Weird New Fruits Could Hit Aisles Soon Thanks To Gene Editing (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Smooth or hairy, pungent or tasteless, deep-hued or bright: new versions of old fruits could be hitting the produce aisles as plant experts embrace cutting-edge technology, scientists say. While researchers have previously produced plants with specific traits through traditional breeding techniques, experts say new technologies such as the gene-editing tool Crispr-Cas9 could be used to bring about changes far more rapidly and efficiently. Among the genes flagged in the new study in the journal Trends in Plant Science are those behind the production of a family of substances known as MYBs, which are among the proteins that control whether other genes are switched on or off.

"MYBs are great targets because they are central to several consumer traits or features like color, flavor [and] texture," said Andrew Allan, a co-author of the review from the University of Auckland whose own projects include working on red-fleshed apples and changing the color of kiwi fruits. "Russet skin in apple and pear [is linked to MYBs]. Hairs on peaches but not nectarines -- another type of MYB." Dr Richard Harrison, head of genetics, genomics and breeding at the horticultural organization NIAB EMR, who was not involved in the article, said tweaking MYB genes or the way such genes are themselves controlled was a fruitful approach. Gene-editing of MYB genes and other genes could bring a host of benefits, Harrison said, adding: "There is a large opportunity to improve the nutritional profile of fruits and vegetables in the future using gene-editing technology, as well as other techniques." Such techniques, he said, introduce the same sort of DNA changes as plant breeders have introduced by artificially selecting traits that cropped up through spontaneous DNA mutation -- but much faster. Next week, the European Court of Justice will decide if or how plants that have been gene-edited will be regulated, and whether they will be treated like genetically modified plants. In April, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it will no longer regulate genetically altered plants, so long as the changes could have been produced through traditional plant-breeding techniques.

Comments

Thanks to gene editing

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll have more stuff to avoid at the grocery store. Thanks Science!

Re:Thanks to gene editing

[Zocalo]

Gene editing - doing to the grocery aisle what cable did to TV; hundreds of different fruits and veg yet still nothing you'd want to eat.

Or whatever. I actually don't think there's much of a market for broad variation like this; the market is finite and there are a lot of logistics problems with providing a lot of choice for a perishable item (even if GMO can extend the fact that fruit and veg has an inherent use by date, it's probably not going to remove it). People in a given area will like what they like - or opt to avoid anything labelled as GMO because GMO - and the market will sort itself out soon enough. We'll likely end up with roughly the same amount of choice in a given store as before, but the actual selection will shift to include those GMO products that sell well enough to increase profits over the products they replaced.

Re:Thanks to gene editing

[Gilgaron]

This isn't putting fruit fly genes in your grapes, this is editing the grape genome with intention rather than depending on blind luck. The other produce at the store you're eating was mutated with radiation, unless you're only eating heirloom varieties.

Re:Thanks to gene editing

[Ol Olsoc]

This isn't putting fruit fly genes in your grapes, this is editing the grape genome with intention rather than depending on blind luck. The other produce at the store you're eating was mutated with radiation, unless you're only eating heirloom varieties.

Though even the heirloom varieties came from something else. Mutations all the way down.

Re:Thanks to gene editing

[Gilgaron]

Very true! But radiation is 'scary' , so I like to point out how the current 'normal' baseline food varieties were made.

Re:Thanks to gene editing

[StuartHankins]

So many fruits and veggies today lack the flavor they had even 10 years ago. They look good but then you bite into the tomato and taste... nothing. A very weak watery flavor. Same with watermelon, oranges, even lettuce. Onions and leeks seem about the same. I blame several things: harvesting before they are ripe then shipping all over the place; less crop rotation and more fertilizers; and the drive to cheaper and cheaper prices.

The best option for me, although inconvenient since I moved, is to find a fruit / vegetable stand and buy from there. You get locally grown stuff, maybe not the variety you want but it tastes like real food.

Re: Thanks to gene editing

[thelUrk]

So many fruits and veggies today lack the flavor they had even 10 years ago. They look good but then you bite into the tomato and taste... nothing.

I've noticed the opposite, but only when eating the stuff my brother grows. For the last few years he's been experimenting with no-till, no-fertilizers, yet-not-technically-organic gardening. Getting soil mineral analysis from the state ag uni, and basically spreading around quarry dust in careful amounts, he's been getting wonderfully healthy and tasty veggies.

It has something to do with providing all nutrients rather than just NPK, and allowing the soil bacteria and fungus to go about its life largely undisturbed. The theory is that the plant produces sugars it doesn't actually want from photosynthesis and sends them out into the soil around the roots. At that point the microbiome guys feed on the sugars and break down minerals and form other organic compounds that the plant really wants. Without these trace nutrients you end up with a plant that is disease prone, low yield, and basically just malnourished.

It's really dramatic to see a plot of traditionally grown tomatoes struggling against pests and putting out feeble vines, while 100 feet away on the test plot they are thriving with hardly any attention.

Now this sort of soil care won't be certified organic due the ridiculous paperwork required, but I wouldn't be surprised if healthier food comes from healthier plants. No gene editing required.

Re:Thanks to gene editing

[MDMurphy]

Here's a non-GMO, non-radiated potato you'll want to avoid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Thanks to gene editing

[Gilgaron]

The point is that you aren't eating original-gene grown crops while you wait! You just think you are, and you have no idea what genes the radiation was used to change, whereas with CRISPR you could know. You know less and find it comforting to be ignorant.

Re:Thanks to gene editing

[HeckRuler]

This isn't putting fruit fly genes in your grapes, this is editing the grape genome with intention rather than depending on blind luck.

Great, so they're putting fruit fly genes in my grapes.... with intention. That's so much better. And and there's STILL a hefty load of blind luck, even with precise gene insertion via CRISPR and such. Unless someone out there has complete understanding of protein folding, methylation, gene suppression and activation, and all the freaky shit from epigenetics, then there's still guesswork. Don't pretend that the field of genetics has been solved.

The more advanced our abilities with genetic engineering get, the more we should treat GMOs like drugs rather than food. Because the only difference between a psychedelic trip and a normal stroganoff is a few tweaks in the genes of some fungus.

The other produce at the store you're eating was mutated with radiation, unless you're only eating heirloom varieties.

mmmm. No. This one is also not quite right. I get what you're saying: That "heirloom" plants are closer to the wild strains than those we've cultivated. But both, (everything really) are products of mutation. And mutation arises from anything that causes transcription errors, not just radiation, but yeah also radiation (like from the sun). While the source of all variation is mutation, most of what changes between two generations is actually from crossover. The mixing and matching of your parent's DNA. We're all carrying around all sort of mutations that get glossed over until a (typically unlucky) kid gets to try it out. Yay recessive genes, nature's development repo.

The real difference between "heirloom" foods and the typical plants you get in the store would be selection. We've directed their evolution by selecting the biggest plumpest tomatoes over the years. The Heirloom variety have also had all the same mutations and crossover over the years, but presumably it's cancelled out with equal mutations in the other direction and the strain is more or less the same since antiquity. The term would be "outbred" for genetic stability as opposed to "inbred" for specific traits.

The difference between unnatural selection (cultivation, domestication, 1700's-era genetic engineering) and the natural evolution of plants is significant. No joke, we've done some crazy stuff. Helpful and useful too. But all that PALES in comparison to what they can do with current modern genetic engineering. The search space for what you can achieve in a handful of generations of cultivation is only so big. There's a set collection of genetic material to cross over and mutations are rare and limited. The search space for what you can achieve with CRISPR is so wide it includes every living organism on the planet. From venom producing snakes, to spider silk, to psychedelic mushrooms, to brussel sprouts. Give a mad scientist a handful of pea pods and a lifetime of cultivation and tell him to make a weapon and at the end you'll have some bad tasting vegetables. Give a mad scientist a handful of pea pods he can genetically engineer and you might have some scary stuff at the end. Like peas that naturally produce anthrax or explode corrosive acid. But monsanto and the like aren't mad scientists. Most of them. Probably. They just want to make cheaper, better, more profitable crops. The worry is that they'll fuckup and have some unintended consequence.

In the near future, as we know more about how genes work, the bigger that search space gets and the more can be done with genetic engineering. Like faster computers, they'll have bigger fuckups in half the time. There's a LOT of fear-mongering and... frankly unfair criticism of GMOs, Monsanto, and genetic engineering in general. And there has also been a significant PR campaign by Monsanto to control public image. It's a fucking mess.

Also, for anyone interested in this stuff, "Herding Hemingway's Cats" is a heavy but insightful read into the state of genetics.

Re:Thanks to gene editing

[HeckRuler]

that does not make GMOs fundamentally wrong.

Right. Just like how guns aren't fundamentally wrong or evil. But it's still concerning when the evil sociopath gets his hands on one.

*Squints and looks over at Monsanto...*

Bu yeah, GMOs have helped feed the world.

Re:Thanks to gene editing

[HeckRuler]

You know, one doesn't usually so readily admit to using hyperbolic bullshit with the sole intention of fear-mongering.... It's not traditionally a real solid foundation to start a debate upon.

Self-awareness is a good thing though. So, you know, props for that.

Re:Thanks to gene editing

[luis_a_espinal]

I'll have more stuff to avoid at the grocery store. Thanks Science!

Screw that. I can't wait to eat an apple-flavored, mint-smelling apple-onion hybrid. All the good nutritional shit without the wince-inducing smell and taste.

Mutant fruit-veggies FTW!

Re:Thanks to gene editing

[Gilgaron]

Ah, but it isn't hyperbole or bullshit, just not getting into the weeds about how genetics works to someone that thinks GMO is scarier than the pastoral Norman Rockwell-esque setting they pretend the food they don't think is scary came from.

Re:Thanks to gene editing

[volmtech]

Something I know, I grew several hundred million pounds of that potato's offspring as a farmer, the Atlantic variety. If you eat potato chips you have eaten them.

The Lenape was devolved as a chip potato so consumers would not have eaten enough to get sick. The farmer though had access and cooked them as they are very tasty.

Unlikely.

[Gravis Zero]

People don't like change or unexpected tastes. There is a reason that green ketchup died.

A faaar better use would be to make healthy foods slightly more palatable without sacrificing it's high nutritional value. Sadly, I foresee this being used to make fruits far sweeter which would make them very unhealthy.

What we need the government to start doing is evaluating goods based on their heath impact and how addictive they are and then place a tax on the food that will later be used to pay for the healthcare you'll need from consuming them. Humans are bad a long-term decision making therefore turning the long-term decision into a short-term one helps people make better choices.

Re:Unlikely.

[Anonymous Coward]

Humans are bad a long-term decision making?! Well, thank goodness we have a government chock full of humans to make our decisions for us!

Re:Unlikely.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no reason to reinvent food, just get rid of all the junk food and GMO. Nobody fucking wants it.

Re:Unlikely.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, I foresee this being used to make fruits far sweeter which would make them very unhealthy.

We've already made fruits far sweeter and unhealthy. Natural apples don't grow to such massive size, and they're certainly not so sugary. Think about it: Why on earth does a plant need to place all of that sugar and water to keep such tiny seeds fed to be able to grow? It just doesn't, in fact growing that large with that much sugar is counter-productive to its survival: It expends much more energy than it needs to, and uses much more water than it needs to, both of which need to be conserved in a natural environment that doesn't have people providing all of that excess.

And when I say unhealthy, these kinds of fruits do contribute to metabolic syndrome, which has been made apparent by stupid frutarian dieters that wonder why their cholesterol and triglycerides are high while on their very "healthy" diet that they think humans are meant for.

Re:Unlikely.

[Anonymous Coward]

Tastes of fruit and vege have changed a lot over the decades. Thing is: consumers don't buy based on taste, they buy based on appearance and consistency. Hence rather than cool new fruit with mind-boggling flavours we get amazing looking tomatoes that bounce without bruising and taste like compressed cardboard and disappointment.

My prediction: same with crispr. Not new fruit, just hardier, blander, more generic versions of what we have already.

Re:Unlikely.

[Dutch Gun]

There are local varieties of strawberries that are significantly more tasteful than the more common store-bought variety grown and shipped from California. The reason these don't sell nation-wide is because they are much more delicate than the California strawberry variety, and thus are far less suitable for mass consumption.

I think it would be fantastic if gene modification were able to combine the hardiness of the common California strawberry with the more intense flavors of our local varieties. Yes, the local berries probably have a bit higher sugar content. Who the hell cares? It's not like people eat significant amounts of strawberries enough to affect one's long-term health.

Re: Unlikely.

[c6gunner]

There is no reason to reinvent food, just get rid of all the junk food and GMO. Nobody fucking wants it.

I'm always astounded by the number of geniuses who want to ban things which nobody wants. Maybe next you can ban porn on the internet, because nobody wants that either.

Re: Unlikely.

[astrofurter]

No need to ban GMO. Just clearly label it. No one will buy it, and the frankenfarmers will go out of business.

Re: Unlikely.

[c6gunner]

Totally. No need to ban cellphones, just put "these devices emit radiation" stickers on them. Nobody will buy them and we'll all go back to using landlines.

Re: Unlikely.

[Anonymous Coward]

I like gmo products. Iâ(TM)m not an idiot.

Re:Unlikely.

[sad_]

A faaar better use would be to make healthy foods slightly more palatable without sacrificing it's high nutritional value. Sadly, I foresee this being used to make fruits far sweeter which would make them very unhealthy.

they are already adjusting the taste of sprouts for example, to make them more 'likable'. that is just plain stupid.
in the end we will end up with everything tasting the same, taking to joy out of eating.
and why is this even a problem? if you don't like sprouts, don't eat them, it's not as if somebody forcing you (if yes, are you less then 6 years old?).

Re:Unlikely.

[Gilgaron]

Some of the newer apple varieties are quite tasty, while certainly there's money in making the products more shelf stable, there's even more money in shelf stable + as tasty as garden tomatoes.

Re: Unlikely.

[astrofurter]

Well let's give it a try and see what happens. But I know both industries have fought and will continue to fight tooth & nail against mandated warning labels.

Re: Unlikely.

[burtosis]

I actually don't mind eating most GMO products that I've come across, I find them to be equal or superior to natural ones if you just compare them taste wise with the natural store alternative. I am opposed to drenching the world in glyphosate, which is the main reason I oppose some of them. Others, like the GMO salmon that grow twice as fast, I'm only opposed to lax regulation because if it were possible for them to escape and breed in the wild it would wipe out natural populations.

Re:Unlikely.

[Rei]

Why on earth does a plant need to place all of that sugar and water to keep such tiny seeds fed to be able to grow?

To attract animals to eat the fruits and distribute the seeds. Duh. Yes, brix is a common measure of fruit quality, as consumers usually prefer higher brix fruits. But there's countless wild fruits that are higher brix than apples. Also, as a side note, but brix without corresponding TA often tastes bland or insipid.

Apples are not a particularly water-wasteful fruit to cultivate.

You're off the mark on this one. The big issue they need to tackle is the "picking fruit underripe so that it lasts long enough to distribute" issue. You actually do rob fruits of a lot of nutrients via picking underripe, and IMHO more seriously, rob them of their texture and flavour. Anyone who's ever compared a fully vine-ripened homegrown tomato (even of a common commercial hybrid cultivar) vs. a store tomato knows exactly what I'm talking about.

Also: it always seems weird to me that they see the need to modify existing fruits so heavily, when there's an endless array of other fruits out there that can be cultivated to add new taste/texture experiences to the market. Yesterday I had lucuma ice cream and a baobab milkshake, both delicious. I enjoy a bowl of acerola when I can get them. Always pick up some langsat when I get a chance, and love me some frozen jackfruit (although that one takes a couple tastes to acquire it). Oh, and don't even get me started on members of the mangosteen genus (Garcinia)! Oh great, now my mouth is watering... SO need to see if the asian food store near Hlemmur has some more mangosteens in stock...

Re:Unlikely.

[Rei]

Oooohh, annonas too! Cherimoya, sugar apple, guanabana, biribá.... *swoon*

Re:Unlikely.

[drinkypoo]

In theory they should be able to edit the flavor back into those pathetic tomatoes...

Re:Unlikely.

[Ol Olsoc]

What we need the government to start doing is evaluating goods based on their heath impact and how addictive they are and then place a tax on the food that will later be used to pay for the healthcare you'll need from consuming them.

Two problems with that. First is that we are pretty abysmal at determining what is healthy or what is not. The "healthy" eating habits of a few years back of heavy carbohydrate consumption with very low fat turned out to be not so healthy for people. I'm one of those people who have to limit my carb intake. That so called healthy diet is anything but to me. Tried a vegetarian routine, and screwed up my metabolism for over a year.

The second is that as long as there are people there will be people staking claim to what is healthy. And it will be different for each group. Ask a vegan.

Some might be restrictive in one thing or another, some might have a religious restriction, and some might be gastronomical Amish, making some sort of only food sources that were around when I was a child are acceptable eating concept.

Your idea of taxing according to health benefits or detriments just won't insure health.

Re: Unlikely.

[Ol Olsoc]

No need to ban GMO. Just clearly label it. No one will buy it, and the frankenfarmers will go out of business.

What is the definition of genetically modified?

I can't think of any thing that any one eats that is in it's pure original gene structure.

I suppose the closest we can get would be to subsist on algae. But that isn't very close.

Wheat, corn, soy have all been heavily modified. Some to the point where they cannot survive without human intervention.

You'll go off about gene spicing and microscopic manipulation. Problem is it's just the next step, moving a stage beyond the trial and error seed selection that selects for desirable traits. Both are genetic modification techniques.

Monsanto pulled a dick move with their Roundup Ready products, which only insure the combined problems of low level dosing of humans with herbicide and breeding superweeds.

But the mistake that anti-GM people make is trotting out a negative like Roundup Ready, and applying it to genetic modification performed for positive reasons, like nutrition, palatibility, harvest improvements and other aspects.

Finally, I present to you the Lenape potato. https://boingboing.net/2013/03... a beautiful potato created by genetic modification that people who are against genetic modification permit. A cross between Delta Gold Potatoes and a Peruvian potato, it was a thing of beauty. It was toxic.

Re: Unlikely.

[Ranbot]

No need to ban GMO. Just clearly label it. No one will buy it, and the frankenfarmers will go out of business.

We should also label all irradiated food, and all those atomic farmers will go out of business! https://www.fda.gov/food/resou...

Labels on foods without any scientific basis do nothing but scare ignorant people.

Re:Unlikely.

[DigiShaman]

What, you don't like bubblegum flavored grapes? Yeah, neither do I, but HEB sells them anyways. WTF, who's bright idea was that anyways??!

Re:Unlikely.

[apoc.famine]

I have fond memories of laying in a patch of cut grass at my grandparents' farm picking the tiny wild strawberries that grew there. They were intensely sweet like condensed strawberries, but only about the size of a pencil eraser. Too soft to do anything with but pick with child fingers and lick off the mushed flesh and sweet juice.

If that flavor could be put into a more solid berry of a reasonable size....that'd destroy the current strawberry market.

Re: Unlikely.

[astrofurter]

It's a little odd that GMO advocates are so opposed to people knowing how their food was produced. I wonder if they feel that people are too stupid to decide what they want to eat?

Re: Unlikely.

[bws111]

People are opposed to labeling because it is pointless. OK, you want to know how your food is produced. Big deal. Why stop at whether or not it is GMO? I want to know what companies produced the tractors that were used in the production of my food. I demand a label! I want to know what nationalities of the people who handle the food are. Label it! I want to know what wages are paid to the workers in the fields. Label it! I want to know who sold the seeds to the farmer. Label it! I could come up with many more examples of stupid things people might 'want to know', each as pointless as knowing if it is GMO.

Re:Unlikely.

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Tastes of fruit and vege have changed a lot over the decades. Thing is: consumers don't buy based on taste, they buy based on appearance and consistency. Hence rather than cool new fruit with mind-boggling flavours we get amazing looking tomatoes that bounce without bruising and taste like compressed cardboard and disappointment.

That is not true for everything. I'm American and I have always lived in places that didn't have much of an apple industry. As a kid, there were 3 types of apples that could be bought in grocery stores where I lived.
1) Red Delicious - which is never delicious but it is certainly red. It's awful all the time. It looks great and it always tastes like a mush.
2) Yellow Delicious - which is marginally better than Red Delicious in that it might actually be possible to find some that don't taste like mush, but most will taste like mush.
3) Granny Smith - these are almost always good and rarely have problems.
That was it. I never understood as a kid why people liked apples because other than Granny Smith, they were pretty bad all the time. And most people who said they liked apples ate those awful crimes against nature, Red Delicious.

So finally the US supermarkets starting carrying Gala and Fuji. Some were convinced that US customers would never buy them because they weren't of uniform color, but those guys are pretty good pretty much all the time and people did buy them. During apple season, I can go to Whole Foods and they'll have the 5 types I mentioned plus a few others like maybe Pink Lady. US consumers have shown that they will now buy apples based on taste and not just appearance, but it took a long time to get there. Even my local chain supermarket is now carrying heirloom tomatoes regularly so there is hope there too. Honestly, I hated tomatoes for most of my life because they were (and sometimes still are) awful tasting even though they look great. I tried a tomato in Eastern Europe over a decade ago and I was amazed at how flavorful it was so then I realized that tomatoes were like apples. It certainly was possible to grow really tasty ones but the supermarkets were only carrying the ones that shipped well and looked good regardless of taste. By the way, even in the US, cherry and grape tomatoes are really good everywhere and are safe bets if you want a tomato but don't want to gamble on a normal sized supermarket one.

Re:Unlikely.

[hey!]

On the ketchup thing, ketchup was originally (in the 17th century) a fermented fish sauce. In the 18th century the primary ingredient in ketchup was mushrooms. Tomato ketchup is relatively new, appearing in the 19th century.

The very history of tomato ketchup disproves the idea that people don't like change; the truth is people vary by the degree to which they seek out and enjoy novel experiences. But I think there's a kind of uncanny valley effect when something isn't quite different enough to seem new; rather it seems "not right". It'd be easier to get someone to like mushroom ketchup, which is brown, than tomato ketchup which was colored brown.

Re:Unlikely.

[avandesande]

Or maybe people think eating synthetic dye laden food is unhealthy

Re: Unlikely.

[lgw]

I'm perfectly happy with whatever regulations you want on "Organic" foods. Then you can have your first-world-problem food, and everyone else can get on with feeding billions.

Re:Unlikely.

[avandesande]

Have you ever had a hand picked Vermont McIntosh in Vermont? Everything else is like eating a piece of wood.

Re: Unlikely.

[astrofurter]

Excellent! I'm glad you have that freedom. I in turn would like the freedom not to buy frankenfoods. Cool?

Re:Unlikely.

[lgw]

A faaar better use would be to make healthy foods slightly more palatable without sacrificing it's high nutritional value. Sadly, I foresee this being used to make fruits far sweeter which would make them very unhealthy.

How about tomatoes that actually taste like tomatoes? That would be a treat.

What we need the government to start doing is evaluating goods based on their heath impact

The government has been wrong about roughly 100% of their dietary advice in the past. There's really no worse track record of any mix of science and government in American history, from irrational panics to blatant corruption (remember the food pyramid that was all about the bread?). You want more of such nonsense?

I have an alternative proposal: accept that freedom includes the right to make decision that you think are bad.

Re: Unlikely.

[astrofurter]

Okay, cool. Get movements going for all those things if they're really important to you. Right now most folks are concerned about frankenfoods, so that's the big focus for the rest of us.

Re: Unlikely.

[astrofurter]

:s/feeding/slowly poisoning/ FTFY

Re:Unlikely.

[Gilgaron]

Handpicked plenty but not that variety and not in Vermont, I'll take it under advisement! Also, I can recommend trying local varieties of fruit in general when traveling, there are mangos and others that won't survive shipping that are much better than the kinds you can get far away from where they are grown.

Re:Unlikely.

[thegarbz]

People don't like change or unexpected tastes.

People don't like change, but unexpected tastes are part of the great wonders of the world. You can see this in action down the road from me where a vinegar and oil shop sells these two very common products in literally hundreds of different flavours. We experiment with taste in every possible way. Next time you cook a stake before you throw it on the BBQ rub some coffee grinds on the outside. It's an unexpected and WONDERFUL flavour.

Re: Unlikely.

[bws111]

There are only two possible reasons for mandatory labelling of GMO foods. The first is health. GMO foods already are labelled with all the known health problems they cause (ie none). The other reason is nothing more than pure politics.

Re: Unlikely.

[bws111]

So use your brain and buy things are marked 'non-GMO' and assume that everything else is GMO. What's the problem?

Re:Unlikely.

[angel'o'sphere]

The only apple I like is an old german breed: Boskoop.
A little bit sour, but also sweet, nice flesh. Easy to store over a winter in a cellar.

Re: Unlikely.

[astrofurter]

Why are you so afraid of the public knowing what they're buying?

Re:Unlikely.

[thelUrk]

... it will be different for each group. Ask a vegan.

Yeah, somehow I never get the chance to ask before they start telling me all about it anyway. ;)

Re: Unlikely.

[lgw]

"GMOs are poison" is equivalent to "Vaccinates cause autism" on the sanity scale. Just so you know.

Re:Unlikely.

[HeckRuler]

. . . Feeding more people?

Nations would have starved without dwarf wheat. That's not "GMO", but the idea is the same. We can do better.

Ask yourself if "There is no reason to reinvent computers" makes sense, then come back to the conversation.

Re: Unlikely.

[Ranbot]

It's a little odd that GMO advocates are so opposed to people knowing how their food was produced.

I wonder if they feel that people are too stupid to decide what they want to eat?

It's not that people are stupid, but they are ignorant. A generic label doesn't teach people anything that will fix their ignorance. When people make choices from a state of ignorance they often unwittingly do more harm to themselves and others.

Ignorance is like being blindfolded. Being blindfolded does not make one stupid, but it does make moving around more risky. Placing labels on things around a blindfolded person does not help.

Re: Unlikely.

[dasunt]

It's a little odd that GMO advocates are so opposed to people knowing how their food was produced. I wonder if they feel that people are too stupid to decide what they want to eat?

Why not a label on foods that were developed through exposing plants to dna-damaging radiation and chemicals?

By some counts, thousands of strains were developed this way, including quite popular varieties (such as ruby red grapefruit).

Or how about a label on organic foods informing consumers that pesticides are used on organic crops?

Where do you stop?

Re:Unlikely.

[lexman098]

place a tax

later used to pay for healthcare

If only the government could execute on that instead of just lowering taxes elsewhere.

Re:Unlikely.

[Ol Olsoc]

Listen, just shut up and support my bid to end heroin addiction by taxing heroin addicts.

Yikes!

Re:Unlikely.

[Ol Olsoc]

... it will be different for each group. Ask a vegan.

Yeah, somehow I never get the chance to ask before they start telling me all about it anyway. ;)

Oh hell! Please everyone!! That is some bad advice I gave there. Dont ask a vegan! Good catch there theUrk, The stories I could tell about my dealings with vegans on campus, like the one that managed to destroy the group's socializing because of constant interrogation of the managers and the cooks of every restaurant we went to - for an hour lunch, we had to put up with her grilling of the managers for half an hour, then the glares and stardowns of us corpse eating troglodytes. The guys said they weren't going to go out to eat with a person that treated them like the enemy, and the ladies didn't want to upset the woman, so that killed it.

She eventually left. I organized a going away party for her. The day after she left town. The menu was bacon Cheezburgers, and cheezfries. Everyone attended. Everyone had a good time.

Then there was the obnoxious vegan who wasn't quite as bad as the first one, but still demanded to sit in judgement. She was going on one day about how much she loved Jell-O. I took great pleasure in informing her that Jell-O was made from Gelatin, obtained by boiling down bones of animals. She got a little sick. She thought it was made from seaweed.

The one exception was a woman who was a fruitarian. Man talk about a restrictive diet. But she was a sweetheart, and didn't even bother with being superior. Never mentioned it until we noted she was always eating fruit.

Re: Unlikely.

[c6gunner]

Why are you so afraid of having to buy stuff labeled "non-gmo"?

Re: Unlikely.

[c6gunner]

In some cases it's ignorance; in many cases it's wilful ignorance which is indistinguishable from stupidity. You can spend all day explaining to these people that all food has been genetically modified to some extent, that genetic engineering is generally far safer than cross breeding or mutagenesis, and that "organic" doesn't mean safe or pesticide free ... and after all that most of them will still say "well, I just want my food to be natural".

That's not just ignorance.

Re: Unlikely.

[c6gunner]

Well let's give it a try and see what happens.

California happens.

Re: Unlikely.

[astrofurter]

"genetic engineering is generally far safer than cross breeding or mutagenesis"

Wow. Do you also believe drinking motor oil is safer than drinking water?

Re:Unlikely.

[drinkypoo]

We sometimes grow these little tomatoes shaped like miniature pears, or little light bulbs. Supposedly they're called "yellow pear heirloom cherry tomatoes". They are great, especially since they're less acid than most red tomatoes. The gold nugget cherry tomatoes are similar.

Re: Unlikely.

[astrofurter]

Food should not be poisonous by default.

You know what, fuck moderation, fuck labelling. Let's just ban this nasty shit. No one with their head screwed on straight wants GMO food. It's an unacceptable risk to the public health and to the environment.

If you really do want to eat some frankenfoods, you can always go to a third-world country where the state is too corrupt to ensure a safe food supply. I'm sure East Buttfuckistan will have *lots* of GMO food tourism. They probably have delicious, "totally safe" arsenic-laced water too.

Re: Unlikely.

[drinkypoo]

I could come up with many more examples of stupid things people might 'want to know', each as pointless as knowing if it is GMO.

I could come up with more examples of things people legitimately might want to know on their food packaging, like country of origin for each ingredient. These days, there is no excuse for not including that kind of information; information technology is more than sufficient to track it, and manage creation of label content. I could also come up with a bunch of bullshit examples like you did, but that would be a jerkoff waste of time.

Re: Unlikely.

[astrofurter]

Nah, changed my mind after talking here. GMO advocates are unreasonable, misleading, and argue in bad faith.

I say we do the prudent, small-c conservative thing: ban all frankenfoods. No one wants them. They pose a totally unacceptable risk to public health and the environment. We need to put people first, corporate profits second.

Even GMO advocates know they are selling poison. That's why they are so very intent on keeping the public in the dark about what's in their food.

Re: Unlikely.

[c6gunner]

No; that's the kind of thing I would believe if I were an ignorant moron. You know, the kind of nitwit who thinks that a handful of engineered mutations are inherently more dangerous than a metric shitload of random mutations.

Re: Unlikely.

[c6gunner]

If you're the kind of idiot who equates genetic engineering with poison, there's clearly not much anyone can say to get through to you. Just like the idiots who think WiFi causes cancer aren't going to be convinced by any rational argument.

Re: Unlikely.

[c6gunner]

These days, there is no excuse for not including that kind of information; information technology is more than sufficient to track it, and manage creation of label content

It not about information technology, it's about logistics. Let's take corn as an example, and let's assume we have four categories we care about: culinary type, location grown, genetically engineered or not, pesticides used or not. Assuming each of those is binary, you now need at least 16 different collection/storage points. You need to load them on separate trucks. You need 16 different shelves for them in stores. Restaurants have to be careful not to mix types. Processed food producers have to do the same.

It gets worse, though, because some of the categories aren't binary. You might have corn from 4 different countries. Now you potentially need 32 separate shelves/storage locations. And why stop at country of origin? Maybe people want to know which state the corn was grown in. How many shelves you think that will need?

Pesticide use, likewise, is not necessarily binary. There are many different types of pesticides. Don't consumers want to know which TYPE of pesticide was used? Go ahead and add another layer of segregation.

The more of your absurd labeling requirements you demand be fulfilled, the more difficult and costly the logistics become. You've successfully created 100+ different types of sweet corn which all look the same, taste the same, have essentially the same nutritional content, and pose the same amount of "risk" to the consumer, but which you want to keep separate because reasons. You've increase cost and complexity with absolutely zero benefit to anyone. Now go ahead and do that for every other food item.

It's about as rational as a little kid demanding that the peas on his plate not touch his carrots ... except at least the kid isn't going to drive up the cost of food for everyone.

Re: Unlikely.

[angel'o'sphere]

I want to know what companies produced the tractors that were used in the production of my food.
And how is that relevant for the contents of your food?

I demand a label! I want to know what nationalities of the people who handle the food are. Label it!
And how is that relevant for the contents of your food?

Re: Unlikely.

[angel'o'sphere]

The other reason is nothing more than pure politics.
The other reason: I want to be able to vote with my valet

If you prevent labels you restrict my freedom to buy what I want. And why would you do that? What is your agenda?

Re: Unlikely.

[angel'o'sphere]

You need 16 different shelves for them in stores.
Why would you need that?

Wine is sorted by country of origin, usually split up into continent and then ordered by alphabetical by country. And in the country subsection by region. If it is "bio" or not is all on the label. And bottom line everything is on the label: winery, grape, year of production, year of resting, kind of barrel, bio or not, alcohol amount, best served temperature, hint of meals.

WTF is wrong with you? That can be done with every kind of food. No special truck, delivery or shelf needed.

100+ different types of sweet corn which all look the same, taste the same, have essentially the same nutritional content, and pose the same amount of "risk" to the consumer, but which you want to keep separate because reasons.
How would that be the case, unless everyone is farming it from the same kind of seed and has the same soil ... and if it is dangerous for me to eat a corn that contains a kelp protein or a chicken protein: YOU don't know!

Re: Unlikely.

[angel'o'sphere]

"GMOs are poison" is equivalent to ...
Scientists disagree ...

https://www.gmwatch.org/en/new...

How do you come to the idea that maize that deliberately was changed to produce pesticides in its skin is not poisonous

Re: Unlikely.

[angel'o'sphere]

Genetic engineering is not a mutation.
It is something completely different.
It is adding or removing a gene or many genes.
A random mutation *changes* an existing gene.
You have no clue about what you are talking.

And all the GMO trouble would be no trouble if:
a) the industry would stop lying so that people like you get a clue
b) people like you actually would be _forced_ to take a reasonable amount of biology in school

c) it was labeled

What the funk do you lose if it is labeled? Nothing. I don't care that you are to stupid for a) and b) but denying me my right of c), that is idiotic. You have no advantage from that. It is just pure evilness.You do it "just because" for absolutely no rational reason.

Re: Unlikely.

[bws111]

This is exactly the sort of idiocy we have all come to expect from the anti-GMO nuts, You didn't disappoint.

Did you know that onions are poisonous!? How do I know? Because dogs that eat even a very small amount of onion can become seriously ill.

On the other hand, did you know that PCBs are not poisonous!? How do I know? There are bacteria that can eat them.

Oh, wait! Maybe the toxicity of something to ONE organism has nothing to do with the toxicity to a DIFFERENT organism! Nah, can't be.

Are you seriously unaware that EVERY plant, 100% of them, produces multiple pesticides? What other defense to you think plants have against pests? Of course, not every plant produces every pesticide which is why some pests target one plant and other pests target a different plant. Oops, there's that 'toxic to one does not mean toxic to all' thing again.

Re: Unlikely.

[c6gunner]

Genetic engineering is not a mutation.
It is something completely different.
It is adding or removing a gene or many genes.

aka Mutation

noun: mutation; plural noun: mutations
1. the action or process of mutating.
2. the changing of the structure of a gene, resulting in a variant form that may be transmitted to subsequent generations, caused by the alteration of single base units in DNA, or the deletion, insertion, or rearrangement of larger sections of genes or chromosomes.

A random mutation *changes* an existing gene.

Gene sequence 1: TTGCGATCCGGGAACTCCT
Gene sequence 2: TTGCGATCAAAGAACTCCT

Did I change the gene, or did I add and remove stuff from it, Einstein?

You have no clue about what you are talking.

Mr. Dick T. O'nary disagrees.

And all the GMO trouble would be no trouble if:
a) the industry would stop lying so that people like you get a clue

Heh. Yeah, those fuckers at Miriam Webster and their goddamn lies ...

b) people like you actually would be _forced_ to take a reasonable amount of biology in school

I would hate to have gone to your school ...

Then again I suspect you slept through the classes you were forced to take, so maybe the school wasn't to blame ...

c) it was labeled

What the funk do you lose if it is labeled?

Money and sanity.

I don't care that you are to stupid for a) and b) but denying me my right of c), that is idiotic.

I agree that you have the right to be an idiot, but I'm not sure why you think that gives you the right to force people to do what you want. Be a good little retard and just buy the stuff that says "Non-GMO" on it.

You have no advantage from that. It is just pure evilness.You do it "just because" for absolutely no rational reason.

I do it for the same reason that I won't put "liquid autism" on vaccines or "eeevil cancer" on cell phones. Because I don't like the idea of humouring morons even in day-to-day conversation, let alone when it involves wasting money and creating unnecessary hurdles for business.

Re: Unlikely.

[bws111]

It isn't relevant, just like whether or not something is GMO. That is the point.

'GMO' by itself means absolutely nothing other than 'this item has some different genes than other similar items'. Well guess what. Unless you are eating cloned food (like bananas), EVERY item of food has some genetic difference than similar items. You did learn about that in school, right? And aside from the sexual reproduction stuff, there can be further mutations from things like sunlight and gamma rays. The only difference between 'GMO' and 'non-GMO' is that someone INTENTIONALLY modified a SPECIFIC gene to produce a specific result instead of chance modifying genes to produce an unknown result. Exactly WHY is that worthy of a label?

Re: Unlikely.

[bws111]

Jeez you are stupid. If mutation is only *changing* an existing gene, how did we (well, most of us, maybe not you) come to be different than plankton? That must have been some fucking great biology course you had.

Re: Unlikely.

[angel'o'sphere]

You are simply an idiot.
I suggest to read a book about GMO "problems".

And as long as you are pro GMO, what the fuck is your agenda preventing proper labeling? If everything is so harmless, why are you against labels?

Are you seriously unaware that EVERY plant, 100% of them, produces multiple pesticides?
Why do you claim such nonsense? Oh, the nonsense is: you claim I'm unaware.
Hint, you stupid moron: it is a difference if a plant produces so much pesticides that a bug will fly away and settle on another plant or: kills a rat, or causes caner in humans. Can't be so hard to grasp

Re: Unlikely.

[bws111]

Read a book on GMO "problems"? Nah, I prefer non-fiction to fantasy.

I have no agenda against proper labeling. I am all for proper labeling. A proper label is one that either prevents fraud (weights, ingredients), provides actual scientifically based information that is important for consumers (nutritional info), or warns of actual problems (allergies, etc). GMO labels do none of that. An improper label is one that serves no purpose other than to promote a political agenda by exploiting ignorance. That is a GMO label.

There are no GMO crops that are causing cancer in humans, so what is your point?

Re: Unlikely.

[c6gunner]

If you're comparing bottles of wine to corn, you're a special kind of ignorant.

Re: Unlikely.

[PixetaledPikachu]

No need to ban GMO. Just clearly label it. No one will buy it, and the frankenfarmers will go out of business.

Where I live, pictures of mutilated body parts are plastered all over cigarette pack. It still sells like crazy.

Re: Unlikely.

[bws111]

But a 'GMO' label would provide no such useful information. Some genetic modifications may produce a specific protein, other modifications won't.

If it is important to know whether or not a specific protein is in a food, then it does not matter in the slightest how that protein got there. So again, just labeling something as 'GMO' says absolutely nothing useful. The only possible reasons to label something as 'GMO' is to humor idiots, or to attempt to confuse and/or alarm others (see the 'everything on the face of the eath is known to the State of California to cause cancer' labels for an example of such idiotic labeling).

Re: Unlikely.

[angel'o'sphere]

So, you need several shelfs to sell corn?
Well, here no one sells corn or buys corn in supermarkets ... so consider me ignorant :)

Re: Unlikely.

[angel'o'sphere]

Perhaps you want to look up how the so called golden rice was produced, Hawkins.
Then you will realize that there is no way in producing that with mutations, Idiot.

I call younan idiot, because there is no food labeled 'non GML,' why the funk would one label the obvious and why the funk are you against labeling the non obvious?

Is your fruit juice labled: 'contains no alcohol?' Is your beer labled with 'confains x%' alcohol?

Again: stuff that does not concern you, you should simply keep your opinion to your self. You cause harm to others by not labeling 'whatever', and you have no gain from it. So why the funk do you want to make other peoples live miserable when it costs you nothing and gains you nothing? The simple answer is: you are an a.....

I hope you are not.

Re: Unlikely.

[angel'o'sphere]

No, no one modified a gene in GMO food.
They add genes, artificially.
Usually from other speciems and often from the other realm, like animal into plants ...

Re: Unlikely.

[angel'o'sphere]

By evolution, not by mutating an existing gene.
Perhaps you might want to look up what a gene is ... and how likely it that mutations result in a useful gene ... good luck.

Re: Unlikely.

[angel'o'sphere]

GMO labels inform the customer that a certain item contains GMOed food.
It is as simple as that.
If you are against it, you are restricting customers to make informed choices :)
Which means: you are an asshole. No labels gain you nothing, labels don't make you lose anything. It is a zero sum game for you. But you want to impose your world view on others, hence: you are an asshole.
I assume most assholes can live with the fact that they are assholes easily.

Failure

[RhettLivingston]

If the change has to be something that could be achieved through breeding, there is no improvement worth making. It will still be a plant and will never achieve the ultimate goal of creating a slig that can take all of my organic garbage in one end and allow fresh pork butt to be sliced off the other forever and ever.

Re: Failure

[Rei]

What about a sleevewarmerdog?

Just say NO

[Anonymous Coward]

To GMO.

Re: Just say NO

[Applehu Akbar]

Wookiefoot made a great song on this "no more junk in my food"
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=...

Sample of lyrics:
Then monsanto owned the farms gm gm gmo and on that farm he had a plant that won't produce a seed monopolize everything that grow....

This is an example of what anti-science liberals call a research study.

FruitS?

[AbRASiON]

Sorry, what?

Re:creimer is fat and a gay! Everybody say 'Yay!'

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you would have nothing to complain about.

Don't care if it is labelled

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care how badly they mutilate the fruits and veggies JUST SO LONG AS THEY ARE LABELLED AS GMO. Let the market sort it out. What are the corporations hiding that they would fight tooth and nail against labels? Don't people have a simple right to know what they are buying and eating?

Re:Don't care if it is labelled

[Anonymous Coward]

personally I don't care one way or the other, I will eat whatever tastes best. But the reality is plenty of uneducated and illogical people associate GMO as something bad. If we want the human race to survive then the success of GMO produce is essential. Even here on a supposed forum for people that generally like science and advancement you will find Luddites that associate GMO as bad or against god or whatever the fuck they have in their warped little reality.

Re:Don't care if it is labelled

[gravewax]

why? most of what you eat has been genetically modified by humans, either through selective breeding for animals or crops, very few things we eat today are in the state they existed when discovered. The only difference with this particular method is it is faster and less error prone. So really almost everything should be labelled as GMO.

Re:Don't care if it is labelled

[Aighearach]

For the reason of having choice, that's all you have to worry about. We're asking for information so we can choose, we're not inviting you to try to choose for us, or to tell us you disagree with our choices. We might also disagree with your choices.

Re: Don't care if it is labelled

[c6gunner]

I used to be opposed to idiotic labels like those, until I realised that they'll have the exact opposite effect of what the fearmongers want. "GMO" labels will eventually turn out the same as California's "everything causes cancer" labels. It's going to reach such heights of absurdity that people will completely ignore them.

I think the "organic" shills realise this to some extent which is why they've intentionally avoided labeling things like cheese and insulin. My bet is they're trying to walk a thin line, steering people into buying overprices fruits and veggies while not overwhelming them by labeling products with which they can't compete. It's a losing proposition in the long run, though.

Re:Don't care if it is labelled

[gravewax]

choice for what? if you label all the stuff that is GMO just about everything will have a label on it. your choice will be starve or eat GMO.

Re: Don't care if it is labelled

[astrofurter]

"Then about 25 years ago, direct ways to add and edit specific genes into food-producing plants began to be used." Yeah. That's what we want labelled. The public has a right to know what they're eating.

Re: Don't care if it is labelled

[astrofurter]

"everything should be labelled as GMO" You don't *really* believe that, do you? I mean I've heard of willful misunderstanding, but c'mon...

Re: Don't care if it is labelled

[c6gunner]

For the reason of having choice, that's all you have to worry about.

That's idiotic. Your "I want choice" can be used as an argument for absolutely anything.

"I want to know all of the produce which was picked by left handed redheads"

"Why?"

"Because I want choice, that's all you have to worry about."

Yeah, OK. I'll get around to that just as soon as I finish labeling all the stuff that was touched by black people. The KKK wants choice too.

Re: Don't care if it is labelled

[skoskav]

That's what makes the labeling arbitrary. Labeling mutation breeding or hybridization is never brought up, which is arguably less predictable and safe, presumably because people would realize that everything they eat, including their favorite brands, has been substantially mutated from their "natural" state.

Unjustifiably labeling GMO can sway uninformed people into incorrect assumptions, such as equating it to dangerous products and ingredients that are also labeled in many countries, like tobacco, alcohol and allergens.

Re:Don't care if it is labelled

[Applehu Akbar]

Why not have a designated religious process area on food labels? That's where we would indicate halal, kosher, No GMO, etc. Nutrition labels list ingredients, and GMO is not an ingredient.

Re: Don't care if it is labelled

[skoskav]

It depends on the definition of GMO. Pretty much every organism grown since agriculture became a thing has been substantially artificially modified genetically by humans. However, the typical meaning of GMO is reserved for the more accurate gene editing techniques that became popular a few decades ago.

Re: Don't care if it is labelled

[astrofurter]

Mutation breeding should probably be labelled too. The public has a right to know how their food was produced.

Re:Don't care if it is labelled

[cascadingstylesheet]

What are the corporations hiding that they would fight tooth and nail against labels?

Why does it have to be nefarious? They fight anything that would hurt sales.

Ignorant people don't want to buy GMO food, so labeling would hurt sales (even though it shouldn't).

Re:Don't care if it is labelled

[cascadingstylesheet]

For the reason of having choice, that's all you have to worry about. We're asking for information so we can choose, we're not inviting you to try to choose for us, or to tell us you disagree with our choices. We might also disagree with your choices.

Why stop there? Why not label all sorts of other random arbitrary things?

Would you like the book shrink wrapped to the product packaging?

Or would you like a scan thingie so you can download the book (that might be the best solution)?

Re:Don't care if it is labelled

[Rei]

Also, where should the labels stop? "Cultivated in a field fertilized with slaughterhouse waste"? "Handled by a snotty teenager with a cold"?

Not that I'd complain having a full traceable history logged to ids in the packaging or crates (NFC / RFID / QR / etc, depending on the exact implementation details) ;) Bunch of log records like "X cultivar was planted at Y location on Z day... products A and B were applied on day C.... " etc, where everything is hyperlinked to learn more about it.

Re:Don't care if it is labelled

[drinkypoo]

GM is substantively different from breeding because it permits changes not possible in any other way. Where the changes would be possible with selective breeding, you're right. But that is not the only kind of GM.

Re: Don't care if it is labelled

[astrofurter]

See above: "Then about a century ago, scientists began with mutation breeding by applying mutation-inducing radiation and chemicals to speed up the process significantly."

Re:Don't care if it is labelled

[drinkypoo]

choice for what? if you label all the stuff that is GMO just about everything will have a label on it.

Just about, but not everything. It would cost literally $0 more, because everything is already labeled. The produce PLU codes could reflect the GMO status, so you wouldn't have to add the letters "GMO" anywhere and you could still get the point across. Packaged foods already have high packaging costs and lots of room, so it's not any kind of problem there either.

your choice will be starve or eat GMO.

No, that's patently false. The truth is that if they labeled all the GMO things as GMO, less people would buy those things, and less GMO crops would be produced as a result due to the lower demand. People who were trying to avoid GMO foods would have a hard time for a little while, and have to restrict their diets, but that would have an effect on the market.

If GMO is as popular with consumers as you think it is, then the effect would be small, and it wouldn't affect you. So what are you bitching about?

Re:Don't care if it is labelled

[thegarbz]

What are the corporations hiding that they would fight tooth and nail against labels?

Evidence that consumers are incredibly stupid and jump onto tinfoil hattery like GMO = bad. There's a shitton of products at a supermarket that could use some very big warning labels. GMO fruit isn't one of them.

Re: Don't care if it is labelled

[thegarbz]

The public has a right to know what they're eating.

Son, the public hasn't had a frigging clue what they have been eating since the 50s.

Re: Don't care if it is labelled

[astrofurter]

Yup. Time to change that, eh?

Re:Don't care if it is labelled

[HeckRuler]

There's a legitimate concern about the scope of what could have changed.

Natural selection has made some fascinating things (I'm looking at you baby, *cheesy smiley and finger-guns*), and unnatural selection like cultivation and domestication have made for more useful foods (and kinda freaky dogs). But the scope of what's possible with this method is known and constrained. Most variety happens with crossover, there's only so much mutation and what you get is typically small. If it's too large, the offspring is non-viable. So developing dwarf-wheat (which has fed BILLIONS) had to be done with baby-steps and lots of generations. Genetic engineering with techniques like CRISPR opens up the search space of what's possible. You could shoe-horn in psychedelic mushrooms into mosquito. You could put spider silk glands into goats and cows. You could put venomous snakes into wheat. Now all the idiots out there have mental images of a snake's head popping out of a muffin and biting them. That sort of hyperbole is crazy. Nobody is trying to do those crazy things and poison you. Other than the spider-goats, that's a real thing. But the companies doing this are typically just trying to make a cheaper, better, more profitable product. The concern is that there are unintended side-effects.

The better we get at genetic engineering, the more we should treat GMOs like drugs rather than food.

and less error prone

Haha, whoa, wut?

Just because we're better at changing things genes doesn't mean the error rate goes down. No, now we can make mistakes at twice the speed! And rather than seg-faults simply crashing the program, now we can get cross-site scripting attacks.

So really almost everything should be labelled as GMO.

Yeah, the labeling is almost moot. There's going to be a REAL blurry line. And whatever they settle on is probably going to make as much sense as "organic" salt.

Re: Don't care if it is labelled

[HeckRuler]

God DAMNIT, I'm trying to eat healthy. This sorta shit isn't helping.

Re: Don't care if it is labelled

[HeckRuler]

Says the anonymous coward. Come on, why don't you use your username? It's like your hiding something....

But everyone in the conversation should be aware that there are PR campaigns by both sides of the debate, and likely shills and pseudo shills polluting the conversation. Along with plenty of idiots that are just plain scared of any new technology and perfectly knowledgable people legitimatly scared of this specific technology.

There's plenty to be skeptic of when it comes to "We want GMO labels on our food". Mostly because those asking for it have zero clue what "GMO" means. You're asking for black and white, when there's about 7 different shades of green. Take the "organic" label for example. What a clusterfuck. There's "organic salt". And there's plenty of reason to dislike organic food (And by association, those who buy it and demanded an organic lable). It's wasteful and can't sustain the world. "Rich people food". Then again, by association, the GMO crowd has a few black marks. Monsanto is a pretty good poster-child for evil dystopian cyberpunk megacorp. There's big money involved, I'd hardly expect anything else.

Anyway, what would the criteria be for something to be allowed to have non-GMO label?

Re: Don't care if it is labelled

[c6gunner]

I do not see how GMO labeling is an exception, especially when it has 89% of the US population's support.

Because it doesn't tell you anything, and the way that it's proponents want it applied is irrational and inconsistent. "Genetically modified" applies to every single thing we eat, so only labeling a subset of those foods is idiotic. If they changed it to "genetically engineered" you might have a better case but, then, again, they want it applied inconsistently. If you buy sugar from a genetically engineered plant it's not "genetically engineered sugar", it's just sugar, yet they want it labeled. Likewise if you buy cheese it's not " genetically engineered cheese" despite the fact that genetically engineered bacteria are used in pretty much all cheese production ... yet, in that case, the "label it" crowd don't want it labeled.

This kind of muddled reasoning just can't be compared with the reasoning behind things like ingredients lists and nutritional information. Those kinds of labels are applied consistently and tell you something useful. "GMO" is nebulous, meaningless, inconsistently applied, and tells you absolutely nothing about the product.

Lastly, "89% of people want it" is a silly argument. The organic industry has spent enormous sums of time and money convincing people to be afraid of this stuff; of course a lot of people will answer "yes" to the labeling question. But if you asked most people whether they wanted labels on food mutated via radiation and chemical baths, what percentage do you imagine would want it? You know full well that it would be even higher. Yet I don't see anyone asking for those labels. Why do you imagine that might be?

Re: Don't care if it is labelled

[Aighearach]

For the reason of having choice, that's all you have to worry about.

That's idiotic. Your "I want choice" can be used as an argument for absolutely anything.

Right, exactly, freedoms are always like that! You don't need to worry about if I'm making good choices or not.

You call freedom idiotic, I call it freedom.

Re: Don't care if it is labelled

[Aighearach]

Ever hear of a "farmer's market?"

Also, in Tokyo you can buy lettuce grown indoors, in a highrise building, right in town. Grown with LED lights. And picked by local workers. They're Japanese, they probably washed their hands even if they didn't work in an urban farm. ;)

Knowledge leads to choices, it doesn't lead to "golly everything is the same." Duh.

Re:Don't care if it is labelled

[Aighearach]

When you figure the difference between a label that tells you about things, and a label that is placed on things, then we can talk policy.

Right now, your grammar isn't narrowly defined enough to enter the conversation at the level of detail that your nouns and verbs call for.

Re:Don't care if it is labelled

[strikethree]

most of what you eat has been genetically modified by humans, either through selective breeding for animals or crops, very few things we eat today are in the state they existed when discovered. The only difference with this particular method is it is faster and less error prone.

Are you trying to say that directly editing genes is as safe as coercing already existing genes into new configurations?

As far as I can tell, I am not overly freaked out by editing genes. I am actually somewhat interested in trying my own hand at it. The way you present the risks seems disingenuous to me. This is especially true since we do not have a full map of how genes work.

Re: Don't care if it is labelled

[c6gunner]

Knowledge leads to choices, it doesn't lead to "golly everything is the same." Duh.

The phenomenon of overchoice occurs when many equivalent choices are available. Making a decision becomes overwhelming due to the many potential outcomes and risks that may result from making the wrong choice. Having too many approximately equally good options is mentally draining because each option must be weighed against alternatives to select the best one. The satisfaction of choices by number of options available can be described by an inverted "U" model. In this model, having no choice results in very low satisfaction. Initially more choices lead to more satisfaction, but as the number of choices increases it then peaks and people tend to feel more pressure, confusion, and potentially dissatisfaction with their choice. Although larger choice sets can be initially appealing, smaller choice sets lead to increased satisfaction and reduced regret.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

Re: Don't care if it is labelled

[c6gunner]

No, it's not "freedom" for you to make others do what you want. That's called slavery.

You want to eat only organic pesticide free food picked by a blond haired Norwegian virgin during a full moon? You go right ahead. You have the freedom to do so. But the moment you insist that everyone else has to label the goods they sell in order to make your delusional desires easier, you are no longer advocating freedom; you are a tyrant trying to force your will on others.

Re: Don't care if it is labelled

[Aighearach]

Believing I have too many choices doesn't tell if you anything about how many choices I have. That's up to me.

Interesting...

[VeryFluffyBunny]

I think the most appropriate objection to GMOs is that Monsanto (now Bayer) uses them to lock farmers into hyper-exploitative contracts and uses heavy-handed legal tactics to enforce them, leading to collateral damage (farmers being wrongly sued for using unlicensed seeds) and suicide by farmers crumpling under the pressures exerted by Monsanto/Bayer.

On the GMO topic per se, I'm with the large number of scientists who can't see anything wrong with it. Gene splicing and editing are just new and different ways of doing what we've always done with crops. With technological developments like these, I think we're due for a review of our agricultural policies and laws but in the public interest, i.e. no corporate and lobby money allowed. But I guess that's just a pipe-dream.

Re:Interesting...

[tquasar]

Roundup-Ready crops were designed to survive being sprayed with glyphosate and farmers were tied to buying seed from Monsanto. Farmers used to save seed from one crop to plant the next growing season. Use the Google. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... https://www.organicconsumers.o...

Re: Interesting...

[skoskav]

Thank you for helping debunk these persistent myths about Monsanto suing and exploiting farmers. I'm so tired of those uninformed arguments.

Re:Interesting...

[DRJlaw]

leading to collateral damage (farmers being wrongly sued for using unlicensed seeds)

Define "wongly" and, more pointedly, name one. Include the court and case number if you have it.

Re:Interesting...

[skoskav]

You need to be more skeptical of your source (organicconsumers.org) as the author has a clear bias to promote woo, being a osteopath, which is the non-science based art of bone-cracking and mixing in homeopathy instead of medicine. Why this self-proclaimed doctor is talking about agriculture and ecology is anyone's guess.

Before glyphosate-resistant crops farmers still generally bought seeds each season. Since about a century back, crops meant for commercial consumption have come from hybrid seeds. Hybrid seeds produce undesirable offspring. If you took, say, a Granny Smith apple and planted its seeds, the resulting trees would all produce different kinds of apples, none of which would taste or look like a Granny Smith.

Re:Interesting...

[skoskav]

My intention by bringing up apples was that Granny Smith is a household-name hybrid that can't be grown from its own seeds. Whether it was re-hybridized from the same parents or continuously grafted into new trees is beside the point, though I can see how it adds unnecessary complexity to my point.

The majority of corn are hybrids that come from inbred parents, according to this seed grower: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (2:30 min video -- How Are Corn Hybrids Created). This will of course vary between countries and type of crop. Do you have any source that specifically corn seed are typically re-grown from the current crop?

Also, I don't think Monsanto has sold any sterile seeds. They're all probably hybrids though -- meaning that their seeds won't be anything like their parent (again, see my Granny Smith comparison), but hybridization is much older than modern GMO techniques and Monsanto. If you don't like sterile seeds though, you should avoid commercial bananas. In spite of how phallic they look, they're incapable of naturally breeding.

Re: Interesting...

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Yeah, what the AC just said. Please make your points relevant to what I wrote.

Re:Interesting...

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Thanks AC :) Looks like we've got a few Monsanto/Bayer astro-turfers among us.

@DRJlaw, "court and case number"? Seriously? And why not transcripts and the judge's middle name(s) and favourite colour, while you're asking?

Re: Interesting...

[skoskav]

And this is the problem.

In the future I can see it now. You can only buy seeds from monsato if you want to grow anything.

This doesn't seem to relate to GMO technology anymore, it's just your opinions on market economy. Monsanto hasn't held the patent to glyphosate for nearly two decades, nor it's resistant seeds. They're also far from the only biotech and seed-producing company. Even if they somehow started approaching a monopoly, regulatory agencies in every market should prevent them from anti-competitive practices.

As for the farmers being wrongfully sued. That was true. Google it. Farmers who weren't even using Monsanto seeds got sued because neighboring crops had their seeds spread to neighboring lands.

It's a mess. You shouldn't need anything special from a corporation to grow things. The fact that if I buy seeds from monsato then I have to also buy their fertilizer or my seeds won't grow. That's bullshit. You should not be able to patent food.

You are far from the first Monsanto opponent I've come across, and almost like clockwork do these really old debunked myths pop up about suing farmers for wind-blown contamination. See this NPR article, Myth 2: https://www.npr.org/sections/t...

Also, do you have any source that Monsanto requires a specific fertilizer to grow their crops? You're not confusing fertilizer with pesticide, are you? Because it sounds to me like you're just making it up.

Re:Interesting...

[skoskav]

You never defined "wrongly" though. You just threw that out there to let others do your research. In that court case, Bowman lost in the District, Federal and Supreme Court. What makes them all "wrong" to you?

You also shouldn't assume that anyone criticizing your arguments are astroturfers. It's an ad hominem that borders on conspiratorial thinking, and isn't conducive to a constructive debate.

Re: Interesting...

[c6gunner]

Uh, I did address everything you said, its the AC idiot responding to me who appears not to have read what I said. He repeats all the same shit you did:

Monsanto do prosecute innocent farmers

No they don't.

and farmer suicides have been increasing dramatically

No, they haven't.

especially among those with onerous contracts with companies like Monsanto.

Again, not true no matter how many times you repeat the lie.

The only people who make money out of growing our food these days don't work on farms.

Again, complete bullshit. I live next door to a farmer who makes very good money "growing our food". And no, it's not fucking organic. I get my roundup from him since he can get it cheaper.

People like you and the AC are just repeating lies you've never thought to question, and when anyone disagrees with you you either double down, or you pull the "hurr durr you're not addressing what I said" routine. That's silly. Why would you get defensive about things you clearly don't care enough about to verify?

Re:Interesting...

[DRJlaw]

Seriously? And why not transcripts and the judge's middle name(s) and favourite colour, while you're asking?

Because that is the way that you identify a legal case so that someone can locate the decision and the reported facts.

Because I wanted to confirm my belief that he was referring to Schmeiser.

Schmeiser - the farmer who intentionally bombed the perimeter of his field with Roundup to select for the "wind-blown" contamination, intentionally grew the surviving Roundup-ready plants to maturity, intentionally harvested the Round-up ready seeds, and intentionally planted the Round-up ready seeds the following year as his entire crop.

This was not "my crop was contaminatined by a small percentage of Roundup-ready plants and Monsanto bullied me into paying royalties." This was "if I don't sign a contract with Monsanto I think that I'm home free to do whatever the hell I want, patent be damned." Which was not "wrongly" punished by Monsanto.

Instead he was referring to Bowman.

Bowman - the farmer who bought Roundup-ready seeds for his first crop under contract to Monsanto, harvested the first crop, then thought "nuts to this," intentionally bought soybeans designated for use as feed/foodstock and instead planted them as a crop without any contact/license.

This was also not "my crop was contaminatined by a small percentage of Roundup-ready plants and Monsanto bullied me into paying royalties." THis was "since Monsanto licensed one crop to me and others all future generations from those seeds are not protected by the patent and do not need to be licensed." Which was a theory, but not one "wrongly" punished by Monsanto.

Different types of "wrongly." Both WRONG uses of the term "wrongly" since the farmers both lost on the merits, but moderately less scummy than the first. And one day someone might identify a "wrongly" where the farmer won on the merits, which would be news to me.

Re:Interesting...

[DRJlaw]

Using "astro-turfer" is easier than acknowledging that someone could honestly hold a different opinion than you and engaging them on the merits.

Re:Interesting...

[VeryFluffyBunny]

OK, that's waaay too much detail and specificity. Next questions:

Are you or have you ever been employed in a legal capacity?

Have you ever received payment of any kind from Monsanto/Bayer or any of their affiliates for any services whatsoever?

Before you answer, remember that this isn't a court of law, this is /. where people go to slack-off from work every once in a while just for fun. Try not to make it sound like you're being paid to do this.

Re:Interesting...

[DRJlaw]

Are you or have you ever been employed in a legal capacity?

Have you even bothered to look at the user bio? Yes. As if that would disqualify me. "He knows too much about the topic!"

Have you ever received payment of any kind from Monsanto/Bayer or any of their affiliates for any services whatsoever?

No.

Try not to make it sound like you're being paid to do this.

As if nobody would comment on a topic that they know intimately, on Slashdot, in their spare time.

Stop attempting to attack the messenger and debate the issue instead.

Re: Interesting...

[DRJlaw]

He's not actually interested in those things, or verification.

If you know too much detail, you're suspect.

If you disagree with his assessment of innocence, you're a shill.

He won't support his conclusions of wrongfulness and innocence... he'll just claim that you've been building a 10 year comment history in order to shill against him.

Re: Interesting...

[c6gunner]

Thanks. It's not surprising, but I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. If I had seen his responses to you, I wouldn't have bothered responding to him; it's clear he doesn't care about facts.

Re:Interesting...

[VeryFluffyBunny]

OK, so according to your intimate knowledge of Monsanto/Bayer's legal history:

How many prosecutions against farmers regarding seed licensing infringement for Roundup Ready and similar products (in the USA alone) have there been?

In the light of a broader selection of legal cases, how representative are the two cases that you've mentioned of the overall pattern of Monsanto/Bayer's legal activities regarding Roundup Ready and similar products?

BTW, Monsanto/Bayer also have a terrifying reputation and simply sending out legal letters to farmers, which implicitly threaten bankruptcy through legal fees, are more than enough to intimidate and threaten farmers into compliance and to prevent them from speaking out publicly against Monsanto/Bayer.

Re:Interesting...

[DRJlaw]

OK, so according to your intimate knowledge of Monsanto/Bayer's legal history:

How many prosecutions against farmers regarding seed licensing infringement for Roundup Ready and similar products (in the USA alone) have there been?

I am not your research assistant. I do not work for you. Back up your assertions with your own facts. So far you have not identified one "innocent" farmer.

In the light of a broader selection of legal cases, how representative are the two cases that you've mentioned of the overall pattern of Monsanto/Bayer's legal activities regarding Roundup Ready and similar products?

Very.

BTW, Monsanto/Bayer also have a terrifying reputation and simply sending out legal letters to farmers, which implicitly threaten bankruptcy through legal fees, are more than enough to intimidate and threaten farmers into compliance and to prevent them from speaking out publicly against Monsanto/Bayer.

Excuse me? What letters? Prevent them from speaking out how? Reputation among who based upon what?

I can ask questions too. You don't and probably won't actually answer them, but you're the one that has to support your assertions. Bowman and Schmeiser won't help you.

Re:Interesting...

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Are you saying that you don't know of any cases other than the two you've mentioned between Monsanto/Bayer and farmers regarding Roundup Ready?

If they are "very" representative, please tell us how/why.

Re:Interesting...

[DRJlaw]

Are you saying that you don't know of any cases other than the two you've mentioned between Monsanto/Bayer and farmers regarding Roundup Ready?

If they are "very" representative, please tell us how/why.

You appear to be either very confused or very disingenuous. I'm betting upon the latter.

You stated that Monsanto sues "innocent" farmers. Support your assertion. The sole example for your case (Bowman), that you did not even provide yourself, was not so innocent.

I do not need to enumerate and discuss every Monsanto case, especially for someone who has not done one iota of their own research. I have discussed two. I will, at my whim, answer any other questions you may have after you demonstrate even a modicum of good faith by (1) providing evidence to support your assertion and (2) answering at least one of the questions that I asked.

Rebutting contrary evidence does not consist of "ask questions until the people raising inconvenient facts get annoyed and leave." Asking questions is short and easy. Answering them and providing support takes more time and effort. I've done the latter. You have not. Get to work.

Re:Interesting...

[strikethree]

Gene splicing and editing are just new and different ways of doing what we've always done with crops.

Not even close. Traditional methods coerce the "natural" state over time. Direct editing of genes allow for kitten/daffodil hybrids. I think the difference is pretty obvious.

On the GMO topic per se, I'm with the large number of scientists who can't see anything wrong with it.

The concept of "wrong" is a moral judgement. I do not see anything wrong with gene editing either. I do see some potential risks that seem to be glossed over, likely in the pursuit of money.

Genes edits that create combinations that are exceedingly unlikely to occur in nature should likely be studied in depth before releasing those gene combinations into the wild.

I am completely ok with editing genes into whatever configuration a heart desires. I recommend strong caution when releasing artificial gene combinations into the wild. I would even go so far as to say that genetically editing bacteria should be even more strictly controlled than genetically altered food. At the "food" level, it is only the chemicals created by the genes that matter, not the genes themselves.

Re:Interesting...

[VeryFluffyBunny]

You're avoiding the question.

Re: "I do not need to enumerate and discuss every Monsanto case" -- I haven't asked you to. That's a straw-man argument.

You claim to be a lawyer with intimate knowledge of Monsanto/Bayer cases and yet you cannot or will not support your assertion that the two cases you've mentioned are representative of Monsanto/Bayer vs. farmers cases in general. I'm not asking for a review of every case. Just a few more examples, i.e. links that you can find, with your intimate knowledge, and copy and paste easily.

Re:Interesting...

[DRJlaw]

You're avoiding the question.

"I learned it from you, Dad! I learned it from you!"

Shall I catalog the questions that I have answered versus the ones that you have not?

You claim to be a lawyer with intimate knowledge of Monsanto/Bayer cases and yet you cannot or will not support your assertion that the two cases you've mentioned are representative of Monsanto/Bayer vs. farmers cases in general.

I claimed nothing - you demanded disclosure. I contented myself with destroying your adopted position that Bowman was innocent. Then you lost your mind at the idea that someone might know something more in this area than you, yet not have been paid to thwart you.

You claim that Monsanto sues "innocent" farmers yet you have yet to produce even one example yourself, and the sole example that you adopted from an AC didn't quite work out. Support your claim.

I'm not asking for a review of every case. Just a few more examples, i.e. links that you can find, with your intimate knowledge, and copy and paste easily.

I'm still asking for any example, which you have yet to provide. 2 >> 0. E.g. examples that you might find by Googling "Monsanto" "patent" and "farmer." Get to work.

In case you haven't figured this out, I'm not going to go away, and I'm not going to do anything more that you ask until you invest some effort in supporting your claim. You're not my audience. This is for the benefit of other readers, moderators, and metamoderators.

Re:Interesting...

[VeryFluffyBunny]

So as it stands, you've...

presented 2 cases as evidence to support your claims;

claimed to have intimate knowledge of Monsanto/Bayer vs. farmer cases;

claimed that the 2 cases you've presented as evidence are representative of Monsanto/Bayer vs. farmer cases;

failed to present any further cases to support your claim that they're representative;

I'm left wondering if these 2 cases are the exceptions that do not reflect the nature of Monsanto/Bayer's litigious relationship with farmers.

If we're interested in establishing facts and getting to the truth of the situation, I think we need to look impartially at a broader range of evidence and more than just 2 cases, which is just under 1.4% of cases that Monsanto/Bayer has brought against farmers. Monsanto/Bayer has a successful prosecution rate against farmers of just 7.6%, i.e. the percentage of cases that Monsanto/Bayer initiates against farmers that actually end in a successful conviction. This may be indicative of an overly aggressive legal policy designed to intimidate farmers, who are vulnerable to the legal expenses, time lost, and stress caused by being prosecuted by Monsanto/Bayer. In plain English, Monsanto/Bayer appear to bully farmers into compliance by threatening to bankrupt them and ruin their lives. It wouldn't matter if a farmer was in the right or not.;They simply can't win at this game.

Pointing at 2 of the 11 successful cases for Monsanto/Bayer, which are intended to paint Monsanto/Bayer in a favourable light (or conversely, the farmers in a negative light), AKA "cheery picking evidence," is intentionally misleading PR nonsense.

Re:Interesting...

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Then there's Monsanto/Bayer's treatment of scientists: https://www.neuralit.com/news-... Monsanto/Bayer have a long record of legal intimidation, as well as strategically placing research funding in order to create dependency on the funding. Several notable agricultural research centres have been "taken over" by Monsanto/Bayer so that scientists working in them are afraid to pursue studies or publish results that might displease Monsanto/Bayer (I know some of them personally).

Re:Interesting...

[DRJlaw]

So as it stands, you've...

presented 2 cases as evidence to support your claims;

claimed to have intimate knowledge of Monsanto/Bayer vs. farmer cases;

claimed that the 2 cases you've presented as evidence are representative of Monsanto/Bayer vs. farmer cases;

failed to present any further cases to support your claim that they're representative;

I'm left wondering if these 2 cases are the exceptions that do not reflect the nature of Monsanto/Bayer's litigious relationship with farmers.

If we're interested in establishing facts and getting to the truth of the situation, I think we need to look impartially at a broader range of evidence and more than just 2 cases, which is just under 1.4% of cases that Monsanto/Bayer has brought against farmers. Monsanto/Bayer has a successful prosecution rate against farmers of just 7.6%, i.e. the percentage of cases that Monsanto/Bayer initiates against farmers that actually end in a successful conviction.

Yay! You found a Wikipedia article all by yourself. Didn't cite it as you should have, but still a remarkable feat for you. Now take that "7.6%... actually end in a successful conviction" (judgment of infringement, thank you, these are not criminal cases brought by the U.S. government) and contrast that with the fact that on average 95% of Federal civil actions are settled prior to trial, and you suddenly lose the conclusion that "[t]his may be indicative of an overly aggressive legal policy designed to intimidate farmers."

...who are vulnerable to the legal expenses, time lost, and stress caused by being prosecuted by Monsanto/Bayer. In plain English, Monsanto/Bayer appear to bully farmers into compliance by threatening to bankrupt them and ruin their lives. It wouldn't matter if a farmer was in the right or not.;They simply can't win at this game.

Yes, yes, assume that all of the settlements were procured by financial duress because that is convenient for you, despite it being even more likely that those settling were caught with their hands in the cookie jar (hint: 35 USC 285 authorizes attorney fee shifting, i.e., English rules for fees, and these farmers are running multimillion dollar businesses).

Pointing at 2 of the 11 successful cases for Monsanto/Bayer, which are intended to paint Monsanto/Bayer in a favourable light (or conversely, the farmers in a negative light), AKA "cheery picking evidence," is intentionally misleading PR nonsense.

Omitting the fact that the 11 successful cases were all of the cases that went to trial, with no losses, is even more intentionally misleading.

Again, name an "innocent" farmer -- even one that you contend settled because "they simply can't win at this game."

Re:Interesting...

[DRJlaw]

According to our sources, the letters politely ordered them to turn over all of their files or preserve them for pending legal action in the U.S. court..... The recently formed Roundup [Multi-District Litigation] No. 2741 is presided by U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria and the first trial in the Roundup litigation is set for June 18, 2018, in the Superior Court for the County of San Francisco.

Oh no! A litigation hold letter! Something that could not possibly be routine U.S. practice because, unlike Europe, U.S. courts permit discovery of evidence held by both sides as well as any expert witnesses.

I receive, or more typically advise clients of, litigation hold obligations about a half dozen times a year. Because disposing of relevant files after you become aware of a likelihood of litigation is considered a big no no...

Monsanto/Bayer have a long record of legal intimidation

I totally believe you in view of your track record so far...

as well as strategically placing research funding in order to create dependency on the funding. Several notable agricultural research centres have been "taken over" by Monsanto/Bayer so that scientists working in them are afraid to pursue studies or publish results that might displease Monsanto/Bayer (I know some of them personally).

Again, I totally believe you in view of your track record so far... and the hollowing-out of government-sponsored basic research has absolutely nothing to do with your so-called "dependency."

Re:creimer is fat and a gay! Everybody say 'Yay!'

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a hearing loss in one ear and some people think I am retarded instead. My audio will always be suspect. I use a Zoom H2 audio recorder with a pop filter 12" away from my mouth, Audacity to clean up and normalize the audio, and sync the audio to the video and apply a "voice enhancement" eq to the audio in the video editor.

But, my penis is 4 1/16 inches when erect. This is American average so Buzz off!!!
--
Dwayne Johnson's Rampage As A Kaiju ("Weird Beast") Monster Movie

Not new. I've been using my crispr for fruits

[raymorris]

Nothing new about using crispr for fruits. I've been using my crispr for fruits and vegetables for a long time. The drawer next to the crispr is where I keep my cheese and stuff. Milk goes on the top shelf, eggs in door.

Re:Not new. I've been using my crispr for fruits

[SCVonSteroids]

You made my morning, good sir.

Red delicious apples

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to love red delicious apples. The skin was medium red, and they were sweet and crunchy.

But about 20 years ago, the red delicious apples in my area (SF Bay Area) changed to being dark red, not sweet, and sort of mushy.

I wish the researchers would bring back the good red delicious apples.

Relevant xkcd

[pointybits]

https://xkcd.com/1387/

Fruits OK, but vegetables are where the money's at

[ShoulderOfOrion]

I love Pluots as much as the next person, but if you really want to get people (particularly parents) forking over money GMO some strawberry-flavored broccoli.

Re:Fruits OK, but vegetables are where the money's

[skoskav]

Real strawberry taste is the result of hundreds of complex chemicals, spread out over even more genes, as is the taste of broccoli that has to be removed. Though it may eventually be possible to achieve, the taste of strawberries would probably clash with the texture of broccoli.

GMO changes tend to focus on inserting or tweaking a few specific genes, typically to produce more of some protein related to disease resistance, drought tolerance, vitamin production, etc.

Re: Foodies VS Luddites

[astrofurter]

If the frankenfoods are clearly labeled as GMO, hardly anyone will buy them. Probably the government will try to force people on public assistance to eat GMO, so their bribe-contributors in the industrial farming business will have *someone* to buy their unwanted garbage.

My goodness

[cascadingstylesheet]

In April, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it will no longer regulate genetically altered plants, so long as the changes could have been produced through traditional plant-breeding techniques.

How sciency!

Hairy and tasteless

[Daralantan]

I wonder who can't wait for all these hairy tasteless fruits.

Re:Hairy and tasteless

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't mind hairy and tasteless, it's hairy and pungent that's a bit much.

What were we talking about again?

Slow vs fast

[Misagon]

I think there is a point in breeding crops the slow traditional way over several generations (of crops): You notice the faults with a breed of crop over some time, and you often have a larger number of different seeds to use for the next generation.
Of course you could do gene editing in a responsible, slow way too, but it gene editing is being sold on its speed and instant results.

Re:Slow vs fast

[drinkypoo]

Nature also never plants a monoculture of all one thing. Even where it kind of does, through plants which stifle competition (with chemical warfare!) they're not all clones.

Re: Foodies VS Luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

If you only eat non GMO you will starve. pick any fruit variety you like, it will almost certainly be a GMO. from your granny smith and Red Delicious Apples to your Black Angus steaks. It is all GMO.

GMO needs time

[kbg]

I am not against GMO per se but we have to acknowledge that GMO unlike other cross breeding changes that have happened is that GMO changes have one thing against them and that is time. Selective changes that have happened already to the fruit we eat today have had time to test for any adverse effects.

We have to acknowledge the fact that anything we put in our stomach has the possbility to cause harm and the effects can manifest itself after a long time. There is always the possibility that something we eat today can kill us after 30 years or so.

Mistakes...

[Anonymous Coward]

1: Article links to a study on social isolation, not to the actual cited study.

2: Much like Roundup Ready crops jumping farmers fields and the horroshow show-trials that resulted against farmers who never bought or planted Roundup ready crops, you have no real control over how genes move once outside the lab.

3: We've prooven pretty conclusively that the externality cost of the FDA not doing their jobs when it comes to experimenting on the public food sources is far greater than the oppertunity cost to both the public and the industry at large. Their job is to slow the change and make sure the public health is not impacted, but that also ensures industry revenues. One Historical example is of rGBH: In the late 90's everyone got so sick from milk that they cut it out of their diets and dairy sales dropped significantly enough the industry had to stop using it. A lot of the reason why you see the disclaimer on the milk bottle for rGBH is they are trying to reduce liability by marketing. What would've become obvious in an inexpensive lab setting on a 5-year trial became a total industry-wide nightmare. We have been engaging in the same exercise with corn and corn syrup due specifically to round-up ready crops for awhile, and there are other crops this is occuring on as well. The organics market, even though they can be quacky, is a response to experimenting on public food sources; people want to know about both the source and manufacture of their food stuffs but we don't have a government that enforces that and the industry by and large prefers to keep the public from knowing because the executive management makes their dollars on buying the cheapest products and dressing them up in fancy labels.

Re: Foodies VS Luddites

[Gilgaron]

If the GMO label is broad enough to apply to all applicable methods, it'll end up like CA cancer warnings and be on everything. If it isn't broad enough, they'll use slightly-different-than-CRISPR to avoid the label ad infinitum, staying just ahead of the regulations.

Save the banana!

[swm]

Can they edit in fungus resistance and save the banana?

I have to disagree about taste

[PeterM from Berkeley]

The story with tomatoes is in fact sad. However, the recent trend with apples is quite different. The Gala apple is a huge improvement over the Red Delicious (RD) in flavor, and has largely displaced it in markets. Plenty of new varieties of apples that are not quite as pretty as RD but are improved in texture and taste such as Honeycrisp, Pink Lady, Jazz, are increasingly dominant. And these apples are being outstripped even now by even newer varieties such as Snapdragon, Ruby Frost, Sweet Tango, and Smitten are giving consumers new choices that taste absolutely fantastic in comparison to RD.

A big difference though is that in apples, consumers love crispy firm texture, which makes apples durable in shipment and handling. Crispy and firm are not ideal at all for tomatoes or stone fruit--both of which have been and remain terrible when got from grocery stores.

--PM

Re:I have to disagree about taste

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with apples but the diversity sitting in heirloom varieties and local orchards is still huge.

There's also a problem with drift to select for certain traits.

I lived near the birthplace of the Red Delicious apple and the original Red Delicious only vaguely resembles what you find in the supermarkets. If you had one, you wouldn't recognize it as Red Delicious unless I told you that.

The problem has been that as Red Delicious took off, growers in different regions started to select for different varieties of Red Delicious, for shelf stability and transportation and appearance, until you have what the supermarket variety is today.

Honeycrisp has been facing trends toward similar problems in recent years as it has drifted from the original stock. My guess is that 50 years from now you might not recognize honeycrisp either unless something is done to change things.

Selection is relatively flexible, and can happen rapidly when you have market pressures in play. I'm not sure how that relates to your comment exactly, except that I think it's really important to actively maintain diversity in fruit and produce that is available, because otherwise things drift toward a certain homogeneity that benefits growers as much as the average person, who sometimes is a theoretical construct that doesn't really represent many actual individual persons in particular.

Re: All I want is a tomato that tastes like a *TOM

[Rei]

It's mostly about transport times. If long-distance endpoint-to-endpoint transport can be made fast and not unduly expensive, I imagine you'll see fruit more often picked in a riper state and shipped in anti-crush containers. Rather than dumped into big boxes, hard and green, so that they can handle them like rocks.

Re: Foodies VS Luddites

[cascadingstylesheet]

If the frankenfoods are clearly labeled as GMO, hardly anyone will buy them. Probably the government will try to force people on public assistance to eat GMO, so their bribe-contributors in the industrial farming business will have *someone* to buy their unwanted garbage.

If you unnecessarily label stuff as if it were scary, that will depress sales. Well, yes.

Temporarily, anyway ... as someone else pointed out, "California says this causes cancer" is now just ignored. As would these labels be, eventually.

Improve citrus by removing fumarins? (maybe)

[PeterM from Berkeley]

I've read that citrus fruits contain substances called fumarins, that when exposed to UV light can become carcinogenic.

I don't think reliable epidemiological studies have shown that citrus consumption and subsequent human exposure to sunlight increases cancer rates, but if they do, then we can reduce cancer incidence by removing fumarins from citrus. (Can, not necessarily should, they might provide health benefits that are greater than the risk.)

Right now, citrus is being saved from becoming commercially extinct by GMO. Naturally derived citrus production worldwide is being decimated by citrus greening--a disease to which apparently no natural citrus is resistant (some 50% of Florida's citrus production has been destroyed). Turns out that if you splice in a gene from spinach, the resulting GMO citrus is resistant to citrus greening.

Given the way agriculture is being done by humans nowadays, I think this sort of countermeasure to emerging plant pathogens is going to be absolutely required to ensure food security. Imagine the famine if an emerging wheat blight wipes out wheat production worldwide faster than breeding can develop resistant varieties. Now imagine if in one year, new wheat varieties that are resistant can be developed. You might have just saved human civilization.

--PeterM

Re:Improve citrus by removing fumarins? (maybe)

[tazan]

When orange juice gets to be $10 a quart for regular (From a tree that was sprayed with pesticide every single day) and $2 for GMO I think the market will decide GMO is OK.

Re: Foodies VS Luddites

[astrofurter]

"unnecessarily label stuff as if it were scary" The public has a right to know how their food was produced. Just because a handful of people don't consider GMO highly undesirable and/or "scary", doesn't mean the majority of the population shares that incautious opinion.

Re: Foodies VS Luddites

[ortholattice]

I doubt that GMO "certainly" explains why we're so damned unhealthy as a country. Do you have a reference? What biological mechanism would cause GMO to make you unhealthy? Stop making things up.

Most likely it is due to an inverted food pyramid of high-calorie fatty snacks, sugary soft drinks, and greasy deep-fried foods, along with inactivity. I've rarely seen an unhealthy/obese person on a Mediterranean diet (not just starting the diet but on it for many years). Most of the fresh fruits, nuts, and vegetables in that diet are GMO in one way or another unless you go to an extreme in seeking out non-GMO produce.

Biogenetics

[SMACX guy]

"We hold life to be sacred, but we also know the foundation of life consists in a stream of codes not so different from the successive frames of a watchvid. Why then cannot we cut one code short here, and start another there? Is life so fragile that it can withstand no tampering? Does the sacred brook no improvement?" -- Chairman Sheng-ji Yang ,"Dynamics of Mind"

Tomacco

[Zorro]

It tastes like GrandMa!

also unusal new odd birds

[Thud457]

They talk about weird new fruits,
but what about strange new nuts?!

Re:The variety already exists in the world

[hey!]

Broccoli, kale, brussels sprouts, and cabbage are all cultivars of the same species: Brassica oleracea. Turnips, bok choy, and Napa cabbage are all cultivars of Brassica rapa. It's not true that supermarkets don't stock variants of the same fruits or vegetables. The thing is that in some cases the cultivars are so wildly different we don't even recognize them as the same thing.

I've been shopping at supermarkets for over fifty years now. Here's the big change since the 1960s: supermarkets have gotten larger and larger, but the space devoted to ingredients and vegetables has shrunk as prepared convenience foods have exploded. Within the vegetable aisles there's always exotic stuff on offer, but cooking basics can be hard to find. Sometimes I have to raid dieter snack trays for celery and carrots, but if I'd wanted dragonfruit and tamarind I'd have been in luck.

I think this is because people are cooking less, and when they do cook it's more likely to be a special event. They watch cooking reality or adventure travel shows, and when they come across a giant spiny jackfruit next to the tomatoes, they know what it is and want to try it.

So people will absolutely try new things, but I'm not sure how you market something that is (a) familiar but different and (b) not tied to some kind of cultural tradition getting media exposure.

Protect what was instead?

[Tjp($)pjT]

If you’re ancient like me you know bananas aren’t what they used to be. Bananas are cloned for propagation. Every Cavandish banana you eat is from a cloned plant. And they are dying off, again. What I’d like to see is some enterprising banana scientist, what a great visual, bring about a disease resistant version, well fungus resistant, of the much tastier and better shipping endurance, Gros Michel banana. If you’re old enough you know what I mean. Bananas on cornflakes didn’t need sugar then. The texture was better, and they did much better in shipping. But the Gros Michel was brought down by a fungus that slowly spread in the ground as tires and boot treads moved it about, an huge fields of bananas were cultivated. So using Genetic manipulation to introduce other banana strains fungus resistance to Gros Michel would be of benefit to all of banana eating kind.

Dear feds, thanks for the price support.....

[TiggertheMad]

Maybe next you can ban porn on the internet, because nobody wants that either.

You say 'bans', organized crime says 'profit centers'. Same thing, really.

Re: Humans?

[Shotgun]

The only person that was hated more was the alternative.

Re: The variety already exists in the world

[Archfeld]

He stole your job, then turned you into a newt ?

Apricots?

[k6mfw]

Going OT here (I admit not RTFA but will comment anyway), talking with a friend that worked in fruit packaging/sorting and also some crop fields in south county in Santa Clara Valley before it became Silicon Valley. She mentioned one year all the apricots yield was not good, was it a bad season? Next year the yield was worse. So was everyone else and the cause was traced to pollution in the valley. I then thought, wow it has been years since I last ate an apricot.

Re:Monsanto...and motive

[k6mfw]

whenever I read something regarding Monsanto, it is always gives me scary feelings.

Re:And what of the weird old fruits

[k6mfw]

what about dayglow red colored kumquats featured in that episode of "Wormhole Extreme?"

Re: All I want is a tomato that tastes like a *TOM

[drinkypoo]

It's mostly about transport times.

At least for domestic produce, it really isn't. It's mostly about harvest times, and handling convenience. And it's funny you come to that conclusion because...

Rather than dumped into big boxes, hard and green, so that they can handle them like rocks.

Yes! And the reason they want to handle them like rocks is that all the food comes in at the same time, but people expect to have all the produce in their supermarket all year long. This is because people are lazy, and that makes them stupid (because they are too lazy to think.) They don't want to eat seasonally, because they would have to think about it. It's also because people are selfish, and don't give a shit about their impact on the world.

In order to keep produce coming all year, yes some is imported. But a lot is just held in storage facilities. They gas it for storage and they gas it again to force it to kind-of ripen. And you can't do any of this stuff if it isn't picked far before it is ripe. Otherwise it will just spoil, or be destroyed by the handling process, and then they can't sell it. It's not so much to do with transport time, because it only takes a few days to get from anywhere in the USA (for example) to anywhere else in the USA. This is only a big factor in international produce, and we really only import produce from countries which are very near to us so that's not such a big issue. Lots of Mexican tomatoes and avocados. The USA is a net exporter of foodstuffs.

Anyhoo... I moved to a property with some fruit trees recently, and I've really been enjoying eating fresh peaches and plums. I've decided I prefer non-freestone peaches, though. The flesh around the pit is not that great in Luther Burbank's variety and its descendants.