Engineered Plants to Be Grown Outdoors in Washington State
by Union of Concerned Scientists 
on 02.27.07
Drug and biotech companies are using food crops to produce pharmaceutical drugs, industrial chemicals, research chemicals, untested food additives and other products. These drugs and chemicals could harm our families if they wind up in common foods such as corn chips, cereal, and baby food.
A Canadian company is poised to ramp up production of genetically engineered safflower to 1,000 acres in Washington State. The company has engineered the safflower plant—typically grown for the vegetable oil obtained from its seeds—to produce a drug to boost the immune systems of farmed shrimp.
Growing drug-producing food crops outdoors poses risks to public health and threatens the economic well-being of farmers because these crops are likely to contaminate our food supply.
The ease of contamination was demonstrated in 2002 when drug maker ProdiGene allowed corn plants engineered to produce a veterinary drug to grow in a Nebraska soybean field. The subsequent harvest contaminated a grain elevator, and 500,000 bushels of tainted soybeans had to be destroyed.
Another accident is just waiting to happen.
You can find out what outdoor pharma crops are in the works in your area. The Union of Concerned Scientists put this database together from U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) information on applications to grow pharma crops outdoors and our own research on individual pharma crop products.
UCS is urging people to write the USDA and tell it to fulfill its responsibility for protecting our food by banning drug-producing safflower and other “pharma” food crops grown outdoors.
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What's wrong with "the immune systems of farmed shrimp" anyway?
Could it be...because they are 'farmed'??
Well I'm just glad that if they're going to be putting us and the environment at risk, they're doing it for IMPORTANT medical research. I mean, curing cancer is nothing compared to protecting the immune systems of SHRIMP! Gotta have my seafood salad...
It always surprises me that more evangelical christains (which seem to be the majority of the US) aren't as opposed to people messing with gods creations as i think they should be. The term playing god definitely comes into play when you bastardize what a certain plants purpose has been for the last thousand to more years and change it to some self serving benefit that has the potential to harm other beings.
I also wonder why both Canada and the US (well... maybe not the US) aren't treading more carefully with the biotech sector? Monsanto is sitting in congress you say?
There must be huge money in all this "being altering" otherwise the west would not be so heavy handed with promotion and forcing the EU through the WTO to allow GMO's in some of their countries. Frankly i am very ashamed at Canada's pro GMO position.
The USDA, after extensive research, approved this. The scientists don't just grant approval willy nilly.
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Summary of the USDA report:
The Canadian company has engineered safflower (most commonly used to produce oil for cooking and birdseed) to produce a carp hormone in the seeds. The seed meal will be fed to farmed shrimp. The hormone, somatotropin, helps the shrimp have stronger immune systems and allows the farms to grow them at a higher density.
Safflowers primarily self pollinate, and their pollen is too heavy to be transported by wind. The hormone is only in the seeds, so even blown pollen could not affect local fish, etc. Mammals and birds are not affected by this fish hormone. This type of safflower is not the type grown for birdseed, in fact, birds and mammals avoid it because of its thorny spines and bad taste.
The GM safflower will be grown a minimum of 2 miles from commercial safflower. Wild safflower does not grow in the state of Washington. The plants and seeds will be processed on equipment that will never touch commercial safflower. To ensure that lost seeds do not sprout and become wild, a 50 foot wide strip of barren ground will surround all GM safflower fields. Any seeds that sprout will be easily seen after harvest and killed.
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So, all of the other "oh noes, frankenfood" people aren't even bothering to think this through. People aren't going to stop eating meat any time soon. Shrimp is an excellent source of protein, and is practically cruelty free. Shrimp don't take up nearly as much resources or pollute as much as chicken or beef farming. However, farmed shrimp often comes from Indonesia and other places where mangrove forests have been destroyed to build shrimp nurseries. This makes the coasts more vulnerable to storms, causes general environmental damage, etc. The alternative is to grow shrimp in pools or such on land. However, the density of shrimp needed to make the farms profitable causes disease to spread in the shrimp. This hormone from carp has been proven to boost the immune system of the shrimp. The simplest way to get the hormone into the shrimp is to feed it to them in this GM safflower seed. Growing shrimp in pools will be more profitable and healthier for the shrimp. This will decrease the value of farming shrimp offshore in nurseries, saving the environment. Further, farming shrimp on land is a relatively simple process that could be done by small farmers across the US and other countries, decreasing the amounts of fossil fuels needed to transport the shrimp to market. The producers of the GM safflower have taken more than enough measures to ensure that the carp hormone doesn't get into the food supply, but even if it did, there would be no effect because it's a fish hormone. The company has also taken more than enough measures to ensure that the gene does not get into wild or cultivated populations of safflower.
So, how is this bad again?
"So, how is this bad again?"
This same person would probably buy into the new-and-improved-thalidomide (puported to ease 'morning sickness' for pregnant women).
They say don't worry about GMO contamination...
>there is a buffer around the crop
>birds and other animals really don't like the taste
>blown pollen can not really affect fish, etc
"Make farms profitable", "Increase density", "grow fish in pools on land" !! (can dogs now fly?), "Increase the immune system of the shrimp".
The people pushing GMO are soooo reactionary. Rather than make effective change in cooperation with nature to address pollution, the root causes of localized crop failure, or the destruction of forest tracts in the name of hunger, they 'engineer solutions' that may, get ready for this... allow us to breath in more smog with less ill effect, forgo using soil to grow plants in favour of chemical fertilizer and vermiculate mixed, and proclaim that we really don't need forests because they cause tooooo much shade for the crops that native people *really* should be growing.
Stop the nonsense. Stop altering natural living things.
that sounds like a bad idea.