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US House Committee Approves Anti-GMO Labeling Law
An anonymous reader writes: The House Agriculture Committee approved a measure banning mandatory GMO labeling as well as local efforts to regulate genetically engineered crops. The decision is a major victory for U.S. food companies and other opponents of labeling genetically modified foods. "This... legislation will ensure that Americans have accurate, consistent information about their food rather than a 50 state patchwork of labeling laws that will only prove costly and confusing for consumers, farmers and food manufacturers," said Pamela Bailey, CEO of the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), said in a statement.
..your friends at Monsanto Corporation.
Our Business Is Life Itself.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
It is like creating a law to hinder cars because horses are closer to nature. There will be soon GMO babies. Should we put a stamp on them too?
other opponents of labeling genetically modified foods
Now who the hell considers themselves an opponent of labeling GMO foods unless they have a financial stake in it? Is there anyone walking down the street who has nothing to do with the food industry and considers themselves an opponent of labeling GMO foods?
This... legislation will ensure that Americans have accurate, consistent information about their food
So a law that requires that GMO foods are labeled as GMO foods would be a barrier to accurate, consistent information? Someone wrote that quote without even bothering to check what the issue was, didn't they?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
I think you mean "this legislation will ensure that Americans have no way of knowing they're being sold GMO food."
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Labeling laws like this convey no real information to the consumer. They just add a word to the food item that many people interpret as frightening, a word that has literally zero impact on the safety or sustainability of the food item. This is definitely a win for people everywhere in the US.
Exactly. GMO labeling laws are analogous to labeling table salt as "NOTICE: HAS CHEMICALS!".
This is right up there with Cheneys "working group" and the "Halliburton Clause" making the fluids used for fracking "proprietary" and not beholden to the Clean Water act.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
I think we should have mandatory labeling on anything that contains DNA, just to be safe.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Yeah, that one got me too. By banning rules requiring "X" information be posted, we're ensuring that people stay more informed.
WTF.
"Genetically modified", all food is genetically modified. Humans have domesticated, modified by selection, hybridation and other means, all the food since the beginnings of agriculture. Labelling this or that is therefore simply a lie, because all should be labelled, then.
At least now we know who's in their pocket...
and they'll bring back the noose for it.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
The bill will probably not make it through the Senate.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Seriously, EVERYTHING YOU EAT is GMO.
The vast majority was done by selective breeding and grafting, a very small amount by directly fiddling with the genes.
There is not a single crop that hasn't been modified by humans in some way.
There is a cost associated with labelling. I'm not interested in paying more for my groceries due to anti-GMO fear mongering.
GMO-free providers can choose to label their food (as some do now). This lets consumers purchase GMO-free foods if they place a greater value on those and keeps the cost of doing so on the product they value more.
Putin just states that GMOs will be forbidden in Russia. This is not even a joke:
http://sustainablepulse.com/20...
We will now be witness to a very large controlled experiment.
I have all ready arranged an explanation for you guys when Russia shows lower rates of disease X and scientists proclaim the "Russia Paradox":
1. There is better disease reporting in the west.
2. Russian statistics are doctored by corrupt officials.
3. Moderate vodka consumption has health benefits.
The big thing you have to remember about this is that traits are not one-to-one with genes. One gene can affect many different traits and one trait can be affected by many different genes. When you genetically engineer an organism, you run the risk of creating or altering traits you never intended. This can and has lead to problems like feed corn that's toxic to the cattle and pigs it was intended for.
Anytime you are not allowed to know what is in your food, how it was made, or where it came from, you know your government is not looking out for Your Interest.
Selecting breeding and genetic engineering are not the same thing. I'm not anti-gmo, but to suggest that putting Salmon genes in Tomato plants is the same as just selecting between different offspring is incorrect.
"US House Committee Approves Anti-GMO Labeling Law"
should be
"US House Committee Approves Anti-GMO-Labeling Law"
Ah, another case of anti-science panic.
Yes, there are some legitimate problems with GMOs, but they are legal issues, not health or environmental ones, and no one is talking about the alternative: More fertilizer, more water, more land use, more fuel to get less food.
Oh, and to pad the profit margins of the laughable "organic" food industry, which, incidentally, is spending much more money on lobbying and propaganda than the GMO industry.
So, just lump this one in with climate-change denial, anti-vaccinet, chemtrail and moon-landing--was-a-hoax crowds.
I just want everyone to be absolutely clear where I stand on this:
The concept of GMO food is not inherently bad. What concerns me is the implementation, and to be more specific, the testing involved. Companies like Monsanto rush these things to market in order to get the quickest and highest ROI they possibly can. What I would consider adequate testing over an adequate period of time has not been done. Meanwhile GMO DNA is already incorporated into the biosphere of the entire planet due to cross-pollination; if there is something that will be harmful in GMO foods, it's probably already way too late to do anything about it, but that doesn't mean I'm going to throw up my hands and say "Oh, well!" and start gobbling the stuff down on purpose, either. Additionally, you can't really sit there and say you believe Monsanto (and companies like them) have nothing but the best interests of the Human Race in mind with their products, or that they haven't been caught doing highly questionable things in the past. So, to reiterate: GMO not intrinsically bad, but what's already out there might be bad, and we won't know for decades (and if so then there's probably not much we can do about it). You can't expect me to be happy about any of this.
Oh, and a word regarding traditional hybridization: Not the same thing at all -- because it's not like farmers, historically, were somehow incorporating insect DNA into their crops, which, I believe, is what was done with GMO tomatoes.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I remember first seeing on a container of recombinant-bovine-growth-hormone-free yogurt that stated there was no difference between it and rbgh containing yogurt.
I thought - "What? Why would the manufacturer put both of those labels on his product?" Of course, it's because the agricultural lobby paid off politicians in order to force non-rBGH manufacturers to put such labels on their product.
You know how Tom Wheeler, former top lobbyist for the cable industry is now head of the FCC? Yeah, it's safe to assume that this sort of thing occurs throughout the US regulatory apparatus. You know the IRS scandal regarding the targeting of conservative groups? Yeah, Big Ag seems to do the same thing but through the regulatory apparatus.
You know, El Chapo broke out of jail, probably with the help of Mexican authorities. It was reported that "He then hinted that the authorities had been complicit in the jailbreak by posting: 'The dog (slang for the Mexican government) dances for money, and I've bought it.'
Fortunately, we don't have law breaking like that here. First the bribery and conflicts of interest are legalized of course, THEN the "favors" occur. So - no illegality.
There are a few issues where a big part of the American electorate supports seemingly retarded policies. One of them is health insurance, where the US (alone in the developed world) stick to a private and non-universal model. Another is GMOs. I know of a few GMOs, such as the one with the RoundUp resistance gene. If the GMO alone is (maybe) not harmful, a plant filled with RoundUp certainly is (cf. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308814613019201). And I don't even need to get into technical details like these. I don't want to see your GMOs in Europe. We're well off without them. Period.
Exactly. GMO labeling laws are analogous to labeling table salt as "NOTICE: HAS CHEMICALS!".
FWIW, in California, every supermarket has this posted near the fresh produce section, but not associated with any particular product.
Proposition 65 WARNING: Products contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.
This clearly conveys the real and important information to the consumer about the fresh produce for sale at every supermarket in California ;^)
You have this backwards. If companies are going to introduce new products into our food supply, the burden of proof should be on them to prove that there aren't any negative health consequences.
Is it harder to show proof of absence? You bet your ass. And given the ramifications involved, it should be.
Look, I'm not an anti-gmo crusader. I think it has a lot of promise to more efficiently feed a growing world. But, like any technology, it can be used both responsibly and irresponsibly, and the private sector doesn't have a great track record of putting public health ahead of profits.
You stereotypers are all the same...
I'm not really sure how GMO labeling helps. Non-GMO labeling may help, but that happens mostly voluntary. It to me it isn't a safety issue, unless you are going to say, this corn or wheat isn't as nutritious as a natural product, or this product only appears to resemble a tomato, it may not smell, taste or provide nutrients found in natural tomatoes. It isn't all that clear to me what path forward we can take to give more people access to better food. Sure I prefer to buy organic, non-GMO, free range, hormone free, etc.., but I'm not sure that can scale at a cost that is workable for everyone. We've created such a glut of false abundance. We have tons of cheap food that isn't very good or very good for you, but it's cheap so we can feed the millions of people who can't afford better alternatives.
False dichotomy. There are a lot of ways to speed up the process other than GMO. Irradiation is still widely used in countries that don't allow GMO. If changing 1 gene makes you uncomfortable, then using mutagens to RANDOMLY change thousands of them in unknown was should scare this shit out of you.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Any person who pays attention knows that ALL processed food contains GMOs
Unless you know the farmer personally, or REALLY trust the advertising of the "organic" producers, it's safe to assume that ALL corn and soybeans, and ALL products made from corn and soybeans contain GMOs
Kinda reminds me of Cal prop 65, requiring sellers to disclose if their products caused cancer in lab animals. Now EVERY product has the warning, and everybody ignores it
Transgenics may not be the same thing as hybridization, but it is a process that can also occur naturally. The claim that "hybridization mimics nature, while transgenics is purely human engineering" is another lie.
So unlike the risk of say breading an aggressive dog with a strong and powerful dog.
Breading traits can be just as dangerous. That pest resistant fruit is giving out poisons to kill the pests can have a negative effect on a person too.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
So instead of a controlled change of genetics, you give it a dose of radiation to allow a random genetic mutations.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Usually, products will be "Packaged in America" or something similar. Canada among other countries requires the label at LEAST indicate where the product originates|comes from. Packaged in a country doesn't tell you squat.
I guess this is to comply with secretly negociated provisions of TTIP (aka TAFTA)
Then you will be pleased to learn thar federal regulators at the FDA, USDA, and EPA decide what. Testing is require, and how it must be conducted to be valid. seed companies just ask what to do, then do it. The regulators decide what needs to be done, and all the incentives for regulators are to make the process as safe as possible.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
See though, 1) and 2) are actually really damn likely is the problem. Remember how much lower infant mortality rates are in Cuba? It sure as hell isn't because less babies are dying.
That said I'd really love to see an honest study on a national level like that. Just...probably not from Russia.
Obama's been the sort of corporate whore that the owners of the Republican branch of the demopublican party have wet dreams about.
The whole Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) thing he's pushing gives corporations blank checks to pillage the governments that sign it. For example, if Monsanto (a BIG GMO pusher) claims to have lost any profits due to any sort of GMO labelling or prohibition, the TTIP allows them compensation, without any actual proof of harm. Even if it were proven that a product killed 10% of its users, that does not prevent them from compensation for lost profits.
Far more than the produce section of supermarkets. The outside of every pharmacy, hardware store, grocery store, and even banks carry a similar warning sign.
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
There is a difference between "Anti-GMO labeling law" and "Anti-GMO-labeling law"!!! Guess which one you meant? Stop making your readers guess what you're trying to say!
"We have tried war, but the use of economic power is far more effective" .. the Collector, evil overlord of Pluto ...
Doctor Who - The Sun Makers
This GMO stuff isn't like selective breeding, it is putting genes from a different species into a plant...like splicing DNA out of a frog into a stalk of wheat.
Why is the food industry so "afraid" of letting the consumer make an informed decision on what they want to put in their bodies?
The food industry hasn't put this much effort and money behind anti-consumer legislation since the food nutrition labeling act (you know, the Nutrition Guides on the back of products) a few decades ago.
What are they afraid of people knowing???
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
No. Everything I eat is not "GMO".
Not everything I eat strips individuals of their personal property rights and grants them to large corporations.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The problem, it seems to me, is not that the GMO's are safe or unsafe. It's that any trust authority has been completely destroyed by money. The FDA/EPA/USDA are funded by Congress and Congress appears to be corrupt. So anything that branches off of them appears to be corrupt. How are we supposed to believe anything from any of these people with such an appearance of corruption. It's a big money game and sometimes the money coincides with the larger public interest but more often it seems not to. So I believe in what I saw my 80 year old mother eat, who does not have diabetes, does not have heart disease, is not and never has been overweight and still has all her marbles. She ate real food that generations of people ate before her that didn't skip steps or have spider genes inserted in it. She might have accidentally eaten a spider and then ate some corn, but she never ate spidercorn.
This doesn't matter. Walmart, MacDonalds and other big retailers will be requiring GMO labeling, rejecting GMO products and they already banned other GMOs (rBGH/rBST). The market place will reach out and slash the GMO producers to little bits.
Our customers don't want GMOs. They vote with their wallet. It's Capitalism with the big 'C' working.
You know nothing about plants or well humans or animals then. GMO is modifying the genes. Not selective breeding for traits. If that were the case all humans are genetic modifications by science as well as all breeds of all domesticated animals.
But there is only so much information one can get on a label. Genetic modification is a complex subject. And poisonous genes are easily obtained in the time honored genetic manipulation called cross breading. So foods need deep chemical analysis for all the compounds they contain. Foods even considered safe have marginal toxins that most people can tolerate in small enough quantities. Poison is a relative term.
So I suggest a single domain worldwide as a clearinghouse for information. Companies pay a nominal yearly fee to list info on new products, something like $50. Once listed it's never deleted or edited but annotations with dates are allowed. Something like a country register but worldwide. The information is also available in multiple languages or have separate info per country per their own regulations. Call it online labeling and it's cross referenced to UPC and other product code systems. (I don't think UPC changes if a food company changes their ingredients list.) Maybe a QR code.
I think the managing organization should be a non profit managed by representative from all countries that want to participate. And it should be nominally supported by the countries that join.
The submitted documents become public, can be copied by anyone, and for all intents and purposes are public domain. This allows the organization to fail and then be replaced. The important thing is that the information is available forever so that it is "too important to fail."
It's because if you give any substance to lab mice and wait long enough, they'll get cancer.
and should also be mandated to label their GMO food in the US, so that consumers can choose.
The truth is that GMO foods have already so penetrated our foods and particularly processed foods that the food makers expect to lose customers if they are required to label.
Monsanto, ADM, etc are not trustworthy nor are the US food agencies that are suffering from regulatory capture. Label GMOs and let the consumer choose.
If the plant was not created by nature hybridization via crossbreeding and instead has genes that could not naturally occur in the plant genome. Label it as GMO.
Facebook is billions of individual "Skinner Boxes." And if you use it you are the pigeon!
This /. story is day-old so prob stale by now and OK for me to comment w/out griefr's - so here's my thoughts on what's been said:
As w/every post, the thread goes well beyond food issues and business interests; As always, the pros and cons are all
laid out bare, well and good. sick and poorly, within the scope of this collective's singular perspectives.
Here, the talk is added cost of labeling vs sunk costs to health and saftey. Can't tell the sock-puppets w/out scorecards/labels.
Branding aside, labels have come to mean nothing at all, regardless of GMO. Unless you know (and trust) the producer,
reputation means diddly in the 'corporate' world.
"Big" biz plays by no rules, don't get caught, that's just about it. And even that one, with some embarrassment finding just about every news-cycle,
has lost its' teeth. Pay a fine, admit no guilt, after sparing no expense to play for time exhausting the four Dâ(TM)s
(Deny, Disrupt, Degrade & Deceive)
Puting the arguments for SMB as factual and otherwise correct aside, big .gov is beholden to big .biz and those .coms .coms
(even the best or biggest) are competing tooth-n-nail w/other, foreign (whatever that has become to mean)
for investors (Mit's paradise) that excludes about 90% of the world's population.
GM, now a shell for a bankers' wet dream, lays off US workers the same week their execs in CN glow/fawn over booming expectations.
Home ownership has lost value while the overbearing of private equity and high-finance steals all its wind.
The fix is in, the system is rigged, cards are stacked, and house always wins; worst case causes a disaster then comes to the rescue to bleed
the carcass dry.
We already do not know where our (corporate) food comes from; it's a positive sign that more people are reading the labels at all.
The 50 shades of choices we see in the isles has no connection to the companies (investors) who own and possibly control them.
Cascadia (all natural...) gets purchased by GMills; will they add GMO's to an otherwise 'organic' product? They might if they could.
What's worse, their reach extends to prohibiting GMO-labeling AND non-GMO labeling. Like gag-orders, we can't say it is, can't say it isn't. Those who make what we eat (are bound to)
put profit over people, trust that.
Even what is generally considered safe (HFCS) does not mean good for you; even if its pronounceable. Artificial flavors, colors, tastebugs
to fool our tastebuds; what it means to be bitter, sour, sweet, salty or umami. Welcome to biotek; trans-fat full of never-ending possibilities.
What corporate interests can spent: to hide their skeletons, to enact or defeat bills, to get their way by exersizing monetary control
over the public's voice in the political system is at public expense and (mostly) against their desire.
The commonweal is a weak force under the weight of capitalism; tho it and free-trade seem more notional ideals than their current sorry state.
It's has come to know neither bounds nor shame, and given the enormous resources of lobby and lawyers, few limits on what they cannot get away with.
Always question of scale, always relative, always growing, always demanding more of everything; including consumption.
The cost of national politics and lawmaking, in time wasted begging and the ridiculous amounts required,
has replaced (the notional ideal of) democracy with a full-on pay-to-play congressionsl cesspool.
Lawyers and millionaires masquerading as buffoons. safely re-electable, ensconced in their office doing 'insider-trading'.
Nearby is a`supreme court which resembles a parliment of crows, one of which is a zombie placemat.
Both of which hold the lowest public esteem in history.
They have created an atmosphere no less corrupt than the stink-eye and filthy shakedown on any roadside in any banana-republic,
they increasingly declare our valuables a c
resist propaganda
Oh, and a word regarding traditional hybridization: Not the same thing at all -- because it's not like farmers, historically, were somehow incorporating insect DNA into their crops, which, I believe, is what was done with GMO tomatoes.
You were doing OK till then. Actually, the genes for plants and animals are full of DNA for viruses and bacterial that were incorporated into the host DNA.
There was an article in the New Yorker a few years ago that explained how segments of viral DNA were incorporated into the human genome. Once they sequenced the human genome, they could search for viral sequences, and they found a lot. There are lots of DNA viruses that incorporate themselves into human DNA. That's why it's so hard to get rid of herpesviruses and HIV. Usually they target somatic cells, but during human evolution they regularly find their way to the germ line.
The vast majority was done by selective breeding and grafting
Selective breeding and grafting are NOT what is commonly called "GMO". Nor is it just tinkering with genes.
You're talking apples and oranges here, while everybody else is just talking oranges.
By the way, I also wanted to point out that OP's hyphenation is wrong. It wasn't an anti-GMO labeling law. (That would be a labeling law that is anti-GMO.) It was an anti-GMO-labeling law.
Labeling laws like this convey no real information to the consumer.
Yes it does. It informs the consumer whether the food contains GMO or not. And some consumers care about this and wish to be informed.
They just add a word to the food item that many people interpret as frightening, a word that has literally zero impact on the safety or sustainability of the food item.
So if the consumers are put off by GMO then the solution is to hide the fact? People of Asian and Jewish religion are put off by products containing pork. Maybe you could argue that pork is perfectly safe and they are over reacting. So should we just hide the fact that some food contains pork because we know better than they do that pork is safe?
This is definitely a win for people everywhere in the US.
How is hiding information that people may care about a "win" for people?
If you're actually trying to tell me that I should be OK with some asshole corporation like Monsanto, who only cares about their profits, inserting insect DNA into my food, then all I can say is either you're being paid by them, or you just don't realize what you're saying. I don't believe that there has been anywhere near enough testing done before they rush GMO foods to market, and we may all pay dearly for that in the long run. Seriously: How many pharmaceuticals have been rushed through all their clinical trials and whatnot, only to find that a percentage of people were dying from it's use? How many pharmaceuticals have been pulled from the market somewhere down the road because of things like that? How is this, really, any different? Other than the fact that if there are serious malevolent effects because the gengineering was done badly, that the consequences could very well be global in scale?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
There's nothing you could eat that has ever done that. Unless you're a cannibal.
You do realize, right, that every GMO is required to undergo years of testing?
True but the testing they undergo is less rigorous than drugs and yet every so often a new drug has to be recalled because of either rare side effects or long term effects that were not known at the time of release. That is not a reason to ban GMO since, as with drugs, the benefits can outweigh the risks. However we would never dream of giving someone a new drug without telling them what they were taking so why should it be ok to let people eat GMO without telling them?
If GMO labelling were mandatory then companies would be forced to pass the benefits onto consumers: if GMO strawberries are cheaper to grow then they should be cheaper in the shops. This combined with an education campaign would mean that people would see and understand the benefits of GMO and so be more supportive of it. By hiding it the corporations can pocket the savings instead of us and they don't have to bother educating anyone which perpetuates the resistance to the technology.
Grocery Manufacturer's Association says it all. This is a ruling in favour of manufactured food-like products, not the production of actual food.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
US House Committee Approves Anti-GMO Labeling Law
That headline needs parentheses to make sense of it. Or does it mean the Food Babe has to wear a hat with "I'm a stupid dork" written on it?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
When you genetically engineer an organism, you run the risk of creating or altering traits you never intended.
Correct, but this is true of all genetic alterations, including conventional breeding: known examples include toxic potatoes and celery.
This can and has lead to problems like feed corn that's toxic to the cattle and pigs it was intended for.
Citation needed. I believe you are referring to a case where GE corn was contaminated with fungal mycotoxins, and as the corn was GE, anti-GMO groups claimed it was the GE aspect that made them sterile, not the well known toxic agents that happened to also be in there (which they conveniently neglected to mention).
If we take your argument, we should label conventional breeding, with known cases of harm, not GE crops, with zero instances of harm (beyond baseless accusation anyway). Of course, that's a bit silly, yeah?
Would those that lobby for these food companies bet their lives on the results of their actions? The board members of these food companies probably already have.
It doesn't make any difference how many right wing propaganda sources you quote since they are all incorrect. When you (or they) state flatly "no GMO food that ever makes it to your plate ever has genes from one organism transplanted to another" it not even close to the truth. A simple Wikipedia search is all that it takes to get the facts.
All the cursing and name calling in you rant makes you appear unhinged and delusional. Given that you are spouting lies as well it's obvious that a rational reader would ignore everything you say.
This makes me wonder. Perhaps your family history is unique, but as far as the rest of humanity is concerned Bacillus thuringiensis is not an organism found normally living with other bacteria in our gut. If your assertion is true then maybe you do have Bt genes or are a host to that organism. If so, when did you find out about the moth/butterfly lineage in your family tree. Please share with us the story about how you ancestors interbreed with insects.
Note: In case my response was too well written for you to understand, I will restate it in terms more suited to your limited capabilities: I called you a damn liar, said that anyone with sense should ignore you, and someone in your family tree was a bug fucker. Is that simple enough for you?
Why is Snark Required?
Just because a decision is driven by lobbying efforts by money-hungry corporations with all the moral compass of a psychopath doesn't mean the decision is actually wrong.
Tuna hasn't tasted the same since they took the dolphin out of it. *sniffles*
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
The scourge of GMOs are patents, an unless it gets totally completely illegal to patent life, I want GMOs labeled.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
the vast majority of GMO are not tailored to resist specific natural pests, leading to a decrease use of pesticides, it's exactly the opposite... GMO are usually engineered to be highly resistant to a specific type of pesiticide (round up anyone) so that we can flood the crops to our heart content with it... no thanks. "Over 99% of GMO acreage is engineered by chemical companies to tolerate heavy herbicide (glyphosate) use and/or produce insecticide (Bt) in every cell of every plant over the entire growing season. " www.huffingtonpost.com/david-bronner/herbicide-insecticide-use_b_5791304.html
If you need an analogon, selective breeding is like changing the configuration file of a customable program.
The analogon would be using some program parts that were written for a different version of the same program.
An analogon would be cut and paste program code from completely different programming projects into your code and just hope it still compiles afterwards.
Then I will pick up the torch.
Every GMO sold in the U.S. has undergone extensive pre-market safety testing. What specifically about this process do you feel to be deficient. Especially in light of the fact that many other tools, such as random mutagenesis via radiation, do not require any pre-market testing depite having actually made people sick (unlike any GMO in the last 20 years).
I have no problem with putting well-tested GMO products in the supermarket. I have a problem with a multibillion dollar corporation bribing my Congresspeople so that they will be able to hide the fact that the products are engineered.
I don't understand the problem with simply specifying what they are selling?
And as a consumer, regardless of if you are for or against the creation, use and spread of genetically modified organisms, why would you ever not want your food labeled with what it is?
For instance, where I live, food is usually labeled with where it has been produced and where it's been packaged. Since I think needlessly long transports of goods are idiotic, I tend to buy as locally produced and handled meat and vegetables as possible, even if it sometimes is a bit more expensive due to my country's high cost of labor and strict regulations on how you are allowed to treat your animals and what pesticides you allowed to use.
If the food hadn't been labeled, I wouldn't have the freedom of choosing where I want my food produced and packaged.
Same thing with actively genemanipulated food. If it isn't labeled, I am not free to choose if I want to buy "naturally" breed products or if I want to buy genetically modified products. That freedom is dependent on the producers informing me of what they're selling me.
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
The protein being produced that kills insects is not digestable to humans. It oasses right through.
Wait wait, but with the gay marriage thing the Republicans said that states should be free to make their own laws... but now it's dangerous to have 'patchwork legislation' throughout the republic? Wow, it's almost like they make up everything on the spot to support their donors.
And when I was a kid, NOBODY was allergic to peanuts.
Something *has* changed, history buff.
So unlike the risk of say breading an aggressive dog
I've never had breaded dog. Does it taste like chicken?
Just another day in Paradise
There are different kinds of radiation. Low doses can be used for microbial control, but high doses and/or chemical mutagens can be used to change the germ line. The seeds containing the mutated DNA are then grown and the most promising strains are crossed with existing strains to try and breed the new traits (very much a plurality of new genes) into established cultivars.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Wow a troll, how nice.
FTA: "Those states like mine, Maine, which has already passed a law that requires GMO labeling... we would be prohibited from doing it," U.S. Rep Chellie Pingree, a GMO labeling supporter, said in a conference call with reporters." Reading that statement it is clear to see that the freedom to choose upon an informed basis i.e. knowing if food is produced as GMO or not seeing GMO food as potentially providing a food source that is mixing for instance animal genes into plants without the consumer knowing can have vegetarians munching away on parts of organisms they would not otherwise. Jews and Muslims alike munching away on pig genes and everyone else who'd prefer munching away according to a precautionary principle munching away on things they would otherwise not touch. This legislation clearly is no victory for consumers and would be interested in hearing from the different people affected by this as to what they think about this restriction of knowledge.
MS, ALS, Aphasia ? http://globability.org - Me http://einarpetersen.com
Kinda like when one cross breeds ....
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Seriously, EVERYTHING YOU EAT is GMO. The vast majority was done by selective breeding and grafting, a very small amount by directly fiddling with the genes. There is not a single crop that hasn't been modified by humans in some way.
Frankly, that's a bogus argument. Selective breeding requires that the "parent" stock CAN interbreed. Introducing genes that code for some foreign protein that is derived from a totally different species is a different kettle of fish entirely. Speaking as a (former) molecular biologist I want that stuff labelled.
I had a
I patiently await your citation of pre-existing natural fish/tomato transgenics.
Engineering is great but engineers and scientists aren't gods, they can make mistakes, fail to fully consider consequences, lack complete knowledge or even get overridden by management. GMOs should of course be allowed, to deny them is stupid but they shouldn't automatically get GRAS status, proof of safety is required rather than assumption of safety until harm is proven.
Actually yes, irradiation is more disturbing and I would put it in the same category as GMOs. Proof of safety required rather than assumption of safety until harm proven.
Bullshit.
I whole heartedly support GMOs, genetic engineering is going to go a long ways towards solving the world's food supply problems. I merely think that we need proper testing of designed species that is more rigorous that that used for hybrids.
You are factually incorrect.
No, I'm not, look at the source material from that wiki page. They don't use a full gene from that bacterium, rather they use a small portion of nucleotides that are inspired from it.
It doesn't make any difference how many right wing propaganda sources
What the fuck does right wing have to do with this? Go take your moron politics to democraticunderground or freerepublic or some stupid shit that's about as relevant as arguing about what is the best sports team.
Would those that lobby for these food companies bet their lives on the results of their actions? The board members of these food companies probably already have.
That's a ridiculous assertion. The board members of those companies do not have to eat what "everybody else" eats. It's probably not out of line to guess they eat "organic" and "heirloom" pretty much all the time.
Hybridization as between two plants of the same species is fine by me. I take issue with simpletons splicing in genes from other creatures assuming that in the depth of their grandeur they can actually foresee critical interactions, and then trying to pass off their arrogance as progress. Frustrating vermin.
When we can take the entire sequenced genome, and feed it into a simulation that can accurately model the entire life-cycle of the organism in something faster than real time, then we can have a discussion about modifying organisms, and after that releasing them into the wild. Anything else should be on pain of death. You-all (myself included) are far too ignorant to be making these kinds of decisions, and keep your damned glyphosphate off my breakfast cereal!
I art more snarky, and terse than thou. I art Slashdot!
False dichotomy. There are a lot of ways to speed up the process other than GM/"Hybrid DNA". Irradiation is still widely used in countries that don't allow GMO. If changing 1 gene makes you uncomfortable, then using mutagens to RANDOMLY change thousands of them in unknown was should scare this shit out of you.
Not really. You see, random mutation from radiation is a fact of nature, and it's been going on for a long time. It's a sledge hammer approach and most mutations will result in a non-viable seed. It's a method that's limited in power and hence risk.
The chances of being accidentally clever on purpose is essentially zero with a random mutation approach. You're basically just speeding up nature. Can that result in dangerous crops? Sure, but experience tells us that to really screw up you need to add intelligence into the mix. The risk of tomatoes all of a sudden sprouting fish genes that might code for a fish protein that could kill those allergic to fish is as near to zero as damn it, with the random approach to "genetic engieering". With GMO the chances of success are several orders of magnitude higher.
I think of a car analogy off the top of my head, but in my own field, computer security/safety the examples abound. Even though the safety/reliability field is a difficult one, we can at least reason about it, because the insults to those systems follows the laws of nature and are amenable to statistical analysis. Not so with security. There we have an intelligent attacker that can change things, not at random, but at will. That means that a small software or hardware flaw that, statistically speaking, could never hurt us, can become our undoing each and every time. Those completely improbable circumstances that need to arise by chance for the danger to be realised, can be put in place by the intelligent attacker at will.
So, you can't really even begin to compare the power of random genetic mutation as a tool for changing DNA to (more or less, well "less" but still) being able to edit that DNA as you please. They're not in the same league, and hence while restricting Monsanto to the former is a cause for concern, giving them access to the later is a cause for abject terror. It's the difference between them having access to a hand grenade and a nuke...
P.S. And they know it. If they were of equal power and utility, they would just abandon GM as not being worth the bother and press on with random mutation. But they are different, and that's why they're not happy being restricted to the much less powerful of the techniques.
Stefan Axelsson
That is not a false dichotomy. He did not say that selective breeding and genetic engineering were the only options, only that they are different options and should not be equated.
This reminds me of a thing a few years back where every bottle of laboratory chemicals had to have a sticker on it saying "For the purposes of the New Jersey Right to Know Act, contents partially unknown." It took a few years before they realized that there was no practical value in that labeling requirement. In the meanwhile, I put one of those stickers on my refrigerator. It seemed appropriate.
Ah, but currently there is no requirement for plants developed by mutagenesis (carcinogenic chemicals, ionizing radiation, or other) to be tested. In fact, many of the seed strains used most by Organic farmers were developed in just this way.
Why are people not getting up in arms about these more random and therefore more dangerous tools? Why are they in-fact turning TOWARD these technologies, and AWAY from more tightly regulated and less inherently risky technology?
They are doing this because their fear is driving them to find justifications, not the other way around. They are opposed to GMO, not based on the evidence, but based on their ignorance or philosophical opposition. They are then data snooping to find any evidence, no matter how small, inconsistent, or flawed, and propping it up as the reason for there opposition when it is just post-hoc justification for a position they had chosen before familiarizing themselves with the data at all.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
You obviously don't know the first thing about genetic engineering, or about the complexity of gene interactions even in manipulated genomes..
With GMO we are inserting a single gene or short sequence of genes, that have been well characterized, into a known location on the genome. We are then testing to verify that the gene is located where we intended, doing what we intended, and not perturbing the system.
With random mutagenesis we are not only changing thousands of genes in unknown, and unknowable ways, but we are not requiring any characterization or testing of the result. (I'm sure the seed companies are doing some testing anyway because no one wants that kind of liability on their hands).
The deliberately designed world of computer programming is a HORRIBLE analogy for the complex milieu of gene interaction in multicellular eukaryotes. Random mutation not only has the potential to change an important gene, but it may change promoter and suppressor regions. Plants produce thousands of compounds that are potentially poisonous to humans (the dose makes the poison), and random mutagenesis is far more likely to increase the production of these compounds than targeted gene insertions.
Take the potato for example. Potatoes' produce a compound called solanine. Normal traditional cross breeding has on occasion resulted in strains that produce dangerously high concentrations of solanine. Random mutagenesis in potatoes is far more likely to unexpectedly increase solanine production than targeted insertion as long as the engineers are careful to target a region of the genome known to be unrelated to solanine production. That kind of targeting cannot be done with mutagenesis, or even traditional cross breeding, which makes it INTRISCIALLY more risky.
Now as a pragmatic scientist, and someone excruciatingly familiar with the risk assessment process used by the FDA, I recognize that the risks of mutagenesis are very low in practical terms. However, that makes the risk associated with GMO very low as well, as GMO is less intrinsically risky than random mutagenesis. Both CAN result in an unsafe product, but it is MORE LIKELY to happen with random mutagenesis that GMO. Throw in the fact that every GMO is extensively safety tested, and the assessments are reviewed by several independent agencies (who's incentives are all biased in the direction of being overly conservative) and the chance of an unsafe GMO actually getting to market if it is created are infinitesimally small at the moment.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Maybe not deliberately, but by omitting the range of techniques in between that blur the lines between GMO and selective breeding he creates the perception of 2 competing technologies when, in fact, there are numerous COMPLETEMENTARY techniques used to develop seeds (hybridization, cross-breeding, random mutagenesis, within species gene editing, targeted gene deletions, gene silencing, transgenic gene insertions.
Monsanto, Bayer, Dupont, Syngenta, et al. use Random Mutagenesis to develop crops for regions that don't allow GMO, but they ALSO use more "traditional" techniques like cross breeding for ALL regions. Many important traits (like yield) are controlled by multiple genes. GMO techniques are not cost effective ways to effect these multi-gene traits. They use the right tool for the job. Just because some of us don't know how a tool works, doesn't mean it can't and isn't being used safety, or that its use should be labeled.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
You obviously don't know the first thing about genetic engineering, or about the complexity of gene interactions even in manipulated genomes..
And neither do you. And that's my main point.
You then go on about avoiding a well known danger and how GM might be safer in that respect.
But that's not the point. It's the unknown unknown, that's the danger.
And with GM you open up whole vistas of unknown, unknown. The computer analogy is very apt. Even in the "deliberately designed world of computer programming" we can't foresee the consequences, and our experience is quite clearly on the side of outright manipulation being more dangerous than random chance change. The risks from the known unknown is readily dealt with in both situations, you have to check for known dangerous compounds using both methods, so your "you can be certain since you didn't fiddle with that" (paraphrase) doesn't fly in that case either. (Also a well known result from the complex systems that are computer programmes, "But that couldn't possibly affect that..." Famous last words.
But in either case, your characterisation of mine in particular, and our in general, concerns aren't about "unsafe" GMO's in the sense of knowingly "directly harmful to humans", it's "letting known psychopath organisations play with fire". We, well I specifically, don't distrust science and technology, we distrust you (in the "ya'll" sense of "you"). We didn't trust Dow Chemical when they said "trust us, our chemicals are completely safe", and we don't trust Monsanto now, when they're doing and saying the exact same thing. And the risk isn't really that we're afraid that they'll poison us outright (not that we hold them above such behaviour, just witness the British when they realised that scrapie had jumped the species boundary to cows and decided against saying anything lest they harm the British beef industry), we believe them to be smarter than that, no, its basically everything else, including the rest of the ecosystem, economy, and laying their grubby hands on a strategic resource...
Note that here in Sweden we don't just ban GMO, we also ban Belgian Blue, because we don't believe in the concept of breeding for what is a genetic disorder in animals just to make beef $0.10 cheaper by the pound. Banning the use of artificial growth hormones in animal husbandry, and the use of antibiotics to promote growth in same, is just plain common sense (esp. the latter).
We note that you don't care one way or the other about any of these. So that you don't care about GMO, and the risks with said, isn't surprising in the least, but also not very much of an endorsement... Especially since our farmers, even though we've "hamstrung" them instead of letting red blooded american capitalism be our guiding star, still manage to overproduce themselves into an unsustainable market situation, almost just as bad as yours. We don't actually need them to be more efficient, and we can't afford them to be anyway...
Stefan Axelsson
You seem to missing the point where we (as in the REGULATORS) utilize testing and toxicology to VERIFY that our presumption of safety is, in-fact, valid.
No one invved in biotechnology believes that there is no risk. Just as with a new pharmaceutical we perform specific tests designed to quantify the various risks associated with a new GM trait. Your government does the same thing, I am sure, because that is the job of governments. The EFSA has already tested numerous GMO plants and affirmed their safety, but the EC (which is populated by politicians, not scientists) has refused to authorize any of them to be planted for political reasons (non-tarring trade barriers, political pandering, etc). The U.S. System puts the EFSA equivalent agencies in charge of deciding directly instead of only making determinations and the. Leaving the final decisions to someone else.
at the end of the day the European de facto GMO ban is about money. As much as Europeans like to characterize Americans as greedy capitalists gone wild, they are no different. They are just more circumpspect about how they let that greed show through. You are using biotechnology approvals as a way to protect domestic industry, and pretending it is about safety for political expedience. The vast majority of Europeans are spending far more on food so that european farmers can stay in business despite being inefficient. All nations do it (you should see the laws surrounding domestic sugar production in the U.S.), but the false flag of safety creates FUD surrounding a technology with an excellent track record this far.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde