GMOs Gone Wild, Part Two

GMOs Gone Wild - Continued from Part One

So the big argument from bio-agri-tech-culture is that by using legally patented GM, herbicide resistant seeds (which need to be purchased annually, of course) one can effectively spray less; and maybe that's true, but the crops still have to be sprayed. If the crops were hand-weeded, it would make for a pretty expensive end product, but, really, with all our health problems involved with mass-produced crops like corn and soybeans, would it really be that bad to make it a tad more expensive? We have no problem issuing taxes on cigarettes to the tune of $11.00 a pack in New York; shouldn't the same philosophy be applied to corn syrup? Just sayin'.

And speaking of costs, we have no real idea how these mutated plants will interbreed and if so, how strong they will be in the wild. Biotech companies claim that their patented property can be contained by using "buffer zones" that supposedly will keep GM seeds from moving into the wild. But when Cynthia Sagers, an ecologist at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, led a research project on the subject, they found mutated canola (rapeseed) strains had started developing along roadsides, outside of the farm construct where it was to be "buffered" to prevent such a scenario.

Sagers and her team found two varieties of transgenic canola in the wild — one modified to be resistant to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide (glyphosate), and one resistant to Bayer Crop Science's Liberty herbicide (gluphosinate). They also found some plants that were resistant to both herbicides, showing that the different GM plants had bred to produce a plant with a new trait that did not exist anywhere else.

[Further] her research team found feral populations of herbicide-resistant canola growing along roads, near petrol stations and grocery stores, often at large distances from areas of agricultural production.

So not only is there an ecological question here, there's a question of legality: First to the persons whose property on which these plants have naturally crossbred, they can be sued by biotech industries for "growing" a patented product (because, remember, GMOs are protected by legal patents); and second to the companies who manufacture GMO seed: are they going to go in and clean up their genetic pollution?

So this is the real question: Who is (and will be) held responsible for truly sustainable foods and GMOs in the wild?

Photo credit cooperativegrocer.coop