Monsanto yet again makes the headlines in another huge blunder where experimental seed from a stock of genetically engineered wheat dating from the mid-1990s was found growing in my own home state of Oregon. Not only was it being grown, but it also had evaded detection and was found in the wild and mixed in with nearby crops in the area that it was found.
This has huge implications for Monsanto as this could have opened them up to a slew of litigation on their end for failure not only to contain their own products, but also demonstrating that containment of even experimental crops is prone to failure AND that such failures may not be detected for years, maybe even decades. Meanwhile, we have no assurance that these strains are safe for consumption and do not pose a threat to existing varieties and strains of wheat (ie, carrying a disease vector). This could also set the precedent for farmers to fight back against Monsanto for taking legal action against them for "patent infringements" where their crops were contaminated through cross-pollination with Monsanto strains or where seeds were accidentally or unknowingly mixed in the silos. This discovery shows that Monsanto does not have the tight control over the proliferation of their strains as they claim.
So, how does Monsanto react to this? Well, in a recent talk with reporters, Chief Technology Officer Robb Fraley made the bold claim that this was the work of a group of criminals who must have broke into the laboratories, stolen the seed, then distributed the seeds in a field somewhere. Despite there being absolutely no evidence other than these fields of wheat of such a thing. However, the sheer improbability of this makes this story ludicrous as any activist breaking into their labs would be looking to destroy their product, not distribute it freely across the countryside. And no over such a wide area as to have it be thriving like it apparently is. We are talking thousands of pounds of seed need to do something like this. In addition, the actual chances of it being detected in the wild or even in any one field) are very slim, being about 1:10000 since the government does not have the resources to test every field exhaustively for GMOs.
Instead, we are seeing the result of life doing what it does best: spreading and reproducing. This was bound to happen eventually, and we can only hope that in the future better testing will be done on strains to ensure they are safe before introducing them to being capable of spreading in the outside environment. After all, this was a very old, and very early strain. It could have been very dangerous.
This has huge implications for Monsanto as this could have opened them up to a slew of litigation on their end for failure not only to contain their own products, but also demonstrating that containment of even experimental crops is prone to failure AND that such failures may not be detected for years, maybe even decades. Meanwhile, we have no assurance that these strains are safe for consumption and do not pose a threat to existing varieties and strains of wheat (ie, carrying a disease vector). This could also set the precedent for farmers to fight back against Monsanto for taking legal action against them for "patent infringements" where their crops were contaminated through cross-pollination with Monsanto strains or where seeds were accidentally or unknowingly mixed in the silos. This discovery shows that Monsanto does not have the tight control over the proliferation of their strains as they claim.
So, how does Monsanto react to this? Well, in a recent talk with reporters, Chief Technology Officer Robb Fraley made the bold claim that this was the work of a group of criminals who must have broke into the laboratories, stolen the seed, then distributed the seeds in a field somewhere. Despite there being absolutely no evidence other than these fields of wheat of such a thing. However, the sheer improbability of this makes this story ludicrous as any activist breaking into their labs would be looking to destroy their product, not distribute it freely across the countryside. And no over such a wide area as to have it be thriving like it apparently is. We are talking thousands of pounds of seed need to do something like this. In addition, the actual chances of it being detected in the wild or even in any one field) are very slim, being about 1:10000 since the government does not have the resources to test every field exhaustively for GMOs.
Instead, we are seeing the result of life doing what it does best: spreading and reproducing. This was bound to happen eventually, and we can only hope that in the future better testing will be done on strains to ensure they are safe before introducing them to being capable of spreading in the outside environment. After all, this was a very old, and very early strain. It could have been very dangerous.
