I for one
Welcome our new Indigo Overlords.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebfLWAB8bY4
Stand by for PURPLE KETCHUP as boffins breed SUPER TOMATOES
You might find yourself banging out a blob of PURPLE ketchup onto your bacon sarnie in days come, as scientists report that they may soon have managed to create a type of heliotrope-hued super tomato, superior to the humble red variety known and loved today. “Working with GM tomatoes that are different to normal fruit only by …
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Tuesday 28th May 2013 12:10 GMT Loyal Commenter
Re: I for one
Just because you don't understand it, it doesn't mean that those conducting the experiments aren't qualified to do so.
Since the advent of the internet, scientific knowledge is freer than ever. I'd suggest to those who object to genetic modification to actually learn about the science involved before airing their ill-informed objections.
Whilst there are legitimate ethical issues involved, these are focused more on the issues of intellectual property rights; for example if a biotech firm develops a crop which has disease resistance, and sells the seeds to a farmer, they can then charge the farmer if he chooses to hold back seeds from the crop to plant the following year, or prevent him from doing this entirely through restricitve licensing rules. If his crop then cross-pollinates another farmer's un-modified crop, issues around IP ownership can then arise. I believe this has happend in practice, and it constitues a thorny issue, as both the farmer and the producer of the seeds have to make a living.
On the other hand, "I don't understand it, so it must be wrong" is about the most idiotic stance you can take on the issue.
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Wednesday 29th May 2013 14:23 GMT Anonymous Coward
@Loyal Commenter
"Just because you don't understand it, it doesn't mean that those conducting the experiments aren't qualified to do so."
The problem is that those conducting the research most certainly do not either.
When it comes to assessing the impact of genetically modified organisms on the environment and to those that consume them, the number of variables are simply too great. You're forced into a suck it and see approach which is often rushed or fudged, especially in the US, where anything is possible if your pockets are deep enough and you lobby the right politicians.
For example:
"The Monsanto Protection Act, essentially both written by and benefiting Monsanto Corporation, has been signed into law by United States President Barack Obama. The infamous Monsanto Corporation will benefit greatly and directly from the bill, as it essentially gives companies that deal with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and genetically engineered (GE) seeds immunity to the federal courts, among other things.
The bill states that even if future research shows that GMOs or GE seeds cause significant health problems, cancer, etc, anything, that the federal courts no longer have any power to stop their spread, use, or sales."
http://www.globalresearch.ca/monsanto-protection-act-signed-by-obama-gmo-bill-written-by-monsanto-signed-into-law/5329388
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Thursday 30th May 2013 15:28 GMT Michael Wojcik
Re: @Loyal Commenter
The problem is that those conducting the research most certainly do not either.
Certainly anyone who follows current research in genetics and related fields, even in the most cursory fashion, should be aware of just how much theoretical churn there is in the area. Gene expression and other epigenetic mechanisms, for example, are still not well understood - that is, we know quite a lot about some specific cases but have only vague models of the general processes.
Similarly we still don't know nearly enough about gene migration and competition for space in the genome (the sort of thing that was once dismissed as "junk DNA", entirely erroneously, as it turns out). The Starlink debacle showed how dangerous that particular bit of ignorance can be.
And there's always the worry that a GMO food will turn out to produce a novel protein that proves to be an unexpected allergen for a significant number of people, or acts as a dangerous prion. That may be unlikely, but the consequences could be severe.
And, of course, the vast amount of money attached to GMO research threatens scientific integrity, as is true in other areas. Scientists are human and susceptible to a variety of incentives, not all of which lead to favorable behavior.
That's not to say that knee-jerk reactions against GMO research or products is the best alternative either; for one thing, the incentives mean someone will be doing it, so surely we're better off with transparency and informed monitoring rather than panic-induced blanket bans.
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Tuesday 28th May 2013 06:25 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: shelf life.
As someone who unfortunately works in a supermarket I can confirm this as being true.
Also, if a pack of anything goes out of date its split open and dumped in with the loose items, eg carrots, toms, onions etc. anything you buy 'loose' you cannot guarantee the date at all.
Also good luck getting chilled produce within acceptable temperature limits in summer. If its to warm we get told we are to refuse it, but we never can because that would leave the shelves empty for 24h...
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Tuesday 28th May 2013 10:17 GMT Ru
Re: shelf life.
This is definitely the case for meat, too. Askat your supermarket meat counter how long a nice chunk of flesh will last before you have to cook it, and compare that with how long your local normal butcher quotes... we got 2 days and 7 days for a bit of fillet respectively.
There's a price to pay for supermarket logistics, after all.
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Tuesday 28th May 2013 05:58 GMT Blofeld's Cat
Hmm...
The cynic in me feels that the development process went something like this...
Boffin: "Good news everyone, we've managed to engineer tomatoes with double the usual shelf life."
Marketeer: "But they're purple - nobody will buy purple tomatoes. Well not unless they prevent cancer or something."
Boffin: "I'll see what we can do."
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Tuesday 28th May 2013 14:00 GMT Anonymous Custard
Re: Boffin: Good news everyone...
Marketeer: "But they're purple - nobody will buy purple tomatoes. Well not unless they prevent cancer or something."
Anyway, if the Dutch can breed purple (and white) carrots and make them orange, why can't we take the tomato back the other way to lovely purpleness? Now we'd all think the original ones were weird.
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Thursday 30th May 2013 15:33 GMT Michael Wojcik
Re: Hmm...
nobody will buy purple tomatoes
Except those of us who understand tomatoes, perhaps. Around here, where people grow real tomatoes (not tragic mass-market crap), a wide range of heirloom-variety tomatoes are available - at smaller groceries, farmers' markets, CSAs, a table in someone's driveway with an honor-system collection box... Real tomatoes come in all sorts of colors - red, yellow, orange, green, purple (I can't think why they've missed out blue) - and are often striped. They're quite decorative.
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Tuesday 28th May 2013 18:36 GMT ChrisM
Re: the key question....
My ideal daily menu:
Breakfast - Bacon sandwich FOLLOWED by coffee (so the taste of the coffee doesn't overpower the bacon)
Lunch: BLT, lots of B, some shreds of L and a slice of T
Dinner: bacon wrapped chicken with pasta in a cheese and herb sauce
Heart attack to follow soon after supper time
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Tuesday 28th May 2013 07:29 GMT Anonymous Coward
Carrots
used to be purple, beetroots were also different colours.
The modern orange carrot is a new "invention".
I have purple and red carrots growing as we speak.
Beetroots, by the way, are not coloured with anthocyanin (common misconception) but the more purple betacyanin...
Which, it seems, is a trick used to turn cannabis purple and then sell at an inflated price...*Must* be good, its purple!!!!
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Tuesday 28th May 2013 07:50 GMT wowfood
Re: Carrots
I swear I remember seeing some of those purple carrots on Britains best dish. Or something along those lines anyway.
I don't know what it is about me, but I just down find purple food appetizing. Except strangely purple lettuce. Although I think it's because I find green even less appetizing than purple.
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Tuesday 28th May 2013 07:59 GMT Elmer Phud
Re: Carrots
"Which, it seems, is a trick used to turn cannabis purple and then sell at an inflated price...*Must* be good, its purple!!!!"
I knew someone who developed a strain that could be easily grown outdoors in the U.K.
It was purple and not bad at all -- about 20 years ago, not a new thing.
In the old days you could tie up any old leaves using a bit of red cotton and a twig -- instant Thai.
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Tuesday 28th May 2013 08:02 GMT Richard IV
Re: Carrots
Orange is "new"? It's been a good 300 years since the Dutch pulled off their nationalistic selective breeding coup.
I've found the purpureal varieties of veg tend to be a bit more flavoursome, if more staining, than others but, if I'm reading the article correctly, the JIC are vaunting that they've managed to engineer only the colourant gene in. Here's hoping the actually-tasting-nice code is built into it...
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Tuesday 28th May 2013 11:47 GMT Martin Budden
Re: Carrots
I like the purple carrots, they're good. I don't like the white and yellow ones as much, and the orange ones are only OK if very young.
Home-grown tomatoes and beetroot and EVERYTHING are way better than anything you'll find in a supermarket. If you have any outdoor area at all, start growing veg! Even if you don't, grow some herbs on your windowsill.
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Tuesday 28th May 2013 12:29 GMT Kubla Cant
Re: Carrots
I once read that the main reason home-grown tomatoes (and possibly other vegetables) taste so much better is partly the varieties chosen, but mostly because they tend to be subject to slight water deprivation from time to time as they mature. Commercial growers make sure their tomatoes take up all the water they can, for obvious reasons.
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Tuesday 28th May 2013 09:00 GMT Suburban Inmate
Healthy food good, profiteering bad.
I've no problem with these tomatoes, or GM that works as advertised. But there's always a but.
My problem is with the corporate ownership of the genes, with all the greed that goes with that. Megacorporations e.g. Monsanto can cover up adverse studies and dampen down the media coverage of opposition by threatening to pull advertising. Look at the rise of peasant farmer suicides, the corporate opposition to the labelling of GM food, underhand tactics used to bully farmers in the USA, massive political bribes, the list goes on.
Free (as in software) selectively bred crop varieties will do just fine, thankyouverymuch. If they are grown without paying protection money (purchasing chemicals) then so much the better.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691512005637
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Tuesday 28th May 2013 10:25 GMT MondoMan
Re: labeling "GM" food
The problem is that all current/proposed laws require labeling only a small subset of the GM food as "GM". Most of the food we eat today has been GM over the centuries, from the mixing of entire genomes of different species of grasses thousands of years ago to result in today's grain crops, to the massive irradiation and chemical mutagenesis of seeds during the early and middle 20th century in search of new varieties of already-existing food plants. Ever wonder how they keep generating all those new varieties of roses?
Sadly, the evil corporations are right in their stance on the GM labeling laws (if for the wrong reason!).
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Tuesday 28th May 2013 10:32 GMT MondoMan
Re: Dude, look up "hybrid" crops
A big 20th century advance in plant breeding, but it pretty much requires a big company to grow the pairs of varieties that are the parents of the hybrid, since the hybrid plants will produce only offspring different from the hybrid parents. That's where Monsanto and the other big seed companies got their start, in the early 20th century, way before we even knew what DNA's structure looked like.
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Tuesday 28th May 2013 09:04 GMT Tom 7
Have you noticed that every effort to make food suitable for supermarket shelves
makes it shit for the consumer.
Me - I'm growing a variety of tomato in my polytunnel which goes back to the 1880's.
When ripe it looks like an elephants haemorrhoids and is soft so you'll never see it in the shops but it tastes like heaven.
Oh and its pretty much purple.
I'm getting the impression the GM industry is a bit like software patents - pretend you've invented something and hope no-one notices its been done before. If my product stayed on the shelf for two days I'd think it a failure, if it has to last 48 days it would be a disaster.
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Tuesday 28th May 2013 12:24 GMT John Smith 19
Re: And not just any mouse...
"As I recall, the genetic lines of mice and rats used for this sort of thing have effectively been selected because they give "good" results; the poor bastards are fantastically more cancer-prone than their wild brethren."
Yes.
That's sort of the point.
To make them virtually guaranteed to develop a cancer when exposed to a carcinogen. If most of them don't you're fairly sure what you've been feeding them has been protecting them.
Now what is the result if they are just fed ordinary tomatoes.
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Tuesday 28th May 2013 11:22 GMT Michael Strorm
Purple Ketchup? Been done...
Heinz got there years ago with their "funky purple" (*) EZ-Squirt ketchup. Anyone else remember that? They also did it in other colours such as lurid green. According to this article:-
http://www.businessinsider.com/major-food-flops-2011-1?op=1
...this was back in 2000.
(*) What the f*** is it with marketing tossers that anything brightly-coloured aimed at young people is described as "funky"?! To paraphrase Alexei Sayle, have you noticed that anyone who uses the word 'funky', who isn't involved in the music industry is a right twat?
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Tuesday 28th May 2013 12:31 GMT John Smith 19
As always there is *good* GM and *bad* GM
Good.
Usually done in research labs in developing countries to improve their countries national crops in some way (better drought resistance improved vitamin content to reduce malnutrition) without harming their ability to reproduce. Genes likely to be different varieties of the same species or at most a different plant.
Bad
Done by an agrochemicals company to make it resistant to their (proprietary) brand of fertilizer/herb/insecticide. Genes from everywhere from other plants to jelly fish and sharks (IIRC).
And of course to make them sterile so you have to buy next years seeds from them as well.
If you thought the likes of Microsoft, HP and IBM practiced "Proprietary lockin" you have not seen the scale of agrichemicals.
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Wednesday 29th May 2013 12:47 GMT Nigel 11
Grow your own!
People seem to be under the mistaken impression that the only natural colour for a tomato is red. Actually, they can be red, orange, yellow, green(but ripe!), purple, or near-black, to say nothing of striped or blotched in various combinations of these colours. This is just using the normal techniques of selective breeding to create new varieties. Check out a good seed catalogue.
The tastiest tomato variety I've ever tried is called "Black Russian" and is green-purple-black with much the same aesthetics as a really bad bruise. Unsurprisingly you won't find it in supermarkets. I'm not sure if it's grown commercially at all.
The uniform red globes you get in supermarkets are bred for high yield, visual appearance, long shelf life, and resistance to bruising in transit, with flavour in a rather distant fifth place. (One commercially-grown variety is called "Moneymaker", which rather gives the game away)
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
