I've been trying to grow as organically as possible, and I've been curious about the food scraps I put in the beds. As far as I know, the government is still fighting against labeling GMOs so there's no way to know what I put in have altered genes or not. I found an article that summarized an experiment done in 2004 which showed that composting should kill the DNA. There's nothing more recent available from my searches and I want to know more details: like what's the lowest possible temperature for those results, how long, and what happens if the materials are only partially decomposed and new plants are put in them?

I'd appreciate any knowledge, resources and links. I've included the link to the e-article I found.

http://www.darcof.dk/enews/june04/gmo.html

As far as growing plants in un-finished compost, there is enough evidence and articles ont his subject that should convince gardeners that the practice of using unfinished is wrong for the plant. If you believe that the 3 elements...N.P. & K, are important to soil, then you have to allow for nitrogen being removed from the soil by such breakdown and thus reducing the availability to the plant you are trying to grow.

IMO it's early days to know the possible long term repercussions of either GM or totally organic food. In the meantime I'm avoiding GM foods as much as possible and gardening mostly organically altho we certainly don't eat only organically. That might take some of the fun out of it.

Seems to me anything the big chemical companies are in favor of is likely not in my best interests but maybe I'm just a cynical ol' woman who doesn't have many petro stocks! ;-)

I'm always a bit nervous around people who jump to conclusions and criticize. As an educator, I'm also all in favor of of knowledge, learning, and the free flow of information.

As for composting, GMO's just compost down like everything else. You might have pieces of fish DNA or DNA from another plant variety in the compost at the end. But that's what you would get if you composted the fish or the other plant. All comes out the same in the wash, as they say.

Rain2Fall

Not sure if this was an open question but there's lots of reasons why one would want to grow organically. The health of the soil, plants and animals to begin with that reside in organic gardens. During mid to late summer my garden swarms with bugs yet I lose very little to them. The only problem I have with bugs is getting seedlings to mature after springtime due to slugs.

4 years running I haven't needed any pesticides and I hope it stays that way.

There are gene transplants and modifications happening in every compost heap and mulch layer in the world, not to mention in your own intestines this very moment.

I'm buying that organic tomato because I know what's NOT in it, because I care about the health of our soil and water and farmers, and because it feels right to me.

This is a misstatement of the results. And only a fool can say there is no increased benefit of having no pesticide on your food. Come now.

As for the topic, my 2¢ is there is little if any risk in transferring GMO genes via compost.

Dan

I'm surprised that there's not a lot of concern regarding the decomposition of GMOs, but I guess that's a good thing. If it's true that at the molecular level (or DNA level) transference isn't really an issue, then I can feel more relaxed about it all.

The home composter may be challenged to ensure all of the inputs are properly decomposed. It is largely a volume and management limitation. I would not even think to include GMOs in my home piles; or even on the property. I find it disheartening just knowing it is out there since it will eventually cover the planet.

The margarine, 2 of the salad dressings and a pizza sauce all contained canola oil. I didn't bother checking much else.

All the producers around me grow canola and all of them use a Round-Up Ready seed. So I am pretty confident saying that most products containing canola oil have some GMOs in them.

So if one uses a salad dressing on his/her salad and scrapes some off their plate into their compost bucket, chances are there is some GMO in there.

Now as to the question of composting degrading the GMO, I don't have a clue. I'm going to guess that this type of investigation is still in its infancy so the jury may still be out on that one.

In the meantime, I'm going to keep composting and not sweat it too much at all.

Lloyd

P.S. I didn't understand jeannie7's post at all.

I'm not against GMO as such but I am nervous about it, as some other poster said its really early yet. Nobody really knows what the long term effects are, it'll be decades before we do. Most people don't really think any farther ahead than yesterday...

We buy some organic products, in particular we drink organic milk. Its much more expensive but it TASTES BETTER which makes it worth the price. Once in awhile we'll even treat ourselves with organic whole milk which is almost like drinking cream (the Organic Cow of Vermont brand) and tastes so good with a piece of cake...

Sheesh now I've made myself hungry.