inter-species gene transfer
Elaborate? Now I'm curious too.
Virus inserts itself in species A, accidentally takes a bunch of Dna with it when reproducing. Virus then inserts itself in species B, and leaves the DNA behind. IIRC, large parts of our Dna have viral origins.
On a side note, many people fail to explain why interspecies Dna transfer is a bad thing, even with GMO plants. It's not like GMO Dna is inherently evil or something.
The only legitimate concern is that they implant resistance to one specific occurrence of pesticide so as to be able to weed out the plants where the Dna transfer didn't succeed.
The GMO cross-breeding escape happens all the time. What's so bad about it is that Monsanto can then sue the poor sucker who caught the leaks. It's how they've got to control a scary fraction of the world's food supply.
Find me a source for that.
I only know one such occurrence, and that was when the "poor sucker" deliberatly bought the pesticide they use to separate GMO and non GMO plants. Sprayed them on his fields to separate GMO and non GMO, and clearly intended to use GMO plants further on.
Not that I like Monsanto or anything, but there's a lot of nonsense in the debate.
Now, in many, many cases that might not have been an issue, but with things like the 'edible vaccines' thing or other biosynthesized medical products, you would run the risk of having animals or humans eating it and getting a drug into their system, with stuff like accidental overdoses or drug interactions possibly happening, and it would be a massive bitch to stamp out if it did get out. Which is why everyone is SOOUPER CARFUL with the stuff in Europe, at least.
Why would you even release these plants or bacteria in to the wild? These stay in labs, and generally aren't relevant to the debate about GMO food crops. Hell, I'm pretty sure they fall under a different regulation.
Most of the European carefulness is based on the fact that pesticide resistances are used to separate GMO and non-GMO plants. (Also the fact that GMO plants are sometimes engineered to make pesticides, which could result in immunity amongst pests.)