Looks like I am the only one here who does not know what these seeds under discussion are…

Why you knock twice and tell the man the password. You could protect it from everything that way. So long as you asked anything that came knocking two specific questions:

1) Are you a terrorist?

2) Honest?

First, a link: http://www.aphis.usda.gov/brs/not_reg.html

If you look at the overall history of what genetically engineered crops have been approved by the USDA (above), you’ll see scads of herbicide resistant-plants created by chemical companies, BT crops (remember the great butterfly debate?), a lone disease-resistant plum (created by a university) and a nicotine-free tobacco variety. Except for golden rice, not much has actually been done towards feeding the poor … just talk, and one solitary instance of kindness in the form of golden rice. (Correct me if I’m wrong here! I would love a chance to become less cynical.)

Golden rice was rejected, in part, because its creator (Monsanto) had done so much to tick off so many people. Monsanto has a long history of … oh … bribery and pollution and harassing people.

BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4153635.stm ,

Supreme Court of Canada: http://www.canlii.org/ca/cas/scc/2004/2004scc34.html ,

Aniston Star: http://www.annistonstar.com/opinion/2001/as-editorials-0329-0-vd291478.htm

Monsanto was doing this sort of thing well they got into the genetic engineering market, so it’s not a reaction to the tactics of Greenpeace, et.al. I think genetic engineering had a wonderful future until Monsanto got involved: they gave it a bad name.

More generally: the reason why more complicated modifications generally aren’t made, by the way (of the “feed the world” variety) is that we generally don’t understand enough about the genes of the plants involved. (Think about how little we still know about the various individual genes in humans, in spite of all the NIH grants.) A simple modification–adding a herbicide-resistance gene, or a vitamin A gene, or carefully tracking down and removing the gene for a simple chemical (like nicotine) … that’s about all we’re capable of right now. It will probably be a while before we have the ability to make really complicated modifications. (For instance, some existing old crop strains are known for their built-in disease resistance, but we don’t know why, and so we don’t know which genes to copy to higher-yielding, better shipping varieties.)

I am not a professional, but I do have more than an average person’s interest in the subject. I believe that genetic engineering has tremendous potential, but as long as we are a capatalist society the bottom line is always going to be return on investment. Helping people = little financial reward. Like I said, I started out loving the idea, and was slowly turned away. If you can point towards something I could read to change my beliefs, please do. I would love to see more altruistic efforts in this field. I am aware of Goldenrice, and although it sounds great, I don’t believe it has yet to be shown of use yet. My belief is that it was a Mosanto project to gain public support for the industry, and the end result didnt quite pan out as people had hoped.

But I did kind of miss the point, as Alan has pointed out.