GMO Genie Out of the Bottle in Oregon

[nosmokes]

At the end of this rather short
article there is a throw away comment from a spokeswoman for the biotech regulatory division of the USDA. to paraphrase, she says she doean't see folks getting too upset over a GM grass. after all, people don't seem too worried about other GM stuff... hmm maybe that's because the corporate media doesn't report anything about it? bint.
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original

Escaped golf-course grass frees gene genie in the US

* 09 August 2006
* From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
* Andy Coghlan


A nondescript grass discovered in the Oregon countryside is hardly an alien invasion. Yet the plant - a genetically modified form of a grass commonly grown on golf courses - is worrying the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) enough that it is running its first full environmental impact assessment of a GM plant.

It is the first time a GM plant has escaped into the wild in the US, and it has managed it before securing USDA approval. The plant, creeping bentgrass (Agrostis stolonifera, carries a bacterial gene that makes it immune to the potent herbicide glyphosate, better known as Roundup. The manufacturer, The Scotts Company, Marysville, Ohio, is hoping the grass will provide a turf that makes it easier for golf course owners to manage their fairways and greens by letting them kill competing weedy grasses with glyphosate.
“It could prove extremely popular with the thousands of golf course managers in the US, making it easy for it to spread”

Jay Reichman and colleagues at the US Environmental Protection Agency's labs in Corvallis, Oregon, identified nine escapees out of 20,400 plants of various grass varieties sampled within a 4.8-kilometre radius of the site where the bentgrass is being cultivated, the most distant 3.8 kilometres away. The team showed that the GM grass has spread both by pollinating non-GM plants to form hybrids, and by seed movement.

Bentgrass is a perennial, so once out there it regrows year after year, whereas most GM crops - mainly soybeans, maize and canola (oilseed rape) - are annuals, unable to reproduce, harvested each year and replaced with an entirely new crop the next. Another worry is that unlike the other GM crops, bentgrass has many relatives in the US with which it can cross-breed or hybridise, potentially passing on the glyphosate-resistance gene to other species - with unpredictable results.
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complete article here

[ThomCat]

1. Companies that release GMOs

into the environment should be shut down. Period.

This is scientifically and ecologically irresponsible. I don't give a damn about their profits. Safety comes first.

:grr:

[bullimiami]

3. a brave new world is coming and there is no stopping it.

genetic engineering like that in blade runner or oryx and crake is just a matter of time.

[Quantess]

2. So...

the grasses carry herbicide resistant genes. At face value it doesn't sound so bad, but I wonder what the ramifications could be?