Plant Biotech Blog

All products of agriculture and animal husbandry of 10,000 years are genetically modified and so they are Genetically Modified Organisms (LMOs) and Living Modified Organisms (LMOs).

Wild plants and animals evolved undergoing genetic modification basing on natural variation existing at a given time and Natural Selection acting upon it. On the other hand, cultivated plants and domesticated animals came into being by conscious human effort, initially from farmers and later on from professional scientists.

Read the rest of this entry »

GM, GMO, LMO:
The terms ‘Genetic Modification (GM)’, ‘Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO)’ and ‘Living Modified Organisms (LMO)’, are used indiscriminately in the context of modern biotechnology. In reality, these terms not only accurately apply to all wild organisms and cultivated plants and domesticated animals of classical agriculture and animal husbandry, but also constitute an imprecise terminology for the products of modern biotechnology, involving Genetic Engineering (GE).

Biotechnology:
The term Biotechnology, coined by Karl Ereky in 1919, is the short form of biological technology, referring to the large or industrial scale use of organisms, their components (proteins, DNA) or secondary metabolites (natural products).

Classical biotechnology:
Biotechnology is over 6,000 years old, as exemplified by the age-old products of day-to-day use such as wine, vinegar, bread, cheese, fermented foods and the organisms that produce them. The conventional industrial production of enzymes, antibiotics, vaccines and antibodies is also biotechnology.

Read the rest of this entry »

It makes a very sad reading that the Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa had to declare a national food disaster, appealing for immediate donor help to feed over 1.7 million people left hungry, by crop failures due to drought in 2005 (Reuters, November 22, 2005). The President seems to have acted very reluctantly, putting the onus on the Zambian Parliament, as he told the journalists that ‘Now parliament is the highest law making body in the land and in view of this resolve, I hereby declare the current food shortages a disaster in Zambia and I appeal for donor assistance.’

In July 2002, the Zambian government made international headlines when they ordered the UN World Food Programme (WFP) to take back over 35,000 tones of food aid, even while three million Zambians faced hunger caused by a severe drought, as the package contained ‘potentially unsafe GM maize’ (Panos). The stand of the Zambian government received a standing ovation from the anti-GE groups the world over and this ‘bold decision’ was endlessly praised making the Zambian government the hero (see http://www.gmwatch.org, May 17, 2005, and November 10, 2005, for the latest).

Read the rest of this entry »