Remember how Shane Morris posted a photo that he claimed showed that the "wormy corn" sign had been taken down when in fact the sign was visible in his photo? Here's the latest (from Private Eye):
After the Eye reported Morris's threats in issue 1194, he wrote to demand a right to reply and made the extraordinary claim that Michael Khoo, then a Greenpeace campaigner, had tampered with the signs to sabotage the research. Morris said a photograph taken of Khoo next to the signs at the time of study proved his allegation.
It proved no such thing. No one, including Morris, had previously argued the photo showed Khoo had tampered with the signs in the seven years since the study began. Nor did a lengthy letter submitted to the British Food Journal by Morris's co-author Douglas Powell, of Kansas State University, which rejected allegations of 'bias and academic fraud' leveled at the paper. Neither was Morris's claim about the photo supported by another co-author, Katija Blaine, who told the Eye she knew nothing of the allegation. Indeed, the photograph of Khoo was initially used by Morris himself on his own website to show the 'wormy signs' had been removed - although subsequent analysis of the photo showed they were still on display.
Khoo said: 'Shane Morris must be fairly desperate to create such melodramatic lies seven years after the fact. If any of these things had actually happened, wouldn't he have been the first to call the police or tell the press?'
The Eye asked Morris to explain these rather glaring inconsistencies but he declined, simply repeating the claim that the photograph shows Khoo uncovering words that had been hidden. As to the Early Day motions signed by cross party MPs in Westminster and the criticism from Irish politicians, Morris said that 'no website was attempted to be shut down as any changes made to anti-GM websites were their decision based on complaints regarding specific wording claims that were requested to be changed.'
Just found this post (and the previous one) and I love your coverage of the "wormy sweet corn" (I may have to snag that phrase in the future). GMOs and the way they are being foisted upon the public is a big issue for me, and I'm glad to see other people keeping an eye on it too.
Here in America, the FDA is still insisting that meat from cloned animals and their offspring is safe, therefore no labeling is needed. Gotta love this overwhelming respect for consumer choice.
And I would love to eat some wormy sweet corn right now!
I'm still trying to work out how we are going to feed 9 billion people in 30 years time (many of whom will have more money than now and want more protein in their diet) in a rapidly changing environment, with significantly less arable land and water than we currently have. Add in large tracts of land being used to produce hydrocarbons rather than food.
Either we all become vegetarian (ain't gonna happen)or we use GMOs (labelled of course). Conventional breeding doesn't have the genetic resources to draw upon to respond to this problem.
It's the elephant in the room that many refuse to see because the response involves 'teh evil GMOs'.
Actually Nexus 6, there has not been one example of genetic modification improving yields. In fact the opposite is true, yields have gone down. The only new technologies with increased yields, which have been introduced recently, have been due to classical plant breeding and not to rDNA techniques.
The late departed head scientist in the UK made a terrible blunder in one of his farewell speeches when he boasted about new rDNA technology in Kenya which resulted in large increases in yield. The only problem is that the new technology was not based on rDNA technology at all but was based on the application of natural technology.
If you want to find out about how non-rDNA technology is helping to feed the hungry people of Africa and elsewhere then here is a good place to start:
http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=8658
Do not believe the lies put out by Monsanto et al, they do not have one project which has been successful in increasing yields, despite many "reports" stating otherwise. Google Dr. Florence Wambugu and find out about the distorted research promoted by these companies.
Agricultural yields have to improve but the current crop of companies and products are not doing it. Too bad that governments are giving so much money to make these companies richer and are doing nothing for farmers and consumers the world over.
I have to support Ian on this. All the GM crops I know about (which is limited and anecdotal) have been modified for pesticide resistance, generation of their own pesticides or be seedless. Not a single one I know of that has been modified to increase yields.
I'm not overly interested in what crops Bayer has released in the past or whether Monsanto steals African babies.
We are talking fairly basic genetics here. Each crop species has a genetic pool breeders can draw upon to improve a particular trait (i.e. yield, drought tolerance etc.). The pool includes the crop's varieties (the ones the farmers use), which are generally all pretty closely related so not that helpful, and the landraces (the wild relatives from the crop's area of origin, which are quite genetically variable). Standard breeding has bought about massive improvements in many traits but the problem is that all the low hanging fruit have been picked, so to speak. The rate of improvement in traits will never be what it was before, even with marker assisted selection and such things. The even bigger problem is that within the available genetic pool the genes required might not actually exist. To believe that somehow we are going to double the yield of maize, wheat and rice in 30 years, whilst growing these crops on degraded soils with less water, and do all this using standard breeding practices involving increasingly limited gene pools is laughable. Don't forget that as the environment rapidly changes the landraces themselves are likely to be decimated, as they're not adapted to just up and move to a more suitable area. Genetic modifaction massively increases the genetic pool available to breeders (who remain just as important as ever).
Perhaps the fight should be over ensuring that corporations don't have complete control over the technology, rather than irrationally hating the technology itself.
Nexus 6, I'm afraid that you do not know much about genetic manipulation. Just because we "think" genes exist does not make it so. It is possible, for example, that a certain trait is composed of a large number of genes, each one of which individually would not seem to be connected to that trait.
Genetics of the types of traits you are talking about are very complicated and not even understood at an elementary basis (that is why traditional breeding has worked, you cross plants with the trait and do not need to understand the biochemistry involved). All the traits used in rDNA are simple one enzyme on gene type traits. The more complicated the trait the more genes which have to be fully understood, characterized and isolated to be able to transfer that trait. It is so complicated that it will take many, many years and untold millions of dollars to do so.
The food shortages in Africa and elsewhere are not caused by a lack of technology but are far deeper rooted. These countries have been used by the first world countries as a source of cash crops, not food, for so many years. The poor farmers who have been turfed off their land are faced with existing on the much poorer soils that the multi-national agro-companies don't want. Also, the land is subject to runoff from various herbicides which kills off the crops they are trying to grow.
If you are really serious about solving food shortages in the third world I would suggest that you forget about rDNA technology but urge the various governments to spend their research dollars on appropriate and natural technology that will help the indigenous farmers, not hurt them. If you want to see how rDNA technology has really hurt farmers then check out the effects of BT cotton in India. That should open your eyes to the malfeasance of the multi-national/government alliances.
Ian, I'm not talking about solving food shortage in the third world now. I agree with you, we currently produce enough food. I'm talking about world-wide food shortage in the future, at a time when more wealthy people are going to want to eat a whole lot more protein than they do now. I'd like to see everyone have access to the quality of diet you and I have now. That's won't be possible unless things change.
As for multigenic traits - sure that's true, but there's no barrier to introducing multiple transgenic traits. For example:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=artificial-chromosome-gm-crops
You seem to have a fixitation with what it already out in the marketplace, such as BT corn etc. These crops were developed over 20 years ago. Think what has happened to computers over the past 20 years. Biotechnology has probably moved at an even faster pace.
Anyways, perhaps explain to me how you think we are going double our food production in 30 years, using less land and water? That is the question I'm asking, not "how are we going to feed the thrid world now?"
ummm, if pests eat fewer crops, wouldn't that result in higher yields?
interesting bit from the Canadian Broadcasting Company.....
Let's end the debate over sweet corn, worms and GM food
March 6, 2008
http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_strauss/20080306.html
Given a choice would you rather eat a wormy or worm-free cob of sweet corn?
If this doesn't sound like a question requiring more than a nanosecond of reflection, then you haven't been paying attention to an international row over what might be called "truth in worminess." It has erupted over an experiment conducted nearly eight years ago by three University of Guelph scientists and a local farmer.
It is a row that now has several dozen international scientists petitioning the journal that published the results in 2003 to withdraw the paper, as well as an award it gave to the article as the best paper published in 2003. It is a row in which English and Irish politicians have used the research to table motions denouncing one of the paper's authors for committing what they characterized as "grossly misleading" research of "a flagrant fraud."
So here is what happened. Jeff Wilson (he likes to be called Farmer Jeff) offered customers at his Birkbank Farms store a choice between genetically modified (GM) corn and traditional corn he had grown.
The GM corn had been genetically altered to express the natural insecticide Bacillus thuringiensis, commonly known as BT. The unmodified corn had had various pesticides and fungicides -- including BT -- sprayed on it.
In the store, there were explanations about how each type of corn was produced and the relative cost of both. The two corn types were sold at exactly same price.
When give a choice, consumers bought 680 dozen cobs of GM corn and only 452.5 dozen cobs of conventional sweet corn. Interviews conducted by the Guelph researchers with a small number of the customers afterward suggested that those who bought the GM corn were first impressed with the fact that it looked better than the conventional corn. An analysis revealed that one to two per cent of the GM corn had worm damage, versus 10 to 20 per cent of conventional corn.
As well, from an environmental perspective, the customers seemed more concerned about the pesticides applied to the conventional corn than the gene movement that had created the GM corn.
The British Food Journal eventually published these results.
Did signage skew results?
But when, you might be asking, are we going to get to the wormy corn question?
Well, it turned out that when Toronto Star journalist Stuart Laidlaw visited the farm and the store, he noted that a handwritten sign above the non-GM corn said, "Would you eat wormy sweet corn." Another, above the GM corn, said, "Here is what has gone into producing quality sweet corn," and listed fertilizers.
Laidlaw wrote in his 2003 book Secret Ingredients: The Brave New World of Industrial Farming that the signage was skewed and added, "when one bin was marked 'wormy corn' and the other 'quality sweet corn,' it is hardly surprising which sold more."
I will come back to this contention later, but on to the controversy.
In 2006, Joe Cummins -- a retired professor of genetics at the University of Western Ontario -- wrote a letter that was published in the British Food Journal quoting Laidlaw's book and demanding that the article be removed and its award rescinded. To put Cummins's views in context, since 1988, he has vigorously written and spoken out against genetic engineering.
In a companion letter, Doug Powell, one of paper's authors and a professor at Guelph, wrote that he didn't think the sign completely prejudiced the study and pointed out that the sign was taken down the next week.
The journal's editor chimed in, in a note: "A common misconception is that science and research are about facts, whereas in reality, research methodology concerns the unknown, hypotheses, probability, balancing and judging evidence or data. Thus, even in an objective research world, there is a need for interpretation and possibly an element of subjectivity."
Sounds so reasonable, but all this was taking place within the context of an often-acrimonious debate in Ireland over the possible introduction of genetically modified foodstuffs.
Another of the paper's authors, Shane Morris -- who is Irish and who was working for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency -- got involved as a private citizen in the debates, arguments and brouhahas. Morris opined about the topic strongly and often in his GMO Ireland blog and in papers published in scientific journals.
This enraged anti-GM groups, and personal attacks on Morris now pepper the internet. For example, a press release bearing Cummins's name characterizes the disagreement as: "how a Canadian Government Agent is involved in shoddy research and across border intimidation of public interest organization over GM crops." Others repeat the "flagrant fraud" accusation.
Another controversy rages as to whether wormy corn signs were left up for much more than a week or, alternatively, if a Greenpeace researcher tried to uncover them after the offending words had been blotted out.
Wow. My guess is that the 2003 paper may today be the most quoted and discussed Canadian agricultural research paper of all time.
Similar results without signs
In this vein, let me point out three things.
First, the sale of GM and non-GM corn continued the next year at Birkbank Farms, when no offending signs of any sort have been alleged to have been posted. Almost exactly the same buying patterns were reported by the Guelph researchers.
Secondly, a farm in San Luis Obispo, Calif., recently sold GM corn and non-GM corn together with labels identifying them as such. The owner told a local newspaper twice as much GM corn as non-GM corn was bought. He was quoted as saying customers told him they bought the GM corn because it didn't have to be partially shucked to see whether it was wormy, and thus it looked fresher.
But my third point is fundamental. Look, in science, when you think a result is wrong, you conduct another experiment that proves that. While the wormy corn sign seems to me to have at the very least been a serious error in judgment, I can't tell whether it was absolutely a fatal flaw with regard to the research findings. And that is partially because I have seen with my own eyes a big Toronto organic store sell produce that was small and deformed and insect bitten. My reading of the overt message the store was sending out was: perfect food is unnatural; if you want to eat naturally, you must dine on food that looks as deformed as this does.
So I think that somebody should conduct an experiment exactly like the first, except with the offending wormy corn sign removed. Even if there was no controversy, you would want to do this, because only a numbskull would suggest that the tastes and preferences of a small number of people visiting a small farm store in southern Ontario can be generalized to include all humanity's multitudinous habits and preferences.
Maybe it turns out that Europeans are so set against genetic engineering that they would rather eat half-shucked, worm-ridden, all-natural corn than wormless, unshucked GM cobs. Maybe the Chinese are quite the reverse.
But the way to resolve this is not to send petitions to journals telling them to remove articles you disagree with. That's what politicians do. What scientists do is take the rather inelegant testing process we know as the scientific method, apply it, and see what falls out.
What science does is what the scientific signers of the petition against the British Food Journal paper didn't and likely don't want to do.
Hold off prejudice; test; see what is.