There has been no research into what affect the Genetically Engineered plants have on our earth mush less on us. No one knows. Some reseasrch done in England exhibited serious health problems in labratory rats feed Genetically Engineered food stock but major efforts by the companies that sell the stuff appear to have caused this research to lapse. Apparently there is sufficient concern among the European Union people that they require labeling, at a minimum, of food products sold there that contain GE organisms.

My grain is not a GMO.

Lloyd

"all commercial grains are made from gmo grains"?
Are you sure? If you include all methods of genetic modification, including traditional ones then maybe. But please realize that people have been genetically modifying plants since the dawn of the ages. I understand you only mean genetic modification by modern techniques. Well... I am sure the modern techniques will become traditional some day. Also, as far as I know commercially available crops that are modified in the modern sense are mostly bred for pest resistance. You decide if decomposing plants that are more resistant to pests are bad for your compost pile.

To check out about commercial grains I called our Cenex/Land O' Lakes and theirs are gmo, as are Murdoch's and I called a local feed mill and theirs are. Then I found an organic grain mill a few hours away and he knew that unless its labeled organic, its likely gmo.

Thanks for the comment "You decide if decomposing plants that are more resistant to pests are bad for your compost pile." maybe that's the main point to think about.

I am feeding some hogs out and wanted organic feed for both food security and soil security in the compost. At least until I find out otherwise, I am going to pursue organic feeds so my concerns for the soil are lessened. But it costs more and is a bit of a hassle so would stay with traditional (now gmo)feeds if I could only know : )

Are you talking about blended feed for livestock because I'm not sure that I understand what you mean by "commercial grains".

Lloyd

The DNA and RNA in genetically modified organisms is made of the same amino acids as the DNA and RNA in any other organism. It all decomposes the same way.

Now keep calm and compost on!

Let's do a check here.
Much field corn is GMO.
Much soybeans [not all] are GMO.
Some canola is GMO.
Wheat is not GMO as far as I know.
Oats are not GMO as far as I know.
Rye and barley are not GMO as far as I know.
Clover and most grasses are not GMO as far as I know.
Some sugar beets and some alfalfa might be GMO.

I was most concerned about the Bt corn, which has the gene for the insecticide Bt "built-in" to the corn. I found the following abstract of a study on that very subject:
------------------------------
In order to make regulations that safeguard food and the environment, an understanding of the fate oftransgenes from genetically modified (GM) plants is of crucial importance. A compost experiment including mature transgenic corn plants and seeds of event Bt 176 (Zea mays L.) was conducted to trace the fate of the transgene cryIA(b) during the period of composting. In bin 1, shredded corn plants including seeds were composted above a layer of cow manure and samples from the corn layer were collected at intervals during a 12-month period. The samples were tested for the transgene persistence and microbial counts and also the compost was monitored for temperature. In bin 2, piles of corn seeds, surrounded by sheep manure and straw, were composted for 12 months. A method combining nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and southern hybridization was developed for detection of the transgene in compost. The detection sensitivity was 200 copies of the transgene per gram of dry composted corn material. Composting commenced on day 0, and the transgene was detected in specimens from bin 1 on days 0 and 7 but not on day 14 or thereafter. The transgene in corn seeds was not detectable after 12 months of composting in bin 2. Temperatures in both bins rose to about 50 degrees C within 2 weeks and remained above that temperature for about 3 months, even when the ambient temperature dropped below -20 degrees C. Extracts from compost were inoculated onto culture plates and then were incubated at 23 to 55 degrees C. Within the first 2 weeks of composting in bin 1, the counts of bacteria incubated at 55 degrees C increased from 3.5 to 7.5 log10, whereas those incubated at 23 degrees C remained at about 7.5 log10. The counts of fungi incubated at 45 degrees C increased slightly from 2.5 to 3.1 log10, but those incubated at 23 degrees C decreased from 6.3 to 3.0 log10. The rapid degradation of the transgene during composting of Bt corn plants suggested that the composting process could be used for safe disposal of transgenic plant wastes.
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I'm quite suspicious of the GMO crops for consumption purposes, and for the long-term prospects of agriculture. The use of Bt corn is already breeding resistant corn borers, according to my local paper (I live in corn country). I think you'd have to consider what each gene manipulation did (particularly if it involves pesticide or herbicides) and find out if that component would be safe for the organisms that turn matter into compost.

Here is a link that might be useful: Composting Bt Corn

Wayne_5, they are working on PERENNIAL wheat that won't have to be replanted. I guess the idea is less fuel usage and the promotion of no-till. When they come up with that, wheat, too will be GMO.
hortster

Wow, thanks for that research info.
As far as commercial feed goes, chicken feed has soy and corn in it, most horse grain has corn in it, hog feed has corn and soy, etc, etc. According to the feed mills, everything available to them is gmo, unless its certified organic.
It sounds like there is much to be learned about all this. If only I was an independantly wealthy soil scientist it would be a lifetime of work.
Thanks for all your input : )

hortster ... have you read what process they are using to get perennial wheat? The same process that produced wheat from einkorn and emmer: hybridizing! Crossing strains of wheat with other related grasses to get the perennial trait. If you consider that to be "GMO" than you are including any species that was altered by selection.

The fancy schmancy genetics part of it is this: They know what part of the genome will make a perennial grass in the wheat family. They are running DNA analysis on the seedlings from the hybridization to identify those that have the selected traits. Instead of tediously growing them out to see what's there, they can snip off a leaf and look at the genetic makeup.

Those that have the right stuff get kept and hybridized again. Those that don't can be culled very early.

You really need to stay more up to date Wayne.

Here is a link that might be useful: Geneticall Engineered Wheat

Are you sure you couldn't find an older document kimmsr?

Nothing like being up to date.

Lloyd

Here is a link that might be useful: No market for genetically modified wheat

Thanks Lloyd, sometimes I wonder if having all the information on the net is helpful or a hindrance.
The cure to all our problems is on the net, hidden under all the secularization & unproven claims,cons,fears & half truths.

I was under the impression that genes from perennial grasses were being implanted in wheat, but after googling I stand corrected in that the organic approach has been used to date. Still, once they come up with a high production strain, I wonder how long it will take them to genetically torque it into Roundup ready perennial wheat (assuming that other forbs and grasses will try to mix in over the six or seven year lifespan)...and come up with another potential Pandora's Box.
And on a tangent - if they develop perennial wheat I wonder if they'll have to start doing controlled burns as with prairie grasses...
hortster

"Don't believe everything you read on the Internet" - Abraham Lincoln

;-)

Lloyd--you consistently crack me up. I love it. :)

horster, I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to Franken-gene it once they come up with a successful production strain.

I thought though that the controlled burns were a good thing. Up here without them those red "cedars" keep taking over. They are nice in windbreaks and for some other applications, but not choking out all other types of vegetation.

They used ti think DDT was OK, too.

Here is a link that might be useful: GMO in food research

And they used to think that diseases were caused by foul humours or dwarves living in your stomach.

I'm not saying one way or the other, but I have two observations on this.

1) The brief comment above about GM living matter being made out of the same building blocks as anything else, and therefore just as biodegradable, was something I was going to say myself. I'm not too worried about different DNA or proteins put into my compost somehow affecting MY health directly.

2) Do we really know that there are NO unusual chemicals produced in these plants that may negatively affect the soil food web? Someone else said it was a grand experiment and that we haven't really studied its effects on the planet. With respect to the soil food web I would bet this is true.

So, I don't know that the sky is falling, but I have concerns.

DDT and Cyanide are made from teh same basic building blocks we all are, so we should consume them because of that?

Certainly not.

The results are not in yet, but given the history of the bigpharma/bigag/fossil fuel entities (all deeply intertwined), prudence would dictate avoiding GMO crops if at all possible, which many other counties have already decided to do.

Here is a link that might be useful: GMO in food research

Not to go too far off-topic, but ...

Here is a link that might be useful: GustOrganics

GustOrganics approaches this from an ideological perspective and not a factual one. A read of the link will show how lacking in truth the statements are.

Here is a link that might be useful: GM Food Myths

A cut and paste quote from that exact link, bluegoat...

"No one really knows whether GMOs are safe or not -- so little work has been done on this and even less has been released to the public."

The fact that the technology is untested, but so widely adopted, is at best unsettling. Perhaps you haven't any progeny about whose future you're concerned, or perhaps profits trump ethics in your world view, but I prefer a prudent ideological approach to the pronouncements of an organization that is soundly anchored in the biotech world.

The world is rife with examples of how mankind continuously victimizes itself through a flawed understanding of how technology and nature interact. Start by researching cruise ships, make a detour to Fukushima , Chernobyl, and Bhopal, and keep going till you find Pompeii. Don't forget the Gulf of Mexico, both before and after BP, Love Canal, and the Cuyahoga River, And how about a nice healthy dose of Thalidamide while we're at it. Bring some DDT in case we run into mosquitos. We could go there in a zeppelin if your Pinto is still in the shop. Just sayin'.

"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana 1905

"There are none so blind as those who will not see."
attributed to Thomas Chalkley, 1713

To say that mankind victimizes itself through "flawed understanding" is a bit too altruistic a view to be accurate.

Though the original purpose of the FDA may have had to do with safeguarding the food supply, now its principal purpose appears to be safeguarding the profits of pharmaceutical and food companies. Otherwise, how could all these drugs, food additives, and "foods" be labeled safe for human consumption without long-term testing?

Monosodium glutamate, aspartame, red dye #40, hydrogenated fats, olestra--all have known problems that they create in the human body, ranging from allergies and sensitivities to damaging the cardiovascular system. Personally, I have quick unpleasant reactions to the first three (ranging from hives to vomiting and metabolic upset)--the latter do long-term damage. All have biologically REAL counterparts that they replaced, but the chemical creation is cheaper to produce and usually stores far longer than the natural version, so it can processed and stocked on grocery shelves. It's not that those in the know don't understand--it's the MONEY.

Often the best way to understand what is really going on in a fubar situation is to follow the money.

I would suspect the pollution we indirectly put onto our soils is far worse than GMO by-products.

Just a guess.

Lloyd

I agree that the FDA has bedded with the drug industry. I take some supplements and am a firm believer in prevention. I keep getting health alerts all the time where we have to battle the FDA from usurping supplements. Their tighter control means mostly one thing...control under the AMA types. Did you know that the AMA was organized to outlaw holistic health care?....still at it!

Perhaps 100,000 people a year die to approved drugs... misuse and such. How many reported deaths from supplements...about zero if you exclude a few diet pill abuses. Yet the FDA and cohorts want to circumvent health freedom...dastardly.

Pardon my rant: That does it, I'm swearing off all advances in human progress in the sciences!!! Based on the numerous examples above, one can only conclude that the world is full of evil, money grubbing bastards enabled by politicians with money stuffed to the hem pockets and that nobody amongst them gives a s**t!!! I'm going back to my bunker lab to build a better mouse trap.

Oh, thanks for the abstract link, always helpful to know where some of this stuff actually comes from.

Oh BTW, is this the 50s, kinda sounds like it, there's a communist hiding around every corner, AAAAHHH! Take a GMO-free chill pill maybe.

The problem is not science, science is awesome. the problem is, IMO, the combination of greed and hubris and the disregard for ethics and what our children will have to deal with. Any new technology will encounter some unexpected consequences. Introducing it prematurely into the ecosystem, without sufficient safeguards, has pretty consistently come back to bite us in the a$$. We as a nation have for decades assumed that the mistakes we make now will be dealt with by a future generation - look at how we deal with our national debt - but as we explore newer and more complex technologies, the unforeseen consequences get harder to imagine, larger in scope, and may require a technological remediation that exceeds the capabilities of the people it affects. I am not opposed to GMO research, and the concept makes sense to me, but it is premature to be introducing it into the global food network. In this supposedly free country, why is there such resistance to labeling GMO foods? The answer is simple - money.

Greed, hubris, and inexorable resource pressure.

In 1970, we were less than four billion.

Now, forty years later, we are seven billion.

Kansas and Nebraska regularly go to court to fight over water rights because of Nebraska's use of water out of the Republican river to irrigate cornfields.

Why do we need to grow so much corn? Because without food, people fall over dead. (Thus saith my water resources engineering professor.)

Resource pressure is also part of the driver for the GMO crops. Lesser of two evils (perhaps) to tinker with the genes to make the corn produce its own Bt and make it resistant to glyphosate than let people starve. We don't know the long-term effects, but we know the short-term effects if people don't eat.

I don't know how this will all play out. I really worry about our futures, long-term, and about the future of my daughter. We have our own little patch of earth where I grow as much of our own veggies as I can, and we have chickens (that eat commercial feed) to produce our own eggs. But what will happen as we keep growing?

Here is a link that might be useful: World population

I will not argue that regulatorily speaking, things seem to be stacked in favor of the companies selling (or proposing to sell) products. At the same time I would suggest that anger against the FDA, USDA etc. needs to be tempered by the realization that almost any regulatory agency at any level of government is boxed in to a certain extent on what they can require.

EPA can't just wake up one morning and decide to change the regime of tests that have to be done to prove a pesticide is 'safe' before it can be marketed. It would require, at most, federal legislation; at the very least, rulemaking (i.e. revising or making new regulations within the current statutes or laws). Even rulemaking is a heavily political process and is not done in a vacuum by the agency.

I'm not defending them, just suggesting that regulation is a slow process and subject to politics. So if the current rules do not require that a GM plant be evaluated for whether its proteins affect the soil food web, it's gonna be awhile before that's seriously considered or implemented, even if the agency agrees and tries to pursue it.

Regulation lags behind science and industry for this reason. They invent something new and the existing regs don't consider its potential issues.

No doubt there are greedy people in the world with no regard for ethics, I just think where we diverge on this, bi11me, is the degree to which it penetrates society and industry in general. Washington, what a humongous mess!

All actions have consequences, it just seems that society has developed an element that, while noble in intent, is going astray in a counter-productive way.

Ralleia: you can add CO to the states list. Bonnnie reservoir in CO along the KS/NE border is being dismantled over the stink. Bonnie is a rather small lake and hardly seems significant but by god somebody sure wants those few gallons, too bad for the migrating waterfowl and lots of other critters in an otherwise dry place.

Most of that corn grown from those irrigated areas is going to ethanol plants, some of it goes to feed animals, none of it is used to feed people directly.

I've noticed that the Republican is definitely running more water than it used to since the pumping restrictions began, no surprise there really.

Without a doubt, world pop. is a huge issue, my solution is simple yet elegant but extremely difficult..... breed the human race to be about 3' tall. Just think of it, we already know how to do the science and if everyone was 3' tall we'd need about 1/2 the resources, housing, food, fuel, etc.. Guess I'd have to be one of the first to go, unfortunately being near 6' tall :-(

With GMO technology, and even common hybridizing techniques, breeding for shortness isn't much of a challenge. Hopefully we'll find a simpler, more politically expedient solution before a more dire and unexpected control presents itself. This is the reason why things like bird flu scares the pants off scientists; these days, in dense populations with less than ideal nutrition and over-exposure to antibiotics, coupled with global trade and travel, one new virulent fatal disease could cause billions of deaths, if the results of pandemics like the Black Plague can serve as an example. GMO may offer some solutions, just as petroleum-based agriculture has helped solve some problems, but the rush to incorporate that technology is, in my opinion, imprudent.

bi11me: didn't the GMO technology start with the flavor savor strawberry (not sure of the name)? At any rate, I think it started in strawberry breeding many years ago; if that's the case, I surmise the rush has been it's relatively sudden application to agronomic crops grown on a wide scale.

The crop residues don't concern me in and of themselves. Crop parts definitely entering the food chain, I haven't yet seen any rigorous research indicating a definitive cause for alarm.

The research may have started with strawberries - my quick GOOGLE search indicates it may have been tobacco (which wouldn't surprise me) and tomatoes - but it has progressed into all of our major agronomic crops; grains, rice, soybeans, potatoes, and on and on - and it is my belief that that was the intention all along. It is pervasive in most American diets. It has, however, been a practice to manipulate the genes of plants since man first started selecting particular ones for seed crops. The (IMO) speed with which the technology is being introduced has to do with corporate economics on at least two fronts, relating to the patenting of seeds and the encouragement of chemical-dependant production methods. The crop residues concern me not only because of the aggressive legal tactics that Monsanto and others are adopting against non-GMO farmers on adjacent lands, but precisely because there are no easily available research results. This is necessarily because it is a comparatively new technology (though not THAT new, research in recombinant DNA began in 1973, according to some resources), but because the research, at this point, should not be so hard to find... my natural suspicion of the BigAg/BigPharma/Big Oil cabal sees something ominous in that fact. Monsanto has released the results of some studies of a very limited number of crops for a very limited amount of time, often as short as 90 days, and pronounced everything to be fine. The effects of changes on DNA, however, can extend beyond generations, so crop residues in soils are unlikely to have been as thoroughly researched, and that research as widely distributed, as I would find necessary to put my mind at rest. There have simply been too many recalls of high-tech innovations, or the discontinuance of certain accepted chemicals because of the discovery of unanticipated long-term effects, for me to comfortably accept the widespread introduction of what I see as an inadequately tested, and disingenuously introduced, technology. I recognize the perceived necessity to produce more, and more nutritious, food, and that in the eyes of many the solution is a technological one. My opposition begins with the presumption that we should be trying to support what is, in my mind, an unnaturally large human population (by which I mean too many people, not too many huge people, which is a different issue) - a very difficult premise to propagate - but it is bolstered by my belief that the best solution to feeding all those mouths is an adaptation that encourages local, small-scale, sustainable, independent food production, rather than a global, technology dependent, and highly commercial one. In complex systems, the possibility and consequences of a small failure increase, as does the potential for that small failure to have a large impact.

Bottom line for me, I am not opposed to the research, any more than I am to cold fusion, the Large Hadron Collider, space exploration, or any number of other highly technological and potentially dangerous technologies, but it seems to me fundamentally unethical to introduce those technologies to a broad segment of the population without rigorous safeguards and the broadest transparency, and that is most definitely not the case with food-related GMOs. I believe it is in our nature as humans to explore, but it is in very few of those explorations, GMO research being one of them, that we willingly take our children along for the ride.

bi11me: we agree on a lot, that is clear, in addition, you are probably a much better typist as you posts are longer than mine :)

I am a bit perplexed at the apparent lack of university research and/or even private research put into the soil side of this issue. Obviously, the major players don't consider it an issue, either they don't want to deal with it or have looked into it on some level and don't care to release their findings for any of a host of possible reasons.

With the state of things in Europe, it is interesting to find a relatively tiny amount of research into the food side of things.

It doesn't surprise me to find many people concerned about things that are new and not understood to them, it's part of the human genome I think. Way, way back in human history people probably reacted by creating superstitions and folk lore about things they didn't understand, that help them live with those things. A lot of people were pretty scared of the steam engine when it first came on the scene.

Really, I'm not trying to poo-poo your's and other's concerns about the GMOs, just trying to step way back and look at them in an attempt to discern if a problem really exists. No doubt we'd agree, if there is a problem, it would be far better to know it now than way down the road, kinda like P caused eutrophication in bodies of water.

Yeah, Monsanto's legal tactics make me furious, what a miscarriage of justice.

I've enjoyed reading your posts.

Many people here are talking about Genetically Modified organisims which are quite common. An f1 hybrid is a genetically modified organisms. What we need be concerned about are the Genetically Engineered Organisms, things inserted into plants that would not get there except via a laboratory.

kimmsr, of course you are technically correct, but because the term GMO is in common usage to describe the transfer of DNA from non-related species that could not normally hypridize - fish and tomatoes being a popular example - it is not unreasonable to be using the term in this discussion. Although it might have served to have stated so earlier on in the thread, it's highly likely that, from jeaninmts' original post on, we're all discussing the artificial bio-chemical transfer of inter-species DNA. Since most of us already grow f1 hybrid crops, and most of us compost, the utilization of crop residues from conventional plant modification techniques would appear to be accepted practice, and would unlikely have warranted both the original post or the long discussion that followed. But thanks for making sure we're all on the same page.