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Re: The dirt on geneticly engineer seed.

Mark,
Thanks for sending this..I would like your permission to forward this to another
list please advise me of your consent.
Connie

Mark Speakman wrote:

> Organic food supply under attack all over
>
> Joe Toth
> (nntp-xfer.ncsu.edu!gatech!news-out.communique.net!news3.epix.net!cdc2.cdc.n
> et!neJoe Toth)
> Fri, 21 Feb 1997 15:21:16 -0500
>
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> Joe Toth: "CA Organic Act does not bar use of genes tinkered seeds!"
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>
> At the moment organic foods are thought safe. But soon we will not
> be so sure.
>
> If that safety were gone, only home-grown food or community support farm
> food
> grown far enough away from genetically manipulated / genetically
> engineered (g.e)
> plants, or sprouts could be natural and safe,
> given that the seeds were not g.e'd. We would also have to consider the
> soil
> in which they were grown.
>
> 1. In 1996 there were only about two seed companies that sold the
> genetically manipulated seed. Next year Monsanto predicts that 90
> seed companies will be established in the marketplace. These large
> biotech-chemical companies are moving to control the entire world's
> food supply through genetic manipulation of national and
> international seed. Monsanto has made a deal with Empresas La
> Moderna, a seed company with 22 percent of the world market share in
> vegetable seeds to provide biotechnology-derived vegetable traits.
> How will you distinguish these seeds from natural seeds? Or one
> squash from another? (From Eileen Danneman)
>
> 2. The organic industry is under assault, just as the ecosystem is, by the
> active, on-going cross-pollination of genetically engineered plants with
> other
> plants and microorganisms. Given the range of insect and wind pollination
> (birds, too) transgenes have been found at unforetold distances in
> nontargeted
> plants and crops.
>
> I might add that bees can bring pollen from genetically engineered crops or
> plants to the hive and affect the honey.
>
> Gene-altered organisms cannot be kept apart from their wild and
> cultivated relatives
>
> Here is a sampling of studies:
>
> - - Scientific studies show the high frequency and wide range of gene flow
> between ge'd crops and normal crops, eg, potatoes.
> (Skogsmyr l (1994) Gene dispersal from transgenic potaotes to
> conspecifics: A field trial. Theor. Appl. Genet 88: 770-774).
>
> - - Much more pollen escapes from large fields of genetically engineered
> oilseed
> rape (used for canola oil) than is predicted from earlier experiments on
> smaller plots. Escaping pollen fertilized plants up to 2.5 kilometers away.
>
> (Scottish Crop Research Institute Annual Report 1994. SCRI,
> Invergowrie,
> Dundee, Scotland)
>
> - - Spillage of crop seeds in transport over the hundreds of miles between
> seed
> merchant, farmer and processing factory, could be "more worrying" than the
> threat through pollen spread. (New Scientist 6 July, 1996)
>
> - - It was found with 4 ge'd plants all containing an antibiotic-resistance
> gene
> (oilseed rape, black mustard, torn-apple and sweep peas) when grown
> together
> with a fungus (Aspeergillus niger), or their leaves were added to the soil,
> that the fungus incorporated the antibiotic resistance gene in all
> co-culture
> experiments.
> (Hoffman T. Golz C & Schieder O (1994) Foreign DNA sequences are
> received
> by
> a wild-type strain of Aspergillus niger after co-culture with transgenic
> higher
> plants. Curr. Genet. 27: 70-76).
> It is worth noting that micro-organisms can transfer genes through several
> mechanisms to other unrelated micro-organisms.
>
> Other unexpected effects
>
> Soil bacteria ge'd to transform plant residues like leaves into ethanol
> survived, competed successfully with parent strains and unexpectedly
> inhibited
> growth or killed off grass in different soil types. It decreased beneficial
> fungi in all the soils tested. These soil fungi are crucial for plant
> health
> and growth because they help plants take up nutrition and resist common
> diseases. In clay soils the ge'd bacterium increased as well as the number
> of
> root-feeding nematodes.
> (Holmes T M & Ingram E R (1995) The effects of genetically engineered
> microorganisms on soil foodwebs. In "Supplement to Bulletin of Ecological
> Society of America 75.2)
>
> A bacteria ge'd for degrading an herbicide broke it down but also degraded
> into
> a substance that was highly toxic to fungi and destroyed them. These fungi
> were crucial to soil fertility and in protecting plants against diseases.
> (Doyle JK, Stotzky G, McClung G & Hendricks C W (1995) Effects of
> Genetically
> Engineered Microorganisms on Microbial Populations and Processes in natural
> Habitats, Advances in Applied Microbiology, Vol. 40 (Academic Press)).
>
> http://www.lisco.com/edit/mothers
> http://www.greenpeace.org/~comms/cbio/geneng.html
> http://www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk/campaigns/ef/toxmut/flavr.html#cflower
> http://www.demon.co.uk/solbaram/articles/clm505.html
> http://www.natural-law.org/issues/genetics/ge_hazards.html
> http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~rone/Genetic%20Engineering.htm
> http://www.netlink.de/gen/home.html
> http://www.mum.edu/PRESS/genetics/ethical_stand.html
> http://www.bio-integrity.org
> http://www.peg.apc.org/~acfgenet
> http://www.nemsn.org/ems/html/ tryptophan
>
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