>Lon:
>
>> movement. But then I don't know what kind of contamination levels would be
>> acceptible. In a big field, a hundred pollen grains in the wrong place
>
>Evidence is already available to suggest that this is a problem of
>commercial magnitude, and it can only get worse as mainstream
>grocery stores take up the non-GMO mantle and testing for GMO
>contamination becomes more commonplace and sophisticated. Consider
>the plight of the Texas farmer, who as i understand the story, had
>grown corn organically, processed it into tortilla chips
>and sent them off to Europe. They were found to have been
>contaminated, reportedly by genetic pollution according to the
>farmer, and sent back - at enormous cost to the farmer.
>
>
>> might multiply into some serious contamination if seed were being saved and
>> the contaminated types were inadvertantly selected. Of if only a very small
>> amount of contaminated grains were needed to throw off tests for BT toxins,
>> or the like. Seems like it wouldn't be hard to do a fast test (fast meaning
>> in a few months) by planting a field of something with an innocuous, but
>> obvious marker such as colored kernals next to a field of non-colored corn.
>
>This may, or may not, be a suitable test - and either way, the fact
>that we are having this discussion at all is a clear indication of
>"technology before science" mentality. As is the case with the Bt
>resistance problem (see latest issue of Science), companies were in
>such a rush to make a buck, that they rammed through a technology
>that is nothing if not externalizing of risk, without an adequate
>grounding in science.
>
>We don't know the pollination distances with certainty, although
>they are known to be in km rather than meters for field-scale canola,
>corn, and potato (I cite quite a lot of these figures, with
>references, in a recent paper given to the Toronto Biotechnology
>Initiative, a pro-biotech lobby group - see my homepage. We don't
>know much of anything about allelic frequencies, dominance:recessive
>relations, or many of the key parameters in the Bt resistance
>question. Check out 1998 or 1999 refereed publications on the
>subject, and you will be astounded at the degree to which they still -
> even today - are based on assumptions in the absence of evidence.
>
>The idea you propose may work, but it may not be generalizable because
>individual GE events can affect such critical processes as %
>outcrossing. See Bergelson et al., 1998 on the effect of putting an
>herbicide resistance gene into Arabadopsis - a selfing species -
>which turned some transgenic lines into 10% outcrossers. Outcrossing
>has nothing to do with herbicide resistance, but is illustrative of
>the general phenomenon of unintentional side effects caused by the
>process of breaching the carefully modulated integrity of both species
>and chromosome.
>
>Recall that, contrary to the hype, GE is far from "precise".
>Regardless of the method used, transgenes are inserted at random -
>unreliably, unpredictably, and unrepeatably. According to my breeder
>colleagues, there is still no method of knowing in advance where in a
>given chromosome, or even on which chromosome, a presumptive
>transgene will land. And, as I argue in a talk given on the weekend
>(The Faulty Assumptions of Field Crop GE, hopefully to be mounted on
>my homepage within a week or two), "order is everything". It makes a
>difference where on a chromosome, and on which chromosome, a
>transgene lands, because genes interact. Arguably, the genes
>themselves do not matter so much as where they are on the
>chromosomes. Interaction is everything. This explains, in large
>part, why unintentional traits - such as outcrossing - can be
>affected by GE. See Mae-Wan Ho's most helpful book Genetic
>Engineering: Dream or Nightmare (1998).
>
>What this means, is that pollination distances would have to be
>tested for each commercial GE event - not generalized over the whole
>species. Or, a worst case scenario would have to be adopted which
>would wreck havoc on production and commerce. And keep in mind, we
>are still thinking here on sexual outcrossing, without even
>introducing the risk of horizontal gene transfer. Ann
>
>
>
>ACLARK@plant.uoguelph.ca
>Dr. E. Ann Clark
>Associate Professor
>Crop Science
>University of Guelph
>Guelph, ON N1G 2W1
>Phone: 519-824-4120 Ext. 2508
>FAX: 519 763-8933
>http://www.oac.uoguelph.ca/www/CRSC/faculty/eac.htm
>
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