Cristiano

Genetically modified grass blamed for mass cattle deaths in Texas | The Raw Story

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Adam Zaius

... except it's not GM grass. It's a normal hybrid breed.

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Joshua Ignore Adam, he's just a troll.

detrius

Uh, hybridizing plants ~is~ a genetic modification.


True, it's not the kind of genetics you commonly associate with lab coats, Frankensteinian experiments and rampaging monsters, but it's gene manipulation nonetheless and results in the creation of life you wouldn't expect to find in nature.

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DanielRavenNest

Grass finally gets even.

Jahar Aabye

Very true, and since we (meaning human beings in general) have been hybridizing crops for at least 5,000-10,000 years, I'm relatively skeptical of most of the GMO scare stories. People who don't want to eat anything "not found in nature" should stop eating maize of all varieties, for starters. Additionally, they should avoid virtually all sugar since the sugar cane plant has been dramatically altered from the natural variety. Wheat, barley, oats, etc have all been altered over the millenia as well, but they're still relatively similar to their wild varieties.

Now, I don't actually think that it makes any rational sense to cut out maize and sugar (well, except for the obvious benefits in general of cutting excess sugar from one'sndiet), but I do think that the entire anti-GMO fad is a bit of a false dichotomy, based on the naturalistic fallacy.

As for this story, I'd be curious to see some coverage from the sane scientific community, maybe scienceblogs will pick it up. For example, have they confirmed that the cows ingested the cyanide from the grasses? Have they confirmed that the grass, and specifically this strain, is actively producing cyanide, as opposed to absorbing it from some other environmental source? The story reeks of "cows died of cyanide poisoning, they ate GMO grass. Therefore the grass caused cyanide poisoning."

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Adam Zaius

Uh no.

This kind of stuff happens in nature all the time - it's just uncontrolled and usually done by things like bacteria and viruses transporting DNA sequences over significantly longer periods time.

Ann Otoole

man.. my dad got this damn african grass thinking it was a good idea for the cows (that died from it). that shit is all over the place now. fucked up shit. Don't fuck with nature.

detrius

Yeah, and if ~humans~ deliberately do it in a controlled fashion, it's called genetic modification.

Following your line of reasoning, there's no genetically modified food at all because all the processes reproduced in the labs happen in nature as well, for example via horizontal gene transfer between viruses.



You're making sort of a "CO2 is not a pollutant, it's a fertilizer!"-argument.

Jopsy Pendragon

Africanized Killer Bees Grass ? Geeze.

Adam Zaius

No I'm not. I'm saying just because humans do it too - doesn't mean it's unnatural; because it happens in nature too.

There's nothing special about what we're doing beyond the fact that we tend to take a bit more care as to how something is mutated.

Void

calling hybrid breeds "genetically modified" has the same flavor for me as calling aritifical insemination "cloning"

there is a distinct difference between getting compatible species to with known attributes to breed in the hopes of combing traits of the two, and inserting foreign genetic material. the results of the former tend to be pretty predictable, the latter, much less so.


bermuda grass isn't a species that usually produces prussic acid (the source of cyanide for most plants)... it's even more resistant to nitrate buildup than many things. I expect if they're reporting cyanide contamination in the plants, their fields are now hoping with scientists wanting to figure out how the hell that happened regardless of how the species was created.

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Gabriell Anatra

For the love of god! Don't walk on the grass!

Twisted Pharaoh

What's wrong with genetically modifed grass?

Jahar Aabye

I'd expect it to be the other way around, actually. Inserting a single gene to produce a single protein should have far more predictable results than the random messyness of meiosis, mitosis, and translocation that you get even just from regular sex. And with hybrids you also get the odd reactions that occur when an expected limiting enzyme isn't present, like what happens with lion-tiger Hybrids where depending on which species is the mother or the father can result in an offspring lacking an essential growth-limiting factor and growing far larger than either species.

The fact that you can get a big cat the size of cattle without any sort of "artificial" genetic tinkering underscores the point: hybrids, selectively-bred organisms, de novo mutations, and genetoc engineering are dofferent tehlchniques, sure, but there's nothing inherently safer or more dangerous about one technique or the other.

Even the concern over introducing "foreign genes" is a bit overstated. Leaving aside the fact that viruses do this in nature all the time...and in fact endogenous retroviruses like alu have even been implicated in causing some fairly dramatic genetic reshuffling...the very fact that "foreign" genes are capable of being transcribed and processed coherently speaks to the importance of common descent. This doesn't mean that it's perfectly safe, but I do think that a lot of the excessive fears of GMOs are incredibly irrational and irresponsible. It's the sort of thing that people living in developed nations with a food surplus can afford to obsess over and protest against, blissfully secure against the reality of malnutrition and famine common in much of the world.

Void

the reasons that breeding vs insertion of genes results in more predictable outcomes (not an absolute, just a tendency) is two fold...

on the breeding side you already have the benefit of near compatibility, so less unexpected side effects are likely, although you also don't get to pick and choose which traits get picked up or left behind. You also have the effect that most negative survival side effects are already bred out of the populations in question. that's not absolute of course, only the worst survival traits get bred out quickly, and you're limited to potential changes from compatible species.

on the insertion side, yes you are making a smaller more targeted change, which is nice because you don't have to fool with generations of breeding to get where you want to go, but you are also making that change without the benefit provided by successive generations culling out negative side effects. unfortunately side effects abound simply because our understanding of protein folding and binding is still pretty weak. it's also very possible to induce a change that could either make the organism more susceptible to, or even encourage mutagenic effects. both of which is exactly why we only make small changes.

Eris

Cattle mutilation?

Tess Whitcroft

The notion that breeding results in a more predictable result is just not true.

Consider, for example, Soviet scientist Dmitri Belyaev's efforts to breed a tamer fox. While the tameness that resulted was predictable all the physiological changes that came with it were not.

Tess

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Tess Whitcroft

So on Tuesday they were fine and Wednesday they "began howling" and many died "in a matter of hours".

If "he’d been using the modified grass for about fifteen years with no problems" and suddenly there are problems is it really most likely the grass?

Tess

Darien Caldwell

that's a good point. The simipler and more logical assumption would be that someone came along and sprinkled cyanide on the pasture.

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Lloyd Newman

It's them durn chem(ical) (con)trails!

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Tess Whitcroft

If there is an environmental cause that builds over time some cow would be the first cow and 15 cows as the first cow could be fine as well. but isn't the lifetime of a cow in a ranch far less than 18 years?

Sprinkling cyanide would be "a" more logical explanation but there could be a number of others. I've heard it claimed that the increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere is making some plants more toxic.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-...cattle-deaths/

Here is an excellent article with a ton of follow-up links...

http://www.examiner.com/article/15-y...e-kills-cattle

Tess

Void

actually it's more likely the cows were eating one of the many plants that can produce it... most of which produce it as a reaction to temperature shock / drought conditions.... so it's reasonably likely that the release was environmentally triggered from one of those sources, rather than purposeful.

now whether that was from the main grass planted, a patch of alternate species (such as sorghum, which is another hay grass), or some new cross breed grass, there's no telling, but supposedly it's actually in the plants.