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Selon l'Organisation des Nations Unies pour l'alimentation et l'agriculture, 80% des récoltes de blé et d'orge en Asie et en Afrique seraient menacés par l'Ug99, un champignon capable de s'attaquer avec une efficacité redoutable à ces cultures. Selon Normand Borlaug, c'est 10% des récoltes mondiales qui pourraient être décimées par cette maladie. Une catastrophe de cette magnitude provoquerait des famines partout sur la planète. Des gènes permettant de rendre les récoltes résistantes à l'Ug99 ont déjà été identifiés, mais en ce moment tous les programmes de recherches ont été stoppés à cause des nombreuses législations qui rendent impossible la commercialisation des OGM. Grâce à Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth et Organic Consumers Association, la prochaine famine risque d'être… écologique et équitable ! |
La famine équitable 
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Quel Bijoux….
À diffuser à la planète entière!
Quel belle recherche.
Certes. Cela étant dit, à la base, le problème c’est la monoculture. L’agriculture, c’est comme la bourse, il faut diversifier ! Là réside la véritable sécurité.
Parce que les OGM, faut pas se leurrer, ce n’est que partie remise, la nature s’adapte très vite.
Ça je te le donne, mais c’est plus le symbole illustré dans le commentaire que je trouve délicieux.
Mmm… si j’en crois un homme, président de slow food canada, on a longuement caché les incidences des OGM sur les humains. Apparemment, on en a testé sur des rats et c’est pas joli.
L’ennui est que si ces études existent vraiment, elles ont été cachées. Qui croire?!
Je crois que c’est un manque d’éducation qui fait peur aux gens sur la question des OGMs. Je connais des gens qui pensent que vu que c’est « génétiquement modifié », que les aliments sont radioactifs ! Quand je leur ai expliqué que beaucoup de leur aliment était irradié avec du Cobalt radioactif, ils ont tourné verts 😛
Tout ca pour dire, si après des tests approfondis on découvre que l’aliment de produit aucune toxine dangeureuse, je ne vois aucun problème.
C’est l’fun de faire dire ce qu’on veut à des articles protégés …?
L’article de Nature.com parle bel et bien de solutions à l’épidémie du champigon reliées à la sélection de gènes. Jamais on ne dit que les « tous les programmes de recherche ont été stoppés », au contraire. La différence est que les recherches utilisées sont les méthodes de croisement traditionnelles.
Et on parle seulement de Monsanto.
Comment ce fait-il que ces recherches aient été arrêtées à cause des nombreuses législations qui rendent impossible la commercialisation des OGM. Et qu’il existe pourtant déjà des centaines de produits sur nos tablettes contenant des OGM?
Existe-t-il des législations précises pour le cas du blé?
Le truc c’est qu’il faudrait aussi arrêter de généraliser. C’est sûr qu’il y a des OGM inoffensifs (pour l’environnement comme pour l’être humain), faut pas diaboliser les OGM. D’ailleurs il faut continuer à faire de la recherche.
Mais la commercialisation reste un problème, notamment parce qu’il peut y en avoir des plus ou moins dangereux et que… les études de part et d’autre (pro ou anti) sont rarement crédibles. Il y a souvent un biais.
Ensuite, comme le souligné un comité québécois, le problème vient aussi du fait que les méthodes de toxicologies conviennent aux aliments, mais pas aux OGM, qui devraient plus ressortir de la pharmacologie (ou un truc du genre).
Enfin, il faut voir le problème dans sa globalité. On ne peut pas raisonner sur l’agriculture avec les schémas libéraux de la main invisible, du marché qui s’équilibre. Si les OGM se popularisent trop, les insectes s’adapteront et les variétés non-modifées seront vouées à disparaître… dans un contexte économique c’est viable, en agriculture non. Parce que la monoculture, même avec les plus belles technologies, c’est très risqué. Et là on reprend un thème libéral que j’affectionne particulièrement parce qu’il s’applique à tout : plus c’est risqué, plus c’est payant.
Quels risques sommes-nous prêt à prendre pour gagner plus ?
Aujourd’hui, les famines sont surtout causées par la situation politique des pays, pas par la technologie « ancestrale ».
Je ne peux lire l’article (il faut être abonner) mais je donnerais comme exemple la loi (canadienne?) qui veut rendre obligatoire l’affichage des OGM sur l’étiquette. J’imagine que ce n’est pas illégal d’en vendre mais qu’ils ont dû faire des études qui démontrent que ce ne serait pas rentable. J’me souviens vaguement d’un sondage qui disait que 90%+ des personnes n’acheteraient pas un produit si c’est écrit qu’il contient des OGM.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIvNopv9Pa8
Les écolos font d’une pierre 2 coups.
Ils sont contre les OGM et ils trouve que la population est trop élevée.
Pas d’OGM + Ug99 = famine donc diminution de la population.
C’est ce qui arrive quand les gens aiment plus les arbres que les humains.
Et dire que c’est la droite qui est supposée être méchante.
En plus vous oubliez que c’est grâce aux subventions pour l’éthanol pour lutter contre les « changements climatiques » qui a fait la crise alimentaire et comme on le sait tous faire gonflé les prix.
Pour répondre à cette fausseté, de même qu'a la question de iEatGLass je vais mettre le texte au complet:
Wheat genes could help fight fungal epidemics
Scientists isolate genes that help wild wheat fend off disease.
As farmers around the world anxiously monitor the march of a deadly orange fungus across their wheat fields, two research groups have reported progress in the battle against the lethal scourge: the cloning of two fungus-fighting genes.
Both genes fend of a wide range of 'rust' fungi, including several types of stripe rust (Puccinia striiformis) and leaf rust (P. triticina). The genes are found in some wild wheat, and can be bred into commercial varieties — but that can be an arduous process taking several years to complete. Knowing what the genes are and precisely where they are located in the genome could speed things up significantly, breeders say.
The results are welcome news as plant pathologists race to arm themselves against an ongoing epidemic of stem rust (P. graminis) caused by a recently emerged fungus called Ug99 (see 'Wheat fungus spreads out of Africa'). The epidemic was first isolated in Uganda and has since spread eastwards into Iran. From there, pathologists believe wind currents may sweep Ug99 spores into India and, eventually, China.
Meanwhile, new types of stripe rust that can overcome the defences bred into commercial varieties have sparked a separate epidemic in the United States. "It is amazing that we are still fighting this battle, and we are losing," says Jorge Dubcovsky, a plant geneticist at the University of California, Davis, who led one of the studies.
Breaking the cycle
One problem is that breeders have traditionally relied on disease-resistance genes that are very effective, but only against a narrow range of rust fungi. These defences target a specific molecule produced by the fungus, and in time, the fungus often evolves a way to modify the molecule, or to go without it entirely.
Increasingly, breeders are turning to a class of defence gene with a broader spectrum of resistance. One such gene, called Lr34, has been fending off leaf and stripe rusts in some agricultural wheat for the past century. "It has proven itself to be durable," says James Kolmer, a plant pathologist at the US Department of Agriculture in St Paul, Minnesota. "It has been exposed to so many rusts in many different environments for a long period of time, and we haven't seen any sign of selection for virulence against that gene."
Lr34 has also become a key component of wheat-breeding programmes aimed at distributing new varieties to the developing world. But despite its venerable history, researchers have been unable to isolate the gene or work out how it confers resistance to fungal diseases.
This week in Science, Beat Keller of the University of Zurich in Switzerland, Evans Lagudah of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Canberra, Australia, and their colleagues report the long-awaited isolation of Lr341. The gene encodes a protein that is similar to molecular transporters that have been implicated in drug resistance. The team speculates that the proteins work by transporting metabolites that impede fungal growth to the site of the infection. Alternatively, expression of Lr34 might slightly speed up the ageing of leaves, leaving the fungus — which requires a live host — less time to establish an infection, the researchers say.
Dubcovsky discovered the second fungi-fighting gene several years ago as a result of work on a wild wheat that has yields with an unusually high protein content2. During tests on the wheat, he noticed that it was more resistant to rust infection than strains with normal protein content. The gene that led to higher protein content happened to be located near a gene, called Yr36, that boosted defences against all known types of stripe rust.
Dubcovsky and his colleagues now report that that Yr36 encodes a protein that may activate a protein signalling cascade in response to lipids, perhaps produced by the fungus itself, or by the plant soon after it becomes infected3.
Neither Yr36 nor Lr34 can fully protect wheat against infection. In one study, infected wheat carrying only Lr34 had stripe rust covering 60% of its uppermost leaf, Dubcovsky says. In wheat carrying just the Yr36 gene, 90% of the leaf was covered in rust. But in plants with both genes, only 5% of the leaf bore the fungus. Dubcovsky has already bred lines that carry both genes and has begun to distribute them to farmers.
A similar synergistic effect between genes may also be useful in the fight against Ug99, says Lagudah. Although Lr34 alone does not render plants resistant to the fungus, researchers have found that the gene can enhance the resistance found in some varieties4. Lagudah says that breeders are pursuing this finding in hopes of generating Ug99-resistant varieties of wheat.
All these approaches will probably rely on traditional breeding methods, and public reluctance about transgenic crops is likely to keep transgenic approaches off the table for some time. In 2004, Monsanto, an agricultural company headquartered in St Louis, Missouri, announced that it was halting development of transgenic herbicide-resistant strains of wheat after US farmers expressed concerns that they would not be able to export the crops to other countries. "The transgenic option is open," says Keller, "but I don't think we're going to see that application very soon."
References
1. Krattinger, S. G. et al. Science Advanced online publication doi:10.1126/science.1166453 (2009).
2. Uauy, C. Theor. Appl. Genet. 112, 97-105 (2005).
3. Fu, D. et al. Science Advanced online publication doi:10.1126/science.1166289 (2009).
4. Vanegas, C.D., G., Kolmer, J.A., and Garvin, D.F. Euphytica 159, 391-401 (2007).
J’ai déjà fait un billet la dessus:
The real GM food scandal
The public in Britain and Europe seems unaware of the astonishing success of GM crops in the rest of the world. No new agricultural technology in recent times has spread faster and more widely. Only a decade after their commercial introduction, GM crops are now cultivated in 22 countries on over 100m hectares (an area more than four times the size of Britain) by over 10m farmers, of whom 9m are resource-poor farmers in developing countries, mainly India and China. Most of these small-scale farmers grow pest-resistant GM cotton. In India alone, production tripled last year to over 3.6m hectares. This cotton benefits farmers because it reduces the need for insecticides, thereby increasing their income and also improving their health. It is true that the promised development of staple GM food crops for the developing world has been delayed, but this is not because of technical flaws. It is principally because GM crops, unlike conventional crops, must overcome costly, time-consuming and unnecessary regulatory obstacles before they can be licensed.
The alleged risk to health from GM crops is still the main reason for public disquiet—something nurtured by statements by environmental NGOs, who in 2002 even persuaded the Zambian government to reject food aid from the US at a time of famine because some of it was derived from GM crops. This allegation of harm has been so soundly and frequently refuted that when it is repeated, the temptation is to despair. But unless the charge is confronted, contradicted and disproved whenever it is made, its credibility will persist. The fact is that there is not a shred of any evidence of risk to human health from GM crops. Every academy of science, representing the views of the world's leading experts—the Indian, Chinese, Mexican, Brazilian, French and American academies as well as the Royal Society, which has published four separate reports on the issue—has confirmed this. Independent inquiries have found that the risk from GM crops is no greater than that from conventionally grown crops that do not have to undergo such testing. In 2001, the research directorate of the EU commission released a summary of 81 scientific studies financed by the EU itself—not by private industry—conducted over a 15-year period, to determine whether GM products were unsafe or insufficiently tested: none found evidence of harm to humans or to the environment. […]
Some opponents of GM crops, who seem to have realised that the argument based on lack of safety has no basis, now focus their opposition on environmental concerns, arguing that GM crops destroy biodiversity. It would be wrong to claim that the planting of GM crops could never have adverse environmental effects. But their impact depends on circumstances, on the particular crop and environment in which it is grown. Such effects occur with all sorts of agriculture. Worldwide experience of GM crops to date provides strong evidence that they actually benefit the environment. They reduce reliance on agrochemical sprays, save energy, use less fossil fuels in their production and reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases. And by improving yields, they make better use of scarce agricultural land.
These findings were reported by Graham Brookes and Peter Barfoot of PG Economics in a careful study of the global effects of GM crops in their first ten years of commercial use, from 1996 to 2005. They concluded that the "environmental impact" of pesticide and herbicide use in GM-growing countries had been reduced by 15 per cent and 20 per cent respectively. Energy-intensive cultivation is being replaced by no-till or low-till agriculture. More than a third of the soya bean crop grown in the US is now grown in unploughed fields. Apart from using less energy, avoiding the plough has many environmental advantages. It improves soil quality, causes less disturbance to life within it and diminishes the emission of methane and other greenhouse gases. The study concluded that "the carbon savings from reduced fuel use and soil carbon sequestration in 2005 were equal to removing 4m cars from the road (equal to 17 per cent of all registered cars in the UK)."
One other effect of GM crops may be the most significant of all. In the next half century, the world will have to more than double its food production to feed the over 800m people who now go hungry, the extra 3bn expected by 2050 and the hundreds of millions of people who will, as living standards rise, acquire a more western lifestyle and eat a great deal more meat. At the same time, the world is running out of good farming land and water resources. Shortage of land already causes subsistence farmers in Indonesia and South America to slash and burn tropical forests. More droughts and desertification caused by global warming will make matters worse. So will the manufacture of biofuels from wheat, corn and other food crops that further diminishes the supply of land for growing food and thus pushes up prices. Improved yields from GM technology lead to better use of land and prevent the destruction of forests with its effect on global warming. By contrast, the environmentalist James Lovelock has estimated that if all farming became organic, we would only be able to feed one third of even the present world population.
Given the evidence about the safety of GM crops and their beneficial environmental impact, and given the global success of GM cotton, maize and soya, why have so few staple GM food crops been licensed for commercial growth? Why are the benefits of golden rice, drought or salt-resistant crops, plant-based vaccines and other GM products with special promise for the developing world so long delayed?
The broader driving force behind the excessive regulation of GM crops, however, is the cult of "back to nature," which has also inspired the propaganda against agricultural biotechnology as a whole. This cult has many manifestations. One is the popularity of organic farming, which is based on the manifestly false principle that artificial chemicals are bad and natural chemicals good. Another is the rising fashion for alternative, non-evidence based medicine. The dogmatic opponents of GM crops in Europe believe that interference with the genetic make-up of plants is essentially a moral issue. It is to be condemned as part of mankind's sinful attempt to control nature, which contributes to global warming, to epidemics of cancer and all the blights of modern life. […]
There can be little doubt that GM crops will be accepted worldwide in time, even in Europe. But in delaying cultivation, the anti-GM lobbies have exacted a heavy price. Their opposition has undermined agrobusiness in Europe and has driven abroad much research into plant biotechnology—an area in which Britain formerly excelled. Over-regulation may well cause the costs of the technology to remain higher than they need be. Above all, delay has caused the needless loss of millions of lives in the developing world. These lobbies and their friends in the organic movement have much to answer for.
procule
Je ne vois pas le problème. S’ils ne vendent pas leurs produits ici ils en auront plus pour ceux qui ont faim ailleurs.
Le consommateur devrait avoir droit de choisir ce qu’il veut acheter ou non. Et s’il ne veut pas d’OGM dans son panier d’épicerie, il devrait pouvoir reconnaître les produits qui en contiennent. Lui cacher cette information est immoral et malhonnête.
Alors pourquoi diable ces études n’ont pas été diffusée à grande échelle? c’est pas comme si Greenpeace pouvait initer des SLAPP…
Cali
Derrière toi à 100% là-dessus!
waried
Tu vois, moi je ne veux pas en manger des OGM. C’est mon droit et je serais prêt à payer plus cher pour des produits qui n’en contiennent pas. Le problème est qu’on me cache cette info avec le résultat que je ne peux exercer mon libre arbitre de manger ce que je veux. On ne me laisse pas le choix et c’est une aberration qui me révolte au plus haut point.
C’est pas mon osti de problème si leurs ventes chuteraient s’ils s’affichaient au grand jour. Là ils passent pour une gang de croches ayant des choses à cacher.
C’est simple, que ceux qui n’utilisent pas d’OGM l’indique sur leur emballage.
David
C’est ça. Faisons payer encore plus ceux qui paient déjà plus cher pour offrir des produits naturels.
Non, moi je dis que c’est à ceux qui mettent des OGM dans leurs produits à payer pour changer leurs emballages et ainsi s’afficher en toute transparence.
Je savais pas que la droite en avait contre la transparence.
@ Caligula
Voyons.
Écrire « sans OGM » sur une canne de binne ça ne coûte rien!
La droite est contre la coercition de l’État.
Si t’aimes pas les OGM t’es libre d’acheter de la bouffe bio, pas besoin d’achaler les autres.
Hollenthon
Tu sais pas de quoi tu parles. Faut que tu fasses changer la matrice d’imprimerie et c’est pas vrai qu’ils font ça gratis.
Il y a de la bouffe classée non-bio qui ne contient aucun OGM. J’veux pouvoir les acheter aussi.
Votre logique ne tient pas la route. C’est à celui qui offre un produit de s’afficher au grand jour. Si tu vends un produit le bon sens commande d’afficher ce qu’il contient, et non ce qu’il ne contient pas. La liste serait bien trop longue.
Si j’aime pas les OGM la moindre des choses est de savoir où il y en a. Je ne vois pas le problème de s’afficher ouvertement quand on a rien à cacher. Les fabricants d’OGM ont-ils quelque chose à cacher? On dirait bien.
Sois sérieux, voir su faire écrire « Sans OGM » sur une étiquette va ruiner une compagnie. Surtout si cet étiquetage lui permet de vendre plus de produit.
C’est simple, prend pour acquis que tout ce qui n’est pas bio a des OGM.
S’il le veut.
Et si le client n’aime pas le manque de transparance du fournisseur il est libre de ne pas acheter le produit.
Acheter c’est voter !