Future of Food: DRM is coming to farms and grocery stores near you
This is a must see video about the agriculture-technology business, with some eye-opening facts: the company which develops Round Up (the miraculous herbicide anyone who's spent time in the garden knows and loves) also has genetically modified seeds and plants to be resistant to Round Up. That actually sounds really convenient! I can spray my whole garden and only the fruit-bearing plants will survive. (This is all fine and good unless this genetic resistance to herbicide ever crossed over to the weeds, poison ivy or some other undesirable plant.)
New genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have amazing new features as well. Take for example a new species of corn which has an insecticide built-in into the plant's genetic code. Now that sounds a little scary. I tend to prefer insecticides of the spray-on/wash-off variety.
Taking the "icky-ness" a little further: future plants will need a high-tech fertilizer which genetically activates a plant to bear fruit. This allows the agri-tech companies to sell fertilizers separate from the seeds so that farmers and gardeners cant keep their own seeds. They need to "subscribe" to the fertilizer business to stay in the food-growing business. And soon plants will have a 1-season suicide gene which will kill an entire crop unless the suicide gene is deactivated with the "genetic unlock code" present in that fertilizer.. Yikes! I am now even more concerned about the cross-over potential of that genetic code into other species.
Does this all cool use-management of food sound strangely familiar?? Yep, its Digital Rights Management (DRM) for the for the food industry!
Disclosure. I'm definitely not a foe of technology and innovation, but since we're talking about some engineering which could have enormously widespread ramifications if something went wrong, I'd love to know more about the food I eat. Is it too much to ask to get some labels on our food? There are so many instances when bugs and defects slip through "beta testing and Q/A" in a technology business, or when government bureaucrats get so overloaded that they overlook a harmful side effect. I'd like to know if my corn has a "terminator gene" built into it. And I'm sure those with a religious persuasion would like to know if the strawberries at the grocery store look extra nice because they've been introduced to the genetic code of shrimp or pork. Maybe I'd like to stick to organic vegetables for a few more decades to see what happens to our Fast Food Nation's children.Patents on Life. A lot of this business is backed up a controversial Supreme Court decision (Diamond v. Chakrabarty) which allowed companies to patent organisms. Although I'm a capitalist and believer in property rights to incentivize creativity and investment, my karma will likely run over my dogma when patents can be issued on living organisms. How long is it before we will have to sign license agreements to breed with each other?? Or when our offspring becomes property of another because our son or daughter has a patented gene. My kids are definitely getting law degrees.
This entry was posted
on 7.08.2007 at 15:37.
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