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[SANET-MG] transgenic plums



The APHIS review of transgenic virus resistant plums is still open for comment. In the past days a question came up about the impact of the GM plums on bees. Study of the USDA documents on the plums fails to uncover any reports on the impact of the transgenic plums on bee mortality and behavior. Since bees are the pollinators for plums the bees should have been studied. The small resistance RNA produced in the plum may impact the bee as similar RNA has been observed to be active across widely different species. Since plums are pollinated by bees it is not surprising that the transgenic plum pollinates plums a long distance from the field of GM fruit.The actual fruit of the plum will not be transgenic while the pits of the fruit will be GM. Interestingly, USDA deems that accidentally GM pollinated organic fruit is still organic.They do not comment on the patent issue US produces about 80% of the world prune export market and countries which look for transgenes in prune flesh will not find transgenes, but if whole prunes are measured the seed transgenes will show up. The comment on organic plums and transgenic plums form the USDA petition is as follows: "The presence of a detectable residue of a product of excluded methods alone does not necessarily constitute a violation of the National Organic Standards. The unintentional presence of the products of excluded methods will not affect the status of an organic product or operation when the operation has not used excluded methods and has taken reasonable steps to avoid contact with the products of excluded methods as detailed in their approved organic system plan. Organic certification of a production or handling
operation is a process claim, not a product claim.
It is not likely that organic farmers, or other farmers who choose not to plant transgenic varieties or sell transgenic plum, will be significantly impacted by the expected commercial use of this product since: (a) nontransgenic plum will likely still be sold and will be readily available to those who wish to plant it; (b) plum trees propagated by grafting and growers purchasing bud wood or grafted plants will know that this product is transgenic because it will be marketed as plum pox virus resistant plum. Additionally, decreasing the overall incidence of plum pox in conventional orchards may lower the likelihood of an organic orchard becoming infected." A slick way to avoid labeling the stocks to be transgenic! To make comments on line visit Regulation.gov : http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main scroll down to Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. On that page find U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service; Availability of Petition and Environmental Assessment for Determination of Nonregulated Status for Plum Genetically Engineered for Resistance to Plum Pox. There you may comment directly or attach a file in pdf format or in Word format. Organic plum producers may feel protected by the USDA position , however, the export market may look at whole plums not just the flesh of the plums. USDA seems to want to call GM crops "organic" but they do not appear to have thought the issue through to the export market.

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