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New Study Confirms Safety of GM Crops
New submitter ChromeAeonium writes "Much like vaccines and evolution, there exists a great disparity between the scientific consensus and the public perceptions of the safety of genetically engineered crops. A previous study from France, which was later dismissed by the EFSA, FSANZ, and the French High Council of Biotechnologies, claiming to have found abnormalities in the organs of animals fed GM diets by analyzing three previous studies was discussed on Slashdot. However, a new study, also out of France, claims the opposite is true, that GM crops are unlikely to pose health risks (translation of original in French). Looking at 24 long-term and multi-generational studies on insect resistant and herbicide tolerant plants, the study states, 'The studies reviewed present evidence to show that GM plants are nutritionally equivalent to their non-GM counterparts and can be safely used in food and feed.' Although it is impossible to prove a negative, and while every GM crop must be individually evaluated as genetic engineering is a process not a product, perhaps this study will help to ease the fears of genetically engineered food and foster a more scientific discussion on the role of agricultural biotechnology."
You cannot ease the fears of the crazy. If you could, they wouldn't be crazy.
But label the damn things so people can choose. Trying to sneak it under the radar - that's the true evil.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Personally I would never eat peas after Mendel had his hands on them.
<sarcasm/>
Your science does not confirm my preconceived notions! I will reject it out of hand and dismiss you as sheep. SHEEEEP!
That's a nice result and all, but it doesn't address the real concerns with GE crops:
1. patent wars on farmers
2. cross-contamination to non-GM crops / organic farms
3. against license agreements to save seed
4. crop monoculture
This debate will be a non-issue in a few years once it's realized that it's just an advancement in agriculture and not a plot to destroy the world. People are so silly when they start picking sides. It's a curious behavior we have that leads us astray on many issues.
How do you mean, confirms? As if they already knew this would be the outcome....
Like a previous poster mentioned, the study ''proving'' the safety of GM crops was financed, at least in part, by a consortium of large French companies with an interest (a large interest) in GM crops.
Make of that what you will, but it reminds me of these studies, sponsored by Microsoft, ''proving'' that Windows was more secure than Linux.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Way to go Obongo! You bail out GM and now they're MAKING CROPS because they can't MAKE CARS. POINTLESS.
Now I'm going to go back to drinking my rumpelmintz and hydrocodone, you insensitive spawn!
I was never really worried about my health, but more of possible ecological impacts of GM crops. I am not convinced it is easy to estimate what these are.
Then again I guess this is the case for many other human activities. Ah the joys of Complex Systems...
You find human beings on every corner of this globe, subsisting for millenia on every possible local bit of biology from arctic seals to desert scorpions, and it turns out this doesn't kill us, either. Well, the food at certain southern restaurants does lead to a lot of heartburn, but other than that, we're good to go.
Why would anyone consider a crop "dangerous" simply because it may have had some gene spliced or DNA sequence slightly altered? After ingesting food doesn't the body break the food down anyway then build its own proteins as it sees fit?
The major problem with GM crops is their intellectual property implications, and another one is accidental cross-breeding with wild plants. If people are able and allowed to use the seeds of last year's GM crop to seed this year's crop, without paying a yearly fee to Monsanto or some such, and if there is a way to guarantee that the modified genes won't spill over into the wild plant gene pool (causing who knows what damage as wild plants become poisonous to bugs that feed off them), I wouldn't have a problem with GM - but what are the chances of either? Not very high.
http://departments.bloomu.edu/philosophy/pages/content/hales/articles/proveanegative.html
So...
You're saying you used to have trust and respect for the slashdot community?
Health issues are not the damn point of this subject. Who really cares what your next carbohidrates source will be? The issues are about poluting the organic crops and then making people pay a seed license. Patents and ownership are yet again the real issues here
It is with the fact that companies like Monsanto now *own* the genetic code to the crop and can destroy anyone they think is "using" it without paying them a fee.
That is the real danger and threat to society. Add in the few strains of the crop being produced now and it becomes an even bigger threat to being totally wiped out with a single disease.
Monsanto and their unholy alliance with the US Government is the danger, people.
Because (up to) two-year studies are enough to determine the long-term affects of food. Many of our biggest health issues arise from a decade or more of poor eating habits.
I don't think Mercola is a valid source.
SMB on Mercola
"I reject your reality and substitute my own."
having all the options in large print would make it easier to play with the luddite vegans
Luddite Vegans
Touched for the very first time
Luddite Ve-e-e-e-gans
With their non-GM crops, next to mine
perhaps this study will help to ease the fears of genetically engineered food and foster a more scientific discussion on the role of agricultural biotechnology
Yeah, because people who reject vaccines and evolution despite overwhelming scientific evidence are going to suddenly embrace reason concerning genetically modified crops. If anything, this study will somehow reinforce their views. Already, I see others on /. -- people who really should know better -- cooking up conspiracy theories.
"Is not a sentence" is not a sentence. Well damn.
I'm sure its sponsored by GM companies. The point is why even mess with it, we have food that we can grow now that isn't GM, in fact if anything we need to diversify our food supply and go the opposite direction, different breeds of corn, wheat, soybeans instead of the same 3 that are grown in every field. The other massive problem with GM is a company can control and patent a seed, once it dominates and is entrenched they slowly squeeze the profits and life out of small farms and into larger companies.
Personally I would never eat peas after Mendel had his hands on them.
<sarcasm/>
But Mendel never cross bred a pea with a firefly.
It's one thing to breed plants and mess with pollen and steer nature in a direction; it's another to start messing with genes and DNA and putting things in them that is impossible to happen in nature.
Claiming that GM is safe is about as stupid is claiming that GM is dangerous. Every individual alteration should be examined and go through safety trials.
But Mendel never cross bred a pea with a firefly.
Genetic engineering doesn't splice food with animals either. Try and find a reliable source for your idiotic hysteria.
I got here through a series of tubes
If you've ever had Mr. Brown Iced Coffee, and Hello Boss Iced Coffee, if would be clear that Hello Boss is, or at least was a knockoff, but Hello Boss and Boss Coffee is much better.
I have heard the opposite claims as well, but I know which one I like.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
I agree that the fear of *eating* GMO foods is science-phobia. But even if GMO foods are safe, GMO agriculture is bad for everybody.
Everything that you read on /. about intellectual property applies to the IP that Monsanto et al apply to their products and research. In fact, it's worse, because the wind doesn't blow proprietary software from nearby windows and OS X boxes onto your linux systems, causing you to owe the IP owners money and disabling your ability to build your own software.
GMO seeds are also highly optimized to solve certain problems, and can fail miserably in other climates where local strains have been bred to adapt to local conditions. The farmers in India who are committing suicide en masse because their crops have failed are not just phobic about science. They got fucked in the ass.
The GMO salmon that are safe to eat are so big because they never stop growing, so they never stop eating. Is that a species that you think would have no ecological impact if accidentally released into the wild?
And we just rationalized totally ransacking natural evolution for profit. Evolution, mind that. a process that takes millions of years on average for mid-to higher species, has just been made a lego toy. A careful balance that has materialized after billions of years, is now at the mercy of whatever results the unbridled genetic modification for profit, will bring. Especially since the modified are breeding with the unmodified in fields, totally exterminating the natural species by mutating them. (this is probably one of the reasons why norwegians set up a vault to preserve seeds in norway some time ago)
Ah, did i tell you it was recently discovered that modification in crops was causing their pests to evolve and develop equally rapidly ? (was on slashdot)
Read radical news here
we have food that we can grow now that isn't GM
Except for extremely drought-common countries, or areas where pests destroy crops before they can be harvested, etc. Those famine-stricken regions would probably be rather happy to have GM food rather than no food at all.
Can't I just stick to buying local produce from my farmers market without having to wonder if good ol' Farmer Joe is using GM seeds?
I should have a choice to purchase non-GM produce at a price just as people should have the choice to purchase GM produce for another (perhaps the same) price.
Why on earth people are wasting time and studies on this is beyond me. You create/breed a new crop through selection and genemanipulation, lo and behold, a new crop. You run the crop through chemical testing and if it still contains the same substances as the original crop (preferably in the desired proportions), THEN IT'S HARMLESS.
All this bullshit-scaremongering is the result of the boneheaded public who know nothing about cellular biology, chemistry etc.; and who think GM is the same as pumping pigs full of dioxins and steroids to make the pig produce more meat. In reality it's the ironical opposite, we do GM in order to AVOID having to inject chemicals into animals that may make it all the way to consumers.
To be fair to the grandparent, glowing peas would be pretty awesome and if someone is not trying to splice firefly and pea DNA to achieve this then I think we should be looking hard at the genetics community and asking 'why not?'
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The study goes on to say that failed attempts at a first post can harm your karma.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Those GM Taco Bell shells did a number on me. Once they switched back, I was fine again.
I have recently done a university essay on the health and economy of genetically modified food and I must say that this article comes very close to being a lie. Genetically modified food, specifically milk produced by cows given hormones in order to grow faster and produce more milk, is known to cause cancer. Additionally, new GM foods may create new allergies (unproven, but the chances are there), as well as transfer allergies between plants when injecting foreign DNA. Think of them injecting peanut DNA into corn, if the right portion of the peanut DNA is accepted, there is now a form of corn that will cause an allergy attack in people allergic to peanuts, and since production of GM crops are not heavily regulated, it is very possible for those plants to breed with the original plant, and spread unbeknownst to farmers (such as what has happened to canola and flax in Canada).
If anyone wants access to the full essay, I would be glad to share it.
Not successfully, as yet.... The theory was that the antifreeze proteins used by the arctic flounder to resist cold damage in its rather hostile environment would produce a tomato resistant to frosts and cold storage.
Splicing the gene in worked just fine. However, the product wasn't significantly better, as a tomato, and the PR was bad.
Good old Green Fluorescent Protein, a jellyfish derivative, has been spliced into just about anything and everything somebody in a lab coat has cared to hold still for 10 minutes; but largely as a proof-of-technique or imaging agent, it has no obvious value for food crops.
Our experience to the present suggests that attempting to grab useful animal traits and shove them into plants(I, for one, welcome the tomeato with enthusiasm!) is harder than naive speculation would suggest; but that there is no magic barrier to splicing animal genes into plants, other animals, bacterial, etc.
How do you go from generally positive comments to FIRST POSTing like a typical troll? I wonder how many other FIRST POSTers generally provide insightful commentary in other conversations... I guess we'll never know except in rare cases of forgetting to tick the "Post Anonymously" box as demonstrated here.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_tomato
These are statistical studies, and you know what "they" say about statistics? There are lies, damned lies, and then there are statistics...
GM crops are protected by patents, and this can harm those farmers who use non-GM crops, but get the genes of the GM crops into their plants through insemination. That alone is enough to not accept them, even if otherwise they should be perfectly safe.
It can only disprove it. Scientific knowledge is, at best, tentative because it can always be disproven by the next finding. It's not stable. People need to realize that.
...that doesn't stop Slashdot from claiming just that in a headline.
They're never going to ban them as there's too much money behind them. It's like X-Ray scanners in airports in the USA.
No matter how dangerous they are or how many cancers they cause they'll never been banned. Of course the Europeans banned them at their airports, but they're more enlightened about a number of things.
Fruit that starts glowing when perfectly ripe (or when it's time to be picked before it becomes ripe during shipping) would be awesome. Just like the Firefly Fruit of Macaroon in Duck Tales.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacillus_thuringiensis
Bacterium genes are spliced into vegetables as one of the most common forms of GMO crops. In general, it's not unusual for genes to be lifted from one genome and inserted into another that would be vanishingly improbable to happen in the wild.
I won't say "impossible" because some genes are thought to have been transferred between species through viruses, but it's a very very rare occurrence.
I'll also head this off and say that I'm not philosophically opposed to genetic manipulation of foodstuffs.
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
It's not the fact that the crops are GM that I take issue with, I could really care less. My issues are what are done with certain GM crops. Genetically modifying crops so we can soak them with biocides is not cool in my book, as such biocides do not wash off, and ruins the land for anything other than crops modified to to resist the same things.
Did they test these plants before or after they dumped tons of extra pesticides on them?
That's one of the issues, we'll develop a Round-up resistant corn. Then the farmer will use 3x as much Woody's Round-up.
The end result is not that the particular GMO crop necessarily poses a health risk, but the greater use of pesticide related to that crop does.
Horizontal gene transfer actually is a fairly significant evolutionary force in nature.
The headline is egregiously wrong. But what else is new around here? If the article's abstract of the paper is anywhere close to accurate, this was just a toxicological study of the effects on animals of being fed certain genetically modified plants. It has NO predictive value with respect to the effects of other modifications.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Still not going to eat your mutant food.
Pretty strange generalization. This sounds like saying "New Study Confirms Software is Bug Free"
Between the scientific consensus and the public perceptions about evolution? Where do you live? Or when...
Other issues are;
1. Cross-contamination to non-GM plants - resulting in food chain problems when wild plants are 'resistant' to the creatures that depend on them.
2. The IP war brought to food; save seed = theft, and the DRM style solution; sterile crops that have to be purchased annually from a single source, result = peonage.
3. Crop monoculture and the resulting food insecurity; think 'potato blight, Ireland'.
There's huge numbers of children, and the number is growing every year, with severe food allergies. Cancer is hitting is earlier and more frequently. *Something* is happening. I don't know if it's the air, the water, the food... but *something* is going on. I find the fact that every industry says "not me" completely dissatisfying. And yes, my daughter has a severe peanut allergy...
Ofc it does!
That is the main reason why educated people demand labeling or even want to forbid it.
Tomatoes e.g. a spliced with chicken gens that produce an amino acid that prevents skin damage and makes the tomatos easier to transport and longer lasting.
You are alergic against chicken flesh? You eat such a tomato? Sigh ... hope the hospital realizes in time what your problem is.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You know, I did a first post, once. Perhaps for each of us, it has become such an ingrained meme, the pull is irresistible in the right circumstance. For me, I happened to log in at the moment Slashdot announced its 10th anniversary. I had a window of I would guess 5 or so seconds in which to frame and post a first post on that story. The temptation got the better of me. I had never done a first post here or on any other forum before, and haven't since. Perhaps that just happens to each of the 2 million or so members here on a story they particularly like, and happens to a few members considerably more, depending on the severity of the vulnerability to the meme.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
But Mendel never cross bred a pea with a firefly.
It's one thing to breed plants and mess with pollen and steer nature in a direction; it's another to start messing with genes and DNA and putting things in them that is impossible to happen in nature.
Viruses manage to inject DNA originally from one species into another all the time. It's thought that about 8% of human DNA has been injected into our systems from foreign by historical viral outbreaks, and then passed on to children. It's one of the ways our immune system passes on immunity.
Following his first (and needless to say, last) dose of Pertussis vaccine, our young son screamed in agony with excruciating head pain for hours. Most likely he had brain swelling. The authorities deny the reality of such events with the excuse that they do not take place in a controlled experimental setting. Their motivation is clear: vaccines are a benefit to the majority, at a cost to the minority, and they (probably correctly) fear that telling us the truth will cause us to avoid them, to the detriment of the majority.
Every single thing you eat has been genetically modified the good old fashioned way anyhow, through selective breeding.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
"GMO study funded by companies with a vested interest in GMOs determines that GMOs are safe.".....
Nothing to see here, folks. Move along...
There's also environmental damage. Herbicide-tolerant crops mean the farmer can spray more and push yields higher, but greater use of herbicides damages diversity in the surrounding countryside. I suppose this is related to your point 4.
Here's an anecdote for you. I'm actually home for the holidays (in farmland country) and was asking my parents what happened to a lot of specific insects I remembered as a kid but don't see these days (I realize it's winter but I've been home in the summer too). Specifically we used to have these massive garden spiders that had a golden abdomen like this one. When I was a kid, I used to flick grasshoppers and locusts into these massive webs they built between our pine trees. The webs are no longer there. My mom says it's the Roundup. She's worked her garden since 1977 and I mean like an acre of garden that we basically subsisted on. She's convinced that it's the farmers that drench their crops with Roundup now and that this Roundup is killing certain insects (directly or indirectly in the food chain). She also claims that due to Roundup we never see the number of toads and frogs that we used to (literally our backyard would be full of the young) but I can't say if this is true or not as my dad has since laid plastic lining around our pond to protect our lawn.
Anyway, is there anyone doing these studies? Who applies Roundup to frogs, toads, golden garden spiders or their food and studies the impact? I guess nobody really cares about spiders but there's the obvious recent example of pesticide harming the bee population and that could turn into be a very dreadful problem.
My work here is dung.
Government enforced, privately owned and limited food is anti-human and anti-life. Also the AC post directly above mine saying essentially what I wanted to say.
I hope the study does not make that broad a conclusion. This must be another bad /. summary. If it does really make that conclusion then it is obviously propaganda science. Seriously how could they possibly have studied all the effects of all possible GM crops? It's like doing a study of a few anti-biotics and stating "Study Confirms Safety of Prescription Drugs." I might believe a conclusion that says "This particular GM corn appears to have no excess adverse health effects" but this is absurd. Who paid for the study? Monsanto? ADM?
-- QED
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacillus_thuringiensis
Bacterium genes are spliced into vegetables as one of the most common forms of GMO crops. In general, it's not unusual for genes to be lifted from one genome and inserted into another that would be vanishingly improbable to happen in the wild.
I won't say "impossible" because some genes are thought to have been transferred between species through viruses, but it's a very very rare occurrence.
I'll also head this off and say that I'm not philosophically opposed to genetic manipulation of foodstuffs.
BT, as a bacteria is completely safe for humans and animals, and even most insects. It really only affects the gut of caterpillars. It occurs natrually in the soil and is considered completely organic. Other forms of BT can affect mosquitoes, fruit flies, and various gnats in the larval stage. I can literally spray my tomatoes with BT, pick them and eat them the same day without washing them (not that I would) with no ill effects.
If could could make a plant produce the BT toxin on its own, this would be a huge boon for the food industry. It would make many crops immune to various worms and caterpillars. The only thing that could be a problem is that one person in 100,000,000 that may have an allergy to the BT toxin that simply has not been found yet because it may just give them gas making them believe it's the cabbage that's giving them gas.
My only issue is that I detest mass produce produce as it simply lacks flavor compared to the stuff I grow myself. I use organic fertilizer, not because I'm against non-organic, but because Tomato Tone works the best and it happens to be organic. I also make my own compost because I'm cheap. The difference is that I pick the fruit when it starts to become ripe naturally. My tomatoes are picked when THEY decide they are ripe, not when the calendar says they need to be on the truck. My fruit ripens naturally on the vine or on the counter (birds eat anything red in the garden) and is eaten when it's perfect. It's not stored in an ethylene gas chamber and forced to ripen and my stuff is never in the fridge. Sure, I can buy produce that gets the treatment I give my own, but heirloom tomatoes run about $5.00 each. Why would I pay that when I can grow over 100 lbs a year?
My point is that it's not the GM that makes mass produced food suck. It's the mass produce part that makes mass produced food suck. A tomato that makes its own BT should be as good as a non-BT tomato if grown properly.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
So is smoking -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycFrFx8MiVw
* Carthago Delenda Est *
You can readily prove the non-existence of something that satisfies a particular set of properties... for example, finding a real number that satisfies being equivalent to the square root of negative 1. The properties are "real" and "square root of -1". And it is fully provable that absolutely no number exists with both of those properties. While a complex number that is the square root of negative 1 exists, and one might want to argue that the ascribed property of being real was arbitrary and unncessary, one could equally argue the the property of being the square root of negative 1 was arbitrary as well... yet clearly real numbers exist, so what make one property distinctive and the other not?
It is even possible to prove the nonexistence of something with only a single property... such as the existence of a number that is equivalent to itself plus 1. There is absolutely no number, in any number system defined by mathematics, that satisfies this criteria. People who challenge even this would have to leave the domain of mathematics entirely, making the argument that it might still plausibly exist wholly meaningless... since, after all, outside of mathematics, what would it even mean to "add 1" to something?
Of course, one might then point out that this could work within a domain of mathematics because it is built on such rigidly defined principles, and those principles are well understood. In the real world, however, we do not necessarily know all the physical principles that govern the universe's operation... we may believe we understand them well enough to have demonstrated predictive power in the past, but that does not mean our understanding is anywhere near complete. Because of this ambiguity, some doubt can always remain about the existence of certain things. The only way you can remove this doubt is by ascribing properties to the thing you are intending to disprove, and then systematically showing that the satisfaction of those properties creates a logical contradiction, thereby disproving the existence of that thing with those properties.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
These days, you only have to whore yourself out once to be fixed for life. Reaching the desired conclusion for money has corrupted so many fields that there is a serious credibility problem with anyone getting funded by entities that have oxen and fear their being gored. It has gotten so bad with the unholy alliance between politics and drug companies that many people have begun giving up paying attention to it altogether.
The way these studies are conducted might be unimpeachable and the conclusions with these particular tests (wherein the changes are said to be "insignificant" (on what basis?)) might be statistically supportable. However, this is one conclusion and not a Fact. Similar studies show that coffee|Brussels sprouts|dietary fiber|control of sodium intake is good | bad for you (related summary here), and reaching opposite conclusions shows either that experiments are not being repeated, or that the effects are not clear.
But Mendel never cross bred a pea with a firefly.
Genetic engineering doesn't splice food with animals either. Try and find a reliable source for your idiotic hysteria.
"Idiotic"?
I saw it originally in Scientific American in the 1980s and that was what I was alluding to in the parent.
I expected Slashdotters to be a bit more educated and informed ....
Except for extremely drought-common countries, or areas where pests destroy crops before they can be harvested, etc. Those famine-stricken regions would probably be rather happy to have GM food rather than no food at all.
These countries did have crops that could grow. They have for centuries, or people wouldn't have survived there until now. The problem is, they started using the crops that work in our climates, which was fine until a year of drought. Larger food supply, growth of population and all... Then, when drought hit that our style of crops couldn't handle, they had more people than before, and insufficient food... Our style of crops created the problem. Perhaps a return to crops that actually grow well in those climates consistently would help more in the long term... if anyone is still concerned about long term food security...
Too bad most people having an opinion about micro organisms and bacteria wouldn't even know what horizontal gene transfer is. Some truths about life:
- Bacteria/ Archaea vastly outnumber any other living thing, there are much more of them than of anything else combined.
- We only know details about ~1% of them, because the rest can't be cultured.
- Horizontal gene transfer is the norm with bacteria/ archaea. Viruses are one type of vehicle used to transfer DNA portions.
- Pathogens among bacteria/ archaea are very uncommon. The successful evolutionary strategy for them is to NOT be pathogenic, otherwise there would be no multi cellular organisms.
- Only 10% of the human body is actually ours and derived from human DNA. The other 90% are micro organisms.
- At least one third (1/ 3) of the human DNA comes from horizontal gene transfer, it's mostly virus genes
On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.
Norman Borlaug (one of the greatest people you may have never heard of), who has saved a BILLION lives through GMO crops, has said that we could feed at most 4 billion people using only organic methods.
http://www.torontoglobalist.org/2010/11/24/the-man-that-saved-a-billion-lives-norman-borlaug-gmos/
and while every GM crop must be individually evaluated as genetic engineering is a process not a product
Tell that to the FDA and the cronies of Monsanto that get paid to rubberstamp its "product".
GRAS, or Generally Recognized As Safe means that each crop is NOT individually evaluated. If it looks sorta like corn, call it corn, rubberstamp it, and go home. Same for all their other products.
'Nuff said.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
There are studies which show that DNA and RNA can both survive digestion.
http://www.zivilcourage.ro/pdf/mazza.pdf
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/09/21/what-you-eat-affects-your-genes-rna-from-rice-can-survive-digestion-and-alter-gene-expression/
While that is no big reason to worry over GM food more than to worry over some strange food from the jungle that you don't know, it is still possible that GM foods can be dangerous.
This is especially true when the GM crops were altered such that lots of strange proteins are created, for example when the GM crops create their own poisons against crop diseases.
There are also other issues surrounding GM crops; One of the most worrying is the possibility that some GM crops contribute to honey bee colony collapse, and bees are vital to growing crops.
Another problem with GM crops is that they are often altered to produce seeds that do not grow into new crops, and even when that is not the case, farmers are forbidden by patents to grow and sow their own seeds.
While a rich country may don't care about this, it can be fatal for people in a poor country.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
If you take DNA from peanuts (safe) and mix it with wheat (safe) odds are you get a safe hybrid. Except if you are allergic to peanuts. Nobody expects to die from a peanut allergy when eating bread. Without labeling GM ingredients you can't know what you are eating.
But Mendel never cross bred a pea with a firefly.
Genetic engineering doesn't splice food with animals either. Try and find a reliable source for your idiotic hysteria.
I guess it must be idiotic to proofread also. Did you mean "splice plants with animals"?
Here's the likely first GM animal to be food:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/7857310/Giant-salmon-will-be-first-GM-animal-available-for-eating.html
genetically modified organisms are no longer the same organism. Making a plant resistant to certain chemicals or pests is a mutant power. Did X-Men not teach us anything about mutants?
Does it cause cancer? Probably not.
What about nutrition?
What about tiny, subtle effects that don't show up for 40 years?
I am not against GM tech. (I am an engineer, I believe we will eventually conquer the universe)
I am just a little skeptical. I fear that we don't know enough yet.
We are like monkeys sticking twigs in a precision machine..."Ah, that seems to slow it down"..
Confirming the safety of GM crops is simply infeasible. It is certainly possible to carry extensive studies in a limited number of GMOs and conclude that they are reasonably safe, but the very nature of genetic modification - and its value, therefore - is that its potential is by all means boundless. One can modify a crop to produce substances that are poisonous to humans just as easily as they modify a crop to produce substances that are toxic to weeds or insects, thus rendering it more "resistant".
The very nature of the concerns about GMOs is that it is very difficult to identify and measure the metabolic side effects that originate from modifying a single gene or group of genes. It's crucial to keep in mind that scientists are *constantly* identifying previously unknown compounds present in even the most common of the vegetable species. It is nonsense to think that it would be possible to measure all the metabolic alterations arising from modifying, adding or deleting a gene.
On top of that, there is an intrinsic issue of conflict of interest. The entities who are most qualified to understand the holistic effects of a genetic alteration, namely the companies who developed the GMO, have no incentive to invest in extensive analysis that may result in findings that render their new product worthless. Pharmaceutical companies are forced to do just that for new drugs, but the food industry is not nearly as regulated and probably never will be.
Given the enormous potential for unknown (and unnoticeable in the short term) side effects of consuming GMOs, I personally refrain from getting close to them at least until I have any trust that proper procedures are in place to thoroughly evaluate them.
GM food is evil. It will bring us back to when everyone farms and pays a local nobility for the honor of growing food for them.
Maybe people shouldn't give immune response suppressing medication like Advil = ibuprofen, especially if the fever is not critical. I know wifes who freak out if the fever is even 1 degree higher than the normal temperature.
See this paper here, it is from 1990.
"Adverse effects of aspirin, acetaminophen, and ibuprofen on immune function, viral shedding, and clinical status in rhinovirus-infected volunteers."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2172402
There is a reason that homeopathy sometimes works, and the reason is that sometimes no medication is the best medication.
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
I'm not so worried about the ingestion part of GM crops but the troubling part for me is seeing Megacorp take down small time farmers for "copyright infringement"[0][1] due to crops cross-pollinating via the wind, bees, whatever. It's ridiculous. It's basically a legal argument to eradicate any form of alternative food source other than Monsanto's monopoly.
Thing is, GM crops are the foothold for food copyright. If you need any indication where that could end up have a look at RIAA proceedings for the past 10 years or even Microsoft's (et al) Seed Vault[2].
[0] - http://www.nelsonfarm.net/issue.htm
[1] - http://www.mnn.com/your-home/organic-farming-gardening/stories/monsanto-wins-lawsuit-against-indiana-soybean-farmer
[2] - http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23503
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It's not about preconceived notions: most scientific examinations of GM don't ask the right questions. Few people doubt that the current generation of GM foods are probably safe to eat and probably don't cause massive environmental harm. But some rather more relevant questions are:
- Can we rely on the integrity of the people who will test the next generation of crops and do we have sufficient controls in place to prevent biased testing
- Are the risks of GM food - however small they may be - borne by the people who profit from the technology? If not, how do we address this fundamental disconnect?
- What are the long term risks of reducing genetic diversity amongst our food crops? Does it make us more vulnerable to unexpected, intercontinental crop failures or reduce our ability to cope with climate change?
- What are the social, economic and geopolitical consequences of making third world farmers dependendend on multinational companies?
- What are the social, economic and geopolitical consequences of the planet's primary food sources being subject to patent controls?
I'm not comfortable that any of these questions have been properly addressed.
Science is half wrong all the time and cross-disciplinary corrections are rare.
Big Business pays for 'scientific' studies all the time to back their claims. They're in it for profit and they frequently lie.
Slashdot always gets the summary incorrectly and the study is nothing as general as confirming safety of all gmo products.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Yes, as a mater of fact you can splice animal genes into food. For instance, a frost resistant tomato was create using genes from an artic fish. Here's a reference from PBS, but there are many other references if you search on Google.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/dna/pop_genetic_gallery/index.html
They have also been using the gene that causes fluoresecence in jelly fish and put into into plants (and a lot of other things) because it make it easy to track genetic markers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_fluorescent_protein
Organic foods are seen as a premium product, worth more money in the grocery store. GM foods are seen as bad, worth less in the grocery store. The ban on labeling the GM foods is so they can sell it at the higher rate rather than at the lower one.
I'm not really worried that some GMO food will poison ME. I'm more concerned about the effects of the introduced gene escaping into the wild and having some unforeseen consequences.
The issue I remember recently was about farmed salmon. The new gene made them fatten up faster. The regulatory safety qualifications were only based on the food produced and didn't even take into consideration what might happen if some of the gm salmon escaped into the wild.
Then of course there are all the problems of industrial agriculture and vast expanses of genetically identical crops, but that's an issue with old fashioned genetic tinkering. The GMO thing just turns it up a notch.
Previous "studies"
"The Agricultural Biotechnology Support Project II (ABSPII), funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and led by Cornell University, brokered the partnership between NARO and Monsanto."
Monsanto?
Who exactly funded the study this time Ms Ricroch?
"Now, for us, the debate on GMOs from a health point of view is closed", Agnes Ricroch (AgroParisTech and University Paris-Sud), who led the study, said to AFP.
Really after only 2 years and 5 generations of animals?
I don't care how safe this stuff is for human consumption. It's not why I oppose it. I oppose it because it's a biological Pandora's box. Once the mutated genes get out in the natural ecosystem, there is no telling what will happen. And our food supply is one place where risks like that should not be taken.
Besides this there's the whole "patent on life" thing that just wants to make me puke.
Who funded the study??? There's always some ulterior motive behind controversial studies and usually the company who paid for the study is the one with the motive. And furthermore why do we need plants that have been GM to be resistent to certain threats? IMHO The better choice would be to use bugs to kill what ever threat your crop faces. That makes more sense than genetically modifying your eco system. Then again I'm not a farmer but I'm sure some other folks here can suggest alternatives.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
Don't worry, I will retard. Also, what the fuck is a clow?
My mistake, I did indeed mean plants. That was quite idiotic of me.
I got here through a series of tubes
the only GM i know is www.gm.com/
wish ppl would stop using acronyms in headlines. it confuse me. please spell out words. took me a while to figure out articles was not about car maker creating or selling food. i though GM was doing some humanitarian work for 3rd world countries. ok, me step of soapbox. ok, time to log out of computer at internet cafe and pay my fee. bye every1
Although it is impossible to prove a negative
But that doesn't stop the AGW crowd from demanding just that from folks who haven't drunk the Kool Aid.
"Where's your proof that man is NOT causing global warming?"
But some significant percentage of the world's population has food allegies, and here in the US, we seem to have allergies to foods that people elsewhere in the world don't. For instance, peanut allergies seem to be unusually prevalent to the US, and some scientists suspect that it may have something to do with how we cultivate them, how they've been selectively bred or genetically engineered, or perhaps due to contamination from other sources. It's not clear that this is due to genetic modifications, but it's a suspect. IIRC, it's only like 10% of the US population that have a food sensitivity (that they know about, anyhow), but anecdotally, GM crops are more likely to be allergenic.
Similar to peanuts, there is corn (maize), which is one of the most genetically modified crops we have. Even before scientists got their hands on it, it was selectively bred for thousands of years, from a barely edible grain to the high-glycemic food we have today. There are some people who have severe reactions to corn, which is basically impossible to avoid in the US, because most additives are derived from it, and the FDA doesn't regulate its use. These include dextrose (used to bind iodine in salt or elsewhere as a sweetener or preservative), citric acid (preservative), xanthan gum (thicker from a bacterium grown on corn), white vinegar (distilled but usually contaminated), microcrystalline cellulose, (high fructose) corn syrup, maltodextrin, any anonymous "starch", and countless other things. The refinement of these extracts is very poor. (Contrast soybean oil which, given that soy is listed as a major allergen, it is much better refined.) Some people with corn allergies even have trouble with milk from cows fed corn. Whether it's the genetic modifications, or whether it's allergies instead to the molds that typically grow on corn, some people with corn allergies report that they can safely eat "organic" corn. Corn allergies are relatively rare, but given that it's almost impossible to avoid, and those with corn allergies seem to have especially severe reactions to trace quantities, my guess is the primary reason the FDA doesn't regulate it is due to political pressure from the corn associations. Corn is huge business in the US.
It's interesting that the most cultivated foods we have seem to be the most allergenic. Soybeans, wheat, corn, peanuts, and milk (cows are highly domesticated). One hypothesis I have is that we're not cut out to eat certain kinds of foods, but desperate or clever people found ways to cultivate these barely-edible things into foods they could more readily consume. But we didn't evolve to eat them, for millions of years before we developed farming, so many people can't tolerate them. Wheat is an interesting hybrid plant, with a weird genetic structure. It's interesting because most people who can't have wheat aren't allergic -- they have celiac disease, which is an autoimmune condition. The body develops IgA antibodies to some of the gluten peptides, and those same antibodies attack other parts of the body, typically the gut lining. Those same antibodies can get into the blood and attack the thyroid gland, causing overproduction of thyroid hormone, which is any many celiac sufferers have panic attacks and other psychological symptoms.
A few concluding points:
- Genetic modification isn't inherently evil or anything.
- But there may be unintended consequences if you introduce genes without knowing their effects.
- And our ability to predict, up front, the effect of a given gene is poor, as is our ability to fully test the effects of the grown organism.
- Most people seem unaffected by this.
- But there is a notable portion of the population that MAY be impacted by these modifications.
- Keep in mind that the primary motivation for making these modifications is increased yield and increased profits, so the scientists and farmers are not especially motivated to scrutinize any unexpected effects. If it grows better, that's all that matters, even if a few m
No one is quite so confident in their beliefs as someone who argues from ignorance.
A few minutes with Google would have turned up this PDF list of transgenic test permits, including...
It's rare, but animal genes in food crops is not unprecedented. No such products have gotten past the test stages into the general market, AFAIK, and unlike you, I've actually read through the list of all GM crops APHIS has granted nonregulated status to under the Plant Protection Act and its predecessor acts.
Cows. How do you explain cows? They are Half Food and Half Animal.
Holy shit Mercola is a quack! Learn How Homeopathy Cured a Boy of Autism
Listen to this guy at your own risk.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
How you "go from generally positive comments to FIRST POSTing" is because of achievements. I like achievements. I like them on Xbox, I like them on Steam, and I'm sure I'd like them on PS3 if having both an Xbox and a PS3 wasn't redundant. But at the same time, lots of achievements are for dumb things. I've been assuming that there was a First Post achievement ever since the one April Fools' Day where they were introduced here at slashdot. (After all, Slashdot introduces dumb community-breaking "features" all the time.)
Recently I've had a lot of opportunities to First Post and haven't done so. Why? Mainly because it's dumb. But on the day before Christmas Eve, when people are hopefully chilling out more and reading slashdot less, I figured today would be a decent, non-community harming opportunity to try. I'm sorry I ruined your slashdot experience.
jmac_the_man
ANYBODY who has programming experience should be strongly opposed to GM foods! We can't get simple closed digital systems we supposedly understand and built 100% to function properly as designed where 99% of the time the errors are not an issue. So we are supposed to blindly put our faith into a field newer than computer science, which is vastly more complex, analog, with slower debug cycles, can self replicate, with commands we do not really understand (we largely just splice segments of code like some beginner programmer hacking together google results,) and which has to interact with many other different systems?
Foolish is not strong enough of a word to cover it.
GM foods in the EU are possibly worse than other high-money organized propaganda because not only is it like big oil and big tobacco but as Wikileaks has shown the USA government is heavily pressuring them on behalf of their corporate masters (Monsanto) to force monopoly FOOD backed by stupid "I.P." laws which already have been used to crush legitimate natural farmers and seed suppliers out of business or over to GM crops. Science has little to do with the issue; its BIG POWER politics and that reality distortion field at work.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
These GE seeds/crops are engineered by companies who would not stop there (and haven't). There are already GE seeds in production that are sterile after 1 round, putting a type of monopoly on food. The same people who would benefit from GM products being accepted are the people who would limit the supply of ...thats right...FOOD, so a farmer's seeds for next years crop would have to be 're-purchased' because when the current crop throws seed, its completely sterile. 100 years down the road..our most basic right, the fat of the land, could be denied to us due to greedy corporations who would rather us [globe] starve than lose money [of course...the planet is going to esplode in 363 days, so it's a moot point]. This type of research/production is happening as I type this.
More still, these GE seeds can and will and have begun to spread and infect (cross with) the natural strains in the wild. Monsanto has been accused of dileberatly seeding the sides of the roads with GE seed along farmlands, contaminating (hybridizing) the existing non GE crops. They then come back to those farms in a couple of rounds and test for the GE modifications in the current crop. Of course it's there...and if the farmer didn't purchase the GE seeds, they sue the farmers into non-existance. If even an 'accident' were to occur at a plant or on a truck containing self-terminating GE Corn, for example....we would very quickly be reduced to having only one option.
Don't get me wrong...resistant food that grows faster and produces more is a wonderful thing. I'm not against GM products. I'm against what it means to accept them.
Just because one set of GM crops is safe, does not mean all will be. The problem is that because food is not sourced locally that much anymore, you have no idea who produced it. Some simple solutions: 1) Label GM crops and products made with them, or at least allow people who use no GMOs label their food as such. 2) Require GM foods to go through the same process as drugs going through the FDA. People used to sell elixer's with opiates in them before there were controls. Who says that once GM is allowed that no one will make tomacco? (Simpson's reference) "Gee, I really want to eat a tomato, but I'm not hungry" 3) Do not allow GM seeds to be "copyrighted", i.e. you can't sue a farmer for selling food made from your GM seed unless they broke into your lab and stole it and you can prove it in a court of law. If companies who make seeds want to prevent people from growing their products then they need to GM the seeds so that they cannot reproduce. You can't throw me jail or sue me if you drop some money and then it sticks to the bottom of my shoe and I bring it home with me.
The biggest problem in this, if in fact GM crops are not unhealthy, is that in the near future, nobody will plant anything other than GM crops to be competitive...I wonder who will own the patents? Open source food? :)
are more what I am worried about. I don't think we should abandon the idea by any stretch but I do think we need to be extremely cautious when we are mucking with things we don't fully understand that are vitally important (aka our food supply). We have done all sorts of stupid things that sounded good such as introducing species to areas to control pests that ended in disaster (see Mongoose in Maui). Well ok...that does sound stupid...but it obviously sounded like a good idea to someone. We still don't fully understand nutrient absorption and all their interactions within our bodies (ask around about whether multi-vitamins are good for you) so I don't see how we could stamp GM foods as truly "nutritionally equivalent."
I wish people would attack the arguments/results of the study itself instead of just resorting to the good ol' "evil corporations!".
Delicious sheep
Hey guys - lets just combine the "good" with the "bad" and they'll neutralize each other! All in favor of "Genetically Modified Organic" say aye! Or wait a sec - is that what GMO already stands for?? I am confused.
There's no place like 127.0.0.1
effecting evolution by breeding dogs in between each other cannot be compared to directly poking at the genes of the dogs in an unrestricted fashion. not to mention how stuff like pitbulls worked out, even with breeding.
Read radical news here
BT *may* be safe however lots of stuff occurs naturally in the soil that is not safe. Anthrax comes to mind. I am not against Genetic engineering. I do however have a problem when companies like Monsanto hides internal research that shows negative results of GM crops. I think we need proper oversight in this area. I am also not for companies like Monsanto patenting strains of GM crops then suing people when their GM crops cross pollinate other crops. Also I recommend you watch the documentary The World According To Monsanto. I don't think these people should be the custodians of GM crops. When you go out of your way to hide what you are doing from consumers and lobbying so people don't know when a product they are purchasing is GM or not then you are corrupt and your products are more than likely unsafe and should be heavily scrutinized. You cannot trust Monsanto that their products are safe after the actions they have demonstrated in the marketplace.
I'm not so worried about GM crops emitting radiation, toxic chemicals, stabby knife things, or just swallowing me whole a la the Venus Flytrap.
I am worried about crop homogeneity. We should've learned this lesson from the Irish Potato Famine. That nothing bad has happened "yet," does not mean that it can't or won't happen, because we're so awesome and smart.
If our few Monsanto-owned strains of food crops goes due to a plant epidemic, environmental changes, or any number of other factors, they *all* go. Or enough of them to cause huge problems anyways.
Besides the fact that I don't believe in patents, let alone patenting life-forms.
It's not about Science its about the actions of corrupt companies that are pushing GM food. You have to look at the SOURCE of the science. You don't take the word of Monsanto scientists as truth about the safety of GM crops just like you don't take the word of oil company scientists as gospel.
As others have pointed out, the issue for many isn't the claims about food safety, but rather Monsanto's lawsuits. Google "Monsanto lawsuit" or check out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#As_plaintiff
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/21/us-monsanto-lawsuit-idUSTRE78K79O20110921
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc._v._Schmeiser
among others. Could Monsanto be viewed as a monopoly? How much control over your food supply are you comfortable with?
Given the true freedom to choose, most consumers don't want GM foods. If the GM products came in noticeably different packaging, if the corporations were not dumping them at lower costs, if they were not pulling the strings on legislators to suppress labeling, then the market would be truly free. Most consumers would say NO to GM. Furthermore, if GM pollen shows up my field and I'm an organic farmer it is I who should be suing you and winning, not the other way around. End Monsantocracy, the whole GM food fiasco goes away, hopefully before we really fuck up all the plants.
I'd be suspicous too if a car or medical device company started selling modified food.
"'The studies reviewed present evidence to show that GM plants are nutritionally equivalent to their non-GM counterparts"
Considering the nutritional quality of our food has been steadily dropping for the past 50 years according to a 2005 study from the University of Texas and the USDA, titled "Changes in USDA Food Composition Data for 43 Garden Crops, 1950 to 1999," GM crops are essentially worthless garbage.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Natural hybridasation is what we did up to now, mixing plant gene from the same genera, and try to get a betetr crop. In other word selecting plant. But adding a gene from a totally different plant genera, or heck, even a gene from mammals/insect/fish is something altogether else than you cannot get with our traditional plant farming.
So yeah I agree this will not assuage people's fear, but telling this is something natural, is stating that this could happen in nature. Even with virus cross-getting gene, I seriously doubt you would get the same results in natural as presented.
So to summarize : not to be feared -yes- is natural -no-. In addition most of us which look at such seed with warriness , do because of the sheenanigan of monsanto and the potential to have truly monopoly on food source, for the first and third world. No something I would welcome. Now if those GM food was "open", for example reuse seed allowed, that would be altogether remove all my doubt.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Organic food means safety - any health hazards of them would have been found in the hundred years they were consumed. GM food, however, is a new product, and thus should be subject to very rigorous tests and regulations. Even then, there could be longterm effects that can't be spotted, so labeling them would make it easy to get a certain product off the shelves were it found to be harmful.
The US embassy in Paris advised Washington to start a military-style trade war against any Euroxpean(sic.) Union country which opposed genetically modified (GM) crops, newly released WikiLeaks cables show.
In response to moves by France to ban a Monsanto GM corn variety in late 2007, the ambassador, Craig Stapleton, a friend and business partner of former US president George Bush, asked Washington to penalise the EU and particularly countries which did not support the use of GM crops.
...as long as Mendel doesn't try to sue me for saving seeds from my own crop, his meddling isn't such a big problem.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Consensus is not Science. Consensus is a bunch of people with no answers and no data getting together to invent their own version of the "facts" in the absence of any supporting observations.
I'll also head this off and say that I'm not philosophically opposed to genetic manipulation of foodstuffs.
Yeah, the GMO debate seems to be getting into more or less the same trappings as the abortion debate; where one side of the argument might only think of it as first trimester, and the other side only thinks of it as third trimester (well, I suppose there are the "every sperm is sacred" people too).
But the GMO debate is even more ridiculous, in that you can just as easily make poisonous fruit through organic crop farming as you could make safe fruit through whatever selective breeding or advanced GM tools you have on hand. But I suppose if there's something people can agree on, its that they like "purity"... whatever that means.
And then there's sucralose / sucrose, the inorganic sugar substitute that's been showing up everywhere. It's indigestible, so you can't get fat from it! Yet, it doesn't seem to leave the body in the same detectable quantities that it goes in! Actually, I just avoid sucrose because it gives me headaches. And I appreciate the fine print on the food/drink labels that help me avoid it.
Yeah, but... The purpose of GM crops is to provide pesticide resistance!!! So, MORE pesticides will be used on these crops!!! Just eat your Dieldrin laced peas!!!
Most people have issue with eating GM crops, i certainly dont, i dont think theyre going to damage my health or cause mutations or anything like that (although i'm sure a fringe do).
The issues with GM food come from introducing a laboratory spliced gene into crops out in the wild and the effects of that when it may cross breed. The effects of a gene from a completely unrelated KINGDOM entering the ecosystem could be a lot more drastic than traditionally selectively bred crops. No mater how much cold resistance you breed tomatoes for, theyre not going to get flounder genes in them. Plants that produce their own pesticides? If those crossbred with something wild, we could be killing off helpful insects and collapse entire food chains. We simply can not know the long term ramifications of this.
The other issue is the patenting of genes and all the associated issues of suing farmers when GM crops crossbreed, etc etc.
Monsanto is just a comic book evil corporation, they should just change their name to Lexcorp or Weyland Yutani or something.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
In other news: A new debugger can prove that your code has no bugs.
GMO cow
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
One of my flames against the anti-GMO crowd is how arbitrarily they draw the line between what is genetically engineered and what isn't. Any sort of goal-directed breeding, hybridization, etc. are forms of engineering, and they work on the genes, and they do it in a way where the resulting genotype has not, and would not, ever occur in nature. But somehow triticale doesn't terrify the the way a Roundup Ready product does.
What's interesting is that these older forms of genetic engineering are also patentable. We have had "proprietary food" since the 1930s. It used to be limited to asexually reproducing breeds and then later expanded. (I don't really pretend to understand the details of why that distiction mattered and why it got changed.)
This isn't something that Monsanto invented; they merely enforced their patents to a new degree of evil. Think of them as the [computer company name omitted but you damn well know who I'm talking about] of agriculture. It wasn't the tech that went bad, it was the lawyers. What used to be safe to society (and I mean this in a legal sense, not a biological sense) got spoiled by a bad apple (oops, sorry, I was trying to avoid that company's name to keep the flamebait mods down).
Nevertheless, it is spoiled, and 99% of us vote to keep the patent system pretty much the way it is. We're not going to roll back the fact that food can be proprietary, so that when you buy it, there may be unusual restrictions on what you're allowed to do with it.
That's why I support clear labeling. Not on GMO specifically, because I don't want to argue about what counts as GMO and what doesn't. That argument will always be stupid, like arguing about which religion is the correct one. The labeling should be government-mandated whenever the product has patents. (And honestly, I can't think of any reason to limit this to just food.)
Imagine your frustration, after you buy some quadrotriticale (thinking it's just good ol'-fashioned unproprietary wheat), ship it to Sherman's planet, plant it, and then you get a letter from Monsanto's lawyers saying you owe a billion dollars because the grain was supposed to be used to make flour, not as seed . Imagine buying an apple (damn, sorry, there's that name again) at a grocery store, and it's not until after you enter your hard cider into the state fair contest, that you find out it had terms of use which prohibited pressing -- you were only allowed to eat the apple solid.
That all borders on a sort of fraud and/or entrapment. Restrictions should be made clear prior to the sale, so that people don't unwittingly become liable for things they never could have known they weren't allowed to do. (*) This isn't a onerous requirement at all; my smizmar buys plants all the time, and some of them actually are explicitly labeled that they're patented and propagation is prohibited. So there's precedent that the supply chain can handle this kind of labeling.
If we're going to go nuts with all this crazy IP law, then there either need to be protections for innocent infringers, or their innocence should cause them to be defined as non-infringing. If you don't tell someone they're not allowed to use the seeds, then they're allowed to use the seeds. WTF would be so unfair about that?
(*) Same goes for software which the copyright holders insist is licensed rather than sold: it should be labeled and communicated prior to the sale, or else the EULA shouldn't be mandatory.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I wouldn't trust any GMO product.
People have been genetically engineering (selectively breeding) food for thousands of years. How can you say that "any" GMO product is untrustworthy and implicitly trust other forms of genetic engineering? If there is no middle ground whatsoever, exactly what criteria are you using to differentiate between the two that makes it clear that one is untrustworthy?
GM food can be harmful or not harmful depending on what genes are changed. It's like saying any food crop has been proved non-harmful.
This is rubbish science. Each GM variety needs to be tested spearately, for health and environmental effects. This is what the GM industry doesn't want to do.
brought to you by your friends at Monsanto
Can you not see the difference between selecting traits already present and injecting new traits from non-plants or diverse species? Genetic splicing in general is not the cut and dry process some would like to believe.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Naturally (that is non man made) diseases kill so many that any fear of GM food stuffs is ludicrous. For example the flu pandemic of 1918 killed over 20 million world wide. Currently there are nearly one million malaria deaths per year with many more infected. I don't understand why most people can not evaluate risks versus benefits rationally. Perhaps that is what makes lotteries popular. Perhaps it is our very poor mathematical education at least in the US.
http://www.mastersinhealthcare.net/blog/2010/10-prescription-drugs-pulled-from-the-shelves-and-why/ has a nice list of a few "miracle drugs" that the pharma industry claimed they had proved are safe ... along with the deadly or horrifying effects they actually had.
Some of us can still remember when industry told us Thalidomide was safe, told us lead paint was safe, told us that it was safe to measure kids shoe sizes by having them stand on an X-ray machine, and so on ad nausem (literally).
So shut the fuck up, quit your grass roots trolling and go back to your desk at ADM.
Consider:
1. "Naturally" modifying a line by breeding traits from one population into another
2. "Artificially" modifying a line by taking the gene responsible for a trait from one population and placing it into another
Also consider:
3. Both of these methods achieve exactly the same result: a gene responsible for the trait ending up in the resulting population
4. The two populations could be exactly the same species (i.e. the transfer might have happened naturally), or completely different species.
Would you be OK with someone "artificially" modifying wheat by finding a trait in one wheat varietal and transferring it into another? (This is a transfer that could easily happen "in nature".)
What about taking genes from barley or rye (very close to wheat, genetically) and transferring them into wheat? (This is less likely to happen "in nature", but the genomes of these grains are very similar and for all we know the gene in question may have existed in a common ancestor.)
In other words, how different do two species have to be before you say the act is dangerous?
But more importantly, why is it dangerous? Is this just fear of something you don't understand?
Any health concerns aside, what's really troubling about Genetically Modified crops is the patenting of foodstuffs. If GM crops really take hold, then you end up with a situation where one or two companies end up with the RIGHTS to grow the food that is available. So what if it's better tasting, or lasts longer? If they successfully run conventional/organic farmers and seed retailers out of business, then all you're left with is a contract with Monsanto Corporation, saying that you won't plant a garden without their explicit consent. Just like water rights, if you sign away your ability to provide for yourself, then you're little more than a slave, praying that Monsanto doesn't decide to play Communist Crop Planning with when and where it allows it's seeds to be planted.
Except for canola oil. Canola is treated as "organic", but it's really another GMO. The name itself comes from CANadian OiL. There's no such thing as a canola seed, it's a modified version of a rapeseed, which is a poisonous plant.
The best thing you can do is look at the ingredient list.
Please look up "The world according to Monsanto" .. and yes .. I post this anonymously because that is one evil corporation that stops at nothing ....
Even if they did cross breed peas and fireflies, who cares? Genes are genes. All "nature" has been doing is genetic engineering. Nature doesn't "intend" for anything so human meddling—which appears to be our genetic predisposition—is perfectly "natural."
My only issue with genetically engineered food is the patent bullshit that goes with it.
As a total side line, it's the reason i won't buy anything with cottonseed or soy oil in it. Both seeds have negligible amounts of oil that are not commercially viable unless extraction is done through toxic carcinogenic solvents. Working with those solvents i don't care what any studies say about evaporation and not leaving anything behind my nose tells me different. (it's also one of the main reasons i don't do lab work anymore)
I am a little bit on the sensitive side though and have gotten to know the 'taste' of many food additives and can usually tell without looking what has been added. I do sometimes get my potassium and calciums mixed up some times, chlorides that is, there just isn't any confusing calcium carbonate!
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
If the food is truly safe, then Monsanto and their ilk won't mind strict labeling and full, unlimited liability if they are found to be unsafe. That will never happen because Monsanto wants the patents without the risk.
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
I don't think all GM crops are automatically bad. That's like saying that all plastics are bad, for all applications, which is silly.
However, there are a number of reasonable scientific, specific concerns about specific GM products and practices. Here's one:
Dr. Huber Explains Science Behind New Organism and Threat from Monsanto's Roundup, GMOs to Disease and Infertility
There are others, but I think the potential issues with roundup-ready corn, soya and now alfalfa and similar products are serious enough to warrant at least *really* investigating the consequences of their use, rather than just rubber stamping "Yes, sir, Monsanto, Oh, sure you can do whatever you want, we trust you *wink* *wink*".
I defy you to cite 10 peer-reviewed published papers that said smoking is "safe".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
Please read this and understand how it applies to your post. That is your homework for tonight.
Genetic engineering doesn't splice food with animals either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_tomato
Informally referred to as the "fish tomato", DNA Plant Technology's transgenic tomato is genetically engineered with a gene from the winter flounder
Try and find a reliable source for your idiotic hysteria.
Might be more useful for the discussion to not make false claims.
Few people doubt that the current generation of GM foods are probably safe to eat and probably don't cause massive environmental harm.
Please tell that to pretty much every anti-GMO group in existence. No one is saying that there aren't social issues or potential unintended consequences. With every new technology, from fire to the printing press to the internet to genetic engineering has that potential. But make no mistake, the vast, vast majority of people out there who dislike GE crops claim that they are dangerous. Just look at the Slashdot discussion of the study claiming they caused organ abnormalities for proof of that, or simply Google the term GMO for plenty of people claiming that genetic engineering is, somehow, dangerous. You might be concerned with more science based concerns, but most people aren't.
As for the questions you pose,
- Can we rely on the integrity of the people who will test the next generation of crops and do we have sufficient controls in place to prevent biased testing
That is not exclusive to GE. Obviously, we need strong, yet not overly restrictive, regulation. AS it currently stands, I'd say this is a yes.
- Are the risks of GM food - however small they may be - borne by the people who profit from the technology? If not, how do we address this fundamental disconnect?
That's an interesting question, one I've never really thought about and don't really have an answer for. Assuming there is any risk, who is to say what the developers eat? Again, you could ask much the same about many things. The scientists I've talked to eat the same food as everyone else though.
- What are the long term risks of reducing genetic diversity amongst our food crops? Does it make us more vulnerable to unexpected, intercontinental crop failures or reduce our ability to cope with climate change?
Reducing crop diversity does this, but you bet the question here by assuming that what you grow is dependent on a particular technique for plant improvement. GE does not decrease crop biodiversity. If anything, it is conventional breeding that selected for or against the genes that left us with what is used today, not the insertion of a few transgenes. Biodiversity is extremely important, probably more important than genetic engineering, and it is pretty crazy how many neglected crop species there are out there (teff, sorghum, quinoa, amaranth, fonio, sago, ensete, oca, sunchoke, mashua, yacon, jicama, maca, screw pine, breadfruit, jujube, pawpaw, goumi, che, maypop, jabuticaba, acara boi, cupuaçu, ugni, quandong, zabala, naranjilla, cassabanana, yellowhorn, melinjo, chaya, salicornia, katuk, New Zealand spinach, Malabar spinach, corn salad, ect ad nauseum to name just a few) but it remains a separate issue, and genetic engineering is not impeeding these species in any way. What, I ask, would you call introducing new genes into what you grow? That's increasing biodiversity, and it is also what genetic engineering does. GE works on the same principle as increasing biodiversity does.
- What are the social, economic and geopolitical consequences of making third world farmers dependendend on multinational companies?
Nothing good, and you'll be hard pressed to find anyone say otherwise. Fortunately, that is not the only option. For projects like Golden Rice and BioCassava, among others, farmers would be able to save their seed (or cuttings in BioCassava's case)as they see fit. While those have yet yo be released, even Monsanto lets farmers in developing countries save their seed, IIRC, provided they make less than $10,000 a year.
- What are the social, economic and geopolitical consequences of the planet's primary food sources being subject to patent controls?
So far, not much. You also assume that all GE crops are under patent. This need not be true, although pre
Is it really that crazy to not trust Monsanto? Seriously look at their history. If I told you I baked a turkey at normal turkey baking temperatures and no e-coli or salmonella was found and then you found out I baked the turkey for 2 WEEKS what would you think? Would you ever trust me again? Of course not. That is one of the things Monsanto did with the RBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone). They claimed any residuals were destroyed at "normal pasteurization temperatures". What they didn't say was that they kept it there for 30 minutes. Milk is normally pasteurized for 15–20 seconds.
Like any advancement genetically engineering foods is a double edged sword best handled carefully. Allowing pathologically untruthful companies to do the tests and decide what is safe is just plain stupid. Look at the revolving door at the USDA and the large agri-business companies. No nothing to hide here, just move along.
So here is a simple solution. If your product contains GMO then label it as such just like they do in Europe. Let the market decide, you know all that true capitalist ideals that get lip service from Democrat and Republican politicians. Give the consumer the information they need to make an informed choice. Pretty simple.
It will be very interesting to see if those 24 studies that they base this on were properly done science or "science for sale" where they design the studies to not find problems.
Ah yes good old human hubris on display for all to see at /. :)
Love the pro GMO comments. You forgot to mention that mother nature has staged a counter attack. Yes nature adapts quicker than even corporate greed. There are now an estimated 3-5 million hectares of land contaminated with GMO WEEDS in the USA alone. Around 80-100 worldwide. Yes the weeds adapted to roundup being sprayed 2-5 times a year and now we have some of the most invasive and aggressive weeds known that are RoundUpReady. Hand weed them and use even more dangerous chemicals is the advice from Monsanto.
Now the bugs are adapting so all this GMO foods will be a moot point soon as nature has a way of biatchslapping humans who are too full of themselves.
By the way in Monsanto's "technology transfer agreement" the farmer planting GMO crops is responsible if his neighbors crops get infected not Monsanto. Imagine if you built a car that would even when properly driven would veer out of control and you the driver were responsible for any accidents.
It doesn't. If a headline said 'Study confirms safety of vaccines' you can take it to mean either A) the one writing the headline is saying that vaccines, in general, do not cause all the problems quacks claim they do and can be reasonably tested for safety or B) the person writing the headline thinks that any pathogen ground up and put into a syringe is safe. Apply the same logic here. Or to use an analogy, if someone says baking is safe, and there's an anti-baking movement claiming baking is the source of countless diseases, are you going to respond 'Well how do you know that every baked in the world is safe? Who paid for this study, Pillsbury?'
Independently funded by the way.
I'm way more worried about corporate control of the food supply; you only have to look at oil to see what happens when real and collusive monopolies attain the ability to levy the private taxes they call profit without restraint because the consumer has no alternative.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Way to make legitimate concerns about GM crops seem crazy. Focusing on the health effects and pretending that those are the only concerns of a minority of 'crazy' nay-sayers is horribly dishonest. A major part of the movement against GM is rational and fact based:
Firstly cross pollination, the environmental impacts of meddling in a system as complex as the biosphere in such a fundamental way are difficult to predict, and there are clear cases where cross pollination has happened so it is not an irrational fear.
Secondly, the further control of the world food market by corporations like monsanto who own the patents on food crops, and because of broken law, all the crops that get cross pollinated, has a major economic impact. The unchecked corporatism in the US is dangerous enough without it taking over the means of survival for the people of the world.
This study clears up nothing, there are legitimate concerns about GM, these are not addressed here in any way. Please don't paint everyone who has concerns about the safety of new technology with the anti-science brush.
Nature is slow, Monsanto is fast ... neither cares about what the outcome is on my health in 20 years, but Monsanto statistically has a better chance of fucking it up simply because of pace of change.
If I could trust the people doing the genetic engineering to show due diligence and to have a certain level of altruism then it would be fine ... but I bloody fucking well can't, this is capitalism ... anything beyond the next few quarters is someone else's problem except for taking some steps to maintain plausible deniability, and looking at the financial crisis even maintaining plausible deniability has stopped becoming a requirement for the truly rich.
if they are so sure and so proud of there GMO foods, Then Label any and all products containing GMO's.
My main experiences with this are with my own consumption of tomatoes, potatoes and corn.
Modifed tomatoes are much less juicy, and taste one level above cardboard.
The spuds are of a more elongated shape, great for "French Fries" when cut parallel to the long side. The round potato seems to have disappeared.
Finally, the corn kernals are now closer to being all white, dry and less tastey. We have traded genetic modification to eradication of taste.
tomatoes, potatoes, corn -- taste was sacrificed for yield.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
the problem with GM crops is that they're owned by corporations looking to monopolise on the worlds food supplies. Monsanto is somehow taking over without much public resistance http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/Monsanto-Roundup-Glyphosate.htm
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
that monsanto has lots of money
I seem to recall reading a number of products approved by the FDA which were 'unlikely to post a health risk" to people. At least until after people starting dying or were harmed beyond help. Diet drugs and other items approved for human consumption. We were told they were safe after many studies. Until we've had a LOT more research how does anyone really know?
And yes I've read their reports. I'm not a scientist or play one on TV however I believe their conclusions are premature...
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
Not as huge a boon as you may think. If BT chemicals are present all the time in the plant, then there is serious pressure on the caterpillar to evolve resistance. The key to a lot of agents is to use them in a large enough dose that it stomps the population flat. Low doses kill off only the most sensitive ones.
This is a chronic problem with all herbicides/pesticides. During the heyday of DDT there was a fly in Texas that not only metabolized it, but developed a dependency on it.
I don't object to GM foods in terms of their safety, but rather due to their environmental impact and the politics of their use.
Monsanto enforcement of their roundup ready canola patent makes the RIAA anti-piracy work look like a visit from the Sugar Plum Fairy.
Worse, Round-up resistance has already found to have transferred to weeds in the same genus as canola.
I am in favour of GM foods -- but only if the developer is held responsible for the side effects.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
Data now support that plant RNAs can target human genes for silencing. Such data should make it clear that DNA that is incorporated into the GM plants should be screened for its capacity to target and silence genes in the animals that will eat it.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/09/21/what-you-eat-affects-your-genes-rna-from-rice-can-survive-digestion-and-alter-gene-expression/
Here is a study. Organic food is better for you. GM food should be labeled.
http://www.naturalnews.com/027854_organic_food_nutrition.html
If you don't think GMO food is evil I dare you to watch this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3OedIuaZto
GM crops will lead inevitably to a monopolistic cartel controlling the global food supply, the same way state-of-the-art engineering and science put Big Pharma and Big Oil in control of medicine and energy. What will be so different about applying state-of-the-art engineering and science to the food supply? For this reason alone, GM crops need to be outlawed.
you pose some interesting theoretical questions. Here's a few questions of my own for you, based on yours...
1) Biased, incompetent testing hasn't been an impediment to the transportation, electronic, computer, and consumer products industries, so why do you think it is going to be an impediment to the GM crop industry?
2) Corporations exist explicitly to decouple those risks from the investors in the corporation. It allows investors to be legally shielded from the pitchforks and torches of the peasants who object to their corporation's products. Why are you trying to exempt GM crop producing corporations from this legal shield?
3) We've been reducing genetic diversity among our food crops since we stopped living as hunter-gatherers and invented agriculture and animal husbandry. We've been consuming what essentially is cow treated with fire for a long, long time, along with a side of rice or potatoes. Not much diversity in the diet of any given culture on the planet, and it's been losing its diversity for about 10k years -- ever since we figured out how to put a fence around our land to keep dinner on the inside and competitors on the outside. Don't you think if there were warning signs we needed to heed, they'd have showed up in 10k years?
4) and 5) The consequences are pretty clear -- stable, long term profits provided by the elimination of competition, and the ability to set national agendas from corporate boardrooms instead of voting booths. It worked for Big Pharma and Big Oil -- why do you think it is going to be any different for Big Food?
Your questions got me thinking a little. I realized that Big Food is as inevitable as Big Pharma and Big Oil, and will have pretty much the same impact on the social, economic, and geopolitical vectors of our civilization as they did. Thanks for the opportunity to explore that a little.
Stated concerns were never about nutritional equivalency.
You didn't actually answer my question. You say you've "worked in labs", which I presume to mean you've worked in the field of gene splicing, so you should be able to tell me (a) why splicing a gene from one wheat varietal into another wheat varietal is dangerous (and more specifically, why it's more dangerous than plant breeding), or if it's not, (b) how dissimilar the source plant has to be from the modified plant before it becomes dangerous, and what the actual danger is.
So far nobody's that's anti-GM has been able to give me a straight answer to this question. It's all boiled down to "I understand how plant breeding works, but gene splicing is black magic and should be feared." But since you say you've "worked in labs", that's almost certainly not the case for you, so I'm really interested in understanding, from a scientific perspective, why these forms of gene splicing are dangerous.