we will be growing in our gardens, so I am posting it here for comments. Although this is very long, I think it is quite important. The Food and Drug Administration, better known as the FDA, has mandated standard labeling for all processed food. This requires manufactures to use a uniform portion size and clearly label their product with the caloric, fat, protein, carbohydrate, and vitamin contents as a percent of the daily values of an adult 2000 calorie diet. Until now, fruits and vegetables have been excluded from this labeling because of the variability in the size and nutrient values of produce. Even hybrid crops, although more uniform than open pollinated crops, vary too much for accurate labeling. For food retailers such as grocery stores, the variability in size alone adds millions of dollars to the annual handing costs of produce. Fast food restaurants also spend thousands of dollars per day sorting lettuce, tomatoes and potatoes to assure the uniform quality of their salads and hamburgers. For these reasons, the federal government, using NIH and NSF as funding agents, has joined most large retail food such as A&P and many restaurants such as Wendy's to form a program to fund research into uniform hybrid crops. The plan was to come up with ways of creating highly uniform crops, in both size and nutrient value, which would save millions of dollars in the handling and processing of food. Dr. Janice Duncan heads a major plant research facility at Rutgers University in New Jersey that receives much of its funding from this program. She is the daughter of Dr. Samuel Duncan who developed the first tomato that could be shipped without damage. Following in her father's footsteps, she has been able to darken or lighten selective areas of the tomato's skin by carefully manipulating the genes which control the tomatoes pigments. An altered tomato looks just like a regular tomato except for a small area covered with black stripes. These stripes can function as a bar code at the supermarkets checkout. The identification bar code is only the start of her research. Because the dark growth is simulated differently by the different nutrient levels in the tomato, the gene can be fine tuned to produce bars whose width represent the actual number of calories, carbohydrates and vitamins in the fruit. For diabetics or even dieters, this means no more guessing how much sugar they are consuming when they eat an apple. They just run the apple across a bar code reader on their personal computer and the nutrient value is displayed instantaneously! At last the FDA has an accurate method for labeling produces' nutrient values. This research is so fundamental and important that the prestigious journal Nature dedicate its entire April 1997 issue to articles describing her research and its implications. However, because of the extreme sensitivity of the research, the journal only describes her watermark accomplishments in the most general of terms. Still, all agree the actual field tests were astounding. Dr. Duncan writes about one experiment with lettuce. "We were able to take the basic genes of head lettuce, the cellulose gene from an oak tree, and combine these with the vining genes of a melon, to create a head of lettuce that grew surrounded with a hard cellulose skin. With further tweaking, the skin was made to grow into a uniform, almost rectangular box, complete with bar code labels. The box can be picked from the vine and shipped directly to the supermarkets. My graduate students had lots of fun altering the genes to make the box different colors with different designs." Retailers are delighted about her results. No more refrigeration, misting, rotting or disposal of old produce. No more produce clerks spending hours putting tiny labels on each fruit, or checkout girls fumbling for the right produce code. Lettuce now can come in sealed boxes that can be stored on shelves for years. The only down side was the taste tests. Tasters described eating this lettuce akin to eating cardboard. In response to that criticism, Dr. Duncan replied, "They said the same about my father's tomatoes, but they [the tomatoes] became an instant commercial success. Anyway, he is rich and they aren't." Dr. Duncan goes on to report that her tomato and lettuce plants do not produce viable seed. They can only be grown by cloning. Thus she named her plants "coded-clones." Why is this so important? Now, not only can plants be developed, patented, and owned by a commercial interest, but for the first time, only the company, or its authorize dealers, will be able to produce more plants. Thus commercial interest can expect to reap its full reward when sowing its research. With no possibility of illegal propagation, the FDA expects many new companies to arise whose major product is coded-clone vegetables, fruits, flowers, even shrubs and lawn grasses. Newt Grinich states this program "is a perfect example of how the federal government and the free market system should work together." The US government is urging people to invest in this type of research. In fact, President and Hillary Clinton, the Speaker of the house and numerous representatives from both parties are writing laws to help the new coded-clone companies prosper. They are even investing in these companies, thus showing the American people their faith in this area of research. (First however, a few out of date conflict of interest laws must be changed; unfortunately, Luddites such as Senator Ted Kennedy are fighting these changes.) As each vegetable and fruit species is processed into its coded-clone form, the FDA will ban consuming, growing, seed saving, grafting, or other propagation of related non-codable-clonable species. This includes in both commercial farms and home gardens. When questioned about the inclusion of home gardens into the law, the FDA's response was "We must protect the consumer. By requiring all home garden plants to be coded-clones, the home gardener will have uniform produce that he/she can rely on for good nutrition. Without the Nutritional Fact Bar Code, tens of thousands of home gardeners may be poisoning themselves yearly by eating tomatoes, strawberries and asparagus without knowing exactly what the plants contains, using only the vague concept of good taste as a guideline. The plant may be deficient in iron, Vitamin A, or even contain excessive amounts of lead, mercury or chromium. This ban, although on the surface harsh, in reality, will help home gardeners from unwittingly harming themselves, their unsuspecting dinner guests, and their innocent children" The DEA, with its excellent record against drug smugglers and drug growers, will be in charge of enforcing these so called "heritage plant laws." Its helicopters will constantly patrol the skies, looking for traces of illegally grown vegetables. When questioned about the additional costs associated with such patrols, the DEA czar responded that the program would be self supporting, even profit making. First, according to the current drug laws, the property where an illegal tomato is found growing can and will be confiscated by the federal government. Current seizure laws do not even require the owner be convicted of any violation for the property to be forfeit! Second, FOX TV has signed a contract for exclusive rights to broadcast the real time busts of tomato dealers. Every Friday night, at 8 PM EST, on live television, DEA and ATF agents will break down another door of a suspected heritage vegetable grower. The audience will see first hand the pots on the stove cooking down tomatoes into sauce, much like cocaine is cooked into crack. They will see the piles of illicit tomatoes, peeled garlic, parsley and basil; they will see the sharpened knives, the Victorio strainer, the pressure cooker, the garlic presses--all horrible instruments of the home cannier. Most terribly, they will see the jars: the rows of glass jars, each carefully sterilized, labeled, with their brass lids brightly gleaming. Jars waiting to be filled with the fruits of illicit plants; jars whose contents would slowly poison an entire family. The audience will thrill as the ATF agents crush tomatoes into pulp with their steeltoed boots, chop the garlic and basil plants down with their razor sharp machetes; all to the sound of glass jars being smashed against the walls. Viewers will cheer as the coded-clone criminals are handcuffed and forced to lie face down in the filth they grew themselves. The audience will feel proud of their government and the DEA cops for bringing these heinous criminals to justice. TV screens will flash a 900 number for citizens to call to report possible heritage growers in their neighborhood, and display information about the profit sharing possibilities of seized property resulting from viewers calls. In all, it will make for great television and sell lots of deodorant, beer, and cars. As important as this part of Dr. Duncan's research is, it pales compared to her final accomplishment in plant genetics: the step essential to ensure uniformity and safety of our entire food supply. Dr. Duncan states, "plant growth varies according to the amount and type of fertilizer supplied. Farmers often use different fertilizers, compost or even manure of unknown quality to grown plants. I was able to alter a gene to omit a vital step in the complicated process of photosynthesis. Thus, unless a certain enabler is provided externally to the plant, the plant is unable to photosynthesis and will die. I expect we will be able to incorporate this gene in my coded-clones within the next decade." Because of the many degrees of freedom in DNA replication, the subtle but important atomic bond angles, each enabler can be different for each cultivar. The enabler sequence is also a million bit trap door code. In other words, even having the enabler and knowing the missing DNA strand, does not allow one to work back and discover how to synthesize the enabler. Only the parent companies that tailored the gene defect will have the enabler formula. The enabler is combined with a properly balanced chemical fertilizer for the plant. Because this fertilizer must be used exactly in accordance with the directions--too much or too little will kill the plant--vegetables and fruits of coded-clones will grow, look and taste exactly the same: all the lettuce boxes will pack together neatly on a supermarket shelf. Dr. Duncan goes on, "I also engineered this gene to be dominant and easily cross with related species and even distant cousins. Thus all hybrids will inherit the missing photosynthesis step, not sufficient to kill the first F1 hybrid offspring, but each hybrid generation will be weaker until at last the plants are no long viable. Before the hybrids die out, they will further spread the gene to their virgin kin. This means that wherever the coded-clones are grown, the wild species or related domesticated plants will be eradicated in only a few generations. Soon we will no longer even need the coded-clone police. (Of course by then the TV rating will have fallen off.)" Since nature does not respect political boundaries, we expect coded-clone plants will quickly displace the inferior heritage species. This means that our imported food supply will be nearly as safe for consumers as the food grown locally. As side benefit, every country will have to buy its vegetable plants and enabler from us alone, correcting our trade balance. Even more importantly, once Cuba, North Korea, and China must buy our enabler or starve, the US can force these governments to give their people the same freedom our citizens enjoy. Furthermore, wild species such as golden rod and ragweed, a major causes of allergies, will be eliminated as their editable cousins are planted nearby. True a few bird and insects species may also become rare or extinct, but our polls show most people would give up a few birds to be free from allergies. After all, who wouldn't be happy with a perfect dandelion free lawn and no bird mess on their car windshield? Dr. Duncan predicts that most people will ecstatically embrace her new nature. "However, we botanists," Dr. Duncan conceded, "realize the import of species diversity, the necessity of random evolution, albeit messy and inefficient. Thus I envision setting aside a few dozen specialty reservations around the world, run by universities, that will be use as storehouses of the non-coded-cloned plants. At Rutgers, our specialty will be my love: trees. We will put all the heritage trees into a tree museum and charge the people a dollar and a half just to see em. Of course, 'No walking on the Grass or Hugging the Trees.'" -John_Mertus@Brown.EDU Zone: Twilight April 1, 1997
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