Saturday, June 29, 2013

The First GMO Was Tobacco

A friend on Crop Talk mentioned the first GMO was done with tobacco as the host plant.  I had forgotten that and had to look it up.

"The first genetically modified plant was produced in 1982, using an antibiotic-resistant tobacco plant.[13] The first field trials of genetically engineered plants occurred in France and the USA in 1986, when tobacco plants were engineered to be resistant to herbicides.[14] In 1987, Plant Genetic Systems (Ghent, Belgium), founded by Marc Van Montagu and Jeff Schell, was the first company to develop genetically engineered (tobacco) plants with insect tolerance by expressing genes encoding for insecticidal proteins from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt).[15] The People’s Republic of China was the first country to allow commercialized transgenic plants, introducing a virus-resistant tobacco in 1992.[16]

The first genetically modified crop approved for sale in the U.S., in 1994, was the FlavrSavr tomato, which had a longer shelf life.[17] In 1994, the European Union approved tobacco engineered to be resistant to the herbicide bromoxynil, making it the first commercially genetically engineered crop marketed in Europe.[18] In 1995, Bt Potato was approved safe by the Environmental Protection Agency, making it the first pesticide producing crop to be approved in the USA.[19] The following transgenic crops also received marketing approval in the US in 1995: canola with modified oil composition (Calgene),

Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) corn/maize (Ciba-Geigy), cotton resistant to the herbicide bromoxynil (Calgene), Bt cotton (Monsanto), soybeans resistant to the herbicide glyphosate (Monsanto), virus-resistant squash (Asgrow), and additional delayed ripening tomatoes (DNAP, Zeneca/Peto, and Monsanto).[14] As of mid-1996, a total of 35 approvals had been granted to commercially grow 8 transgenic crops and one flower crop of carnations, with 8 different traits in 6 countries plus the EU.[14] In 2000, with the production of golden rice, scientists genetically modified food to increase its nutrient value for the first time.."

GMO vs non GMO keeps coming up in farmer conversations as the events fail or have problems or people start questioning the science.  Another reader sums it up well:  "think it is the keep your head in the sand and it will go away syndrome, Ed. Too many don’t want to believe the reports like you have shown me with high levels of Formaldehyde in it after using RU.

Not only that if they believe it then they will be forced to do something about it and quite frankly RU made farmers out of people who have no clue about it. Some here will still spray 4 or 5 times with RU so long as Monsanto throws in something extra like generic select for the “escapes” I believe it is affecting our food. I think all GMO is. It just a quick and easy way to overcome short comings instead of learning proper agronomy and respecting plant breeding.

There are too many physical changes happening to plants and animals to explain it any other way. Is RU the sole cause? I doubt it but it is a serious contributor just because of how much is used. And I think it stacks itself for each GMO event you add to the mix. [ I don’t think that is what they were meaning when they came up with the term stacked traits]."

What do you think?

Why do you farm, anyway?

Ed Winkle






11 comments:

  1. Ive said it many times now, GMOs are safe!. The things that you think you are obsering as a result of gmo tech are a result of your bias.

    Another telling observation. The anti-gmo crowd always results to propaganda to condemn gmo's. They so badly want to trash the name of gmo that if there was any good evidence of a problem with gmo's it would show up all over the place. Instead all we see from them is propaganda.

    Ive talked with many of my peers and mentors about your take on gmo's. Not one agrees with your take. Most consider your view contrived. Some think your take is self promotion as you are a non-gmo producer.

    I continue to closely eye our thousands of acres of gmo and non gmo crops. Gmo passes my eye test.

    And every scientific review

    David Seck

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    Replies
    1. It isn't that GMO's aren't safe....since most foods now are genetically modified anyways. It is the fact that they alone have affected our society in the way we eat and the way industries perceive business. From my research there is no problem with GMOs, most of the problem comes from the mass consumption leading to health issues and the FDA not doing their job.

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  2. I am uncertain about them, very uncertain. Glyphosate, a tank cleaner is being found everywhere.

    What have we done to our soil and water David?

    Please research before you accept the latest and greatest.

    I know you are a good person and I don't want you or any reader to be ignorant.

    Ed Winkle

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  3. I think the over use of gly is the problem. Gly burn down, gly post 2x on beans and burn down and post sprays of gly on corn year after year.

    Kinda like drinking one beer won't kill your liver but excessive use will.

    The max in crop use for gly is 2.25-2.5# acre....or 64oz of powermax.


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  4. Safety is not the only concern with GMOs. I "think" they are safe too, from a toxicological point of view, at least as "safe" as the cultivar onto which the new genes were "grafted" or "recombined", but as long as there are no independent long term study about them, people will be concerned, and justly so.

    Sill, the safety of our gene pool diversity is dangerously compromised because of cross-pollination. That's not a risk, that's a fact. Some non-GMO crops are being contaminated that way.

    Ed, you're seeing glyphosate everywhere in the water and the environment only because it is the main herbicide in the U.S. As soon as farmers switch to some other herbicide, that's what you'll see, and probably more toxic than glyphosate, maybe not as quickly biodegradable too.

    I don't know how these new genetically engineered proteins and toxins affect our food chain, but probably not a lot, as we don't eat much of them directly, apart from sweet corn. It's mostly animal feed. Soybean oil is so purified with solvents that there is probably not a single trace of protein in it. The solvent extraction is the reason why I stick to cold pressed olive oil exclusively. As for soy proteins, you'll find some in some cheap frozen burger products that I also avoid, your next exposure to soy is probably the lecithin additive or soy sauce. Not something you base a full meal on.

    As for corn, I doubt there is any protein left in HFCS, it's purified a number of times industrially starting from starch extraction. So unless you eat a lot of tacos and other corn products, your main exposure is sweet corn. I don't eat any of it canned or frozen, but I indulge a bit in the summer, and I don't always stick to organic corn there, which is basically the only way to guarantee some non-GMOness. It's a compromise...

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    Replies
    1. Excellent post chimel. Very pragmatic

      David Seck

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  5. I agree that is a very good post, Chimel.

    Ed Winkle

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  6. The solvent extraction plants are essentially the process of extracting oil from oil bearing substances with the aid of solvent. The use of certain chemicals are being accomplished for extracting solvent in this process.

    ReplyDelete
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    ReplyDelete