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Genetically Modified Crops Are Safe, Report Says (nbcnews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: Genetically modified crops on the market are not only safe, but appear to be good for people and the environment, experts determined in a report released Tuesday. "The committee delved into the relevant literature, heard from 80 diverse speakers, and read more than 700 comments from members of the public to broaden its understanding of issues surrounding GE crops," the report reads. Panel members read more than 900 reports. A lot of concern centered on health effects. The committee determined the following: there is no evidence of large-scale health effects on people from genetically modified foods; there is some evidence that crops genetically engineered to resist bugs have benefited people by reducing cases of insecticide poisoning; genetically engineered crops to benefit human health, such as those altered to produce more vitamin A, can reduce blindness and deaths due to vitamin A deficiency; using insect-resistant or herbicide-resistant crops did not damage plant or insect diversity and in some cases increased the diversity of insects; sometimes the added genes do leak out to nearby plants -- a process called gene flow -- but there is no evidence it has caused harm; in general, farmers who use GM soybean, cotton, and corn make more money but it does depend on how bad pests are and farming practices; GM crops do reduce losses to pests, and if farmers use insect-resistant crops but don't take enough care, sometimes pest insects develop resistance. The National Academics of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have put the evidence up on a website for skeptics of the report. The report also includes a 'Summarized Comments Received from Members of the Public' section for people to look up the facts to answer their concerns.
There are people today who are concerned that there is DNA in their food. They will not believe this report any more than the people who think global warming is a lie or that the creationist 'museum' is factual..
The issue of GMO food has passed rational debate and entered into religious fervor. Some silly report isn't going to change a thing.
The report really knocks the value of GMOs as begin completely over blown and of little value. Further, the report points to many unresolved ares of substantial risk.
I don't doubt that GM crops are safe. But what about the dirty tricks companies play, such as patenting a gene sequence? Or writing contracts that forbid farmers from harvesting seed, forcing them to buy new seed each time? Or deliberately modifying the genome so the plants are fine with respect to food, but don't produce viable seeds?
Are those things really in society's interest?
I liked the part of the report which stated that people who eat GMO foods are better looking, make more money, and have sex with supermodels far more often than their non-GMO-eating counterparts.
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Do they say who financed the report ? Who are the scientists that wrote the report ? Full disclosure guys, full disclosure.
If it ends up being financed by Monsanto or written by scientists financed by big agro double lol.
Go to the website and do your own research.
"And Gould said all the vested interests are revealed on the website. "They can look to see if something we reference is funded by industry," he said.
It's from the National Academy of sciences, so you are in denialist class denial if you don't give it some credence.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
So they've determined that selling GMO plants doesn't lead to increased monopoly control over the food supply?
That's my primary objection. I'm hard to convince on the other points, but I know myself well enough to realize that this is mainly because nothing has altered my main grounds for opposition: monopoly control over the food supply. I could be convinced that chemical pesticides are safe...it would take better evidence than I've seen, but it could be done. However this wouldn't change my opposition to GMO foods unless it could be shown that they didn't lead to increased monopoly control.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Glyphosate, a consequence of GMO modified crops is in people's urine and mothers milk, worst of all in BEER!!!!
And it has "probably" no effect on human's health, not even thinking about the whole soup of endocrine disruptors messing up our bodies or the compound effect of all the goodies additions feeding us so well taken together.
Interesting the timings of those - does no harm - reports coming out - Glyphosate is due for renewal in the EU in July (or so).
When was this trans-fat goodie discovered and put to use? 1800's, right and how long did it take to show adverse effects recognized and get it shut down?
Building blocks of DNA (what they are using to spice the crop's DNA is probably a secret) are swapped between organisms and that process is far from fully researched.
Round-Up-Ready DNA is taken in by weeds and yoii, are they putting it to use. Next is stronger and more complex poisons...
The underlying issues - profit and growth the only criteria, unlimited population growth in a limited environment is too hot a potato to be touched by a politician dependent on "sponsors", if it's even recognized by those conditioned brains convinced that all is OK, gods will or things are just not true...
All-together, just one big Yuck! Fish are dying - can't breath any more.... no more "thanks for all the fish"...
If you think cancer is bad try starving to death from lack of food. We need GMO to make the most efficient use of land.
Or we need to stop the population growth, mainly through education and giving people powers over their own bodies and future. Without old men telling them that there's an invisible creature that wants them to make more babies, and that they can't get pensions to live on, but if they squeeze out a few more babies, surely they will be taken care of if they grow old...
Starvation and overpopulation goes hand in hand. Higher production and better distribution of food only enables the poor to increase population growth, pushing back the problem to the future, where it will be even worse due to more people.
And higher production of just some kinds of food means even more lack of variety among the poor, who have to eat what is available and cheapest. That's not a good recipe for better lives.
I know agricultural researchers and Monsanto is a regular topic of discussion. The influence of Monsanto is there but it's less direct that funding the meta-study by the National Academy of Sciences. Monsanto funds huge amounts of research at the world's leading agricultural research centres while convincing governments that they don't need to fund so much of the research. The ag research community has become somewhat dependent on them. Maybe a researcher isn't currently working in a department that is partly funded by Monsanto but they may do so in the not too distant future. How many agricultural researchers do you think are left who aren't afraid of publishing papers that would negatively impact Monsanto's share price?
BTW, here's an example of what often happens when someone does actually publish evidence against Monsanto's interests: http://www.nature.com/news/wid...
Such a small fragment of truth you should have at least tried to verity. From a quick Google search the number is more than 140 lawsuits filed by one company (Monsanto) against farmers. This does not include any of the other companies performing genetic modification or licensed by Monsanto to use their seeds and their lawsuits.
The fragment of truth is that one lawsuit made it to the Supreme Court who upheld Monsanto's rights to sue.
The second tiny fragment of truth is that one patent expired. There are hundreds of thousands of seeds on patent.
All that said, when Monsanto goes after a specific farmer even if the patent is expired the claim generally puts farmers out of business.
The problem is not GMO as much as shit business practices who ensure that consumers get fucked because competition does not exist. A pox on all the people modding down anything that can possibly be perceived as anti-GMO.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Given that we've practiced some form of artificial selection for centuries, it is pretty much safe to say that crossing two organisms that produce edible food will almost invariably result in a new organism that produces edible food. Most of the things that we don't know are ecological, e.g. the risks of creating a monoculture that is susceptible to a specific disease that doesn't exist yet. Those issues are certainly cause for concern, but they're unlikely to be a health issue.
By contrast, when manually editing genes, it wouldn't be entirely implausible for someone to accidentally slip a recessive gene sequence into an apple tree seed that, when present in both chromosomes, would cause the production of cyanide. And then in the second generation that isn't supposed to exist, suddenly you have fruit that look normal, but kill people....
Look, I'm not saying that GMO foods are bad, or that they don't provide significant benefits for humanity, particularly when it comes to creating drought-resistant crops that can survive in areas affected by famine, etc. What I'm saying is that no one has the right to force someone else to take unknown risks without that person's knowledge or consent, and deliberately unlabeled GMO foods do just that.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Yes those evil companies trying to invent ways for humans to produce more and better quality food with less pesticides
One of the type of genetic modifications performed involves modifying the plants so that you could actually use more chemical crap without hurting the produce. Now it may be safe for human consumption but it turns out that it can have unitended consequences for local environment in general. For example, using more herbicides and fertilizer to promote the growth of crops using the latter but preventing weeds from doing the same using the former results in the Gulf of Mexico becoming a eutrophicated, dead zone.
Ezekiel 23:20
It's from the National Academy of sciences, so you are in denialist class denial if you don't give it some credence.
I've been over this with the anti-GMO crowd before. There are actually a lot of organizations, ranging from government to nonprofit organizations, that are very much in favor of GMO technology. However each time you list one of them, the anti-GMO crowd comes up with some excuse as for why they're not trustworthy. Here's a list I can name off of the top of my head:
World Health Organization
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
U.S. Academy of Sciences
American Medical Association
American Heart Association (Nifty little tidbit I might add: http://newsroom.heart.org/news... but don't let any anti-GMO people see this or else they'll think the AHA is in on the Monsanto conspiracy as well.)
Girl Scouts of America
The last one in that list is particularly interesting. Why? Because they've been the target of change.org petitions and massive parental protest against what is perhaps their biggest source of income: cookies. And yet still they remain steadfast in their opinion that, indeed, GMO is safe.
And you know what? I happen to agree. I also don't have any financial interest in GMO or any other agriculture, nor do I work for one. In fact I actually work for a major non-profit health care provider. I also happen to believe that GMO will eventually completely solve issues like world hunger and foodborne illness, and possibly even chronic disease as well.
A lot of GM crops are significantly more hardy than the original variants. This means that, if they breed true, then they are going to displace all of the originals and you will end up with a homogeneous group, which is then vulnerable to a single parasite/bacterium. Humans already have a dangerous lack of diversity in our food crops (go and look up the WHO's projections on how many millions would starve to death if wheat production were threatened globally) and GM crops are likely to decrease diversity even more.
The second problem is that many of them don't breed true or, indeed, at all. You must keep buying new seeds from the same company, you can't collect your own seed stock. This means that your food supply becomes entirely dependent on a small number of companies. This is less of a problem for the USA, but the EU spends a lot of money subsidising farmers to ensure that we have an independent food supply and making it dependent on seeds bought from the US seems to counter this quite effectively.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Most of those organizations are pro business growth at any cost, that's why they like GMO and fund research to sell it.
That, dear sir, is one of the most amazing accusations I've heard in a long time. There are some who would say the opposite.
The farmers of the world that GMO claims to help are so sick of top down reorganization they will not buy it , its that simple.
You seem to think that GMO=Monsanto, and throw all GMO under the bus with Roundup ready seeds. That's really unfortunate, and wrong minded.
GMO farming is buying into a system you don't control that will ultimately control you. Notice the careful wording about the situations where pests become resistant, that's because its not magic. If you offer a choice to indiginous farmers (without destroying their land first) they reject it.
And more of the same. GMO foods, even if you don't buy into my idea that given the inherent nature of sexual reproduction, everything is genetic modification, and we've been doing it manually for a long time. But since a lot of people don't understand genetics, we can narrow it to just modern laboratory based manipulation.
So since anti-GMO kooks are all pissed off at Monsanto - which in itself is not a bad idea, given that they are inadvertently breeding some kickass Roundup resistant weeds - they allow their outrage to extend to fruits and vegetables that have been engineered for better nutrition, longer shelf life, and other very positive aspects that make the produced food actually better in all measurable ways than the base food source.
And even when we don't do it in the lab, we've been doing it since we harvested wheat and corn, selecting for the seeds that stayed on the shafts first by accident, and later by cross breeding for desired characteristics.
And just to be certain, we sometimes created things that were bad for us using this method - enter the Lenape potato: http://boingboing.net/2013/03/...
So in your hatred for Monsanto, and your apparent wish to throw all GM under the bus because of that, do you now want to freeze all genetics in their present form, so that everything stays exactly the same? REduction to absurdit isn't difficult when the basic premise is absurd to begin with.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.