New Frontiers in Genetic Engineering
I was browsing some older posts from Matt’s blog, and I came across this.
In fact this is something I’ve known for a while, and coincidentally sent Matt an email about the other day, but I’ve never posted here on the subject.
It’s just a fact, the science of genetic engineering (GE) is quickly moving out of the laboratory and into the home. Not just in our ability to buy products that are themselves a result of GE, but also in our own ability to make GE organisms.
Already, if you have a well equiped home, it’s possible to do an awful lot. The cost of this equipment is within the budgets of many people, it’s only getting cheaper and it’s accuracy increasing.
The amount of publicly available data that can assist GE is also increasing at a dramatic rate; including things like decoded genomes and cataloges of marker genes (a fancy term that just means genes with a known trait). All of this applies to plants, microorganisms, animals and even humans.
So while the debate now often centers on the latest Roundup ready gene Monsanto inserted into our soybeans, tomorrow it could be the latest accident caused by a teenager or the mess intentionally caused by someone knowledgeable.
I often compare GE to abortions. I don’t really think it makes sense for anyone to be for or against abortions. An abortion is just a medical procedure. You can argue if it’s immoral, talk about it in terms of legal or illegal, safe or unsafe, early or late, but you can never deny the existence of the procedure itself.
This is really where we are now with GE. It doesn’t make sense to call it good or bad. The genie is out of the bottle. Now it’s time to start learning as much as possible as quickly as possible about the science, and to focus honestly and diligently on what the real risks are.
In the meantime, this crap doesn’t belong in our food or the environment, until we’ve had a chance to honestly research and learn more about it!
Swine Flu Video
Here’s a video I found on the GRAIN website, a translated French documentary on La Gloria and the associated Smithfield Farms factory pig farm where the latest outbreak of Swine Flu occured.
It’s about 45 minutes long, and contains some disturbing images.
Garden Pictures January 2010
The garden is a winter wonderland now. While we aren’t breaking any records yet, it’s pretty darn cold. The snow is about a foot (30cm) deep. The canals are all frozen.
Everything is covered in ice crystals.
Even the cobwebs under the shed roof didn’t escape the ice crystals.
The view in the distance just fades, because the whole area is covered in a winter mist. No footsteps in the snow, because I’m the only one crazy enough to visit their garden. Mine were the only human footsteps visible. Otherwise there were tracks from the hares and birds that live in the area during the winter.
Planning is already underway for a possible Elfstedentocht this year! We need another few weeks of cold winter to make it possible…
2010: International Year of Biodiversity
UN Secretary General Welcome Message for the 2010 International Year of Biodiversity from CBD on Vimeo.
Our challenge will be to make sure this applies to the food we eat, as well as the world’s ecosystems.
Political Failure
Well, we just witnessed what is probably the most ineffective outcome from the Copenhagen summit possible. Nothing binding, no real deadlines and no new commitments. Julieanne has a pretty good analysis on her gardening blog Gwenfar’s Lottie.
When are countries going to include agriculture in these discussions anyway!
The EU has also just finalized their budget next year, with roughly 45% earmarked for agriculture. As is usual for these kinds of things, there seems to be little concrete information online, but indications are this too was a total failure by most accounts. No big overhaul that we’ve been promised for years, no new money for small and family run farms, no new money for organic agriculture, no caps on the largest recipients of farm aid and no obvious cuts for the environmentally damaging factory farm industry that provides most of our food.
What we have is a promise for next year, a total overhaul of the budget. There doesn’t seem like a lot to look forward to here either. France, Ireland and Poland are promoting business as usual, and other countries are supporting “a shift in spending away from agriculture towards innovation, energy and tackling climate change.” We’ll have to wait a while anyway for whatever gains are made on these policies, because they don’t come into effect until 2014.
While no one is going to stand up against innovation, without reforms in patent and other intellectual property rights laws, all that’s going to happen is we find ourselves in the middle of another GMO fiasco. That is we’ll end up with technology and innovation that doesn’t offer any particular benefit to consumers, isn’t wanted, is potentially dangerous and is forced on us regardless.
Who knows what it means to increase spending in ‘energy and tackling climate change’ in the context of all of this. Important topics for sure, but what exactly does it mean?
