Some companies are so hell-bent on avoiding oversight of their genetically engineered crops that they are using new technique to avoid any government review of the safety and environmental impact of their products.
The technique – called gene “editing” – allows companies to create all sorts of new plants and crops.
What could possibly go wrong?
Scotts Miracle-Gro, one of the many companies using this technical loophole to avoid regulation, has a bad history with genetic engineering. Back in 2003, Scotts created a new kind of grass designed to be resistant to the herbicide glyphosate, marketed by Monsanto under the brand name Roundup. Before any regulators could check it out, it escaped into the environment from Scotts’ test plots in Oregon. The failure to contain this experimental plant forced the company to shut down its biotechnology operation.
Today there is increasing concern that genetically engineering crops to tolerate glyphosate has negative environmental effects. Widespread adoption of genetically modified corn, soybeans and other crops has dramatically increased the use of weed killers such as glyphosate. This, in turn, led to the evolution of weeds that can also withstand glyphosate, which has forced farmers to turn to ever-more toxic herbicides linked to serious health problems, including cancer and Parkinson’s disease.
In spite of the increasing concern that genetically engineered crops are driving up the use of glyphosate, Scotts is back in the business of bioengineered plants. In 2011, the company rolled out a new grass engineered with the same resistance to glyphosate. Because they developed it with gene editing, a type of genetic engineering that skirts USDA review by not introducing a regulated type of gene into the plant’s DNA, the grass isn’t required to get approval under current law.
Companies are escaping regulation not just on genetically engineered grass but also on food. Corn and canola (canola oil is found in processed foods such as potato chips) engineered with gene editing have escaped oversight too. Just this week (Jan. 15) the USDA granted “non-regulated” status to soybeans and cotton manipulated by Monsanto to be resistant to a new combination of herbicides.
Don’t you think someone should make sure the food we eat is safe to eat?
That’s a familiar story line: new organisms created without government oversight poised to escape into the environment and create all sorts of havoc. Could be the beginning of a blockbuster movie. Things can only end badly.
CC photo courtesy of: Flickr, user Scott Kinmartin
