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Contaminating Corn Maize--a question for Dr. Robert Fraley
Contaminating Corn Maize--a question for Dr. Robert Fraley
'Let's Use Organic and GMOs to Feed the World"--says, Dr. Robert T. Fraley,
Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Monsanto
Date: 8/30/2014 8:17:50 PM ( 10 y ) ... viewed 1044 times
This blog needs work….
The ideas are not developed.
Little time to do that…
8:28 pm
Saturday August 30, 2014
'Let's Use Organic and GMOs to Feed the World"--says, Dr. Robert T. Fraley,
Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Monsanto
Posted: 08/13/2014 12:33 pm EDT Updated: 08/13/2014 12:59 pm
Putting together my pizza box teachings for the trip. These are varieties of Baker Creek Heirloom corn seeds. Our biodiversity of corn varieties is compromised by GMO corn. Gmo corn contaminates heirloom corn. This question needs to be pursued.
I will be teaching Helping Uncle Sam Marry Auntie (Anti) Gmo at 11:30 am, Tuesday, September 9, at The National Heirloom Exposition This story by Dr. Robert Fraley, Monsanto Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer came on to my radar today. It is published in The Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-robert-t-fraley/lets-use-organic-and-gmos_b_5669928.html
"The debate over GMOs has tended to sidetrack progress on the development of a common agenda to solving the global food security problem."--Dr Robert Fraley.
I fully support a national conversation on Seed Saving, Support of Seed Libraries, and GMO Education.
This photos from my Pizza Box shows six varieties of indigenous corn. Jere Gettle of Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company finds that when he tests his Non GMO Seeds, they are contaminated by growing near GMO corn.
One of the speakers at this year's National Heirloom Expo is Ignacio Chapela (12:15 pm, Wed, Sept 10 Finley Hall) discovered trangenes in Mexico Maize.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignacio_Chapela
This is a deep subject. How do we preserve indigenous tribes that depend on unique varieties of corn? Dr. Fraley suggests that some Organic methods and some Biotech methods in his approach to solving Food insecurity.
I believe that Food Security can best be enhanced by thousands of more Gardeners who join Seed Libraries and help to adapt local heirloom Seeds to their unique areas.
I met Dr. Fraley at the leading US Science conference years ago. I actually planted seeds--they were organic beet seeds-- with him that one day Organic Lovers and GMO Lovers would close the Gap and enter into an authentic Dialogue on Science, Ethic, and Food
https://www.facebook.com/groups/DialogueScienceEthicsandFood/
I knew at some deep level that the world had shifted on that day. Fast forward to today. We have an opportunity to help build upon Penn State Seed Libraries Protocols that were accepted by the Simpson Library.
Please look at this Plant Your Dream Blog to trace the latest in my process:
You are invited to Help Develop a National Seed Library Protocol & Change Seed Laws as Needed
http://plantyourdream.net/?p=19058
Contamination of Corn--Ignacio Chapela Story
Trespass: Genetic Engineering as the Final Conquest
by Claire Hope Cummins
Worldwatch Institute
The most alarming case of GMO contamination is the discovery of transgenes in corn at the center of the origin of corn in Mexico. From the time GMO corn was first planted in the U.S. Midwest, it took only six years it to make its way back home in the remote mountainous regions of Puebla and Oaxaca, Mexico. Ignacio Chapela, a Mexican-born microbial biologist, was the scientist who first reported this contamination in 2001. Early in 2002, I visited the area with Dr. Chapela to investigate the cultural and economic implications of his findings. While I was there I got a first-hand look at the complicity of government and industry in the spread of GMO contamination.
The genetic diversity of corn, the world's most important food crop after rice, has been fostered for thousands of years by Zapotec and hundreds of other indigenous farming communities who have lived in these mountainous areas since before the Spanish arrived. Now their traditional land-based ways of life, the sacred center of their culture, and the source of their economic livelihood, corn, has been imperiled by this new form of colonization. The farmers I talked to there were well informed, but worried about their cultural and economic survival. What they did not understand was how transgenic corn got into their fields.r
Early press reports blamed the farmers themselves, based on the observation that in order to help support their families and communities, some of them travel to the U.S. to work as migrant workers. But in fact, it turned out that the cause of the contamination was the Mexican government and "free trade" rules. Although Mexico had banned the commercial planting of transgenic corn, under pressure of NAFTA and the biotech industry it was importing corn from the U.S. that it knew was contaminated. It then distributed this whole-kernel corn to poor communities as food aid, without labels or warnings to rural farmers that it should not be used for seed. This highly subsidized corn, which is being dumped on third world farmers at prices that are lower than the cost of production, undermines local corn markets. But instead of taking steps to stop the spread of this contamination, or to protect its farming communities, or even to guard its fragile biodiversity, the Mexican government, the international seed banks, and the biotech industry all deflected public and media attention to a convenient scapegoat-Dr. Chapela.
The suppression of science
Chapela and his graduate student, David Quist, had published their findings in the peer-reviewed Journal Nature.t They had actually made two findings: first, that GMOs had contaminated Mexico's local varieties of corn-in technical terms, that "introgression" had occurred. And second, they found that once transgenes had introgressed into other plants, the genes did not behave as expected. This is evidence of transgenic instability, which scientists now regard with growing concern. But allegations of such instability can be dangerous to make because they undermine the central dogma's basic article of faith: that transgenes are stable and behave predictably. Not surprisingly, the industry attacked the first finding, but was foiled when the Mexican government's own studies found even higher levels and more widespread GMO contamination than the Nature article had reported. The industry then focused its attack to the finding of transgenic instability.
For over a year, the industry relentlessly assailed Quist and Chapela's work, both in the press and on the Internet. As the debate raged on, scientists argued both sides, fueled, Chapela says, by a well developed and generously funded industry public relations strategy that did not hesitate to make the attacks personal. Monsanto even retained a public relations firm to have employees pose as independent critics. The outcome was unprecedented. The editor of Nature published a letter saying that "in light of the criticisms...the evidence available is not sufficient to justify" the publication of the original paper. This "retraction" made reference to the work of two relatively unknown biologists, Matthew Metz and Nick Kaplinsky. At the time, Kaplinsky was still a graduate student in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at UC Berkeley. Metz had finished his work at Berkeley and was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Washington. What few knew was that their role in the Nature controversy was linked to another dispute that they, Quist, and Chapela, had been involved in. That earlier dispute, too, was about the integrity of science. And in that case, Chapela had led the faculty opposition-and Quist had been a part of the student opposition-to private funding of biotechnology research at UC Berkeley.
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/568l
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