Farmer’s Supreme Court Challenge Puts Monsanto Patents at Risk

[farminator3000]

69. i work on a family farm and i have a degree in working on a family farm

i planted 250 acres of cover crops last fall by myself, have built many coops, and go to three farmer's markets.

permaculture and terminator- sure they go hand in hand- kill your neighbors crops, that's a sound plan!

the point is nobody knows what would happen, because it is so evil MONSANTO didn't use it- this makes it worse than DDT or PCBs or agent orange, which they merrily dispensed for years, causing billions of dollars of damage.

if they had been stupid or evil enough to force terminator instead of bt or roundup corn on 90%+ of US farmers, it could have wiped out the entire corn crop in north and south america in the last 8 years. is that a good enough start towards world famine?

another part of not knowing means corn pollen COULD contaminate other species, not just plants, but worms, bees, whatever. could reduce sperm counts by 90% worldwide, who the hell knows?

who the hell would want to find out? why even go there?

Will the Terminator spread to other plants?
http://www.psrast.org/terminexpl.htm
It is likely that Terminator will kill the seeds of neighboring plants of the same species, under certain conditions. However, the effects will be confined to the first generation, and will not be able to spread to other generations. The scenario might go like this: when farmers plant the Terminator seeds, the seeds already will have been treated with tetracycline, and thus the recombinase will have acted, and the toxin coding sequence will be next to the seed-specific promoter, and will be ready to act when the end of seed development comes around. The seeds will grow into plants, and make pollen. Every pollen grain will carry a ready-to-act toxin gene. If the Terminator crop is next to a field planted in a normal variety, and pollen is taken by insects or the wind to that field, any eggs fertilized by the Terminator pollen will now have one toxin gene. It will be activated late in that seed's development, and the seed will die. However, it is unlikely that the person growing the normal variety will be able to tell, because the seed will probably look normal. Only when that seed is planted, and doesn't germinate, will the change become apparent.

In most cases, the toxin gene will not be passed on any further, because dead plants don't reproduce. However, under certain conditions I will discuss later, it is possible for the toxin gene to be inherited.

In any case, dead seeds, where they occur, would be a serious problem for the farmer whose fields are close to the Terminator crop. How many seeds die will depend on the degree of cross-pollination, and that is influenced by the species of plant, the variety of crop, weather conditions, how close the fields are to each other, and so on. If many seeds die, it will make saving seed untenable for the adjacent farmer. Even if only a few seeds die, they will contain the toxin and any other proteins engineered into the Terminator-protected variety. These new "components" may make the seed unusable for certain purposes.

Will seeds containing the toxin made by Terminator be safe to eat?

In fact, the effects of the toxin on the uses of the seed are a serious question. This issue is discussed in the patent at the end of page 8. There the authors say that "in cotton that would be grown commercially only selected lethal genes could be used since these proteins could impact the final quality of seeds....If the seed is not a factor in the commercial value of a crop (e.g., in forage crops, ornamentals or plants grown for the floral industry) any lethal gene should be acceptable."

This is dangerously reductionist thinking, because people are not the only organisms that interact with seeds. In forage crops, for example, not all of the forage is always harvested before seeds are mature, depending on conditions. How will a particular toxin affect birds, insects, fungi and bacteria that eat or infect the seeds? If a forage crop with toxin-laden seeds is left in the field, and the seeds come in contact with the soil, how will that affect the ecology of soil organisms? These are important questions because a variety of specific organisms are necessary for the healthy growth of plants. Further, a floral or ornamental crop with Terminator may happen to grow near a related crop where the seeds are used, and if pollination occurs, the seeds will contain toxin without that farmer knowing. The toxin could end up in products without anyone's knowledge. For example, an ornamental sunflower could spread Terminator to an oilseed variety, and then the toxin could end up in edible oil or in sunflower seed meal.

Other potential problems with making novel toxins in edible seeds have to do with allergenicity. The RIP toxin described earlier may not be directly poisonous to animals, but may cause allergic reactions. If the seeds are being mixed with the general food supply, it will be difficult to trace this sort of effect.