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Here is some good info. Plenty of information from just about every government and university in the world. Just need to look.

Having said that, we really don't know enough to be certain of the long-term effects. Much more research needs to be done, but companies like Monsanto are forging ahead now, and from what I can tell, with little regard for consequence.

I gotta disagree with that one, because there has been quite a lot of research on GMO crops that have found no significant difference between them and normal crops. They are not known to produce any compounds that they're not supposed to, and the idea that the gene itself will hurt you (which is an argument I have actually seen) is just silly, considering that normal breeding and mutagenesis produces far more altered genes than GM, and besides, your body can handle everything from kepel fruit to kangaroo, and that's a lot more new genes than simple genetic modification. One could make the argument that the Bt protein used in insect resistant GMOs (also used in organic farming) is harmful, but I've never seen a shred of evidence to indicate it.

Could there be long term consequences of eating GMOs? Absolutely. They could kill us all tomorrow for all I know. I can't disprove the possibility that there is some sort of complex interaction via presently unknown mechanisms that will ultimately hurt us. But as Stephen Gould said, 'Apples may start rising tomorrow but such a possibility doesn't merit equal time in physics classrooms.' The smallpox vaccine might have some sort of sort of long term effect, so could cell phone and wifi radiation, but, like GMOs, we have no evidence to indicate that they do, and until there is, I wouldn't really worry about it. Yeah, there have been those 'smoking gun' type studies, they always turn out to be baloney. And keep in mind, when you reject scientific consensus to hastily over a single study, bad things can happen (remember the Wakefield study?). And of course, there is no reason to assume that all GMOs are good, they can be pretty complex when you're running a gene that produces a certain compound in one plant through entirely different pathways, as this potentially harmful GMO demonstrates, but notice that the problem was found and explained. No one has ever found, let alone provided a science based reason for the existence of, and causative agent for the harm that GMOs are occasionally claimed to cause.

Now, had you said ecological long term consequences, that is a much more complex issue, but there, if we use GURTs, genetic use restriction technology, which we are not currently using due to protests from the anti-GMO crowd, that can be kept to a minimum. And of course, there they do not need to be perfect, only a net positive over agriculture without them. For example, they currently provide known ecological benefits, so in the case of this escaped canola, it is not a matter of 'How bad is the canola' but of 'Is this worse than the damage that would be caused to the soil and water and local flora/fauna without GMOs.' I think we still come out ahead, as it isn't like this canola is some sort of 'superweed' or whatever just because it has an extra human inserted gene.

I agree with your first paragraph, just pointing out that human health is one of the least likely areas for GMOs to come back and bite us in the rear.

IF you are concerned about safety, FDA or no, there has been extensive research on it. Very many studies demonstrate no difference between GMOs and non-GM crops, and as a result, the general scientific consensus is that they're safe. Even if we assume Monsanto is influencing the FDA, I doubt they exert the same influence over countless relevant experts. Heck, even countries like Iran and China have developed their own homegrown strains of GMO. Iran made the worlds first Bt rice. Is Monsanto bribing off what one of most anti-US countries in the world?

Those who claim that GMOs are dangerous haven't done a very good job of proving their claims, either. For something to be dangerous, I think we can all agree it must have a reason, yes? Just being GMO is not a valid reason, it must have some sort of chemical compount, not present in the unmodified counterpart, that is dangerous. To date, no such compound from a commercially approved GMO has been identified. No genetic reasoning, no chemical pathways given for the production, and no proven cases of people actually hurt by them. No reason in theory, no evidence in practice. Starfruit and kiwi have presented more problems than GMOs, yet no one protests them. And of course, GMOs must be reviewed on a case by case basis, maybe someday the FDA royally screws up and one that kills people is released , but if it is, there'll be a reason for it. And since there is neither a known reason as to why any of the commercial GMOs would hurt anyone nor evidence that it happens, I guess the FDA just puts them in a catagory similar to Generally Recognized As Safe after the testing has been done.

As for the weeds, that is a very real problem. The thing there is, everyone saw that coming. Even Monsanto said it would happen. The problem was that there are only two traits for herbicide resistance, Starlink and Round-Up Ready, and only Round-Up Ready was extensively used. The problem wasn't overuse, but over-reliance. If there were more approved traits, and people used multiple herbicides, it would much more difficult for a weed to develop resistance. Even if it were to acquire the resistance through horizontal gene transfer, if there were multiple genes confirming resistance to multiple compounds, it is still very unlikely. These weeds aren't really 'superweeds' by the way, just regular weeds that are resistant to the most popular herbicide, so they can still be taken out by other chemicals and methods, but still, this never should have been allowed to happen in the first place. I don't know why it wasn't done, why those traits weren't pushed out there, maybe the FDA was lax in approving them, maybe activists protested, maybe the companies just didn't care, whatever, but yes, someone screwed the pooch on that one.

Here are some. Now, is there any credible (key word) evidence that GMOs do cause harm? And if so, why? What is the causative agent, the novel protein produced in the GMO, but not in the conventional crop? What is the chemical pathway taken to produce that compound? What is the genetic reason for it being produced like that? Why does it only happen in man made GMOs, and not in natural, uncontrolled horizontal gene transfers? Not a single one of those very critical questions have been answered for a single commercially approved crop by the any of the anti-GMO guys. There's something to be said for requiring something be shown reasonably safe, but there's also something to be said for perpetual goalpost shifting (one more study and a few more years!) requiring that a negative be proven (prove they aren't dangerous) and falsifiability (prove that they will never ever, via any presently unknown mechanisms, be dangerous).

It's funny that you mention that, because I've always figured it would go quite a ways to proving creationism if organisms had a built in anti-tampering device, that if altering the genes directly always produced something that was a dangerous. I don't know how you're post got modded troll, because it is spot on. Monsanto pricks? Sure. GMO ecologically damaging? Potentially. That's a very complex area, and you've also got to consider the differences in damage between an escaped gene and the amount of damage that they can prevent. Agriculture is very damaging to the environment. If, say, a nitrogen use efficiency, or pest resistance, or increased output trait can offset any other harm GMOs cause, it might be worth it. GMOs dangerous to your health? There is more evidence to indicate that Elvis is still alive. Genetic engineering, like any applied biology, is complicated. For example, in China, the adopted a GMO strain of cotton, stopped spraying pesticides, which improved insect biodiversity, which meant a once minor pest became a major one. These are certainty interesting times with thins technology, and times they are a' changin. And one thing we don't need is demonizing them based on unscientific fearmongering. The claims of GMOs causing health problems have no merit whatsoever, and it doesn't do any good for any one to make shit up. It is a problem that so many people are letting their strange ideology trump science and critical skeptical thinking.

Actually, the thing that showed up on /. a while back alleging organ damage from GMOs is what was debunked. The people who 'debunk' the 'myth' that genetic engineering doesn't give you [insert disease here] are usually the same people who, in their next post, wax about the virtues of homeopathy. As far as science is concerned, no horticulturist or biologist I've ever met could find a shred of evidence that GMOs posses any health risks. Plenty suggesting otherwise though. People claim that Monsanto is covering up all the proof that GMOs are dangerous. Conspiracies are not an arguments, they're a denialism tactic, an ultimate defense against evidence. What, I'm supposed to believe that Monsanto is bribing off the vast majority of relevant horticulturists, botanists, agronomists, microbiologists, geneticists, zoologists, ect in the UK, France, Germany, Denmark, Italy, Switzerland, Israel, Egypt, South Africa, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zeland, Mexico, Canada, Brazil, ect.? Bullshit. Heck, scientists in Iran and China, the last places an American company is going to take over, have developed their own strains of GMO.

Really, I'm sad to see tripe like this on Slashdot. Anti-vaccine=anti-science. Anti-GW=anti-science. Anti-evolution=anti-science. Anti-Genetic engineering=oh so enlightened and wise. I can't believe that so many people have fallen for the agricultural equivalent of vaccine denialism. It's a little disheartening.

And sure, let's be fair, there's always the possibility that a GMO could be harmful. Here's one that was. But that does not imply that they are all harmful. In that case, they found the compound, the harm's causative agent, that was potentially harmful, the chemical pathways that produced that protein, they found the problem, and moved on. How many anti-GMO cranks can name a single causative agent for harm in an commercial GMO? Zero. Never happened. Not once. So, they fall back on vague appeals to long term health, although never say when we will have enough proof for them. Sound familiar? Like people who only want 'one more' transitional fossil? You can make these vague claims about anything, I could claim that the smallpox vaccine has some sort of crazy complex intergenerational side effect that will kill us all in a few years, and you can't disprove that (ain't non falsifiability grand?), but we have no evidence to suggest that is the case. Same with GMOs. I can't disprove that they'll kill us all, but that burden of proof doesn't rest on me. It is like saying that pork should be banned until we know that it won't cause eternal damnation. It's not a very rational position.

We really need to do for science based agriculture what was done for other areas that skeptics espouse, like science based medicine. Sure, Monsanto can be pricks, but I don't care if the CEO eats a bowl of kittens for breakfast everyday, that says nothing of the science behind GMOs, and one company does not own an entire branch of science. More people need to learn about the science, not the weaselly fearmongering you see from NGOs like the Union of Concerned Scientists [sic] or Greenpeace or the Organic Consumer's Union. The actual scientists have done the research, the evidence is in, GMOs are safe, they are effective, and they are the next big thing in agriculture. We need more people to be more aware, more scientifically literate, less magically thinking, about plant science, and to me as a one who studies horticultural, seeing so many poeple, on this site o

I already saw that. I wasn't impressed enough to even remember it. Considering that A) wasn't long ago that the Russian Ministry of Health was blaming swine flu on GMOs B) that the vast body of current evidence says GMOs are, in general, safe, C) we've been eating GMOs for years and there has never once been a single human health problem linked conclusively to GMOs, and D) they were, as usual, unable to find a causative agent or a chemical pathway for the creation of said agent for these problems (nope, just happens cause their genetically modified by man. A billion years of mutations and natural foreign viral DNA insertions is dandy, but insert one single gene in a lab and it's deadly. It can be done.), color me skeptical until I see more details (I can't find anything about their methodology of the line of GE soy they used) or preferably, someone a bit more high profile doing it.

Either way, one study vs the whole of science...it might be accurate for whatever line they used, it isn't impossible, but I'm doubtful. Here's a whole bunch of studies proving homeopathy works; do you, in light of the whole of scientific opinion, question those studies, all of them, and have skeptical suspicions, or do you accept that massively diluted stuff that's really just water is an effective way of treating disease? Same thing here. Ok, there' s yet another study 'proving' that GMOs are going to kill you. So what? That doesn't amount to jack, at least not yet, and the burden of proof rests on them to prove their findings to the world, not for someone to prove them wrong, and I'm not going to assume they're right until poo-pooed by various regulation agencies (like what happened with the French corn study). Remember the last time a big scare story broke? Bloke by the name of Andrew Wakefield had a study too, and tons of people believed it without waiting for the scientific community to confirm his findings. Remember how that one worked out?

I'm not trying to accuse you of crankery here by mentioning the homeopaths and the anti-vaxxers, but I point those out to draw the similarities between alternative medicine promoters & vaccine denialists and genetic engineering denialists, and to say that patient skepticism is a virtue.

I already saw that. I wasn't impressed enough to even remember it. Considering that A) wasn't long ago that the Russian Ministry of Health was blaming swine flu on GMOs B) that the vast body of current evidence says GMOs are, in general, safe, C) we've been eating GMOs for years and there has never once been a single human health problem linked conclusively to GMOs, and D) they were, as usual, unable to find a causative agent or a chemical pathway for the creation of said agent for these problems (nope, just happens cause their genetically modified by man. A billion years of mutations and natural foreign viral DNA insertions is dandy, but insert one single gene in a lab and it's deadly. It can be done.), color me skeptical until I see more details (I can't find anything about their methodology of the line of GE soy they used) or preferably, someone a bit more high profile doing it.

Either way, one study vs the whole of science...it might be accurate for whatever line they used, it isn't impossible, but I'm doubtful. Here's a whole bunch of studies proving homeopathy works; do you, in light of the whole of scientific opinion, question those studies, all of them, and have skeptical suspicions, or do you accept that massively diluted stuff that's really just water is an effective way of treating disease? Same thing here. Ok, there' s yet another study 'proving' that GMOs are going to kill you. So what? That doesn't amount to jack, at least not yet, and the burden of proof rests on them to prove their findings to the world, not for someone to prove them wrong, and I'm not going to assume they're right until poo-pooed by various regulation agencies (like what happened with the French corn study). Remember the last time a big scare story broke? Bloke by the name of Andrew Wakefield had a study too, and tons of people believed it without waiting for the scientific community to confirm his findings. Remember how that one worked out?

I'm not trying to accuse you of crankery here by mentioning the homeopaths and the anti-vaxxers, but I point those out to draw the similarities between alternative medicine promoters & vaccine denialists and genetic engineering denialists, and to say that patient skepticism is a virtue.

Don't tell Greenpeace! They'll declare these resistant hybrids as 'evil' and claim these 'frankenfoods' will destroy all humanity!

Not like they haven't before....

Apparentlybiottech == Montsanto under any circumstance.

About the organic spinach: I'ld like you to be aware that this myth was deliberately spread by people who think they have something to fear from organic food.

Earlier, Dennis Avery from the Hudson Institute carefully wrote misleading stories on E.coli and organic food, which was based on deliberately mispresented research.
Even though it has been debunked (http://www.organicconsumers.org/Organic/ecolimyth s.cfm) he is still spreading the rumour because people tend to believe him.

With the recent spinach problem biotechnology apolegetes (AgBio http://www.agbioworld.org/newsletter_wm/index.php? caseid=archive&newsid=2605 [agbioworld.org]) were very quick to spread the rumor that it was about organic spinach, which afaik is also a construction of them.
I tried to politely suggest to them to also spread the news that it wasn't organic after all, which they simply ignored.

So organic==good.

Saying ancient breeding is like g.e. and then, ignoring the differences, say it is ipse facto safe is a logical fallacy.

"I'd bet that 99.99% of food-related fatalities over the past 30 years have been due to natural pathogens (or choking). Care for some organic spinach?"

Ok what will be bet on?
Anyway a bet is pointless as it is not tested for GE.

About the organic spinach: I'ld like you to be aware that this myth was deliberately spread by people who think they have something to fear from organic food.

Earlier, Dennis Avery from the Hudson Institute carefully wrote misleading stories on E.coli and organic food, which was based on deliberately mispresented research.
Even though it has been debunked (http://www.organicconsumers.org/Organic/ecolimyth s.cfm) he is still spreading the rumour because people tend to believe him.

With the recent spinach problem biotechnology apolegetes (AgBio http://www.agbioworld.org/newsletter_wm/index.php? caseid=archive&newsid=2605) were very quick to spread the rumor that it was about organic spinach, which afaik is also a construction of them.
I tried to politely suggest to them to also spread the news that it wasn't organic after all, which they simply ignored.

Think independently.

In the longer term perspective, a recent expert study estimated that the world is approaching the limits of global food production capacity based on present technologies. Its most optimistic projection suggests that a doubling of food production by 2050 might be technically feasible, and this could feed 7.8 billion people if grain is largely used as human food and not for animals. A likely higher level of population growth, or a failure of sufficient commitment to increase food supplies around the world, will create severe problems for a major part of the world population (Kendall and Pimentel, 1994). The pessimistic assumptions seem more likely, as present per capita food production is stagnating if not declining, and some crops may be close to biological and environmental limits. Already 700 million people experience endemic hunger, not counting those added by natural disasters (Serageldin, 1995).

Further,

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) expects the world's population to grow to more than 8 billion by 2030. The FAO projects that global food production must increase by 60 percent to accommodate the estimated population growth, close nutrition gaps, and allow for dietary changes over the next three decades. Food charity alone simply cannot eradicate hunger. Increased supply--with the help of tools like bioengineering --is crucial.

Last year Ethiopia's population grew by 2.7%; according to this article: 'Most years, Ethiopia has to depend on some level of food aid as it rarely grows enough to feed the whole population.' The reliefweb article also states: 'many impoverished rural families say they have no choice but to have large families to help raise their incomes.' This strongly suggests that poverty is a vicious circle: because people are poor and famine-stricken they have more children; which leads to even greater pressure on food production; which, at its non-GM present state, is unable to answer with requisite increases in the amount it yields; which leads to even greater poverty; and so on and on and on. A way to break that vicious circle would be to provide people with the means to farm their own food locally and with better chances of success. In their article Technology That Will Save Billions From Starvation Prakash and Conko write:

The productivity gains from G.M. crops, as well as improved use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, allowed the world's farmers to double global food output during the last 50 years, on roughly the same amount of land, at a time when global population rose more than 80 percent. Without these improvements in plant and animal genetics and other scientific developments, known as the Green Revolution, we would today be farming on every square inch of arable land to produce the same amount of food, destroying hundreds of millions of acres of pristine wilderness in the process.

It is estimated that Vitamin A deficiency leads to some 1,000,000 children dying and some additional 300,000 being struck by blindless every year. According to the WHO between 100 and 140 million children are vitamin A deficient and between 250,000 to 500,000 children per year become blind due to Vitamin A deficiency. If, as Patrick Moore says, 'adding a daffodil gene to rice in order to produce a genetically modified strain of rice can prevent half a million children from going