Bananas Have No Sex Life
By Trent Loos, High Plains Journal
03:15 PM
Without a sex life, bananas are the fourth largest staple in the world. Entire civilizations rely on bananas for subsistence. The livelihoods of half a billion people depend upon the banana, yet bananas have a looming secret.
They are the result of vegetative propagation rather than pollination. All of the minor varieties of cultivated bananas are essentially sterile, genetically uniform clones. The banana varieties that do exist have come about not through the normal process of genetic shuffling that occurs during sexual reproduction, but by mutations within a clone that are vegetatively propagated by taking cuttings or “suckers” growing from the base of the plant.
There is, in fact, nothing very natural about the banana, which would have remained an obscure plant confined to somewhere in India or Malaysia had it not been for the Stone Age farmer who took a fancy to the fruit of its sterile mutant plant and propagated the first cutting from one of the suckers.
How the banana has gotten away without sex for so many thousands of years is 100 percent the result of science, technology and the human hand. Conversely, wild bananas do pollinate their flowers–having the botanical equivalent of sex–and their fruit is packed full of peppercorn-hard seeds which render them inedible.
I marvel at the number of people who will launch into a mouth-foaming tirade over biotechnology or even cloning in modern agriculture while eating a banana. Complete ignorance, I say.
It seems as though in the past couple of weeks many of the people I meet in my travels have voiced their concerns about our ability to feed an ever-growing population. If we simply take the time to learn about the lack of danger that such technologies offer to humans and the planet alike, these fears about feeding the planet would disappear.
Enter one of the largest hypocrites in today’s food business: Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream. They have recently launched a website presenting a tainted view of cloned dairy cattle.
First of all, even though FDA recently approved cloned animals for the purpose of producing meat, milk and eggs, the number of cloned animals in production will be nearly non-existent. Yet, fear-mongering, science-rejecting Ben & Jerry’s uses this opportunity as a marketing ploy to cast a shadow of doubt on the safety of cloned dairy cows. In fact, their website recently stated:
Ben & Jerry’s, which has long stood firm against the use of hormones that lead cows to produce more milk, doesn’t think that using cloned animals to make milk and meat is a good idea. They reject science because in their words the “yuck” factor, as in, “yuck, I want my meat grown on a farm, not in a lab.” Animals that are genetically modified are obviously a different issue, but clones-genetic copies of existing animals-might not produce milk that’s any different from what comes out of a happy organic heifer.
First of all, a cow that does not use hormones to produce milk is a dead cow. Naturally occurring hormones are involved in the milk production of all mammals, including humans. Secondly, cloned animals pose zero risk to humans and have the potential for tremendous opportunities.
What about when the day comes that a certain cow is found to be resistant to food-borne pathogens and the cloning of that cow could improve the overall safety of all dairy foods? Is cloning still a bad idea?
Even more importantly, I see that on the Ben & Jerry’s website one of their featured flavors is Banana Split. Since we have determined that all bananas have been cloned since the Stone Age, why aren’t they equally concerned about the banana portion of their ice cream?
Could it be that it doesn’t really give them a controversial niche to fill, in the minds of frightened consumers who are led to believe that they have to buy Ben & Jerry’s overpriced products just to keep their kids safe?
If the fear-mongering, profiteering non-governmental organizations would not continue to stymie science and technology, there is no question about whether or not we could continue to feed an ever-growing global population. But when food companies not only reject technology but then turn it into a marketing ploy and attempt to create a niche, it only works against sustainable food production.
Finally, Ben & Jerry’s has every right not to use milk from cows that have been administered additional BST or even from a cloned animal. Equally, so do I, as an American consumer, have the right to say “No, thank you” to their products, as I prefer to purchase my ice cream from a supplier who actually implements real “green policies” instead of just using them to lure in unsuspecting do-gooders hoping to save the planet. And make mine a double dip!