there is no "Genetic Engineering" yet, only genetic tinkering and selecting
While it is true that people have been altering crops for thousands of years (in fact, some crops, like corn, wheat, broccoli, Brussels sprouts strawberries, and tangerines were pretty much created by humans), and unless you are eating nothing but foraged foods and non-cultivated species everything you eat has had massive genetic alterations made to it via human selection, however it is not true that there are no genetically engineered crops out there right now.
There are, right now (as far as I can remember anyway), a grand total of 15 genetically engineered species with 9 types of traits that have been commercially released worldwide. Genetically engineered corn, soy, canola, cotton, sugar beet, and alfalfa are allowed to be grown in the US (some of these are deregulated in other places like Canada, Argentina, Brazil, and China too). These crops have either resistance to Lepidoptera insects (the Bt traits) or tolerance to an herbicide (the epsps gene for glyphosate or the bar gene for glufosinate), or both, depending on the crop. Also, drought tolerant corn was recently approved in the US, and a soybean called Vistive Gold that has an altered oil content. Those are your major GE crops.
Then there's two minor (relatively) crops, the Rainbow papaya (the first but hopefully not last university produced GE crop to make ti to market) and summer squash, which have genes from virus coat proteins to resist the papaya ringspot virus or cucumber mosaic virus. Another virus resistant crop was recently approved in Brazil, a bean resistant to golden mosaic virus (although it will be two years IIRC before it goes into production). There used two other horticultural crops that were GE, tomatoes and potatoes. The Flavr Savr tomato had delayed ripening traits and NewLeaf potato had the Bt trait, however, while they are still approved for sale, were taken foff the market. There is, however, the Amflora potato being grown in the Netherlands. It has altered starch content and is grown for industrial starch.
The rest are even more minor and aren't actually food crops.. The Applause rose is a GE 'blue' rose (looks more purple to me, but whatever). Once, Iran grew Bt rice, but from what I can tell (and I don't have much info on this one) they stopped growing it. In China they released Bt poplars into the wild to repopulate some deforested areas. The last one is the GloFish, which is sold as a pet.
Also, there's stuff that comes from GE microbes, for example, the rennet used in cheese making often comes from Ge bacteria.
So, that's what is currently (or was at one point) genetically engineered. There are plenty of GE crops in development or awaiting approval though, from Golden Rice to BioCassava to Arctic apples to Enviropig to 2,4-D resistant corn, and there's lots of promising research into other traits like fungus resistance and delayed ripening (food spoilage is a major problem in developing countries), so it isn't just limited to these plants and these traits. Unfortunately, overly strict regulations and general opposition & ignorance prevent the technology from being further utilized.
One problem with that notion. Europeans oppose publicly funded research that would not have that problem too. Ever heard of the potatoes at the University of Ghent, the government funded grape rootstocks in France, or the government funded wheat & potatoes and apples in Germany? Destroyed. Meanwhile, I've never heard of them having any problem with patented non-GE plants. Maybe the patents factor into it, but you really can't take the patent or corporate angle here. The main issue is the science. They're against genetic engineering and ALL GE crops, regardless of specific circumstances, period, and they're not going to let nuance or facts or science change their minds about that.
Some things, like trans fats, are just bad for you. Others, like sugar and fats, are fine in moderate amounts, but we have evolved to really like them, and find them really nice to eat, so naturally now that we as a species are able to get a lot, we tend to overdo it. This over consumption of course is bad for you (but it tastes good). I love soda and greasy burgers and fried everything, but the fact is, they tend to have a lot more sugar/fat than you should be getting. And not everything that tastes good is said to be bad; fruits taste good, and there's plenty of healthy vegetable based things you can make if you learn to cook them. Might want to get a less loony doctor too.
GM foods are mainly litigation tools to further the market dominance of corporate controlled food stocks.
That's moronic. Genetic engineering is a way of plant improvement, just like any other plant improvement method. If companies producing these seeds weren't providing a better seed, then they wouldn't have so much of the market share.
Even if insects/bacteria begin affecting them, I doubt Monsanto will stop suing family farms out of existence, and that's the worse than insects.
Yes, because obviously the best way to make money is to destroy your customers. That's why restaurant supply companies are trying to get rid of all the family run restaurants that make up their biggest customers./sarcasm
If you think patents and copyrights are absurd now, wait until there are only two or three companies growing the entire world's food supply.
Monsanto doesn't grow food, the produce seed. There's a big difference. If you don't know that, you probably aren't too well informed on this issue.
Support your local farms if you are lucky enough to have some.
What makes you think your local farmers don't use GE seed? Mine do.
The GM food thing needs to stop.
What? Even if we accept that Monsanto is evil, ect, what does that have to do with the science of genetic engineering? It'd be like saying Merck is evil, therefore you shouldn't get vaccinated.
Do you realize how stupid of a term that is? They are resistant to one type of herbicide, not 'superweeds,' and if you don't use that they of herbicide are of no affect to you. That's just a made up bullshit word to scare people who don't know how many weeds have built up resistance to herbicides in the past and don't understand that it is over reliance on a single herbicide (not the fact that the resistance in the crop to the herbicide is conferred via genetic engieering) that produces resistance to evolve in the weed population.
Yes. There is no single solution. Insects and pathogens evolve resistance to sprays and to genes. This has been happening since evolution began, and will continue to happen. The problem isn't any one technique, it is an over reliance on any one technique, and that we need ever improving integrated pest management practices that incorporate a wider range of defenses.using differing modes of action.
That's what drives me up the wall with all these people here and all over the internet thinking this is more 'proof' that genetic engineering is somehow bad. It has nothing to do with the plant being GE or not. Look at wheat and hessian flies. No genetic engineering there, but the pests still built up a resistance to the wheat's defense. There's a reason breeders are still breeding insect resistant varieties of various crops. Pests and pathogens developed resistance to the last generations. The Red Queen's Race is run in agriculture too, just faster.
Laugh at me, one and all. But it is within reason that these monocultures may put mankind's survival at stake one day.
No argument there but
Monocultures are so WONDERFUL - for the people who are extorting money out of that one culture!
And anyone and anything that is benefiting from the economies of scale. Don't get me wrong, I like biodiversity and polyculture, but lets not think this is a black & white issue. By and large, at least with current techniques, it is going to be the monoculture that is more efficient. This is good for both people and the environment. Given their problems they should be on the way out, but not without developing practices that can get the same yield out of different practices. A good rotation helps too. And it would be nice if more varied crops were grown on a large scale too (quinoa, sorghum, teff, ect).
Many if not most GM plants are rendered sterile so that you are forced to purchase new seeds from year to year,
Wrong. I don't know if you're confusing GE with terminator traits or hybrids. Terminator seeds are a type of GE seed to prevent cross pollinated seed from escaping. That way, the people who don't want GE traits wouldn't get them, the companies would lose control over them, and everybody's happy. Too bad the anti-GMO movement is bonkers and want apeshit at the thought.
You might be thinking about hybrid seed though. All commercially available GE seed is first generation hybrid seed (they don't need to be mutually inclusive, but commercially they are). The first generation of hybrid seed is good, the second, not so much. The seed isn't sterile, it just isn't very good. Also, farmers have to sign contracts before buying the seed saying they won't replant the seed without paying additional fees. These three thing create the popular, but false, notion that GE seeds are sterile, but really, think about it. How does inserting an insert resistance gene make something unable to reproduce, and if they were sterile, would there be any fuss about them escaping? Amazing that some people like to say they spread everywhere, AND they're sterile.
If you really believed that, you wouldn't eat any crop that you didn't co-evolve with, because there's a lot more . I assume you don't eat New World/European/Asian (minus whichever continent you ancestry traces back to) crops. Also, we've been consuming cry proteins for some time as they have been used before GE crops, and all plants have a form of the gene that confers resistance to glyphosate anyway, the one that gives resistance to glufosinate is just an enzyme (you eat tons of those every day with no ill effects), and virus resistance crops have less of the new protein than a non-GE version (because the protein comes form the virus itself, so the non-resistant one has orders of magnitude more of the stuff). Your argument, though common and popular, holds no water.
You mean Dr. Don 'No you can't see my data but you should totally believe my wacky claims' Huber? Wow. Has he released has data yet? Didn't think so. Why should I believe anyone who hides their data?
This is because most country's will not allow GMO's to be planted in their country due to their lack of long-term testing of effects on humans.
So its just a coincidence that they can't compete against countries like the US, Canada, and Brazil in terms of large agronomic crops and want to protect their own industries without breaking WTO laws? That has nothing to do with science and everything to do with politics. Ask any European plant biologist about GE crops. They'll say the same things American ones do.
We want to see what it does to your children's children before we'll even consider it
So, you can't find any differences between the Ge and non-GE plants (besides the epsps or cry1ab or bar or CMV coat ect) but you expect there to be some long term effect, though strangely breeding, hybridization, mutagenesis, ect is exempt from this? That's what we call magical thinking.
You should know that there are no genetically engineered tomatoes or potatoes on the market. There were (the Flavr Savr tomato and NewLeaf potato), but their sale has been discontinued. Only about 10% of the sweet corn is GE at the moment (in the US anyway, not sure about other Canada, which judging by your sig I assume that's where you're from), and the problem you're having with corn sounds like a freshness one. Sweet corn starts to eat through its sugar the moment its picked. I don't know if they do this in Canada, but here in the northeastern US farmers sell sweet corn out of the back of pick-up trucks along roads. That's always a good bet for good sweet corn (you can tell if one is non-GE by the big worms you occasionally find inside the ear). I don't know what you mean about the potatoes. Try another market maybe?
As for tomatoes, they have been bred (not genetically engineered, so whether you realize it or not your comment is going against conventional breeding, not genetic engineering) for shipability, not flavor, and that is the reason for the taste of some tomatoes. Also, they're picked before they're ripe and gassed with ethylene (one of the main plant hormones, responsible for among other things fruit ripening) to ripen up some of the way post harvest. The reason is pretty obvious; a bland tomato is better than a rotten one. It isn't an easy task to use conventional breeding to select for multiple traits, and consumers buy with their eyes, they want bright red perfect round uniformity with no blemishes all year round, and that got us to where we are today. Taste wasn't sacrificed for yield so much as for the ability for them to be sent all over the place, including places where they would be out of season. I grow a few heirloom tomatoes myself (the fancy ones, I've got yellow and white and purple and striped and green ones), and I know how long they last after being picked. Not very long. They'll rot right on the vine if you're not careful. They taste pretty good, but when it comes down to would you rather have a bland tomato or rotten mush? If you're not buying local (which is always a good idea anyway, but something that far too few people do nowadays) then realistically those are your choices.
If anything, this is a reason to embrace genetic engineering. Take a good tomato like Kellogg's Breakfast (a medium sized orange one, my favorite tomato which I highly recommend anyone with a yard to find buy seed and grow this tomato), and use GE to silence the glycosyl hydrolase gene responsible for breaking down the cell walls in the tomato...maybe you would have one that works in the modern food chain, AND retains the tomato flavor. Something to think about. Genetic engineering is a tool, and like any tool there are some things it can't do, at least not very well. Flavor is the result of many chemicals from many pathways from many genes. Genetic engineering can stick in a few genes that do a few specific things, but flavor? Nope, too complicated, genetic engineering really can't do it, not right now anyway, that is, not until we have a better understanding of the genome and metabolome. As it stands only other tools like breeding can truly affect flavor (well, GE could mess with it to some degree in certain cases, but that's not what any of the genes currently inserted into food crops do anyway). So what you're saying really doesn't make sense, and really, it highlights one of the biggest problems genetic engineering faces: misconceptions.
So if someone in your country wants to own something you disagree with, then its okay for you to prevent them from owning it? Remind me, what's that called again?
It's a right that everyone has. Plenty of jackasses around the world say the same thing about other rights, weather it is free speech in China (free speech disrupts social harmony just like guns only kill) or Saudi Arabia (women driving opens them up to social corruption just like guns only kill) or even here in the US with prohibition (cannabis only makes people crazy just like guns only kill), or wherever else you care to look. You or your government's recognition of that right is irrelevant and any attempt to suppress that right is immoral. Deal with it
When you cross a cultivated potato with a wild potato, you can get a poisonous potato (like the Lenape). Why shouldn't other plant improvement methods be labeled? And don't forget, if you're inserting a single gene, you know exactly what it does and its potential to be an allergen. As it stands, if you can show me any reason to think that the any of the currently used cry proteins, epsps protein, the bar enzyme, or the PRSV or CMV viral coat proteins (the major genes currently inserted into most GE crops) have any evidence whatsoever that a single person ever had an allergic reaction to them, well, I'd be really surprised.
Actually, that's not one. Huber claims, in a nutshell, that glyphosate is making a virus sized fungus that attacks both plants and animals. The evidence he presents to support his claim? Nothing. He talks a lot about some really incredible stuff, but when it comes time to prove it, he refuses to publish his data. Monsanto might as well say they give you superpowers. But, despite the fact that the guy gives nothing to back his claims, his story is still bouncing all over the internet.
It doesn't. If a headline said 'Study confirms safety of vaccines' you can take it to mean either A) the one writing the headline is saying that vaccines, in general, do not cause all the problems quacks claim they do and can be reasonably tested for safety or B) the person writing the headline thinks that any pathogen ground up and put into a syringe is safe. Apply the same logic here. Or to use an analogy, if someone says baking is safe, and there's an anti-baking movement claiming baking is the source of countless diseases, are you going to respond 'Well how do you know that every baked in the world is safe? Who paid for this study, Pillsbury?'
Few people doubt that the current generation of GM foods are probably safe to eat and probably don't cause massive environmental harm.
Please tell that to pretty much every anti-GMO group in existence. No one is saying that there aren't social issues or potential unintended consequences. With every new technology, from fire to the printing press to the internet to genetic engineering has that potential. But make no mistake, the vast, vast majority of people out there who dislike GE crops claim that they are dangerous. Just look at the Slashdot discussion of the study claiming they caused organ abnormalities for proof of that, or simply Google the term GMO for plenty of people claiming that genetic engineering is, somehow, dangerous. You might be concerned with more science based concerns, but most people aren't.
As for the questions you pose,
- Can we rely on the integrity of the people who will test the next generation of crops and do we have sufficient controls in place to prevent biased testing
That is not exclusive to GE. Obviously, we need strong, yet not overly restrictive, regulation. AS it currently stands, I'd say this is a yes.
- Are the risks of GM food - however small they may be - borne by the people who profit from the technology? If not, how do we address this fundamental disconnect?
That's an interesting question, one I've never really thought about and don't really have an answer for. Assuming there is any risk, who is to say what the developers eat? Again, you could ask much the same about many things. The scientists I've talked to eat the same food as everyone else though.
- What are the long term risks of reducing genetic diversity amongst our food crops? Does it make us more vulnerable to unexpected, intercontinental crop failures or reduce our ability to cope with climate change?
Reducing crop diversity does this, but you bet the question here by assuming that what you grow is dependent on a particular technique for plant improvement. GE does not decrease crop biodiversity. If anything, it is conventional breeding that selected for or against the genes that left us with what is used today, not the insertion of a few transgenes. Biodiversity is extremely important, probably more important than genetic engineering, and it is pretty crazy how many neglected crop species there are out there (teff, sorghum, quinoa, amaranth, fonio, sago, ensete, oca, sunchoke, mashua, yacon, jicama, maca, screw pine, breadfruit, jujube, pawpaw, goumi, che, maypop, jabuticaba, acara boi, cupuaçu, ugni, quandong, zabala, naranjilla, cassabanana, yellowhorn, melinjo, chaya, salicornia, katuk, New Zealand spinach, Malabar spinach, corn salad, ect ad nauseum to name just a few) but it remains a separate issue, and genetic engineering is not impeeding these species in any way. What, I ask, would you call introducing new genes into what you grow? That's increasing biodiversity, and it is also what genetic engineering does. GE works on the same principle as increasing biodiversity does.
- What are the social, economic and geopolitical consequences of making third world farmers dependendend on multinational companies?
Nothing good, and you'll be hard pressed to find anyone say otherwise. Fortunately, that is not the only option. For projects like Golden Rice and BioCassava, among others, farmers would be able to save their seed (or cuttings in BioCassava's case)as they see fit. While those have yet yo be released, even Monsanto lets farmers in developing countries save their seed, IIRC, provided they make less than $10,000 a year.
- What are the social, economic and geopolitical consequences of the planet's primary food sources being subject to patent controls?
So far, not much. You also assume that all GE crops are under patent. This need not be true, although pre
Examples: "New Study on GM crop safety contradicts previous study on GM crop safety" or just "New study on GM crop safety".
Neither or those would have really described the situation well enough though. Saying that it contradicts a previous study doesn't say much, because most studies on GE crops do. Also, it was a pretty poor study, and I don't think there's anyone credible that actually cites it as evidence for GE crops being harmful. Saying that there's a new study, again, doesn't say much either, because there's tons of those and new ones come out periodically. Note that this study is on the bottom of that list, at number 115, and that's just the independently funded ones (its #343 on their list of total studies). What made this one noteworthy was that it looked at a number of long term and multigenerational studies, and (along with the rest of the evidence) confirms the general safety of genetic engineering, at least with respect to many of the fears out there.
Look at it this way. If a study looked at various 'controversies' in evolutionary biology, and ruled each of them in favor of evolution actually occurring, would a proper headline be 'New study on evolution contradicts previous creationism study,' "New study on evolution,'.or 'New study confirms evolution is a real phenomenon?' I'd go with choice 3.
Remember that the major plant patent acts were passed in the 30s and 70s, long before GE plants arived on the scene. I'd like to take scionwood of the apples SnowSweet and Suncrisp (both great apples if you ever get the chance to try them) from my university's orchard to graft onto my own apple tree. But I can't do that legally, as they are both under patent. Neither has been genetically engineered in any way. Fact is, we as a society have two choices. We can pour money into public programs, or we can let corporations do it. We have chosen the later.
I'll certainty agree about monoculture, but that is a problem of what you grow, not how you improve it. Genetic engineering is a plant improvement method, not a way of cultivation. Two different things. Any genetic conformity in major crops is due to conventional breeding, not the insertion of one or two transgenes (and wheat isn't GE by the way, at least not yet). Biodiversity should be embraced a lot more than it is, and this is something that should really be harped upon, but it isn't genetic engineering that's holding back crops like fonio, mashua, jujubes, yellowhorn, katuk, or pacay.
Ah, did i tell you it was recently discovered that modification in crops was causing their pests to evolve and develop equally rapidly ? (was on slashdot)
Same thing happens in non-GE crops. Google the recent story about wheat and hessian flies.
I absolutely agree, but like the potato blight, it was that way before GE, and it remained that way after. I'm not really sure how much it is though Believe it or not breeders do know the benefits of genetic diversity, and do seek to promote it, even in the mass produced hybrid lines, and farmers often grow more than one variety on their farms to hedge against things like pests or early frosts, ect. Anyway, if anything, gentic engineering introduces biodiversity into plant with the addition of extra genes.
Personally, I'd like to see more intraspecies biodiversity. Replace some corn with quinoa, teff, and sorghum, some apples with jujubes, pawpaws, and shipova, some potatoes with oca, yacon, and sunchoke, some lettice with chaya, salicornia, and New Zealand spinach, some mangoes with rose apples, salak, or marula, ect. ad nasium Unfortunately, with no market demand, biodiversity is unable to achieve its full potential. That's the problem. A lot of people talk about monoculture, but you have to live it too. Go buy something weird. Learn how to eat it. Support the farmers who actually grow those things. And, just think, what if genetic engineering could be used to give all these other species, which did not receive the hundreds of years of breeding conventional crops received, the traits needed to compete. With the current regulatory and funding situations this is impossiblle, but it is an interesting though.
Some GM "pest resistance" causes the plant to produce pesticides. The total amount of pesticide around actually goes up
Keep in mind that that is also how conventionally bred pest resistance works. All plants produce tons of insecticidal secondary metabolites. The cry genes are unique in that they're proteins, not secondary metabolites, and they have a very specific mode of action, binding to specific receptors in the guts of certain insects. Insect biodiversity typically goes up on farms using Bt GE crops.
but one of those causes is almost certainly the spread of pesticide-producing GM
I'd kind of doubt that, since the problem occurs in areas without GE crops under cultivation.
But you have to counter that with the no-till farming these crops have facilitated. Obviously, spraying ANYTHING is bad for the environment. But the question isn't 'what does no harm' so much as 'what does the least harm.' tillage degrades the soil, releases CO2, and causes fertilizer runoff into aquatic environments. Herbicide tolerant crops have gone a good way to decreasing the harm from tillage. For all the ill will directed toward them, they've actually been an environmental win. Also, the herbicides used are more benign than the ones previously used. Again, it isn't herbicide 1 vs no herbicide, but herbicide 1 vs herbicide 2.
That said, they need to be used better, with better rotations, and with additional resistances to herbicides with altering modes of action to prevent the resistant weed problems we're seeing now.
That's an interesting story, made all the more interesting by the fact that there is no genetically engineered wheat on the market. Just corn, soy, cottonseed, canola, alfalfa, sugarbeet, papaya, and summer squash. Whatever was affecting you, it wasn't genetic engineering. Nice lesson on the problem with personal anecdotes though.
I'm not saying there are easy answers, but "conventional" agriculture (a separate issue from GMOs, by the way, although not with current US law) isn't it.
You're right in that there are no easy answers. Science based agriculture is what we should aim for. Do what works, reject what doesn't. The problem with organic is that is is dogma based on the appeal to nature fallacy. No matter how safe or sustainable something is, if it is synthetic, or genetically engineered, it can never be organic. No matter what good points it has, it is still quackery. Kind of like naturopathy...while naturopathy says eat lots or produce, avoid fatty and sugary foods, get lots of excise (all good) it also is just naturalistic nonsense that rejects science based medicine, and as such, it is quackery. Organic agriculture is the exact same thing. Conventional on the other hand isn't even a specific thing. The future of food should take approaches from both 'organic' and 'conventional' practices. For example with genetic engineering, you can avoid pesticide inputs, but you still need a good rotation and IPM practices, and also other biological techniques, like intercropping, use of beneficial soil microbes, use of mating disruption, and full utilization of biodiversity (I cannot stress how important I feel biodiversity is) should be researched so that they can be better put into practice. A lot of the nuance gets lost in the organic vs conventional false dichotomy, which I think is mostly due to the dogma of the organic promoters and the fact that most people don't really understand either side.
Slashdot Mirror
Allow non-GMO modified producers to label their products as such.
They are allowed. Walk down the organic section of your local supermarket and you'll see tons of stuff with 'non-GMO' on the label.
there is no "Genetic Engineering" yet, only genetic tinkering and selecting
While it is true that people have been altering crops for thousands of years (in fact, some crops, like corn, wheat, broccoli, Brussels sprouts strawberries, and tangerines were pretty much created by humans), and unless you are eating nothing but foraged foods and non-cultivated species everything you eat has had massive genetic alterations made to it via human selection, however it is not true that there are no genetically engineered crops out there right now.
There are, right now (as far as I can remember anyway), a grand total of 15 genetically engineered species with 9 types of traits that have been commercially released worldwide. Genetically engineered corn, soy, canola, cotton, sugar beet, and alfalfa are allowed to be grown in the US (some of these are deregulated in other places like Canada, Argentina, Brazil, and China too). These crops have either resistance to Lepidoptera insects (the Bt traits) or tolerance to an herbicide (the epsps gene for glyphosate or the bar gene for glufosinate), or both, depending on the crop. Also, drought tolerant corn was recently approved in the US, and a soybean called Vistive Gold that has an altered oil content. Those are your major GE crops.
Then there's two minor (relatively) crops, the Rainbow papaya (the first but hopefully not last university produced GE crop to make ti to market) and summer squash, which have genes from virus coat proteins to resist the papaya ringspot virus or cucumber mosaic virus. Another virus resistant crop was recently approved in Brazil, a bean resistant to golden mosaic virus (although it will be two years IIRC before it goes into production). There used two other horticultural crops that were GE, tomatoes and potatoes. The Flavr Savr tomato had delayed ripening traits and NewLeaf potato had the Bt trait, however, while they are still approved for sale, were taken foff the market. There is, however, the Amflora potato being grown in the Netherlands. It has altered starch content and is grown for industrial starch.
The rest are even more minor and aren't actually food crops.. The Applause rose is a GE 'blue' rose (looks more purple to me, but whatever). Once, Iran grew Bt rice, but from what I can tell (and I don't have much info on this one) they stopped growing it. In China they released Bt poplars into the wild to repopulate some deforested areas. The last one is the GloFish, which is sold as a pet.
Also, there's stuff that comes from GE microbes, for example, the rennet used in cheese making often comes from Ge bacteria.
So, that's what is currently (or was at one point) genetically engineered. There are plenty of GE crops in development or awaiting approval though, from Golden Rice to BioCassava to Arctic apples to Enviropig to 2,4-D resistant corn, and there's lots of promising research into other traits like fungus resistance and delayed ripening (food spoilage is a major problem in developing countries), so it isn't just limited to these plants and these traits. Unfortunately, overly strict regulations and general opposition & ignorance prevent the technology from being further utilized.
One problem with that notion. Europeans oppose publicly funded research that would not have that problem too. Ever heard of the potatoes at the University of Ghent, the government funded grape rootstocks in France, or the government funded wheat & potatoes and apples in Germany? Destroyed. Meanwhile, I've never heard of them having any problem with patented non-GE plants. Maybe the patents factor into it, but you really can't take the patent or corporate angle here. The main issue is the science. They're against genetic engineering and ALL GE crops, regardless of specific circumstances, period, and they're not going to let nuance or facts or science change their minds about that.
Some things, like trans fats, are just bad for you. Others, like sugar and fats, are fine in moderate amounts, but we have evolved to really like them, and find them really nice to eat, so naturally now that we as a species are able to get a lot, we tend to overdo it. This over consumption of course is bad for you (but it tastes good). I love soda and greasy burgers and fried everything, but the fact is, they tend to have a lot more sugar/fat than you should be getting. And not everything that tastes good is said to be bad; fruits taste good, and there's plenty of healthy vegetable based things you can make if you learn to cook them. Might want to get a less loony doctor too.
Also, there is no such thing as western medicine.
GM foods are mainly litigation tools to further the market dominance of corporate controlled food stocks.
That's moronic. Genetic engineering is a way of plant improvement, just like any other plant improvement method. If companies producing these seeds weren't providing a better seed, then they wouldn't have so much of the market share.
Even if insects/bacteria begin affecting them, I doubt Monsanto will stop suing family farms out of existence, and that's the worse than insects.
Yes, because obviously the best way to make money is to destroy your customers. That's why restaurant supply companies are trying to get rid of all the family run restaurants that make up their biggest customers./sarcasm
If you think patents and copyrights are absurd now, wait until there are only two or three companies growing the entire world's food supply.
Monsanto doesn't grow food, the produce seed. There's a big difference. If you don't know that, you probably aren't too well informed on this issue.
Support your local farms if you are lucky enough to have some.
What makes you think your local farmers don't use GE seed? Mine do.
The GM food thing needs to stop.
What? Even if we accept that Monsanto is evil, ect, what does that have to do with the science of genetic engineering? It'd be like saying Merck is evil, therefore you shouldn't get vaccinated.
http://www.raw-wisdom.com/organicsvsgmo
Now there's a reputable source.
Do you realize how stupid of a term that is? They are resistant to one type of herbicide, not 'superweeds,' and if you don't use that they of herbicide are of no affect to you. That's just a made up bullshit word to scare people who don't know how many weeds have built up resistance to herbicides in the past and don't understand that it is over reliance on a single herbicide (not the fact that the resistance in the crop to the herbicide is conferred via genetic engieering) that produces resistance to evolve in the weed population.
Yes. There is no single solution. Insects and pathogens evolve resistance to sprays and to genes. This has been happening since evolution began, and will continue to happen. The problem isn't any one technique, it is an over reliance on any one technique, and that we need ever improving integrated pest management practices that incorporate a wider range of defenses.using differing modes of action.
That's what drives me up the wall with all these people here and all over the internet thinking this is more 'proof' that genetic engineering is somehow bad. It has nothing to do with the plant being GE or not. Look at wheat and hessian flies. No genetic engineering there, but the pests still built up a resistance to the wheat's defense. There's a reason breeders are still breeding insect resistant varieties of various crops. Pests and pathogens developed resistance to the last generations. The Red Queen's Race is run in agriculture too, just faster.
Laugh at me, one and all. But it is within reason that these monocultures may put mankind's survival at stake one day.
No argument there but
Monocultures are so WONDERFUL - for the people who are extorting money out of that one culture!
And anyone and anything that is benefiting from the economies of scale. Don't get me wrong, I like biodiversity and polyculture, but lets not think this is a black & white issue. By and large, at least with current techniques, it is going to be the monoculture that is more efficient. This is good for both people and the environment. Given their problems they should be on the way out, but not without developing practices that can get the same yield out of different practices. A good rotation helps too. And it would be nice if more varied crops were grown on a large scale too (quinoa, sorghum, teff, ect).
Many if not most GM plants are rendered sterile so that you are forced to purchase new seeds from year to year,
Wrong. I don't know if you're confusing GE with terminator traits or hybrids. Terminator seeds are a type of GE seed to prevent cross pollinated seed from escaping. That way, the people who don't want GE traits wouldn't get them, the companies would lose control over them, and everybody's happy. Too bad the anti-GMO movement is bonkers and want apeshit at the thought.
You might be thinking about hybrid seed though. All commercially available GE seed is first generation hybrid seed (they don't need to be mutually inclusive, but commercially they are). The first generation of hybrid seed is good, the second, not so much. The seed isn't sterile, it just isn't very good. Also, farmers have to sign contracts before buying the seed saying they won't replant the seed without paying additional fees. These three thing create the popular, but false, notion that GE seeds are sterile, but really, think about it. How does inserting an insert resistance gene make something unable to reproduce, and if they were sterile, would there be any fuss about them escaping? Amazing that some people like to say they spread everywhere, AND they're sterile.
If you really believed that, you wouldn't eat any crop that you didn't co-evolve with, because there's a lot more . I assume you don't eat New World/European/Asian (minus whichever continent you ancestry traces back to) crops. Also, we've been consuming cry proteins for some time as they have been used before GE crops, and all plants have a form of the gene that confers resistance to glyphosate anyway, the one that gives resistance to glufosinate is just an enzyme (you eat tons of those every day with no ill effects), and virus resistance crops have less of the new protein than a non-GE version (because the protein comes form the virus itself, so the non-resistant one has orders of magnitude more of the stuff). Your argument, though common and popular, holds no water.
You mean Dr. Don 'No you can't see my data but you should totally believe my wacky claims' Huber? Wow. Has he released has data yet? Didn't think so. Why should I believe anyone who hides their data?
This is because most country's will not allow GMO's to be planted in their country due to their lack of long-term testing of effects on humans.
So its just a coincidence that they can't compete against countries like the US, Canada, and Brazil in terms of large agronomic crops and want to protect their own industries without breaking WTO laws? That has nothing to do with science and everything to do with politics. Ask any European plant biologist about GE crops. They'll say the same things American ones do.
We want to see what it does to your children's children before we'll even consider it
So, you can't find any differences between the Ge and non-GE plants (besides the epsps or cry1ab or bar or CMV coat ect) but you expect there to be some long term effect, though strangely breeding, hybridization, mutagenesis, ect is exempt from this? That's what we call magical thinking.
You should know that there are no genetically engineered tomatoes or potatoes on the market. There were (the Flavr Savr tomato and NewLeaf potato), but their sale has been discontinued. Only about 10% of the sweet corn is GE at the moment (in the US anyway, not sure about other Canada, which judging by your sig I assume that's where you're from), and the problem you're having with corn sounds like a freshness one. Sweet corn starts to eat through its sugar the moment its picked. I don't know if they do this in Canada, but here in the northeastern US farmers sell sweet corn out of the back of pick-up trucks along roads. That's always a good bet for good sweet corn (you can tell if one is non-GE by the big worms you occasionally find inside the ear). I don't know what you mean about the potatoes. Try another market maybe?
As for tomatoes, they have been bred (not genetically engineered, so whether you realize it or not your comment is going against conventional breeding, not genetic engineering) for shipability, not flavor, and that is the reason for the taste of some tomatoes. Also, they're picked before they're ripe and gassed with ethylene (one of the main plant hormones, responsible for among other things fruit ripening) to ripen up some of the way post harvest. The reason is pretty obvious; a bland tomato is better than a rotten one. It isn't an easy task to use conventional breeding to select for multiple traits, and consumers buy with their eyes, they want bright red perfect round uniformity with no blemishes all year round, and that got us to where we are today. Taste wasn't sacrificed for yield so much as for the ability for them to be sent all over the place, including places where they would be out of season. I grow a few heirloom tomatoes myself (the fancy ones, I've got yellow and white and purple and striped and green ones), and I know how long they last after being picked. Not very long. They'll rot right on the vine if you're not careful. They taste pretty good, but when it comes down to would you rather have a bland tomato or rotten mush? If you're not buying local (which is always a good idea anyway, but something that far too few people do nowadays) then realistically those are your choices.
If anything, this is a reason to embrace genetic engineering. Take a good tomato like Kellogg's Breakfast (a medium sized orange one, my favorite tomato which I highly recommend anyone with a yard to find buy seed and grow this tomato), and use GE to silence the glycosyl hydrolase gene responsible for breaking down the cell walls in the tomato...maybe you would have one that works in the modern food chain, AND retains the tomato flavor. Something to think about. Genetic engineering is a tool, and like any tool there are some things it can't do, at least not very well. Flavor is the result of many chemicals from many pathways from many genes. Genetic engineering can stick in a few genes that do a few specific things, but flavor? Nope, too complicated, genetic engineering really can't do it, not right now anyway, that is, not until we have a better understanding of the genome and metabolome. As it stands only other tools like breeding can truly affect flavor (well, GE could mess with it to some degree in certain cases, but that's not what any of the genes currently inserted into food crops do anyway). So what you're saying really doesn't make sense, and really, it highlights one of the biggest problems genetic engineering faces: misconceptions.
So if someone in your country wants to own something you disagree with, then its okay for you to prevent them from owning it? Remind me, what's that called again?
It's a right that everyone has. Plenty of jackasses around the world say the same thing about other rights, weather it is free speech in China (free speech disrupts social harmony just like guns only kill) or Saudi Arabia (women driving opens them up to social corruption just like guns only kill) or even here in the US with prohibition (cannabis only makes people crazy just like guns only kill), or wherever else you care to look. You or your government's recognition of that right is irrelevant and any attempt to suppress that right is immoral. Deal with it
When you cross a cultivated potato with a wild potato, you can get a poisonous potato (like the Lenape). Why shouldn't other plant improvement methods be labeled? And don't forget, if you're inserting a single gene, you know exactly what it does and its potential to be an allergen. As it stands, if you can show me any reason to think that the any of the currently used cry proteins, epsps protein, the bar enzyme, or the PRSV or CMV viral coat proteins (the major genes currently inserted into most GE crops) have any evidence whatsoever that a single person ever had an allergic reaction to them, well, I'd be really surprised.
Actually, that's not one. Huber claims, in a nutshell, that glyphosate is making a virus sized fungus that attacks both plants and animals. The evidence he presents to support his claim? Nothing. He talks a lot about some really incredible stuff, but when it comes time to prove it, he refuses to publish his data. Monsanto might as well say they give you superpowers. But, despite the fact that the guy gives nothing to back his claims, his story is still bouncing all over the internet.
It doesn't. If a headline said 'Study confirms safety of vaccines' you can take it to mean either A) the one writing the headline is saying that vaccines, in general, do not cause all the problems quacks claim they do and can be reasonably tested for safety or B) the person writing the headline thinks that any pathogen ground up and put into a syringe is safe. Apply the same logic here. Or to use an analogy, if someone says baking is safe, and there's an anti-baking movement claiming baking is the source of countless diseases, are you going to respond 'Well how do you know that every baked in the world is safe? Who paid for this study, Pillsbury?'
Independently funded by the way.
Few people doubt that the current generation of GM foods are probably safe to eat and probably don't cause massive environmental harm.
Please tell that to pretty much every anti-GMO group in existence. No one is saying that there aren't social issues or potential unintended consequences. With every new technology, from fire to the printing press to the internet to genetic engineering has that potential. But make no mistake, the vast, vast majority of people out there who dislike GE crops claim that they are dangerous. Just look at the Slashdot discussion of the study claiming they caused organ abnormalities for proof of that, or simply Google the term GMO for plenty of people claiming that genetic engineering is, somehow, dangerous. You might be concerned with more science based concerns, but most people aren't.
As for the questions you pose,
- Can we rely on the integrity of the people who will test the next generation of crops and do we have sufficient controls in place to prevent biased testing
That is not exclusive to GE. Obviously, we need strong, yet not overly restrictive, regulation. AS it currently stands, I'd say this is a yes.
- Are the risks of GM food - however small they may be - borne by the people who profit from the technology? If not, how do we address this fundamental disconnect?
That's an interesting question, one I've never really thought about and don't really have an answer for. Assuming there is any risk, who is to say what the developers eat? Again, you could ask much the same about many things. The scientists I've talked to eat the same food as everyone else though.
- What are the long term risks of reducing genetic diversity amongst our food crops? Does it make us more vulnerable to unexpected, intercontinental crop failures or reduce our ability to cope with climate change?
Reducing crop diversity does this, but you bet the question here by assuming that what you grow is dependent on a particular technique for plant improvement. GE does not decrease crop biodiversity. If anything, it is conventional breeding that selected for or against the genes that left us with what is used today, not the insertion of a few transgenes. Biodiversity is extremely important, probably more important than genetic engineering, and it is pretty crazy how many neglected crop species there are out there (teff, sorghum, quinoa, amaranth, fonio, sago, ensete, oca, sunchoke, mashua, yacon, jicama, maca, screw pine, breadfruit, jujube, pawpaw, goumi, che, maypop, jabuticaba, acara boi, cupuaçu, ugni, quandong, zabala, naranjilla, cassabanana, yellowhorn, melinjo, chaya, salicornia, katuk, New Zealand spinach, Malabar spinach, corn salad, ect ad nauseum to name just a few) but it remains a separate issue, and genetic engineering is not impeeding these species in any way. What, I ask, would you call introducing new genes into what you grow? That's increasing biodiversity, and it is also what genetic engineering does. GE works on the same principle as increasing biodiversity does.
- What are the social, economic and geopolitical consequences of making third world farmers dependendend on multinational companies?
Nothing good, and you'll be hard pressed to find anyone say otherwise. Fortunately, that is not the only option. For projects like Golden Rice and BioCassava, among others, farmers would be able to save their seed (or cuttings in BioCassava's case)as they see fit. While those have yet yo be released, even Monsanto lets farmers in developing countries save their seed, IIRC, provided they make less than $10,000 a year.
- What are the social, economic and geopolitical consequences of the planet's primary food sources being subject to patent controls?
So far, not much. You also assume that all GE crops are under patent. This need not be true, although pre
Examples: "New Study on GM crop safety contradicts previous study on GM crop safety" or just "New study on GM crop safety".
Neither or those would have really described the situation well enough though. Saying that it contradicts a previous study doesn't say much, because most studies on GE crops do. Also, it was a pretty poor study, and I don't think there's anyone credible that actually cites it as evidence for GE crops being harmful. Saying that there's a new study, again, doesn't say much either, because there's tons of those and new ones come out periodically. Note that this study is on the bottom of that list, at number 115, and that's just the independently funded ones (its #343 on their list of total studies). What made this one noteworthy was that it looked at a number of long term and multigenerational studies, and (along with the rest of the evidence) confirms the general safety of genetic engineering, at least with respect to many of the fears out there.
Look at it this way. If a study looked at various 'controversies' in evolutionary biology, and ruled each of them in favor of evolution actually occurring, would a proper headline be 'New study on evolution contradicts previous creationism study,' "New study on evolution,'.or 'New study confirms evolution is a real phenomenon?' I'd go with choice 3.
Remember that the major plant patent acts were passed in the 30s and 70s, long before GE plants arived on the scene. I'd like to take scionwood of the apples SnowSweet and Suncrisp (both great apples if you ever get the chance to try them) from my university's orchard to graft onto my own apple tree. But I can't do that legally, as they are both under patent. Neither has been genetically engineered in any way. Fact is, we as a society have two choices. We can pour money into public programs, or we can let corporations do it. We have chosen the later.
I'll certainty agree about monoculture, but that is a problem of what you grow, not how you improve it. Genetic engineering is a plant improvement method, not a way of cultivation. Two different things. Any genetic conformity in major crops is due to conventional breeding, not the insertion of one or two transgenes (and wheat isn't GE by the way, at least not yet). Biodiversity should be embraced a lot more than it is, and this is something that should really be harped upon, but it isn't genetic engineering that's holding back crops like fonio, mashua, jujubes, yellowhorn, katuk, or pacay.
Ah, did i tell you it was recently discovered that modification in crops was causing their pests to evolve and develop equally rapidly ? (was on slashdot)
Same thing happens in non-GE crops. Google the recent story about wheat and hessian flies.
I absolutely agree, but like the potato blight, it was that way before GE, and it remained that way after. I'm not really sure how much it is though Believe it or not breeders do know the benefits of genetic diversity, and do seek to promote it, even in the mass produced hybrid lines, and farmers often grow more than one variety on their farms to hedge against things like pests or early frosts, ect. Anyway, if anything, gentic engineering introduces biodiversity into plant with the addition of extra genes.
Personally, I'd like to see more intraspecies biodiversity. Replace some corn with quinoa, teff, and sorghum, some apples with jujubes, pawpaws, and shipova, some potatoes with oca, yacon, and sunchoke, some lettice with chaya, salicornia, and New Zealand spinach, some mangoes with rose apples, salak, or marula, ect. ad nasium Unfortunately, with no market demand, biodiversity is unable to achieve its full potential. That's the problem. A lot of people talk about monoculture, but you have to live it too. Go buy something weird. Learn how to eat it. Support the farmers who actually grow those things. And, just think, what if genetic engineering could be used to give all these other species, which did not receive the hundreds of years of breeding conventional crops received, the traits needed to compete. With the current regulatory and funding situations this is impossiblle, but it is an interesting though.
Some GM "pest resistance" causes the plant to produce pesticides. The total amount of pesticide around actually goes up
Keep in mind that that is also how conventionally bred pest resistance works. All plants produce tons of insecticidal secondary metabolites. The cry genes are unique in that they're proteins, not secondary metabolites, and they have a very specific mode of action, binding to specific receptors in the guts of certain insects. Insect biodiversity typically goes up on farms using Bt GE crops.
but one of those causes is almost certainly the spread of pesticide-producing GM
I'd kind of doubt that, since the problem occurs in areas without GE crops under cultivation.
But you have to counter that with the no-till farming these crops have facilitated. Obviously, spraying ANYTHING is bad for the environment. But the question isn't 'what does no harm' so much as 'what does the least harm.' tillage degrades the soil, releases CO2, and causes fertilizer runoff into aquatic environments. Herbicide tolerant crops have gone a good way to decreasing the harm from tillage. For all the ill will directed toward them, they've actually been an environmental win. Also, the herbicides used are more benign than the ones previously used. Again, it isn't herbicide 1 vs no herbicide, but herbicide 1 vs herbicide 2.
That said, they need to be used better, with better rotations, and with additional resistances to herbicides with altering modes of action to prevent the resistant weed problems we're seeing now.
That's an interesting story, made all the more interesting by the fact that there is no genetically engineered wheat on the market. Just corn, soy, cottonseed, canola, alfalfa, sugarbeet, papaya, and summer squash. Whatever was affecting you, it wasn't genetic engineering. Nice lesson on the problem with personal anecdotes though.
I'm not saying there are easy answers, but "conventional" agriculture (a separate issue from GMOs, by the way, although not with current US law) isn't it.
You're right in that there are no easy answers. Science based agriculture is what we should aim for. Do what works, reject what doesn't. The problem with organic is that is is dogma based on the appeal to nature fallacy. No matter how safe or sustainable something is, if it is synthetic, or genetically engineered, it can never be organic. No matter what good points it has, it is still quackery. Kind of like naturopathy...while naturopathy says eat lots or produce, avoid fatty and sugary foods, get lots of excise (all good) it also is just naturalistic nonsense that rejects science based medicine, and as such, it is quackery. Organic agriculture is the exact same thing. Conventional on the other hand isn't even a specific thing. The future of food should take approaches from both 'organic' and 'conventional' practices. For example with genetic engineering, you can avoid pesticide inputs, but you still need a good rotation and IPM practices, and also other biological techniques, like intercropping, use of beneficial soil microbes, use of mating disruption, and full utilization of biodiversity (I cannot stress how important I feel biodiversity is) should be researched so that they can be better put into practice. A lot of the nuance gets lost in the organic vs conventional false dichotomy, which I think is mostly due to the dogma of the organic promoters and the fact that most people don't really understand either side.