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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Is this a predecessor for GE Cacao?
I'm not really smart enough to decipher this, so can one of you more educated-in-this-topic give this a look-see and give me your thoughts??
http://www.cacaogenomedb.org/main
I'm trying to be less cynical today....so I'm hoping this is a good thing, and not a predecessor to Monsanto-held chocolate.
Re: Is this a predecessor for GE Cacao?
I just don't know.
The whole thing is about making the cacao genome public domain 'with free access to the cacao scientific community and anyone who can utilize it to improve cacao'.
"Mars has deemed the cacao genome information so critical to the sustainable future of the millions of small holder cacao farmers that the cacao sequence will be put into the public domain...With the support of MARS and USDA-ARS, scientists from many of the cocoa-growing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America have received training in the utilization of genomic tools and have already begun to benefit from this Mars initiative. "
But if someone genetically modified it, wouldn't it still be patentable? I wonder what sorts of work that isn't genetic modification that this would aid.
Oh Sciencey people....
Shucks! Alisha, I figured either you or Super Green would be able to "de-code" this for me! Oh well, thanks for your input anyway!
Yeah, I'm very confused by this. I understand that failure of a crop can be devestating to a small time farmer, but at the same, tinkering with it so that it can't fail....it sort of screams "frankencocoa" all over it, right? Plus, it just contributes to the "everyone's a winner" mentality that the older folks criticize our generation for having. Every farmer will always have a crop...as long as he can pay the Man for his seeds each year. Do I want to see poor people fail? No. But do I want my foods corrupted and altered by science? No. From a political perspective could you possibly have a more "grey" area??
One thing else we haven't really touched on with the GM of the salmon is how it might create morphed fish that might not have a natural predator--I think you may have alluded to it in your post yesterday. I'm sure the GM of some of crops have affected the native insect AND plant life in the areas in which they grow. Unfortunately, I doubt many bug or plant specialists would have the same voice as the farmers who profit from the GM crops in affected areas. Heck, there may not even BE "specialists" that research those things in some of the areas.
Unaffected nature has always meant for there to be a beginning for every end and an end for every beginning. We just don't know what happens when people interfere and eff it up.
Sorry to dissapoint you derky
I've never heard of this project, but I'm with Alisha on the whole "what other direction could this go in than genetic modification?" The link says cacao farmers are losing their crops to pests and disease, both the hallmarks of growing monocultures. I'm sure cacao farmers are looking for a way to reduce crop losses with diversifying the varieties of cacao they're growing, and GE is the way to do that.
Yes I would think that if this project made the genome public, and Monsanto/Dupont/whoever
inserts a pest/disease resistant gene, then they could patent that particular variety of cacao. The company would then sell their GMO seed, and a whole new crop of monocultures would pop up.
Frakenfood scares us on this board, but it doesn't scare anybody else. Not the FDA/USDA regulators, not politicians, not the American public. They all want cheap, reliable food no matter what the cost, because they're not seeing the true cost. The increase pesticide use which runs off into rivers and streams, the poisoning of farm workers, and the use of that GMO corn and soy to feed desspicable CAFOs is all "behind closed doors." The American public doesn't see it happening, so it's like those impacts to human health and the environment don't exist.
So no one cares about food being deformed by GE, because it's cheaper and that's all that matters to them. IMHO, it's going to take a huge number of people dying from contamination or pesticide poisoning in a very 24-hour-news-network kind-of-way before we wake up to the problems with our food system. GE being a key component of that.