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  • From: Allan Balliett <igg AT igg.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Market-farming] Fwd: Keeping Seeds Safe - NYT Editorial
  • Date: Mon, 1 Mar 2004 10:54:27 -0500

Richard Kalin posted this to BD Now!



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Keeping Seeds SafeNew York Times Editorial

March 1, 2004

Keeping Seeds Safe

hen an American farmer gets ready to plant a crop like corn or soybeans, he
has two basic choices. Traditional seeds are the kind farmers have planted
throughout history, developed by crossing parents with desirable traits to
get a superior variety. Genetically modified seeds, first widely planted in
1996, contain trangenes from other organisms that convey specific advantages
to mature plants - the ability to resist herbicides, for instance. The
acreage planted with genetically modified crops has exploded: a third of
this country's corn by 2002 and three-quarters of its soybeans. Whatever you
make of this trend - and there are strong arguments on both sides - one
question it raises is whether genes from modified plants might somehow drift
into unmodified ones. The answer is yes.

In a pioneering study released last week, the Union of Concerned Scientists
asked two independent labs to examine samples of traditional corn, soybean
and canola seeds. The labs found contamination in half the corn, half the
soybean and more than 80 percent of the canola varieties. The study draws no
conclusions about when the mingling took place. It could have happened
during field tests, after modified crops were widely planted or during
shipping and storage. But the genetic purity of at least some traditional
seed varieties has been compromised.

This is a serious finding. Though the acreage planted with modified crops is
enormous, the number of varieties is still very small. But many more
modified varieties - many of them for industrial and pharmaceutical crops -
are being tested. The risk posed to the food supply by contamination from
pharmaceutical crops will almost certainly be much greater than it is from
genes that have migrated from, say, Roundup Ready corn. But there is a
broader point. To contaminate traditional varieties of crops is to
contaminate the genetic reservoir of plants on which humanity has depended
for most of its history. In 2001, for instance, scientists discovered
modified genes in traditional varieties of corn in Mexico, the ancestral
home of the crop and the site of its greatest diversity.

The need now is for more extensive study, best undertaken by the Department
of Agriculture. It's also time to subject genetically modified crops to more
rigorous and more coherent testing. The scale of the experiment this country
is engaged in - and its potential effect on the environment, the food supply
and the purity of traditional seed stocks - demands vigilance on the same
scale.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company


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  • [Market-farming] Fwd: Keeping Seeds Safe - NYT Editorial, Allan Balliett, 03/01/2004

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