GMOs

A tale of manipulation, monopoly, Monsanto and

cheap food

Brian EllisMichael Smith LaboratoriesUBC October 24, 2008

GMOs

What are they?

What is really out there?

What impacts are they having?

Where are we going with them?

GMOs

What are they?

What is really out there?

What are they doing to us?

Where are we going with them?

GMOs are organisms whose genome has been permanently manipulated by direct insertion

of one or more genesthat were not there before

‘Crown Gall’(gall cells contain bacterial genes in their genome)

Mother Nature’s Genetic Engineer

+

Agrobacteriumtumefaciens

Agrobacterium carrying “Roundup Ready” gene in an ‘engineered’bacterial plasmid

Monsanto’s“Roundup Ready®” gene

Roundup®-tolerant Roundup®-sensitive

GMOs

What are they?

What is really out there?

What impacts are they having?

Where are we going with them?

GMO crops

• Commercial Applications

Altered agronomic traits forindustrial producers

• Disease/insect resistance• Virus resistance• Herbicide resistance• Salt/drought tolerance• Cold tolerance• Enhanced yields, other

quantitative traits

Application of Roundup herbicide

Field following application

time 2008

Corn, cotton, soybeans, canola

Nature Biotechnology 25: 271 (2007)

GM crop use is continually expanding

Which countries grow the most commercial GM crops?

Which countries grow no commercial GM crops?

EU, Japan, NZ

USA, Brazil, Argentina, Canada

What are the ‘developing countries’ doing about GM crops?

India and China have begun to grow GM cotton

ScienceSept. 08, 2008

GMOs

What are they?

What is really out there?

What impacts are they having?

Where are we going with them?

Are there fish genes in our tomatoes?

What about ‘Golden Rice’?

Are there proven health impacts?

Microarray analyses reveal that plant mutagenesismay induce more transcriptomic changes thantransgene insertion

Batista et al Proc.Nat.Acad.Sci (USA) 105:3640 (2008)

“We found that the improvement of a plant variety through the acquisition of a new desired trait, using either mutagenesis or transgenesis, may cause stress and thus lead to an altered expression of untargeted genes. In all of the cases studied, the observed alteration was more extensive in mutagenized than in transgenic plants.”

11,267 (51) genes vs. 2,318 (25) genes

Intensive GM crop use also modifies the ecology of our agricultural landscape ...

…but we have been massively modifying this ecology for thepast 10,000 years

GMOs

What are they?

What is really out there?

What impacts are they having?

Where are we going with them?

Homo sapiens has become the dominant species on an

increasingly over-exploited planet

Humans directly exploit ~70% of temperate and tropical ecosystems

Agriculture~50%Commercial forests~20%Human settlements~20%The greatest single activity affecting

native ecosystem structure and functionis agriculture

Increasing human population size and aspirations

are putting unsustainable pressure on the biomass productivity of the planet

This will drive even wider adoption and extension

of GMO technology as human societies struggle to cope with loss of productive land / water

resourcesand the associated food shortages

Something not covered by the new Gene Technology law…