Greenpeace and the legacy of Ludd
Last Thursday morning, as reported widely in the Australian media, and some overseas news services, a mother opposed to genetic engineering took matters into her own hands, and mowed down a trial crop of experimental wheat being grown by the CSIRO at Ginninderra, near Canberra in the Australian Capital Territory.
Backed by environmental group Greenpeace, the team entered a restricted area and removed plant material before flowering, they say to prevent contamination of surrounding areas by the modified crops, which they have stated were "potentially unstable" and claimed they "had no choice but to take action to bring an end to this experiment".
It should be noted that any new plant variety is "potentially unstable", it's a simple matter of genetic recombination, especially with open pollinated plants such as the grains we rely on for much of our staple diet. It's also a source of useful mutation, as William Farrer found over a hundred years ago when developing wheat varieties more resistant to disease and local conditions in Australia. Farrer did much of his selection by careful cross breeding, an old fashioned form of genetic manipulation, and close observation of trial crops.
The idea of this action being the last straw in the opposition of Genetic Modification of potential food crops, that there was "no choice" but to destroy valid, taxpayer funded research in order to protect our children, is pure hyperbole.
The best protection from any possible contamination from this crop would have been to leave it alone. Setting up experiments is a complicated business. As with the operations of any government department, risk assessments of all possible hazards to people and property must be undertaken before approval is given for an activity. This is likely to be the case here, scientists usually set up their work meticulously to avoid interference that could destroy valuable data.
Possible interference from outside factors are also accounted for, and when growing test crops, blocks are laid out in such a way as to remove potentially skewed results from protection or exposure of parts of the crop to conditions such as excess wind, shade, drainage, or sun, for example. Once an experiment is set up, appropriate signage is placed around a site, or individual plots, to indicate exactly what is planted, and usually who to contact for information. This is especially true in large test grounds where multiple experiments are ongoing concurrently.
Anyone working on a CSIRO site would be inducted to the particular procedures of such operations, and appropriate protocols. The entire area is most likely prominently declared as CSIRO research property, and unauthorised persons are likely warned to keep out. Pretty standard procedure for any research operation. This is not because there are hazardous materials, necessarily, though there may be. It is because experiments work best when the people running them know what is happening at all times. Unexpected actions, even apparently benign interference like watering, could disrupt months or years of work, depending on what the experiment is designed to discover.
Greenpeace have stated that they are aware that contamination from GM crops result more often from human dispersal of GM material, for example when people remove material from one site and take it inadvertently to another. Would these activists have increased the risk of such contamination by entering the experimental site? Almost certainly. They multiplied the very risk they were opposed to.
As for instability of the plant material, there is a possibility that the genetic modification could have been unstable, and reverted. This is exactly why such an experiment was necessary, to check for unforeseen changes in the modification in field grown plants. In this case, there was no addition of genes in the wheat plants, there was a change in the plants expression of certain genes related to starch production. In other words, if the changes were unstable, the wheat would revert to "normal". It is difficult to comprehend the risk to anything outside the researchers' careers for such an instability occurring.
There is some question as to the funding of these experiments, some large agricultural and chemical companies contribute to the funding and research bodies who commissioned the trials. This is not unusual in modern science. Government budgets only stretch so far, and external finance is obtained from industry to fund R&D in most, if not all scientific endeavour. If there are irregularities in the funding process, they should certainly be investigated, and conflicts of interest identified and eradicated. But to call for a halt to private money funding public research would cause science in Australia to all but grind to a standstill.
There are risks to developing genetically modified crop plants, that is certain. But to identify those risks, and test them, we need to conduct rigorous scientific study. Unless this is done, such risks are hypothetical, literally. To rely on a corporation's own research for their own product raises questions, not to mention eyebrows. So relatively impartial organisations are called upon to test new products, either directly or indirectly, in order to remove the conflict.
This experiment will be undertaken again, in all likelihood. Possibly with higher security, certainly with the benefit of hindsight. Perhaps in future, CSIRO will keep their experiments a secret, which in itself is a step backwards. Time has been lost, which cannot be regained, and it's at least conceivable that experienced contributors will be unavailable by the time the eventual harvest takes place. Scientists are retiring and leaving the country for the proverbial greener pastures all the time, and certainly postgraduate students have only a limited time in which to complete their projects.
The name of Ned Ludd is often bandied about when people blindly oppose new developments. This is a little unfair, as the Luddites were concerned with their replacement by machines in the early Industrial Revolution in England. They did destroy machines, but because their livelihood was threatened directly by their appearance, or so they believed. In this case, there may be a risk to humans if they consume this potential new food crop, but without proper investigation, we will not know for sure. There is a risk of contamination, but any wheat variety will contaminate a neighbouring variety if they differ, possibly in both direction, farmers already know this, and manage their timing and crops appropriately, or we would have long since lost every separate variety of wheat we currently grow.
This variety is being developed to possibly counter digestion problems with wheat in some people. There may be other ways to deal with that issue, such as not consuming wheat, but ultimately that is a marketing issue, and if wheat producing nations, like Australia, wish to increase sales, selling to people who can't usually eat wheat is one way to do it. That is a business decision. But to destroy well designed, valid scientific research, at the same time as increasing the supposed risks that research poses, is indefensible behaviour.
The resulting grain from the harvest was to be collected, and further analysed. Testing of the nutritional value of the grain, checking for any obvious toxic by-products or anomalies would have been the first of a series of experiments beyond the field trial. Next would have likely been testing the grain as a food source for animals, who would have been tested for adverse and possible positive reactions to the new food. If all this went okay, and after approval by an ethics committee, a human trial would have likely been set up: Volunteers giving informed consent to the experiment, under controlled conditions, and the results analysed. This may have been several years away, assuming there was even enough grain to make it this far from one crop.
It's a far cry from all farmers being forced to grow one strain of wheat, and every food producer being left with no option but to use it. With better food labelling laws, it would not even be a problem, as people could choose to avoid the GM sources of grain, and let the market decide. Greenpeace may have snatched a headline, they have also probably turned a few people against their cause. They claim that "GM has never been proven safe to eat" and they apparently don't want anyone to test that statement.
Backed by environmental group Greenpeace, the team entered a restricted area and removed plant material before flowering, they say to prevent contamination of surrounding areas by the modified crops, which they have stated were "potentially unstable" and claimed they "had no choice but to take action to bring an end to this experiment".
It should be noted that any new plant variety is "potentially unstable", it's a simple matter of genetic recombination, especially with open pollinated plants such as the grains we rely on for much of our staple diet. It's also a source of useful mutation, as William Farrer found over a hundred years ago when developing wheat varieties more resistant to disease and local conditions in Australia. Farrer did much of his selection by careful cross breeding, an old fashioned form of genetic manipulation, and close observation of trial crops.
The idea of this action being the last straw in the opposition of Genetic Modification of potential food crops, that there was "no choice" but to destroy valid, taxpayer funded research in order to protect our children, is pure hyperbole.
The best protection from any possible contamination from this crop would have been to leave it alone. Setting up experiments is a complicated business. As with the operations of any government department, risk assessments of all possible hazards to people and property must be undertaken before approval is given for an activity. This is likely to be the case here, scientists usually set up their work meticulously to avoid interference that could destroy valuable data.
Possible interference from outside factors are also accounted for, and when growing test crops, blocks are laid out in such a way as to remove potentially skewed results from protection or exposure of parts of the crop to conditions such as excess wind, shade, drainage, or sun, for example. Once an experiment is set up, appropriate signage is placed around a site, or individual plots, to indicate exactly what is planted, and usually who to contact for information. This is especially true in large test grounds where multiple experiments are ongoing concurrently.
Anyone working on a CSIRO site would be inducted to the particular procedures of such operations, and appropriate protocols. The entire area is most likely prominently declared as CSIRO research property, and unauthorised persons are likely warned to keep out. Pretty standard procedure for any research operation. This is not because there are hazardous materials, necessarily, though there may be. It is because experiments work best when the people running them know what is happening at all times. Unexpected actions, even apparently benign interference like watering, could disrupt months or years of work, depending on what the experiment is designed to discover.
Greenpeace have stated that they are aware that contamination from GM crops result more often from human dispersal of GM material, for example when people remove material from one site and take it inadvertently to another. Would these activists have increased the risk of such contamination by entering the experimental site? Almost certainly. They multiplied the very risk they were opposed to.
As for instability of the plant material, there is a possibility that the genetic modification could have been unstable, and reverted. This is exactly why such an experiment was necessary, to check for unforeseen changes in the modification in field grown plants. In this case, there was no addition of genes in the wheat plants, there was a change in the plants expression of certain genes related to starch production. In other words, if the changes were unstable, the wheat would revert to "normal". It is difficult to comprehend the risk to anything outside the researchers' careers for such an instability occurring.
There is some question as to the funding of these experiments, some large agricultural and chemical companies contribute to the funding and research bodies who commissioned the trials. This is not unusual in modern science. Government budgets only stretch so far, and external finance is obtained from industry to fund R&D in most, if not all scientific endeavour. If there are irregularities in the funding process, they should certainly be investigated, and conflicts of interest identified and eradicated. But to call for a halt to private money funding public research would cause science in Australia to all but grind to a standstill.
There are risks to developing genetically modified crop plants, that is certain. But to identify those risks, and test them, we need to conduct rigorous scientific study. Unless this is done, such risks are hypothetical, literally. To rely on a corporation's own research for their own product raises questions, not to mention eyebrows. So relatively impartial organisations are called upon to test new products, either directly or indirectly, in order to remove the conflict.
This experiment will be undertaken again, in all likelihood. Possibly with higher security, certainly with the benefit of hindsight. Perhaps in future, CSIRO will keep their experiments a secret, which in itself is a step backwards. Time has been lost, which cannot be regained, and it's at least conceivable that experienced contributors will be unavailable by the time the eventual harvest takes place. Scientists are retiring and leaving the country for the proverbial greener pastures all the time, and certainly postgraduate students have only a limited time in which to complete their projects.
The name of Ned Ludd is often bandied about when people blindly oppose new developments. This is a little unfair, as the Luddites were concerned with their replacement by machines in the early Industrial Revolution in England. They did destroy machines, but because their livelihood was threatened directly by their appearance, or so they believed. In this case, there may be a risk to humans if they consume this potential new food crop, but without proper investigation, we will not know for sure. There is a risk of contamination, but any wheat variety will contaminate a neighbouring variety if they differ, possibly in both direction, farmers already know this, and manage their timing and crops appropriately, or we would have long since lost every separate variety of wheat we currently grow.
This variety is being developed to possibly counter digestion problems with wheat in some people. There may be other ways to deal with that issue, such as not consuming wheat, but ultimately that is a marketing issue, and if wheat producing nations, like Australia, wish to increase sales, selling to people who can't usually eat wheat is one way to do it. That is a business decision. But to destroy well designed, valid scientific research, at the same time as increasing the supposed risks that research poses, is indefensible behaviour.
The resulting grain from the harvest was to be collected, and further analysed. Testing of the nutritional value of the grain, checking for any obvious toxic by-products or anomalies would have been the first of a series of experiments beyond the field trial. Next would have likely been testing the grain as a food source for animals, who would have been tested for adverse and possible positive reactions to the new food. If all this went okay, and after approval by an ethics committee, a human trial would have likely been set up: Volunteers giving informed consent to the experiment, under controlled conditions, and the results analysed. This may have been several years away, assuming there was even enough grain to make it this far from one crop.
It's a far cry from all farmers being forced to grow one strain of wheat, and every food producer being left with no option but to use it. With better food labelling laws, it would not even be a problem, as people could choose to avoid the GM sources of grain, and let the market decide. Greenpeace may have snatched a headline, they have also probably turned a few people against their cause. They claim that "GM has never been proven safe to eat" and they apparently don't want anyone to test that statement.
posted by The Last Scientician at 9:46 PM
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