Posts by Bart Janssen
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Tussock
I’m sorry but there is no easy way to say this. But your objections are based on misinformation.GM is still done in plants with the naturally occurring virus and bacteria, in a way that allows the wild versions to neatly pick that same gene back out in the field and distribute it to other species, right?
No, not right. The virus bit you’ve heard about is a piece of DNA that is used to make the gene of interest be produced in the target plant. It is not a virus nor can it ever be a virus again. Yes the bacteria we use sometime to make transgenic plants naturally transfers it’s own DNA into plants, that’s how the system was discovered. But no it doesn’t go and pick up genes from the transformed plants and move them elsewhere. Sorry whoever told you that is really confused.
That's how the roundup-ready gene spread to various weeds in the US and Australia.
No that’s not true. As I said above that’s not how it works. There has been some spread of the roundup resistance gene from rape-seed to closely related brassicas. It has spread simply by pollen fertilising nearby weeds and the seeds carry the new gene. Yes that isn’t great. No it isn’t the disaster that has been portrayed. No we won’t do that again.
So there is a difference, and quite a major one, eh.
Nope there is no difference. The problem here is I think you imagine conventional breeding to be safe and without any risks at all right? But actually that isn’t true. There are numerous examples of conventional bred crops that were either environmental or health problems. The key thing here is that we accept that plant breeding has an element of chance and mistakes happen. As we get more knowledge the damage caused by those mistakes is less and less.
What I am saying is that GM plants should be treated exactly the same as we treat conventionally bred plants. You don’t just make a new potato variety without checking to see if it isn’t poisonous (there have been such examples); you don’t import a new plant into NZ without making sure it doesn’t overrun our native forests (gorse).
But you also don’t say we are never going to breed a new crop and we are never going import another plant into NZ. That would be an over-reaction and disproportionate to the actual risk and harm.There's a bit of land in the states
Without a reference all I can say is I’m guessing you might be referring to a field trial site. Here’s the thing field trial sites are essentially lab experiment sites. Once we’ve done the work in the lab and done the work in the greenhouse, we have to do the work in the field. And to do that we use small plots of real land. And yes that’s where we learn sometimes that something unexpected and undesirable has happened and so we kill the plants and we usually sterilise the soil as well.
So yes there are dead bits of land that we’ve used for field trials. That is exactly as we would expect.One might suggest the insecticides incorporated into various crops haven't been too friendly on the bees either
But the bees are completely unaffected by the insecticidal agents in the transgenic plants we currently have. If you suggesting such a thing you would be scare mongering and I’m sure you don’t mean to do that and perhaps you should say that to the person who told you that story.
There's farmers throughout Canada and the United States have had their land confiscated
…because they stole from Monsanto. Sorry but that is what they did. And it has been shown in the case of the Canadian farmer that he went to considerable lengths to steal the seed.
By the way in New Zealand we develop new fruit tree varieties which we are very proud of and which we sell to orchardists worldwide. If they then take cuttings from those trees and start planting out orchards from those cuttings then they are stealing from us and yes we prosecute them too.
Just because someone didn’t use a crowbar to jimmy open a seed warehouse to steal the seed doesn’t make it less of a theft.Farmers buying Monsanto seed are locked in forever
No they are not they can choose any time to buy inferior seed but you know they don't because farmer growing transgenic crops (14 million of them) actually make more money by growing the transgenic crop. New Zealand makes millions of export dollars doing exactly the same thing. If you want to rail against Monsanto you better get out there and protest against some of our leading export earners as well.
You can argue that capitalism is bad but that has nothing to do with whether GM crops are bad.you can't ever get 100% of last year's seed out of the next crop,
The farmers don’t want to use last years seed. Last years seed doesn’t grow as well. Even if they aren’t using hybrid seed, fresh seed lots produced by the seed companies germinate better and produce a better crop. That’s why the farmers pay money for fresh seed. It has nothing to do with GM.
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Don
I’m not sure if you are being facetious and I should lighten up but anyway…1 I agree it’s mostly fossil fuels but burps are significant. And who cares if reducing the impact of the burps helps then maybe we should try to do that.
2 I don’t think we need an excuse. And yes we are constantly aware of longer term issues as well as short term. However, the implication it’s some subtle plot to get GM crops used in NZ is wrong – there is nothing subtle about it at all it’s quite open really. We scientists think it’s good for NZ and so we believe we should do it.
3 Yup lots of research on the feed and on the cows themselves and on the bacteria in the gut and on the clover and grass they eat. And as far as I’m aware nobody has suggested stopping one line of research just because of success in this area. All the solution are being explored – which is good.
4 Yup. China is rapidly becoming one of the biggest producers of GM crops and is going to be one of our biggest customers this century. There are some trade barriers in place in some parts of Europe to exclude American crops using the excuse that they are GM. As the European countries develop their own crops those barriers are disappearing. There is also a generation of consumers who were born after I started transforming plants and they generally don’t care at all. It’s hard for them to believe in the disaster scenarios when they are wearing jeans made from transgenic cotton plants (BTW most people are).
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Which "we" counts. I'm not bothered by what scientists like Bart do
Thank you for your confidence in me Sacha but I am only as smart as my colleagues allow me to be.
The way to make sure that people you don't trust aren't the ones doing all this work is to make sure the ones you do trust can do the work. If you trust the NZ science community (and I do) then why the hell do we create such a restrictive environment for them to try and do their work. We have rules that prevent us doing work on lab strains of E. coli that have been used safely for 40 years!
appropriate risk management
me too.
But at the moment we have inappropriate risk management. We have a system that demands that we prove beyond all doubt that we will never do any harm. Since that is impossible to prove we can't do the work we need to do in order to make real progress. Yes we can do some work but it is ridiculously expensive (a waste of tax dollars) and we can't ever get it to the point where it is able to make it into the field - which of course is the point of the rules.
Stupid analogy time - because every person has the potential to become a homicidal maniac (since we don't really understand what triggers that behaviour) then applying the same logic as we apply to GM you would argue that every person should be in jail, to prevent the possibility of them becoming homicidal.
That's called inappropriate risk management and that's what we have now.
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Thanks for the clarification, but don't we already have introduced flora that we effectively can't get rid of?
True but we are smarter now. Most of those problems come from a time when we thought it was OK to bring gorse from Britain to NZ. We do actually know a bit more now about ecology and are more careful when we do things like this.
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GM crops in the US have reduced environmental damage of monocultures not as is claimed increased it.
How?
Ok so if you want to go to the source you should look up ISAAA. Which has links to lots of interesting (well to me) reports on this kind of stuff.
So the use of herbicide resistant soybean in particular but also the other big row GM crops in the US has resulted in a pretty dramatic change in farming practices. The big thing is the reduction in tilling which destroys soil architecture causes soil erosion etc etc.
But also less pesticide use and less herbicide use (overall and a switch from really toxic ones to roundup) which has consequences for runoff etc.
And also less tractor trips up and down the rows!
It's estimated that from 1996 to 2007 the reduction in fuel use is equivalent to 7090 million kg of CO2 emissions.
Reduction in tilling results in less carbon lost from the soil an estimated 3570 million kg of soil carbon sequestered in 2007 alone - that's equivalent to taking 6.3 million cars from the road!!!!!
{insert lots of excited arm waving here to emphasise how much I think this is a good thing}
In just the tilling alone you could argue that GM crops are a pretty damn successful piece of technology for alleviating global warming. No not the silver bullet we need but a piece of the puzzle.
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Thanks, Bart (despite patronising dismissiveness ;)), but I'm confused about your dismissal of the genie metaphor.
Yeah sorry about the tone. I find it really really hard to answer some of these objections with facts without appearing dismissive. It's easier in person where arm waving and expression can soften what is otherwise a bald hard statement.
Anyway the genie thing.
There is this myth going around that once a GM crop gets out it could never be recalled. But we don't make triffids, they don't go walkies in the night. So if by some weird unforseen circumstance something bad happened in the field that had never shown up during greenhouse trial and had never shown up during field testing and had never been thought of by the very smart and knowledgeable people whose job it is to try and think of all the bad things .... then should such a bad thing occur then really it IS possible to destroy a crop.
And yes I know that pollen could spread the genes but really we know that and that why we do the testing and it isn't true that pollen from The GM crop will rampantly fertilise everything in sight - that just isn't real.
So yes I really think the Genie thing is wrong. If something bad happens then really all we do is kill off the plants and try something better.
I say that knowing full well that there will be people who won't believe me .. sorry.
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I’m not certain I want to enter into this discussion but it is my field of science. In other words I have spent the last 23 years of my life doing exactly the science being discussed. I’ve never been paid by a big corporation either, sadly.
My apologies for the tone. I know what is below sounds patronising and in some places dismissive. Forgive me for that please.
So here goes
There is no reason to believe that transferring a gene from clover to clover is any more or less safe than transferring a gene from any other organism to clover. None.
There is no reason to believe that transferring genes using GM is any more or less safe than classical breeding as has been carried out for about 10000 years. None.
GM crops have been in the ground commercially worldwide since 1995. There have been no disasters. None. Yes rapeseed ain’t the best thing ever made resistant to one herbicide but it still isn’t even close to being a disaster.
GM is worldwide not just in the US.
Ruminants burp methane, you can leave your fart jokes at home.
GM crops in the US have reduced environmental damage of monocultures not as is claimed increased it.
GM crops are grown by millions, yes I said millions, about 14 million last year, of small holders. Not as is claimed only by large corporations.
Most of the research done towards GM crops is being done outside large corporations and none of the researchers that I have ever met are rich (unless you describe having a house and mortgage like everyone else as rich).
There are no “superweeds” there is only some resistance to roundup which is one herbicide. Admittedly roundup is the safest herbicide I know of so some resistance to roundup isn’t great but it is not anything like the disaster described.
Genies are mythological.
Insurance companies don’t insure liability that they can’t estimate with certainty. Since there has never been a GM disaster they can’t insure for or against one. It would be like trying to get an insurance company to insure against your dog giving birth to a cow.
Beneficial means people don’t starve and the food they eat can be produced without damaging the environment, it has nothing to do with being cheaper and often is not cheaper. Your bread tastes bad because it is made badly, good bakeries make good bread with modern grains. And I seriously doubt there are many bakers who could make bread you’d be willing to eat with the ancestral grains.
If you want GM crops developed by ethically sound organizations then how about actually letting us (your government owned and managed scientists) do the work. At the moment the law and attitudes in NZ means simply that most of the work will be done overseas and by those very multinationals that you hate.
Don’t be too proud of ERMA. Essentially ERMA is so restrictive that doing the experiments you need to do to develop a GM crop is too expensive or simply not possible in New Zealand. That may suit the Greens politically but it just means that the discoveries will end up being sold overseas, probably to the same multinationals that the Greens hate so much, because we can’t develop them in NZ.
GM cannot solve all our problems, neither can efficient solar power, nor any other one technology. But GM can and will create crops that are better for the environment and better for us than currently exist. We can choose to be engaged in that science and allow our ethics to have some input or we can ban it in NZ at let the rest of the world make those decisions for us.
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Damian
I don't accept Henry is a bully. I don't consistently see him marginalising people, like you claim. I really don't.
OK I accept that. All I can judge is what I see on the screen. To me it seems like bullying and as I’ve said I’m sensitive to it so I may just be over-reacting.
To assume that he bullies his co-workers assumes they feel bullied, does it not?
Actually no. Very often people being bullied, and this is especially true of women, assume the blame is their own. I am not saying this is the case with PH but it is common to find bullied people who have no idea that the treatment they get is anything other than normal and acceptable. And yes that is bizarre and sad and yes I agree it sounds like social workers creating a problem where there is none but I have seen it in action. If you don’t buy that from me then please do some research. I can dig up some links for you if you want them, but it’s not a fun subject.
But fine I bow to your experience and your contact with his co-workers that he is not a bully. But equally you have to accept that I perceive his actions on screen as appearing to me to be bullying.
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that he was a workplace bully of the kind who drove people to suicide
aw come on Russell, that's what you hassled me for
I said I think Paul Henry is a bully. I said I think his behaviour towards guests and co-workers is bullying.
And I said, when told to lighten up, that I think bullying isn't something to lighten up about and that some people end up committing suicide as a result of stuff like this.
Do you want to join the dots to say I said Paul Henry drives people to suicide? Because that isn't what I meant to have you read.
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Not sure about the value of continuing this I'm pretty sure neither of us are gaining from it. I really do understand this is a real person we are talking about. I also do accept that you have criticised him. This is a "hot" button for me and I accept I'm probably over-reacting.
But how on earth can you get "it's okay" from what we said?
I guess I see it a bit differently from you. What you see as giving a balanced view of the person is what I see as minimizing the impact of his poor behaviour. I've seen that minimizing used as a defense of bullying in my own life and hence I am very sensitive to it.
This wouldn't even be relevant, except that you seem determined to imagine an unalloyed monster.
As I said I don't think for a second think he is an unalloyed monster. I said quite clearly that one of the big issues in identifying bullying is that bullies typically display very different behaviours to different people. They can and often are very good with some people.
I'm quite happy to accept that Paul Henry was a fun person to meet and that you respect his ability as a broadcaster.
But that doesn't change the fact that when I see him on TV I see someone using undermining, belittling and bullying behaviours. Often towards people who have no defense. I saw those behaviours often enough that I stopped watching breakfast TV and have no respect for the man - in spite of whatever positive traits he may have .
And yes Sofie I did exercise the choice to watch Sunrise instead and now I watch Sky News in the morning instead.