It doesn't matter.
The earthworms and beneficial aerobic soil microbes can handle it with no problems.

When homemade compost is done, any form of vegetable organic matter will be converted into safe, healthy, humus plus nutrients that all plants and beneficial soil microbes love to digest.

Happy Gardening!

Why are you assuming it would be bad in anyway?

It doesn't harm you to eat it, why would it hurt compost?

I think it depends on the process of the composted material. If it were manufactured with GM anything, than it would fall under some kind of scrutiny by the USDA Organic Program if my thinking is correct. Not to say that this makes ANY difference in the grand scheme of things.....just giving the bureaucracy something to do.

not a major issue for me...There are checks and balances in several scientific journals with regard to GMOs, trialing, and weighing exceptions to the rule..IMO

The only things likely to be gmed that would end up in your compost are soy beans - meals etc., cotton seed, and corn not intended for human consumption, and now long grain rice. Avoid these things.

I'm not aware of any store bought veggies that are gm. Papaya is the only gm fruit I know of on the market.

I gotta ask Aletha, why would one avoid the items you listed?

GM also includes Bt corn, soybean and about 90% of the store bought products. Like sweetner (Asparteame(sp) is from GM corn)

RUR products like soy bean

Tomatoes, wheat, rice, barley, oats etc

LOL

Byron

Byron, that does it....just red meat for me.

Cobalt_blue, one of the primary principles of organic growing is to avoid man-made synthetics, choosing naturally occuring inputs. Gmo's are not naturally occuring. They are synthetic approximations of natural genes.

Gmo's were not tested extensively before being allowed in the food chain. Since then (mid 90's) more research has been done concluding the safety of these organisms is questionable. Below is a link to a summary of some of the problems.

Here is a link that might be useful: gmwatch

This article posted on SOE two years ago is, imo, an excellent summary of what a gmo is.

Synthetic genes in the brave new world of food crops Posted by Marshallz10 (My Page) on Tue, Jun 22, 04 at 11:05 The commentary below is one of the clearest cautionary statement against the current reliance on "substantial equivalence" in regulating biotech products. I include it in full because it was posted to a prohibited webpage. \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- June 20, 2004 Prof. Joe Cummins "Synthetic genes in the brave new world of food crops" In North America genetically modified (GM) foods that are unlabeled and untested are taking over the food supply. The promotion of such foods maintained that natural genes "substantially equivalent " to the genes in normal crops were being shifted from bacteria or viruses to improve food crops. That promotion ignores the reality of genetic technology. The genes used to create GM crops are synthetic approximations of natural genes that contain synthetic DNA sequences tuned to maximize production of toxins killing insects or degrading herbicides, as well as providing firm patent protection on the food crop. Synthetic genes are used because the genes active in bacteria or man are not very active in crop plants. The DNA code must be adjusted for the codon bias typical of the crop plant species into which genes from bacteria or mammals are introduced. The genetic code is made up of 64 three letter codons (code words) for twenty amino acids (61 codons) plus words for translation start and stop. The code words for protein amino acid are encoded for between one (met and tryp) and six (arg,lue,ser) synonymous code words. The first two positions of the codon are fixed for a particular amino acid while the third position is said to wobble allowing for alternate code letters. The degeneracy of the code allows for alternative gene codes for a single protein, The frequency with which different codons are used varies between groups of organisms, so for example, genes from bacteria are poorly read in higher plants (and visa versa), For optimum expression the code for a transgene frequently needs to be rewritten to achieve adequate performance. The codon bias within members of a group of organisms such as plants is believed to be caused by the presence of typical isoacceptor transfer RNA families in the different groups of organisms. The number of possible genes that can code one protein molecule is staggering, it is estimated to be about five times ten to the 47th power (1). That number is within three orders of magnitude of the number of atoms making up earth and five times larger than the number of water molecules on earth (2). In synthesizing the genes used in GM crops, say in altering a Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) cry toxin gene for useful activity in plants, a table of plant preferred codons is used to substitute the plant preference for the bacterial preference.(3). Sometimes it is necessary to substitute one or more of the amino acids so that the final cry toxin can function in the plant cell environment (3,4). As plant genetic engineering has "advanced" the crucial active domains of toxins and enzyme are recognized and "improved" to such an extent that the original source protein from living organisms is hardly recognizable. Regulatory sequences (such genes are frequently referred to as cis elements) such as promoters, introns and transcription termination signals are normally are normally taken from higher plants or their viruses. Nevertheless, progress has been made in creating synthetic promoters loosely based on the cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV) commonly used in plant genetic engineering (5). The use of synthetic genes in food crops has not been taken into account sufficiently in the regulatory approval of the food crops. The synthetic genes , based on bacterial genes or human genes, can be propagated in bacteria using illegitimate recombination and bacterial plasmids but such genes are not substantially active in those bacteria nor do they readily participate in homologous recombination. The synthetic genes lack DNA homology with the bacterial or human genes from which they originated. The codon usage of humans and of bacteria diverges from the codon preference of plants yeast and nematodes. The synthetic genes used in crop plants do not function successfully in bacteria or humans but should do well in yeast (and likely other fungi) and in nematodes. In spite of the obvious differences between the synthetic and the natural genes from which they arose, regulators have allowed the genes and proteins produced in bacteria to be considered appropriate surrogates in safety testing for the synthetic genes and the proteins produced in food crops (6). The use of the bacterial surrogates has been to spare corporations the cost of isolating the quantities of DNA and protein from the crop plants needed for safety testing. That is true even though the cost of fully testing the "real thing" is negligible relative to the profits from licensing the GM food crops to farmers. The genes and their proteins produced in bacteria are no real substitute for the real genes and proteins produced from them in food crops and the assurances that the safety tests are fully meaningful is a convenient fiction showing the unhealthy togetherness of corporations and their regulators (7,8). There seems to be a convenient fiction propagated by corporations ,government bureaucrats and academics who depend on grant money from corporations and government to promote the myth that genes from bacteria are used in producing food crops or that genes from humans are used to produced plant biopharmaceuticals when , in fact, the genes used in the crop plants are synthetic approximations used to produce products similar to the real thing. Even the courts seem to have accepted the convenient fiction as if it were fact. The next generation of GM crops is evolving towards a minimal assembly of active protein domains (domains are active area of proteins that serve as signals for activates such as toxicity or enzyme function or environment sensors for regulation) that are frequently patched together from a number of different proteins. Safety testing is based on unreal surrogates and the products are not labeled in the marketplace so that subtle changes caused by a few amino acid changes or failure to heed secondary protein modifications such as glycosylation will be difficult to trace as people are adversely effected by consuming the synthetic GM crops. It is imperative that the synthetic genes and their real products be tested thoroughly, not only for potentially toxic side effects but for stability and recombination properties as well. These synthetic genes have not had an evolutionary history and it is a major mistake to assume that the genes can be expected to behave in all ways like the gene that they were built to represent. A distinction must be made between natural genes and transgenes and the synthetic representations of those genes used to manufacture GM crops. A polluting synthetic transgene should not be presumed to be equivalent to a polluting natural transgene. References 1\. Gustafsson,C,Govindarajan,S. and Minshull,J Codon bias and heterologous protein expression 2004 Trends in Biotechnology in press pp 1\-8 2\. About Big Numbers qaearth\=atoms in the earth 2004 http://pages.prodigy.net/jhonig/bignum/qaearth.html 3\. Fischoff,D. and Perlak,F. Synthetic plant genes 1996 United States Patent 5,500,365 pp1\-59 4\. Payne,J,Cummings,D,Cannon,R,Narva,K. and Stelman,S. Bacillus thuringiensis genes encoding lepidopteran\-active toxins 1998 United States Patent 5,723,758 pp 1\-32 5\. Bhullar,S, Chakravarthy,S,Advani,S, Datta,S,Pental,D. and Burma,P. Strategies for Development of Functionally Equivalent Promoters with Minimum Sequence Homology for Transgene Expression in Plants: cis\-Elements in a Novel DNA Context versus Domain Swapping 2003 Plant Physiology 132, . 98898 6\. Cummins,J. Regulation by deceit 2004 Science in Society 22,32\-3 7\. Ho,M DNA in food and feed 2004 ISIS press release pp1\-8 http://www.i-sis.org.uk/ 8\. Ho,M. and Cummins,J. GM food and feed not fit for "man or beast" 2004 pp1\-6 http://www.i-sis.org.uk/

Sheesh, that dudes a wordy cuss now isn't he.

Having labored my way threw his presentation it seems clear thet he niether proves nor disproves anything.

Who's opinion counts when a claim that the FDA "rushed" something through the approval process?

I've yet to read or hear any concrete evidence that "gmo's" are of any harm to anything.

You obviously feel strongly about the issue Aletha, and no offense to you personally but I think the whole issue is nonsense. And I'll continue to feel that way until it is proven to me that its a legit concern.

You know from the producers perspective this and other issues concerning their lot in life have got to be very aggravating. Their asked to do the following;

Produce more food to feed a starving planet.
Use less tillage to prevent errosion.
Use less fuel to produce said food.
Sell at a cheaper price to compete with foreign competition
and keep the corporate wolves away from the door.
Produce food of higher quality and get it to market as fresh as is possible due to modern consumers being quite finicky.

All that and now we want them to try and replace oil fields with corn fields for our energy needs.

Yikes!

My understanding of the starving world problem is that there is already enough food to go around. It isn't distributed evenly in the world, though, and that has to do with who has money, weather, global warming problems, and who is rich enough to feed most of their corn and soybeans (a.k.a. the U.S. and the 'civilized' countries) to animals instead of people. So that doesn't let big corporations off the hook with me, saying they can grow more food if they mess with the genes in the food.

Eating food that has been so doctored without having it thoroughly tested is a crapshoot. Yes, it might not hurt us, but really no one knows. I personally prefer to eat more natural foods, and GM foods are by definition not naturally occurring. For example, the choice between butter and margarine. Butter is what you get when you milk a cow and shake the result. Fairly natural. Margarine is what you get when you do all sorts of weird things to plant oils and get strange long molecules that they have finally figured out aren't good for us.

For me, I like to avoid weird created food substances, such as aspartame. I would rather eat real sugar, that is more natural. WHo knows what our bodies will do with artificial sorts of food. I know that hubby gets sick from aspartame and I don't, but I still avoid it. Why eat crap if you don't have to? So I would at least like food to be labelled GM, and it isn't in the U.S., so that I would have the choice to avoid it.

The other problem with GM food is that it travels via pollen to other foods and 'pollutes' them. GM corn has now affected the corn in all sorts of obscure spots in Mexico where the farmers have never grown GM corn, yet they have the artificial genes in their corn because of how corn pollen spreads a great distance. Seems scary to me to be doing such widescale stuff on the planet with such minimal testing.

Marcia

.See: Harvard Center for Health and the Global Environment:(Publications)
http://chge.med.harvard.edu.index.html
Climate Change and U.S. Agriculture:The Impacts of Warming and Extreme Weather Events on Productivity, Plant Diseases, and Pests (2000);
(journal):
Emerging infectious diseases of plants:pathogen pollution, climate change and agrotechnology drivers(2004);
plantstress.com/Articles/index.asp
(for some additional references pertaining to conditions influencing proper seedset);
plant pathology online
http://www.aspnet.org/online/feature
>(i.e.Papaya(2004)
Scientific American:Ecology and Political Upheaveal; Jeffrey Sachs; Columbia University(7/2006;page37)

....it is a complicated world under our contemporary conditions and the calculus of time....'think I'll defer....
additional:Plant Pathology;George N.Agrios

"I've yet to read or hear any concrete evidence that "gmo's" are of any harm to anything."

Do you have any concrete evidence that they wont? The days of scientists being put up on a pedistal as gods is gone, theyve made too many stuff ups for the average person to put blind faith in their discoveries anymore, and it takes years before the true results and safety is really known. If you look at the bigger picture of GM, it's very scary, and I dont remember anyone picketing because they wanted their food to be fiddled with, it's just another thing the food producers want to force on us.

At a small level though, to the original poster, if that food is good enough for you to buy and eat, then it should be good enough for your compost bin IMO

TG

"Do you have any concrete evidence that they wont?"

Well, since there is no known proof that gmo's have harmed anything the burden of proof lies on the shoulders of those espousing its ills.

I'm not trying to prove anything, I've simply stated my opinion on the topic. If and when gmo's are proven harmful I'll change said opinion and act accordingly.

Let me be clear, I have no interest in insulting anyone here. Its just that the notion of gmo's being dangerous for the compost pile seems way over the top to me. I also think I'll move on as I've said all I personally need to on the topic and have no interest in being part of a range war.

Cheers

Rick

"I've yet to read or hear any concrete evidence that "gmo's" are of any harm to anything."

I can only assume from this that you didn't read the article I linked. Avoiding information which contradicts ones preferred beliefs is an excellent way to maintain your stated position.

Let's get back to the idea of whether it is safe to compost the stuff, as that is easier to answer than whether GMO's are an overall good or evil in the world.

(1) The GMO's that you are putting in your compost are not going to transmit their DNA. You're not going to suddenly have GMO's in your garden. (You are more likely to get GMOs in your garden from open-pollination and seed saving, than from anything else.)

(2) The GMO's in your compost are only "synthetic" in their sequence. They are still normal cellular material (same amino acids, same bases in the DNA) and are just as degradable in a compost pile as anything else. Microorganisms don't care if a protein has the sequence GGYHSTEES or GGYTSHEES, for example. They degrade it, because it is a source of carbon and nitrogen.

(3) Things that are far more likely to survive your compost and be bad for your garden are things like plant diseases from your crops, weed seeds, etc.

Maybe if you can outline specifically why you think a GM food would be hazardous in the compost, we could give a more satisfying answer. If it is just a fear of the unknown, then rest assured that other things in the compost are worse and you live with those things quite happily.

You pretty much hit the nail on the head, patty.

The only unanswered question that I still have concernes BT. Would it still be present in the compost? I've read about different chemicals and things being broken down by the compost pile. I know there is one substance that takes years to break down (sorry, can't remember what it was). And since the BT is tampered with and actually in the cell of the plant, I was wondering if it would break down the same as if it were just poured onto the pile. Or even just wondering if anyone knows of any studies being done on this...

Thank you for all the input so far.
tr

This is clipped from the gmwatch article I linked:

"4.2. Cry toxin produced in the entire plant during the whole growth period Székács et al6 have confirmed that the Cry toxin is produced in the plant during the whole period of growth. That is, in a dry plant, under moderate temperature, the toxin remains biologically active for several years. Post-harvest the maize stubble contains a significant quantity of Cry toxin. Cry toxin, over-wintering in the stubble, can be detected in plant residues after a period of one year.

4.3. Comparisons between bio pesticides and Bt plants

Székács et al compared the quantity of Cry-toxin proteins produced by the Bt-plant with the doses registered and permitted for their use in bio pesticides, and determined the toxin quantity in DIPEL. They found that MON 810 Bt-corn produces 1500-3000 times more Cry1Ab toxin than the Cry1Ab toxin dose corresponding to a single treatment with DIPEL.

They also found that only part of the toxin from the Bt-plant is decomposed during the growth period. Further, a significant part of the remaining quantity in the stubble enters the soil, where it may affect soil life (animals and micro-organisms)."

I have seen only one study of a controlled hot composting experiment with gm corn. A high compost temp was maintained for a year and the corn was completely broken down over a years time. My guess is that most home compost piles, mine for sure, don't maintain a constant high temp throughout the year.

...but also it must be determined whether or not conventional breeding methods v.s.new approaches, risk assessments, trialing, play out well in areas where TIME is a factor to save a crop... We are also dealing with contemporary conditions and contemporary environmental factors and vectors that promote the spread, persistance(wintering over/ alternate hosts of weed species) pests and disease isotypes and their adaptive traits ) and so much more....so why should I maintain an opposition to the general topic of plant biotechnology?
There are plenty of pesticides in my river water that I use for irrigation already....

Bear in mind how long it took for many of our other so-called technological solutions to have later turned out to have unforseen consequences - DDT, thalidomide, Agent Orange, not to mention a slew of more recent "medications" such as Viox. If you're living in the same country I am, short-term profit trumps erring on the side of caution every time. Or you could wait 60 years and ask your grandchildren what they wished you had done. Apart from that, most of the GMO vegetables are intended, at least in part, to help support the marketing and food production intentions of large and not always altruistic pharmaceutical companies, helping to reduce biodiversity, food production sustainability for non-industrial growers, and the concentration of agricultural power for political and commercial reasons, thereby exacerbating the inequities in the global food supply. People starve because other people profit from it. Supporting GMO use and production, even if it just means buying microwave popcorn, makes us complicit in destroying sustainable food worldwide. If you tire of the technicalities in the above reading matter, check out Michael Pollan's book The Omnivores Dilemna.

Here's an interesting little sidebar:

Interesting twist, billme.

althea, I did read the entire link that you posted. Thank you for doing that. I just still had concerns about BT. The article did not specify any tests or results about soil residue... it just said that it MAY affect soil life, so that is why I asked.

I appreciate the info you all have provided. I don't know how you guys keep up with so many issues. I learn a lot from watching this forum.

Again, many thanks,
tr

Billme, you made an excellent point that supporting gm in any way makes you complicit in it's continuation.

It is my understanding that the word "may" is used because the research is ongoing. Here are some samples of ongoing research from PubMed, each concluding that more research is needed:

"1: Appl Environ Microbiol. 2005 Nov;71(11):6719-29.Click here to read Click here to read Links
Impact of Bt corn on rhizospheric and soil eubacterial communities and on beneficial mycorrhizal symbiosis in experimental microcosms.

* Castaldini M,
* Turrini A,
* Sbrana C,
* Benedetti A,
* Marchionni M,
* Mocali S,
* Fabiani A,
* Landi S,
* Santomassimo F,
* Pietrangeli B,
* Nuti MP,
* Miclaus N,
* Giovannetti M.

Istituto Sperimentale per lo Studio e la Difesa del Suolo, CRA, Florence, Italy.

A polyphasic approach has been developed to gain knowledge of suitable key indicators for the evaluation of environmental impact of genetically modified Bt 11 and Bt 176 corn lines on soil ecosystems. We assessed the effects of Bt corn (which constitutively expresses the insecticidal toxin from Bacillus thuringiensis, encoded by the truncated Cry1Ab gene) and non-Bt corn plants and their residues on rhizospheric and bulk soil eubacterial communities by means of denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis analyses of 16S rRNA genes, on the nontarget mycorrhizal symbiont Glomus mosseae, and on soil respiration. Microcosm experiments showed differences in rhizospheric eubacterial communities associated with the three corn lines and a significantly lower level of mycorrhizal colonization in Bt 176 corn roots. In greenhouse experiments, differences between Bt and non-Bt corn plants were detected in rhizospheric eubacterial communities (both total and active), in culturable rhizospheric heterotrophic bacteria, and in mycorrhizal colonization. Plant residues of transgenic plants, plowed under at harvest and kept mixed with soil for up to 4 months, affected soil respiration, bacterial communities, and mycorrhizal establishment by indigenous endophytes. The multimodal approach utilized in our work may be applied in long-term field studies aimed at monitoring the real hazard of genetically modified crops and their residues on nontarget soil microbial communities."

"1: Ying Yong Sheng Tai Xue Bao. 2005 Mar;16(3):524-8. Links
[Effects of Bt corn straw decomposition on soil enzyme activities and soil fertility]
[Article in Chinese]

* Wang J,
* Feng Y,
* Luo S.

Institute of Tropical and Subtropical Ecology, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, China. wangjw@scau.edu.cn

An incubation test with the straws of Bt corn 34B24 and its non-transgenic isogenic line 34B23, Bt corn Nongda 61, and non-transgenic Nongda 3138 was conducted to study the potential effects of Bt corn straw decomposition on soil enzyme activities and soil fertility. No significant difference in soil protease and acid phosphatase activities was found between treatments 34B24 and 34B23; but on day 75 of incubation, soil dehydrogenase activity was significantly higher in treatment 34B24 than in treatment 34B23. The same was true for soil invertase activity on days 15,45, 60 and 75. Soil urease activity in treatment 34B24 was significantly increased on day 30, but decreased on days 45 and 75. A significant difference in several soil enzyme activities was also observed between the treatments of two Bt corn hybrids and their conventional cultivars at some sampling days. After incubation for 90 days, the contents of soil available P and K were significantly lower in treatment 34B24 than in treatment 34B23. The differences mentioned above resulted from the composition of test corn straws, which may be affected by the Bt gene transformation process. In order to accurately assess the effects of Bt corn straw decomposition on soil ecosystem, a standard classification system of soil enzyme activities should be established for different soil types from different regions."

"Erratum in:
Mol Ecol. 2003 Aug;12(8):2279.

Effects of transgenic Bt corn litter on the earthworm Lumbricus terrestris.

* Zwahlen C,
* Hilbeck A,
* Howald R,
* Nentwig W.

Zoological Institute, University of Bern, Baltzerstrasse 6, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland. claudia.zwahlen@gmx.net

A 200-day study was carried out to investigate the impact of transgenic Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) corn on immature and adult Lumbricus terrestris in the field and in the laboratory. Another objective of this study was to develop test methods that could be used for standard testing of the impact of transgenic plants on different earthworm species in the field and in the laboratory. For this purpose two different experiments were involved, a laboratory experiment with adult L. terrestris and a field experiment with immature L. terrestris. No lethal effects of transgenic Bt corn on immature and adult earthworms were observed. Immature L. terrestris in the field had a very similar growth pattern when fed either (Bt+) or (Bt-) corn litter. No significant differences in relative weights of (Bt+) and (Bt-) corn-fed adult L. terrestris were observed during the first 160 days of the laboratory trial, but after 200 days adult L. terrestris had a significant weight loss of 18% of their initial weight when fed (Bt+) corn litter compared to a weight gain of 4% of the initial weight of (Bt-) corn-fed earthworms. Further studies are necessary to see whether or not this difference in relative weight was due to the Bt toxin or other factors discussed in the study. Degradation of Cry1Ab toxin in corn residues was significantly slower in the field than at 10 degrees C in the laboratory. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay results indicated that earthworms in both experiments were exposed to the Bt toxin throughout the whole experimental time."

Thanks Althea - those are interesting.

I am surprised that Bt toxin appears so persistent! I would have thought that since Bacillus is a very common soil microorganism, that compost would know what to do with Bacillus thuringiensis toxin.

I am also surprised that soil NPK were lower in the straw from engineered corn. I would have guessed the opposite - that the corn would have higher biomass and lead to a greater NPK contribution to the soil.

I'd like to see these repeated, and I'm curious to search pubmed for related articles.

Thanks again,
Patty

...if you care to apply these newly developed analytcal tools into other realms of ecology with regard plant interrelations and environmental influences, we are also dealing with trends in a changing world...whereby time is a factor...IMO

...and if in fact time matters, you will find me distraught with the inconvienent presentation of Mr.Gore and his publisher (for the book lacks a standard scientific format),and of that dot org site because we are off the integration of biological systems under our contemporary conditions and enter the realm of politics/philosophy....