IAPS : Digital Library : Works : Paper iaps_19_2006_664:Towards Organo-Transgenic Crops ?

id	IAPS_19_2006_664
authors	Ammann, Klaus
year	2006
title	Towards Organo-Transgenic Crops ?
source	Tolba, Mostafa K .; Abdel-Hadi, Aleya; Soliman, Salah; ENVIRONMENT, HEALTH AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT (IAPS 19 Conference Proceedings on CD-Rom), 11-16 september 2006
summary	Organic farming is a heterogeneous management method in agriculture. This can be explained by its multiple origins, and by the fact that certification of organic farming practices with follow-up inspection has been introduced in various decades and many different places. Organic farming is now growing rapidly out of the corner of backward thinking Luddites, becoming a veritable industry. Regulation has been imposed more or less strictly on all organic farms of states like California, bringing a basic shift towards top-down activities, not restricted to regulation, but taking over in marketing overall. Its time to forget about the ideological warfare, since also the biotech crop industry has learned how to deal with environmental problems. Indeed, the progress there has been dramatic, in the area of the most planted GM crops like maize and cotton, the environmental advantages are manifested in numerous scientific papers. A close look at the molecular level reveals, that the novelty of genetic engineering is restricted to the possibilities to jump over the species level, but actually when you have a close look at the processes, then nature and molecular engineering follow exactly the same strategies, there is simply no difference. If you widen the perspective to what classic breeding has done to the genomes of the most widespread crops, its just astounding: Chromosome number manipulation, handling fragments of chromosomes, invert and transpose sections of he DNA is routine, also some questionable methods as triggering mutations for breeding purpose did not stop from using gamma radiation and toxic substances. These manipulative methods (and other ones) are certainly less targeted and elegant as genetic engineering is. So – in essence – we should learn to work together and plan for organo-transgenic crops.
keywords	biodiversity, biotechnology, organic farming, GM crops, genetic engineering
series	conference:IAPS:19
type	keynote
email	klaus.ammann@ips.unibe.ch
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last changed	2007/08/17 14:07