Fantastic video explaining how to put the engineering back into genetic engineering - aka synthetic biology (HT Marc Brazeau at Genetic Literacy Project)
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How novel are the genes introduced during genetic engineering?
It is often asserted that genetic engineering (or GMOs) are different and should be regulated differently because they introduce "new" genes that couldn't have been introduced "naturally."
A piece at the genetic literacy project by Curtis Hannah, a plant geneticist, however, questions that wisdom:
“The remarkable advances in the way DNA is sequenced have made the sequencing of all the genes in a particular organism (termed the genome) extremely cheap. Thousands of genomes from different organisms have been decrypted and comparative genomics is a thriving field of scientific endeavor. Investigators have also sequenced different members of a particular family and unexpectedly found that the two different members of the family did NOT contain the same genes. Some genes were found in some members of the family but not in others. This phenomenon of plus/minus genes is particularly rampant in plants.
An exceptionally striking case of this was published recently in the journal Plant Cell. Of 8681 corn genes studied at the DNA level by this group, only a small fraction, 16.4 percent, were found in all 503 lines examined. The vast majority of these genes (83.6 percent) were found in some BUT NOT ALL lines. Corn is not an exception since similar cases of plus/minus genes have been found with other important food crops. Hence, new non-GMO or conventional varieties of food crops appearing on the market this year likely contain genes that were not in those same crops the year before. Also, the new ones likely lack genes that were present the year before.
Where do these genes come from? There are several sources. First, most food plants underwent a duplication of most if not all their genomes during their course of evolution. This duplication then allowed some relaxation from Darwinian selection such that the one gene copy was free to diverge in sequence and take on a new function.”
He concludes:
“To summarize, the new methods to rapidly, accurately and cheaply decipher genomes have uncovered hitherto unimaginable variation in the genetic material of all organisms, including the ones we eat. Hence, labelling plants and their derived foods GMO and non-GMO is clearly a distinction without a difference.”
How US Companies Should Help Farmers Increase Sustainability
That's the title of an article by a marketing guru, Doug Austin, in the Farm Journal.
While some of the discussion is sensible, I found it a bit interesting to see the "solution" proposed to increased sustainability:
“When large companies partner with farmers, they have more influence on how farmers take their products to market, and they’re involved much earlier in the process. For instance, a corporation could instruct a farmer to plant 10,000 acres of corn without any pesticides, GMO seeds, etc., and the farmer would be under contract to deliver. This is a big shift away from the traditional farming mindset that uses yield as the primary success metric.”
First, I don't know that corporations "instruct" farmers. They can offer incentives. They can offer premiums. Or, as Austin suggest, they can offer contracts.
The idea is hardly new. And indeed, the rate of contracting is already increasing at a rapid clip, precisely for many of the reasons suggested by Austin - food companies trying to achieve more uniformity ad price stability, and to be responsive to consumer concerns.
Here for, for example, is a graph out of a USDA report by William McBride and Nigel Key on the percent of hogs marketed in the US under contract from 1992 to 2009. In some parts of the U.S. virtually 100% of hogs are produced under contract.
There are many advantages to contracting (mainly protection against price or production risk), but the practice also opens up food production industries to all kinds of criticism (e.g., see how Tyson was vilified in The Meat Racket for its use of contracts). If a corporation wants to exert the kind of control it needs to achieve various end-use characteristics, that means farmers conceding some freedom (in exchange for certainty of income). However, this relationship can get construed as "big bad market power exerted by Big Food."
The contracting situation isn't unique to hogs. Many (perhaps most) vegetable growers produce under contract with processors. And, here is another graph from the USDA-ERS by James McDonald on the extent of contracting for the major commodity crops
The other problem with the quote above is the implicit assumption that the use of GMOs or pesticides are not sustainable. Or, that yield isn't one metric of sustainability. Corporations may (one day in the future), in fact, want to contract with farmers to plant certain GMOs precisely because they are more sustainable.
How should food policy issues be decided?
Not only is it the case that people are likely to differ in their opinions about the desirability of mandatory GMO labeling or soda taxes, but they are also likely to differ in how they think such issues should be decided.
A while back, I ran across this paper by Gaskell and colleagues published in Science. They sought to categorized citizens in terms of their attitudes about how technology should be governed by asking two questions relating to whether decisions about technology should be made by 1) experts vs. average Americans and 2) moral and ethical issues vs. scientific evidence on benefits/costs.
In the latest edition of the Food Demand Survey (FooDS), I applied these questions to five food policy issues. Unlike Gaskell's work I also allowed respondents to have different answers for different issues.
The first question asked: “Decisions about food policy should be based mainly on the views and advice of experts OR decisions about food policy should be based mainly on the views of the average American.” The second question asked: “Decisions about food policy should be based mainly on the moral and ethical issues involved OR decisions about food policy should be based mainly on the scientific evidence of risk and benefit.” Then five food policy issues were listed in random order: labeling of genetically modified food, use of growth hormones, legality of selling raw, unpasteurized milk, use of the term "natural" on packaging, and the tax charged on sugar sodas.
Here's what we found.
More than 70% of respondents wanted policy decisions related to GMO labeling and use of growth hormones to be based on expert advice rather than the views of the average American. I find that result rather striking in light of the fact that opinion polls show large numbers of people saying they want GMO labeling. Here, we see that a large majority thinks this sort of issue should NOT be decided by the views of the average American. That would seem to imply that folks do not think GMO labeling should be settled by ballot initiative.
In stark contrast to the other food policy issues, almost 70% wanted decisions about soda taxes to be based on the views of the average American rather than the "elites".
Recall that we also asked about whether decisions should be based on morals and ethics or based on scientific evidence on risk and benefit.
For three issues, milk pasteurization, hormones, and GMO labeling, the majority thought decisions should be based on science. There was a split on natural labeling. For soda taxes, the majority thought moral issues should be the deciding factor.
As with the prior research, we used the answers to categorized people into one of four categories for each of the five food policy issues. “Scientific elitists” wanted policy decisions made by experts on the basis of scientific evidence, “moral elitists” wanted policy decisions based made by experts on the basis of moral issues, “scientific populists” wanted the average American to make decisions on the basis of scientific evidence, and “moral populists” wanted the average American to make decisions on the basis of moral issues.
A plurality of respondents were "scientific elitists" for GMO labeling, use of growth hormones, and legality of selling raw milk. The same was true for use of the term "natural" on labeling, but there was a larger share of "moral elitists" in regard to this issue than for others. Finally, for soda taxes, "moral populists" described the largest share of respondents.
A natural question is whether these categories explain people's attitudes about the food policies. Gaskell et al. showed that "scientific elitists" in regard to general technology were the majority citizen type in their surveys and this type had more favorable attitudes toward biotechnology and nanotechnology than other consumer types - particularly moral populists.
I find something similar here as well. Take for example, the 4-category breakdown on GMO labeling. I find that "scientific elitists" on GMO labeling express the lowest level of concern about eating GMOs (an average score of 3.06 on a 1 to 5 scale of concern), whereas "moral elitists" and "scientific populists" had scores of 3.41 and 3.43. Moral populists averaged 3.34. There also seems to be a political dimension to people's views about how these food policy issues should be decided. For example, scientific elitists and scientific populists were slightly more conservative (about 3.05 on a 1 to 5 scale of liberal to conservative) than were those who focus more on moral/ethical issues (score of about 2.9 on the scale). Those identifying with the Democratic party were more heavily represented in the "moral elitist" category than they were in other categories.
Even the Amish grow GMOs
Last week, I was in the grocery store looking for popcorn. I ran across a brand I'd never seen before that advertised "Amish popcorn." I gave it a try and it tasted just as good as the heathen brands.
While munching on the tasty treat, a question came to mind: do the Amish use GMO crops? As far as I know, there are no genetically engineered popcorn seeds on the market, but all those reality shows I see advertised on A&E, Discovery, and the like show hardy field corn and tobacco plants growing alongside the homes of the Amish.
Sure enough, a quick internet search turned up story after story after story revealing that many Amish farmers indeed plant genetically engineered corn or tobacco.
It seems the Amish have turned the tables on conventional wisdom. Most consumers are very pro-technology and innovation when it comes to things like cell phones, TVs, and cars, but are often technology-averse when it comes to agriculture. It seems that at least some of the Amish hold exactly the opposite position.
There is a deep irony in the fact that the Amish farm is something many people idealize - small, family-run operations - that uses a technology that frightens many consumers. In part it reveals the disconnect between romanticized images of farm life and the reality of the choices made by the flesh-and-blood people who work there.
While it might do well if more people understood more about production agriculture, it seems I could have known a bit more about the Amish before writing this paragraph at the end of a chapter on biotechnology in the Food Police:
“Perhaps we Americans can afford to give up a few comforts and pay more for more “naturally” grown food. But, this return to nature is pure fantasy. Human interactions with nature have altered animals and vegetation in a way that our ancient ancestors could scarcely imagine. The food elite’s vision of the world would return production agriculture to its state a hundred years ago; to a time when food was far less plentiful and in which those who did the back-breaking work of farming lived a meager existence. We might like to visit the Amish but few are clamoring to convert.”
It seems that the at least some of the Amish are more technologically progressive than I gave them credit for. In fact, in this one dimension, they are more technologically progressive than many Americans.