Genetically-engineered wheat discovered in Oregon field

(Apologies if earlier posted, did search and looked at new topics, no similar threads came up.)

The USDA has found a strain of GE wheat in an east Oregon field. They claim it's a mystery on how it got there.

There is no genetically engineered wheat currently approved for U.S. farming. USDA officials said the wheat is the same strain as a genetically modified wheat that was legally tested by seed giant Monsanto a decade ago but never approved. Monsanto stopped testing that product in Oregon and several other states in 2005. The USDA said the genetically engineered wheat is safe to eat, but the department is investigating how it ended up in the field, whether there was any criminal wrongdoing and whether its growth is widespread.

King 5
They say it can hurt trade relations because a lot of countries won't accept GMO's.

Having watched plenty of documentaries on GM corn and doing personal and academic research on GMO's, I think this wheat has been cross-breading since 2005, when the program stopped.



I do wonder what the GM wheat looked like. I wonder how much different it looked that the farmer was concerned enough to contact Oregon State.

reply to post by collietta


Well................rest assured, this poor farmer will be soon finding himself in front of a judge for stealing patented seeds from Monsanto!!!!

Although this report puts Monsanto on the chopping block for releasing an unapproved organism into our environment, which I find as a good thing(Not a good thing that it was released, but a good thing that Monsanto is busted!). We can rest assured that our bought and paid for criminal government will choose to ruin the farmers life versus criminalizing one of their lobbyists.........

reply to post by seeker1963


Sadly I think your right.

Hopefully with the publicity, his punishment won't be severe.

The Monsanto site won't open, so I can't find get direct info on the wheat.

Instead I grabbed a 2004 Greenpeace article, written when Monsanto first announced it would stop testing wheat.

The article states the GE wheat was designed to resist round-up.
They stopped testing because of global resistance to GMO's.

From the article

According to the Canadian Wheat Board 87 percent of Canadian wheat buyers now require non-GE certification of wheat. In a survey of countries willing to accept GE wheat by the US Department of Agriculture, only four - Peru, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Yemen - said they would buy it.

Victory Monsanto drops GE wheat

Old McSanto had a farm....but so did everyone else. ..and on his farm he had some wheat, and spread it everywhere.

Gee.. The laws of physics and wind were supposed to take a flyer at the farm limit line? Umm... Under the heading of "Why we don't test franken-experiments in the wild" should be a brief outline of this story.

It seems to me, some idiots figured a honey bee could use a few creative changes once upon a time too. Yeah... See how that worked out. At least they'd tried to contain that nightmare, for all the good it did.

Playing God never seems to work out well. Nature doesn't like competition.

Stupid humans....didnt anybody think this would happen as soon as large GMO fields were planted?
Weve altered the genetics of the planet however much irrevocably!
The damage will only get worse as the GMO and natural varieties cross and mixx....
To Think nobody wondered what would happen if the GMO crops spread their pollen to the winds like all plants do?
This has been gnawing away at me since the first trials...
How can we ever hope to NOT alter the surrounding strains with crosspollination and wind and insect travel?
We #ed up big time with GMO and Monsanto...now its too damn big to kill

Originally posted by stirling
Stupid humans....didnt anybody think this would happen as soon as large GMO fields were planted?
Weve altered the genetics of the planet however much irrevocably!
The damage will only get worse as the GMO and natural varieties cross and mixx....
To Think nobody wondered what would happen if the GMO crops spread their pollen to the winds like all plants do?
This has been gnawing away at me since the first trials...
How can we ever hope to NOT alter the surrounding strains with crosspollination and wind and insect travel?
We #ed up big time with GMO and Monsanto...now its too damn big to kill

edit on 29-5-2013 by stirling because: (no reason given)

It is possible to fix this - Simply stop growing wheat in the Americas for the next 5-10 years, make it a crime to grow this. All wheat crops, commercial and domestic. Have teams searching and destroying any growing wild, and then hand the bill for the costs of control and for the farmers loss of profits to Monsanto.

Stopping the growth of wheat for a period can't stop it. The problem here is that once the experiment is started there is no way to stop it. Life persists even modified life. Look at some of the invasive species -- google Kudzu or Zebra muscles. If you screw it up you screw it up - there is no going back. No do overs. I'm glad I'm old.

This is Not good news. If one feild has the Genetically modified wheat, you can bet that there are a whole bunch more feilds out there, that either havent been discovered, or dont want to be. Unfortunetly there is No way to stop the genetic mutations once its in the wild, This scared many scientist in the beginning phases of this research into genetic mutations of crop. And many scientist refused to take part in this, for fear of messing with nature. Nature took millions of years to evolve into the crops we see today, and humans took a few years to decide nature wasnt doing it good enough, and we could do it better. With unseen side effects, yet to be accepted by the general public.

I was curious if Monsanto's seeds were sterile. I was under the impression they were and if they were the farmer could make a stronger case for his contaminated field.

But according to their site they are not, and never have been.

Monsanto has never developed or commercialized a sterile seed product. Sharing many of the concerns of small landholder farmers, Monsanto made a commitment in 1999 not to commercialize sterile seed technology in food crops. We stand firmly by this commitment. We have no plans or research that would violate this commitment in any way.

Terminator seeds policy

There is no publication date linked to the page. I wonder if they changed this when they realized their crops were breeding and mutating.

reply to post by collietta


It's an odd thing about this coverage and the Terminator gene in particular. When this was brand new and Monsanto had no idea they'd face opposition across the world over it, the terminator aspect seemed nearly a selling point. A great idea, I recall reading them portray.

Now? you're right in suggesting it's hard to get info. Where once I read glowing accounts of what good things the Terminator gene could mean for GMO crops? Now I see where they almost outright deny the thing ever even existed. Yeah.. and they wonder why we don't believe them on anything?

I teach my son an important lesson about truth. There is only..EVER...1 version of it. Not 2 or 3 or a bunch of clever interpretations. Truth comes with one the 1 version and variety. So when Monsanto changes their tune as if the tune never played? Well..they lie when the truth might actually serve them better. Evil....

OP source states:

There is no genetically engineered wheat currently approved for U.S. farming. USDA officials said the wheat is the same strain as a genetically modified wheat that was legally tested by seed giant Monsanto a decade ago but never approved. Monsanto stopped testing that product in Oregon and several other states in 2005.King5

Very alarming, likely the scenarios are the seeds had leaked from testing sites then or now or that it's an intentional ongoing leak because Monsanto plans to market the wheat-see WestBred below- in the next 10 plus years.

Breeding Efforts

Monsanto has been investing in wheat breeding research – doubling the number of wheat breeding trials and deploying advanced breeding tools like molecular markers and seed chipping technology that will help develop better varieties faster. Monsanto wheat breeders are also applying lessons learned from other crops to further speed up advancements.
Monsanto

Originally posted by seeker1963
reply to post by collietta

 

Well................rest assured, this poor farmer will be soon finding himself in front of a judge for stealing patented seeds from Monsanto!!!!

Although this report puts Monsanto on the chopping block for releasing an unapproved organism into our environment, which I find as a good thing(Not a good thing that it was released, but a good thing that Monsanto is busted!). We can rest assured that our bought and paid for criminal government will choose to ruin the farmers life versus criminalizing one of their lobbyists.........

Jump to conclusions much?

Nowhere in the article is Monsanto being blamed for this yet your assuming their guilt with no evidence?

Wouldn't it be a little more prudent to wait for that evidence before you condemn people?

Originally posted by collietta
I was curious if Monsanto's seeds were sterile. I was under the impression they were and if they were the farmer could make a stronger case for his contaminated field.

But according to their site they are not, and never have been.

Monsanto has never developed or commercialized a sterile seed product. Sharing many of the concerns of small landholder farmers, Monsanto made a commitment in 1999 not to commercialize sterile seed technology in food crops. We stand firmly by this commitment. We have no plans or research that would violate this commitment in any way.

Terminator seeds policy

There is no publication date linked to the page. I wonder if they changed this when they realized their crops were breeding and mutating.

Yes they claim against having developed the seeds, etc., but sources say otherwise, am still researching into that.

Can see where sources are claiming they may* go ahead with the Terminator Seeds...

In an open letter to the Rockefeller Foundation
*

We are not currently investing resources to develop these technologies, but we do not rule out their future development and use for gene protection or their possible agronomic benefits. -see above-Open Letter...

As to not ruling it out in the future.

One might say then If the Rockefeller Foundation is more invested in the seeds or other, there may be a push for the seeds.

Keep in mind that monsanto's has powerful employ's within the USDA. Maybe some of this produce has hit the markets for public testing before its "approved". Remember just because something is USDA organically approved does not mean its non GMO. Just because a company has a non GMO label does not mean its not GMO. I believe their is something much more then a corporate take over of our food supply, maybe its hear to save us, maybe its hear to enslave us. I do not have clearance so I am not going to try to answer those questions. Its just safer to wait and see what happens before touching the food.

reply to post by Infi8nity


You're right.

According to the King 5 article linked in the OP, the USDA states organic foods, by law, are free of GMO's.
But how can we know for sure?

I have pulled up peer reviewed articles that tested products that claimed to be organic, natural, and no claims. At the time of the study, all the organic foods didn't contain GMO's, but the some of the natural ones and the no claims did. This was years ago, and I'm sure contamination has occured in organic foods.

I'm trying to find the study to link to the site.

As my agricultural professor was explaining, if the law changes a bit of wording (it's possible), GMO's that containing bt could be considered organic since they didn't use any outside chemicals to help grow.

I found another local article with much more detail. They have a video also in the report, but they didn't show what the wheat looked like. They did talk about last weeks protest and trading markets.

The article does state how the wheat was discovered, so it might not have had startling mutations.

Field workers at an Eastern Oregon wheat farm were clearing acres for the bare offseason when they came across a patch of wheat that didn't belong. The workers sprayed it and sprayed it, but the wheat wouldn't die. Their confused boss grabbed a few stalks and sent it to a university lab in early May.

The genetically-modified wheat grew on land that was supposed to be rotated, said Mark Flowers, Cereal Specialist at Oregon State University Extension. The field was in an off-year and in May 2013, it was supposed to be fallow and bare. Workers expected to kill off the few rogue plants that poked out of the ground.

What I find saddening is this wheat was tested for seven years in so many states. That gives this unapproved strain plenty of time to spread and contaminate other farms.

The tests confirmed that the plants were a strain developed by Monsanto to resist its Roundup Ready herbicides and were tested between 1998 and 2005. At the time Monsanto had applied to USDA for permission to develop the engineered wheat, but the company later pulled its application. The Agriculture Department said that during that seven-year period, it authorized more than 100 field tests with the same glyphosate-resistant wheat variety. Tests were conducted in in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington and Wyoming.

Even though the article and video state this is the only field they have discovered this wheat, I feel like Monsanto won. They got their unapproved strain on the market
There's no telling how much GM wheat the world has been eating (against their will and knowledge). Other farmers may have not noticed this wheat was different than their other wheat.

Now before people point out that the US doesn't care if we eat GMO's, other countries do. Our wheat is exported around the world. The main reason why they stopped wheat testing was other countries didn't want GMO's in their food.
NWCN article, more details than op

As someone who has worked Monsanto test plots I know exactly how it happened.

Test plots as Stewarded which means that every single element of the plot is supposed to be fully controlled. Many times this is hard when dealing with rural farmers. The farmer is supposed to take every kernel of grain through an appropriate method of disposal, whether that be feed for cattle or burying it, there are many methods.

After the grain is harvested, it is hard for Monsanto or Bayer, or even the USDA for that matter to keep an eye on it. Many farmers sign off saying they completely destroyed the crop, and cleaned their harvest equipment in an appropriate method, even though this might not be true.

There are MANY MANY ways where stewarded grain could be spread around, and its pretty hard to keep a handle on all of it.

Someone's head will roll at monsanto over this though, I will guarantee it. Probably a few. Senior agronomist on down to field scout.

reply to post by collietta


As for looks, no difference, generally it is a genetic mutation from a drought resistant plant, or a genetic mutation from a plant that has an inborn defense mechanism against a certain family of pests. All of these genetic differences and so small and subtle that they do not affect the wheat plant at all aside from the benefits such as cell walls that don't collapse when put under drought conditions.

reply to post by Hopechest

Jump to conclusions much?

Nowhere in the article is Monsanto being blamed for this yet your assuming their guilt with no evidence?

Wouldn't it be a little more prudent to wait for that evidence before you condemn people?

What conclusion am I jumping to little Fairy? Apparently you haven't studied the tactics of Monsanto as much as I have or you wouldn't have been so eager to put your foot in your mouth once again?

FACT! The GMO wheat has NOT been approved! FACT!!! It is now contaminating other wheat crops!

FACT!!!! Monsanto has been bullying and putting farmers out of business for years!

Get over yourself! When you have ACTUALLY studied something, GET BACK TO ME!!!