User avatar
Albert_136
Full Member
Posts: 33
Joined: Thu Mar 23, 2017 1:51 pm
Location: Nevada (Sunset 2b)

Composting GMOs

Just curious. Age and health have me beyond doing any composting.

But I got to wondering. If one composts a GMO is the finished product certifiably "organic"?

User avatar
rainbowgardener
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 25279
Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 6:04 pm
Location: TN/GA 7b

Depends. There's a huge variety of GMO's, depends on what the modification is and what its purpose is. Some plants have insecticide engineered in. Most common is Bt (bacillus thuringiensis), which is an organic insecticide anyway, so maybe OK. But scientists have found that super wide spread Bt use like this is breeding resistant organisms and they are finding Bt toxin polluting waterways, with unknown effect on fish and other aquatic life. Since the synthetic insecticides are not organic or natural, they probably can't induce plants to produce them.

The other most common GMO in plants is Round-Up resistance. This just makes the plant more resistant to the effects of RoundUp, so they can spray their fields with it, to control weeds, without killing their crops. I don't see why this would be bad in your compost pile.

User avatar
digitS'
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 3925
Joined: Sun Sep 26, 2010 1:10 pm
Location: ID/WA! border

Unless the herbicide resistant plants have been recently sprayed with an herbicide, RainbowGardener. If herbicides can pass through livestock and their manure can contaminate compost, plenty of evidence of that, then herbicide treated plants shouldn't be used when making compost. Of course, the next stage of the argument is whether they should be used as food for humans or livestock.

As far as regulations for organic certification, a quick search came up with this after a 2016 federal court ruling: "Until NOP issues a final rule, CCOF’s residue testing program will continue to focus primarily on pesticides and GMOs in finished crops/products and verification of compliance." That is CCOF (California Certified Organic Farmers) - LINK

Good to see you posting, Albert.

Steve

User avatar
applestar
Mod
Posts: 30514
Joined: Thu May 01, 2008 7:21 pm
Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)

I was looking up analysis for cottonseed meal and came across this. I couldn’t find a good excerpt to cover everything, but earlier in the article, it said due to possible pesticide residue contamination, cottonseed meal must be composted FIRST.

https://www.mofga.org/Publications/The-M ... Fertilizer
Cottonseed as Fertilizer
Far Better Options Exist

...

Note that this statement would not be true for genetically engineered cotton, which expresses the gene for the Bacillus thuringiensis bacterial toxin in all plant parts. Thus, the second NOP restriction cited by Sideman: that cottonseed be demonstrated to be free of genetically engineered material.



Return to “Organic Gardening Forum”