Comments on: Greenpeace offers marker assisted breeding

By: James

James — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 03:01:46 +0000

Since both the internal combustion engine and the assembly line have car related applications, clearly Ford should abandon the internal combustion engine once you tell them about the benefits of the assembly line.

By: Matt

Matt — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 02:54:02 +0000

Wow, it’s profoundly stupid that Greenpeace “offered” MAS to breeders. Maybe I’ll recommend the assembly line to Ford.

By: James

James — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 02:48:37 +0000

Given that’s basically what greenpeace just did, I’d say turnabout is fair play. One of the many reasons science-based ag needs its own NGO.

By: Mary

Mary — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 02:42:00 +0000

It strikes me that we ought to do a press release titled: Greenpeace comes out for biotechnology!, explain the whole thing, and watch their heads explode.

By: James

James — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 02:13:17 +0000

You’re completely right about the striga resistant sorghum. I think the world food prize is one of the many things in the world that simply isn’t acknowledged by the anti-science based agriculture set. That fact that there’s a prestigious award set up to recognize scientists for contributing to the battle against world hunger doesn’t fit so well with the view that scientists are part of the problem and definitely not part of the solution.

Tragically wrong really is the best word for it. That’s almost the worst part. There are plenty of people who live their whole lives not give much thought at all to where their food comes, or whether we will still have enough of it in fifty years. The organic/local/sustainable/etc food movement at least is trying to pay attention. They’ve just fixed on to incorrect conclusions and refuse to think critically about them.

By: Mary

Mary — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:51:45 +0000

Oy. I’ve gone ’round and ’round on that one elsewhere too. One woman was arguing with me on the funding for a bill in the Senate that she wanted all her readers to oppose because it used–wait for it–”biotechnology” in the language of the bill.

Yet she assured me that MAS/MAB were not biotechnology. So I pointed out the IAASTD report (which she always tells me is teh greatest) uses this definition:

“The IAASTD definition of biotechnology is based on that in the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. It is a broad term embracing the manipulation of living organisms and spans the large range of activities from conventional techniques for fermentation and plant and animal breeding to recent innovations in tissue culture, irradiation, genomics and marker-assisted breeding (MAB) or marker assisted selection (MAS) to augment natural breeding. Some of the latest biotechnologies (‘modern biotechnology’) include the use of in vitro modified DNA or RNA and the fusion of cells from different taxonomic families, techniques that overcome natural physiological reproductive or recombination barriers. ”

http://www.agassessment.org/docs/SR_Exec_Sum_280508_English.htm

Here’s one of my major issues with the people who don’t understand this: they will ban things they claim are ok because of their sloppy language and lack of understanding of this field. The activists are working _against_ training and academic projects that would teach third world agricultural scientists the techniques. It’s tragically wrong.

Another great story in MAS/MAB was Gebisa Ejeta’s striga-resistant sorghum. Ejeta also won the world food prize this year and I keep waiting for a single foodie to acknowledge it….