So now for the main event! What you all came here to hear, what I came here to hear, frankly.
Steve Strauss is a distinguished professor in the College of Forestry, at Oregon State,
he is the outreach director for the biotechnology program at the university, he is also a fellow
of the leopole leadership program at Stanford University, and director of the Tree Safety
and Research Cooperative at OSU. Steve has degrees from Cornell, from Yale, from Cal
Berkeley. And by the way, many who know him; you know that Steve is also a soccer referee.
So when he leaves the lab, when he leaves the controversies of the scientific enterprise,
he goes onto a high school soccer field and tries to negotiate with the soccer players
and he has cards. He brought them here tonight to make sure that we're all in line so, if
you're asking a question, you're a little bit on the edge, you get a yellow card. And
if you are way outta line, you get a red card and you'll be out on your ear. But of course,
I'm just kidding. But I'm not kidding about his soccer endeavors, and Steve is. I can't
imagine being a soccer referee. I watch these people work and think, how do you do that?
So he his good at negotiating controversy, and he are going to share his knowledge and
his perspective on genetic engineering of food and crops with us tonight. So please
give Steve Strauss a warm science pub welcome! How's that Justin? Wow, thank you very much
Nick, thank you everybody for coming, I'm overwhelmed. I see there's a lot of friends
here I'm sure there will be some enemies before the night is through. It's really an exciting
opportunity to come talk to you about this amazingly exciting and controversial area
of science and technology.
So when I talk to people who are pretty savvy, but they're not nerds like me, they don't
know about genetics and they sometimes will say, "what's all this controversy about GMO's,
aren't foods already genetically engineered?" That's what I have heard. And so what I tell
them is that, yeah they are. Functionally. And so you may or may not know that maize,
corn, that's what it looks like in the wildest halocenty. Several major mutations are what
brought about maze. But this is done by non scientific methods by need of people in Mexico,
thousands of years ago. The tomato wild progenitor, highly toxic, in contrast to what we have
today. That's either large sweet and luscious, or large and taste like cardboard, one or
the other. Lettuce, similar story. Wild lettuce versus domesticated lettuce. Rice, a single
gene that's dwarfed it- the basis of the green revolution in rice and wheat that allows farmers
to put a lot of inputs in, a lot of fertilizer and instead of the plants growing up tall
and mostly producing vegetative matter, they produce mostly seeds, and they don't fall
over in wind and rain storms. That's not a GMO, its not genetic engineering in the current
sense, but very much like a genetic engineering phenomenon. Similar outcome, but not in method.
And you can look at the banana, the wild banana, versus the cultivated banana, where an entire
set of chromosomes was added to make it sterile. And there are lots of other examples; I'm
just going to give you a couple. The Brassicas, the mustards, starting from this very inconspicuous
little plant called wild cabbage. Cabbage through old methods of genetic engineering
we've produced this incredible diversity, which I'm just showing you a piece that is
some of the healthiest foods that we eat, of course. And you know about that. These
are major mutations that have caused these changes in gross morphology, but not using
current genetic engineering, as I'll tell you about using these older methods.
Sometimes we can't find the mutants that we want through breeding, or it's very difficult.
So we use things like a radiation or chemical mutagenesis. And I've been told that some
of the best microbrews are made from barley that's gone through this radiation. So perhaps
it gives you a little extra buzz, I don't know.
I will drink to that though! And of course, this is not just plants this
is also animals. You could look at all the different kinds of livestock. Chickens are
a pretty obvious example. My favorite is dogs; we know that all dogs arrived from the wolf,
amazing with the extraordinary diversity of dogs of which you see a tiny fraction of different
varieties here. So again, its reasonable that people I talk to would think that we are already
doing genetic engineering, but these are all using the old selective cross breeding kinds
of methods.
And this is not something that just happened a long time ago, that doesn't happen any more.
Breeders make amazing progress everyday. Aggressively making hundreds of different varieties, making
new highbred, cloning them, testing them, lots of the properties they're changing nutrition,
the protein content, their adaptation to environment. We don't see obviously, some of them like
this on are the indigo rose. Jim Meyers at Oregon State bread this; it has this purple
exterior, higher in antioxidants, its considered to possibly be healthy. There's also a GMO
version of this that's completely purple, but it's not on the market and probably never
will be. Because of all the issues we'll talk about tonight.
So breeding continues we continue to do genetic engineering, and in an age of DNA sequence,
we not only can look at the phenotype, how it looks how it behaves, but we can look at
the DNA that underlies that and really speed things up. It's a wonderful exciting time
in science for this old type of genetic engineering. But! If you use this method of transgenic,
which I am going to tell you about briefly what it is, people get really, really, really
excited. It brings out thousands of people to protest for a variety of reasons. We know
about this in Oregon, it shocked me that in the last couple of weeks we had this special
section of the legislator, the governor said, "you will pass all of these bills, or you
will pass none of them." And one of them was motivated by the GMO controversy in attempt
to include individual counties from having their own GMO laws. I realize this is hard
to read, but this is from the bill here, the agricultural seed flower, nursery etc. Industries
in the State will be adversely affected if those in subject to a patchwork of vocal regulations.
So apart from that in Jackson County, that beat this bill, this basically makes it impossible.
So Benton County, was going to have one as well, right here. That might have made it
hard for any of us here to do research on GMO crops, to do it actually. It would have
been quite exciting.
But anyway, it just shows how strong some of the sentiment is in Oregon, which is one
of the epicenters of it. As Nick says, the views are really polarized. So this is a survey
that was done in 2000, buy Suzan Horning Priest, at Texas AM, and things have only gotten more
polarized since. So what you see when you are asked broad questions, like, "Do you believe
these technologies will improve our way of life in the next twenty years will have no
effect or make things worse?" what you see is that genetic engineering and nuclear power
have a similar set of bi-modal patterns. Where Deleterious is in yellow and Provident is
in brown. Black is, don't know. You see this. So a lot of people think it'll improve, but
a lot of people think it will be deleterious. This isn't just food and agriculture. This
is all genetic engineering. So people have a queasiness about it that looks a lot like
the queasiness they have about nuclear power.
Actually, I took that slide out cause I was told this talk can't be four hours long just
this afternoon, so. But she also did other surveys, when you ask more specifically about
GM foods, will it bring benefits, will it cause this. You see a similar bi-modal kind
of pattern.
This is a more recent survey, this polarization is not just in the United States, its worldwide
and in all industrial countries. This is a survey that was just released a few weeks
ago in Australia, where the social scientists are making the point that things are very
polarized about 50/50 for and against, and its based on your broad value system. It's
not based on your detailed knowledge of genetics and genetic modification and agriculture.
So here you see the against segments. There's one that's really not engaged, but she doesn't
really like technology, she doesn't trust it. Then there's this segment that is engaged
and thinks they know a lot, but is very much against it. And this tends to be with people
who also don't think its important to vaccinate children.
So they have a different information base but they feel very well informed. And then
on the "for" segment they were cautiously keen, liking the technology benefits but also
realizing there are risks. Want to go forward, but always keep the balance right. I put myself
there. And then there are just the techno crazy, lets just do techman, and get out of
the way. But the really important point is that these are deep values, and if you ask
questions about pesticides, or radiation and medicine, you would see a similar partitioning.
So these things are quite deep.
I'm a tree guy, but I think I only have one tree slide, if you don't count papaya. One
of the awakenings I've had, so a little bit of a diverge to tell my own story.
As a scientist in this area, just starting to do genetic modifications, just starting
to sequence DNA, this field was really coming into its own. Very, very exciting time in
the late, nineties and I was a chairman of this organization of forest biotechnologists
around the world and we were having a meeting in Oxford. Amazing place, beautiful. If you
have ever been to Oxford, it is just a gorgeous, gorgeous environment. So, Sunday night, we're
gathering in a conference hall with the beautiful high ceilings and all the scientists' hob-knobbing
with each other, feeling like we're at some great time in the history of our little field.
And that very night, there was vandalism going on against the only field trial of genetically
engineered trees in the UK. So the vandals did this, they kind of welcome the scientists
to the UK. That was very nice of them.
What kind of amazed us, and we found out about this in the morning was also the press coverage
about it, which is incredibly hostile, so you see this thing. "Frankenstein's Forest."
Was public attention as we focused on the thread of Frankenstein foods, the same corporations
who are forcing us to ingest GMO's have been quietly perpetrating yet another crime against
the environment. So that was the narrative. In reality, what these trees were poplar trees,
certain kinds aspens and they had a natural gene for making ligament, this plastic-y stuff
that glues wood together. Waterproofs it, makes it rot-resistant, but also gets in the
way when you want to make paper and ethanol bio fuels. The ideal was to weaken to ligament
a little bit turn it down, because these trees are not going to live for hundreds of yeas,
they are going to live for two or three years. And the thought that we could have an environmental
positive effect less chemical, less energy, less pollution, because we are not having
to get rid of the lignant and we are looking to see do they actually grow normally? Are
they adapted? Are they pest resistant? So on and so forth. So it looked like it was
a win-win. Going to be good for industries, save them money, produce more products and
be better for the environment. We're also suppressing a native gene. We weren't putting
in a gene from jellyfish or somewhere else that tends to get people excited. But all
those scientific details were completely lost from the vandals. And that, you know, of the
awakening, is that this goes so much deeper than the science. The science is usually misrepresented
and is not understood and really doesn't matter to the people who have these great concerns,
it's the deep values.
So this is the um, one of my favorite little cartoons. This is how I feel about the state
of GMO's that we have maybe this incredible scientific ferment going on. Creating all
these possibilities knowing these genes, the ability to modify- and you'll see some examples
tonight. But then there's also this social chaos going on about, should we, shouldn't
we? Is it ethical? What are the impacts? Who owns it? And all the things you'll hear about
tonight. And we really don't have a clue yet how to connect them. This controversy has
been going on really for 20 years and getting worse rather than better. I'm just hoping
the next generation does a better job than our generation in trying to bring some rationality
to this. So this is really what I am doing tonight, you might think I'm summing up here,
with this slide, but that's not true. A little bit of orientation you already had most of
that. What's going on? What's the context? What is genetic engineering? I kind of think
that its good to know what you are talking about. Although a lot of people in this area,
because of the deeper issues don't feel that it's that important. And then, the good, the
bad and the righteous. The good is--What are things that I think are good, some of you
may think they're bad, but I'll tell you why. What are things that are bad, or at least
unfortunate side effects that are happening, that would be really nice if we could work
harder to avoid. And then the righteous. And Nick talked about Jonathan Hate a little bit,
"The Righteous Mind." I don't know if Gary Barns is here or not, but he assigned this
for our book club, so very useful preparation for tonight's lecture. But what righteous
means is, people who feel so strongly that they cannot really listen to reason or they
generally create their own reason to serve the elephant that Nick talked about. So, I
think that we really have that problem here It's going to be hard to get around it if
we don't. And of course it's not just GMO's, if you look at the state of our government
right now and you see a very similar thing so there are very deep problems when we have
our ideologies so strong we feel so righteous about them.
So before I go on, I just want to put this up. This is sort of a sense of scale, some
people out there, and this is more of the libertarians viewpoint will say, "Well lets
just get the government out of the way. And lets just let technology in the market take
care of everything." The other one would say, "There's never enough government, BioTeck
can only open up a Pandora's box, go back to nature. All industrial scale farming is
just wrong and we should only have local small-adapted farms. All GMO. And so on and so forth." The
truth is somewhere in the middle here. And that's where all scientists are, whether you
are an ecologist, or a geneticist, or soil scientist. It really depends, and you often
hear it said by scientists that the ecological society of America, you need a case-by-case
consideration. GMO's neither good, they're bad it's just a method; it's just a technology.
They can be used for good or bad, like lots of other, like all other technologies. But
in my view, this is where the world is today. This is dominating the regulations, this is
dominating the fear, and so I am trying to inch us up toward that way. So it might look
to you that I am a fervent pro-GMO, guy, but not all GMO's make sense. The ones that get
through our regulatory system because it is very stringent tend to make some sense, but
really it all depends. And there are definitely bad ideas we want to pursue as well. So that's
where I am, and I'm hoping that's where you guys are going to be, after I'm done with
you.
So you are probably already bored to death, and you should be. I put this in here to kind
say, "stick with me," even if you've had a couple of beers. We're going to talk about
this really cool stuff here. We're not going to talk about this last one, although a guy,
a really intelligent person sent me an email explaining how he things GMO's are destroying
oxygen in the atmosphere, and I explained to him that, "Well, that's extremely unlikely
Sir." So anyway, but we're going to skip that one in the interest of time.
So what is genetic engineering? This is not going to be a very harsh course. So traditional
breeding, you are mainly crossing stuff, sometimes you use radiation and mutagenesis, so we're
going to skip that for now. It's relatively minor, but you're crossing different speeds,
different varieties, and they often can be radically different and almost always grow
in different parts of the world, if this is agriculture. And then you have natural combinations,
which sort of mixes it all up. So even if you might want one particular gene, you're
getting a whole mess. This is a representation of a chromosome, you might now we humans have
twenty-three of them, each one of them has thousands of genes on it. So there's a huge
amount of diversity a part from what you might want that has developed as part of conventional
breeding, and that's how it works. We sort through that, we sequence it these days to
help us sort through it, but its really kind of a gigantic jumble. We try to pick out what
we want from. Genetic engineering, you start with a chromosome and if you want a particular
trait, you try to find a gene for it. A lot of science goes into finding what genes effect
what traits, how to regulate them so they give you not too much, not too little, but
the goldilocks level. So a lot f science goes into developing this, and then you put it
in asexually, so you don't make a cross, you actually at some point have the DNA in a test
tube, its a chemical, you cut it, you sequence it, you might modify it so it works better
where you are putting it, usually where it comes from is different from where you are
putting it, you need some tricks to make it work well. And you insert it, so there it
is. And then you have to also then go back into conventional breeding. And this is not
an alternative, this is just a way to generate directed variability in traits of interest,
you still need to put it back in and go through all this stuff, grow it in the field, in lots
of different places and make sure it works well in harmony with the organism, in harmony
with the environment our farmers are growing them. So this insertion here, if I drew it
to scale, you wouldn't see it, so three genes and a soy bean plant is about one foot, between
here and Seattle. So you would not even see it. So that is the scale of most of the genetic
engineering we see. It's very, very small. You probably heard talk about synthetic biology
where you synthesize the DNA for an whole organism, its hardly been done in bacteria,
its not happening for higher organisms like plants and animals in my lifetime. I think
I won't live to regret that because their complexity. So we're really, what we are doing
is we are tinkering, we're not engineering, we're not creating a new bridge, or a new
building, like "real engineers "do. We add a few genes for a few traits and the organism
itself remains in tact. It has its integrity. So that is a critical concept.
So this is what it looks like, in some way, you usually put these things in vitro in a
sterile culture so it is easier to work with and you insert the DNA in these somatic tissues,
these are little pieces. They're brown now because some of them are dying, some of them
are living. But these are somatic tissues where you have applied DNA. You may have used
a biological insertion agent, which is very, very common. Or you may have shot it in with
a little micro-gun. But anyways, these are plants that are developing now from cells
that have been genetically modified by inserting DNA into them. Or they have the native genes
modified through a similar process. So now, its just horticulture, its just propagation,
you take cuttings you put roots on them, you get seeds from them, whatever your propagation
process is. I'm showing you some poplars, cottonwoods, because that's what I work with.
And eventually you got to get them in the field to see that they actually grow straight
and give you the traits you want, if the trait is stable, and is usefully to farmers or shows
you- teaches you something about science, etc. So these are two rows of cottonwood trees,
they are you're second growing season in eastern Oregon. We're working with a company back
there, one is modified, and one is not. It's hard to tell, they had gene for insect resistance,
there wasn't a lot of insect pressure that year, and they look basically about the same.
So that's your lesson in genetic engineering, now could you pass out the exams please? See
if people pass. Not too painful I hope.
So now I want to talk about what I consider the good of what's happening with genetic
engineering. This IPA is pretty high quality, I recommend it if you like IPA. So, GMO's
have been adopted at a rate that several people who know better than I have said is the most
rapidly adopted innovation in the history of all of agriculture. Faster than hybrid
corn, faster than the tractor. So in the countries where the government has allowed it to happen,
it's happened really fast. In one case, in India, local peasants stole some of the genetically
engineered cotton from some field trails that were being done by a seed company working
with Monsanto. They just went in, it was a very bad insect damage year and the only stuff
green was these field trails. The local farmer said, "This looks good." And they just took
it! And a whole black market developed around this stuff, it had never been authorized by
the government. So then, the government created a regulatory authority and they said, no,
no, this is no legal, "you can't grow it anymore." And the farmers said, "oh yeah? They refused
to stop." And so they said, well okay, I guess it's okay. That's what happened in India,
where the farms got in fights with the government. And in many of the countries you see, the
farmers have never had the opportunity to grow it. When they have, it has been adopted
in this incredibly fast rate; you can also see here that this is a developed country
vs. industrial country, so developing like China, like India. They have about the same
amount area of sage now. You sometimes here that this is just about agrobusiness, and
just about mega farms, it is not true. Small farmers who grow relatively small parcels-
the value of something like an insect resistant rate that means they have to use less pesticide,
and these are often pesticides that their children are applying on these small family
parts of land is also very, very valuable. It's not something just about agrobusiness.
The other thing to see here is that its grown on a huge area, even though you see some countries
grow it and some don't, when you add up the ones that do, its a vast area. About ten percent,
I've see estimates as high as fifteen percent of the arobole land, the plowed land around
the world has already been genetically modified crops for about a decade. So it's not something
that's new, novel, radical, of the edge, it's happening in huge areas and its works. Farmers
keep growing it. When I asked students what have they heard about genetic modification,
has it been negative? Has it been positive? Usually about three-to-one usually students
will say its bad, its toxic, it's harming the environment. Actually when you look at
the scientific record, that's not true. So these are a couple papers: this one was published
about a month ago, this one was 2010, where a bunch of scientists, national academy here,
these are just some scientists from Cal Berkeley and UC Davis, good scientists, economists
and plant breeders looked at the record, looked at the literature and there have been some
very, very major environmental benefits. The two of them are mainly reductions in the amount
of pesticides used. Particularly in the genetically modified cotton, and in a lesser extent corn.
Cotton uses lots and lots of pesticides. Both of these crops are grown over huge areas,
so reductions of fiber ten percent, and the millions of pounds not put in the environment.
So that's one benefit. The one benefit is that urbacide tolerant crops. Crops that are
resistant to an urbacide like Roundup. Actually, have allowed farmers to adopt conservation
tillage. Meaning they don't till, they can control weeds with an urbacide, and plant
directly into the stubble. So, tillage is bad for soil, it depletes soil carbon, it
makes soils prone to erosion. It also costs a lot of energy. So more greenhouse gas emissions.
So that's the other major way there's been an environmental benefit from these. There
are also some negatives and I'll come to that in a little bit. But these are big because
of the area is so large; these kids of changes are very, very large. This paper here also
talked about economic benefits and in our food for thought lecture series, nick mentioned,
we've had a number of speakers to address this. The most recent one spoke this year,
Nickolas, and I can't really say his name, I think it's unpronounceable. C____ - something
like that. An economist in the University of Missouri have done estimates of the economic
benefits and they are hard to do, because you're trying to figure out you know, one
global sense, what happens. You produce more, the price goes down, different buyers and
growers react. So you need a very complicated model. So I'm sure this is not a very precise
estimate, but this is what he came up with about seventy billion dollars to 2010. The
other thing he estimated was who gets the benefits? Is it mainly Monsanto? That's kind
of the conventional wisdom is that mainly farmers are the consumers and his conclusion
was that it was mainly consumers and the reason is, is you produce more, supply goes up and
price goes down. It's not something you can see in the supermarket; it's a macroeconomic
phenomenon. I know we have some economists here, so maybe we'll get some more about that
in our Q&A session. So again, against conventional wisdom, very large benefits, most of it just
appears to be to consumers, rather than the seed companies
Like Monsanto.
So you can get caught up in the mega-crops. There's also a lot of smaller crops that have
very exciting stories. We'll talk about a couple tonight. On of them, is papaya. This
is very interesting because this is a virus resistant papaya that really the Hawaiian
industry was threatened to be completely destroyed by the ring spot virus. And the scientists,
formerly of Cornell, were playing around, putting viral DNA into plants and stumbled
on this thing called RNA interference. Which later on won a Nobel Prize. He didn't figure
out what he was doing. It took some other scientists to figure it out and they got the
Nobel Prize. Nevertheless, that is what he was doing and its analogues to immunization.
Where we put a little bit of a killed pathogen in us, or a little bit of it's DNA, and that
gets our immune system ready. Well, that's the way this works except with a different
molecular mechanism, but it gets the plant a natural plant immune system ready for this
particular virus. So very exciting, and I'm maybe a new generation of insect resistant
crops coming forward using this technology, that's kind of the buzz in the streets, we'll
see what happens. Anyway, you can see in this image, this is an air photo here, these are
the transgenic papayas will a little bit of DNA in them, having this RNA interference
phenomenon. These are the wild type papayas; I don't think we need a statistician to tell
you the effect. Similar thing here, looking down rows, I think this is in Thailand, before
they banned it. So again the wild type-- the transgenic. So dramatic benefits. And here's
another crop that would be of a great appeal in the developing world, if you ever travel
as I have, say in Indonesia, you know how important papaya is as a staple crop. And
there are lots of virus problems. So the AID is working on getting this out, I think it's
been put on hold because of the GMO controversy and all the stuff we've been talking about.
I just can't keep my hands off this IPA, I'm sorry about that.
The other major instead of the good that I want to talk about is bio fortification. Ya'll
know about it, all of our cereal is bio fortified, with vitamins and all that stuff. Well, in
lots of places people can't afford to buy bio-fortified cereals, they can't afford to
buy much of anything; they just grow their own food. And often they eat now is very narrow,
its mostly cassab, it's mostly rice. Very low in a lot of these nutrients. So the idea
is simply to bolster the natural and nutrient levels in order to improve the health of the
poor. This is no some crazy idea, this is happening around the world. When you don't
use GMO methods, its already in place as it says here, in the rich sweat potato is currently
being grown by a half million families. Harvest plus is a non-profit, mostly funded by the
Gates Foundation that's working on lots of different crops and lots of different nutrients
to try to improve the health of the poor. So I want to focus a little bit on vitamin
Am pro-vitamin A and we'll talk also when we talk about the righteous a little bit.
So, why do we do this? Why are we working on vitamin A? Turns out, when you look at
the world, this is a map of vitamin A deficiency and pretty much everything that is not green
has mild to serious-- this is the industrial world here, including ourselves where we have
fortification, we can afford to buy fortified materials, we have a diverse diet. Pretty
much all the developing world has mild to severe vitamin A deficiency. And the consequences
are really serious. As you see them here from the Harvest Plus, vitamin A deficiency as
estimated through effect of approximately one third of children of children under the
age of five in the world, one third of children. I can't believe it whenever I read that. It
is estimated to claim the lives of six hundred and seventy thousand children under five annually.
Approximately a quarter to a half million children per year in developing countries
become blind due to vitamin A deficiency. Night blindness due to vitamin A deficiency
is very high among pregnant women in many developing countries. So this is a really,
really big deal. If you can make any significant dent in this you are doing good for a lot
of people with serious health problems. So that's the reason for my interest in vitamin
A as one of the goals of bio fortification. So you can do this when you have natural diversity
in keratin production. Keratin is converted into vitamin A in the body, such as this high
keratin corn. That is now being released and used. This cauliflower, you've seen similar
things to this in the market. These are for conventional breeding. This is casual, again,
the yellowish in the beta keratin, that's from genetic modification. So, golden rice.
How many people have heard of golden rice at all? That's wonderful. I think we got a
solid three quarters there. So, this is Ingo Patriques. He was a speaker at Oregon State
here about nine years ago. He was the first speaker when we had the food for thought lecture
series. He worked for many years trying to developed gene transfer methods. When he started
out, you couldn't put genes in things like cereals. He figured out how to do it. As he
was getting to the end of his career, he was a Swill scientist. He said you know, "I want
to do something good for the world. I want to leave an impact that is positive, that's
not just helping the Monsanto's of the world to do their genetic engineering." So he got
to gather with a scientist in Germany. Peter Bear, a biochemist and they had the idea of
building a biochemical pathway into rice grains that was not there naturally. So that took
three genes to make a biochemical pathway. No one had ever done that before, that was
considered at the edge. He got it done, he got it accomplished and that is the reason
he got on the cover of time magazine. At the same time, the reaction to GMO's in
Europe was heating up. Time Magazine Europe refused to put him on the cover. Because they
figured it would create uproar and decrease their readership. So he ended up being quite
a bitter man. And when he talks he is very bitter. Because he accomplished this miracle
he set out to, that could have this amazing benefit for the poor and the malnutrition,
but its been impeded in every step of the way, and you'll hear more about that as we
go forward. So bio fortification is the other major area
that we'll talk about can GM have humanitarian, can genetic modification have humanitarian
benefits? In my view there's no question that it can, and golden rice is kind of, the leading
example of that. The Bad. What's not so great about this whole
area? And of course, there's a group of people that are very anti-GMO and their list would
be very much longer than mine. And plus I don't have time to go through it all. So maybe
we can talk some of that later. One of them is that I tank the agricultural
industry, I think all scientists who work on this would agree that while there's these
environmental and economic benefits to urbacide resistant crops, if you use it too much, if
you dont have it part of an integrated ecological management system, the weeds will respond
and become resistant. And some people have the arrogance to say, "oh no, Roundup is too
good. It kills everything, it will never do it to Roundup." Which most scientists laughed
out, well it's happened. What happened? It's just like the story in anti-biotics in humans
and animals, just due to overuse, people wanting the benefits, now. Farmers- it makes their
management very much easier. One herbacide controls the weeds, they can spray it whenever
they want, they don't have to worry about cropping there. They use less fuel and so
on and so forth. So they want to use it every year, and then the seed companies what to
sell it every year because they make money. So it was over used and not used as part of
the integrated management system and so farmers had these huge problems and many weed species
and trying to manage it. The environmental benefits I told you about earlier are less
than what they were. So presumably they still exist because farmers are doing this a lot
but it's decreased them. And that's unfortunate and I think we can do a better job of it.
Insect resistant crops, that's the other major kind of crop that's out there, it's a gene
from a bacillus thuringiensis, you may know about. Organic farmers used it extensively.
But the difference is that they took the gene, modified it so it would work in a plant, and
so the plant makes its own pesticides. They don't spray it in the environment, its in
the plants, you have to bite the plant to get a dose of it. That is used much more wisely.
The reason is that it has been regulated by the EPA, rather than the USDA. And the EPA
has strict rules for how much farmers could grow, what kinds they could grow and so forth,
so that has slowed resistance development tremendously, but it is still coming along.
And so there is a war here, its called evolution. Whenever you cut out something that is highly
resistant, eventually evolution will happen and farmers have to manage that. In the case
of urbanite resistance, it's not the GM crops that it. There are hundreds of cases of urbanite
resistant weeds developing due to overuse of urbanites. It's really the ground stay
for agriculture. Like I said, it's very analogous to the problem with anti biotic that are prescribed.
People want them because they want the quick answer now. But really what we need is a management
system and a regulatory system that is smarter, and that means we need to have ecological
integrated management. And we also need to have a flow of new genes and traits to keep
this moving. That's what sustainability means in this case, not one thing forever- but a
flow of things. As you see, the regulatory system itself is probably the main impediment
to this part because it is so hard to get through because of the stringency of it.
So lets talk about the regulatory system a little bit. To me, that is one of the bad's.
I think it is a mess. From any perspective, any way you look whether it is the United
States or Europe, or the global situation. So here, this is similar to what you saw with
the rise of GM crops, this shows the countries that are using and the countries that are
not. And you see that it's a fifty/ fifty kind of thing. And a lot of the countries
that really could use it, like Africa vitamin A, are not using it because of the regulatory
structure they've adopted from Europe, which makes it very hard to do it, and so on and
so forth. So we have this mix of different regulatory regimes, very difficult to trade
with this kind of stuff with these countries as a result, and so I think it is just very
unfortunate. So you might have heard talk several months ago before the government was
just concerned about staying open at all, they actually were trying to do things, remember
that time? Where Obama was talking about having some sort of free trade agreement with Europe.
I can't imagine how that could happen. This headline from the Huffington Post Greed Edition,
is talking about world of labeling in Europe, go away. When we have this free trade edition,
and I think that is very unlikely. Europeans think so strongly about this, I think that
is a major impediment to actually having some sort of free trade agreement because of the
different regulatory systems in the two different places. You probably all heard about the flap
with genetically modified wheat here in Oregon, and to me, that's- This editorial here in
the Oregonian was actually by a couple of organic people who were saying you need stricter
and stricter regulations so nothing ever gets out. I think actually the opposite is true,
I think smarter regulation so things that are sage and reasonable can get our for search
and development. So what happened here is a tiny bit of genetically modified wheat was
found growing in one farm in Oregon. Luckily it was not on lots of farms, or we would have
had a real trade issue and a real economic impact to farmers. And no one knows how it
got there, but wheat is an inbreeded. It doesn't spread genes very much, it's pretty easy to
contain it if this was another crop such as alfalfa or corn that are out breeders, the
probability of some low level contamination after a search, despite all the efforts to
avoid it are very high. And like I said earlier, you can't really develop any GM crops with
out-field research. So here, the situation is that we had a little bit of contamination.
The genes in this case are intensively well studied they were already in commerce, they
were expected to be safe, but because of the different regulatory and market systems around
the world, that tiny bit of contamination almost cost us millions and millions of dollars.
It almost took away the lively hoods of these farmers. It's just crazy. We need a whole
different regulatory system and the world needs to get together around it.
So I think the core concern about genetically modified food from the average people, which
is yourself. Are you average people here? Probably not if you are in Corvallis. You're
probably left of average. But, is it safe? And how is it tested that we could be sure
its safe? There is just a fantastic article, I know that this is a little science for most
of you but Laura De Francesca is the editor at the Journal Nature Biotechnology and she
took what I consider to be a fresh, brief look at the whole issue, how we assess it
and why there's still a concern. And I actually threw out those slides because it would have
taken another ten minutes. But I'd be happy to talk about how we do it and where the concerns
come form in detail, perhaps in the Q&A session. I think I have one quote from her, and this
is it: "Critics and proponents of genetically modified organisms (and she didn't say this
but except for a few scientists who are kind of at the extreme, but she's talking about
the mainstream here" agree that genetically modified foods have failed to produce any
untoward health effects and that the risk to human health from foods contaminated with
pathogens is far greater than from GMO's." They don't even really compare. She gives
some of the numbers there, and they're dramatic. And some of the major folks who criticize
GM and want the label to be taken off the market and those are particularly organic
advocates. They produce some of the worst of this. So it's kind of a funny situation
there. And she goes on to say, "Contrast that will non reported for transgenic foods in
their decades-long history in the food supply." So that is a fair summary of what mainstream
science would say. And I found this one website which is very
nice, which had actually this summary, has all the logos of the organizations, I've blown
up the top section here and here's six of them. A triple IS, the biggest organization
of scientists in the world based here in the US. American Medical Association, World Health
Organization, the UN Associated, National Academy of Science, Royal Society of Medicine
in UK, European Commission and then we could go on. So when you look at mainstream science,
it is really pretty clear. The stuff that is out there now doesn't mean that we couldn't
do something that has a hazard. The stuff that is out there now, there's no evidence
that its unsafe that people believe. I also have to just to sort of increase your sense
of credibility; I want to tell you where I found this stuff. From this website- and this
is what it said at the bottom of the page: "Our manifesto on mean wars is here, lets
not allow moronic groups like Greenpeace to dominate the mean world with lies on important
issues." So I am not endorsing that, but I thin they are onto one thing right am the
mean; just some set of assumptions that societies developed about something being good or bad
or beautiful or safe. And they are talking about fighting this mean war, where people
might assume like a lot of my students do that this is all bad, and they are fighting
against that. I think if you looked at their homepage, you would see that they are even
more, obliviously a credible source of science. On the "about" page, axis mundi, whatever
that is, are "rave rock step ultrapure described as a cross between a system of a down and
the prodigy. Just add Brian Cox and you're about there." So obviously I don't know what
that means. This was sitting on their website and this stuff is cool. This scuff in blue/green
is good. The other stuff well, pretty cool I guess.
43.45 So in this last section here, if I haven't
stuck my neck out far enough, I want to stick it out further and see if it gets chopped
off or not. The righteous, um. So, And again in the hadean
sense, we are talking about people who feel so strongly that they can't see the opposite
point of view, they can't compromise, they can't collaborate toward a solution. So the
first one that comes to my mind is just the role that GM has mostly controlled because
of the patents and the high regulatory costs- is mostly controlled and put out by multinationals
and the poster boy for that, the poster child, whipping boy is Monsanto. So we'll use them,
and you know they would make you think that they have the silver bullet that is going
to feed the world. Anyone who knows anything about poverty and hunger knows that that is
nonsense. That's I think the major reason people have reacted with a sense of righteousness
in the large corporations that just say, "get out of the way, I've got the answer." And
that's just not true. There's no one answer to these incredibly large problems. So on
the other hand, when you look at their stuff and you look at what they do, they do contribute
towards sustainability, they ignore some big issues like the fact that most of their GM
stuff goes to animal agriculture which is huge. Climate impacts. But there's a lot of
big stuff that they quietly don't ignore, but there's a lot of good stuff that they
do too. And I just took a look this morning and there was a brand now, over the weekend,
announcement on their website that they have partnered with the Clinton Global Initiative
to work on honeybee decline. You probably know that pollinate is around the world, there
are serious problems; serious trouble and we don't really know the causes. We have some
good theories. There's probably a role for pesticides but it really needs a lot of good
research, and so they are probably putting in a lot of money. One of the things that
makes me that this is real is the Word Wildlife Fund is a partner. We had Jason Clay, vice
president, he was a speaker her a few years ago. And they have a philosophy very different
than groups like Greenpeace where they partner with major corporations to get them to do
the right thing. So this tells me that this probably is the right thing that they're doing.
They're not just green washing. Complicated, you know the righteous thing when it comes
to corporations its a yin and a yang. So probably the largest source of this righteousness
sense is the left versus right spectrum. This gets back, and Nick talked about the Haitian
elephant that drives with a driver on top. So basically the elephant is what you believe,
your ideology, what you feel to be correct, your mean. According to that wonderful source
of scholarly insight I mentioned earlier. And then the driver sits on top, and the driver
is like the layer that comes up with reasons, tactics to justify what the elephant is doing.
What your intuition is telling you. And I think there is a lot of intuition in the world
that is saying that we want a more socialistic even communistic kind of society, we want
a less market capitalistic kind of society. GMO's association with agriculture business,
association with patents, is no question about it, the major reason in my view of all the
angst. I have had lots of talks here in Corvallis in discussions afterwards in the Monsanto
factor, you know big corporations getting all the profit, controlling the food supply,
that comes up time and time again. And I think a lot of the science that is done, is done
by people with this strong angst and if effects the science they do, it certainty effects
how it is communicated. So that is another piece of righteousness that I think, in terms
of getting it to science at least, what's really happening in terms of safety and economic
environmental benefit, really, really gets in the way.
So another piece, and here I am going to really get in trouble probably. Is the issue of organic
versus conventional or GMO agriculture. And so what this says is the bee's fly, the wind
blows, the water flows, seeds germinate, protect organic agriculture. What they are talking
about is the risk that genes will move from conventional farms that are sort of growing
GMO crops onto organic farms and contaminate them and undermine their integrity. And that's
a serious issue for organic farmers in an economic sense because they are often selling
into markets that demand an absolute absence of GMO content. And that's a real issue. When
you look at the way agriculture works, gene flow and gene movement, its not anything that
is new with GMO's, it is agriculture itself. Farmers on different sides of the road, the
same farmer often grow different varieties and they will contaminate each other to some
extent. We have rules, seed certification rules and so forth, in place to say, we are
going to call it verity (X) as long as it's 99.9% variety (X). We're going to call it
good and clean as long as the present rodent feces in there is blow (X) parts per million.
Contamination and agriculture is everywhere the question is, how do you coexist? How do
you get along? So the notion that genetic drift will somehow you know, a patented gene
will move from one farm to another, and now Monsanto owns your stuff, fines is a very
common myth. That is not true. That is only true if it drifts there if you take it and
you use it commercially for benefit. Then Monsanto will sue you and they've sued hundreds
of farmers. And that gets people unhappy. But its only when they intentionally use it.
Or concentrate it for some reason. When it drifts onto it and they don't get any particular
benefit, they don't care. But the reality is, is that it can hurt the farmers. And that
is why a lot of organic farmers in the Willamette Valley and elsewhere are very concerned about
it, and that is a legitimate claim. The point is, we need to find a way to get along. We
need to find a way to coexist. Agriculture has done this for thousands of years; GMO's
are just the newest twist. That requires both sides to try to work together. In Oregon,
you might have seen- although this bill was passed in legislature prohibiting local regulations
the governors committed to try to find ways to help organic farmers coexist with non-organic
farmers. And try to come up with solutions. And we are working on it. As long as both
parties don't feel they're so righteous that they won't come to the table and work on it.
And that is the main issue in my view. So, you know the writer has many, many representations
out in the world and one of them is through popular media. So, there's a bunch of films
some of them I guess are called documentaries that show all hymns and hazards and horrible
things about GMO's. The latest one that I know of is something called GMO-OMG and you
can Google that and go on the web and what their trailer and you can see this little
kid and this hazard suit going through GMO corn because it is so hazardous. So this one,
I happen to come upon, I don't know if any of you know Michael Spector, he is a writer,
a science writer for New Yorker Magazine. The people know what SMDH is? How many people
know that before they read the slide? Good. I didn't know it either. SMDH, and acronym,
(I had to Google it), standing for shaking my damn head. Usually typed on blogs or in
text messages to express disappointment, sadness. I am going to use this to text my friends
about Beaver football games I think from time to time. I could have used it for a few different
plays on Saturday night. But at any rate, I - So that's the title of this little blog
post by Michael Spector, and you can go online and see this and I just have a few pieces
of it. So genetically engineered crops, which are his. That is the authors view. The author
of the film. Such badly concealed poisons that he actually dressed his children in hazmat
gear before entering the field of genetically modified corn. And then he cites another writer,
as Pherris Jobber pointed out in an extremely thoughtful view in scientific American, he's
a producers intellectual laziness if profound, quote, "instead of using his children like
marionettes for Ludacris theatrical tricks, scoffer could have, I don't know, done some
actual research." And then he ends this by saying by himself, genetically engineered
crops will not end hunger or improve health, both of the economies are struggling countries
but they will certainty help. First though, we have to adopt reality as our principle
narrative. For people like Jeremy Scoffer, that may be too much to ask. So in short,
he just tore this thing to bits. There are a lot of other ones that I have seen that
could have very much the same treatment. But it's out there. I guess for profit sense of
righteousness and arrogance that allows people to not bother with science, choose science
and scientists you like and paint a picture of utter horror.
So, I want to talk about labeling a little bit. I think there are two more on my list
here of righteous things, before you throw the tomatoes here. So there is a lot of talk
about mandatory labeling. Is that the right thing? Is that a righteous thing to do? And
I hope you like this little cartoon here, so you know in Oregon, I think it was 2003,
we had a ballot measure to label all genetically modified food, that was produced or even came
through here. It was quite radical. And it was defeated in the landslide, obviously a
lot of spending from agro business. In California as well this year, there was another one.
It came close to passing, and I think it was like, 52/48. Quiet close that would have done
a similar thing in California. In Washington State in November, this November coming up,
there's a similar ballot measure to label. So this is a big deal. And a lot of these
local county things would have been similar as well. The labeling measures passed in main
and Connecticut, or at least they'll pass if a number of states go along with them.
So a lot of people feel like they want labeling. The problem is that when you look into the
details of what these labeling initiatives say, they say publicly that its about a right
to know, when you look at how strident the rules are you see its really not about right
to know its an attempt to make it so ownerist, or so damaging to your brand that you will
not carry genetically modified food. And indeed that is what has happened in Europe. And so
occasionally people say their real agenda, so Joseph Ricola, very wealthy. Has a gigantic
natural foods industry, they are very pro-labeling; because they perceive that will make people
play more for natural foods, or natural herbals. And then you know of Vendana Sheber, perhaps
you've heard of her. Very, very anti-GMO, and Indian woman. Who basically says here,
"with labeling, no one will carry GMO's." That's vital; you have to get that passed,
that's the way they get GMO's out of the marketplace. So that's the real agenda. And I don't think
anybody that is pro-labeling, at least labeling that you see out there now, is possible to
be labeling in what I call a rational and scientific manner to help us to keep track
of the food we might consider particularly risky, but that is not what all this stuff
going on is about. So, triple IS, the largest scientific organization
in the world has come out with this policy. And they're by no means, activist about this.
I think this is the only thing they've ever said about GMO's. But they basically said
that legally mandating such a label can mislead, and force falsely alarm consumers. If you
have a strict labeling system it will cost more, and that will be passed on to consumers
and the poor of course, will disproportionally pay that price. As I said, if you have labels,
they are leverage for anti GMO folks to boycott and keep it off the shelves and that is what
has happened in Europe. Not more choice, less choice. And what is the ethics of doing it;
if as I said, mainstream scientific community says the process is not dangerous. Why label
the process if its not dangerous? Right now, in the United States if we produced the food
that had higher vitamin content through genetic engineering, the FDA would require we label
it, but they wouldn't care that it was genetically engineering. They care that it has a vitamin
level outside of the range. Likewise, if we had and allergen reduce, if we had wheat that
was very, very low in gluten due to genetic engineering, that would need to be labeled
now. Because it is functionally different, but no the method. So we actually have labeling
laws that in my view, make a lot of sense because they are based on function and biology
rather than based on this process. Which we know is not important to the safety of foods.
So when this ballot measure went for us in Oregon, pretty much all the newspaper editorializing
is a bad idea. This seams to be starting to happen with the Washington ballot measure.
This came out a few days ago, the Seattle Times, saying "vote no." When you look into
it, it just doesn't make sense, just an impediment of burden for Washington Agriculture.
So last thing on righteousness, um, is is righteous, is it right for us to protect the
developing world from GMO crops? And there is a fantastic book by Robert Parlburg with
very nice forwards by Norman Borlog, you may know won the Nobel Prize. He died a couple
years ago. He was considered the father of the first Green Revolution. And Gindy Cotter
who you probably know as a farmer and humanitarian. Talking about basically how Parlburg has it
right. So Parlburg is a political scientist at Welsly, and in this book he talks about
how adopting the regulations from Europe and Africa have pretty much kept GM foods out
of Africa. And these poor farmers who really needed, and really could benefit from some
of these crops, and I've told you about things like Cassava already and there's many others
who are not having access. So that's what this issue is about. Is that the right thing
to do, is that not an act of righteousness. So I want to end by really talking about the
GM, the golden rice situation in sort of a case study scenario by looking at the Philippines.
And so we already talked about gold rice, and why it might be very valuable as humanitarian
product. Well it turns out that its also vitamin A deficiency that is a big problem in the
Philippines as well. So the international rice research institute has been doing field
trials in the Philippines to try to see if it works, if its safe, if it grows normally
and so forth. And they are doing that because in the Philippines vitamin A deficiency has
a huge impact. So 1.7 million children, about 15% between the ages of 6 months and 5 years.
A sub clinical deficiency, such as night blindness, 1 out of 10 pregnant women. So a huge, huge
kind of an issue. So it is certainty for me, it makes sense to look into this option. Its
not going to be the only way you deal with it, it is not a silver bullet, but it could
be an important part of this solution. So amazingly for me, from a bunch of funding
from NGO's wanting to do good, I guess, out of Europe and apparently mostly from Sweden,
a particular NGO- Vandalism was organized in the Philippines. People were busting, they
were paid, they were given information that made them think that this rice was poison
and was going to undermine their livelihood, and so on and so forth. And you'll see the
video of the vandalism and you can see some of the hysteria going on. For the first time
that am aware of thousands of scientists all over the world then organized a petition condemning
this vandalism and doing nothing to advanced humanitarian causes or the causes of science,
and should be roundly condemned and it basically was.
So this is- if you have ever seen an eco terrism act, you're about to see it. I hope that...
Are there any children in the room? No, I don't think there is any violence in here,
but at least to me its very disturbing. So, if we can go ahead Justin...So who can give
us the Philippine version of that? I don't think you need a Philippine version, I think
it's clear what's going on. These people are angry. This food is toxic, it's going to undermine
their way of life, and you can find this kind of information freely on the Internet. Completely
different than the mainstream scenic information that know about the possible benefits of treating
this huge nutrition problem. So, I just want to wrap it up and put it in perspective. I
want to let you see the response from the ear people about what went on and how they
look at it. So again Justin, if go ahead... "Today we learn that one of the sites for
golden rice research was vandalized. This site was located in Peely in Camina Sur. We
are very saddened and disappointed that this vandalism was taken place because it affects
the work that we are doing on golden rice research. Golden rice is an important new
rice variety that enables us to combat vitamin A deficiency. And vitamin A deficiency is
a horrible affliction that effects many women, and effects many children. And we are doing
our part to combat this micronutrient deficiency. This research is being conducted in partnership
with the department of agriculture and the Philippine Rice Research Initiation. We are
committed to continuing this research because it is the only way by which we can answer
all of the questions about golden rice that all of us are interested in. No only us researchers
but as parents, as families, as women, and as children who are afflicted by the deceased.
We will continue this research, we are committed to finishing it for the good of all Philippines,
for the good of all mothers and children." So um, I thought I would never, ever see this
day. Where something like golden rice that could have these amazing, amazing benefits
for such dreadful nutrient diseases would be vandalized. So obviously there's a very
powerful sense of righteousness in the part of the people who are doing it, because of
the information that they have. Something needs to be done that in my opinion so at
least we can know if this works or not. That's really all we need to do. Whether it will
work for those cultures, whether it will be a big contributor to the problem, we don't
know unless the research happens. So, to end now, And I actually didn't have
this slide in until I got an email this afternoon from my friend Ricardo who is a referee with
my by the way an OSU professor, I don't know if you are here Ricardo, but uh- There you
go thank you! He said, "Steve, what about phosphorous? Aren't you going to talk about
genetic engineering with peak phosphorus coming at us, what are we doing about it?" And it's
like, wholly cow, I hadn't thought of that in years! And yeah, we've actually have some
genetic engineering solutions, things that have been done, but they've been abandoned
because of the GMO stigma, or they weren't developed because of the cost of regulations
are just too high. So that made me put in this slide, this is not about phosphorus,
this is about a wonderful piece of journalism, same journalist in the New York Times who
wrote about golden rice, as I showed you a few slides back in the vandalism, called,
"A race to save the orange by altering its DNA." I don't read many news articles and
cry, but this is one where I did. And the reason I have it up here is because there's
a whole variety of products that we don't even developed because we can't imagine getting
over this wall of opposition. So what Amy Harmon is talking about here is this disease
called citrus greening. That uh, breading has no solutions for. So right now, in the
citrus growing areas, particularly in Florida, has just increasing use of pesticides to try
to prevent the insect vector from spreading this bacterial disease around, which is continually
killing groves and may put the industry out of existence. And so this grower in this article
that she is profiling here ricers is thinking about investing in genetic engineering as
his only solution. And actually has a very interesting lead product, a gene from spinach,
that we have been eating forever is presumably completely safe that might work. But the biggest
consideration could/would anybody ever sell this? Would anybody drink orange juice in
it because it's GMO? And it's probably the quickest safest best solution we can think
of from a science point of view. But that's where the stigma has brought us, and that's
why I was crying at the end of it. So on a lighter note, this is really where
we're. We have this impasse where we need to figure out a way around. And if we don't
figure it out in the United States, if we go the European way, I don't think anybody
will figure it out. So I hop we do something smart, but I think the world is really looking
at 2 big choices, 2 big perspectives and they're figuring out which one they are going to adopt.
Are we going to decide that genetic engineering is unethical, irreversible, done really for
profit seeking and nothing else, unpredictable in its impacts and safety and environment?
And the only choice is to stop it, or regulate it out of existence. VS. To study and regulate
it well, much better than we are doing today. So it becomes an essential tool that will
help people in dire need right now, and there's no better example than golden rice. And given
climate change and population growth and all the stuff that we're staring at, and we're
scared about. At least I am. Helping to manage this incredibly scary future. So I think you
know where I stand, you make your own choice. Thank you.
I need to hand off this microphone in a bit; we are going to go to questions and answers
now. And there will be Shelly and Megan in the audience with their microphones so that
we can hear your questions. Before we go to questions, I want to give a big thank you
to Steve once again. And I want to give a big thank you to the Majestic, to American
Dream for their pizza, to Ted and his crew at the Old World Deli for providing the food
for tonight, and hopefully we'll be able to do this again in the near future. Next month
it will be back at the Old World Deli with Bill Robbins talking about Tom McCall's legacy
shooing that famous documentary from 195=62 called pollution in paradise. The same year
that Rachel Carson's book was polished; help set the stage for the environmental movement
of the sixties and seventies. So now to your questions, Shelly and Megan will have microphones.
Hold your hand up, we'll point to you so we can get one at a time and please state your
name and your questions for Steve. Thank you. Steve, My name is James Rodell.
Where are you James? Right over there! And, you mentioned that there is a sincere
and honest issue involved with canola in the Willamette Valley effecting existing organic
seed growers and alfalpha seed people as well as the brassicas. Would you be willing to
take some time and really give us more of an update about all of the various parameters
of that and what we need to be concerned about and so on and so forth?
The short answer is no. The reason is that you know, that messy mill ground I talked
about will coexistence with canola here in the Willamette Valley, with organic seed that
probably has zero tolerance, I would assume. Is a tough deal; and I would imagine you need
some kind of on the ground segregation. You know we've had that in Oregon before, I guess
we have one set in place now a little bit. So some research can go forward. But we have
people at Rusk Carrots here somewhere who are much better informed about really the
agronomic and economic details of that. But I consider that a place where the solutions
are going to be hard. It's also possible that we just, they just can't coexist in this particular
place. And I, you know, that's a reasonable outcome that may occur. So, but that needs
to be worked out and it is not going to be based on crazy fears and bad scientists, its
going to be based on people getting together, seeing each others differences and trying
to work out a solution if they can. I think that's the kind of thing Kitzhaber has in
mind when he talks about things like much more sophisticated identity systems for where
growers are growing what. So and I think that has to happen. That's all I really can say.
I'm Phil Burnham, I guess the last question made me wonder, what are your views on how
you can control the genetic spirit of something? So say you maybe you cna control it in some
way but it just seams to me that, my personal fear is that, you know reproduction is one
of the most powerful forces in the universe, and maybe one or two is just too high of a
number escapement, if you are truly trying to control it. Could you speak to how, if
one camp was kind of worried about the control aspect of it, were the others saying, "well
I want to do the experiment, and I'm pretty sure we can control it?" How do you make the
middle grounds susceptible between those? You know think for mainstream agriculture,
at least with current technology, you're not going to have complete control. It's also
you know, a bit ironic that when companies started doing research into control methods,
and I work on control methods, so I'm fairly, deeply aware of it. There was this giant push
back and it was really a way to force farmers to always buy seeds and further imprison the
poor and so forth. And so all the companies I know stopped that research on control. And
I agree with you, its going to be hard to make something perfect, but there would be
cases where it would be nice to have some really good controls systems in there. Even
if they are only 99.999% perfect. Which some of them already are. On the other hand, so
anyways, that doesn't mean that you're going to have to control everything. When you look
at mainstream agriculture now, it's basically a minimal control system. And yet, we have
all kinds of innovations. We have coexistence, we have industrial canola with food canola
and we work those out. And they're very spread in the environment and are very limited in
different areas. And like the gentleman was talking about- you need these coexistent strategies.
So for those kinds of things, I think you're going to have those sort of systems developed,
but for a lot of mainstream agriculture, if we have genes that don't produce hazardous
effects. If we produce a kind of wheat for example, that is low gluten, because we've
knocked down the genes that make it, does that need to be contained like a toxin? Why
can't that be grown normally? Even though it's a GMO, under normal agricultural separation
and coexistence. So a lot of stuff doesn't need control, on the other extreme, would
be things like bio pharmaceutical crops. If we start making medicines in crops and there's
a lot of good reasons to do that. Those are going to have to be grown in isolation with
the sterility techniques and all the technologies we can to try to make it absolute zero or
very close to it. So I think you have this whole range to deal with, in some cases it
really should be no control, even though it's GMO. In other cases, you might have some geo-political
kinds of control. In other cases, you really need absolute segregation. So it's just a
mixed bag. If that helps. My name is Jim Nelson; I've looked at one
of your studies on making popular trees resistant to roundup, a study that was funded in part
by Monsanto. And I don't eat popular trees, and that doesn't concern me, but the problem
as I see it is, is a lot of the food stuff, that are made resistant to roundup, they find
their way into our foods that we consume everyday. Those foodstuffs maybe be safe in the laboratory
setting, where they grow the crop, they set the crop its fine. But they don't always test
it after it's been drenched in roundup. And shouldn't we as consumers be allowed to know
whether or not the crops that we are eating every day have been drenched in herbicide.
So you mean, that shouldn't there be labeling? Is that what you mean?
Well yeah, because I read that they grow the GMO crops, they tested them with laboratory
animals, they came out fine. But they forgot to spray the crops with roundup. Because it
was this kind of laboratory control experiment. In the real world, the GMO crops that are
roundup resistant are sprayed with this herbicide that none of us would consume voluntarily,
and the testing hasn't addressed the herbicide that is getting into our foods. You know,
there was a controversial French study over a generation, um, four generations of laboratory
rats. So it's really a concerning health issue and they were testing GMO crops that have
been drenched in herbicides. So aren't there studies out there that raise issues about
not the crop itself but the fact that the crops in the real world are being sprayed
with herbicides, and that's getting into the food stream of. Golden rice isn't getting
sprayed with herbicide. Yeah, so you know, I can't speak to ever little
study that has been done, but whenever I heard talks from USDA regulators- from anyone. Field
studies are essential. So if field studies weren't done, then something is wrong, or
someone is misportraying it. So for example, the EPA requires that when you register an
herbicide tolerant crop, that they look at the pesticide residues. When you register
the herbicide, Roundup, you have to look at the residues that would get in food. And decide
if they were at a level that was at least 2 orders of magnitude, one hundred fold below
the level where no effect is observed in laboratory. That's basically the standard. So that has
to be done when you register an herbicide. Now when you take a genetically modified crop,
And now it may get more herbicide on it, you need to do it again, and make sure those residues
are below that safe level and you need to do it in the field where it is metabolized
normally. So I don't know the studies your talking about, where that wasn't done, but
that would be very shocking to me if that truly had not been done and was not required
by the regulators. And then your second point about that French study, all I can say is
that the European Food Safety Authority basically said that its at such low scientific quality,
we will ignore it. It doesn't enter into any of our thinking about GMO safety. And I actually
had a slide earlier in my 4X version of this, it had one of the papers that rebutted that
study for all the different reasons, so I just don't take it seriously. It was also
by a person who is unknown, anti GMO crusader. He actually blocked the media; we couldn't
get access to it unless it was given to select media that agreed with him. It was an example
of a greedious publishing, as well as a greedious science. So the scientific community that
I am aware of, the one I respect has basically put it aside as not helpful.
My name is Nick Wong and I have two quick questions. One of them is in regards to all
the genetic modified things, where do you draw the line? Can we do it to crops, to animals
so that they are resistant to certain diseases? And my other question is with the whole RNA
modify action that makes them resistant to viruses, this is really speculative, but isn't
is possible for a large company like Monsanto or something to develop a virus that could
effect crops in an adverse way, however also developed a crop that would be resistant to
it and wouldn't they have a complete monopoly in that aspect?
You must be a Sci-Fi writer! I think you should go out there and make some real money. So
yes, that's possible to do that, its possible to create a crop that is resistant to say
an RNA pesticide, if that is what you mean. And you know, spread it in the environment
and then you sell- you get to sell your crop. That's theoretically possible. Some of the
Asians of genetic engineering are concerns for bioterrorism. If you take a gene from
anthrax or something. The toxin, I don't know anything about anthrax, so I am on thin ice
here. And uh, put it in an agent that you can spread around the world, around the environment
easily, or put it in a crop, a food crop. That could be a serious issue right. That
would create a food scare as well as hysteria and possibly undermine our sort of food system.
So those are legitimate concerns. You can also make a cross with a wild tomato and introduce
a toxic gene and put it into the food supply. Without genetic engineering. So that could
be done, that has been done. It's not just a GMO thing. Did I get all your. Is there
a part that I missed? Yeah. Animals. Yeah you know when you look at some of those polls.
And I told you some of the stuff from Suzan Priest earlier, and when you ask about animals,
they always create lower levels of approval than plants. So it's kind of um, microbes
are the most acceptable; plants are next, animals the least. You know, you can also
do things for animals that are good for them. Make them for example, mastitis resistant.
That's been done. Make them mad cow disease resistant. So there are things you can do
that are good for animals, as well as using them as livestock and pets. So should that
be allowed? You know, one of the hot issues is genetically modified salmon, which now
is only intended for growth and land pens- not to put out in the ocean. And they are
highly sterile. I don't know if you know about this but there are basically salmon that grow
faster when you feed them. They are kind of like lives. They are feed life kind of salmon.
And that has been in front of the FDA for sixteen years, mainly because sort of the
ethical unease. And sort of the notion that they may disrupt markets, upset constituents
of politicians. So that's an example that would be the first genetically modified animal.
And it's been sitting there mainly because of the sort of social unease about it as reflected
in the political process. So am I okay with it personally? Particularly about the ways
that they were going to use it, and knowing that conventional breeding of fish does the
same thing. Just slower. We have incredible breads of fish, for aquaculture that grow
very, very fast. As fast as GM salmon in some cases. So to me, it's not materially different
whether you do it through the old methods by selecting these natural mutants, or use
the new methods. The question is, is it safe? Is it sustainable? Does it lower the cost
of fish protein for people? Does it improve sustainability; one of the notions is to grow
these salmon in pins close to cities so they are not shipped from Alaska, Norway or Chili.
So they have a lower greenhouse gas output. So it would depend on that. But me personally,
I'm comfortable given I know enough about it and it works.
Hi my name is Julia Rosen, I have a question- I saw on one of your last slides a bullet
point about open source. And I was curious if you could speak a little bit about how
you think open source GM would change growing food and also the landscape of pubic opinion.
Yea that is a fascinating thing. You know in the microbiology area, there's this whole
DIY movement. The sort has: do biotech in your garage, and put it out there. And there's
a website encouraging you to make a glowing tree for Christmas. The problem is, the technology
is not quite there to make it glow very well, so it probably wouldn't be very popular. But
the notion that- if people did it, and they did what they wanted, and got to get the government
out of the way, there'd be a flourishing of innovation and good things. And generally
I believe that. But I also believe that you could do bad things too, that wouldn't be
good. So I think there needs to be some layer of regulation. And I think we can do this
pretty simply, I think we could for example, make a line between putting things in that
are toxins or come from allergenic sources. And just say, those- you better go through
FDA first. Versus, when you are tinkering with the genes that are there, turning them
up, turning them down. Turning down a known allergen. Do we need to go through FDA first
for that, or can that be open source, can that be done without it. So again, I think
that is the hard work of getting together and designing smart regulations. I would like
to see for example plant breeders here in town in USDA at Oregon State, producing varieties
whether they be a low lignin tree or a tree that makes some of its own enzymes to help
it pulp itself. Here, without having to go through Monsanto. That's what I would like
to see. But that requires we have a much less ownerous regulatory system and obviously a
less hostile political climate. It has become common in the medical community
for researchers before they present their research, or their opinions to disclose the
funder research. Could you tell us who supports your research?
So roughly if you look at the long haul over the years, probably about 90% comes from public
sources. The USDA, Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, National Students of Health-
in that basic order. And then I am going to guess about 10%, mostly from forest industry,
Monsanto gave me money for a five year period when they were interested in trees, they were
part of this consortium that nick mentioned, back when they thought that they were going
to be really taking over the world literally and you know producing genetically modified
coffee and sugar cane and forestry and they realized they really can't do that. There
are too many technical and social obstacles. So they just dropped it. So my relationship
with Monsanto ended whenever it was, ten or so years ago. But forest industries continued
to give me some money; I still have a small cooperative. And it's a small part of the
research in my life. Probably more like 15% these days. Where Quarry? She probably knows
that. But anyways, that is about what it is. Hi, Janelle Ives, watching those videos from
Indonesia you could see a lot of emotion on one side, and then the scientist response
while rationally interesting, was not very emotive or did not create much of a response.
The scientific community has been particularly poor in messaging and communicating. Do you
think that methods where scientists could partner with NGO's to maybe promote GMO's
in a better way or to get a better at least the communication system out there?
Yah. You know, people expect scientists to be mostly rational you know, they look to
them for not so much moral leadership, but to get the facts right. So I'm not sure we
want scientists to be too cute and warm. As you see, I tried a little bit and I failed
dismally. But you know, certainty the corporations are very much you know they have their public
relations, department of advertising and Monsanto's website and everything is warm and fuzzy about
sustainability and everything else. So it's hard for a big corporation to be warm and
fuzzy and get away with it. I do thin personally, one of my pet peeves is the public- public
sector scientists, not every scientist, but the community at universities and public sectors
needs to be more aggressive and getting out the science, the correct science. When you
take a policy stand on it, but like I've talked about what the mainstream communities say
about the safety of food, its not really debated. It's kind of clear. But Greenpeace is screaming
that the food is killing us. And we're basically, except for writing a random op-et quiet; and
very few universities around the country except for California, are actually seriously engaged
in getting information out. And I think it's because they're too poor, too many budget
cut backs. And they are too politically correct. They don't want to take the risk of angering
their constituents and I think it's a tragedy. Same thing happened here at this university
where we really can't afford, it is not a priority for us to do this, and I think the
steaks are too high to put your head in the sand. But that has been a hard sell for us.
(Laughter) Other questions?
Back here. Hi I'm Craig, in one of your earlier slides,
you showed that there was a pretty big riff between people anti GMO and pro. It looked
like it was even more pro. If that's true, why would mandatory labeling be the end of
GMO's if I would think there's people like myself who would appreciate seeing the label,
but still being okay with eating it. And actually liking some kind of resource like a website
or something to a website to see if I wanted to look into more information on this kind
of food. Yeah. You know, I used to have and maybe I
still do, the same viewpoint of you knows being more transparent about it. Lets get
it out there. Get the narrative that we're hiding something out by doing it. And its
one of these cases where the devil is in the details. How you do it, how stringent it is,
what the tolerances are for contamination. So for example, if you have to have, you have
to label everything as GMO. And its .5 or .9 percent of anyone component of food is
GMO, it must be labeled. It's very hard for in agriculture in the realities of it to keep
things that clean. Without separate boxcars, without inspectors testing everywhere. And
then what are the consequences if you make a mistake? Are entire shipments turned back?
That's actually happened and cost tens of millions of dollars. Where some contaminate
has got into a shipment going to Europe and it was turned back. So, labeling in principle
is fine, but the proposals that are out there are so stringent, that they would be costly
and they would be hard to enforce. And then from my point of view, if they are about the
process, not about the product. Did you use genetic modification? And that is what the
labeling proposals we have are, its scientifically misleading. I was not part of the triple IS
group for that position statement, but I do think it would be misleading and scare people
and provide a leverage for the strongly anti GMO and the very well funded groups to then
lobby supermarkets, lobby major retailers to keep it out. So if you labeled the product,
for example, if there was more than 1% protein of a novel transgene. And that was one that
maybe science had some question about. I think that would be reasonable. But that is not
what is being talked about. (Audience member) I think that in the long
run, it could reduce the stigma if people saw that how many products do have GMO's and
they're not causing harm. But we can see.
You know, I think, you know the labeling issue keeps popping up. You know, it's kind of-
you can't really kill it. There is discussion and its still kind of quiet among the big
players that maybe we need to get ahead of this and label ourselves. And be at the table
and having a big part in determining how it's done so it's scientifically meaningful and
not so stringent that it is going to be so costly so we can't do it. So maybe we'll get
there and maybe this year! But I think that people are talking about it because there's
just this public concern of "just tell us" so maybe its time we started getting involved
in that, rather than seeing it happen to us. So I'm kind of with you there.
Hi, my name is Mark. I just. I think you touched on kind of glossed over some of the different
methods of doing genetic modification. When you're able to force up more detail about
each one, you said sometimes the micro gun. Do I understand correctly one method is to
use a virus to insert a gene into DNA molecule, and not being a scientific person, I wonder
doesn't that leave ruminants of the virus aren't there some health effects that even
if minute might be cumulative if you ate that food three times a day for ten-20 years. That's
where my concern rises. Can't we emphasize safe injection of genetic material, and deemphasize
those that are unsafe. If a virus insertion is unsafe maybe we could make that less prominent.
Yeah, so typically in plants, people generally don't use viruses to insert DNA. In animals
like humans, they often do. But there are viruses that have been extensively engineered
to be safe. They have taken out the pathogenic genes and so forth. In plants, the main gene
insertion method is a bacterium. And it's a plant pathogen, something called agrobacteria
and that causes gavels. And so we use that. But before we do, we spice up the genes that
makes a plant cause gales. So it just transferred the DNA. So as far as we can tell, there's
no hazards left of sort of the pathogen. We're just using that as a mechanism because it's
been well studies and because these pathogenic agents have been taken out. So that would
be the short answer. And the details would depend on every case, but the ones that are
in widespread use, are sort of these ineffable disarmed kinds of vectors they're called.
Okay we have one more question then we'll be done.
I'm Mark Thompson, related to that question, how about the micros hot gun approach? Which
is I understand how glyphosate resistance started in soybeans, right?
That's right. The original ones, I'm not sure if the newer ones are still produced that
way. How much has that technology changed?
You know, its called the gene gun where what happens is you have this micro shrapnel which
is like a one micrometers- basically gold or tungsten dust. That DNA is precipitated
onto. And then you use either an electric shock or an air pressure shock or an actual
bullet wit a stopping plate so you don't shoot a hole through the plant. And you accelerate
it in. And that is what this partial gun does. And it's not the favorite technique anymore
because you have less control of the integrity of gene. It often goes in several paces in
the envenom and the DNA shrapnel. So it's working against the tendency to make the technology
more precise. The funny thing is that, USDA does not regulate that. The technique where
we use the pathogen agrobacterium-because its a plant pathogen, USDA the lawyers have
decided that that's the trigger. Not because it's hazardous. It's just a legal trigger.
And so companies that want to avoid regulation and the regulations are onerous can use a
particle gun to avoid it. So it's coming back into fashion just a little bit. But it's not
a technique that I would promote. I have such a gun and I haven't used it in fifteen years.
I don't like the shrapnel concerns. Yeah and I don't like that either, it's just
not very elegant is it? And I wish that GMO advocates would talk about
the ecological consequences of the difference between the glyphosate resistances in soybeans.
And the BT trait in corn which acts on a wild organism, which if that escaped, could really
cause a bad ecological effect. I heard rumor that once they were considering putting BT
into squash. Stupid. And sunflower. You know you had the similar
issue. And basically so what's been done so far- you know, I'm not convinced that it would
cause an ecological disaster like you're talking about, but there's a plausible case for concern.
No question about it. And so, so far, EPA has not allowed BT for example BT cotton to
be grown anywhere that there are wild relatives that can cross-pollinate with. So for example,
they are not grown in Florida, I think they're not grown in Puerto Rico is it- where there's
some wild relatives. There could possibly be a transfer of the BT trait. So right now,
all the BT crops do not have relatives for that reason. And so you might say the regulations
are extremely precautious and admirable. You could also say, you know you really don't
know if there is going to be an impact, and you are never going to find out. But either
way, it's not happening right now. Okay, thank you Steve!