Friday 25 May 2012

GM in the News

Just over a month ago I saw some tweets from Rothamsted Research and read a blog post on Nelly's Greenhouse which made me aware of intended action of Take The Flour Back to destroy a research field trial. In the last month the topic has gained a lot of publicity and now everyone seems to be talking about genetic modification (GM), which is pretty cool! I think it's really important to talk about science. Of course we must remember to do it in a way that uses unbiased facts and avoids scaremongering, but all the publicity is raising awareness of the potential of GM technology.

Before I go any further I should explain that I am pro-GM, as long as it is highly regulated and tested so we can know more about what we are dealing with. I can't see the use in discarding what could be a fantastic tool for crop improvement because people are telling lies and are threatening vandalism. I also believe that people should have a choice about what they want to put in their bodies and that this new technology should not be forced on anyone who doesn't want it. I wouldn't like it if you made me eat boiled cabbage, for example, so I wouldn't make you eat GM food if you didn't want to.

I admit cabbage can be pretty! Image from here

In case you somehow missed it, here's what all the fuss is about: Rothamsted are running a small outdoor trial to test the ability of wheat, with an added man-made gene, to repel aphids. Aphids love wheat and unfortunately cause damage and spread disease. Currently the only way to get rid of aphids is to spray crops with pesticides. Adding this synthetic gene into the wheat DNA by genetic modification techniques makes the wheat emit a plant chemical (produced in peppermint, amongst other species) which smells really grim to aphids and has the added bonus of attracting their natural predators, such as ladybirds. The hope is that if the plant can repel insects by itself we will not need to apply pesticides to our crops and we can reduce damage to our environment.

(I'm kinda hoping in the next 100 years they figure out how to do this with humans. Maybe we could start giving off a chemical which repels mosquitoes! Sign me up, I hate mosquitoes! (Or maybe we could repel those annoying salesmen who hang around town centres trying to make you buy car insurance..).


Image from this blog which is anti-GM.

But seriously, it's understandable that people worry about GM. All new technology can be scary because the consequences are unknown. In the case of GM, it is important to view the process as a tool and not to immediately associate the term with so called "Frankenstein foods". GM is actually just a technique, which can be good or bad depending on who is using it and what their reasons are. Trying to get rid of GM without investigating it further is a bit silly really because it could be a great way of improving our crop productivity and it could help feed the world. Then again it might not, but we don't know until we try!


In the case of Rothamsted's aphid trial, this is probably one of the most sensible approaches to testing GM I've seen. It has been approved by The Food and Environment Research Agency. They have not involved any companies who may want to sell the wheat for profit. This trial is purely for research purposes. They have safeguards in place to stop any transgenic material (that's material with an added gene) from escaping into the wheat population. Anyone who works with wheat will know that wheat pollen doesn't travel very far (although it still manages to get up my nose and give me hay fever), and even if the pollen does manage to reach another wheat flower it is unlikely they would be compatible. Wheat self-pollinates you see.

My field trial :)

The Take The Flour Back website puts a large emphasis on the synthetic gene in this GM trial being a cow-gene. One feature of their video campaign shows a bread-cow. The gene is not from a cow. This is a lie! The gene is man-made and just happens to be most similar to a cow gene. I work with fungi and when I enter the DNA into a website I can find hundreds of different organisms from plants to animals to humans with matching sequences. This does not mean my gene is from a hippo! Things like this drive me barmy. It's like that tabloid headline which said "Victoria Beckham rejected by Simon Cowell". Everyone was thinking that it was all sexy and gossipy but actually the truth was that he didn't sign the Spice Girls to his record label. My point is that you should take everything you read with a pinch of salt. Even what I'm writing here! This is just my opinion. I made my opinion by reading about the subject. If you haven't read up on it, don't view the activist propaganda and get scared because someone is telling you that your bread will soon be made from cow. Try reading more about the subject first. If you are one of these people considering destroying this research, not understanding something is not a good reason to go and ruin someone's work.

Take The Flour Back are planning to "clean-up" the trial site on the 27th May. In other words they are going to trample through centuries old field trials at Rothamsted to access the GM trial and then tear up all the plants. In any other career this planned "decontamination" would be seen as madness. It makes me sad just to think of it.

How about a hypothetical situation: I'm going to break in to my local dentist next Tuesday and start smashing things up because I don't think that they should be allowed to extract teeth. I'm scared by the thought of extracting teeth and have heard that you can die if they put you to sleep when they do it. I haven't bothered to understand why it is necessary to remove bad teeth and I haven't asked for more information on the safety measures in place. I just believe I'm right and that I'm helping everyone out by stopping this process.

Stupid? Sensible? Ridiculous example? Let me know your thoughts.

I have too many thoughts surrounding this issue to be able to write them all here so I will leave you with two videos. One from Take The Flour Back and one from Rothamsted Research. Watch and tell me what you think.



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