Talk:Genetically modified wheat/Archive 1

Cleanup
This article is in such a desperate need of a cleanup, I really didn't want to tackle it. I'm not a corporation with infinite resources, I'm just a home baker who is interested in keeping my ingredients as natural as possible. I came here to find out info, not to add it. Nevertheless, the misinformation in the article propels me to act. So here goes (a start, anyway):

"Transgenic wheat may have been the first transgenic cereal to be produced."

This is unsupported by a reference and appears to be false.

According to Jones and Shewr, Spring Wheat was first reportedly transformed by transgenic biolistic methods in 1992 (after the other grain crops of Maize and Rice), but only since 1997 for Agrobacterium methods (in the case of Spring Wheat), and 2003 for Winter Wheat, 2007 for Durum wheat. So wheat wasn't the first. The preface also seems to indicate that wheat posed many challenges to those who sought to genetically modify it.

Therefore I suggest omitting this line in its entirety.

"Wheat is a natural transgenic plant derived from at least three different parenteral species."

This is at best strangely worded, and it seems to involve a misunderstanding of 'transgenic'. "Transgenic" implies something that is not naturally derived, but rather artificially engineered. So either wheat is natural or it is transgenic. Which is it? Since wheat has been around since the dawn of civilization and transgenic methods of engineering plants have only been in existence since the 1980s, given the either-or choice, I would say that wheat is a natural plant, even if it did evolve in the midst of human agricultural intervention.

If this line is allowed to stand, it will mean that Wikipedia is biased toward a broad acceptance of transgenic wheat. I imagine others coming to Wikipedia to learn what Transgenic Wheat is, and to learn what some of the arguments are for its introduction into a region's agriculture. I myself have done this. To find instead the sentence that wheat is already transgenic (or always was transgenic) is going to lend a bias to any further information one might hopefully gain.

I know we need an introductory line without going into the detail of, say, the entire Wikipedia article on Wheat itself. But what is the point of saying that it was "derived from at least three different parenteral species"? That is so simple a picture it misleads and tends toward the same bias (which is, in a nutshell, 'accept transgenetic wheat because it is already a done deal'). How about something a little less biased as an introduction? Something like this:

"Wheat is a domesticated grass used for food."

If that is rather banal, and insufficiently specific, one could possibly say this:

"Common Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is an important domesticated grass used worldwide for food, and its evolution has been influenced by human intervention since the dawn of agriculture."

A source for that information: Encyclopedia of Grain Science

One might argue that this expanded version of the first sentence is a bit biased the other way (i.e. biased against transgenic wheat), for it suggests that human civilization and wheat evolved together and are symbiotic to a degree. This would lead us into an interesting discussion of how wheat (and flour and bread) has deep cultural roots -- and this is the reason why transgenic varieties of wheat are having a difficult time being introduced in many areas of the world. But that is exactly the discussion that ought to take place in this Wikipedia article anyway!

"The first historically recorded interspecies transgenic cereal hybrid was between wheat and rye [1]."

The reference is Stephen Wilson, the inventor of triticale. For those who were forced to look it up as I did, the short article that Wilson wrote can be found in this public domain Google book:

Clearly, Wilson describes cross-pollinating rye and durham wheat by hand. Since he was experimenting in 1873 and back then no one knew about recombinant DNA methods, triticale could hardly be called transgenic. (Just to be clear, the Wikipedia article on transgenic crops says that to be called transgenic, one must use recombinant DNA techniques. It is not enough that the plant is able to cross fertilize with another species).

The sentence above about the first cereal hybrid would be true except for the superfluous, misleading and incorrectly used word "transgenic". But without that word, why even bring it up in a Wikipedia article on Transgenic Wheat? The sentence ought to be omitted.

Unfortunately, it is a segue sentence that leads into the next three paragraphs, all of which contain similar mistakes.

"Such wheat has long helped farmers resist devastating plant diseases such as rusts."

What wheat is the previous editor referring to here? Is he/she still talking about triticale (which, by the way, was never mentioned in the Wikipedia article)? Or all wheat? I suggest that we omit this sentence.

"Hope is one such wheat variety bred by E. S. McFadden with a gene from a wild grass. Hope saved American wheat growers from devastating stem rust outbreaks in the 1930s."

No reference is given for the rust-resistant McFadden hybrid Hope from the 1930s (it can be found, however, by reading the full text of the original author's second citation). But it could hardly be a transgenic plant as it was hybridized some 50 years before the technique was possible. So why mention it? I suggest this sentence be omitted.

"By the late 1930s with the introduction of colchicine, perennial grasses were being hybridized with wheat with the aim of transferring disease resistance and perenniality into annual crops, and large-scale practical use of hybrids was well established, leading on to development of Triticosecale and other new transgenic cereal crops."

Again, mutagenic techniques and traditional mechanical hybridization do not add up to transgenic techniques. Why go back this far, when we are interested in current transgenic wheat?

The cited article, "Plant genetic resources" does describe translocation, but it is not clear that this is a transgenic technique from the citation. In fact, Veery wheat that uses translocation comes from Borlaug's Green Revolution and not from any newer transgenic, recombinant DNA technology. To imply that transgenic wheat has been used for decades is false.

The outline information that follows seems to come from the more general Wikipedia article "Transgenic Plant". There is a lot of description of disease resistance and pest resistance, but nothing about drought resistance, which is currently of interest to Africa and Australia in particular. There is also nothing about the proposed extra nutrition that the transgenic wheat varieties are supposed to address. The information so far is dreadfully incomplete.

I hate to say it, but pretty much this whole article needs to be scrapped and started over. I have not done so yet because I would I would like to be fair, and I would appreciate some talk from others, including the previous author/editor named ADM. Also, I haven't written anything to replace it except for the first line! Onionskintorpor (talk) 02:08, 4 January 2010 (UTC)
 * It would appear that since writing the above comment, Onionskintorpor cleaned up the article, as none of those items are still there. Thanks Onionskintorpor and the others contributing since then. --EricE (talk) 21:20, 15 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Since Aircorn changed the title to "Genetically Modified Wheat", the topic changes somewhat, and the article needs to be expanded further, since it currently only addresses "transgenic wheat". This is another huge job, and I'm not sure I really want to take it on (but then I didn't want to take on the earlier revision either, and felt I had to).  Transgenic Wheat is a mere subset of GM wheat, and not all wheat that has been genetically modified contains GMO.  So it is going to be a big job.  Some Aggie PhD. out there should tackle it, where are you people, wouldn't this look good on your resume?  Don't leave it to the home bakers. Onionskintorpor (talk)  —Preceding undated comment added 11:12, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Adding Current Status
I have added a section "Current Status" because after reading the article, I could not find the information about whether GM Wheat is in use or not. And I bet 98% of readers of this article are going here specifically to find out just that fact. It will of course need to be kept up to date with references! --EricE (talk) 21:20, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

This info was in an earlier version of the article, edited out by some other user; maybe they didn't like my citation? Furthermore, the part now deleted contained references to the use of transgenic wheat in other parts of the world besides the U.S., something that needs to be addressed. Your bet of "98% of readers" should also take into account the portion that comes from elsewhere than the U.S.; Canada, U.K., E.U. Asia, Africa, South America, Australia -- everyone wants to know this info. What is more, "current use" is misleading, since there are still trials of transgenic wheat going on in countries where the general use of it is banned. And some believe there are dangers of it escaping from test plots. I like the idea of having this section, and in having it prominent in the article, but it needs to be overhauled and expanded. I would have to look into it to find citations before I could add anything yet. Maybe others could do the work Onionskintorpor (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 10:54, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Conclusion?
What's up with the Conclusion section? This isn't a newspaper column, it's an encyclopedia article. Any 'conclusion' is going to consist of 'what I think,' and is not appropriate, no matter what the effort to balance it. The reader should draw his/her own conclusion, not be led to it by Wikipedia contributors. MarkinBoston (talk) 03:56, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Bias
This page reads more like an editorial than an unbiased encyclopedia entry. Would someone add a tag to the top of the page asking for it to be revised on the grounds of objectivity? Conclusion section should be removed absolutely. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Techpriest (talk • contribs) 00:43, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree. The whole article reads like a speculative essay or blog article rather than an encyclopedia article. It is full of the writers opinions and very short of facts and proper citations.71.108.132.110 (talk) 04:48, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

This whole article is complete bullshit. The part about humans not evolving as fast as plants is just complete garbage. Please just delete this page. The page on food GMOs is good enough. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.83.16.19 (talk) 14:45, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

The page is not neutral. It is filled with beliefs and the facts cited are largely unrelated to the actual issues and history of the title. One of the worst wikis I have read in months. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.104.248.206 (talk) 04:36, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
 * this kind of comment is perhaps useful for venting but not helpful for improving the article. if there is specific content you would propose or change, please bring it. thanks. Jytdog (talk) 18:38, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Pro-Con thing
Hi The bulk of this article is the pro/con debate, which makes this essay like. There is already an article on genetically modified food controversies and the pro/con section here recapitulates that article. I am going to move nonduplicated content and sources from this article to that one, to consolidate and strengthen the controversies article. I have already added some standard paragraphs that are being deployed across the suite of GM articles to keep things cleaner for the reader. If I come across anything funky as I go, I will make notes here. Jytdog (talk) 18:21, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

1st funk
Current content: "The genes responsible for wheat's senescence and annualism may be reversible using transgenic means, resulting in a wheat with adventitious roots, good production of seed, and perennial habits.(ref)Chapman, G.P. The Biology of Grasses. CAB International. (1996) p. 5(/ref) - first chunk of the Chapman book is here http://bookshop.cabi.org/Uploads/Books/PDF/9780851991115/9780851991115.pdf and it does not say that anything about GM -- this is OR by the editor who wrote it.  Not importing this to Controversies article.  Jytdog (talk) 18:23, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

2nd funk
Text says: " The first transgenic wheat licensed for sale into the human food-chain (so far only in two countries worldwide, Colombia and the United States)(ref)(/ref) is MON 71800....." The page cited there does indeed say that the US and Columbia have approved it. But that is a summary that provides only some of the story. If you look at the top area of the page, just under the title, you will find 3 tabs. The middle one is called "Decisions on the LMO". If you click on it you will get here http://bch.cbd.int/database/lmo/decisions.shtml?documentid=45398 and you will see that in no country has it been approved for environmental release. In other words, it is OK to sell the GM wheat as food, but it is not OK to grow it. What is up with that, you may ask? If you read the article on the regulation of the release of genetic modified organisms you will see that in almost every country, there are separate food safety and environmental reviews. In the US, the FDA has approved the food safety of MON 71800 (if you click on the link in the source provided in the quote above, and the click on the link in that page to the CERA database you will arrive here: http://www.cera-gmc.org/?action=gm_crop_database&mode=ShowProd&data=MON71800&frmat=SHORT and if you click on the link at the bottom to get the full piece you will arrive here http://cera-gmc.org/index.php?action=gm_crop_database&mode=ShowProd&data=MON71800&frmat=LONG and on that page there is a link to the FDA memo documenting that it found MON 71800 to be OK. You will notice that there is no document from the EPA there... and it is the EPA application that Monsanto withdrew away back in 2004 - the GM wheat was never approved for release and was never marketed or grown commercially.

I am going to to take what I can of the very good content that is here about MON 71800 and make a new section for it, cleaning up this issue. That will stay in this article. Jytdog (talk) 19:04, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

3rd funk
working on the "con" side now. Importing content into controversies article...

I did not transfer the following, but deleted them, for the reasons provided:


 * "Furthermore, to feed people transgenic wheat would introduce DNA changes in humans that no one will be able to predict.(ref)Genetically Modified Organisms in Agriculture: Economics and Politics. pp. 240–248(/ref) To introduce further changes much faster would not allow humans time to evolve side-by-side with the plants."   REASON: This is WP:FRINGE and without being able to see the source (sorry don't have access to it) I am not going to bring it over.


 * "For example, the purveyors of the Paleolithic diet point out that humans have not even evolved enough to take full advantage of a diet based on wheat, after some 6000 years of agriculture. There may be evidence to suggest that humans have not even yet evolved to be able to handle the amount of wheat already present in the average diet: gluten intolerance and celiac disease show that some segment of the population are unable to tolerate a wheat-based diet.  And some controversial studies even link autism, attention deficit disorder, and other modern ailments to human inability to properly metabolize wheat products.  The archeological record shows that the adoption of an agrarian diet coincided with a decline in healthy bones and tissues."   REASON: This is not sourced, and is not on target to GM wheat - is more about wheat in general.


 * "The creation of wheat strains that fix their own nitrogen from the air, like legumes, has so far concentrated on adding legume-like abilities to interact with soil-based micro-organisms that do the nitrogen-fixing. To this end, transgenic wheat that fixes nitrogen would require a transgenic soil-based micro-organism that works symbiotically with wheat.  The fears are that once such a micro-organism is in the soil, it cannot be contained or controlled."  REASON: This is not sourced


 * "The track-record of other transgenic crops that have promised less pesticide use has not been good, leading many to assume that the claims for less pesticide use for wheat are unfounded. Since the companies that provide the pesticides are the ones creating the transgenic crops, a conflict of interest has been observed." REASON: This is not sourced and is already covered in GM food controversies article


 * "There are unknown effects on human health that also need to be considered. The Mayo Clinic found in studies published in 2009 (ref)"Mayo Clinic Study Finds Celiac Disease Four Times More Common than in 1950s" http://www.mayoclinic.org/news2009-rst/5329.html July 1, 2009(/ref) that the incidence of Coeliac Disease is four times more common today as it was in the 1950s.  They also found an increase of mortality in patients that tested positive for Coeliac Disease.  Their conclusion is that something in the environment or in wheat caused this change.  This is supported as well by the explosion in products that are gluten-free."  REASON: not relevant to GM wheat which has never been on the market


 * "Many who have found themselves newly intolerant of gluten or wheat in the 2000s have wondered if genetic alterations of wheat through selective breeding might be the cause. From 2002 to 2005 a variety called "Hard White Wheat" was introduced into the US market, with varieties that were developed in the late 90s through 2004.(ref)"Hard White Wheat: Producing North Dakota’s Next Market Opportunity," Joel K. Ransom, William A. Berzonsky and Brian K. Sorenson, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58105,APRIL 2006, http://www.ndwheat.com/uploads/resources/568/hardwhitewheatbrochure.pdf(/ref) It is unknown if the introduction of this wheat variety is at the root of the current explosion in gluten/wheat intolerance, but the timing suggests it is an area that scientists should explore." REASON: not relevant to GM wheat which has never been on the market


 * "No matter if genetically modified wheat is ultimately adopted or not, there are potent arguments against adopting it in the current regulatory regime. The lack of transparency in food chains is making it very difficult for food producers to know if their products are modified or not, for those consumers who wish to avoid potential risks; due to the lack of mandatory labeling in many countries.  The lack of requirements for truly independent tests prior to approval, and the almost universal practice of conducting studies on these products lasting two months or less in laboratory mice, instead of full lifespan studies, may provide insufficient checks on dangers to public safety.  Thus, any such near-term approval could well be premature."  REASON: unsourced and violates WP:OR and maybe WP:SOAPBOX

That's it. Jytdog (talk) 19:50, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

removed essay tag
I think this is OK now, so I removed the essay tag. Jytdog (talk) 19:52, 9 June 2013 (UTC)