Me, the other day:
I’m personally not someone who fears genetically modified food- basically everything you eat today has been genetically modified through selective breeding over centuries. Cows didn’t always look like that. Hell, all you dog lovers out there, your specific breed didn’t use to look like that. I’m far more comfortable with wheat that has been genetically modified to resist fungal diseases or livestock genetically modified to resist the various maladies they suffer than I am with spraying crops with DDT or shooting up cows with steroids, hormones, and antibiotics.
As if the Gods themselves said “Look, that idiot is running his fool mouth again,” via Crooks and Liars this, the first story I’ve heard of GM foods being dangerous:
A mysterious mass death of a herd of cattle has prompted a federal investigation in Central Texas.
Preliminary test results are blaming the deaths on the grass the cows were eating when they got sick, reports CBS Station KEYE.
The cows dropped dead several weeks ago on an 80-acre ranch owned by Jerry Abel in Elgin, just east of Austin.
Abel says he’s been using the fields for cattle grazing and hay for 15 years. “A lot of leaf, it’s good grass, tested high for protein – it should have been perfect,” he told KEYE correspondent Lisa Leigh Kelly.
The grass is a genetically-modified form of Bermuda known as Tifton 85 which has been growing here for 15 years, feeding Abel’s 18 head of Corriente cattle. Corriente are used for team roping because of their small size and horns.
The GM gas suddenly started producing cyanide gas, which killed the cattle.
I’m like a fucking rural Tom Friedman with a foul mouth and a fat cat.
*** Update ***
Turns out the CBS news report is crap and Tifton 85 is not a gm grass.
David Koch
cue M Night Shyamalan
Corner Stone
“Look at you.
You got on heels, you ain’t that tall.
You got on makeup,
your face don’t look like that.
You got a weave, your hair ain’t that long.
You got a Wonderbra on,
your titties ain’t that big.”
Violet
I think that’s the issue with the genetically modified stuff. It may be okay for awhile–in this case the guy was using it for 15 years–but then something happens and it’s suddenly not okay. What’s that something? Nature is adaptable and who knows what happened to change it. Why did it work for awhile and then not? But that’s the kind of thing that can’t be tested, really. How do you test for its interaction with unknown things out in the wild? You can’t.
Steve S
Tifton 85 is not a GMO, numbnuts.
Cap'n Magic
@Steve S: Yep.
Violet
Not sure if you saw, but commenter JC posted that in your open thread last night.
Southern Beale
The reason I am wary of GM foods is that unlike, say, vaccines, GM doesn’t mirror any natural process. Genetically modified soy is not the same as “soy which has evolved over the centuries and adapted to certain conditions or been selectively bred to meet the needs of modern agriculture.” GM foods are literally franken foods. They take viruses and fish DNA and crap like that and modify the plant DNA in a way that would never happen through natural evolutionary processes.
SlothropRedux
As others have said, this is a hybrid grass, NOT a genetically modified one. Here are some linkie links for your enjoyment.
JenJen
“I’m like a fucking rural Tom Friedman with a foul mouth and a fat cat.”
I love that.
freelancer
Correlation doesn’t equal causation. I can’t stand Susie Madrak, but even her post here indicates her thinking that this might be more drought-related than anything else.
Raven
let Monsanto give you a hand!
Steve S
@Violet: WOW this JC guy (commenter JC, not John Cole) comes off as equally stupid and assholey.
Brachiator
@Southern Beale:
Selective breeding does not really mirror natural processes.
Violet
@Steve S: Indeed.
Karl Rover
you’re a good guy, John Cole. Just don’t go off on stuff you know nothing about. NO, insect poison genes weren’t routinely breed into our food by our forefathers. NO, herbicides weren’t routinely sprayed over our crops up until the day they are harvested. This is new shit, and if you’re going on about DDT, wel,l you best stick to what you know.
freelancer
So, the moral of this post is that John Cole’s self-loathing knows no bounds. Got it.
foo
The points are noted above and in the references, but succinctly:
a) the grass in question is NOT genetically modified (https://www.soils.org/publications/cs/abstracts/41/1/5)
b) cyanide poisoning of cattle is apparently a known phenomenon (http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3898869?uid=3737864&uid=2&uid=4&sid=47699100841577)
I won’t comment on whether or not GM foods are a danger or not, but this case is not evidence for that thesis.
(Also note that Tifton 85 has been around since 1985, before any GM foods).
update: in fact, there is a whole class of ‘cyanogenic’ plants in the grass family — plants which produce cyanide, so yes, plants DO have pesticide genes built in…
Ben H.
Tom Friedman is like an urban John Cole with a brain-sucking hairy alien perched on his upper lip.
Keith G
Cole steps off a cliff and and always a few of the commenters rush in to hold hands on the way down….. sweet
Blogs citing other blogs for a circle wank of silliness – and we laugh at the wingnuts.
Corner Stone
@Keith G: You’re sounding a little raw these days. How’s things?
JGabriel
Brachiator:
I disagree. Perhaps it’s a matter of degree, but selective breeding mirrors natural selection — with the caveat that we’re the natural phenomena doing the selecting, as opposed to weather, faunal population variations, or other environmental factors.
In fact, Darwin based the theory of natural selection on selective breeding, but without a breeder/selector.
.
JPL
@Keith G:
Do you have on your magic undies. ..
He updated his article and although I agree that more research should be done before posting, he did update.
IMO..Drudge never, ever updates. Remember John Kerry’s girlfriend?
Cap'n Magic
Let this be a lesson to all: search twice before you post. Once for the incident, and then again for the backstory.
MikeJ
Technically it *is* genetically modified, but in the old fashioned “we’ll just grow a bunch of stuff and try to cross breed it and hope something we like eventually comes along” way instead of actually picking which genes you want.
JPL
@Corner Stone: He is just eating a lot of the genetically modified stuff.
WereBear
What annoys me most about this whole issue is that they won’t label it for what it is.
The whole libertarian-GaltGulch-informed-consumer-driving-bad-corporations-out-of-business model just falls apart there.
freelancer
@Keith G:
Yes, yes we do. Because our reaction to Cole’s one-off is that he fucked up. Their reaction to grievous errors of fact is always “Clap Louder!”
And so we laugh.
JPL
@WereBear: free enterprise
joes527
Since we were all ready to condemn GMO when we thought that this grass was GMO, does that mean we need to start agitating for the elimination of non-GMO* because all that natural stuff iz killing our cattle?
* I know that what I wrote sounds wrong. But I refuse to write “non-GMO organisms.” You have any complaints? you can find me at the El Cortez.
Bob Munck
“Tifton 85”
While this particular product may not be GMO, it seems like a good rule of thumb to avoid eating anything whose name ends in a number. Ice 9, for example.
jl
link for the update, please.
Edit: I don’t see a correction in the story you linked to.
Edit @17 thanks, I did not see those.
SiubhanDuinne
This is why I love you, John Cole.
Raven
@Bob Munck: Even on a Chinese menu?
Elizabelle
The perils of blogging in realtime.
You’ve posted a link that’s a correction.
Don’t be too hard on yourself.
Stephen1947
If you always have to be absolutely sure that everything you say is absolutely correct, you will be mostly silent. You won’t make many mistakes, but you won’t learn much either.
Mike Jones
To me, the things that make GMO organisms different from selectively bred ones (which are the things that really concern me about them) is that you can’t breed a tomato with a salmon, but you can put genes from a salmon into a tomato. Or vice versa. Which may generate some cool and useful things, but what if you’re allergic to tomatoes? Will those genes in the salmon produce proteins that will trigger your allergy? It’s hard to tell, and (more disturbing) the people producing the organisms don’t seem terribly interested in the sort of systemic testing you’d need to discover these things. You can’t rationally assume risk if people are withholding key information from you.
GMO processes bring in a much wider range of changes than normal selective breeding, and does it much more quickly so the rest of the ecosystem has much less opportunity to respond.
General Stuck
“cyanide gas”
Hey! This isn’t right! Hey! This is no good!
WereBear
@JPL: About time we responded: “Free and Informed Enterprise, m4792th23 f87k48s!”
delphi_ote
@Southern Beale: GM doesn’t mirror any natural process?! If it didn’t, researchers never would’ve been able to make it work! The proteins in GM corn evolved in bacteria. The genes are inserted using techniques for horizontal gene transfer that also evolved naturally in bacteria. Scientists invented the techniques used to produce transgenic crops precisely by mirroring nature!
Also, your entire point is founded on a logical fallacy called the “naturalistic fallacy.”
Note: I agree that we should be very careful with transgenic crops. But our conversations need to be grounded in reality, science, and critical thinking. Vague fear mongering results in uninformed, knee-jerk decisions.
Brachiator
@JGabriel:
No. For example, we breed dogs and cats and cattle for our pleasure. It’s got nothing to to with reproductive fitness. Hell, people will breed or accept genetic disadvantages because of other features they find desirable.
Darwin was able to look at the very narrow stuff that people do and move beyond this to a larger principle about nature. There is nothing in his work that suggests that natural selection is merely selective breeding writ large.
Martin
@WereBear: How so? It the GMO you eat kills you, then you’ll stop eating it, right? Free market wins again!
Linnaeus
@Brachiator:
No, it doesn’t, but I do think the analogies that are often drawn between selective breeding and laboratory GMO techniques are a little sloppy (not saying that you’re doing this, but it happens a lot). Yes, selective breeding is a technique that genetically modifies an organism, but the laboratory techniques that have been developed over the past 30-40 years allow for more radical alterations of an organism’s genome more quickly than traditional selective breeding techniques, because you can bypass the various biological barriers that limit horizontal gene transfer in nature.
Which is not to say that we shouldn’t do research related to GMOs (I think more research is a good thing), just that concerns about it are not entirely unfounded.
Of course, this story doesn’t help things, since the problem doesn’t appear to have anything to do with GMOs at all.
Keith G
@Steve S:
And it figures that Mr. stupid and assholey was citing a post from Raw Story, a place not celebrated for doing journalism.
Narcissus
Wait, the cows are still dead, right?
delphi_ote
@Mike Jones: Bam! Now THAT is an informed and well thought out criticism of transgenic foods.
Every product we put on the shelves and eat should be tested for safety and benefit, exactly like the drug market is. You have to show that the overall benefits of putting your product on the shelf outweigh the potential harm. Unfortunately, the dietary supplement industry has been pushing back against anything like this, because they like being able to sell products without demonstrating that they have any benefit.
gvg
As additional info plants do produce natural herbicides and insecticides. Black walnut and several other plants poison the ground under them to prevent competition. some natural insecticides are from ground up plant parts-neem oil (from a tree) and pyrythium dust (from a daisy.
I think we sometimes carry viruses that kill other viruses cow pox/small pox? and our guts have bacteria we use for digestion.
what I worry about is the unintended cross pollination messing up natural eco systems. the legal stuff where a company sues someone near by whose plants get their patented genes is just new situation/bad law and will need to be corrected. IMO they need to tell the companies tough luck, this kind of wind born non preventable crossing makes that kind of patent unenforceable and they should stop granting that kind of patent.
I would expect some problems with anything really new and based on past mistakes I’d say go slow, but mostly it will be good.
Oh also based on past experience any mainstream alarming news story about complicated science should be not initially believed. Wait quite awhile before thinking it’s real.
I’ve heard quite a few stories actually about herds of cattle being killed by plants they ate. Loco weed, lantana-a lot of plants sneak into pastures and suddenly kill cows. Not every day, but there are a lot of warnings in my garden books.
Leslie B
@Southern Beale: Look up this thing called “horizontal gene transfer”, and then tell me again that genes can’t move between different species outside of a lab.
Viruses put their genetic material in hosts all the time. Humans have thousands of bases worth of viral DNA. Plants also have viruses that will put their DNA in the genome of their hosts. This is a totally natural (if not particularly beneficial to humans) process, and is instrumental in evolution.
schrodinger's cat
Correction:
Tom Friedman is annoying, you are anything but. Tunch is not fat, he is floofy.
mai naem
So I got around to watching Bill Maher yesterday. Is there anybody more deserving out there than Nick Gillespie to get run over by a Mexican driven eighteen wheeler with bad brakes, then get treated by a quack alcoholic doctor followed by eating food in the hospital that gives him food poisoning and finally get his private insurance pulled by the insurance co. because they don’t want to pay for all his immediate upcoming medical bills. Okay, apart from Rand and Ron Paul and Grover Norquist.
El Cid
Regardless of whether or not one has an opinion on GMO’s in the food chain and what it is, this is the sort of report that you should make sure is really, really solid before making a big noise about it.
SiubhanDuinne
@Bob Munck: Seagram’s 7?
WereBear
Holy GMO-modifed_WTF Batman!
Look, I don’t care if the plant makes its own fungicide, or some Homo sapiens in a lab adds it to the genetic soup. I do not believe we are genetically adapted to fungicides, mmmmkay? That would be the point.
Keith G
@Corner Stone: Hot. Thank god for the grand old oaks that populate the Museum District. My quick walk home was mostly in shade.
I will cop to sounding a bit bitchier than usual. The unforced errors around this place seems to have nudged up. I think that is what happens when imagination and craft take a back seat to scanning other blogs for some outrage to get outraged about. It’s an unfortunate rut, but I am sure it will get better as these things tend to run in cycles.
burnspbesq
OT: OMG, that has to be one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in a major league baseball game.
R.A. Dickey knocked A-Rod down with a 70 mph knuckleball, and got him looking on the next pitch with another 70 mph knuckleball on the outside corner.
Priceless.
The Red Pen
@Mike Jones:
What consenting tomatoes and salmon do in private is none of your damn business!
Brachiator
@Linnaeus:
I agree. But the claims that selective breeding is OK because it is kinda semi more “natural,” while GM is inherently more dangerous is wrong headed.
It kinda reminds me of dopes who think that vaccinations are unnatural, but exposing your kids to other kids with measles or other diseases is somehow “natural” and will work out better.
Bob Munck
@SiubhanDuinne: “Seagram’s 7?”
OK, but straight up, no Ice 9.
Linnaeus
@Brachiator:
Sure, selective breeding and GM are both “artificial” techniques. I think what people are expressing when they suggest that selective breeding is more “natural” is an anxiety about the power of laboratory techniques to do that which would be very difficult or functionally impossible (even after many, many years) with selective breeding.
WereBear
Yeah. Like that whole salmon breeding with broccoli thing. Like you would ever see them in the same bars, much less following the same bands.
blahblah
I understand that people don’t want to eat corn with salmon genes in it or whatever. There might be dietary restrictions due to allergy or religion or preference. GMO is coming, though, and it’s coming to fill a real need. In fact if you eat processed foods or industrially raised meats it’s already here.
So what I’m saying is dietary restrictions, preferences, religious food rules, and even your own personal preferences may need to be revised or changed.
Because you can’t stop GMO food. In general, with humanity, you can’t stop any technology. It’s just who we are as a society.
Mike
I’ve never understood why people get all worked up over transgenic stuff but don’t seem bothered by mutation breeding (i.e. nuking to induce beneficial mutations).
Linnaeus
@blahblah:
No, you really can’t and we may not want to if GMOs have real benefits. I think most people’s concerns about GMOs are less about GMOs qua GMOs and have more to do with questions of who controls the technology, who benefits from it, the appropriate level of testing of the GMOs and regulation of GMO technology, etc.
blahblah
@Linnaeus: My personal opinion is that we need to question those things with all of our food.
Linnaeus
@blahblah:
I don’t disagree.
bystander
80 acres ain’t a ranch. And, grass doesn’t “leaf.”
If it’s science, the mainstream media’s reporting is suspect. If it’s least bit sensational, it ought to doubly scrutinized.
Chet
“I’ve never understood why people get all worked up over transgenic stuff but don’t seem bothered by mutation breeding (i.e. nuking to induce beneficial mutations).”
Because the billion-dollar food-scare industry hasn’t tried to push opposition to it, therefore nobody thinks they need to get worked up about it.
When someone figures out how to market some triple-price “alternative”, that’s when you’ll see a massive push against “mutant food”, labeling requirements so the “consumer can decide”, “Big Mutie”, etc.
Mike Jones
@blahblah: So we should adopt the same attitude with eugenics? Nuclear weapons? Human cloning? Nothing better to do than “lie back and enjoy it” while the captains of industry (and believe me, it’s not the scientists putting this stuff on the market) do what They Know Is Best For Us?
No, thank you.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@foo: Thanks for the links.
Lynn Dee
Cole: Rats. I very much enjoyed the image of you as a rural Tom Friedman with a foul mouth and a fat cat.
Well, what the heck. We’ve still got the image, right? And anyway, it’s just a matter of time before you have another opportunity to use it.
:D
blahblah
@Mike Jones: Haven’t we? Nuclear weapons and power sure are still around.
The cloning of human tissue for organ replacement is a huge emerging field.
Human eugenics have been more or less dropped, but selective breeding has transformed our world.
If it fulfills a need, like feeding everyone on this overcrowded, polluted shithole of a planet, then we will do it.
Good luck I guess, but I think you’re just ignorant. Or maybe idealistic.
GxB
@Keith G: Yep, RedState, Politico, Drudge, and Big Government never engage in right wing circle jerk wankery. We gotta be more like The Right, Cole gotta bring back that old wingnut magic and DOUBLE DOWN!!!
Okay, props to the Keith G in that we should be a bit more vigilant in getting the story straight. But a lot of things are coming to a head in this country and its getting a bit hard to keep an even keel. Let the venal sins slide when there’s an admission of whoopsie.
To the topic itself, I have a BS in Molecular Biology and turned down an interview when I found out it was with Monsanto. So ethics aside, I have to admit that GM is the future, the genie is out of the bottle. Just as Steam Power, the printing press and the H-bomb permanently altered our course in the past, we got to roll with it.
I am 100% behind informed consent, labeling, extensive testing, and massive responsibility (liability) for the “innovators” should the slightest thing go to hell. But I won’t be shocked when some scandal or coverup comes to light. We’re dealing with people in power who can cause disasters on an unimaginable scale almost on a whim. Whether through their incompetence or callousness, we got to do our best to keep it on a tight leash.
So I guess I’m all for a healthy, skeptical, anti-GMO push, if only to keep them as honest as possible. Let’s face it though, there’s a fuck-ton of money to be made and there ain’t nothing going to keep the greedy from their profits. Knowing how even old hat technology is misappropriated by the current powers that be, FSM help us all.
Mike
@bystander:
That’s classic Gell-mann amnesia affect thinking in action.
Maude
CBS reported this wrong and didn’t get the facts straight?
The news business needs to get a handle on this and knock it off.
Tunch is floofy.
EIGRP
@Bob Munck:
I’ve never been one for penis-69 (I hope I find this just as funny tomorrow as I do right now)
Eric
GxB
@mai naem: He was in a top form of assholicity there wasn’t he? He’s got his though so all is right in his world. If there’s a Karma Fairy out there aiming to set it all right then (s)he should really get cracking.
Keith G
@GxB: Thanks, I think.
Look, I am certainly aware of the unsavory behavior of the other side.
All the more reason to get out of the reactive crouch our side seems to be in and lead by talking about policy, by talking about how to get things right.
Outrage blogging is getting a bit boring and it will not help our needs.
GxB
@Keith G: Yep – I’m with you there. Carping from the cheap seats accomplishes nothing. I also loathe our constant ploy of playing defense, and a lousy one at that. But given the current lack of brass genitalia in our elected leaders, well, here we sit. It tends to bring out the foul mouthed worst in me. So I guess until we can find our way to contribute effectively this is the only catharsis we have.
LT
I’ve always thought the GM scarecraze was overblown – because plants genetically modify themselves all the time – but not with, say, genes that are activiated in fish but not in plants. But still – we’re all made of the same DNA. Every living thing here.
I obviously have more to learn about it…
Quaker in a Basement
So? Do you think little things like this stop bigtime bloggers like McMeghan?
Pseudonym
@Leslie B: Endogenous retroviruses anyone?
Pseudonym
@Leslie B: Endogenous retroviruses anyone?
lojasmo
I don’t care if GM food has, as yet, been proven to be dangerous. I am avoiding it, as natural foods are preferable.
lojasmo
I don’t care if GM food has, as yet, been proven to be dangerous. I am avoiding it, as natural foods are preferable.
OmerosPeanut
@Southern Beale: While I can’t speak for the fish DNA, viruses have a long history of acting as vectors for inserting strange new DNA into a species’ genome. Medical researchers are coming to the conclusion (have long concluded?) that our so-called “junk DNA” is actually the genetic heritage of millions of years of retroviruses inserting themselves into our genome. For another example, I was reading sometime in the last two weeks on Scientific American or Science Daily’s website about a type of bacteria that can express and release a full viral genome in order to defend itself – the viral DNA is completely present in the bacterium’s DNA and is actually expressed, meaning the bacteria can create copies of the virus to do its bidding.
So while you have a point, it’s simply not as cut and dried as you seem to think it is.
debbie
Since Texas cares more about its cows than its citizens, maybe GM and pesticides will still get a second look, if only to get them labeled.
Constance Reader
@SlothropRedux: Thank you, you beat me to it. Also, there is now reason to believe that the grass is producing the cyanide because of an acid that it synthesizes in times of stress, such as this year being Texas’ third year of drought.
Barry
@OmerosPeanut: Yes, but consider the relative rates of viral trans-species DNA flow with man-made. The latter will probably soon dwarf the entire history of the former.
Binky Bear
@Brachiator: Are you really saying that humans are supernatural? Because that would be some shit right there.