Interview With Professor Potrykus, Inventor of Golden Rice

crabel writes "According to WHO, 127 millions of pre-school children worldwide suffer from vitamin A deficiency, causing some 500,000 cases of irreversible blindness every year. This deficiency is responsible for 600,000 deaths among children under the age of 5. Golden Rice might be a solution to this problem. The only problem? It's GMO. In an interview inventor Potrykus, now close to 80 years old, answers questions about the current state of approval, which might happen in the next couple of months."

Comments

"The only problem? It's GMO."

[Anonymous Coward]

It being a GMO isn't a problem, unless you're a Luddite.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[Garridan]

Yup. The problem with GMO is that Monsanto uses it so they can soak crops with RoundUp. Say no to RoundUp, not GMO.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[hawkinspeter]

The seeds being owned by a company is a problem, though. It's like open vs closed source but applied to food.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[DrXym]

Owned for 20 years, or 12 million alive and 10 million sighted children if you prefer. Then anybody can do what they like with the patent. It also doesn't stop some rival from producing a crop with equivalent properties expressed through some other means.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[hawkinspeter]

That's a false dichotomy - there's more than one way to skin a cat. How about we encourage them to grow more sweet potatoes (which naturally have a high vitamin A content) rather than forcing them to grow cash crops to export in a futile attempt to pay back their international debts?

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[game kid]

It also doesn't stop some rival from producing a crop with equivalent properties expressed through some other means.

...and there's the problem. By enabling Monsanto to patent life, you encourage others to do so. Even if Monsanto only used its patent in some copyleft sort of way, you'd have some even greater asshole or two or 37 who decide that once a nice breeze brings some of their pollen into your crops, you've become a dirty floppy-copying "IP" thief ripe to bend over de jure.

At least your orifices will be Roundup Ready(tm) once they're done.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[DrXym]

They haven't "patented life" they have patented one way of countless of increasing the vitamin & iron content of a staple food. If countries don't want to pay a corp which has put millions, possibly billions into developing this crop with the reasonable expectation of profit then they should develop their own alternative or provide their population with education and supplements that they don't go blind or die.

India obviously has the odd loose billion given they've just built a nuclear sub.

Or just pay the going rate and wait for the patent to expire.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[DrXym]

I assume this rice given its properties was largely developed for domestic consumption so I don't see that your point is valid.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[Pi1grim]

Apparently you haven't read the study itself. Which was conducted on mice genetically predisposed to cancer and that during the process control groups were changed so that results would better fit the theory of cancer-inducing GMO. Articles are being removed, because the study was a conducted with so many violations it's result cannot be trusted and since independent attempts to reproduce the results of the study, conducted thoroughly have not come to the same conclusions. But, please, go ahead and don't let facts get in your way of fear-mongering.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[rycamor]

No kidding. The anti-Luddites are just as bad as the Luddites when it comes to this stuff. There is a whole spectrum of food available without needing to rely on someone's patented experiment.

With sweet potato, it's not just vitamin A. they have about the highest concentration and spectrum of vitamins you will find in any common crop. And it's freaking easy to grow. The problem is not lack of technology, but lack of simple knowledge and willingness to apply it.

Another crop that is ridiculously easy to grow in temperate and tropical zones is the moringa tree, which produces copious edible leaves and seed pods, with a near-miraculous nutritional profile. Unfortunately, try to get poor Africans to grow it and eat it and they will often turn up their noses in disgust, calling it "poor people food". Sweet potato often receives the same low-brow snobbery in the USA, actually.

The problem of nutrition is always more cultural than anything else. Look at the USA itself, where abundant nutritious food is available, yet the average American gets most of his calories from high-fructose corn syrup (delivered to your gullet in many sneaky ways). And when you add up HFCS and highly-processed grains, that probably accounts for a good 85% of the calories eaten in this country.

So yes, "golden rice" might solve a problem, in the sense that it would fool culturally-bound people who are unwilling to forego rice as their staple food. But it's hardly the only way. And I do remain highly suspicious of the long-term risk/benefit scenario with GMOs.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[hawkinspeter]

I'm sorry, I don't follow what you mean by "domestic consumption" and how that refutes anything.

Vitamin A deficiency is a worldwide problem with the worst affected area being Africa and the least affected areas being North America, Europe and Russia.

The big advantage of having high vitamin A in rice is that a lot of cultures have rice as their main staple, so in theory it's a quick way of increasing worldwide vitamin A consumption. The downside is the GMO/ownership issues.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[Joce640k]

Yes, but we're talking about Golden Rice here, which is nothing to do with RoundUp.

Golden Rice has exactly three extra genes in it. The modification made was openly published. Many widely eaten foods already contain the exact same genes The only reason it was added to rice is because that's what these people grow/eat on a daily basis.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[DrXym]

Domestic consumption as in the rice would be predominantly eaten in the country that grew it to alleviate vitamin A and other mineral deficiencies. Note that this rice is targeted for the Philippines and from TFA mention was made of cassava and sweet potatoes for other countries. So it doesn't follow it would be "forcing them to grow cash crops to export" since it's unlikely that was ever the intention.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[DrXym]

"this rice is targeted" -> "this rice trial is targeted"

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[Joce640k]

These stories are rutinely removed from the web very quickly, this is one of the few I could find:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/suppressed-report-shows-cancer-link-to-gm-potatoes-436673.html

So ... anything can be true so long as there's an article somewhere on the Internet, right?

In that case I'm guessing this guy is the only person who knows the real truth about AIDS, yes?

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[hawkinspeter]

I was mainly thinking about Africa, rather than the Philippines, but the same situation exists there as well.

It's not the rice that is forcing them to grow cash crops, but it's their external debt that forces them to grow cash crops for export which then leads to local consumers being unable to afford the crops that are grown within their own country.

Ownership of the seeds from a crop is vitally important to people who are trying to feed themselves as they may not be able to purchase the seeds for the next season if they have a bad season. If they switch away from traditional crops (that they can keep the seed from) to GMO crops, they'd better have kept enough seed for switching back again if they fall on hard times.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Another crop that is ridiculously easy to grow in temperate and tropical zones is the moringa tree, which produces copious edible leaves and seed pods, with a near-miraculous nutritional profile. Unfortunately, try to get poor Africans to grow it and eat it and they will often turn up their noses in disgust, calling it "poor people food". Sweet potato often receives the same low-brow snobbery in the USA, actually.

Hah. Golden rice could actually bump into the same problem. For some peculiar reasons, in many parts of the world, white rice - pretty much like white-anything (bread, flour, people...you name it) is subconsciously considered "purer" and anything else has a poverty stigma attached to it. Don't ask me why, it just happens. Trying to convince Asians to eat something ricey AND brown or yellow or orange may prove difficult. Don't know about Africans but you find this kind of food idiocy pretty much anywhere, so I guess there's a solid chance that golden rice will actually be a tough sale (*especially* since it's been *designed* as "food for poor people who couldn't afford better diet otherwise").

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[wonkey_monkey]

I know yours was more on-topic, but you wanted an example of a whacko theory on a website and you didn't go for this guy?

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no licensing issues with Golden Rice. All patent holders have long ago agreed to free use for humanitarian purposes.
"Open vs closed source" is a problem in general, but not for Golden Rice.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[N1AK]

So yes, "golden rice" might solve a problem, in the sense that it would fool culturally-bound people who are unwilling to forego rice as their staple food. But it's hardly the only way. And I do remain highly suspicious of the long-term risk/benefit scenario with GMOs.

It would solve the problem of insufficient vitamin A and virtually instantly; I really can't see how that point is debatable, even by people who think it is a bad idea for other reasons.

There are dozens of possible solutions, virtually all of which have been available for decades now. They aren't being applied. Moving people to 'golden rice' is a trivial change comparative to trying to change the diet of hundreds of millions of people, the crops of millions of farmers and the supply chain for millions of tonnes of food.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[hawkinspeter]

Yep, I read about that after posting.

However, I still have some concerns about licensing food crops, even though Golden Rice has been developed for humanitarian reasons (they did try to commercialise it, but developed countries aren't vitamin A deficient so there wasn't much of a market). There's always the possibility that some of the related license holders can change their minds and nothing about patents is ever clear cut.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[idji]

I remember an Ethiopian turning his nose up in disgust at having to eat leeks, "That is a poor person's food".

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. You have to be a really dumb mean spirited cunt to say "just because i dislike monsanto, kids should die and be blind". i am not a fan of monsantos policies, but something like golden rice was created out of a drive to improve life. not only is he a hero, but even monsanto an other companies who do it for profit arent as evil as watching hundreds of thousands of people go blind or die :P

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[bluefoxlucid]

No civilization has ever survived primarily on potato.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[wisnoskij]

It has nothing to do with debt.
It is simple capitalism.

The first world will/can pay more for food it throws out than the third world can pay for food to save their starving children.
You can make more money advertising to Americans to convince them to buy 50% more than they could every possibly eat, then you can make feeding the starving population of Africa. So the food gets exported to America, or Britain, or Canada.

That is simply global capitalism. Africa can produce their own necessities, but they cannot pay as much for them as you or I could, so they do not get to use them.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[bluefoxlucid]

Problem: Vitamin A is poisonous.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[Rich0]

So yes, "golden rice" might solve a problem, in the sense that it would fool culturally-bound people who are unwilling to forego rice as their staple food. But it's hardly the only way.

That sounds like the "obesity isn't a problem - just eat less" solution. Sounds nice in paper, and yet millions of people are expected to end their lives early at considerable taxpayer expense "simply" because they don't "want" to eat less.

Changing culture isn't easy, and changing eating habits is extremely difficult. By all means try to get them to eat sweet potatoes, but until you manage to change the entire Asian culture at least a few people who might otherwise develop blindness might avoid it from switching to a different brand of rice.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever actually eaten a sweet potato? They're disgusting. I'll just stick with the blindness, thanks.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[Culture20]

Do sweet potatoes grow in boggy fields? Golden rice can grow in current rice fields.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[hawkinspeter]

What about the Irish?

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[Anonymous Coward]

Heard many years ago.
It being asbestos isn't a problem, unless you're a Luddite. It keeps you warm

Heard even earlier.
It being mercury isn't a problem, unless you're a Luddite. It cures your disease.

even earlier
It being radioactive isn't a problem, unless you're a Luddite. It just burns by skin when i attach it to my arm.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[hawkinspeter]

Debt is an important factor in deciding which crops to grow. If you need to generate cash, then you're not going to bother to grow local food which won't generate any (or hardly any) cash, but instead you'll grow crops that can be sold to the wealthy (typically outside of the debt ridden country).

However, I agree that capitalism also exacerbates the problem.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[barlevg]

GMO is hardly an obscure acronym. And a Google search gives the correct answer on the first non-sponsored hit. While I agree that slashdotters tend to play it fast and loose when it comes to using obscure acronyms, this is not one of those cases.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[khallow]

The problem of nutrition is always more cultural than anything else. Look at the USA itself, where abundant nutritious food is available, yet the average American gets most of his calories from high-fructose corn syrup

That's not cultural, it's economic. Lots of subsidies made that happen.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[__aaltlg1547]

It being a GMO isn't a problem, unless you're a Luddite.

Or live in a country where the Luddites are in charge.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[morgauxo]

Because different crops grow well in different parts of the world. Rice for example grows where it is far too wet for most other food crops.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[hibiki_r]

So is almost anything at high enough doses. One would expect that the concentration of vitamin A in golden rice is not four times higher than that of liver.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[njnnja]

Actually it's not a slam dunk. The concentration of vitamin A in golden rice is not high enough in and of itself to solve vitamin A deficiency. From Wikipedia:

The research that led to golden rice was conducted with the goal of helping children who suffer from vitamin A deficiency (VAD). In 2005, 190 million children and 19 million pregnant women, in 122 countries, were estimated to be affected by VAD.[18] VAD is responsible for 1–2 million deaths, 500,000 cases of irreversible blindness and millions of cases of xerophthalmia annually.[19] Children and pregnant women are at highest risk. Vitamin A is supplemented orally and by injection in areas where the diet is deficient in vitamin A. As of 1999, there were 43 countries that had vitamin A supplementation programs for children under 5; in 10 of these countries, two high dose supplements are available per year, which, according to UNICEF, could effectively eliminate VAD.[20] However, UNICEF and a number of NGOs involved in supplementation note more frequent low-dose supplementation should be a goal where feasible.[21] Because many children in countries where there is a dietary deficiency in vitamin A rely on rice as a staple food, the genetic modification to make rice produce the vitamin A precursor beta-carotene is seen as a simple and less expensive alternative to vitamin supplements or an increase in the consumption of green vegetables or animal products. It can be considered as the genetically engineered equivalent of fluoridated water or iodized salt in that it helps to prevent disease, with the exception that fluoride is not an essential nutrient for survival.[22] Initial analyses of the potential nutritional benefits of golden rice suggested consumption of golden rice would not eliminate the problems of vitamin A deficiency, but should be seen as a complement to other methods of vitamin A supplementation.[23][24] Since then, improved strains of golden rice have been developed containing sufficient provitamin A to provide the entire dietary requirement of this nutrient to people who eat about 75g of golden rice per day.[4]

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[hawkinspeter]

I love sweet potatoes. I tend to use them as a mashed potato replacement or roasted along with other vegetables. I've been known to microwave them whole as a kind of jacket potato. They're really good as a base for dips or soup as well.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[wisnoskij]

There is no selling anything outside of debt ridden countries, every capitalistic country is ridden with debt. And it has been said that the debt is an integral part of capitalism, and that one cannot exist without the other.

But, that is beside the point. It is not the debtors who control what is being grown, it is the undebt ridden multinational corporations who grow food for export in Africa, and none of their decisions are based on how much debt Africa has, just if they will make more money exporting excess food to America, or feeding the starving poor of Africa.

The debt was/is used, however, to force Africa, among others, to open up their boarders to multinational corporations, and to sell off valuable resources.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[nitehawk214]

Yes, but we're talking about Golden Rice here, which is nothing to do with RoundUp.

Golden Rice has exactly three extra genes in it. The modification made was openly published. Many widely eaten foods already contain the exact same genes The only reason it was added to rice is because that's what these people grow/eat on a daily basis.

We know, but there are so many people out there that think either "GMO = HCFS" or "GMO = Unhealthy" or, my favorite, "GMO = Monsanto" as if they were the only company that uses GMO techniques.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[slashmydots]

Also they do zero long term cancer and other illness testing on it before selling it and God forbid they do an environmental impact study. Other than that, it's great.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[Mr. Slippery]

The only reason it was added to rice is because that's what these people grow/eat on a daily basis.

Actually many of the people with vitamin A deficiency live in Africa, in areas not known as rice country.

The actual problem is an economic system that leads to people growing rice almost exclusively: "Beyond that though, poorly-fed people are unlikely to be able to absorb beta-carotene even when they eat golden rice. To use it, they need a diverse diet, including green leafy vegetables. But the sorts of vegetables people used to be able to find have declined in number as the green revolution of the 60s and 70s emphasised monocultures of new varieties. Household consumption of vegetables in India has fallen by 12% in two decades." -- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3122923.stm

Golden rice only contributes to the problem (economic and ecological) of monoculture. Growing carrots, sweet potatoes,mangoes, papaya, or other vitamin-A rich crops is a much more sensible answer -- unless one is devoted to the current exploitative system.

The purpose of "golden rice" is not to solve malnutrition, that could be done far more cheaply and easily with carrots, etc. Its purpose is to provide good PR for the biotech industry: "Why, yes, our GM crops are largely untested for safety, and most of the studies on safety that do exist are ones we've done ourselves (trust us!); and yes, they present a novel ecological hazard of genome pollution; and yes, they have led to increased pesticides use; and yes, they give more control of agriculture to corporate interests -- but look! We found a very expensive and impractical way to prevent some cases of vitamin A deficiency! Love us! Worship us! Big Science!"

It's not science, it's scientism in the advancement of corporatism.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[BrokenHalo]

We know, but there are so many people out there that think either "GMO = HCFS" or "GMO = Unhealthy" or, my favorite, "GMO = Monsanto" as if they were the only company that uses GMO techniques.

As a biotech graduate, I get very tired of the hysterical drivel we hear about GMOs (OK, for those who are too damn lazy to Google it: genetically modified organisms). It's as if the last thing we want is an informed debate.

But the same people still expect to reap the benefit of GMOs, from new drugs for treatment of disease to the sweeteners in their diet Coke.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[interkin3tic]

What are herbicide we then saying "yes" to? Something that is healthier than roundup? I have never heard of such a thing, though I'm not a farmer. Roundup is effective and non-toxic compared to other herbicides, that's why it's such a big deal. Organic farming? That's fun for people with a lot of money, but is not a realistic solution for the nation's food supply.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[BrokenHalo]

If you like. But the difference between Golden Rice and the seeds sold by corporations like Monsanto is that they aren't deliberately made sterile in order to force the farmer to keep buying more seeds.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[DriveDog]

Finally somebody got it right.

Of course, having less population growth would help, but educating the populace would weaken the powers that be...

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[BrokenHalo]

Given that this is Slashdot, so a high proportion of our readers subsist on junk food (OK, flame on if you want), I might add that sweet potatoes also make a really yummy replacement for ordinary potatoes for deep-frying.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[BrokenHalo]

These stories are rutinely[sic] removed from the web very quickly, this is one of the few I could find:

I wonder if that might have anything to do with the fact that they are total crap?

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[jellomizer]

You just called the State of Californa a bunch of Luddites.

But that is the problem, people react without understanding things and wants to classify things in nice easy bins of Good and Bad.

GMO is often used to make the foods more pest resistant. Now this could be bad because our GMO foods have trace amounts of poison in them.
GMO can be used to make the foods more nutritious. Now this is good, because we can get more nutrition per smaller farming area. Less water, Less land, less carbon.

You can also Use GMO to make Agriculture useful for non-food usage. I have heard about GMO corn used to make biodegradable plastic.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[jsrjsr]

Last sentence of your quote from Wikipedia:

"Since then, improved strains of golden rice have been developed containing sufficient provitamin A to provide the entire dietary requirement of this nutrient to people who eat about 75g of golden rice per day.[4]"

Average rice consumption per capita per day is higher than that it the Philippines according to a number of sources.

So it is "high enough in and of itself to solve vitamin A deficiency."

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[TWiTfan]

There is a whole spectrum of food available without needing to rely on someone's patented experiment.

Yes, a whole spectrum of natural, non-GMO food that has never in the history of the planet supported a population of 7 billion+ before. But if you're volunteering to be one of the humans to commit mass suicide so that the rest of us can return to the natural, organic ways of yesteryear when the earth's population was much smaller and more rural--then please, don't let me stand in your way. We appreciate your sacrifice.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[tlhIngan]

Owned for 20 years, or 12 million alive and 10 million sighted children if you prefer. Then anybody can do what they like with the patent. It also doesn't stop some rival from producing a crop with equivalent properties expressed through some other means.

Considering the rice is "owned", how are you going to get poor people to pay for it?

Basically, you've just committed 12M people + 10M children to death and blindness because the people who this can help, cannot pay.

It's so bad that many essential medicines get state approval to violate the patents so they can be produced cheaply for the population that needs it. It's a very sore sticking point for the owning companies and trade negotiations (especially with the US).

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[operagost]

Capitalism is not the problem; greed is the problem. Socialists call for collectivism as the solution to the world's woes, as if a command economy can't also be used for evil.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[bluefoxlucid]

I'm sure you can find better examples than this. India is currently using non-GMO, manure-fertilized crop and sustainable growing practices to break world records for crop yield (overall and per land area) in rice, wheat, and potato. That means, yes, they're beating all of our advanced, scientific magic where we use chemical pesticides and herbicides followed by GMO crops and chemical fertilizers... just by shoveling horse shit into the land.

Usually arguments about how farmers are doing it wrong end out with people telling me--with no farming experience of their own--that they don't know what the hell they're talking about BUT since the high-dollar farmers in America are so smart they must know what they're doing and it's probably impossible to grow an appreciable amount of food without using chemical pesticides and fertilizers. The last guy cited the Green Revolution (scientific advancements in crop growth that basically saved the world from starvation by inventing new growing techniques centered around chemical fertilizers and modernized industrial practices), but I'm fairly certain that "X happened and Y fixed it, therefor only Y works" is a logical fallacy.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[rycamor]

Yes, it is extremely hard to get people to change eating habits. I'm willing to bet just getting them to change from white rice to golden rice will be all but impossible. Food remains humanity's biggest "decision bug". You can take modern educated people, provide them 100% satisfactory evidence that replacing processed foods (mainly sugar and grain) with good quality vegetables and proteins will give them abundantly more energy, better mood, health, even good looks, not to mention a longer, more active life, and they will just say shrug and return to their established habit. It takes an extremely self-directed and self-disciplined person to change a diet when something lesser, but immediately-gratifying is available.

Notice also, this is rice. These food/culture problems always seem to center around grains and starchy foods. Those foods offer similar instant gratification to sugar. Quick elevations in blood glucose, followed by longer-term energy crashes. I think people get addicted to the blood sugar swings. I know it took me some serious mental reprogramming to stop centering my diet around sugars and starches.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[wisnoskij]

If you label a supply and demand economy as greed, than sure. If you call selling products for the market price, instead of undercutting yourself, greed, then sure I agree with you. But that is Capitalism.

That is Capitalism functioning as expected, and designed. Sure we might also call it greed (depending on how yo want to define greed), but then Capitalism is greed. What type of Capitalism are you thinking of, where the business owners try to get the least amount of money for their goods as possible?

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[rycamor]

Don't be ridiculous. Crops like sweet potato can produce more calories per acre than rice could ever hope to. The problem is cultural.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[rycamor]

I agree that subsidies played a big part, but subsidies didn't force people to eat the grain. They just made the lesser foods more available and cheap. People are always following paths of least resistance to their detriment. This is the part that is almost impossible to change in a population.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[HaZardman27]

Well by viewing and commenting on slashdot, you are using the internet. There is this amazing concept on the internet called searching. When you don't know something, instead of whining, you have the power to look it up.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[operagost]

You just called the State of Californa a bunch of Luddites.

Appealing to the popularity of a belief is fallacious. In addition, this is the same state that democratically, through referendum, opposed same-sex marriage and the courts decided that popularity didn't matter in that case.

GMO is often used to make the foods more pest resistant. Now this could be bad because our GMO foods have trace amounts of poison in them.

One life form's poison is another's food. Or, at least, the "poison" has no effect and is passed without incident. Biologists know this. Greenies get up in arms about GMO, then use "natural" pesticides to keep insects from damaging their "organic" crops without a sense of irony.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[mcgrew]

I don't know a lot about sweet potatoes (can't stand them myself) but I doubt you could grow them in places like where they grow rice -- parts of the world where there are two seasons, dry and rainy. Your choice of crops is limited in those places, which is why so much of the Asia eats so much rice. It's easy to grow rice in a rainy climate. When I was in Thailand in the USAF, they grew rice in the rainy season and something else (can't remember what) in the dry season.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[mcgrew]

Sounds nice in paper, and yet millions of people are expected to end their lives early at considerable taxpayer expense "simply" because they don't "want" to eat less.

Early death doesn't cost the government, it saves the government money. Everyone dies, it's just a matter of when. Let me use a real-life example -- my uncle and his mother.

Uncle Bill caught TB in his thirties and lost a lung because of it. Plus he used his remaining lung to smoke four packs of Kools a day while working in the city's garbage incinerator. He died at age 60 from COPD. He never collected a dime of his city pension or Sociual Security or Medicare.

My Grandma, OTOH, lived a hundred years. She collected Social Security for forty years, all the while seeing a doctor every two weeks on the Government's dime using medicare.

Early death saves the government money, living a long time costs the government.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[hawkinspeter]

They can be grown all over the world although they won't grow in a rice paddy, but they are grown in large amounts in the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, India and Africa. They tend to be hardy and easy to grow, and although they aren't the single answer to human nutrition, they are a convenient way of getting more vitamin A.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[hawkinspeter]

I've had kumara (their version of sweet potatoes) chips in New Zealand, but I found them to be a little soggy compared to potato chips (or fries as they are known elsewhere). Still nice though.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[hawkinspeter]

Really? They're entirely different plants, despite the similar name. Sweet potatoes are from the Convolvulaceae family whereas ordinary potatoes are members of the Nightshade family.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[rycamor]

AFAIK most of those boggy fields have been carefully engineered to be that way. Ironically, according to Masanobu Fukuoka rice yields can be higher without flooded fields.

There is an incredible amount of momentum behind both bad farming practices and bad eating practices. The modern world tries correct this momentum by adding technological backfixes rather than address the problems themselves.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[bws111]

So exactly which seeds sold by Monsanto are deliberatly made sterile? Not a damn one. Find some different FUD to spread.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I remember an Ethiopian turning his nose up in disgust at having to eat leeks, "That is a poor person's food".

I guess I must be an extremely poor, leek-loving European, then. :-)

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[Rich0]

Good luck generating 100%-accurate data for anything related to diet in humans without violating a bazillion ethical codes. You could merely institute draconian monitoring of your test subjects in which case you'll end up kicking everybody out of every group but the junk-food group for non-compliance. Or, you could just lock all your test subjects in cages and feed them rations of the appropriate type, allowing them to nearly starve if they refuse to eat them.

Feeding tests in lab rats are fairly practical, tests with humans are anything but, mostly for the reasons we already agree on. That's why everybody has their favorite diet and an argument about why it is better than all the others.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[Rich0]

Early death saves the government money, living a long time costs the government.

Sure, but there is a big cost-difference between being healthy right until you die from a cerebral aneurysm vs dying after suffering with type-2 diabetes for 15 years. The diseases associated with obesity tend to be pretty expensive.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[ChromeAeonium]

There are dozens of possible solutions, virtually all of which have been available for decades now.

Indeed there are...vitamin A pills and nutrient rich vegetables come to mind. To bad the former requires a constant supply being delivered, and the later requires a developed transportation infrastructure, refrigeration, and enough money to purchase vegetables. Your comment amounts to 'Let them eat cake.'

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[rycamor]

Good luck generating 100%-accurate data for anything related to diet in humans without violating a bazillion ethical codes. You could merely institute draconian monitoring of your test subjects in which case you'll end up kicking everybody out of every group but the junk-food group for non-compliance. Or, you could just lock all your test subjects in cages and feed them rations of the appropriate type, allowing them to nearly starve if they refuse to eat them.

Feeding tests in lab rats are fairly practical, tests with humans are anything but, mostly for the reasons we already agree on. That's why everybody has their favorite diet and an argument about why it is better than all the others.

I didn't say 100% accurate data but a hypothetical 100% satisfactory evidence. The "could" meant it was hypothetical, as in "even IF". Now, I know it's impossible to be 100% about this stuff, but we have abundantly satisfactory evidence just from looking around us and at the food habits of those we know, that processed foods high in sugars and grains do horrible things to our health. Anyone I know who has modified their diet toward fresh, whole foods, cutting back on the processed carbs has come out a whole new person. It ain't rocket science, nor does it need to be.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[BrokenHalo]

Wrong. Roundup Ready seeds are well known to use terminator genes to make them sterile beyond the first generation.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[ChromeAeonium]

Growing carrots, sweet potatoes,mangoes, papaya, or other vitamin-A rich crops is a much more sensible answer -- unless one is devoted to the current exploitative system.

Thank God the poorest people in the world can afford that and the refrigeration and transport necessary to facility that. Stupid poor people for not thinking of hoping down to the local Walmart sooner.

Golden rice only contributes to the problem (economic and ecological) of monoculture.

Bullshit. You think people want to live off rice their whole lives? They aren't going to get this and decide they want nothing else; this is to help until a more varied diet can be available to everyone. Of course Golden Rice isn't the ideal solution, but good luck changing the socioeconomic problems of global poverty before more people die.

Its purpose is to provide good PR for the biotech industry:

So the good that biotech can do is simply dismissed as PR. Nice spin. I suppose vaccinations are just good PR for big pharma and serve no other purpose.

our GM crops are largely untested for safety, and most of the studies on safety that do exist are ones we've done ourselves (trust us!)

Wrong wrong wrong wrong.

they have led to increased pesticides use

In the same sense that switching from a weekly line of coke to a weekly class of wine is an increase in drug use. Now look at the overall environmental impact of switching form less harmful herbicides and tillage to no-till systems using glyphosate and glufosinate...but of course a holistic point of view wouldn't fit the technology bad narrative.

It's not science, it's scientism in the advancement of corporatism.

Everything's a conspiracy when you're wrong.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[bws111]

No, they aren't. They are claimed to have terminator seeds by fudsters. If they actually are sterile, then explain the lawsuits Monsanto files against farmers who regrow the crop. Monsanto has stated they have never developed or commercialized strerile seeds, and have committed to not do so for food crops.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[ChromeAeonium]

How about we encourage them to grow more sweet potatoes (which naturally have a high vitamin A content)

Agronomic, economic, social, and technological issues that can't be simply waved away by saying 'well just do this' maybe? If the solution was so simple don't you think someone would have done it already?

Think of Golden Rice as applying pressure to a slit wrist. Does it fix the underlying problem? Nope, but you if you were bleeding profusely you wouldn't reject someone putting pressure on it for that reason, would you? No, you would accept until you could get better care, which is the purpose of Golden Rice. We don't live in a world with perfect solutions, so things like Golden Rice are there to keep people from dying until the such solutions are globally feasible.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[ChrisMaple]

Sweet potatoes taste lousy, and when cooked have the consistency of rotten banana. They deserve to be treated with disgust and "low-brow snobbery".

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[Darinbob]

Sweet potato is expensive though. The whole point of the golden rice is that it's as cheap as the normal rice which is the majority of what some poor people eat. The reason it has a poverty stigma is precisely because that's the only thing people in poverty can afford to eat. This isn't about culture but price. You can also store and transport it more easily than most other foods, probably accounting for some of the low cost compared to more perishable vegetables.

Sweet potato in the US is expensive compared to a lot of things, such as a basic russet potato. Ie, sweet potato fries always cost much more than normal fries. But part of that is the novelty and supply and demand. (ie, quinoa which used to be a staple in Peru is all being sold to first world countries now and the price is such that poor Peruvians can no longer afford it, or would rather sell it and use the money to eat something cheaper.)

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[Darinbob]

But was that a poor Ethiopian who could not afford to eat anything but rice and then was offered an expensive leek and asked how it was?

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[Darinbob]

There's a difference. One guy is deluded and boring and the other is outright crazy and entertaining.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[hawkinspeter]

That's kind of my point - we shouldn't treat Golden Rice as the only possible remedy when there's multiple things that can be tried. Looking at global solutions isn't necessarily the answer when often you need to use a variety of techniques that can be applied locally. e.g. Look at that unused dry dusty land over there; let's try planting some sweet potatoes and see if we can get them to grow.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[gottabeme]

Educating them to what? Stop having sex? Or are you going to give them free condoms? Who's going to pay for those?

Educating them to stop having family members who can help earn a living? Or should they just have two kids and not be able to do enough work to survive? What about when their children die young?

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[doom]

This is great, not only are you quoting wikipedia for support, you don't appear to have read what you're quoting. (Try looking at the last line again.)

And someone moderated this as "informative".

By the way, back at TFA:

The first version of Golden Rice was criticized for containing too little vitamin A. While this point has meanwhile become obsolete, what did you think of this criticism at that point in time? It was unjustified from the beginning. On the basis of experimental data on the availability of vitamin A from rice, we can prove today that 100g of our first Golden Rice variant with 1.6 micrograms of vitamin A per gram Endosperm would have been sufficient to compensate vitamin A deficiency. Unfortunately, these data are available only since 2010.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[njnnja]

Of course I read that part. However, I have read elsewhere there are problems with the potency of even the current versions of golden rice. So even though I do not believe what is in Wikipedia, I left in the last sentence because I felt that that would be potentially misleading, and not what the wikipedia writer would have wanted someone to quote.

So should I have taken that part out, and been accused of selective editing, or leave it in, and be accused of hypocrisy (or of not reading my own post)? I chose the latter. YMMV

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[ChromeAeonium]

I've never heard anyone seriously propose that Golden Rice be the only possible solution investigated, and it is a very big straw man to suggest that anyone is. I have, however, heard people saying that, solely because it is genetically engineered, more people should die while we wait for the other possible solutions.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[hawkinspeter]

I was replying to someone who said that the choice was to use Golden Rice or let people go blind and die, so it's not a straw man, but posted a few parents above this.

What other solutions are we waiting for when there are lots of alternatives available right now? I think a multi-pronged approach will have the most success.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[Rich0]

Good luck getting the US government to agree on your claim of grains being harmful.

That's the point - there really isn't agreement. The two of us might be agreed, but if the evidence were really that incontrovertible there wouldn't be so much debate.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[rycamor]

Generally, if the U.S. government is committed to an idea, that's my first tip-off that it is a bad one. At least, anytime since about 1913 when the statists and authoritarians took over.

Notice I didn't issue a blanket "grains are harmful". I stick to the blindingly obvious: processed sugars and highly-processed grains (and the foods they tend to be packaged in) are harmful. Even the government scientists will tell you that whole-grain bread made from freshly-milled wheat is better for you than Twinkies or that Wonderbread with a 2-month shelf life. Problem is, they still subsidize the hell out of the raw materials for Twinkies and Wonderbread. They would also (grudginly) agree that fresh vegetables picked that day from your garden are probably more nutritious than something harvested halfway across the country and shipped through three major distribution hubs before arriving at your local supermarket.

If you just look at things simply and empirically, it is very easy to test these questions. Problem is Americans are in love with "Science" as an overarching authority, and industry as a supplier of all needs, and would rather see huge edifices of logical supposition built upon studies done decades ago (of often questionable financial sources) rather than look at the evidence right before their eyes. Vary your diet for a month, and see if there's a difference in your health. Ain't that hard to do...

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[Rich0]

If you just look at things simply and empirically, it is very easy to test these questions.

Sure, if you don't care about getting the right answer. When it comes to human health, every complicated question has a simple answer, which is wrong. If you want to look at things empirically then you have to control for the placebo effect, and for that matter do a controlled experiment in the first place. Both of those elements are extremely difficult to pull off when it comes to diet. Maybe if you lock people in cages and puree all the food and mask the flavor you can feed people a controlled diet for a few years without them having any idea what they're eating, but good luck getting that past the board of ethics. Or I guess you could implant cannulas in them like they do with rats.

If you're just looking for a bunch of anecdotes then just browse the internet and you'll find people claiming that everything from whole wheat bread to bacon to Twinkies is responsible for everything from living to the age of 102 to dropping dead from a stroke at age 14. Millions of people live lives that are medically exceptional in some way, and millions of people have unusual diets, so there will be lots of intersections of these whether there is a true relationship or not.

So, everybody has their pet theory and happily professes it, while lobbying the government to punish all those people who practice the wrong religion (thereby increasing healthcare costs).

I'm all for science, but precious little in the healthcare industry really qualifies as science, and almost nothing in the diet industry does, unless you're talking about mice. It isn't that nobody tries - the problem is that you can never really know what your test subjects are doing unless you can cage them up, and you can never really control the genetics unless you breed boys and mothers/sisters for 14 generations. Do that with people and you'll get results that are as reproducible as what we get with rats, but obviously we can't do that. Oh, and if you really want to understand how people tick start knocking out genes - that will make the cannulas and controlled breeding seem really tame.

Re:"The only problem? It's GMO."

[kurzweilfreak]

This is false. Monsanto doesn't produce any deliberately made sterile products. It's amazing how often this blatant lie is repeated as fact.

GMO is not a problem

[kruach aum]

Ignorance and fear are the problem.

Re:GMO is not a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignorance and fear are the problem.

GMO could be a problem depending on how it is done and how it is deployed. Ignorance and fear prevent any meaningful discussion of the matter. Calling for more research into the risks and then trampling experimental crop fields doesn't help either.

Re:GMO is not a problem

[Joce640k]

One sided proprietary research (just like with pharmaceuticals) and lack of any kind of research is the problem.

Wars in the Middle East don't pay for themselves, you know...

Re:GMO is not a problem

[kruach aum]

What you describe is a problem of ignorance, not a potential problem specific to GMO. Everything could be a problem depending on how it is executed. Wells can bring water to thousands. Shitting in wells can also bring cholera to thousands. Neither has anything to do with wells, and everything to do with knowledge.

Re:GMO is not a problem

[kf6auf]

It's not entirely the fault of the populace that they are ignorant. Have you tried finding out in what way GMO foods at your local supermarket have been modified?

Heck, if the agriculture companies had started using genetic engineering to make crops healthier, they would have been far more likely to be accepted. But they started by making crops more watery (and thus less nutritious), making it so farmers can blanket entire US states with herbicides without affecting the desired crops, and introducing pesticides that AFAIK are just assumed to be safe. So a broad brush was used, and because of the agriculture companies it was the bad brush instead of the good one.

Re:GMO is not a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignorance and fear are the problem.

GMO could be a problem depending on how it is done and how it is deployed. Ignorance and fear prevent any meaningful discussion of the matter. Calling for more research into the risks and then trampling experimental crop fields doesn't help either.

Monsanto Marketeers would call that "anti-advertising".

Most of the ignorance and fear you speak of stems directly from the mistrust in the very companies controlling GMOs, who go so far as to prevent any such labeling on any food to merely identify it as containing their own product. Perhaps if certain companies were a bit more open and honest instead of wanting to secure profits in any way possible, the ignorance and fear could be quelled.

Re:GMO is not a problem

[Joce640k]

It's not entirely the fault of the populace that they are ignorant. Have you tried finding out in what way GMO foods at your local supermarket have been modified?

In the case of Golden Rice the modification have been widely published.

Even Wikipedia has them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice

Re:GMO is not a problem

[daem0n1x]

The real problem is this kind of complicated, expensive and dangerous "solution" when simply introducing other crops that naturally provide vitamin D would fix the issue.

Reminds me of that old joke about the US spending millions of dollars to develop a pen which can write in space, and the Soviet cosmonauts simply using a pencil.

Re:GMO is not a problem

[daem0n1x]

Fix: I wrote "vitamin D", I meant "vitamin A". I keep confusing them all the time.

Re:GMO is not a problem

[N1AK]

I find it interesting that you think changing agricultural practice and diet across a gigantic swathe of the globe is 'simple'.

If Norman Borlaug had tried to introduce more efficient crops instead of developing dwarf wheat he would not have saved hundreds of millions of lives and been awarded one of the most appropriate nobel peace prizes for his work.

Golden rice is licensed freely to small farmers and they are free to re-use seed so there's no typical lock-in risk.

We know the modifications that have been made to the rice. We know the nutritional and organic content of the rice produced. There's no credible reason to believe that golden rice will have negative health consequences; but we know for damn sure that people are dying and going blind now.

Re:GMO is not a problem

[daem0n1x]

Golden rice is licensed freely to small farmers and they are free to re-use seed so there's no typical lock-in risk.

Drug dealer business practice: the first fix is always free.

Re:GMO is not a problem

[Chris Mattern]

Reminds me of that old joke about the US spending millions of dollars to develop a pen which can write in space, and the Soviet cosmonauts simply using a pencil.

Which, as it turns out, is completely false. Before the introduction of the space pen, both the US and the Soviets used pencils, but, in fact, pencils aren't good in zero-g; graphite bits break off and can contaminate electronics. What's more, the space pen was developed at zero cost (that's $0) to the government. A private individual created it at his own expense, and sold them to NASA at a modest cost, asking only that he be allowed to advertise its use by NASA when he also sold them to the general public. He made a mint. If that's the best argument you can come up with for not using technology to improve people's lives, it's not good enough.

Re:GMO is not a problem

[daem0n1x]

Which, as it turns out, is completely false.

I know it's false. That's why I called it a joke.

If that's the best argument you can come up with for not using technology to improve people's lives, it's not good enough.

I'm all for technology improving people's lives. But many times, technology is overkill and used only because of corporate interests. There are simpler solutions, but then someone would not be making a shitload of money from them, so they're not used.

Re:GMO is not a problem

[drinkypoo]

Wells can bring water to thousands. Shitting in wells can also bring cholera to thousands. Neither has anything to do with wells, and everything to do with knowledge.

Great. But fracking can fuck your well. And that's what we're doing now. CNG is around $2.35 a gallon-equivalent, why do you think that is? How do you think we came to this pass? What do you think the results will be?

Re:GMO is not a problem

[Politburo]

Shit analogy. Most drugs do not reproduce themselves.

Re:GMO is not a problem

[Attila Dimedici]

The thing is that the people calling for GMO labeling want food made using this Golden Rice labeled in the same way that food made from Monsanto Round Up resistant corn is labeled. That makes the label NOT useful, because it lumps food made with crops containing well understood properties (beta-carotene) with food made with crops containing less well understood properties (the component that makes the crop resistant to Round Up).

Re:GMO is not a problem

[BrokenHalo]

Don't we already have a USDA Certified Organic program? To qualify for the certification, the food *cannot* be GMO.

As a scientist, I would be very interested to see an inorganic GMO.

Re:GMO is not a problem

[BrokenHalo]

Maybe that's because they are often manifest in the same products (butter, for instance).

Re:GMO is not a problem

[BrokenHalo]

And when companies like Monsanto won't let you keep seed for next year to plant a new crop

There's nothing stopping you from keeping seeds from a crop - they just won't do you any good. Monsanto's products are deliberately sterile, so you only get one generation of crop out of them.

Re:GMO is not a problem

[nitehawk214]

But you use the joke as a strawman as to why we should not use technology to solve our problems. Your entire premise is false. Do you have a real reason why we should not use this crop?

Re:GMO is not a problem

[HornWumpus]

Jokes, true of false, are supposed to be funny.

What's wrong with making a shitload of money? The people that built the space pen did well for themselves, NASA and the Ruskys.

Through most of history most people were starch eaters. Until capitalism lifted up the economy, Europe was full of peasants that ate nothing but starch. Throwing the Reds out of power in the third world would definitely be a better long term solution, but good luck with that.

Re:GMO is not a problem

[HornWumpus]

Just wrong. They thought about using a terminator gene but market reaction stopped them.

But descendents of F1 (first generation hybrids) don't breed true. Never have. If you like the traits of a F1 hybrid somebody has to grow fields of seed crop every year. That's not as easy as it sounds. Requires separation from sources of pollen.

Re:GMO is not a problem

[bill_mcgonigle]

It's not entirely the fault of the populace that they are ignorant. Have you tried finding out in what way GMO foods at your local supermarket have been modified?

It's precisely the fault of the FDA - they attack companies who try to label foods as non-GMO. It's a blatant First Amendment violation, but who can fault the the companies for not funding a challenge when there are Monsanto lawyers on the Supreme Court?

Re:GMO is not a problem

[HornWumpus]

Most people you know find a false parable funny? You must hang with idiots. I suppose their is a little meta-humor in the people who think that simplistically.

Regarding reds, look at the third world nations in the worst state and getting worse. e.g. Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

You do realize that Marx was completely wrong about the whole 'society evolving towards communism' thing? I still haven't heard a single accurate prediction from his theories. Despite repeated challenges to /. reds.

Re:GMO is not a problem

[daem0n1x]

Most people you know find a false parable funny? You must hang with idiots. I suppose their is a little meta-humor in the people who think that simplistically.

Ad hominem. Best sign of lack of arguments.

Regarding reds, look at the third world nations in the worst state and getting worse. e.g. Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

Venezuela and Zimbabwe are Communist? And in what parallel universe are those the nations in the worst state? And what does one have to do with the other?

You do realize that Marx was completely wrong about the whole 'society evolving towards communism' thing? I still haven't heard a single accurate prediction from his theories. Despite repeated challenges to /. reds.

You're right. Our economic model is completely perfect and we should never ever do anything but sit on our asses and let it be. After all, the IMF keeps telling me that everything's gonna be alright. And when did the IMF ever fail a prediction?

Re:GMO is not a problem

[Aonghus142000]

Please justify your statement in regards to the contention that plants producing sterile seeds = unacceptable corporate greed.

Re:GMO is not a problem

[Guppy]

The real problem is this kind of complicated, expensive and dangerous "solution" when simply introducing other crops that naturally provide vitamin D would fix the issue.

Yes, there are so many other food choices that would fix the problem. As it is in the US -- I hear it all the time that. If only people would eat this and not that we'd fix Obesity, Colon Cancer, Heart Disease, etc. And then take a look around and see how much progress we've made as the public health message goes out decade after decade.

If only, if only, if only. How well does if only work in the 3rd world? Well, regardless of how well it works, it'll have to do the job.

And while I can't say for sure how many families will decide to eat Golden Rice voluntarily, the question doesn't matter as long as it remains a locked up as a laboratory curiosity, because we've already made the decision for them.

Reminds me of that old joke about the US spending millions of dollars to develop a pen which can write in space, and the Soviet cosmonauts simply using a pencil.

I love that anecdote, because the punchline is that graphite particles are electrically conductive, and in microgravity will float around, posing a short-circuiting hazard. The Soviets ended up adopting pressurized-pen technology in 1969.

Re:GMO is not a problem

[ChromeAeonium]

Most of the ignorance and fear you speak of stems directly from the mistrust in the very companies controlling GMOs

I disagree, considering the fear started with relatively small company, Calgene, and their Flavr Savr tomato, the first GMO?

Most of the distrust comes from activists stoking fear about the corporations and the science, not the corporations themselves.

who go so far as to prevent any such labeling on any food to merely identify it as containing their own product

They don't prevent labeling, they oppose forcing labeling. I'm sure if someone wanted to label organic crops as having been grown in cow crap, the organic producers would, rightfully, fight against that too.

Re:GMO is not a problem

[ChromeAeonium]

Have you tried finding out in what way GMO foods at your local supermarket have been modified?

Yes. Corn for insect resistance, herbicide tolerance, and drought resistance. Cotton for insect resistance and herbicide tolerance. Soy, canola, and sugar beet for herbicide tolerance. Papaya and summer squash for virus resistance. Laziness is no one's fault but your own. Now tell me all the other, non-GMO ways a crop is altered...good luck.

But they started by making crops more watery (and thus less nutritious)

And that is done via conventional breeding, which is wholly non-controversial. Funny how GMOs get blamed though.

making it so farmers can blanket entire US states with herbicides without affecting the desired crops

And thus phase out harsher herbicides and environmentally damaging tillage...don't leave out that key detail.

introducing pesticides that AFAIK are just assumed to be safe

If by assumed you mean known, then yes.

because of the activists companies it was the bad brush instead of the good one.

Fixed that for you.

Re:GMO is not a problem

[BrokenHalo]

Just wrong. They thought about using a terminator gene but market reaction stopped them.

Not wrong. Roundup Ready seeds use terminator genes. Monsanto justifies this by claiming that the reason for this is to prevent the transfer of glyphosate resistance genes to other plants (which in itself is actually a valid consideration), but there's no denying that it's also good for revenue.

Re:GMO is not a problem

[ChromeAeonium]

with food made with crops containing less well understood properties (the component that makes the crop resistant to Round Up).

That isn't really true; the gene for glyphosate tolerance is pretty well understood. It's just a bacterial form of the EPSPS enzyme present in all plants. The glyphosate in Round-Up (or whatever other glyphosate brand one chooses to use) binds to the EPSPS in plants and prevents them from synthesizing essential amino acids, causing the plant's death. In the transgenic plants, with the C4 EPSPS, the site that glyphosate would normally bind to is different, preventing it from being fatally disabled by a Round-Up application. For all intents and purposes, it is the same protein, just with enough difference to the binding site that a plant with it can survive the herbicide.

Re:GMO is not a problem

[bws111]

You are wrong. Here is monsanto's statement.

Re:GMO is not a problem

[Darinbob]

Our chief weapons are ignorance and fear. And an almost fanatical devotion to the pope. Make that three weapons.

Re:GMO is not a problem

[Attila Dimedici]

If it is a Monsanto talking point, how come I always hear it in the mouth of those calling for labeling? I have yet to hear someone who favors labeling of GMO foods who does not say that they will not eat any GMO foods if they have the ability to know that it is GMO. Just look at this discussion, there are numerous people who are comparing Golden Rice to corn that contains pesticides and to corn that is herbicide resistant.

Re:GMO is not a problem

[Attila Dimedici]

I will not argue the point, but I am pretty sure that the various forms of the EPSPS enzyme are less well understood than beta-carotene. That does not mean that the scientific knowledge of them is insufficient to conclude that they are safe, merely that there is space in what is unknown about them for the possibility (although that possibility is rather slim) that there are unknown processes related to them that may have negative health effects.
I, personally, am not concerned about the health effects of glyphosate resistant crops, but I understand those who are. On the other hand, I do not understand those who are concerned about the health effects of rice which contains beta-carotene. Of course, the former are made more concerned by those who lump corn that is resistant to glyphosate with corn which contains pesticides (primarily neonicotinoids, if I understand what I have read correctly) with rice that contains beta-carotene. And that is complicated by the fact that they always use the term "pesticides" when referring to the crops that contain them so as to make people think of the insecticides that you can buy at the store that warn you not to breathe or consume them.

Re:GMO is not a problem

[ChromeAeonium]

with corn which contains pesticides (primarily neonicotinoids, if I understand what I have read correctly)

It actually is the Bt protein that corn contains. Bt is better known as the same thing that has been sprayed on organic crops for decades to no ill effect. This protein is also quite well understood,and does not affect mammals. Neonicotinoids are a class of insecticides that are sprayed on crops which have been implicated in colony collapse disorder. A lot of anti-GMO folks like to point out that GMOs are often sprayed with them, therefore are responsible for CCD, which of course is dishonest and is only true because large amounts of some crops are GE.

Of course, strictly speaking, all corn has pesticides in it. Chemical defenses are how plants evolved to defend themselves in place of swatting at bugs like animals can do. Even 'all natural' organic non-GMO corn will contain naturally produced insecticides like maysin and benzoxazinoids (nd if it is organic, probably BT too).

Re:GMO is not a problem

[kurzweilfreak]

Monsanto does label their products as GMOs. Their customers see them all the time. That's specifically why they purchase them.

Their customers are farmers. Not you. Monsanto doesn't sell corn to supermarkets. They sell seeds to farmers. There would be no fear if not for the organic industry's obviously successful anti-GMO propaganda smear campaign.

Idiots are against Golden Rice

[rossz]

Idiots who shop at Whole Foods would rather a child go blind due to vitamin deficiency rather than allow an evil GMO food to be used. Their suggestion of "they should eat more vegetables" ignores the simple fact that they need the special rice because they don't have access to the fucking vegetables.

Tons of food have been destroyed in Africa because of this ignorance. It's better that people starve rather than risk ingesting a GMO food. What. The. Fuck?

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you really that surprised? Africa's seen this sort of insanity before. Better let AIDS spread like wildfire than allow sinful condoms to be used.

Newsflash: people are idiots and idiot people will believe whatever any authority figure will tell them under certain conditions. The good feeling they get thinking they're acting on behalf of a deity (in one case) or that they're acting to rid the planet of toxic evil food (in the other case) is all they need.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[phantomfive]

Their suggestion of "they should eat more vegetables"

When I read this, I thought you were joking, thinking, "no one could be as stupid as suggesting that." Then sure enough, right after, I read this comment. I guess they are that stupid!

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Wow, you have extrapolated from a trolling AC to stereotyping people who are doubtful about GMOs. For all you know rossz posted that just to make his own over-the-top post post look more plausible.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[m00sh]

Idiots who shop at Whole Foods would rather a child go blind due to vitamin deficiency rather than allow an evil GMO food to be used. Their suggestion of "they should eat more vegetables" ignores the simple fact that they need the special rice because they don't have access to the fucking vegetables.

Tons of food have been destroyed in Africa because of this ignorance. It's better that people starve rather than risk ingesting a GMO food. What. The. Fuck?

Would rather die from cardio-vascular disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer then?

We tinkered around with our food system and 2/3 of the population is over-weight and 1/3 is obese. We suffer from heart disease, diabetes and related problems in epidemic proportions.

Maybe the solution isn't genetically modifying rice but something simpler as finding the right vegetables to grow alongside the rice that supplies the missing vitamin.

Plus, vitamin A in excess is toxic and causes liver damage. Maybe we fix childhood blindness but instead give teenage cirrhosis.

Just because we can genetically modify plants doesn't mean we should go around looking for problems to solve with it, especially that can have large possibly unknown consequences.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[phantomfive]

I didn't extrapolate, although I can see how you might have misread my post that way.

In general, I have a low opinion of those who irrationally hate oppose golden rice, for reasons mentioned above. People are worried about some hypothetical, speculative harm caused by these GMOs, and are willing to let people die for no other reason than their own fears. This particular rice has been studied a lot, has provable benefit compared to some speculative risk, and people who oppose it generally do so for irrational reasons.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[phantomfive]

In fact, you might say that "golden rice" is a kind of shibboleth, a test to determine whether anti-GMO people are able to reason about topics well, or whether they are completely irrational in their fears. Greenpeace falls into the irrational category here.

The benefits of the rice are so obvious that you have to be somewhat blind to completely oppose its use in Africa.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[Anonymous Coward]

We tinkered around with our food system and 2/3 of the population is over-weight and 1/3 is obese. We suffer from heart disease, diabetes and related problems in epidemic proportions.

Heart disease, diabetes and related problems are usually related to overweight. Golden Rice is about malnutrition.

Maybe the solution isn't genetically modifying rice but something simpler as finding the right vegetables to grow alongside the rice that supplies the missing vitamin.

That's what Greenpeace et al. recommends. Doesn't work. People need their land for rice.

Plus, vitamin A in excess is toxic and causes liver damage. Maybe we fix childhood blindness but instead give teenage cirrhosis.

Golden Rice doesn't contain vitamin A. It is enriched with -carotene, a precursor of vitamin A. Overconsumption is not a problem. (If you eat really *alot* your skin becomes orange, but this wellknown condition is benign)

Just because we can genetically modify plants doesn't mean we should go around looking for problems to solve with it, especially that can have large possibly unknown consequences.

Agree. It's better to put our trust in arbitrary fears and let a couple of million children go blind.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[Chrisq]

Their suggestion of "they should eat more vegetables"

When I read this, I thought you were joking, thinking, "no one could be as stupid as suggesting that." Then sure enough, right after, I read this comment. I guess they are that stupid!

Yes stupid, when obviously we should let them eat cake

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, what I assume you mean is the way condom supply and education in Africa is severly restricted by USS aid funding where US religious organisations refuse aid in areas where condoms and sex education are given?

Its the Americans (well, not all of them, but enough..) who consider them sinful, for others, not the Africans.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[Dave Emami]

Would rather die from cardio-vascular disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer then?

Yes, I would rather live longer and die from those things than to die earlier from malnutrition or related problems.

We tinkered around with our food system and 2/3 of the population is over-weight and 1/3 is obese.

I'm sure having readily-available food has caused average weight to rise, but I'm skeptical about how much of a factor that is compared to reduction in exercise. Until quite recently (in the evolutionary and historical scheme of things), humans have had to burn a lot of calories just to stay alive -- food, shelter, and protection all required heavy exercise to acquire, produce, and/or maintain. Even after the advent of agriculture, the vast majority of the population spent their time doing manual labor to grow food, and the rest of the population tended to do manual labor that was just as intensive. Staying alive required you to plow a field, or chop wood, or haul stones, etc. Today, most of us here on Slashdot (and a lot of other people around us) gain our food, shelter, and protection by making little motions with our fingers, talking, and every so often moving a short distance within a building. We don't have to exercise to survive (in the day-to-day sense). Exercise is something we have to deliberately seek out.

Shorter version: I think the problem is more our lack of caloric output than our excessive caloric input.

We suffer from heart disease, diabetes and related problems in epidemic proportions.

Until human beings cease to be mortal, by definition something will be killing us in vast numbers. And unless those causes of death are evenly spread out, some things will always be glaring problems compared to everything else. All we can do is change what those things are, and hopefully make them happen later in life.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[OhANameWhatName]

This is a commercially licensed product owned by a corporation spending the money to market it. Let me restate that, this particular plant is OWNED by a private company.

You think they're creating the plant because "they" (the starving people) are hungry? This biotech company wants to make money by prolifigating their crop throughout the developing world (because .. you know, they *need* it) and making money from countries desperate to keep their people alive.

It's not just the GMO part, the concerns are much, much, much larger than the not so simple question of "To GMO or not to GMO". It's about the continuation of life on this planet not beholden to corporate interests.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[sFurbo]

Plus, vitamin A in excess is toxic and causes liver damage. Maybe we fix childhood blindness but instead give teenage cirrhosis.

Given that it was originally was (and potentially still is) a problem that it did not contain enough vitamin A, I don't think vitamin A toxicity is a potential problem. Furthermore, testing whether this is a problem and what can be done if it is is what we have research for, not what we have blind, Luddite panic for.

Just because we can genetically modify plants doesn't mean we should go around looking for problems to solve with it, especially that can have large possibly unknown consequences.

Yes, god forbid that we try to solve problems with technology. Where would THAT leave us? Especially with technology that can have unspecified "large possibly unknown consequences". I prefer my solutions without any potential problems. I haven't found any such solutions yet, but I am confident that I will strike gold any day now.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[m00sh]

Yes, god forbid that we try to solve problems with technology. Where would THAT leave us? Especially with technology that can have unspecified "large possibly unknown consequences". I prefer my solutions without any potential problems. I haven't found any such solutions yet, but I am confident that I will strike gold any day now.

There is a difference between solving problems with technology and going looking for problems to solve with the technology we have.

I guess you prefer your solutions which produce larger problems than the initial problem it solved.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[reub2000]

Carrot cake, DUH!

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[m00sh]

Agree. It's better to put our trust in arbitrary fears and let a couple of million children go blind.

All I'm saying is that genetically modifying rice to produce vitamin A sounds like a professor with a lab looking for things to do rather than someone really trying to solve the real vitamin A deficiency problem.

The simplest solution seems to be to grow some carrots or other vitamin A rich food alongside rice. But, maybe you're right and they need every inch of their land to grow rice and can't spare any for other vegetables.

Maybe we all become orange oompa-loompas eating nothing but fortified rice.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

In general, I have a low opinion of those who irrationally hate oppose golden rice, for reasons mentioned above.

Ah, so no it wasn't extrapolation, it was confirmation bias.

After all, an AC saying something like, "And guess what, no Monsanto can sue you for growing unmodified carrots!" means he's an example of mainstream criticism of GMOs.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[Joce640k]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice#Distribution

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[N1AK]

We tinkered around with our food system and 2/3 of the population is over-weight and 1/3 is obese. We suffer from heart disease, diabetes and related problems in epidemic proportions.

Which has sweet fuck all to do with GMO and everything to do with the American government bringing in subsidies to discount the production of corn. America as a country is actively encouraging people to eat unhealthy food. It might be stupid, and it might be something worth discussing, but it has nothing at all to do with people dying or going blind in Africa and Asia.

We're not going around looking for problems you dumb cunt, millions of people are dying and millions are going blind, we've already found a monstrously big problem and ignorance is stopping a viable solution from being used.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[Rockoon]

I guess you prefer your solutions which produce larger problems than the initial problem it solved.

"I'm from the government and I'm are here to help."

When people are free to choose for themselves, they wont generally choose solutions that cost them more than the benefits of the solution are worth to them. In the case of this golden rice, the benefits are large and obvious and it is almost certain that there are no large downsides aside from what might present itself in the political/legal game.

Thats really the end of the debate. The only way this rice is likely to have higher costs than benefits is if some government through either direct ("we tax golden rice grown or imported here") or indirect ("we granted someone a monopoly") action.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[N1AK]

Let me restate that, this particular plant is OWNED by a private company.

Who license it for free to people making $10,000 a year or less from it they don't have to pay and have the right to re-use their seed. By the time your average small farmer in Africa is making enough rice to feed his family and earn $10,000 a year he will have the money to decide whether he wants to pay for GM seed or use the money to buy other nutritious foods and go back to non-GM seed. So why stop that farmer from having access to golden rice and the chance to stop his kids going blind or dying?

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[the plant doctor]

The simplest solution seems to be to grow some carrots or other vitamin A rich food alongside rice. But, maybe you're right and they need every inch of their land to grow rice and can't spare any for other vegetables.

Have you actually set foot in a rice paddy here in Asia? I'm guessing not. Rice is extremely unique in its ability to grow under monsoonal conditions. I'm not aware that carrots are fond of 5cm of standing water throughout the growing season.

Beyond that, as the grandparent noted, these people use all the land to grow rice. It's not that there aren't good solutions (from a Western developed country standpoint), it's that this one FITS the problem at hand.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[m00sh]

Have you actually set foot in a rice paddy here in Asia? I'm guessing not. Rice is extremely unique in its ability to grow under monsoonal conditions. I'm not aware that carrots are fond of 5cm of standing water throughout the growing season.

Are you serious? The problem can be solved easily by elevating and draining small portions of the field for other crops than rice. Even if you believe the entire Asia farmlands turns into few inch deep pond, what about rice with fish farming?

Beyond that, as the grandparent noted, these people use all the land to grow rice. It's not that there aren't good solutions (from a Western developed country standpoint), it's that this one FITS the problem at hand.

To me it seems like there are many many solutions. It's just that the other solutions can't be the product of a mega-corporation.

Re: Idiots are against Golden Rice

[Attila Dimedici]

How is Golden Rice "all about making money" when the patent is owned by a non-profit, which has licensed the product for free use by farmers making less than $10,000 a year (which is the market they developed this rice for)?

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[Alsee]

You linked to a Score:0 Anonymous Coward, who I think was probably making a sarcastic joke that they should obviously just eat more carrots. However after you posted we got at least two certifiable cases:
Score:5, Insightful ranting we should just "encourage them to grow more sweet potatoes" and
Score:5, Informative ranting they should just eat sweet potatoes and moringa tree leaves.

If they are growing rice, there are probably reasons that they grow rice. Maybe sweet potatoes don't grow in that soil and climate. Maybe they can't obtain an economically viable yeild. Maybe moringa tree leaves taste like shit. (WTF is a moringa tree anyway?) Maybe there are cultural reasons. It doesn't matter what the reasons are, it doesn't much matter if they are good reasons. The fact is that six hundred thousand children are DYING each year and another half million are going BLIND each year, and yelling at people in extreme poverty to just "eat some goddamn vegetables you idiots" is not a particularly successful solution. I kinda suspect that curing blindness and vitamin-deficiency disease might provide a teensy-weensy bit of help for them to climb themselves out of poverty.

If I found a mutant variety of rice out in the wild which contained Vitamin A, these GMO ranters would embracing it because it's a NATURAL mutant. We knew we wanted rice containing Vitamin A, we looked for it, we didn't find it (yet), that mutation might pop up in a field somewhere tomorrow..... but somehow it magically becomes daaaaaaaaangerous if we make it ourselves rather than waiting around looking for that "natural" mutation. Because a natural mutation potentially making cyanide in your food is somehow better than intelligently, carefully, deliberately putting vitamins into food.... because if we smartly do it that's unnaaaaaaatural.

There's the old Luddite saying: "If man were meant to fly he would have been born with wings"
Fuck that. If we weren't meant to engineer artificial solutions to problems we wouldn't have been born with brains. Well, some of us anyway.

-

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[dbIII]

Even if you believe the entire Asia farmlands turns into few inch deep pond

That pretty well sums up what happened when hard drives became expensive a couple of years ago - surely you noticed it?

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[dbIII]

"I'm from the government and I'm are here to help."

That's what governments are supposed to do. If they don't you are supposed to kick their arses out and put them under adult supervision. Instead I just hear a lot of whining from people that usually don't even bother to vote.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[nitehawk214]

Idiots who shop at Whole Foods would rather a child go blind due to vitamin deficiency rather than allow an evil GMO food to be used. Their suggestion of "they should eat more vegetables" ignores the simple fact that they need the special rice because they don't have access to the fucking vegetables.

Tons of food have been destroyed in Africa because of this ignorance. It's better that people starve rather than risk ingesting a GMO food. What. The. Fuck?

Would rather die from cardio-vascular disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer then?

Spoken like someone that has never gone hungry.

Would I rather die of obesity and heart disease than hunger? Yes, a million times, yes. At least I would have a chance to live. Fuck you to hell for suggesting it is better to let people go blind and starve than be forced to admit the GMO boogeyman isn't as horrible as you want him to sound.

Also, GMO produce is not causing American obesity, or any of the other conditions you are referring to.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[Rockoon]

That's what governments are supposed to do.

Governments are supposed to force solutions that create more harm than good?

Simply amazing....

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[dbIII]

here to help ... supposed to do

There it is again. Have you finished pretending to be retarded or should I try again and let you continue your game where you try to make yourself look good at others expense by arguing against a strawman?
What is it with these pointless little public masturbatory games?

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[mcgrew]

Wow, where to begin...

We tinkered around with our food system and 2/3 of the population is over-weight and 1/3 is obese. We suffer from heart disease, diabetes and related problems in epidemic proportions.

You think it's GM food that's making everyone fat?? What's making everyone fat is part chemistry (plastics) and other environmental changes (I'm 61, I never saw a single man with moobs when I was a kid no matter how fat he was) but mostly increased caloric intake. When I was a kid a small soda was 8 oz, medium 12, and large 16. Now a small is 20 oz. There were no half pound hamburgers. Restaurants didn't give you double portions of everything like they do now.

Maybe the solution isn't genetically modifying rice but something simpler as finding the right vegetables to grow alongside the rice that supplies the missing vitamin.

You might want to read some earlier comments; it isn't feasible.

Plus, vitamin A in excess is toxic and causes liver damage. Maybe we fix childhood blindness but instead give teenage cirrhosis.

You don't get vitamin A from food, you get beta carotine which the body converts to vitamin A, and your body will only produce as much as needed. You can only get too much vitamin A by taking artificial supplements or eating food that has vitamin A artificially introduced (breakfast cereal, drinks, etc).

Just because we can genetically modify plants doesn't mean we should go around looking for problems to solve with it

You don't have to look hard to see what vitamin A deficiency is doing to people in the third world.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[phantomfive]

I didn't say anything about mainstream critics (unless mainstream critics say 'let them eat sweet carrots' which is possible but I don't think true) so you must be the one with some kind of weird confirmation bias.

I'll bet this topic frustrates you because you are not completely irrational and understand that golden rice can be good, but at the same time you have a strong emotional rejection towards GMO. Try exercising, it helps that kind of weird emotional disconnect.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

> I didn't say anything about mainstream critics

So, the entire point of your post was "some people are really stupid?" What value is there in that?

> I'll bet this topic frustrates

I haven't read up on golden rice, so I can't really say. My issue is with someone citing what sure looked like parody to me as proof of anything meaningful about the topic. That doesn't add understanding, it's just knocking down a strawman to make yourself feel superior.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[phantomfive]

So, the entire point of your post was "some people are really stupid?" What value is there in that?

I'm going to tell you something sad but true, the vast majority of most posts, including mine, have very little value.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I'm going to tell you something sad but true, the vast majority of most posts, including mine, have very little value.

Bookmarked for a response to anything you say in the future. If you aren't even going to try to add value to the discussion you are an asshole.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[Rockoon]

Have you finished pretending to be retarded

Read the whole thing again, starting with my first post and what I quoted. Then look at your first reply to me.

Now why is it only you that doest realize that you did in fact just defend solutions that cause more harm than good, and claimed quite plainly and simply that thats what governments were supposed to do.

If you meant something different, then you should have said something different.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[m00sh]

Even if you believe the entire Asia farmlands turns into few inch deep pond

That pretty well sums up what happened when hard drives became expensive a couple of years ago - surely you noticed it?

Fish Culture in Rice Fields

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[m00sh]

Which has sweet fuck all to do with GMO and everything to do with the American government bringing in subsidies to discount the production of corn. America as a country is actively encouraging people to eat unhealthy food. It might be stupid, and it might be something worth discussing, but it has nothing at all to do with people dying or going blind in Africa and Asia. We're not going around looking for problems you dumb cunt, millions of people are dying and millions are going blind, we've already found a monstrously big problem and ignorance is stopping a viable solution from being used.

When the food subsidies were being introduced, if someone had said it was a bad idea because it would cause the nation to get fat, he/she would probably have been called a dumb cunt as well.

If we mess with rice, the basic of the most basic stapes of billions of people, we could turn a million people problem into a billion people problem.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[Eg0r]

> I'm not aware that carrots are fond of 5cm of standing water throughout the growing season.

You probably could engineer carrots to do just that!

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[m00sh]

Idiots who shop at Whole Foods would rather a child go blind due to vitamin deficiency rather than allow an evil GMO food to be used. Their suggestion of "they should eat more vegetables" ignores the simple fact that they need the special rice because they don't have access to the fucking vegetables.

Tons of food have been destroyed in Africa because of this ignorance. It's better that people starve rather than risk ingesting a GMO food. What. The. Fuck?

Would rather die from cardio-vascular disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer then?

Spoken like someone that has never gone hungry.

Would I rather die of obesity and heart disease than hunger? Yes, a million times, yes. At least I would have a chance to live. Fuck you to hell for suggesting it is better to let people go blind and starve than be forced to admit the GMO boogeyman isn't as horrible as you want him to sound.

Also, GMO produce is not causing American obesity, or any of the other conditions you are referring to.

So morbid obesity is more "pleasant" than malnutrition then, huh?

I've heard this "well intentioned" bullshit before. In Iraq and Afghanistan, we were supposed to be using smart bombs to liberate millions of people. Now, we're spending billions to be sitting around flying drones killing villagers and kids.

So, let's bomb the rice genome with smart viruses and this will help millions of people right? Nothing bad could possibly happen.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[m00sh]

You think it's GM food that's making everyone fat?? What's making everyone fat is part chemistry (plastics) and other environmental changes (I'm 61, I never saw a single man with moobs when I was a kid no matter how fat he was) but mostly increased caloric intake. When I was a kid a small soda was 8 oz, medium 12, and large 16. Now a small is 20 oz. There were no half pound hamburgers. Restaurants didn't give you double portions of everything like they do now.

Since genetic engineering is biology and not chemistry, it shouldn't have any bad effects, right?

You don't have to look hard to see what vitamin A deficiency is doing to people in the third world.

You literally have to look away from what obesity is doing to people in this country.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[MrL0G1C]

Idiots who shop at Whole Foods

What an absolutely ironic statement, the 'Idiots who shop at Whole Foods' would never get vitamin A deficiency because they don't eat all processed crap. If all people ate all 'whole foods' this story wouldn't exist.

Monsanto's version of GM is slamming thousands of bits of DNA into the host DNA until something sticks, never mind all the unknown mutations they may have caused during this process. Some GM foods have turned out to have longer term negative health effects which the original plant didn't have, this is what scares people. GM is a dangerous game.

And if taking a farmer to court after the wind blows some of their GM seed into the farmers crop isn't evil then I don't know what is.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[phantomfive]

you are an asshole.

Some people definitely call me that.

However, it's better than having an irrational fear of GMO.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

However, it's better than having an irrational fear of GMO.

Since you've just admitted to being deliberately irrational here, you don't have a leg to stand on.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[phantomfive]

The comment you are referring to was modded funny, which is value enough for me.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[Darinbob]

Isn't Shibboleth one of the old ones found in lost R'lyeh?

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[Darinbob]

"This cake has *vegetables* in it!" -- Kevin

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[Darinbob]

Wow, no one has ever considered these solutions before. The last few decades have been completely wasted!

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[phantomfive]

Possibly, it's an ancient semitic word used during a war to determine who spies were, because one side pronounced it "sibboleth."

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[dbIII]

Read the post I replied to and my reply and stuff your extra unread or unwritten baggage wherever stuff that doesn't matter should go. Do not use me as your strawman in some stupid high school mass debate game.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[sFurbo]

There is a difference between solving problems with technology and going looking for problems to solve with the technology we have.

As long as it is a problem and it gets solved, I don't see the big difference.

I guess you prefer your solutions which produce larger problems than the initial problem it solved.

Yes, I sure do. But I don't see what that have to do with golden rice.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[MaskedSlacker]

The benefits of the rice are so obvious that you have to be somewhat blind to completely oppose its use in Africa.

The benefits are obvious, but the downsides are subtle.

Namely: If poor farmers do not own their seeds, they must grow cash crops to buy new seeds every year. This has two main negative effects: 1) less arable land is devoted to food production in a region ALREADY suffering from calorie deficiency, 2) The farmers are effectively enslaved to the production of that cash crop--they are now less self-sufficient and can never stop growing that crop without finding another wage earning job to replace it.

These two consequences would, in general, be disastrous for the poorest subsistence farmers in these countries.

Re:Idiots are against Golden Rice

[phantomfive]

I keep trying to get better at insulting people, but you really deserve an insult for that post. If you'd done any research on the topic at all, you'd have realized that growers will be able to reuse their seeds as they please. At least do basic research?

I can't imagine

[Anonymous Coward]

600k more children living... I bet they're some place that is already suffering a child shortage right? Great, so you fix their death by problem 1 and lead them right into death by problems 2 through 100.

Re:I can't imagine

[Namarrgon]

Bet you didn't know that when you reduce child mortality rates, population growth rates actually go down, not up.

Re:I can't imagine

[TapeCutter]

We are all going to die, so by your own logic there's a "death problem" with the number (last_death_problem_num_fixed + N) that is going to kill you. Also according to your own logic you should stop solving your own "death problems" instantly in order to reach the optimum value of N=0 (as implied by your post). In fact if you put some effort in maybe you could get to the optimum value faster by creating some artificial "death problems" for yourself.

In other words: Fuck off and die, because there's certainly no room for your particular brand of trolling on Slashdot.

Re:The obvious solution

[joostje]

Monsanto cannot sue for golden rice either, as there are free licences available, see access for those who need it

The problem with golden rice is lack of fat

[Anonymous Coward]

For the body to take advantage of the vitamin A it needs to be consumed with fat.
So the poor people should make sure to have a good kebab with their portion of rice...

Re:The problem with golden rice is lack of fat

[joostje]

rice contains more fat (0.66 gr/100gr) than carrots, so the golden rice should be at least as effective as carrots then. And yes, meat would be good too, but very expensive.

Re:The problem with golden rice is lack of fat

[Joce640k]

rice contains more fat (0.66 gr/100gr) than carrots

Oh, the pesky facts...

Re:The problem with golden rice is lack of fat

[Joce640k]

For the body to take advantage of the vitamin A it needs to be consumed with fat.
So the poor people should make sure to have a good kebab with their portion of rice...

If only there was a way to find out whether or not the vitamin A in Golden Rice could be absorbed by humans...like, I dunno, eating some. Nah, you'd have to be a reckless idiot to do that. Much better to sit around on the Internet and imagine ways it might not work.

Oh, wait, somebody did eat some! http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/89/6/1776.full.pdf

Re:The problem with golden rice is lack of fat

[Alsee]

If them poor people don't wanna go blind they should just eat carrots. Like we do at the Iowa State Fair.
Deep fried in butter, then served with a thick butter sauce.

-

Re:The obvious solution

[Joce640k]

Instead of adding genes to rice that make it contain more vitamin A, people should simply eat more carrots.

Good luck finding an 'unmodified carrot'.

Oh, wait. If it was modified more then 100 years ago it doesn't count as evil.

All about GMO now..

[geekymachoman]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_A and check "Sources" section.

So... why ? I mean if there's a country in Africa that doesn't have access to anything containing vitamin a, then ok sell this rice to them. 99 % of us are ingesting it daily already.

Re:All about GMO now..

[gl4ss]

yeah plenty of food in the world and not a famine in sight... sigh.

Re:The problem with GMO is licensing

[Chrisq]

GMO per se are at least sometime OK, sometime probably not. For instance I don't think glyphosate (aka RoundUp (tm)) resistance is a good idea, as it will inevitably lead to glyphosate overuse and will make its way into our food with undocumented side effects. However in this case adding beta-carotene to rice is probably a good idea.

The problem is licensing. It costs more money to plant golden rice. License holders have given out free licenses to subsistence farmers, and seed reuse is OK. However I think this is a foot in the door. Make no mistake, golden rice is not a humanitarian endeavour, it is 100% commercial.

I think that this is one of the few good use of GMOs. I'd rather not have food that is engineered to produce compounds toxic to pests, no matter how often I am assured that its OK. And I share your concern about resistance to pesticides. However improving the nutritional value, like golden rice, or making plants drought resistant, able to tolerate salt so they can be grown in estuary areas, etc. seems fine to me,

Professor Potrykus

[tinkerton]

Damn you've got a cool name!

GMO won't fix this

[dutchwhizzman]

You can artificially put vitamin A in (expensive, copyrighted) rice, but you won't fix the poverty that is the cause of all this. Once these people will (maybe, if they can afford it) have access to rice with vitamin A in it, the next deficiency will kill the "new" survivors. Fix their poverty, not their lack of vitamin A in their food. They will take care of the vitamin A without having to resort to GMO rice. Spending money on this sort of food modification won't pay for anyone but the copyright holders. It's not even about the "risks" of GMO, it's about the futility of trying to solve poverty with it.

Re:GMO won't fix this

[Chris Mattern]

"Fix poverty". Which immediately leads to the question, *how* do you fix poverty? Don't you fix poverty by giving the poor more opportunity to grow and make what they need?

Re:GMO won't fix this

[the plant doctor]

So in your world, blindness and other consequences of nutritional deficiency is in no way a driver of poverty?

Poverty and well-being are inextricably linked. It's a vicious cycle. If you can start breaking into it at any point it's helpful. Golden Rice is just one entry point into this cycle.

Re:GMO won't fix this

[the plant doctor]

"Fix poverty". Which immediately leads to the question, *how* do you fix poverty? Don't you fix poverty by giving the poor more opportunity to grow and make what they need?

It's well established that human health and poverty are closely linked. Fixing human health is one of the steps to fixing poverty. Healthy people are more capable of working than those that are ill.

Re:GMO won't fix this

[Attila Dimedici]

Or, you can put Vitamin A in cheap, patented rice, which is what this story is about. Perhaps you should educate yourself. The non-profit organization that holds the patent for Golden Rice has a track record of developing solutions for third world malnutrition. They have been around since the 1960s and are well respected for the work they have already done to reduce malnutrition around the world. The GMO rice being discussed is available for the same price point as the rice which its target market (poor, malnourished farmers in the Philippines and other Asian countries) currently pay for the rice they grow.

Re:GMO won't fix this

[hibiki_r]

It's more than that: Insufficient infant nutrition is highly correlated with low IQ. Just look at the numbers for children IQ in places full of poverty. Much could be done for that place if, by better nutrition, the average moved 10 points closer to that of the developed world.

Re:GMO won't fix this

[jbeaupre]

Avoiding blindness goes a long ways towards relieving poverty. Not having to support a blind family member goes a long ways towards relieving poverty.

And good news: golden rice isn't expensive because it can be propagated for free.

Re:GMO won't fix this

[mcgrew]

It's not to "fix" poverty, it's to alleviate suffering.

Unlicensed seeds?

[codeusirae]

What about all those poor farmers who can't save their own seeds unless they go back to Monsanto for a license?

Re:Unlicensed seeds?

[Joce640k]

Stop drinking the cool-aid...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice#Distribution

Re:Unlicensed seeds?

[N1AK]

Wel... Erm... They don't exist. So why not stop posting about things you clearly aren't informed about? Golden Rice has been offered for free to subsistence farmers without restriction and with the right to store and re-plant seed, the cut-off is a revenue of $10,000 which is a huge amount revenue for an small African farmer, especially after all the crop they will eat themselves.

Re:Unlicensed seeds?

[Attila Dimedici]

Maybe because Golden Rice has nothing to do with Monsanto? The patents on Golden Rice are owned by a non-profit organization that has a record of helping people in third world countries deal with malnutrition going back to the 1960s. The license for Golden Rice says that farmers who make less than $10,000 a year (the target market for this crop) don't have to pay anything for the seeds and are allowed to collect and reuse the seeds.
You are a perfect example of most people who oppose GMO crops, "Oooh, it is a GMO crop. It must have been developed by an evil corporation (Monsanto) in order to control the world and poison us."

Re:Unlicensed seeds?

[nitehawk214]

Ahh, another "GMO = Monsanto" idiot. Welcome to the discussion.

Balance

[MrL0G1C]

"Excessive vitamin A consumption can lead to nausea, irritability, anorexia (reduced appetite), vomiting, blurry vision, headaches, hair loss, muscle and abdominal pain and weakness, drowsiness, and altered mental status" - Wikipedia

Hey watch where you're putting that stuff, it's like salt, you need a certain amount but too much is equally harmful. And the difference between too little and too much is a lot closer than with other vitamins like Vitamin C.

Re:The obvious solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting anon to avoid removing mods

Syngenta != Monstano;
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology != Monsanto;
University of Freiburg != Monsanto;

In this case, even Monsanto (Potrykus has spearheaded an effort to have golden rice distributed for free to subsistence farmers. Free licenses for developing countries were granted quickly due to the positive publicity that golden rice received, particularly in Time magazine in July 2000. Golden rice was said to be the first recombinant DNA tech crop that was unarguably beneficial. Monsanto Company was one of the first companies to grant free licences.

The cutoff between humanitarian and commercial use was set at US$10,000. Therefore, as long as a farmer or subsequent user of golden rice genetics does not make more than $10,000 per year, no royalties need to be paid. In addition, farmers are permitted to keep and replant seed. [ Courtesy of Wikipedia]) != Monsanto;

STFU with your (and every other persons) rant about Monsanto in this thread. Not everyone is the devil incarnate Monsanto, not even Monsanto all the time.

File it under Dunning/Kruger

[TapeCutter]

Idiots who shop at Whole Foods would rather a child go blind due to vitamin deficiency rather than allow an evil GMO food to be used.

That simply is not true, most of those people would be unaware that vitamin A deficiency causes blindness and how widespread the problem is, so how they can possibly "prefer" it? If both sides go around accusing the other of being "evil" then nobody will be enlightened. Sure there's some unethical marketing involved in pushing "health foods" and it should be highlighted on sites such as this one by knowledgeable people, but really it's no worse than the industry standard since the same claim of "unethical marketing" can (and has) be made about fast food and soft-drink companies.

"Let them eat veggies" is no different to "let them eat cake" or "let them eat string cheese", the reason people say such idiotic things is due to plain ignorance, it's not stupidity, and it certainly does not imply they "prefer to see kids go blind". At most it implies the person has lead a "sheltered" life and have done a poor job of self-education on that particular subject.

At the end of the day I firmly believe the government has as much right to tell me what I put in my body as it does telling me what to put in my mind, ie: none. Having said that the government does have a strong role to play in ensuring public health, checking advertising claims and labelling, and promoting the most accurate health information science can provide. The reason I think we need those regulations (aside from preventing fraud) is because I recognise no single person is an expert on everything they eat, drink, inhale, or inject, they do not (and cannot) know the chemical makeup of everything they consume. In my experience most people consume what they do for two reasons, taste and/or inducing a state of altered consciousness.

Starvation, as seen in Africa and parts of Asia, is a completely different state of mind and is all about nutrition. Once you starve yourself beyond a few days, taste no longer matters and the hallucinations are free. In fact you can get the hallucinations in (normally) less than two days by simply not drinking and staying awake. Not that I recommend doing those things, it's just that when you get to my age (50+) it's almost a given that you will have experienced at least one (non drug induced) auditory or visual hallucination of some kind, in my experience the majority of those are induced by lack of sleep. Often combined with the dehydration of a hang over ;).

Re:The obvious solution

[Joce640k]

It's a cool thing, but some of us aren't playing games when it comes to our health.

Why would GMO affect your health? Do you have any idea what percentage of 'natural' plants are nasty, poisonous, cancer-inducing, etc.?

eg. Potatoes. When they turn green in sunlight it's because they're making a deadly poison to protect themselves. It can cause illness, birth defects and even death. There's no way a potato would get FDA approval if it was introduced in our diets today.

Tomatoes have it, too. You know potatoes and tomatoes are members of the nightshade family, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solanine

I hope you're totally paranoid about potatoes and ask to inspect them before cooking if you're in a restaurant. Peeling away the green skin doesn't remove it (the green is only chlorophyll, not the Solanine) and it's not affected by heat. You do, ask, right?

Oh, wait...people have been eating them for more than 100 years so it doesn't count.

Re:Yes, and you fail biology now.

[Joce640k]

Cross-bred plants can't be patented?

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111125/09052516897/coming-to-plates-europe-patented-vegetables-produced-conventional-breeding.shtml

Evolution did not happen through monoculture

[fonske]

Let's reduce the problem of dietary diversification to one problem of shortage of a precursor to vitamin A and the industry is winning the GMO debate already.
Moreover this debate takes monoculture for granted.
A good example of problems with monocultures is a crossover of Phytophtora infestans (blight) with Mexican Phytophtora since the 80's, wreaking havoc on (cloned) monocultures of potatoes.

Re:Evolution did not happen through monoculture

[the plant doctor]

Having done my PhD on late blight, P. infestans and your "Mexican" Phythophthora are the same species. Not sure just what you're trying to say here? BTW, you misspelled Phytophthora, twice.

Re:Evolution did not happen through monoculture

[fonske]

With "Mexican Phytophthora" I meant the new genotypes (type A2) that permits sexual reproduction with the predominant A1 type (until '70's) in Europe.
With your argumentum ad verecundiam you should be aware that major crop losses are happening due to sexual reproduction of these new types with the A1 type that caused famines in 1840 in Ireland and Flanders.
OK, you only misspelled it once: phyto instead of phytho, coming from Greek phuton ("plant").
The other part was misspelled by me: phthora ("destruction, corruption").

And you haven't read the reports either.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the Monstato paper on how it was safe used the same strain of rat. Indeed, that strain of rat is ALWAYS used *precisely because* they're sensitive to the consequences. Means quicker response with fewer rats used.

Moreover, the number of rats used in the french trial was higher and the trial lasted longer than the Monstato trial "proving" it was safe.

You DO know that cancer takes time to become visible, right?

Articles are being removed because Monstato will remove any and all funding for a journal carrying something that damages the GMO jihad. And other biotech and agribusiness companies are doing the same.

There's trillions to be made here.

Re:And you haven't read the reports either.

[Darinbob]

You mean Monsanto I think.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[somersault]

Nobody's trying to make money from people's hunger. That would be evil! These guys are trying to make money from people's blindness. Big difference.

Tongue out of cheek.. everyone is "making money from people's hunger", or lack of clothing, or lack of computers, etc. Stop trying to make it sound wrong. Researchers need to eat too.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[somersault]

We were only able to develop Golden Rice because the technology was patented. Thus it was publicly accessible for research. Without patents, the technology would have been secret.

They were granted free use of those patents because of the humanitarian usage. And I expect they'll do the same with the final patent on Golden Rice itself. This guy is looking to help the world, not make money. Read the interview, it's quite interesting.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[Charliemopps]

Actually no, they've licensed it for free. As long as your not growing it on a commercial scale you can use it for free. Basically they saw this as a PR opportunity so they helped develop and license it on their own dime.

PROvitamin A!

[Anonymous Coward]

Rice contains - as usual for plants - only the provitamin A, which will be converted into retinol (VitA) depending on demand.
So it is perfectly safe. The threat of overdosing only occurs when you eat animal-based food (i.e. liver).

Re:PROvitamin A!

[HornWumpus]

The liver is the bodies 'oil filter'. Eating it can't be a good idea. Even if it didn't taste awful.

How did that work out?

[raymorris]

How did it work out when the Irish tried that? The key word is "survived". The Irish died relying on the potato.

Re:How did that work out?

[hawkinspeter]

The population fell by 20-25%, so there were significant survivors.

Re:How did that work out?

[hawkinspeter]

What? Firstly, I don't condone killing 20-25% of anyone (my family or not) and I don't believe my post stated that I was okay with it.

Secondly, I most definitely am not a christian - I'm an atheist. I also don't play the lottery.

Thirdly, I'm English so you may think that I had a part in causing the Irish Potato Famine, but that was way before my time - I just happened to be born on the same lump of land.

Baseless speculation is all you have.

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that GM is created out of almost complete ignorance of the consequences does not make it safe.

Here's something you morons will never understand: GMO's are Uber Invasives.

If, for example, a new type of fish were to be moved to a location by natural random cause, it would have to compete from a minority position. But when it's brought in by the truckload "for a reason" by humans, they no longer have to compete from a minority position.

So a transspecies gene transfer in plants that gives it insect genes from natural processes via viral transfer will have ONE of that species and competes against an entire continent of other species competing in the same sphere.

A GMO organism will be sowed on hundreds of square miles of land in a job lot. No competing needed.

To someone whose brain does not automatically turn off when "green" is said, the consequence of this difference is obvious.

you ate them fried with cinnamon, didn't you

[raymorris]

If you fry them in margarine and cover them with cinnamon they are disgusting. If you mash them with white sugar, butter, and vanilla, stir in beaten eggs and bake, they are extremely delicious.

Re:you ate them fried with cinnamon, didn't you

[rycamor]

Sweet potato "fries" (actually baked) are really tasty too. Just slice like steak fries, brush on some melted butter, olive oil or coconut oil, sprinkle a little salt (celtic sea salt is really good here), and bake for a half hour at 350 or whatever works for you. Crunchy salty-sweet. Almost like junk food, but without the transfats, preservatives and insect parts at acceptable levels.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[Ash Vince]

We were only able to develop Golden Rice because the technology was patented. Thus it was publicly accessible for research. Without patents, the technology would have been secret.

They were granted free use of those patents because of the humanitarian usage. And I expect they'll do the same with the final patent on Golden Rice itself. This guy is looking to help the world, not make money. Read the interview, it's quite interesting.

I think he is probably being a little naive though.

The company who owned the patents in question has probably just done this as a one off with the aim of winning support for genetically modified food. Personally I have no problem with GM food and think this golden rice is a wonderful idea. The problem is that most companies involved in GM research in food are not trying to find a way to solve vitamin A deficiency, they are trying to find a way to make as much money as possible.

I am all for GM being used to solve world hunger problems, I am totally against it being used for purely financial gain. This is especially a worry when you look at how many of these companies have behaved in the past. i don't they have suddenly become nice people, I think they realise they need to win a PR battle so are trying to play nice.

If they really wanted to do the right thing then instead of this "humanitarian usage" clause for farmers making less than $10K they would have just given the patents over into the public domain.

If this sort of research was done solely by academics in universities and the results always made public and free for anyone to use then I would be all for it. I would even be happy to eat the stuff as I am pretty open minded when it comes to grub. I fully expect to be eating vat grown meat at some point in my life.

Re:Or you could help those folks diversify

[Yosho]

Surely it's at least as easy to help folks without vitamin A grow spinach, kale, carrots, sweet potatoes, etc as it is to have them grow a different variety of rice.

How are you going to terraform the land so that any of those crops can grow in the kind of environment they're growing rice in?

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[cayenne8]

Personally I have no problem with GM food and think this golden rice is a wonderful idea.

I think, at least in the 1st world countries, the US in particular....if they would just allow/mandate the labeling of GMO vs natural foods it would solve a lot of the uproar. Why not give the consumer this information?

I mean, hell, we have other labeling laws, we have to label seafood with country of origin (I like this one a lot), pretty soon, they're going to have one tracking beef.

Why not GMO? If the producers have no fear of GMO foods, what wrong with letting the consumer choose better what they want to consume?

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[morgauxo]

Why, so Monsanto can patent it? That's not helpful.

Labeling is my main GMO peeve

[hort_wort]

I just want the companies to be honest about what's in the food. I may well ~choose~ to eat it given the option.

Someone said that having a tomato plant with some tuna fish genes injected into it would be no worse than just eating a tomato with some tuna fish. Fine. Great. How does that work for a vegetarian? There's a moral issue. What happens if the person is horribly allergic to tuna fish? Now there's a health issue too.

I don't a company has a right to just make that decision for someone. I'm not so happy about forced water fluoridation or iodized salt either, but at least those things are usually labeled.

Re:Labeling is my main GMO peeve

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

The problem is that most people don't realize there is no food that takes a plant and injects tuna genes into it. FDA and other governments expressly forbid the production of such crops. Scientists might be doing R&D in the labs, but there is no Tomato/Fish hybrid on your table or in the grocery store.

So instead of people educating themselves over the reality and facts of GMO, they would rather argue and debate about nonsense.

Also what is ignorant is the idea that taking a single gene out of Tuna and putting it into a Tomato makes the Tomato an animal and thus inedible by vegetarians, or make the Tomato inedible by those allergic to tuna fish. There is a gross misunderstanding about the nature of genetic manipulation if people think along those lines. Even if they find some benefit to taking animal genes and putting it into a plant, say to increase Omega 3 in a tomato, people would again debate about nonsense FUD if it even would be possible.

You are worried that because someone took one species of tomato and injected a gene from another species of tomato to make the tomato sweeter or more resistant to disease should be expressly labeled as GMO so that people can choose to not consume it out of ignorance. Yet if someone, say, cross pollinated two species of tomatoes to make a smaller sweeter tomato it does not require any labeling or moral angst? There is simply no food on the market, farmer's stand, or in your backyard garden, that has not had some form of human intervention.

I agree, no company has a right to make you eat a tomato with fish genes in it, because the government does not allow that.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[morgauxo]

"If they really wanted to do the right thing then instead of this "humanitarian usage" clause for farmers making less than $10K they would have just given the patents over into the public domain."

Why?

I'm sure the 'under $10k limit should cover poor people in third world countries just fine. Where else do you find blindness from vitamin A deficiency?

Who cares? You do.

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

500,000 a year. Each year's delay is 500,000 more blind children.

I've been saying this for years -- organizations like the FDA cause a lot more harm than good because delaying good drugs hurts a lot more than forbidding bad drugs helps.

Bad drugs that make it to market get found out bad soon enough and are pulled. But one good drug that saves, say, 10% of heart or cancer patient, boom, a million, boom, a million right there. No bad drug will ever harm that many before it is stopped. Almost certainly one incident like that, and we have had many, outweighs all the FDA's decades put together.

Nobody runs these numbers. They point to bad cases. They never point to millions who die needlessly because most drugs are delayed 5-10 years. With AIDS drugs they had to shame government into inventing "fast track", with the supposedly obvious logic that these people were going to die anyway.

I will say it straight out: far from improving the situation, FDA-type organizations kill mmagnitudes more than they save. It's just not obvious since someone who dies from a bad drug (a few) are good news fodder, but millions each year from disease are normal, un-newsworthy wretches.

better idea

[slashmydots]

Instead of more money in Monsanto's pocket for no reason, let's take a trip to Walgreen. Oh look! Pounds of vitamin A. How about we ship that over to these countries instead of experimental, patented, money-making machines. Monsanto might as well be selling them cocaine.

Re:better idea

[Reziac]

So, don't help them grow their own vit.A, but provide it as a 'fix' off the Walgreen shelf? How is that not creating a dependency?

Further, do you think that vit.A on the Walgreen shelves got there for free? Not hardly, and very likely the processes for manufacturing it are encumbered by their own patents, not only for materials production but also the tools involved.

This is where the Idiot Elite will step up

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

Start pounding their fists and say "no! no! no!" to anything GMO related.

Not because of any real scientific evidence but because "social news" has told them that GMO is bad, period. The Idiot Elite cannot form their own opinion on anything only regurgitate and corrupt a single myopic one.

In the meantime GMO has saved billions of lives by provided food to areas of the world that could not otherwise sustain crops or increasing the yield of crops to make food affordable and to allow farmers to make some kind of profit rather than always relying on government subsidies to produce a crop where half of it goes to rot.

I am not saying that some care and concern should be made over how GMO is used, certainly I have no respect for Monsanto trying to monopolize food crops by adding suicide genes so that farmers are forced to buy seed every season, but this is not the reason to dismiss GMO as a whole. Finding one negative and then striving to shut down an industry is what the Idiot Elite excels at.

Humans have been manipulating crop genes for thousands of years. While we do it in the lab these days, taking two plants and cross pollinating them to produce another species has been going on for thousands of years, all in an effort to make food more efficient and effective and produce a better product. The Idiot Elite can easily understand the idea of shaking pollen from one plant on another, they can't understand the concept of taking individual genes out of one plant and combining them with another under a microscope to achieve the same results. Therefore this must be protested simply out of ignorance. There is no such thing as a non-GMO organic food item that has not resulted from thousands of years of human intervention.

I mean those fluffy passive stuffed animals that people call their pet 'doodles these days is a result of thousands of years of human fuckery, there is nothing natural about a Schnickerdoodle or whatever. But you don't have the Idiot Elite rising up and calling them Hellhounds (except maybe pitbulls).

One day soon, the Idiot Elite will grab their pitchforks and burn down the institutions of science claiming they are using witchery when in reality they are trying to cure disease, solve world hunger, and find a solution to the energy and environmental crises.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[the eric conspiracy]

So what if it's patented? Even if the company holding the patents refused to license it, the patents will expire in 20 years.

Do you think that the world will have solved to problem of poverty in 20 years? If so you are incredibly naive. In fact current demographics plus global warming pretty much guaranty the problem will be much worse in 20 years.

People here complaining about the fact this invention are absolute IDIOTS. This is an invention that changes things for all time. Not just the term of a patent.

Re:The Lifemother has the last laugh

[Agent0013]

It's actually the caucasians that have the HIV resistance. 1 out of 10 have one gene mutation making it more difficult to contract HIV and 1 out of 100 have both genes mutated making them immune to HIV.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[dbIII]

The company who owned the patents in question has probably just done this as a one off with the aim of winning support for genetically modified food.

So? I don't see that as a bad aim. Each should be on their own merits instead of getting a frankenstein label. The GM fear is driving us towards vunerable monocultures so is probably worse than whatever the anti-GM people want to prevent. Anti-GM killed such promising things as growing long lasting vaccines that can be administered orally in bananas. No needles, not even refridgeration required, and it was killed off not long before human trails were due to start. If a GM company want to fight luddites with some PR from free food I don't see anything wrong with that. We let coca-cola get PR so why not these guys with far more noble aims?

Barbarians versus Farmers problem

[dbIII]

There may be plenty of reasons why they are not already growing sweet potatoes but instead something that grows well at their farm. Since sweet potatoes die if they don't have good drainage it's pretty well the opposite of a rice paddy - but of course many rice paddies are artificially flooded so may be able to be converted so that argument is not universal.
It's reminding me of the "let's just give everyone ten acres" anecdote, where the new barbarian overlord that only knows about fighting manages to arbitrarily reward or screw over people because he has no clue that not all bits of farmland are equal or good for every purpose.

Re:Barbarians versus Farmers problem

[hawkinspeter]

Yes, you're right. My point was that the choice isn't between "grow this rice" and "let them die", but that there are plenty of other ways to go about treating the problem. I since read a bit more about Golden Rice and it does look to be a good solution for culture that use rice as a staple. Another great solution is to encourage a wide diversity of food sources rather than settling on a staple crop for the majority of nutrients.

Re:Barbarians versus Farmers problem

[Deluvianvortex]

Dude. Listen to yourself. "Encourage a wide diversity of food sources". To the poor? The POOR. You seem to be missing that valuable piece of information. These people are not like you and me. They exist at a poverty level you have never laid eyes upon, unless you've done humanitarian work overseas. Then maybe you do understand and I'm sorry for being frank. But you sound like some sort of couch-surfing ignorant american who thinks a poor person is someone who only has a 30" TV and not the 60" model. These people don't get 'choice' in the food sources. They buy what they can afford, which isn't much, and usually ends up being rice because you can buy enough of that to feed your family on the ten cents a day you manage to make selling trash you picked out of the landfill you live in. I wish I was kidding about that, too. That's why this is such a breakthrough. Why this is necessary. I wish it was as easy as encouraging them to eat more cucumbers or whatever but it's not. You have to provide them with a food source that contains what they need but is also cheaper or as cheap as existing staple foods. I think we can all agree 'organic' food is not cheaper. Your plan may be ideal, but it is not a viable option.

Re:Barbarians versus Farmers problem

[hawkinspeter]

Historically, poor people did have a wide variety of food sources as different foods would be available at different times of the year. If you're scavenging for food rather than just buying the cheapest food available, then you're more likely to get a variety of foodstuffs.

By the way, don't ever call me american. I'm English and not proud of it, but I'm not american and especially not from the US.

Re:Barbarians versus Farmers problem

[hawkinspeter]

Oops - forgot to include this link which may be of interest http://www.feeding5k.org/gleaning.php/

Re:Barbarians versus Farmers problem

[Deluvianvortex]

Yeah because when you have 6 kids, 3 under the age of 2, you can totally wander around the countryside looking for food.

Re:Barbarians versus Farmers problem

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Yeah because when you have 6 kids, 3 under the age of 2...

...you should either divorce your second wife and let her marry someone else, or stop having twins, or go visit a large medical institution and have them generously pay for your life expenses while they research how is it possible for your wife to regularly have one baby every eight months and what are the medical implications of this novel discovery.

Re:Barbarians versus Farmers problem

[ChrisMaple]

You just failed math. One newborn. One aged 1 year. One aged one year, 11 months, 29 days.

Re:Barbarians versus Farmers problem

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Ugh. So I did indeed! Talk about off-by-one errors... Luckily, this condition doesn't last longer than...what, four months at most?

But nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition

[RogueWarrior65]

Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical devotion to radical environmentalism, and nice green uniforms.

Evolution

[root_42]

I wonder if humans would evolve further, maybe producing their own beta carotene or Vitamin A? I do not condone the suffering of millions of people, but I wonder if giving our bodies everything in plenty is good in the long run (like generations).

Also, can't this deficiency be solved with existing crops and/or vegetables? The rice looks nice, though...

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[Dishevel]

Anyone who wants to can label their food "Non-GMO". People can buy what they want.

Re:Correct. They can't be patented.

[HornWumpus]

You don't have to patent F1 hybrids you moron. They don't breed true. You just keep both parent strains locked up and secret on your seed farm and you own it.

Farmers wouldn't pay for the seed unless it outproduced heirloom strains by more then the cost.

Re:The obvious solution

[HornWumpus]

When most of your post is setting up a strawman, just mash the 'Cancel' link rather then posting.

What do you think of the posts that misrepresent your position then shoot that down? Waste of time? There you go.

Why GMO, why not fortify?

[istartedi]

In parts of the USA there used to be a problem with Pellagra. AFAIK the solution to problems like this is to fortify common staples with vitamins. That's what the "enriched" in packaged rice sold here is. Instead of modifying the very source of the food, why not fortify? As an added bonus, you can probably process all varieties with added vitamins. That means you can experiment with diverse crops and still get proper nutrition.

Fortification works so well we don't even think about it. When was the last time you met anybody with a goiter? All our salt is iodized. That's why. It prevents goiter.

Fortification can also be controversial (see, flouridated water), but as long as it's labeled I don't have a problem with it.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[macraig]

There's an ethical difference between "making money" in exchange for true equal value and concentrating wealth in your direction by giving people only perceived value. Which one are you doing?

Re:Natural Selection anyone ???

[freeschwag]

whoops posted anon by accident, referencing the sig that isn't there....Epic fail self...Epic fail....

Drugs from plants and fungi

[tepples]

The exceptions being cannabis, opium, coca, peyote, shrooms, ergot, and a bunch of other things that American propaganda calls "eeevul drugz".

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[ShanghaiBill]

So why hasn't anyone done it yet? Or am I just, er, blind?

You are either blind or oblivious. Plenty of products in my local Wal-Mart grocery store say "No GMO" on the packaging. Plenty more say "Organic" which at least in the USA legally implies "Non-GMO".

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[dgatwood]

The potential for the vaccine-producing banana cross-pollen... oh, wait... bananas aren't growable from seed. Never mind. In pretty much any other plant, that would be a bad idea because you wouldn't want to get a dose of a vaccine every time you ate some random piece of food. But in bananas, because of the need to grow them from cultivars, that might actually not be too harmful a GM modification. Carry on.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[Ash Vince]

The company who owned the patents in question has probably just done this as a one off with the aim of winning support for genetically modified food.

So? I don't see that as a bad aim. Each should be on their own merits instead of getting a frankenstein label. The GM fear is driving us towards vunerable monocultures so is probably worse than whatever the anti-GM people want to prevent. Anti-GM killed such promising things as growing long lasting vaccines that can be administered orally in bananas. No needles, not even refridgeration required, and it was killed off not long before human trails were due to start. If a GM company want to fight luddites with some PR from free food I don't see anything wrong with that. We let coca-cola get PR so why not these guys with far more noble aims?

I only have a problem with it because if it works it will be the only time it happens as the public will have been won over. The next person with lofty aims who tries to do the same thing as this guy has done with Golden Rice will find out that the company no longer needs to win the public over so they will be told to pay market rates for the use of the patents or sod off and let the children die of vitamin A deficiency.

If companies want to be able to get patents on genetically modifying bits of the food chain then they should start by lobbying government to change patent law such that the humanitarian non profit licence covering these patents applies to all patents on modified food going forward as well. Letting them just do it as a one off is too short term when the gains these companies stand to make from these patents in future are so huge.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[ShanghaiBill]

There's an ethical difference between "making money" in exchange for true equal value and concentrating wealth in your direction by giving people only perceived value. Which one are you doing?

You are stating the "zero sum fallacy". In reality, most transactions result in a benefit for both parties, so wealth is being created as well as transferred. The root of the fallacy is your assumption that something has "equal value" to both parties.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[cayenne8]

The "problem" is the ignorant-and-proud-of-it public irrationally deciding to avoid GMO food.

Well, regardless of their reason (reasoned or not) why would not giving the masses the information to make their choices be a bad thing?

It should matter the reason someone wants or want to avoid GMO foods, but give the info and the consumer will decide with their pocket book.

Re:The obvious solution

[kruach aum]

Mod parent up. That's a really interesting fact I never knew.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[cayenne8]

Anyone who wants to can label their food "Non-GMO". People can buy what they want.

Well, the problem is that it is not mandated.

Why should it not be mandated, just like they have to have ingredient labels on canned foods?

And should the impetus be on those that manipulate 'normal' foods and label them as being altered?

The norm should be un-modified foods, and those that splice in genes from other species (often unrelated to the food source in question) should be required to label their foods as being such or containing GMO ingredients.

The dangers that are being ignored

[whitroth]

Everyone's ignoring the fact that vitamin A, like D, are fat-soluble, not water soluble, and so if a large portion of the food intake was this vitamin A rice, there are medical consequences of too *much* of the vitamin.

http://www.niams.nih.gov/Health_Info/Bone/Bone_Health/Nutrition/vitamin_a.asp

            mark

Re:The dangers that are being ignored

[the eric conspiracy]

Crikey are people really this effing ignorant? READ THE ARTICLE. The rice supplies a precursor that the body converts to Vitamin A.

DUH
DUH
DUH

For Christ's sake

[WillyWanker]

Give your kid a goddamn carrot. Problem solved. Nooo, let's instead genetically modify rice to contain a vitamin already present in over a dozen common foods. What could possibly go wrong when we manipulate the genetic code of our food and stuff our kids with it?

Re:For Christ's sake

[the eric conspiracy]

These people don't have carrots.

Re:For Christ's sake

[WillyWanker]

Then give them seeds and teach them how to grow them. Do they have dirt? Water? Sunlight?

Re:For Christ's sake

[smoothnorman]

They have very little water. They have a sack of rice donated to them. Why do you think there's even a problem if it's just a matter of "go grow carrots!"? You're not suggesting that these malnourished people are stupid, are you?

Re:For Christ's sake

[WillyWanker]

How do they cook rice without water?

I'm not suggesting they're stupid (uneducated perhaps, but not stupid). I'm suggesting the idea of giving them rice that's genetically modified to be rich in vitamin A is stupid, because there are plenty of fruits and vegetables that can be grown that naturally contain vitamin A (along with a full range of other beneficial nutrients not found in GMO golden rice), and that perhaps it would be a more wise and prosperous investment having them grow their own foods instead of relying upon handouts from us. Oh wait, but how will we promote ourselves and profit from it that way???

But com'n, the reality is that these are poor starving kids in Africa, so fuck it, let's give them whatever crap we can come up with and turn a few bucks while we're at it. I mean, it's not like anyone really cares about these people anyway, amirite? One Israeli or Palestinian dies and everyone screams bloody murder. Millions of African children die every year and no gives a shit. We blather on and on about the genocide in Syria, but no one has ever given a fuck about the genocide in Africa that's been going on for the better part of a decade. Oh yeah, that's right, no oil or Jews in those parts of Africa.

So let's just stop pretending this all about doing something good for people in need. Cause that ghost ship sailed a LONG time ago.

This is not Monsanto

[pandymen]

No one is telling these people they can't save their seeds from these crops. GMO does not necessarily mean that it is "closed source" and owned by the company that made it. That is just how big agriculture businesses like Monsanto operate. There is nothing indicating that will occur in this case.

GMO just has a stigma in that some people believe that they have hidden health side effects. The Monsanto lawsuits against farmers is another thing entirely. There are plenty of GMO crops out there besides the "Roundup Ready" seeds you are referring to.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[aardvarkjoe]

Why should it not be mandated, just like they have to have ingredient labels on canned foods?

Why should it be mandated? It's not the government's business, unless there is an actual, scientifically-documented health risk involved. If you don't like genetically-modified food, it's your responsibility to choose products to avoid it. Plenty of manufacturers of food are helping you to do so by doing their own labeling.

This comes down to consumer preferences, and as such is not an appropriate target for government regulation. The default position should be to reject government regulation unless you can show that such regulation is actually beneficial to society.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[bws111]

Be sure to leave plenty of space on the label so we can mandate all the other things that every loony with an agenda thinks should be mandated. Warning: Tref! Warning: Non-organic! Warning: Hydroponically grown! Warning: Picked by Mexicans! Warning: Not fair-trade certified!

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[jbengt]

That is not always true - at least for some products in some states the lobbyists have had laws passed so that you can't label GMO or non-GMO. And for corn used in prepared foods, it's impossible to get anything that is demonstrably without round-up ready corn in it

Golden Rice has nothing to do with Monsanto?

[codeusirae]

'Maybe because Golden Rice has nothing to do with Monsanto?`

"Monsanto have now agreed to provide royalty-free licenses for its technologies to help fast-track the further development and distribution of the rice." ref

And these farmers can never go into the seed selling business - into perpetuity ...

Re:Golden Rice has nothing to do with Monsanto?

[Attila Dimedici]

Monsanto does not have any patents on Golden Rice. They do, however, have patents on some of the techniques used to develop Golden Rice. Monsanto has now reached an agreement with the organizations holding the patents directly on Golden Rice to allow those organizations to distribute Golden Rice for free to subsistence farmers. This agreement was brokered through a deal which Monsanto reached with the company which has the rights to sell Golden Rice in developed countries (such as the U.S., France, and Germany).
So, even though my statement was slightly incorrect, no one needs to go to Monsanto to get more seeds, EVER.

Re:Golden Rice has nothing to do with Monsanto?

[codeusirae]

Monsanto

Re:Golden Rice has nothing to do with Monsanto?

[Attila Dimedici]

I missed one thing you said that is definitively not true. Patents only last for a limited length of time, which means that these farmers will only be limited from going into the seed selling business until the patents expire, at the latest. I do not know how the licensing will be given to the farmers, so it is possible that they will not face that restriction (although improbable).

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[XcepticZP]

Lol, dude... You just got "F'd in the A", as South Park would put it.

Re:The obvious solution

[MozeeToby]

The risks from green potatoes are no more significant than the risks associated with basically any meat product. The vast majority of the toxin is kept in the skin, so peeling does in fact eliminate most of the toxin. Boiling and deep frying, while not destroying the toxin, cause it to leach out into the cooking fluid, again greatly reducing content. And finally, the toxins are extremely bitter, it's unlikely you're going to keep eating food that tastes disgusting, which is why almost all cases of real poisoning happen when there's simply no other food to eat.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[estitabarnak]

Anyone who wants to can label their food "Non-GMO". People can buy what they want.

That's just the problem: Anyone who wants to can label their food "Natural" or "Non-GMO." But it's not really regulated. Naked Juice, which has a label plastered with non-GMO claims finally had it catch up to them with a class action lawsuit about it. But that took people getting together to sue; it's not the government penalizing companies.

The FDA doesn't have a set of rules for the "All Natural" label, so it doesn't mean anything. The "Organic" label, on the other hand, is regulated. Most folks don't seem to recognize the difference.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[sl149q]

My rule of thumb in the grocery store is never, ever, buy organic. And if I ever see non-GMO I'll be sure to NOT put that in the cart as well.

In both cases the sellers are simply trying to capitalize on people's fears to sell a product that has no inherent additional qualities. And in many cases is simply inferior and / or bad for the environment (growing organic and / or non-GME food takes more land, so more habitat destruction.)

GMO is just a tool...

[smoothnorman]

...it's what you do with that tool that decides if the result is a positive or negative thing. The knee-jerk fear of (and efforts to eliminate/label/vilify) all GMO is generally part of a sad, and often justified, anti-government, anti-big-business, and lately, (unjustified) anti-science, social psychology. GMO is typically not distinguishable from all the cross-breeding done by dog-breeders, rose fanciers, and agriculture for hundreds of years. It's only when combined with other nasty procedures, for instance being coupled with the use of herbicides ("RoundUp"), that it becomes the screw-driver in the hand of a villain.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[Dishevel]

That is pretty much what they want. As long as they agree with the individual warning.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[Dishevel]

And for corn used in prepared foods, it's impossible to get anything that is demonstrably without round-up ready corn in it

Sure you can. Single source farm that is certified. More expensive and takes effort but it can be done. As an expensive feel good product it would be profitable as well.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[Dishevel]

Well lets just make sure that we regulate the profit out of everything for the stupid.

CCR5-Delta32

[Guppy]

By allowing HIV to spread, the Africans will evolve HIV resistance. In the mean time, the high mortality rates will prevent oversupply of labor, resulting in better wages and working conditions for African laborers.

It's actually the caucasians that have the HIV resistance. 1 out of 10 have one gene mutation making it more difficult to contract HIV and 1 out of 100 have both genes mutated making them immune to HIV.

That would be the famous CCR5-Delta32 mutation, which is present at a frequency of about 4-16% in populations of European decent. Assuming Wikipedia is correct, the frequency of CCR5-Delta32 homozygous individuals would thus be 0.16% to 2.56% assuming Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium.

However, there are also other non-CCR5 traits which confer varying degrees of HIV resistance.

The Germ of Laziness

[Guppy]

"Fix poverty". Which immediately leads to the question, *how* do you fix poverty?

Good question and history (as it so often does) provides us with some instructive examples; the war on Hookworm which took place (as related in books such as The Germ of Laziness).

In the early 20th century, Hookworm eradication was seen as a key part of anti-poverty initiatives aimed at the South and the Appalachians, due to the anemia and energy-sapping effects of heavy infestation that left its victims too fatigued to do much work. Combined with the public-health initiatives were large-scale development projects such as those part of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

While poverty still remains with us today, the combined development and public-health push was largely successful in eliminating the the most desperately impoverished pockets of 3rd-world-tier poverty that existed at that time, and has left a legacy of infrastructure which we still benefit from today.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[macraig]

Are you actually twelve or twenty-five and retarded? Grow up.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[XcepticZP]

I just love it when an arrogant statist get's schooled. How about you grow up, and leave the rest of us alone and out of your shitty little world view.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[macraig]

OF COURSE transactions result in some mutual benefit, and I didn't say otherwise; it's the proportion that matters. Neither did I state that both parties value both what they offer and receive equally; why would they? If one party values what he can offer as much or more than what he would receive, then no transaction would even take place if motives are purely selfish. Also, simply exchanging goods for money or a service does not de facto "create wealth". I was describing transactions where there is a knowing disproportion in value, where one party KNOWS the other is being disadvantaged and proceeds anyway. It happens all the time, especially at the corporate level. Corporations spend immense effort to misdirect, mislead, and miseducate for the singular purpose of creating disproportionate transactions that favor them.

its food

[nurb432]

Eat it and be happy there is food to eat. Without GMO we most likely would be hungry today.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[cayenne8]

Why should it be mandated? It's not the government's business, unless there is an actual, scientifically-documented health risk involved. If you don't like genetically-modified food, it's your responsibility to choose products to avoid it.

Not necessarily. I mean, we label ingredients now, and that isn't due to having"scientifically-documented health risk".

GMO foods are a special kind of 'ingredient' IMHO...and it is virtually impossible to know how pervasive they are in our foods without such labeling.

Ingredients lists as we currently have them, allow shoppers to make better informed decisions on what they want to ingest (cane sugar vs HFCS, or even salt levels for instance).

And frankly, some folks would like to maybe do a wait and see. There really hasn't been enough time and study yet to see what the full impacts of GMO on the human system or the environment are yet.

I just don't understand why people that are for GMO so much, would oppose simply labeling it as an ingredient or a process on a food.

The govt would only mandate it as an add-on to existing labeling laws. From there, the public can make their own informed choices.

What is more democratic than that? Why do you cheer for more 'obscurity' in how our foods are processed and made available to market?

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[cayenne8]

Be sure to leave plenty of space on the label so we can mandate all the other things that every loony with an agenda thinks should be mandated. Warning: Tref! Warning: Non-organic! Warning: Hydroponically grown! Warning: Picked by Mexicans! Warning: Not fair-trade certified!

Well, I think your examples are pretty trival compared to someone actually manipulating your food you consume into your body system genetically, vs who picked it.

Seriously, what's wrong with letting someone make and informed decision on veg. A (normal) vs veg A1 which has had some jellyfish gene spliced into its DNA?

I don't really care who picked it....but I do care to know as much about the product as I can before I put it down my throat and let my body (which has adapted to process different foods in different ways over the human evolution period) start to digest and process it.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[HornWumpus]

There is only perceived value. Things are worth what someone will pay for them.

If someone pays too much for something (e.g. an Apple product) they are supposed to learn from their mistakes. Nobody else's problem if they're too dense.

People who persistently buy stupid stuff are punished by their own stupidity. What are we going to do? Burn down all the Rent To Own stores because nobody with half a brain would ever patronize them?

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[aardvarkjoe]

Not necessarily. I mean, we label ingredients now, and that isn't due to having"scientifically-documented health risk".

There are plenty of scientifically-documented health reasons to require knowledge of ingredients. Allergies, for instance; also nutrition is related to ingredients and has an obvious impact on health. This doesn't apply for GMO foods.

I just don't understand why people that are for GMO so much, would oppose simply labeling it as an ingredient or a process on a food.

The govt would only mandate it as an add-on to existing labeling laws. From there, the public can make their own informed choices.

What is more democratic than that? Why do you cheer for more 'obscurity' in how our foods are processed and made available to market?

You are free to choose foods whose manufacturers advertise their non-GMO nature. Manufacturers already know that they can sell things to people like you by advertising it, and so they do. I don't have a problem with the information being available. I have a problem with government mandates and regulations when they aren't necessary.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[macraig]

We already regulate, restrict, or prohibit all sorts of unethical transactional behavior in this "capitalist" economy, so I find it curious that you would still advocate allowing deceitful behavior; your argument ignored the deceit of one party and chose to focus on the "stupidity" of the other. Way to blame the victim. I can guess how you judge women who are raped.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[bws111]

That's exactly the point. YOU have some fear of GMO foods, and think that justifies mandatory labelling. Well, OTHER people have concerns (kosher, organic, whatever) that, to them, are equally deserving of a label. What makes your fears any more valid than theirs?

Documented cases of GMOs causing problems?

[Theovon]

If I google this, I get a lot of noise. Are there any documented cases where a GMO food has caused identifiable harm? I see lots of claims about what MIGHT happen, complaints about people playing God, introduction of harmful allergens, etc. But I haven't heard of any verified cases.

I often ask food producers about corn products in their food. The real reason is that my wife has a corn allergy, and you just can't get away from the stuff. The FDA has no legal definition of corn as an allergen (in contrast to gluten, for instance). So in addition to asking the question, I point out that a lot of people avoid corn to avoid GMOs. I honestly don't care about them being GMOs, but food companies that make specialty products (like gluten free foods) are sensitive to customer perceptions, sensible or not. For instance, while it's great for celiac patients that there are certified gluten-free products, the fact is, many people eating gluten-free are doing it because they think it'll help them lose weight.

Re:The obvious solution

[ChromeAeonium]

Fun fact about that: through good old fashioned, non-controversial conventional breeding, a potato with toxic levels of solanine was produced. If genetic engineering did that, you'd never hear the end of it, yet strangely none of the anti-GMO organizations will put things in context by bringing up that topic (either that or they are simply ignorant of the both the science and the history of crop improvement, which is commonly the case).

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[ChrisMaple]

There is only perceived value

Leaving aside the deeper philosophical issue of the impossibility of perceiving that which doesn't exist, your statement is still false.

Perceived value (or more accurately, estimated value) is the motive for trade. But actual value exists, in a given context. Food is valuable for animal life. Cars are valuable for going places. Chairs have value for sitting. Clothes have value for keeping warm and hiding ugliness. Paint is valuable to protect wood.

Re:The problem with GMO is licensing

[ChromeAeonium]

I'd rather not have food that is engineered to produce compounds toxic to pests

This seems to be one of the big disconnects between most people and genetic engineering. Often anti-GE types try to make GE crops out to be scary by pointing out that some are engineered to express insecticidal toxins, but it really isn't if you know much about plant biology. All plants produce insecticidal compounds. They can't defend themselves by attacking pests like an animal can so they evolved chemical defenses. Even your non-GMO corn is going to contain insecticides like maysin and benzoxazinoids. Plants make poisons; this is just the way of things, and adding one more really is not something you should be inherently concerned about, especially considering that, for one thing, the insecticide inserted is very well understood, very specific in its mode of action, and is non-toxic to mammals. Additionally, it's preferable to pesticide sprays....bugs aren't just going to leave the crops along, you've got to control them somehow. Also, it probably reduces mycotoxin infection from fungi (less damage to the corn kernels means less fungal infection which means less mycotoxins). So, it's actually a pretty good thing, but those who scream about how 'they're putting pesticides right in the food!' strangely never want to give people the background context to the topic.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[ChrisMaple]

You are proposing labels on each ear of corn, each unbagged cherry, each apple in a pick-it-yourself grove. It is an unreasonable burden.

Ingredient labels exist because of pressure groups, not because of actual demonstrated need - foods with high and deadly alergenic potential like peanuts excepted.

Keeping track of the GM status of ingredients in a food processing plant would be a nightmare, replete with more government inspectors and lawsuits galore. There is no rational excuse for this silliness.

And democracy is not a virtue.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[ChrisMaple]

Foods picked by diseased workers have caused human deaths in the US. The same cannot be said of GM foods designed for human consumption.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[ChrisMaple]

Labeling is an additional expense. If the government mandates showing the GM status of foods, you are removing the possibility of the consumer to buy the least expensive food possible.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[ChrisMaple]

Patents don't last forever.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[dbIII]

That's what made it such an awesome project. The GM backlash about a decade ago killed it.

Re:The obvious solution

[Joce640k]

The risks from green potatoes are no more significant than the risks associated with basically any meat product.

Nobody's saying they are, but they're probably far greater than the risks from Golden Rice.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[cayenne8]

Labeling is an additional expense. If the government mandates showing the GM status of foods, you are removing the possibility of the consumer to buy the least expensive food possible.

What extra expense??

We already label food ingredients...this is just an added ingredient requirement, the cost of a fraction of a bit more ink maybe is going to tip the balance? Seriously?

Even with produce...everything already gets a sticker on it that I see in the store, just add GMO to that sticker if it is GMO...no added expense...

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[cayenne8]

That's exactly the point. YOU have some fear of GMO foods, and think that justifies mandatory labelling. Well, OTHER people have concerns (kosher, organic, whatever) that, to them, are equally deserving of a label. What makes your fears any more valid than theirs?

Bad examples....foods are already labeled kosher and organic.

Again, what are the fears of labeling food that has been genetically altered?

What is the fear of giving people information? I don't get it...

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[cayenne8]

Foods picked by diseased workers have caused human deaths in the US.

Don't most people wash their foods first?

The same cannot be said of GM foods designed for human consumption.

The long term effects of these food mutations, haven't yet had time to likely manifest themselves. We are currently seeing problems with peoples' health and all sorts of new allergies that haven't really yet been explained, but a lot of the problems do seem to coincide with the influx of changes in our food system in recent decades.

And so far, there isn't a LOT of in-depth scientific (independent of the companies producing the stuff) of GMO foods yet.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[Ash Vince]

Patents don't last forever.

Not technically. But companies generally try and file bullshit extensions to something they already created in such a way that they are in effect extending the life of a previous patent for very little added.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[bws111]

You were arguing for MANDATORY labelling of GMO foods. There is absolutely no law that states every food must be labelled with it's kosher/tref or organic/non-organic status. The kosher/organic labels are VOLUNTARILY put on by manufacturers who think that is a selling point for their product. Manufacturers can also indicate that their product is not GMO, if they think that is a selling point (they can not, however, do so in a manner that implies non-GMO is healthier or that there is something wrong with GMO, because there is no basis for either statement).

There are basically two reasons for opposing something in the absence of evidence: belief that it is morally wrong, and fear. None of the labelling laws we have, including ingredient lists, are because of those two reasons. A mandatory GMO label would be exactly because of those reasons. It is not the goverments job to make sure everyone and anyone caters to your fears and beliefs.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[HornWumpus]

Food is valuable for animal life

Unless its brussel sprouts. I'll pay you to take those.

There is only perceived value. Things are worth what someone will pay for them. Which is 'actual value', I can't figure out what your babbling about beyond that. Chairs have value for sitting? Find someone who doesn't already own enough chairs, they might have value to him/her.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[HornWumpus]

I'll count your vote as: 'Burn down the RTOs' then.

Grownups don't whine when they pay too much for something. They take their lesson and move on.

If someone wants to pay 10x retail to 'rent to own' who am I to stop them. Same as someone who spends $400/oz for fish eggs or $60+/750ml for Vodka (pure ethanol and water). Fools and their money were lucky to get together in the first place.

I suppose you think its rape when a guy lies to a women to get into her pants.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[cayenne8]

It is not the goverments job to make sure everyone and anyone caters to your fears and beliefs.

I don't have really any fears about it, but given the choice to know if my food was natural or had had foreign genes spliced into it, I'd prefer to eat the more 'natural' ones.

And...what would you say, if down the road about 20-30 years, they do find that GMO foods had a negative effect on humans?

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[bws111]

Haha! Good one!

There really hasn't been enough time and study yet to see what the full impacts of GMO on the human system or the environment are yet.

... compared to someone actually manipulating your food you consume into your body system genetically

The long term effects of these food mutations, haven't yet had time to likely manifest themselves. We are currently seeing problems with peoples' health and all sorts of new allergies that haven't really yet been explained, but a lot of the problems do seem to coincide with the influx of changes in our food system in recent decades.

And so far, there isn't a LOT of in-depth scientific (independent of the companies producing the stuff) of GMO foods yet.

...what would you say, if down the road about 20-30 years, they do find that GMO foods had a negative effect on humans?

Every one of those statements is an expression of fear (namely fear of possible hidden problems), and nothing else.

Further, I will go so far as to say it will never be shown that GM poses a health risk to humans. There may be problems with specific GM foods, but it is kind of silly to think that just doing GM is going to cause a problem.

Yes, of course it is possible that in 20 or 30 years someone will find out that a certain GM food causes health problems. Guess what - someone could find out that a certain non-GM food causes health problems too! Should every food out there carry some sort of 'we don't really know the actual long term effects of this specific food' warning?

On the other hand, what if someone in 20 or 30 years finds out that eating a certain GM food actually improves health? Then all the people who were scared off by your 'danger - unknown consequences of GMO' labels will be less healthy than had they not had the labels that scared them off due to no specific danger at all.

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[doom]

if they would just allow/mandate the labeling of GMO vs natural foods it would solve a lot of the uproar. Why not give the consumer this information?

You don't mean "allow", it's already allowed. You want it mandated. Say what you mean.

The reasons why not would be additional cost for no benefit, because they wouldn't be allowed to sell the stuff at all if it were actually harmful.

What you're actually after is an opportunity for irrational scare-mongering, pushing what amounts to a mother nature knows best religion-- because if there were actually data that this stuff was bad for you that would be what the argument is about, right?

Myself I think it would be interesting if GMO labeling passed, because I suspect it might go the other way... people would find out that everything they've been eating is GMO, and might learn to shrug it off.

But you know, the voters turned down the opportunity to label GMO food. Got that? In CA it was put up for a vote, and it got voted down. The will of the people, you know? It sucks and all, but that's why you're not allowed to mandate whatever you feel like. Democracy and all.

At home in the U.S.

[CHIT2ME]

Here in the U.S. we are eating cloned beef (very tasty cloned beef I might add!), and the wack jobs are criticizing a product like golden rice and it's potential benefits. Get a life people! Nobody is going to force golden rice down your throats, but for those who need it, it could be a Godsend!!!

Re:And never pushed: not profitable.

[macraig]

Nope, you're not in the least bit arrogant, dogmatic, and hypocritical.

Grow up.