Organ Damage In Rats From Monsanto GMO Corn

jenningsthecat writes "A study published in December 2009 in the International Journal of Biological Sciences found that three varieties of Monsanto genetically-modified corn caused damage to the liver, kidneys, and other organs of rats. One of the corn varieties was designed to tolerate broad-spectrum herbicides, (so-called 'Roundup-ready' corn), while the other two contain bacteria-derived proteins that have insecticide properties. The study made use of Monsanto's own raw data. Quoting from the study's 'Conclusions' section: 'Our analysis highlights that the kidneys and liver as particularly important on which to focus such research as there was a clear negative impact on the function of these organs in rats consuming GM maize varieties for just 90 days.' Given the very high prevalence of corn in processed foods, this could be a real ticking time bomb. And with food manufacturers not being required by law to declare GMO content, I think I'll do my best to avoid corn altogether. Pass the puffed rice and pour me a glass of fizzy water!"

Comments

Oh God, not the bourbon.

[Doches]

If it's going to damage my liver, I'm switching to scotch. I'm sorry, Jack, but I just can't take the chance...

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[snowgirl]

If it's going to damage my liver, I'm switching to scotch. I'm sorry, Jack, but I just can't take the chance...

Unfortunately, your scotch and bourbon is likely fortified with a corn product.

The kind of "duh" think that I'm thinking about here is that, if this corn produces these insecticide-like chemicals, one should have to show that it is non-toxic in humans...

One could feasibly find a way to splice in genes that would make the product lethal to humans... so if you're "adding" something to the corn, it should be controlled the same as any other food additive.

Although, people wishing to avoid all GM foods, corn itself has been so selectively bred that it doesn't even resemble its nearest neighbors. It's even moribund if we ever disappear, because its seeds over compete and kill each other off. If you want to talk about crazy amounts of GM, take something that's essentially a grass, and turn it into corn.

Not like corn provides all its nutritional value unless its treated with a relatively strong-ish base anyways... lime is what's mostly used to break up the proteins on the kernel to produce vitamin B12...

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[Wonko the Sane]

,

The kind of "duh" think that I'm thinking about here is that, if this corn produces these insecticide-like chemicals, one should have to show that it is non-toxic in humans...

That's the key: the problem is not the fact that this plant was genetically modified, but rather the specific proteins that it was engineered to produce.

This distinction will be lost on millions of reactionaries.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[flitty]

This distinction will be lost on millions of reactionaries.

And the distinction is unnecessary if you just make sure the food is safe for long term use.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[ArcherB]

That's the key: the problem is not the fact that this plant was genetically modified, but rather the specific proteins that it was engineered to produce.

This distinction will be lost on millions of reactionaries.

Sad that this was modded down because, unfortunately, it's true. The call will be "GM food kills", not "research has shown that some proteins that can be grown in highly modified corn caused organ damage in laboratory rats."

Actually, it sounds like the system worked to me.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[Narpak]

Unfortunately, your scotch and bourbon is likely fortified with a corn product.

Bourbon is primarily made from maize corn, while scotch is primarily barley. This is why it is important to ensure that your scotch is pure single malt!

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[Truekaiser]

but due to monsanto's lobbying, they get to have their cake and eat it too. they lobby that their gm corn is 'different' enough that it requires patent protection, BUT they then turn around and lobby the fda(or have their former employee's that work there) declare it no different then normal corn so it gets the 'generally assumed as safe' status meaning it is exempt from special regulation and is treated by the fda as non-gma corn.

Selective breeding though is a different process, they took a already existing trait and only let the seeds from the plants that had it germinat, if the trait produced something else they did not want they either tried to select against it or started over. gm corn is taking a gene from a completely different organism, in this case gene's from Bactria that gained resistance to their weed killer or from a organism that produces natural(as in not artificially produced) insecticide and shoot it into the genome of the corn or another plant with micro gold spheres as well as chemical's that not only turn the gene on but smash the switch that turns the gene on and off in the on position.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[jedidiah]

Centuries of selective breeding by it's very nature also includes centuries
of testing on humans. The pace and nature of the tinkering is such that
everything is self-governing and self-correcting. Once you have a megacorp
that can buy entire national governments and generally push everyone else
accelerating the process you really have very little to keep the process from
running amok.

Earth is a production system with no backups.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[ArcherB]

This distinction will be lost on millions of reactionaries.

And the distinction is unnecessary if you just make sure the food is safe for long term use.

No. It won't matter. There are safe GM foods that have been feeding people for hundreds of years, but it only takes one to go wrong that will cause even the safe GM foods to banned. There was a case where an African country turned down free GM food and allowed their people to starve because some hippie-eco-group convinced the government that GM food was poison.

Also, note that the "pesticide" in question is Bt toxin. Bt stands for bacillus thuringiensis. Bt is used in mosquito dunks, pesticide sprays and several other applications. It is not just considered safe for humans, animals and beneficial insects, but is even considered to be ORGANIC! You can spray your crops all day and night with millions of gallons of Bt and not lose your organic certification.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[wall0159]

Maybe these "reactionaries" aren't as ill-informed as you think. Maybe at least some of them are aware that in an ideal world, with ethical and moral corporations performing proper testing on products prior to release (and with unbiased, independent regulatory bodies ensuring proper standards are met), there would be little to fear in GM foods. Maybe they aren't that naive...

Nah, I'm sure they're just a bunch of ignorant, tree-hugging hippies.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[tacarat]

There are safe GM foods that have been feeding people for hundreds of years, but it only takes one to go wrong that will cause even the safe GM foods to banned.

I think the issue is that the old fashion way of genetic modification, or selective breeding, is more tried, true and gradual. Gene splicing and such, however, has more potential for "now that's interesting" events. Given that we're always finding new things that are good or bad in our foods, this is an understandable concern.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[flitty]

Nice Link, which explained that they turned down the Free GM food because they would lose 50% of the market they export to by having GM food (European Union) and feared the so called "terminator" seeds that give no seeds for replanting.

I'm not a GM food reactionary, I just think that as a policy, the only thing we can do to fix these sort of safety problems is regulate the safety of GM foods, regardless of what genes are modified.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[evilbessie]

Mostly as Scotch comes from Scotland (if it doesn't it's not Scotch but some other whisk(e)y), and in the UK and Europe as a whole we are not fans of GMOs made in labs so if you are drinking Scotch I would guess there is hardly any GMOs if any at all.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[berashith]

the question isnt is it safe, the question is how do we make it safe. Obviously, if the corn is modified to not be harmed by chemicals that kill plants, then the solution is to modify people to not be harmed by eating the corn. This way, the deer and other wild population that infiltrate our corn fields will be eliminated along with the weeds that interfere with our farms. Dominion is awesome!

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[Simon80]

You have made the mistaken assumption that the techniques used to modify the corn and other plants works exactly as well in practice as it should in theory. The proteins that GMO foods are engineered to produce are already regulated as a food additive, but that's not enough to conclude that such products are safe. Unfortunately, Monsanto lobbied hard to ensure that they wouldn't have to prove the overall safety of the GM plants they were selling, just the safety of the specific proteins they were introducing. They've also done everything they can to ensure that studies that are critical of their products are suppressed. Without any new coverage of science specifically showing that their products are unsafe, they have successfully convinced the public (i.e. you) that their products should be safe in theory. "The World According to Monsanto" should be required viewing for people participating in this debate, it's a documentary about Monsanto's lobbying and litigation tactics, which have a history that goes further back than GM foods. For a much shorter read, see Árpád Pusztai

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[mcgrew]

There are safe GM foods that have been feeding people for hundreds of years

Genetic engineering is in its infancy. Genetic engineering is NOT the same as crossbreeding or selective breeding; with genetic engineering you directly insert parts of one DNA strand into another. They've only been able to do this for a decade or two.

You can't make one strain of corn toxic by breeding it with another strain of corn. You can make a strain of corn toxic by inserting DNA from a toxic species that corn couldn't mate with. They've inserted human DNA into pigs; that's genetic engineering. You couldn't mate with a pig, though. If you could it would be crossbreeding. Again, nothing similar at all.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[Anonymous Coward]

But selective breeding is an entirely different beast than the GMO process. Selective breeding allows corn to vary according to the "natural" laws of the corn itself. In GMO corn, companies have actually found a way to break down the barriers that the corn would naturally have to prevent the type of variation introduced. The DNA is altered in such a way that could NEVER happen naturally even after 1,000 years of naturally occurring variation. This at the least is a major cause for concern. Even more concerning is that so little research has been done on the effects of various GMO foods on the human body. Maybe it just gives us more gas. But even, then it would be nice to know.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[Exitar]

Companies must tell you if a food they sell contains grapes, raisins or hemlock, but if a food contains corn, they're not forced to tell you if it's "natural" or GM.
So, unless you're an ancient greek philosopher, you can choose to not introduce hemlock in your body but you haven't the choice to not introduce a possibly harmful GM substance but only the "natural" one.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[IndustrialComplex]

Scotch has to be made in Scotland, otherwise it can't be called "Scotch". See here [wikipedia.org]

In the UK.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[wall0159]

To put it simply, maybe the "reactionaries" have nothing against GM in principle, but are reacting against it because of outcomes (eg. toxic foods, genetic pollution, etc) that are inevitable given our current state of economic and political corruption.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[chomsky68]

Also, note that the "pesticide" in question is Bt toxin. Bt stands for bacillus thuringiensis. Bt is used in mosquito dunks, pesticide sprays and several other applications. It is not just considered safe for humans, animals and beneficial insects, but is even considered to be ORGANIC! You can spray your crops all day and night with millions of gallons of Bt and not lose your organic certification.

I disagree with you. When Bt is sprayed it breaks down and that is why there is a 2 weeks 'cool down' period before it is allowed for human consumption. In this case Bt is delivered to your system as is therefore it is not the same as spraying your crops with it.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[mary_will_grow]

So "The System Worked", uhh, how?

1. If you RTFA you'd see that Greenpeace lawyers had to go to great lengths and fight a mess of court battles to get at the data that shows this problem.
2. This corn is out in the food supply, and its not impossible that cross-pollination/etc is causing it to spread to other food sources.
3. I have no way of determining in the supermarket if either of these 3 varieties, or varieties which include these proteins, are present in the package of corn I'm about to buy.

You GM fanboys are fighting a straw-man. Folks like me don't hate the idea. I'd like to end world hunger. I'd like my car to run off sugar made from some superplant. What I don't want is some corporation like Monsanto to have no oversight, conflicts of interest all around (HELLO? They _fought_ the release of this information. They'd rather you die from liver disease than see a negative impact on their profits. Why the hell are you coming to their defense?) poisoning our food supply because they didn't want to spend the money or the effort to do it RIGHT.

Doesn't it bug you that all those left wing GM-hating nutjobs were RIGHT? This is _exactly_ what we feared would happen. Its not the idea of GM we hate. Its Monsanto. And You. And all the other idiots who don't take a second to think about what MIGHT happen if poor oversight is mixed with singleminded financial motivation.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[daem0n1x]

in an ideal world, with ethical and moral corporations

In this kind of world there would be no OGMs because there wouldn't be corporations inventing and pushing things that nobody needs.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[VShael]

This distinction will be lost on millions of reactionaries.

Maybe, but it's not lost on me or the people in my social circle who protested the so-called Frankenfoods.
Basically, it's not GM manipulation of a crop that I have a problem with. It's Monsanto.

In 1997, it was alleged a local FOX affiliate cooperated with Monsanto in suppressing an investigative report on the health risks associated with Monsanto's bovine growth hormone product, Posilac. Posilac, a synthetic hormone used to increase milk production in cows, while banned in many first-world countries, is used in the United States.

Steve Wilson and Jane Akre disagreed with the inclusion of material in the story they felt was slanted or misleading. Both reporters were eventually fired for not being pro-Monsanto in their reporting. Wilson and Akre sued. The court held that Fox News had no obligation to report truthfully, and the First Amendment protects their right to lie. Therefore, the court held that firing a reporter for refusing to lie is not actionable under the whistleblower statute. The story can be seen in the feature length documentary film The Corporation.

You show me a corporation that makes GM foods, ethically, and I'll support them to hell and back. But Monsanto? Not a chance.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[jabuzz]

Actually in the European Union and associated trading partners.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[Will.Woodhull]

Actually, it sounds like the system worked to me.

And if you learn next year that you have some liver damage consistent with the Monsanto Syndrome, will you still feel the same way?

Since I have a mild intolerance to high fructose corn syrup (it, or something closely associated with it, contributes to my exercise induced asthma attacks which in turn make my bicycling much less fun), for several years I have been scanning ingredients labels for the word "corn". Some kind of processed corn is used in a surprisingly wide variety of foods, and is often near the top of the ingredients list. In the USA, much of this comes from the huge acreages of Monsanto owned agribusiness farms that would be growing one of Monsanto's GM corns, which would then be processed through one of Monsanto's operations before being sold in railroad tanker lots to Kraft, General Foods, Coca Cola, Kellog, Pepsi, Tyson, Little Debby, Hostess, etc. Fortunately the problem that I know about is limited to just HFCS so I don't avoid all corn products and can still eat a lot of stuff from the shelves of Safeway. I'm just pickier about which brands of hamburger relish, salsa, and crackers I buy.

But if there is anything unhealthy about Monsanto's corn operations, it could potentially affect all USA citizens who were not zealous in avoiding corn (because of severe allergies). That would probably be more than 90% of the USA population. Considering the size of the potential public health problem, I don't think there is sufficient oversight of Monsanto's operations, including its GM corn.

BTW, Monsanto gets a nice chunk of cash from the Federal Guvmint as a subsidy for growing corn. Although to be fair it should be noted that through their lobbying and campaign contributions they do return a lot of that to the political process....

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[Bengie]

Corn has always been GM. That's how corn was made in the first place, corn is not naturally occurring. I felt this went along with your "GM corn" comment.. :p

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[Artuir]

Isn't the entire goal of crossbreeding or selective breeding to alter the genetics of the result in cases like these?

How is that not genetic engineering? It would seem to me it's just a crude form of a control method for doing just that.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[TeXMaster]

"This is _exactly_ what we feared would happen."

And what "_exactly_" is that, exactly? Do you really think they want to kill humans?

It's more like they don't care, to the point of criminally trying to withold the information that proves that their products are health hazards.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[pedestrian crossing]

Do you really think they want to kill humans?

With a corporation, it isn't a matter of wanting to kill humans. It is simply a matter of accounting.

If the cost of killing humans is much less than the expected profit, then it is the corporation's duty to kill humans, since it is the corporation's duty to maximize profits for the shareholders. That's the whole purpose of a corporation, to maximize profits for the shareholders.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[GargamelSpaceman]

Um, yes you can make a nontoxic species toxic by breeding. I'm thinking of the case of the insecitcide averse organic farmer who selected the best least insect damaged zucchinis each year for replanting until one year he had a quite pristine looking zuchinni crop. Except that when he ate them, they proved toxic. He'd been effectively breeding for insect resistance which meant breeding for higher and higher quantities of a toxin naturally present in zuchinni. Eventually it reached levels toxic to humans.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[Demonantis]

They don't care as long as it does not cut into their profits. That is all they are concerned about. The way you ask it makes it sound like they are selling guns knowing full outright that they will be used to commit crimes of terror. They are going out of the way to kill people. Whats interesting is that we don't know as much as we want to think we know about GMOs. It is all a lot of hand waving.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[StuartHankins]

They seem more concerned with profits than the effects of their decisions on humans.

So maybe their goal isn't to kill humans, but if it's a side effect of a profitable product, they don't seem to care. Fighting the release of the information just makes it look like a cover-up.

Haven't we all seen movies where some misguided soul creates a monster, which has to be dealt with by some third party? Ergo this.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[networkBoy]

you are correct.
hybridizing is genetic engineering at its most basic level. However, it is inherently safer as mother nature puts limits on how far you can go before you fail to get offspring (corn + poison ivy), or the offspring is sterile (horse + zebra).
-nB

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[tehcyder]

You can't crossbreed fish so they glow in the dark

No, you just have to keep feeding them that radium each morning.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[BrokenHalo]

Selective breeding is certainly well tried and gradual, but "true" is misleading. All you are doing is leading evolution in a direction of your choosing, rather than allowing natural selection to take its course. But you're right in that no amount of evolutionary genetic recombination would result in the spontaneous production of Bt toxin in our lifetime.

It's worth noting that this is entirely different from the so-called "Roundup Ready" crops which by definition encourage the farmer to use potentially toxic doses of the herbicide. Bt toxin is a pesticide, and the degree of its expression in GM crops is not yet entirely predictable.

When I first started studying biotechnology 10 years ago, Roundup was commonly regarded as being no more toxic than coffee. We have since learned otherwise, and Monsanto's crude sledgehammer approach to farming practice has gone a long way towards discrediting the biotechnology industry in general.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[Syntroxis]

So true about the corporatists. The corporation can do no wrong. Look at the suicide gene which has been developed in many food crops developed by Monsanto and other seed giants. "...Through natural pollination, their crop may now become partially pollinated by Monsanto's GM corn through no fault of their own. Now they are selling GM food without their knowledge. Furthermore, the crop seed that they may be holding bad to plant for next years crop may be completely sterile, which would have a devastating effect on the following years crop for that small farmer...." ahref=http://thegldc.com/blog/tag/monsanto/rel=url2html-26299http://thegldc.com/blog/tag/monsanto/>
Corporations like Monsanto are suing small farmers all over: "The odds are clearly stacked against the farmer: Monsanto has an annual budget of $10 million dollars and a staff of 75 devoted solely to investigating and prosecuting farmers. The largest recorded judgment made thus far in favor of Monsanto as a result of a farmer lawsuit is $3,052,800.00. Total recorded judgments granted to Monsanto for lawsuits amount to $15,253,602.82. Farmers have paid a mean of $412,259.54 for cases with recorded judgments". ahref=http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Goliath_and_David:_Monsanto's_Legal_Battles_against_Farmersrel=url2html-26299http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Goliath_and_David:_Monsanto's_Legal_Battles_against_Farmers>
Unfortunately, the cat is out of the bag and GMO has crossed over into non-gmo strains.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[Darkmane]

You couldn't mate with a pig, though. If you could it would be crossbreeding.

It would also be ugly as hell.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[Logic and Reason]

Companies must tell you if a food they sell contains grapes, raisins or hemlock, but if a food contains corn, they're not forced to tell you if it's "natural" or GM.

Then buy products that do specify whether they contain GM components. If there's a product you want that isn't so labeled, try looking online or calling the company. If they won't say, chances are there's GM stuff in the product.

Yeah, that's a pain, but stop pretending that there's no way to avoid consuming something you don't want to consume just because producers aren't required by law to put it on the label. The nice thing about the market is that the more people become concerned about GM stuff, the more companies will start putting that info on their labels, even without being required to.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[DwySteve]

It's worth noting that this is entirely different from the so-called "Roundup Ready" crops which by definition encourage the farmer to use potentially toxic doses of the herbicide.

That's odd, I have heard the exact opposite from farmers. I grew up on a farm and my father still farms. He and many other use GM corn that is 'Roundup Ready'. They love it because it lets them use less herbicide. Before, they had to pick and choose herbicides so that they didn't kill the corn. Got milkweed? Use this one. Water hemp? Sorry, use a different one. This could lead to multiple applications and lots of herbicide being used overall. Even if you use just a little, having to reapply different herbicide several times increases the overall amount.

Now, they apply Roundup once and use much less herbicide than before. It's also much more effective. It's so effective in fact that many farmers have switched to no-till farming methods. This is a tremendous gain because it saves a lot of topsoil. Tilling helps to eliminate weeds so most people practiced it so they could avoid herbicides (they're expensive!). But it didn't quite deliver good yields. My dad used to say 'No-till is easy. No-till, no-crop, no check!'. Now he uses it and swears by it. You used to see so much dust kicked up on a windy day that you thought you'd suffocate. Whenever there was a flood the runoff was black - that was our topsoil going away.

But thanks to no-till and Roundup-ready corn we are saving the topsoil and using overall fewer chemicals to grow our food. This is a tremendous win for environmentalists. It's too bad they got caught up in anti-GMO fever.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[Rich.Miller.6]

With a corporation, it isn't a matter of wanting to kill humans. It is simply a matter of accounting.

If the cost of killing humans is much less than the expected profit, then it is the corporation's duty to kill humans, since it is the corporation's duty to maximize profits for the shareholders. That's the whole purpose of a corporation, to maximize profits for the shareholders.

You are being ironic, I hope. The idea that "corporations exist solely to maximize shareholder value" isn't a Given Truth - it's just another idea about how society can organize a (big) part of its activities. As such, it should be evaluated like any other idea: see what it leads to. One direct consequence is the argument that if something is legal and maximizes return to shareholders, a corporation has a fiduciary duty to do it. This argument was made in defense of British ships participating in the slave trade until 1807, even though chattel slavery was declared unlawful in England in 1772 and Scotland in 1776, and slavery itself in 1799. Another consequence is the idea that corporations have no social obligations - that maximizing shareholder return is required, regardless of other consequences such as, say, global economic meltdown and huge government transfers of money to banks and Wall St. firms during the last year or so.

These aren't the only ways for corporations to behave, nor do they appear socially desirable. Here's a reference for those interested in examining this further: http://www.allaboutbranding.com/index.lasso?article=373

Books such as Marjorie Kelly's The Divine Right of Capital: Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy already point out the inhumane way corporations have departed from serving the public, even though the roots of corporate duty were in the public good. Maximizing returns to shareholders was the obsession at Enron and Andersen

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[Znork]

that will cause even the safe GM foods to banned.

Personally, I don't really mind GM foods, but I'd feel much safer if anything Monsanto touched was banned. Considering their track record of deliberate contamination and knowingly poisoning employees and residents in areas they've operated I certainly wouldn't expect them to warn anyone should they discover their products were hazardous to health. In fact, I'd expect them to try to cover it up any way they could, and attempt to silence any whistle blowers or outside researchers, and probably bribe officials to let them continue to operate if they can.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[syousef]

You couldn't mate with a pig, though.

I think you'll find a lot of mid western farmers disagree and can prove you wrong by contradiction. What you can't do is produce viable offspring.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[eoeoe]

This is very interesting to me. Just last year I discovered that I have 'high liver enzymes' and went through a bunch of tests, and came up with no reason. The doctors just say I have a 'naturally high level' of liver enzymes in my blood.

And then about 2-3 months ago I started having sporadic asthma attacks -- having never had them before. And then they went away just about the time I started eating a little better and eating cooked food more. I wonder if there's a connection between the liver problems, the asthma, and the corn.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[sjames]

Simple difference, do you EAT mosquito dunks? Sprayed on food is one thing. Food is washed before eating. Grown IN food is another. Cow manure is organic, but I don't eat it.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[benjamindees]

I agree with you 100%. I've developed an intolerance to crappy food. And, believe me, it's nearly impossible to avoid corn syrup. It's in everything. It's in every single type of salad dressing. It's in mustard. Mustard. The recipe for mustard didn't change for a thousand years. Mustard seeds, vinegar, salt. Now it needs corn syrup too, for some reason.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[waterford0069]

Actually many bread recipes include oil. Canola oil in many such cases would be an acceptable form of oil. In any case, a typo-get over it.

You are right, Canola is a specific cultivar of rapeseed and its name was chosen to make it more market friendly.

Toxicity is generally a matter of how much, not a yes/no. Your garden variety tomato contains lots of compounds (if taken in sufficient doses) will make you sick or kill you. In principal, you could use selective breeding to create a tomato that was so full of them that they are in effect toxic/poisonous.

Now perhaps you are talking about a novel toxin in the plant. Well we know, that through natural random mutations, eventually some of your field of tomato plants will develop a mutation that that produces a toxin that is harmful to its pests, but not to the plant it self. Through the wonders of natural selection (or we could use artificial selection) and sexual reproduction (and more random mutations) the gene that produces this toxin will get amplified to the point that it becomes very toxic to the pest, but not to the plant.

It takes a long time, it may take many individual plants, and (if you are using artificial selection) it may be very expensive, but it can happen.

Or do you reject the facts of evolution and centuries of plant breeding.

Re:Oh God, not the bourbon.

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

How is patent encumbered food products a win for environmentalism? And you're talking about how silly anti-GMO fever is in an article saying how some of these products may actually be harmful?

forbes magazine's company of the year

[fl!ptop]

what's most disturbing about this is forbes magazine just named monsanto company of the year.

Re:forbes magazine's company of the year

[snowgirl]

what's most disturbing about this is forbes magazine just named monsanto company of the year.

"Company of the year" has everything to do with business model, and not the quality of the product offered.

Re:forbes magazine's company of the year

[Wonko the Sane]

Under eight years of a Republican President nothing was done that might get in the way of businesses making money, and it probably started a lot sooner than that.

So... one year under a Democratic president with a Democratic congress exactly how many corporate abuses have been curtailed?

If you believe that any substantial difference exists between the two parties you are nothing more than a useful idiot.

Re:forbes magazine's company of the year

[mcgrew]

what's most disturbing about this is ferengi magazine just named monsanto company of the year.

Why would a Ferengi care about your liver? Monsanto has always been evil. Before the Clean Air Act you couldn't drive through Sauget, IL with your windows down; you couldn't breathe and the air burned your lungs. Very toxic. These sociopaths don't give a rat's ass (or liver) about your health, your well being, anything at all about you except how much money they can extract from your wallet and how best to exploit you.

This is why we need regulations. Now, to you "free marketers" out there, how am I supposed to make an informed decision when there are no data showing what products have GM corn and what products have normal, non GM corn? Your god of commerce fails here, and we need "socialist" regulations badly.

GM anything should be required to be clearly marked on the container.

This bothers me; I eat a lot of corn, and a lot of stuff that has corn in it (anything sweetened these days uses corn syrup). I like to drink a bit, which is one reason I stay away from Tylenol. Now I guess I'll have to stop drinking soda and stop eating corn, or stop drinking.

Re:forbes magazine's company of the year

[jonbryce]

A free market requires full information about the product to be available. So what you need is free market regulations, like in the EU. Here, products containing genetically modified material are required to be labelled as such, and that guarantees that nobody will buy it.

Re:forbes magazine's company of the year

[Anonymusing]

"Roundup Green is People!"

Re:forbes magazine's company of the year

[locallyunscene]

Because 8 years ago when this was approved both the congressional majority and the president were Democrat...

We'll see how they handle this situation. And while I agree it's not likely to be much better than the original Republican oversight, give "credit" where it's due.

Re:forbes magazine's company of the year

[jfengel]

Well, off the top of my head, there's the Credit CARD Act of 2009:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_CARD_Act_of_2009

And the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilly_Ledbetter_Fair_Pay_Act

And a big act for managing public lands:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnibus_Public_Land_Management_Act

Plus a bunch of other legislation that didn't make it past the filibuster, a rather high bar that has now become de rigeur. And a lot of regulatory redesign that doesn't require the Congress, like the EPA deciding to regulate CO2 as a pollutant.

So yeah, I'd say there is a difference in the two parties. Maybe not as big as you'd like, but if you don't see any difference, you're not looking.

Re:forbes magazine's company of the year

[Favonius Cornelius]

Under eight years of a Republican President nothing was done that might get in the way of businesses making money, and it probably started a lot sooner than that.

So... one year under a Democratic president with a Democratic congress exactly how many corporate abuses have been curtailed?

If you believe that any substantial difference exists between the two parties you are nothing more than a useful idiot.

Poor comparison. In those 8 years Bush and co. had plenty of time to do things, Obama has had *1* strife filled year to fix the entire earth. I think those who expect change in a few months or a year are an idiot. Republican politicians are corrupt people who have lost their souls.

Yummy Roundup!

[zenaida_valdez]

Eat enough corn and... Roundup Ready people!! Mmmm Yummy Roundup.

Why wasn't Monsanto required to reveal this info?

[plover]

Monsanto did the research in 2000 and 2001, and obviously knew the outcome. So how did they manage to suppress the data and results for 8 years?

Re:Why wasn't Monsanto required to reveal this inf

[PopeRatzo]

Monsanto did the research in 2000 and 2001, and obviously knew the outcome. So how did they manage to suppress the data and results for 8 years?

The invisible hand of the free market made the data and research invisible.

An effect of pesticides?

[Sockatume]

From their conclusions:

This can be due to the new pesticides (herbicide or insecticide) present specifically in each type of GM maize, although unintended metabolic effects due to the mutagenic properties of the GM transformation process cannot be excluded. All three GM maize varieties contain a distinctly different pesticide residue associated with their particular GM event (glyphosate and AMPA in NK 603, modified Cry1Ab in MON 810, modified Cry3Bb1 in MON 863). These substances have never before been an integral part of the human or animal diet and therefore their health consequences for those who consume them, especially over long time periods are currently unknown

It sounds to me like the issue isn't the GM itself, but the over-use of novel pesticides that it permits.

Re:An effect of pesticides?

[rhsanborn]

It sounds like that may be a possibility, but just as much as it may be a possibility that it's the corn itself. Other researchers need to replicate these results and do a couple of controls to try and isolate just the pesticides, just Monsanto corn, etc.

Re:An effect of pesticides?

[Pedrito]

It sounds to me like the issue isn't the GM itself, but the over-use of novel pesticides that it permits.

No, you're misunderstanding. They don't allow the use of pesticides, the pesticides have been inserted into their genome. The pesticides are derived from bacterial DNA that is naturally herbicidal. Unfortunately, it's also a rodenticide, which means it's probably pretty poisonous to us as well..

Re:An effect of pesticides?

[Blakey Rat]

But how am I going to be SCARED of GM corn if it's due to something else?

Big science-y words like "genetic" and "nuclear" are supposed to scare the pants off me for no reason!! You can't take that away from me, it's all I have!

High Fructose Corn Syrup

[Dr_Barnowl]

I think the majority of "high prevalence of corn in processed foods" is HFCS - does this contain significant fractions of the proteins involved.

Not that I think HFCS is a health food. I'm so glad that Iowa corn lobby influence can't reach over here to the UK.

Re:High Fructose Corn Syrup

[vlm]

I think the majority of "high prevalence of corn in processed foods" is HFCS - does this contain significant fractions of the proteins involved.

Ideally it would contain approximately none, as the proteins would mess with the taste, odor, and color. HFCS is a very highly refined product... I would vaguely guess that there is about as much protein from random contaminants like rodent hair as protein from the corn.

Generally speaking HFCS syrups are sold with nutritional information for 100g of the stuff, and the nutritional info always lists 0g of protein. Now that doesn't mean 0, it means rounded to 0. So, if scientists write the nutritional data, that means less than 500 mg protein per 100 grams, or if marketing wrote it, it means 999.99999999 mg or less per 100 grams. However marketing doesn't care about protein content of HFCS at this time, so I'd feel confident that its well under 0.5% by weight.

I'd worry more about, say, frozen creamed corn, corn chips, or corn tortillas.

Re:High Fructose Corn Syrup

[blackchiney]

You would think so but you'd be incorrect. The reason of why the US uses HFCS and other countries don't is because of the sugar lobby and the corn lobby. Sugar is cheap to produce so the sugar lobby had the Gov't slap a tariff on it for sugar imports. Great for US sugar producers, not so great for everyone else including you, me, and Coca-Cola. Corn produces got the government to subsidize the price of corn. So the price you pay for corn is cheaper than it costs to grow. Now farmers are producing lots of corn because they know they'll be getting paid by the government no matter what it costs them. They've been getting more inventive with it too. Alternative fuel, alternative polymers, and alternative sugars like HFCS. Unfortunately these subsidies only work in the US. So while the UK pays the real price for corn, they also pay the real (inexpensive) price of sugar. Hence, this is why Coca-Cola in the UK won't be turning to HFCS anytime soon.

Re:Why wasn't Monsanto required to reveal this inf

[MrMr]

I have no idea.

Riddle me this

[PopeRatzo]

All you "free market" enthusiasts out there, answer this question for me:

How would the unencumbered "free market" handle a problem like this? Especially since none of us who eat corn are actually direct customers of Monsanto's GM corn?

Tell us how getting government out of business is going to prevent a little thing like people dying from organ failure for eating Monsanto's frankencorn?

Re:Riddle me this

[thepooh81]

We probably wouldn't have had the government subsidized corn so much that it turned into our main source of food.

Re:Riddle me this

[Wonko the Sane]

How would the unencumbered "free market" handle a problem like this? Especially since none of us who eat corn are actually direct customers of Monsanto's GM corn?

People would stop eating corn products.

Those who were damaged by the defective product would seek damages in a civil court.

If the courts declined to provide relief then the injured parties would all get together, storm the Monsanto headquarters and lynch all the executives.

Re:Riddle me this

[cartzworth]

Correct. The free market assumes perfect access to information (information wants to be free, no?). We just got more information on this product. Thus we can make decisions based on this new information (it gets "priced in"). We then return to an equilibrium after the use of this GM corn falls in disfavor. Of course, I'd also like to see more studies confirming this before any conclusions are drawn. How about a simple comparison of how widespread this GM corn is, when it was released, and national rates of organ failure over a long period of time?

Re:Riddle me this

[vvaduva]

Yeah, I was out sick during that meeting where Monstanto's board of directors issued the "we need to kill all our customers" directive.

This thing called "the legal system," where someone could sue someone else for damages, trespassing, etc. is amazing from what I hear. People from everywhere can come in, fill out paperwork and ask for these things called "damages," but hell..what do I know? I am just a free market enthusiast.

Re:Riddle me this

[Anonymous Coward]

How would the unencumbered "free market" handle a problem like this?

This was covered in my Microeconomics class, and is generally ignored everywhere I see people invoke free market principles:

In a properly functioning free market, information is perfect and freely available to all parties. So, if the market were truly free, you could inspect the products you could purchase and you would know exactly where they came from. I.e. you would know, from labeling, an Internet lookup of lot numbers, or other means, exactly how much GM material and which varieties were in the product you are buying. And you would have a means of verifying that this information is accurate and not simply fabricated. From this, you could research the studies on the effects of these GM products. This, of course, assumes that you're smart enough to understand this information when you get it.

The problem is not that the free market is failing. The problem is that the market is not actually free, since you have no means to make an informed decision. The solution is to have a consumer-accessible, independently-verifiable audit trail of the history of any food product you can buy. How you can do that without government intervention is a separate issue needing further development.

There is also the fact that such a system will increase the cost of food you buy. So then it becomes a question of whether you like your food cheap or verified. History suggests that cheap will win every time.

Re:Riddle me this

[Alinabi]

Yes, people would stop eating GM corn products. And GM wheat products. And GM soy products. And meat and dairy products from cattle fed with GM feed. But that's ok, 'cuz Monsanto can just GM the people, so they can survive through photosynthesis.

I don't know about you, but once my liver and kidneys have been damaged by a defective product, there is no redress civil courts can provide. Lynching the Monsanto executives wouldn't make me feel any better either.

Re:Riddle me this

[WalkingBear]

In a pure free market system, the most valuable item on a company's portfolio is it's reputation. A company deliberately misleading the consumers of their product would quickly find themselves without consumers.

How do the consumers find out? I answer that by pointing you to the very top of this discussion. Either someone inside the company lets it out (wikileaks?), a competitor takes a good look at the product (normal business practice: study your competition) and lets the word out, or some other curious person looks at their food and says "um, something's fishy here".

Word gets out and that companies reputation goes into the toilet. No one would sell their product because no one would want to buy it. Their competitors would, rightly, expound greatly upon such a scandal.

It's a self correcting problem.

Re:Riddle me this

[Idiomatick]

Declining to comment on the silly lynching plan... You've got no chance in hell winning a law suit. There is no way to PROVE the corn is what caused your liver failure w/e. It damages millions of people just a little bit. Like second hand smoke.... Or factory/power plant pollution... I can't go sue the local steel plant because I have asthma.. though it was likely a huge contributor.

What you would do if you got enough mad people is force a law to be made that shut them down.... Which is somehow socialist/evil. And no longer a 'free market'.

Capitalism is a great and powerful force. Competition is an amazing thing that makes companies very efficient. The goal should be for the government to point this power and wield it. That way the companies work to our advantage not against us for their own advantage. Set rules and frameworks in which capitalism can prosper in a way advantaging the populace, Simple.

Re:Riddle me this

[shutdown -p now]

People from everywhere can come in, fill out paperwork and ask for these things called "damages"

What amount of damages could redress damaged organs that may prove to be impossible to replace? What about life?

Re:government protection

[gnud]

you see people would rather have a toothless "small government"

Why is it all or nothing with GMO

[ocularsinister]

I may be wrong here, but I think the current discussions regarding GMO are an 'all or nothing' approach - in other words, you can grow any GMO crop or GMO crops are all banned. This doesn't make sense to me - some GMO crops may be fine, others not so. In particular, I think some GMO should be banned, full stop:

• broad-spectrum herbicide tolerant species should be allowed ever: this is giving the farmer instructions to completely soak the countryside with lethal chemicals (and who is to say the rats were sick because of the GMO or the herbicide?)
• Genes that produce sterile crops: This is putting our food security at risk, if your business model can't cope with this - tough, find another model or another business - food security comes first.

There may be others, but those spring to mind...

Re:Why is it all or nothing with GMO

[Dr. Spork]

Your comment comes closest to what I also think about this issue. I am a rabid environmentalist and I have great hopes for genetic engineering. I'd be sad if we screwed it up as we did with nuclear fission - where a couple of greedy institutions didn't take universally understood precautions, and thus ruined a good thing for everyone.

And while I have great hope for GM crops, I have zero faith in the moral integrity of Monsanto. They very well could be what ruins the promise of GM for two generations.

The reason why, as an environmentalist, I support GM research is because it allows for a given area of land to feed more people. It's that simple: The more productive are our crops, the more of the Earth we can keep as wilderness. If we insist on using low-yield crops, we simply have to suck it up that more of the planet will be covered with agriculture. Because I want to keep as much wilderness as possible, while still keeping our population fed, the land we do cultivate should produce at its maximum. Many fellow environmentalists fail to understand that their insistence on low-yield agricultural species amounts to a demand to plow under huge swaths of what is now nature.

Having said that, I of course want the GM crops to be certifiably safe for consumers and for the environment. Businesses that rely on GM should want the same, because if they get caught with their pants down like the nuclear industry did, they're fucked. Sadly, I have no faith that Monsanto understands this. If they really have been selling a toxic product and knew this, no amount of government connections will save their asses. I wouldn't mind seeing them go down. But with them would go the whole GM industry, because people don't make distinctions like the ones you made. For example, many people still think that all nuclear plants are functionally copies of Chernobyl. If GM gets taken out, we would lose one of our most important tools for the prevention of environmental destruction.

We should realize that Monsanto GM crops are really the first products of an industry in its infancy. They are the equivalent of Netscape 1.0. We didn't give up on the internet just because the early browsers had serious defects. We fixed the defects and kept going. That's what we need to do with GM. But first and foremost, we need scientific openness in quickly discovering the defects, before they hurt people and cause a backlash.

Not completely surprising.

[SpazmodeusG]

What chemicals are in these plants that give them insecticide properties? Finding a chemical that harms insects but doesn't harm humans is a tricky problem and it's why fly spray companies and the like have R&D departments.
If they are releasing a new never before ingested product onto the market shouldn't they be forced into similar regulations as pharmaceuticals?

Re:Why wasn't Monsanto required to reveal this inf

[eldavojohn]

Monsanto did the research in 2000 and 2001, and obviously knew the outcome.

You can't say "and obviously knew the outcome" unless you're Monsanto. I believe that GMO crops undergo far fewer tests for safety than pesticides. From the Wikipedia page on one of the three crops in question (MON 863):

In 1989 a 90-day rat-feeding trial done by the FDA, 40 rats that were fed the Bt corn developed multiple reactions typically found in response to allergies, infections, toxins and diseases. Gilles-Eric Seralini reviewed the study as part of the French Commission for Biomolecular Genetics and said that the response by the rats were similar to reactions caused by pesticides. Although the Bt-toxin is a pesticide, he points out that animal research on pesticide-producing corn is nowhere as thorough as that required for approval of pesticides. Follow-up studies on these serious findings were demanded from organisations worldwide. None were conducted and the corn was approved.

MON 863 is even approved for use in the EU which is surprising considering the long history of European countries denying crops imported from other countries like the US where GMO crops are allowed on the off chance that said crops were cross pollinated with GMO plants in other fields. Very recently I believe Germany banned cultivation of GMO plants. If you want your data don't look toward Monsanto or even the underfunded FDA. Look to the European Union, I hope more studies follow in the path of this research but unfortunately it's hard to think of a source for major funding if it's not our tax dollars.

rep of Int Journal of Biological Sciences?????

[acidfast7]

as a scientist, it has two things I dislike listed on its webpage... 1. In a prominent position its "unofficial IMPACT FACTOR" ... ugh. 2. In a prominent position its "UNOFFICIAL impact factor" ... well, if TR/ISI can't find it important enough to tabulate (assuming this is what unofficial indicates), why should we care :( in fact, this is the first time I have heard of the journal ... if the work is more widely useful, we not publish in a more widely-read journal?

Re:rep of Int Journal of Biological Sciences?????

[Anonymous Coward]

Also at the bottom of the page we see this. Not saying they are biased, but sometimes you find what you're looking for.

Greenpeace contributed to the start of the investigations by funding first statistical analyses in 2006, the results were then processed further and evaluated independently by the authors.

Is it really that surprising?

[janek78]

We knew that insecticides are harmful. Now we have a GM crop that instead of being sprayed with them actually makes them. Is it a surprise that it's harmful? If you make a crop that produces cyanide, it's going to be poisonous.

This is not really related to GM technology (although TFA does not rule out mutagenic properties of the GM transformation process), rather content of toxic substances.

Re:Is it really that surprising?

[vlm]

If you make a crop that produces cyanide, it's going to be poisonous.

I wonder how many people caught the sarcasm of your post, revolving around apple seeds containing cyanide.

That's excellent.

[tjstork]

You have a food that kills rats. How can you possibly get angry about a food that kills rats? I mean, do you know how many people are starving because rats eat the food? This is absolutely a great thing.

Wary

[methano]

You know what? I don't believe this research is right. It may be correct and we're gonna learn of an interesting mechanism whereby this implementation actually allows a protein to avoid the digestive system and make it's way straight into the bloodstream. That would really be cool. But from what I know of the mechanisms of digestion and what types of molecules get through the whole process, I just don't believe this conclusion is correct. I suspect that it's bogus or a statistical fluke. As I said, there may be something here but my first inclination is to suspect something is wrong. Research has shown many mutually exclusive things to be "true" and so one has to have a mechanism that throws up a "bogus flag". This article does.

So I'm gonna call bogus for now.

Re:Wary

[PeterM from Berkeley]

Hello,

    Somehow the Bt toxin makes its way through the bug's digestive system to kill it. Why is it so unbelievable that some of the toxin makes it through a human's digestive system?

--PM

Re:Wary

[BradleyUffner]

If it kills insects when they eat it, then why would it be at all surprising if it was bad for rats or humans too?

If you spray an insect with water containing soap you will kill it too, are you going to stop taking baths? Salt has some rather nasty effects on slugs, so you better get rid of that. Insects are different that humans.

Re:Wary

[vlm]

Somehow the Bt toxin makes its way through the bug's digestive system to kill it. Why is it so unbelievable that some of the toxin makes it through a human's digestive system?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacillus_thuringiensis

"When insects ingest toxin crystals the alkaline pH of their digestive tract causes the toxin to become activated."

Most (all?) higher animals use a strongly ACIDIC digestive tract. Not a serious concern.

No idea why it would directly affect rodents. Maybe it doesn't directly affect them at all.

Politics of GMO

[Kupfernigk]

This demonstrates the European objection to GMO. It is not, as the manufacturers would like to suggest, a Luddite fear of new technology. It is a growing perception that there is no proper oversight of GMO development. In the US, the NIH acts as a counter to the pharmaceutical companies and does a lot of fundamental research. The GMO companies are perceived as being able to carry out inadequate trials, and not make their seeds and research sufficiently available to genuine independent researchers to ensure that the result is properly evaluated. (In the UK, the chief cheerleader for Monsanto is George Bush's pal Tony Blair, which goes a lot of the way to explain our concern. He's lied to us so often that now anything he promotes is immediately seen as being evil.)

During the 19th century the issue was contaminated food produced by the new breed of large processed food manufacturers: in the early 20th it was the meat packing industry. Now it's Monsanto. In the first two cases it turned out industry was unfit to regulate itself, and bribery of Government officials was rife. But nowadays we regard processed food manufacturers as mostly benign (well, except for the junk food industry), and nobody worries about tinned meat. Regulation in the end was good for the industry. Monsanto needs to stop pissing on anyone who suggests it isn't perfect, and start to come clean. It would be in its long term benefit.

Re:Politics of GMO

[jonbryce]

The chief cheerleader in the UK is the former science minister in Tony Blair's government - Lord Sainsbury, who's family owns a supermarket chain of the same name.

Re:Politics of GMO

[DeadCatX2]

It is a growing perception that there is no proper oversight of GMO development.

Maybe if people would stop freaking out about the idea of GM food, we could have a rational discussion about what kind of oversight is appropriate. Instead, everyone panics, labels GM food the devil, and the debate is snuffed out.

There's this stuff called Golden Rice, it's rice that has a Vitamin A gene. It will help lots of Chinese kids stop going blind. Maybe those researchers should study whether that rice kills rats.

Science

[takowl]

OK, I haven't read the paper in detail, but my initial impression is that, if academic researchers have found evidence that GM food damages your health, why haven't they put it in a really major journal--Nature, Science, PNAS, or something like PlosONE if the whole publication really had to be open access? I've got a degree in biology, and this is the first time I've ever come across the 'International Journal of Biological Sciences'.

Glancing at their results table, it doesn't seem clear cut overall. E.g. there are cases where rats fed 11% GM corn show a response, but rats fed 33% GM corn don't, cases where male rats are apparently affected, but not females, and vice versa. They also don't name the maize they used as a control, so we don't know how accurate it is.

All in all, it looks like they did a rather unconvincing study that prominent journals weren't prepared to accept, so they stuck it out there in this way. That doesn't mean it's wrong, but take it with a pinch of salt.

Re:Science

[Pedrito]

why haven't they put it in a really major journal--Nature, Science, PNAS, or something like PlosONE if the whole publication really had to be open access?

Yeah, their editor-in-chief is only the chief of mammalian genetics at NIH, and their editorial board is a bunch of slackers from the likes of Georgeton, UCLA school of medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Vancerbilt, Nortwestern, UC, etc.

OK, I haven't read the paper in detail... Glancing at their results table, it doesn't seem clear cut overall. E.g. there are cases where rats fed 11% GM corn show a response, but rats fed 33% GM corn don't, cases where male rats are apparently affected, but not females, and vice versa. They also don't name the maize they used as a control, so we don't know how accurate it is. Maybe you should read it in detail. FTFA: The raw data have been obtained by European governments and made publically available for scrutiny and counter-evaluation. So, they didn't actually perform the experiments, they're using the results of experiments that others did. It doesn't invalidate your point, but if you read further, I think they realize this:Furthermore, groups of animals were also fed with diets containing one of six other normal (non-GM) reference maize lines; the same lines for the NK 603 and MON 810 tests, but different types for the MON 863 trials. We note that these unrelated, different non-GM maize types were not shown to be substantially equivalent to the GMOs. The quantity of some sugars, ions, salts, and pesticide residues, do in fact differ from line to line, for example in the non-GM reference groups. This not only introduced unnecessary sources of variability but also increased considerably the number of rats fed a normal non-GM diet (320) compared to the GM-fed groups (80) per transformation event, which considerably unbalances the experimental design.

Yeah, I know, actually reading the article before posting your critical analysis is pretty hard to avoid.

Re:Science

[takowl]

Yeah, I know, actually reading the article before posting your critical analysis is pretty hard to avoid.

On /.? More seriously, if I'd taken the time to read it in detail, my comment would have been much later, and nobody would ever have read it. Considering the apparent credulity of /. readers on this issue, I wanted to get an oar in.

It does have some credible scientists on its editorial board. And I don't believe it's a bogus journal. But I do know a bit about how science works (being in it), and we consider the reputation of the journal, not just its editorial board. IJBS hardly has any reputation (acidfast7, posting above and below, agrees with me on this).

To back up my point, a bit of searching shows that this group of scientists has tried the same stunt before, and their methodology was and still is suspect (this is from Food Standards Australia/NZ, not Monsanto): FSANZ response

Perhaps not

[BigSlowTarget]

It doesn't look like the 'impact factor' relates to anything. Its in the header whether you're looking at an article or their contact information. No explanation there.

This note on the front page: This Journal is ranked among the top 2.1% of journals (29/1380) according to SCImago in the area of Agricultural and Biological Sciences ...details
Indexed/covered by MEDLINE, PubMed, Science Citation Index (SCI) Expanded, Current Contents®/Life Sciences, EMBASE, CAS, CABI, Scopus

Plus there isn't much anti-GM crapvertising elsewhere on the website. I'm normally among the first to call bs, but this could very well be the ideal journal for the paper as it seems specifically dedicated to issues in the biological/agricultural sciences.

Anyone familiar with the journal or practices in submitting in the field?

How did I guess this was from Kdawson?

[Anonymous Coward]

The study shows no organ damage. This is a lie by the esteemed Slashdot editor.

The study shows slight changes in some parameters which could be signs of damage. It could also not be. Eating sausages will give you different kidney readings from eating chicken, yet neither sausages nor chicken has been banned. Correspondingly the study says these are "signs of toxicity and not proof of toxicity". I would have expected KDawsons "organ damage" to imply that organ damage had been found.

Some data seems surprising - there is a significant effect for female rats consuming 11% Monsanto corn, but not male rats or female rats consuming 33%?

Although I agree that multiple year teasts should be performed, and organ damage checked for. Though it would be extremely surprising if this has not already been done by anyone.

Of course, since I write this I must be paid by Monsanto or just be evil, since all good-thinking progressives would never question criticism of an evil megacorp like Monsanto.

Re:How did I guess this was from Kdawson?

[Dr. Spork]

I read the article too and took away exactly the same conclusions. I also thought it was interesting that they can't isolate the effects of the corn itself from the effects of whatever the corn was treated with. (They mentioned that the signs of toxicity are reminiscent of something that could be a reaction to a pesticide.) That might be worth doing in a future study, and wouldn't be hard: You just grow the corn in a test field and don't spray it at all, and compare its effects to the corn that was grown the conventional way.

So come on, people. This shit is important, and lab rats aren't that expensive. Let's go already!

we need GMO foods

[chichilalescu]

like it or not.
you can choose between keeping the human population to a constant (and already there are a lot of starving people), or change something to the food we eat.
I didn't do any research on the issue, but if a biologist says he wants funding to make food that grows faster and easier, I think he should get that funding. I would gladly have society give up on "new clothes every season, or you're a caveman/woman/person/thingie" and put more money into this kind of research.
but i'm just a geeky hippie, so i don't get a say in this.
on the other hand, if there are alternatives to gmo foods, let me know.

Re:we need GMO foods

[o'reor]

GM crops are already doing more harm than good. Just ask the Indian cotton farmers, for instance...

It has been proved that they also have lower yields and require more pesticides in the long run than conventional crops.

I'm not saying that GM plants and research should be discarded, or that they can't be used to actually get better yields and use less pesticides. I'm just saying that for now, a few corporations are focused on making piles of money by making farmers entirely depend on their seeds and their pesticides, no matter what it takes. And that particular use of GM crops (and of patents lawsuits over crops) should be outlawed.

MOD PARENT UP

[schnablebg]

This is exactly right. The reason GMO corn exists and is widespread is that the gov't has incentivized corn production so much that it is practical to grow huge fields of it. This crop monoculture results in the excessive need of pesticides, hence the requirement of "Roundup-ready" crops in the first place.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to call bullshit on this. It's dodging the question. "We wouldn't have to deal with this problem because this would never have happened under a free market system!" Suuuure. You can't see a situation where a monoculture could develop in a free market system? That's just IMPOSSIBLE, huh?
The government subsidies may have encouraged a monoculture, but that's beside the point. The GM crops improve yield. Why would that have not been a success in a pure free market?

Re:Why wasn't Monsanto required to reveal this inf

[Nova77]

That's the reason why it was accepted:
http://www.efsa.europa.eu/EFSA/efsa_locale-1178620753812_1178620772383.htm

"In conclusion, the Panel considers that the information available for MON 863 addresses the outstanding questions raised by the Member States and considers that MON 863 will not have an adverse effect on human and animal health or the environment in the context of its proposed use."

While I am not at all fan of Monsanto, I have to say that in the past research on GM crops has been highly polarized and there has been a lot of poor science from both sides. Let's wait and see how this study classifies.

I have nothing against GMO in theory

[locallyunscene]

but WTF Monsanto, FDA. This is bad for EVERYBODY. Especially considering Americans eat more corn than anyone on Earth, ever(except maybe the Hopi).

This is why you can't let lobbying continue as is. I don't think this out-and-out corruption through bribery, but I'd bet my bottom dollar Monsanto spent a lot of money wispering into ears that GMO posed no health risk and was a forgone conclusion. Hell, they didn't even need to check their own data, what could possibly go wrong? Besides that's the FDA's job right? Meanwhile the FDA hears all about how Monsanto wouldn't let any GMO through that would hurt their consumers. Of course they know the technology better, and their own analysis should be thorough enough to allow for FDA approval.

I'll take a Department of Redundancy Department that does its goddamn job over a regulatory body that doesn't.

Re:I have nothing against GMO in theory

[o'reor]

FDA and Monsanto ? Mind the revolving door on your way out...

An opinion by a PhD and sustainable farmer

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know enough about toxicity studies to analyze this too closely but then as I read it, there is some "fishy" stuff going on.. First off, though - these researchers did not set up these studies. They used lawyers to get data from some of these companies or something like that- it's kind of vague. I have NEVER seen a study where you report like you did the research but you actually didn't. You are just trying to take the numbers and draw your own conclusion.
They say in one part: "The most fundamental point to bear in mind from the outset is that a sample size of 10 for biochemical parameters measured two times in 90 days is largely insufficient to ensure an acceptable degree of power to the statistical analysis performed and presented by Monsanto. " They say that because they think Monsanto shouldn't say the corn is safe - but then they (these researchers) are using that same "Insufficient" data to say it's unsafe. That's the way this whole paper is- it just doesn't jive together.

They also note that the control corn fed the rats in these studies was not similar enough to the GM variety to be good controls.

OK - then why are they using these data at all - why not do their OWN study???!!! I"ll tell you why - because they found a way to skew this data for their own purposes. How can you pick apart an experimental design and then use that data and say YOUR conclusions are valid. This is insulting and I still do not believe this can be a legitimate journal (although I can't find much on it online).

Re:An opinion by a PhD and sustainable farmer

[Dunbal]

here is some "fishy" stuff going on.. First off, though - these researchers did not set up these studies. They used lawyers to get data from some of these companies or something like that- it's kind of vague.

      Granted such a study is not scientific and has no merit per se. However this type of thing might be enough to get a real group of scientists interested in setting up a real, controlled study. After all science is all about asking questions and getting answers. There might be a valid question. So now someone will look for a reliable, reproducible answer.

I have NEVER seen a study where you report like you did the research but you actually didn't.

      Tobacco companies claiming that smoking is "safe" circa 1970's and 80's?

Re:An opinion by a PhD and sustainable farmer

[ceoyoyo]

Meta studies are scientific, though, depending on the circumstances, they may not be as good evidence as a primary study.

Studies where you reanalyze someone else's data are quite common, and are the reason there have been efforts to create large, generally available datasets including cancer registries, pharmaceutical trials and astronomical surveys.

Re:An opinion by a PhD and sustainable farmer

[claus.wilke]

They say in one part: "The most fundamental point to bear in mind from the outset is that a sample size of 10 for biochemical parameters measured two times in 90 days is largely insufficient to ensure an acceptable degree of power to the statistical analysis performed and presented by Monsanto. " They say that because they think Monsanto shouldn't say the corn is safe - but then they (these researchers) are using that same "Insufficient" data to say it's unsafe. That's the way this whole paper is- it just doesn't jive together.

You might want to re-read your statistics textbook. They say that the power of the Monsanto analysis is low. That implies that if Monsanto does not see a significant result, they cannot conclude that no effect exists. However, the authors of this study see significant results nevertheless. Thus, even though power was low, the effect was large enough to show up.

In a nutshell: To demonstrate that there is a problem, all you have to do is find the problem in some instance. To demonstrate that there is no problem, you have to demonstrate that you looked very hard and yet could not find a problem. What the authors are saying is: "Monsanto didn't look very hard, and yet there is evidence of problems."

Avoiding Corn-derived Products

[jdevivre]

Good luck avoiding corn-derived products.

Try reading "The Omnivore's Dilemma" to get a sense of how much of our food products come from subsidized corn (sugar? CITRIC ACID???!).

distinction

[nten]

Correct, GM is truly a wonderful thing. But I do wonder if spot checks on produce wouldn't be advisable. Processed foods get spot checked, perhaps produce should as well. You can get a DNA sequencer on ebay for two grand now. Grabbing the sequence that produces abrin, or ricin from the rosary pea or castor bean respectively, and putting it in a couple corn plants, is within the ability of an undergrad certainly. The lab procedures are published out there, I saw them on the kindle store even. Corn is wind pollinated, so planting a few modified malcious plants upwind of a field could be really nasty. It is only going to get easier to do, and restricting the technology is the wrong way to try and prevent it. Spot checks of produce for common pathogens and dangerous chemicals would add to the price of food, so I wouldn't suggest they be mandatory. Might work kind of like an organic stamp, "Non-deadly GM" or somesuch.

Re:distinction

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct, GM is truly a wonderful thing. But I do wonder if spot checks on produce wouldn't be advisable. Processed foods get spot checked, perhaps produce should as well. You can get a DNA sequencer on ebay for two grand now. Grabbing the sequence that produces abrin, or ricin from the rosary pea or castor bean respectively, and putting it in a couple corn plants, is within the ability of an undergrad certainly. The lab procedures are published out there, I saw them on the kindle store even. Corn is wind pollinated, so planting a few modified malcious plants upwind of a field could be really nasty. It is only going to get easier to do, and restricting the technology is the wrong way to try and prevent it. Spot checks of produce for common pathogens and dangerous chemicals would add to the price of food, so I wouldn't suggest they be mandatory. Might work kind of like an organic stamp, "Non-deadly GM" or somesuch.

Someone should do this* with corn and spread it around the midwest....

* From what I can tell the story was a joke

Re:distinction

[vegiVamp]

Ooo. Now there's an interesting angle for a terrorist to take. Are seeds forbidden on airplanes already ?

Re:distinction

[Glothar]

You don't have much background in genetics, do you?

I don't mean to insult you. I don't expect most people to understand genetics. However, I would hope they understand how much they don't don't know about genetics.

Sequencing an organism is a long, complicated process even with modern sequencing technology. Sequencers don't give you answers, they give you decent guesses. For eukaryotic organisms like the castor bean, its very difficult to even sort out which copy of which chromosome you're looking at. Then you need to find the genes that produce ricin. There's almost certainly more than one coding region, and you do know that they're not labeled, right?

If after a few years you managed to complete your sequencing of the castor bean and if you managed to isolate the collection of genes responsible for producing ricin, you still wouldn't have reached the really hard part of the process: Integrating it into the corn plant. If you were really lucky, you'd be able to get a hold of a corn specimen that had already been sequenced for you, then it might only take millions of dollars and years of research to find a way to integrate those genes into the correct part of the corn genome.

To think that you'd be able to do this with a sequencer off of ebay and some spare test tubes is humorously naive. Jurassic Park wasn't real. We don't do gene splicing with VR displays.

There is a reason why huge corporations do this work. Hundreds of trained geneticists spend years working on getting things like this done, and even they fail repeatedly.

Are spot checks advisable? Sure, why not? Are they advisable because someone might have created an apple that releases sarin gas? No. Sorry, we don't live in fantasy land. The chances of someone pulling that off are miniscule compared to the chance that you're struck by a meteor within the next year.

Re:distinction

[StreetStealth]

Nah, someone would have to actually try bringing GMO seeds aboard a plane and shouting in Arabic while attempting to throw them out the bulkhead hatch.

Then the TSA would not only ban bringing seeds on planes, but also issue guidelines stating that passengers may not look out the window while flying over farmland, may not read books about farming during the middle two hours of a trip, and may not think about corn at any time while the plane is in the air.

Re:distinction

[davebooth]

Well, I DO have a background in genetics and to be honest I probably wouldnt need a sequencing machine to create something evil.

Give me the enzymes and nucleotide stocks, some e coli and some M13 bacteriophage. a couple glass plates and some acrylamide I'm quite capable of sequencing without one, thank you very much!

Not that much sequencing would be required, Monsanto have already done that work and have kindly provided a template with a known target sequence (the gene for the thuringensis toxin) already under the control of a highly active promoter. So lets start our hypothetical experiment with a sample of BT corn.

Ideally we'd look for a single-peptide toxin and recent research has provided a much "better" payload than either ricin or any other plant or bacterially derived peptide toxin and again much of the required preliminary work has already been done. We're going to replace the gene for thuringensis toxin with PRP and make sure, by site directed mutagenesis, which requires the same reagents and skills as sequencing, that as many as possible of the polymorphisms that encourage the refolding of this protein into the PRP-Sc form are present. Sure it will take time and persistence, but the techniques are no challenge.

Theres your upwind "pollen bomb." Mad Corn Disease, anyone?

Re:Why wasn't Monsanto required to reveal this inf

[vvaduva]

They do it through lawsuits. They are a very litigious company as they sue their own customers for failing to disclose harvest data and seed information. Since they patended certain varieties of soybeans and corn, you cannot keep seed from one year to the next. Also, a neighboring farmer who has his own non-Monstanto crops contaminated by Monstanto crops are also being sued and asked to prove themselves innocent.

It's a travesty. I am not opposed to GM foods by any means, but this company's approach to solving problems with their products is completely unreasonable. A class-action suit seems to be the only answer.

Re:Why wasn't Monsanto required to reveal this inf

[LordKronos]

Wait...so the president's actions in 2009 is responsible for information remaining hidden from 2000 through 2008? For crying out loud, he didn't even make US Senate until 2004. But yes, I suppose the corruption of a member of the Illionois Senate has its reach all the way down into the state of Missouri (where Monsanto is based). Or maybe Obama has a time machine.

Re:Why wasn't Monsanto required to reveal this inf

[IWannaBeAnAC]

Any person in any country in the world could buy a bag of Monsanto corn...

Are you sure about that? I'm not a farmer, and I don't know anyone who has had anything to do with Monsanto corn, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a contract that you need to sign before buying Monsanto GM corn.

Re:Could american law please...

[MickyTheIdiot]

One of the main goals of corporations is to make sure owners, stockholders, and employees don't have personal liability. Who do you put in jail?

We're still in the age of no personal accountability due to the last administration. I don't see Obama doing all that much to untie that knot.

Stduy flawed

[Orga]

If the GMO corn has been bred for high sugar, as we know that's the main focus, then the rats more than likely consumed more calories which I would expect to have a detrimental effect on most systems in the body. From the study: We note that these unrelated, different non-GM maize types were not shown to be substantially equivalent to the GMOs. The quantity of some sugars, ions, salts, and pesticide residues, do in fact differ from line to line, for example in the non-GM reference groups. This not only introduced unnecessary sources of variability but also increased considerably the number of rats fed a normal non-GM diet (320) compared to the GM-fed groups (80) per transformation event, which considerably unbalances the experimental design. A group consisting of the same number of animals fed a mixture of these test diets would have been a better and more appropriate control.

Re:government protection

[jedidiah]

Yes. We need less "government regulation". That way anyone that feels that they have been wronged by Monsanto can just form a nice lynch mob and start hanging senior executives.

Good 'ol Monsanto

[revlayle]

They want to own food and the IPs for any GMOs they make and them force them into countries an markets. While i usually try to avoid hype documentaries, I do recommend watching "Food, Inc." as a starting insight into the evil of Monsanto (as well as the meat industry) - maybe biased but still a GOOD watch. The find a French documentary (usually it is subtitled or dubbed) called "The World According to Monsanto" for more details on the companies practices. Remember, before food, they created Agent Orange (as well as all the other "rainbow" Agent herbicides). Because of these shows, I have tried to buy my food from local source, and try to buy (unsuccessfully) in season (when i do buy out of season, I try Whole Foods, dunno if they are THAT better, but the one in Tulsa is good) - all my meat comes from a local butcher now and local livestock feed in conventional ways.

Re:Avoid Corn? Bahahahahahaha good luck

[Lumpy]

Yes you can, you actually have to put forth effort.

Dont buy products with it in it. My lettuce and fresh veggies dont have it, my meat does not have it, The flour I bake with does not have it.

It means switching from Insta-fake-food they sell in a box to actually getting off your butt and cooking.

Your general health will increase nearly 3 fold if you do.

It's the Ends, Not the Means

[rmccoy]

Exactly.

I'm not worried about the process of genetically modifying food anymore than I am using nuclear energy for power. In both cases, I'm worried about how these tools are used by the corporations that are centered on short-term profit.

GM is an accelerated version of what happens in nature. We need it to feed our billions. Unfortunately, lack of corporate imagination and long-term thinking might produce a backlash that makes it untenable for years.

Re:It's the Ends, Not the Means

[Fred_A]

GM is an accelerated version of what happens in nature.

No it's not. It's the artificial manipulation of a genotype to get a desired trait by means that are not very well understood but that mostly work although their consequences are not very well grasped.

We need it to feed our billions.

No we don't. Crop rotation and the use of better seeds works much better and with far less pesticides and other toxic chemicals, notably in emerging markets.

However, a certain company won't get as rich if we go that way...

Re:government protection

[JWW]

You are actually claiming that the US government is small and toothless.....

Unbelievable.....

Remember when you ask the big government to do what you want, that may be great for you, until they start doing what you don't want.

Food, Inc.

[tresstatus]

Nothing that Monsanto does comes as a surprise to anyone who has seen "Food, Inc.". http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1286537/

the problem with GMO crops is that they can't be contained. a farmer doesn't have to plant monsanto's corn or soy beans for them to start growing in their fields.

and to anyone who says "i will just avoid eating corn and corn products".... good luck. almost every product in the grocery store either contains corn or ate corn.

Re:Food, Inc.

[geekoid]

really? Food inc? Yes base all your opinion and conclusion on heavily biased cherry picked crap.

I used to be against GMO because it is made to sound scary. When actually studying the subject and reading studies I realized the anti GMO people are ignorant fear mongers. This 'study' is a great example of the kind of crap they pull.

Obligatory documentary about Monsanto

[Hurricane78]

If you want to see a documentary, looking at the actual details, and without being as annoying as Michael Moore ;), this one is really nice:

• In English
• En Français
• In Deutsch

IMO, Haliburton, Microsoft, RIAA/MPAA, and the weapons industry are all freakin’ jokes compared to these guys... :/ (Only Eli Lily might come close.)

Currently only in Animal Feed

[Slashdolt]

Currently, GMO corn is only in animal feed. But the problem is that you cannot simply go to the elevator and request "GMO Free" corn. Feed corn is feed corn, whether it's GMO or not. That was the big coup that Monsanto pulled off a few years back. It took a lot of lobbying, I'm sure.

I raise "all natural" free-range chickens and sell them to friends and neighbors. I wish that I could get corn that was GMO-free, but the only way is to purchase "organic" (TM) corn, at about 10 times the price. At that point, I'd have to sell the chickens for $5/lb and no one in their right mind would pay for it.

Monsanto knew that if their corn had to be silo'd separately from other varieties, that it would be worth a lot less, so they had to get it commoditized with the rest, or all of that R&D would have been wasted. Good for them. Bad for us.

Re:Why wasn't Monsanto required to reveal this inf

[nazsco]

Even the amish uses it

http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2009/02/amish_hackers_a.php

Misleading title and summary !

[cyberfunk2]

If you actually read the journal article, all you will find is a LOT of criticism of Monsanto's statistical methodology (which may be valid), but very little (if any) of any actual evidence of toxicity.

Basically , they claim (which may be correct): Monsanto didn't do their studies properly! They should've used more rats, for longer, and with more measured parameters !

And THEN they turn around and claim... even though the study is statistically unsound (according to their own argument), we're going to draw some conclusions that are weak to begin with, even within the weak frame of this supposedly faulty study !

It just doesn't make much sense.... from a professional scientists' standpoint (mine), this amounts to a lot of hemming and hawing about experimental methods, but absolutely nothing in the way of conclusions !

Cross breeding issues

[Pedrito]

My concern, which doesn't appear to have been raised yet, is this shit blows around in the wind and cross-breeds with non-GMO corn. I'm guessing nobody has any idea how badly this has happened yet. This stuff could be ending up in our food, making the most important and second largest cash crop (after marijuana) in the US poisonous to consumers. I wonder why that doesn't sit well with me.

Re:What GM food for hundreds of years?

[JBdH]

No, it's not. With selective breeding you can never go outside of the scope of the accumulation of genetical variety available in the species your breeding with. You cannot breed dogs that produce poisonous bites by just interbreeding different type of dogs, the genetical material needed to be able to allow for a poisonous bite just isn't there. Theoretically dogs could in the long run, through spontaneous genetical mutation acquire such features, but that's outside the scope of breeding of dogs.
If you would start genetically modifying dogs with genetical material alien to dogs, say poisonous snakes, you actually could produce such poisonous dogs, given enough perseverence and research. Genetically modifying creatures is in essence engineering, working from the specfications of features of the creature up to a design. Selective Breeding is bricolage, using whatever is at hand to meet a goal that's changing along with the process.

Face it: y'all hate it when hippies are right

[spun]

Selective breeding is not the same thing as modern genetic modification. Mendel wasn't putting bacterial genes into corn. We've had thousands of years of testing selective breeding. We have had a decade or so of testing bacteria protein laced corn and other genetically modified foods. See the difference? The damn hippies were right: we should have tested this stuff more.

Horrible, horrible meta study

[geekoid]

It';s not a study it;s a meta study. Not even a well written meta study.

After seeing some odd conclusions, and logical fallacies I decided to look up the authors. Yeah, huge anti-GM proponents.

So what we have is a metastudy - which are always questionable. They have a use, but it's a very narrow band use.

We have authors who are heavily biased.

All the data has been cherry picked.

This shows nothing. Please come back with good data.

For the record, I am pro good studies and scientific facts. Even when they may slay a sacred cow.

Re:Do you know stupidity well?

[tehcyder]

The reason that you don't touch hot stoves is not because of anything your parents told you when you were a child - it's because you did it once and it hurt.

So the only reason that I haven't yet blasted my head off with a shotgun is because when I was a child I did it once and it hurt?

Hmmm.

need a new word

[zogger]

I've seen this a lot on this site (unfortunately). Luddite is tossed around as a swear word to ridicule those who don't understand or see any benefits of modern tech. The opposite exists but we don't have a single word for it, people who automatically trust any new tech to be safe, without any evidence that it is safe, other than the inventor's and corporation's word for it. There's a word used that is close, but doesn't specify "as regards newer tech", that is a "pollyanna". We really need a new word for those who blindly "trust" but never "verify" all new high tech advances.

This issue with some of the GM corn mods has been known for years now, and dismissed by the big business sycophants/pollyannas. The largest misconception I have seen is equating *cross species modification* with naturally occurring or man made same species hybrids. These get equated all the freaking time by alleged tech savvy people as the excuse to just "trust". The "tech pollyannas" knee jerk automatically trust, based on a starting point of falsehood belief. It's just as loony and stupid as being a luddite based on erroneous or even zero knowledge of the subject.

I am a farmer and I will say I do NOT trust corporate big ag business (nor ag college academia that relies on the same big business for funding and has tame scientists in and out of the same big business) to be self regulating as to safety concerns nor do I trust the governmental regulators because of the revolving door "jobs" aspect that occur. (exactly the same as occurs with Wall Street/Federal Reserve/Treasury/SEC revolving door jobs). There's WAY too much money involved for there not to be corruption. Just human nature. Just because some person has many letters next to their name, or some official government title, is not any guarantee they are trustworthy as to being non corrupt or "bought off". They are just as likely or not as likely as anyone else, and as the currency units involved go up in number..we should take closer and closer looks as to this trust and verify business.

  It would be nice to trust the system, but I can't the way it is set up now.

Here's an interesting video on this food subject, on how much trust we should place in huge global ag business and regulations as they exist now.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6262083407501596844

Look at software code. A chunk can be written, looked at, have other people look at it, vetted..few months later they missed something and there is an 0-day.
Well, that can be patched.

Can't say the same thing for food stuff once it is planted all over. Won't be any patches once it is out in the wild and air pollination starts spreading it. We are already seeing some of the first minor examples with canola/rapeseed "superweeds". Just wait until there are major examples.

It isn't a matter of if, it is a matter of when. There will be a hugemongous "whoops..heh heh heh, guess we missed that" excuse mumbling major screwup, by guys in black suits and white lab coats at some news conference, with the global food supply. This corn might be it, who knows, but it is coming.

Re:need a new word

[davebooth]

I am a farmer and I will say I do NOT trust corporate big ag business (nor ag college academia that relies on the same big business for funding and has tame scientists in and out of the same big business) to be self regulating as to safety concerns nor do I trust the governmental regulators because of the revolving door "jobs" aspect that occur. (exactly the same as occurs with Wall Street/Federal Reserve/Treasury/SEC revolving door jobs).

I'm an ex-molecular biologist and I dont trust 'em either. Modern genetic techniques do indeed have the potential to bring tremendous benefits and I'll even go so far as to say the profit motive has a role in driving the deployment of some of those benefits but thats only with the most rigorous and transparent testing and verification. THAT is what we dont have, instead we have regulators willing to take the word of the guys who stand to make a huge pile from a favorable result of the testing. The end result of this will indeed be, as you predict at the end of your comment, that some minor factor which in testing was argued away as insignificant or negligible will become significant when the product is deployed on such scales as are applicable to food production.

I hope we're both wrong, but I dont believe we are.

Re:need a new word

[Anonymous Coward]

"Pronoia"

The opposite of paranoia.

The belief that everyone is out to help you.

Re:What GM food for hundreds of years?

[moeinvt]

"Selective breeding is nothing but a very slow primitive form of genetic engineering."

The "very slow" part is what completely differentiates selective breeding and natural evolutionary processes from genetic engineering. All of the genetic differences you see in something like dogs occurred very gradually, and with some degree of harmony with the ecosystem. Introducing these GMOs is basically bypassing thousands of years of evolution, and going off on a tangent that would have a minuscule probability of ever occurring, even through selective breeding. I think that's a very important distinction when we're talking about the potential health and environmental impacts of these things.

an African country turned down free GM food

[da5idnetlimit.com]

Hmm did you hear the rest of the story on that one ?

They refused "free" gm crops seed and food, worked hand in hand with ONU to alleviate the food crisis and started sowing "normal" traditionnal seeds that were acclimated to their country.

And now they have almost reached food production independence.

Can you remind me what happened to the neighboring countries that accepted ?
They actually sowed some of the grains and now pay the "Monsanto Tax"...and even if short term they solved the problem, they now are in a problematic situation for years (possibly decades) to come.

Have a look at a documentary called "the world according to Monsanto" and what happened to some south american countries that are now paying millions, if not billions to Monsanto each year. Also have a look at Indian (like in India) cotton farmers and their suicide rates since they switched to GM cotton. One of the worst human tragedy of the decade, because they had to buy fertiliser and RoundUp, got more heavilly in debt and commited suicide when they couldn't repay it all.

And I'm not even a green activist. I just despise the bastards from Monsanto...

Re:What GM food for hundreds of years?

[geekprime]

I'm sorry,

There is NO WAY that I am going to accept the assertion that "selective breeding" is the same process as "gene splicing".
Nor will anyone else that is not trying to reassure someone that gene splicing is not dangerous.

It is pretty obvious that there are (this time at least) unintended reactions AND that we apparently cannot trust Monsanto to fully test and disclose before selling and feeding us their experiments.

Re:What GM food for hundreds of years?

[vivian]

I dont eat dog, so I am not worried about any genetic modifications made to those.

The big problem with GM technology is not the actual technology - it is how it is being used.
I would have no problem eating GM foods if they were only modified to add say, additional vitamins, grow with salter water, or endure harsher environments, but the problem is they are making changes that do things like add pesticides into the food its self, or enable much higher levels of herbicides and insecticides to be used on crops without killing the plants (eg, "round up ready" strains)- so there are many more toxins actually in the food, or used on the food we eat.

The other big evil with GM crops is that it promotes monocultures, which puts all your eggs in one basket geneticalyl speaking - if there is then something that badly affects that strain of crops, it can have a devestating effect as entire harvests can be wiped out due to there being no natural bio diversity which would otherwise have allowed some plants to survive.
On top of that, the way that GM crops are licensed, so that often they are engineered to only produce a single generation from the seeds and can not breed true is just a disaster waiting to happen.

One good and relatively safe use of gene technology would be to use it to precisely Analise the natural variations produced by crossbreeding several different strains of the same type of crop, then selecting those that had the ideal characteristics.

we need to start cracking down on inappropriate genetic modifications to our food, and only allow modifications that enhance the flavour or health benefits of the food, or make it able to grow in harsher climates or with less water - not introduce genes which produce toxins or are designed to enable use of much higher concentrations of poisons.

The point is...

[sean.peters]

... that these compounds are known to be toxic to various other organisms. Rather than blindly trust the company who's making a profit selling the stuff, perhaps we ought to test whether they're toxic to us too. Sure, insects are different from humans. But rats are considerably closer to us in their anatomy and physiology, and it looks like there's evidence that it's harmful to them too. And your response is that we should just take Monsanto's word that there's nothing to see here?

Re:Why wasn't Monsanto required to reveal this inf

[Dr_Barnowl]

There is - you have to sign a technology agreement.

In addition, if you don't buy Monsanto corn, you are likely to be investigated. If your field is even partially pollinated by Roundup Ready® corn, and it's probably a virtual certainty by now, they'll set the lawyers on you. Since Monsanto can afford more lawyers than you, and your farm is likely to represent your family livelihood, most people cave in and settle out of court rather than lose their family inheritance. And I'm willing to bet that some of them start buying Monsanto just to avoid it happening again... maybe it even gets written into the settlements.

That's right, Monsanto now makes money out of farmers for NOT buying Monsanto products. The best thing for them about this business model is that it spreads itself - literally, with pollen - across national borders, regardless of consent or trade agreement.

idk how you got modified informative, but I give u

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

PLUS 5 for being funny!

That was HILLARIOUS!

Re:Say wha?

[snowgirl]

> lime is what's mostly used to break up the proteins on the kernel to produce vitamin B12.

Only bacteria have the biochemical apparatus to produce B12. I call bullshit.

It's not even anything which would be produced by the reaction of a base with protein. You'd just get amino acids...

It's not B12, it's B3 as stated by others. And if you looked up "Hominy" you'd see that it's true.

sort of

[zogger]

Usually pointy haired bosses are mid level though. These big decisions are made by the muckety mucks at the top.

I think that if it can be proved that research studies were obfuscated to hide the negative, or fudged..purely for economic gain, or that an official regulator used their authority position to further that shady goal, that it should be treated as a crime against humanity, like attempted genocide, along those levels. As in major criminal felony, not some white collar BS civil matter where they might get some joke fine either.

There are normal accidental mistakes, then there are deliberate decisions made to go ahead and issue some governmental stamp of approval and then produce and sell something that they know has questionable and dangerous traits. The latter non accidental occurrence should be a serious criminal violation. And repeated occurrences within the same corporation should result in a corporate death sentence, disallowal of corporate charter, declaring all outstanding stock to be worthless and untradeable. If they can do it to poor people with normal crimes, "three strikes" laws, they should apply the same thing to corporations. Three major criminal foulups-out ya go, dissolved, physical plant and other assets seized and auctioned off.

"Maximizing shareholder value" should not be the only criteria for allowing corporate charters. Just screw that and that mindset and belief. I like what the original design had, corporations had to prove to be of the public benefit to retain their charters. Now it is..they can do anything crooked sleazy or illegal they want and if they can afford to eat the fines if they are caught..they keep doing it. Nuts. Whack a few dozen of the top infringers down. Shareholders would *finally* get the message that they better be watching over their employees conduct a little better, that there's no such thing as a free lunch, and with profits come duties and responsibilities.

  And with that, we need some whistleblower protections with big sharp teeth in them. It's still a joke and lower level employees in government and business are still afraid of getting the word out on malfeasance and unethical or illegal behavior they are aware of. That should just not be.

not bad!

[zogger]

It's a brand new bouncing baby word!