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Anti-GMO Activist Recants
Freddybear writes "Former anti-GMO activist Mark Lynas, who opposed genetically modified food in the 1990s, said recently, at the Oxford Farming Conference: 'I want to start with some apologies. For the record, here and upfront, I apologize for having spent several years ripping up GM crops. I am also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid 1990s, and that I thereby assisted in demonizing an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment. As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter-productive path. I now regret it completely. So I guess you'll be wondering — what happened between 1995 and now that made me not only change my mind but come here and admit it? Well, the answer is fairly simple: I discovered science, and in the process I hope I became a better environmentalist.' To vilify GMOs is to be as anti-science as climate-change deniers, he says. To feed a growing world population (with an exploding middle class demanding more and better-quality food), we must take advantage of all the technology available to us, including GMOs. To insist on 'natural' agriculture and livestock is to doom people to starvation, and there’s no logical reason to prefer the old ways, either. Moreover, the reason why big companies dominate the industry is that anti-GMO activists and policymakers have made it too difficult for small startups to enter the field."
Kepler figured out he had it all wrong after a career spent trying to prove bad theories (Platonic model of the universe? Really?) ... and arguably launched the age of the scientific enlightenment.
I'm anxious read Mr. Lynas' coming works.
I find this refreshing. If only everyone would take the time to reevaluate their beliefs from time to time we might be so much better off.
I have not read the article, but a couple of things in this summary ringed some bells: current GMOs use is not to feed the world population, for instance USA corn monopoly is empowered with Monsanto GMO corn to make farmers and countries even more dependent and them. There is a whole vicious circle involving subsidies, monoculture, corn industrial derivatives, corn feedstock, antibiotics that has nothing with "feeding the world population" but with empowering monopolies". Furthermore "'natural' agriculture", is he talking about traditional agriculture? I couldn't agree more that it's doomed. But the UN has studied Agro-ecology and found out that it could double agriculture production http://is.gd/oxtixy
Most likely not. Saying that GMO is not evil is not the same as condoning Monsanto's actions in court. Strawman much?
So truue. All those papers you cited made for quite the convincing case.
...Lynas jumped into his gold plated Ferrari and drove back to the country club for another round of golf with his new best friends from the Monsanto Board of Directors.
Roundup used in commercial agriculture (food crops) only eliminated weeds for a few decades, now there are superweeds that have evolved its own immunity to Roundup.
what happens in the lab and used in the fields will find its way in to the wild (it is unavoidable)
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Seriously, there is plenty of science that shows issues related to GMO crops. If not the crops themselves, the fact that a round up ready corn means several times more round up applied to the ground. This is scienfitically documented.
So I am of the opinion this guy is probably just some bought out loon.
Science, and advocate of real science, would concede there is far too much we just do not know at this point. And MANY fears that were pointed to, have been proved valid. Like infection of wild specieis.
That's SCIENCE...
Yes, he is going after other anti-science people. Climate change is happening and has been verified even by studies commisioned by groups seeking to disprove it. Anyone still denying it is either an industry shill or someone with an agenda.
Some of us don't like the idea of corporations eventually holding patents on all our food. Sorry but if we can't sustain ourselves without giving up something so basic then we need fewer people on the planet.
Cross contamination & subsequent loss of organic certification isn't an issue then? How about Monsanto dragging innocent farmers into court?
I would personally advocate slicing GMO issues into separate bins. What you're referring to is the Intellectual Property bin which is a problem with (at least the US) most countries and the ownership (whether an instance of or the general use of) genetic material. Put all those lawsuits and patents and copyright crap in one bin.
Then you have another bin where we analyze the human element of consumption of GMO foods. What is the process to determine when something has undergone enough testing and is ready to push it forward? How many years of human trials must be held before it can be released? We do this with drugs but strangely, I haven't heard of much about this with GMO crops -- why is that?
Lastly we have a more open problem like environmental issues both surrounding the plant's effect on its environment and also the adjusted actions of the humans cultivating this crop. For example: with Roundup ready plants from Monsanto, have we really analyzed what the increased usage of chemicals like Roundup has on the immediate vicinity of the fields? Do we know that these genetic constructs that are taken from an insect and inserted into a plant do not adversely affect the pollen and have indirect affects on hay fever or honey bees? Again, how do we test this and how long should it be tested before it's pushed nationwide.
Lynas raises an interesting point I had not considered -- that my above desires for process and bureaucracy will prevent a small company from venturing into this field. On the other hand, we've been using selective breeding to move past a lot of the hurdles Lynas mentioned that GMO crops are supposed to move us even further past. It's unfortunate but this isn't a black and white issue and I'm against the unfettered proliferation of gene constructs that have been taken from other organisms and inserted into plants without sufficient testing.
The process of DNA -> Amino Acid -> Protein is still a very difficult puzzle for us as humans and I feel we should not openly experiment with inserting stuff at Point A when we don't know the full effects that yields in points B and C. I feel like there is still a lot to be achieved with selective breeding and until we have a better understanding of protein folding, we should shy away from smashing DNA into strands of plants unless it's absolutely critical to humanity. Go ahead and do that stuff in a lab to better understand it but leave it in a lab until there's a process that ensures it is safe.
My work here is dung.
The logic of this article seems to be one person has changed their mind about something, therefore everyone else with similar beliefs is also wrong, and valid concerns such as the ones you raise can suddenly be ignored.
Of course it's only those Chinese and Russians that can influence the weather though, and hell an upstanding US company would never do such a thing would they?
See, there you go, losing what credibility you may have had. Couldn't just be that they saw an opportunity and took it, could it?
It would be great if you provided some actual citations for the studies you referenced.
All that aside, I too am suspicious of turnarounds in opinion like this - it's very rare that a person can admit that he was wrong on such a scale.
Congratulations, that doesn't mean GMO is always good.
It is a bad thing to breed pesticides into our food supply without absolute certainty of they are safe.
It is not a bad thing to have to label GMO foods for what they are.
Exactly. To here these Occupy types blather you'd think the middle class is sleeping under a bridge.
The standard of living for an American poor person is very high for most of the world, and mostly not so far behind socialist paradises in the EU. I'll give you that we need some sort of means-tested max-out-of-pocket universal single payer health care, but other than that it's a bunch of crybabying and class envy.
Who cares what he has to say?
Any blanket assertion of GMOs being bad for you is just as idiotic and pointless as a blanket assertion GMOs are not bad for you.
Every case must be judged on the merits and it must not stop with the question of the qualities of the product. One must also consider the secondary effects playing god has on the environment and fucked up geopolitics of globalization meets Monsanto.
Every anti-GMO person, including you, ignores science. Usually in the same way.
How? You ignore every study that shows GMO crops are safe, and focus on one or two (often questionable) studies that suggest there might be a problem in some way, then take that to mean it's all the work of the devil. Even though the study's authors don't say that! Here is a way you can tell if you're being irrational:
GMO saves lives. If you can't accept that, then you aren't being scientific. GMO might not be a solution in all cases, and certainly not all GMOs are safe (neither are all natural organisms), but being anti-GMO as a blanket rule is dumb.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
There is no scientific evidence that GMOs save lives.
Every increase in crop yields due to the use of GM crops saves the lives of some people that would otherwise die from starvation. It's a direct and obvious relation - there's no need to do a scientific study here.
You can't separate the two so yeah. If you're supporting GMO's then you are supporting a framework that allows for the corporate monopolies in farming.
Patents are part of the landscape. You can't just pretend they're not there.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Every increase in crop yields due to the use of GM crops saves the lives of some people that would otherwise die from starvation.
No it doesn't. That would only be true if increased yields magically found their way into the hands of starving people regardless of geography, politics, economy, or government.
It's a direct and obvious relation - there's no need to do a scientific study here.
I think there's a direct and obvious relation between the weight of an object and how quickly it falls. There's no need to do a scientific study to prove that.
Of course, some may disagree with that ...
Most likely not. Saying that GMO is not evil is not the same as condoning Monsanto's actions in court. Strawman much?
Agreed the two should not be conflated, although it's hard not to since Monsanto has 90%+ of the market share, so it's their way of the highway. If there were an AMD-like underdog, the first thing they would compete on would be reasonable licensing terms. But instead, we have a company that is acting like MicroSquash in the '90s, and just as with MS they prefer their critics to promote Luddite-ism rather than focusing in on the antitrust aspects of this.
I do disagree with TFA, however. It's not anti-GMO activism that kills small GMO startups, Monsanto does that very well on their own. If they don't buy out a promising startup outright they just deny it access to the market and it dies a slow death. For all the waving and shouting, anti-GMO activists can't even get labelling laws passed.
I would also add that the mindless gasbag has presented a fallacy of false choice; use GMO or starve. We are told to believe that despite Monsanto's business plan of enslaving the world's farmers, that they are just doing this out of the kindness of their hearts to feed an overpopulated world. Here's a thought, reduce population growth instead. Statistics show that free access to education and contraception reduces population growth without imposing martial law. But no one gets rich off of giving something necessary away for free. So we are doomed.
You're using a computer, so I can assume you support software patents? You can't separate the two.
Software patents are part of the landscape. You can't just pretend they're not there.
Um Not Correct. People seem to misunderstand the origins of GMO technology. The technology that allows transplanting of genes was developed by copying natural processes that do exactly the same thing.
Transposons, retrotransposons, proviruses and other mobile genetic elements naturally translocate to new sites in a genome, and over long time scales will move genetic material across species. It happens all the time, in all forms of life. The speed at which it can happen is sometimes frightening - the rapidity at which resistance to antibiotics spread is due directly to natural genetic transfer.
Plant tissue culture and introduction of foreign germ plasm across species lines is a technology that is hundreds of years old. Almost all of our grain is produced by trans-species crops developed long before modern GMO came into existence.
The lack of basic understanding of what is going on here after so many years of debates on this topic is shocking.
No, there is also open source, publicly funded GMO research being opposed or deliberately sabotaged by anti-science activists. Monsanto =/= GMO. Saying GMO is bad because Monsanto is bad is like saying operating systems are bad because Microsoft.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
There is a point to all of the posters but:
1. It should be labeled no different than high fructose which has gone from unnoticed to hated.
2. It should be up to the companies, not the government.
3. The GMO companies are like a black plague, litigating normal farmers who don't use their products. People have a right to be able to avoid them.
The problem is it misses the point. The problem isn't labeling Jews. I'm Asian, and you don't even have to label me. My appearance immediately tells you I'm Asian. But it's not a problem because there is no negative stigma associated with Asians.
The problem isn't the label. It's the negative stigma associated with Jews. Fixing the problem involves correcting the negative stigma - teaching kids that there's nothing wrong with being Jewish - they're just people like everyone else, and that they've been unfairly targeted in their past just because of their race.
The same goes for GMO foods. The problem isn't the label, it's the negative stigma they've picked up. Fixing the problem means openly engaging and educating people on what GMO is, and what dangers are real and fake. Hiding behind a ban on labels just fuels the conspiracy that they have something they to hide.
The fact that you and others think that food deserves the same protection shows that you're either food industry shills or just really shallow thinkers.
Please don't assume to know what I think, I'm obviously the one who has all the "facts" on that subject.
It's not the same question and it IS flamebait. Food doesn't have feelings,
Your a perfect example of why I bitched about the moderation, your comprehension sucks! The GP's and my post were not about what or who is being labeled, they are about the power a label has over the human psyche. A label is specifically a mental simplification that replaces thinking with a standard response, it's is THE way human minds communicate with each other and it is basically the definition of "shallow thinking" and it is necessary because the brain does not have time to think deeply about everything it encounters. If you don't have the introspective abilities to see this behavior in yourself then you are much more susceptible to propaganda, you will tend towards "shallow thinking" and jump to erroneous conclusions as you have done here.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.