First Ever Biologicals Summit, August 2023 in Salinas, California
What's New Monday (September 4, 2023)
This article covers how major agricultural corporations are jumping into the “microbe” game and their approach is to genetically alter the microbes to control pests.
The genetic modifications released inside GE microbes could move across species and geographic boundaries with unforeseen and potentially irreparable consequences. The scale of release is also far larger, and the odds of containment far smaller. An application of GE bacteria could release 3 trillion genetically modified organisms every half an acre that’s about how many GE corn plants there are in the entire U.S.
Some GMO microbial products are already on the market. Pivot Bio, for example, has been actively marketing their GMO microbes in the midwest for several years. Note, the yields have been lower (by several dozen bushel) that what we were able to get with my former employer’s microbes that were all natural.
Pivot Bio’s patent application for the most prominent GE microbe available to farmers, a bacteria called Proven® that’s marketed as a source of nitrogen fertilizer, lists at least 29 different genes and myriad proteins and enzymes that can be manipulated to, in their own words, “short circuit” the microbe’s ability to sense nitrogen levels in its environment and “trick” it into overproducing nitrogen.
Large Ag companies are looking for and buying microbe companies so they can take these products, modify them in the lab, and get the next new Geneticically Engineered (GE) product to market. It is big money, but is it the right thing to do?
Adding biologicals to a failing industrial farming system and tricking microbes to act more like chemicals, by pumping out nitrogen for example, doesn’t harness the true power of biology
Let us know your thoughts on this.
Source
Klein, Kendra. Op-Ed: Biologicals 2.0: Why Genetically Engineered Soil Microbes Are Concerning. August, 2023. https://foodtank.com/news/2023/08/why-genetically-engineered-soil-microbes-are-concerning/.
Good questions. With the entities named in the article, it looks like it was all the big ag players. Will labeling be required? It isn't now even if the food itself is GMO, so I doubt it will be for the microbes in the soil. But, I don't know.
I’d love to know more about the entities gathered to the summit, what their preliminary findings were, and what plans they are drafting as a result of this summit. For instance, because of the unknown variables in these GMOs, are they going to add regulations to the industry or has it been handed off such as Monsanto’s corn. Will there be labeling or language we should or should already be looking for when we shop for food grown with these products? Thank you - Jackie