Wired Magazine Ag Researcher: Give Us a Break
By Kristen Philipkoski | Also by this reporter Page 1 of 1 02:00 AM Apr. 03, 2003 PT In recent years, environmental activists have uprooted or burned many acres of transgenic crops in the United States, causing almost $30 million in damages between 1997 and 2001. And the U.S. Department of Agriculture made the vandals' job that much easier by pointing to the crops' exact location. Now one scientist is calling on regulators to give more-benign research into genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, a break. Some organic farmers and those who believe genetically modified crops are dangerous to human health and the environment say it's only right they should know where such plants are grown. But from the agricultural researchers' point of view, revealing their location leaves them vulnerable to anti-GMO vandals. "We have to go to the public and give people the opportunity to damage our research," said Steven Strauss, a forest science professor at the University of Oregon in Corvallis, who works with poplar trees. In a commentary published in Thursday's issue of the journal Science, Strauss argues that regulations for more-benign experiments, such as his poplar tree research, should face less-stringent USDA regulation. Anti-GMO vandals have eased off in recent months, but in the summer of 2001 arsonists gutted a University of Washington horticulture lab in Seattle and set fire to a poplar tree nursery in Clatskanie, Oregon, causing damage to the tune of $3 million. Incidents like those worry Strauss, whose research involves inserting a dwarfism gene from a mustard plant into poplar trees to make them grow smaller. Poplar and other trees can grow so tall that they threaten nearby homes, down power lines and become difficult for nurseries to manage. The damage caused by tall trees costs government agencies up to $1.5 billion a year, he said. "We can predict with very high confidence that we're not going to make a plant that invades an ecosystem," Strauss said. "You've got to come up with some really wild scenario of how it's going to take over Cincinnati when it's shorter than the guy next door." Researchers have already sequenced the entire genome of the arabidopsis mustard plant, as well as various other plant genomes, including barley, rice and corn. Strauss stressed the importance of putting that information to work. "Hundreds of millions of dollars of public investment have been spent, and we may only get a fraction of the potential out of it," Strauss said. Exempting non-threatening research from the USDA requirement that site location information be made public would further that goal, he said. "He's right, but on other hand if they don't (publicize GMO crop locations), then people say you're behaving very secretively," said Peggy Lemaux, a faculty member in the plant microbiology department at the University of California at Berkeley. "I don't think it's a black-and-white issue." The USDA does judge genetically modified field tests on a case-by-case basis. Experiments like Strauss' would likely fall under a less-restrictive category. But he would still need to provide his location. "The reason we do this is to ensure these plants don't pose a threat to other plants," said Jim Rogers, USDA spokesman. "We want to make sure they're not going to be weeds." � Copyright 2003, Lycos, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
