Nature - USDA Announces That It Lacks Authority To Regulate Or Control Transgenic Bluegrass

[hatrack]

No big deal - not like anybody would plant much of it. Oh, and it's glyphosate resistant!

:silly:

When the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced this month that it did not have the authority to oversee a new variety of genetically modified (GM) Kentucky bluegrass, it exposed a serious weakness in the regulations governing GM crops. These are based not on a plant's GM nature but on the techniques used for its genetic modification. With changing technologies, the department says that it lacks the authority to regulate newly created transgenic crops.

The grass, a GM variety of Poa pratensis, is still in the early stages of development by Scotts Miracle-Gro, a lawn-care company based in Marysville, Ohio. The grass has been genetically altered to tolerate the herbicide glyphosate, which would make it easier to keep a lawn weed-free. On 1 July, secretary of agriculture Tom Vilsack wrote to the company to say that the variety "is not subject" to the same regulations that govern other GM crops. The decision allows Scotts to bypass the years of environmental testing and consultation typically required by the regulators for GM plants, although the company says there are no plans to market this particular variety.

The grass can evade control because the regulations for GM plants derive from the Federal Plant Pest Act, a decades-old law intended to safeguard against plant pathogens from overseas. Previous types of GM plants are covered because they they were made using plant pathogens. The bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens — which can cause tumours on plants — shuttled foreign genes into plant genomes. Developers then used genetic control elements derived from pathogenic plant viruses such as the cauliflower mosaic virus to switch on the genes.

By revealing similar elements in plants' DNA, genome sequencing has liberated developers from having to borrow the viral sequences. And Agrobacterium is not essential either; foreign genes can be fired into plant cells on metal particles shot from a 'gene gun'. Scotts took advantage of both techniques to construct the herbicide-resistant Kentucky bluegrass that put the USDA's regulatory powers to the test.

EDIT

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110720/full/475274a.html

[Duer 157099]

1. Too bad the scientific illiterate run too many things in this country

Stupid fucking idiots.