Lecture 10 Thursday February 07 2008

contamination

• cross pollination or wind migration
• biotechnology will spread

terminator seeds

• make male transgenic canola sterile
• pollen will not spread
• prototype has already been made
• an alternative would be not to plant in regions with woody realatives
• social issues - people become dependent on the biotechnology company for seeds each year

phytoremediation

• transgenic mustard efficiently sucks up selenium
• genetically modified indian mustard plant
• selenium hungry enzymes

BT toxin and the Monarch Butterfly

• did bt toxin kill of beneficial insect or non targeted insects
• the insects eat the corn with BT toxin and die
• monarch caterpillar eats corn and dies of BT toxin
• milkweed is a staple of the monarch caterpillar
• there is fear of pollen from corn with BT toxin might get on the leaves of the corn and land on the milkweeds
• BT toxin protein is rapidly degraded by sunlight
• distance of pollen spread is short
• amount of pollen distribution is very short
• if the larvee comes in contact with BT toxin pollen 40% will die

problems with the study

• experiment was only done once
• it was done in a controlled environment
• 4 day duration
• pollen levels were not controlled and were likely excessive
• when these faults were corrected it was found that the insects were smart enough to go to another plant

2 conclusions

• there is a difference between proving that a toxin can kill and insect and that it will necessesarily kill the insect

** biodiversity**

definition of biodiversity

• variation of number of kinds of life forms in a given ecosystem

GMO's

• may directly cause reductions in biodiversity (e.g., toxic effects on insects) requires a case by case study
• absences of weeds in herbicide -tolerant crops, reduces seed -eating birds in a given ecosystem
• expansion of agriculture into new environments reduces bio-diversity

agriculture

• necessarily alters or destroys biodiversity
• agriculture monocultures are totally artificial
• what is needed is agroforestry

3 canadian ministries work on GM issues

• Canadian Food Inspection agency - toxicity if ingested
• Health Canada - co-related with disease or illness
• environment Canada -

safety assessment

• laboratory
• growth change

safety assessment and risk maangement by AgCanada scientists

• confined field trials or unconfined field trials
• precautionary principal

other issues

1. labeling
2. buisness considerations
3. ethics

1. labeling

• tomato puree from california sold to Europe
• in Canada no mandatory labeling
• it was labeled wih "made in genetically modified tomatoes"
• GM tomatoes puree was cheaper than conventional tomatoe
• a brochure accompanied the tomatoes along with salespeople
• voluntarily labeled
• Monsanto bought this small biotech company and withdrew the voluntarily labeled items
• a backlash followed
• this is a human psychological issue - if people try to hide something we get very defensive

wouldn't some one like David Suzuki argue that it is precisely because GMO's are not synthetic that the risks are far greater than pesticide because they could pollute the gene pool

• while we can stop using pesticides - we can not stop a bio active compound - and we can't stop it
• this is naive stance considering the nature of chemical compounds
• plastics that leech out - chemicals are very strong and
• chemicals are capable of acting remarkably like natural hormones - shell fish in the pacific ocean were 90% female because these chemicals stimulate this path of development

labeling in Canada

• GM foods have so rapidly been applied in our food system that labeling has quickly become meaningless
• most people are willing to pay more for non GM food

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