Everything that you read on/. about intellectual property applies to the IP that Monsanto et al apply to their products and research. In fact, it's worse, because the wind doesn't blow proprietary software from nearby windows and OS X boxes onto your linux systems, causing you to owe the IP owners money and disabling your ability to build your own software.
But you would neither say that operating systems are therefore bad, or that Linux does not exist. This is why we need more publicly funded research, like the Rainbow papaya.
GMO seeds are also highly optimized to solve certain problems, and can fail miserably in other climates where local strains have been bred to adapt to local conditions.
That point has more to do with widely sold hybrid lines than GE. GE just adds on one or two traits, the rest of the breeding (which is conventional, non-biotech) is what determines the vast majority of the plants characteristics. That highlights the importance of locally adapted varieties and biodiversity, but is more an argument against the seed industry than genetic engineering. If you wanted to blame any technique for that, it would be conventional breeding and hybridization, not the cry protein for insect resistance or epsps or bar gene for herbicide tolerance, as neither of those are going to mean anything with respect to climatic interactions. The best thing to do would be to improve local varieties, and that is what some projects seek to do, for example, that's what the Golden Rice people plan to do, and I know there's some people at Cornell doing that with Bt eggplant. I know Monsanto does that in the US and Europe, and I'd have to assume they do it to a degree in other parts of the world.
The farmers in India who are committing suicide en masse because their crops have failed are not just phobic about science. They got fucked in the ass.
Here's a good piece on that I highly recommend reading for what the actual numbers say. It's a bit different than it is often made out to be. And when crops do fail, again, it is not the transgene responsible.
The GMO salmon that are safe to eat are so big because they never stop growing, so they never stop eating. Is that a species that you think would have no ecological impact if accidentally released into the wild?
From what I hear (and keep in mind that I know a lot more about agronomy and horticulture than aquaculture, so this is hardly my area of knowledge here) the fish will be kept in tropical waters (well, in the mountains of Panama, so that if they do escape they will end up in tropical waters), which should prevent them from getting to wild populations even if they do escape (since salmon don't do well int tropical water), and the fish are all sterile females. I think they might be triploid too. Will this be enough? I personally don't know enough to say, like I said, not my field, I don't know anything about Panamanian aquaculture, but there are precautionary measures in place.
Perhaps for you the issue is not safety, you there are a lot of people who do believe that GE crops are harmful, and they still protest even non-corporate genetic engineering. For example, farmers growing the Rainbow papaya, and the researchers working on the the pest resistant potatoes at the University of Ghent in the Netherlands and the low GI wheat at CSIRO in Australia have all experienced vandalism problems, despite the non-corporate nature of those GE crops, and people have been hating on Golden Rice for years. You can take issue with IP issues if you want, but lets remember that, first, the legal issues are not exclusive to the technology (non-GE crops are patented too, and so are tons of other things out there, so lets not single out one subject), and second, for most people, they are against the technology itself, not just any IP issues.
Also, if you don't like the corporations, demand more publicly funded research and a more rational approval process. As it currently stands, only large corporation can jump through all the hoops to get their crops approved. If that were changed, we'd see a lot more university created GE crops on the market without the profit motive baggage, and that would be a good thing if you ask me.
I'm not aware of any plants that have naturally built man-made pesticides into their DNA sequences
Then you know nothing about plant physiology. There are thousands of chemicals, called secondary metabolites, out there designed to protect plants from pests. Have you ever stopped to wonder why plants aren't entirely consumed by the billions of insects that would love to eat them, or how conventional breeding produces pest resistance, or where organic pesticides come from? Consider horseradish as an example. You think the plant produces allyl isothiocyanate for the hell of it? Nope, that's a bona fide pesticide. It isn't just natural for plants to produce pesticides, it is ubiquitous. Some of them, even in plants you eat (like the crucifers) are quite toxic. AS for the 'toxin' put into GE crops, it is only a toxin to the Lepidoptera. It isn't active in the human gut (it only activates in alkaline environments) and it works by binding to specific receptors in the Lepidoptern gut. If there were no Lepidoptera, we wouldn't even know those proteins are 'toxins.' In fact, no LD50 has been discovered for it because, to mammals, its just another protein.
Trying to sneak it under the radar - that's the true evil.
I disagree that it is being snuck, at least, any more than any other plant improvement method. There is a big difference between sneaking something in and not publicizing it. If you buy something, you don't know if it has been produced with selective breeding, hybridization, wide crosses, issue culture, grafting, somaclonal variation, embryo rescue, chemical and radiation mutagenesis, induced polyploidy, and anything else Most of the time, except for some fruit, you don't even know what variety of the crop you're eating (and there's going to be more difference between two varieties and a GE crop and its non-GE isogenic counterpart). None of those are labeled or advertised either, heck, most people don't even know what half those things are. With respect to labels, I don't see why genetic engineering should be any different. If you want to label something as being produced by somaclonal variation, or as being polyploid, or as coming from a grafted plant, or as being GE, or as not being any of those, that's fine. In fact, I'd like to see that. But if you don't want to, you shouldn't have to, any more that you should have to explicitly label things as kosher, halal, or vegan. And you could say the same of labeling for inputs. How many people know what pesticides, fertilizers, fungicides, plant growth regulators are on their food? Again, most people don't even know what a PGR is and are completely unaware of all the plant hormones sprayed on fruit.
Basically, any product, food or otherwise, could have more information given about it. But realistically, you need a cutoff for what is required. That cutoff should be determined by real concerns (like containing soy or tree nuts or other known allergens), not by simply wanting to know.
Also, it is fairly easy to tell what is and isn't GE. Corn, soy, cottonseed, canola, sugar beet, alfalfa, summer squash, and papaya (from Hawaii). If it has any of those in it, due to the way those commodity crops are processed, consider it GE unless it says otherwise. The only times you would be unsure are when you eat sweet corn or summer squash.
I see it like the 'evolution is just a theory' labels on textbooks. It is entirely true, evolution IS just a theory, but what does it imply? It implies that evolution is something to be distrusted, that it lacks credibility. Do the same thing thing with GE crops. Put the label on there, and it is true, but what does it imply. Hmm, why does this need a label?
Already done. If you look at the Rainbow papaya, you can save seeds from that GE crop. Granted, it is the only non-corporate GE crop approved for commercial cultivation, but the point is, it can be done. It is mostly regulation holding back other such crops from other universities and NGOs. The regulatory barriers to entry are so high that only corporations can get in, and that's a fault of the system that encourages this, not the technology. Also, farmers must sign the contract before they purchase the seed, and they're free to buy other seed if they choose. That they don't says to me that they feel it is worth it for the benefits they get. I personally don' find the situation to be optimal, but that's how it works in the absence of stronger publicly funded presence. And most of them would buy the seed again even without the contract; the seed is hybrid after all (meaning that while you get the benefits of hybrid vigor the first year, you lose genetic stability the next). Now, if we had apomixis traits, well, that would be cool (and it would shut down Monsanto's seed business overnight).
As for preventing genes to wild plants, I first must point out that no one seems concerned that mutations created by non-GE means escaping never bother anyone, and second, that was one of the reasons for the development of genetic use restriction technology, aka GURTs, or more commonly known as the oft despised terminator technology. If you want that, good luck, not after the way its been demonized.
And that's why it says 'while every GM crop must be individually evaluated as genetic engineering is a process not a product.' It'd be like saying 'vaccines are safe.' Obviously, just because you have some dead microbes in a syringe doesn't mean it is safe, therefore all vaccines must be tested individually. But we'd still have no problem stating that vaccines are generally safe. However, if a study finds that vaccines are safe, it is likely referring to the widespread fears that they cause autism or something. What does this study say about a new type of modification? Well, not necessarily anything, but it would hopefully cause people to be less paranoid about the technique used.
I wouldn't be surprised if unchecked muscle growth also leads to bone/tendon damage/poor muscle control/heart issues etc.
I think that would probably be the most likely scenario, if not simply because people with these sorts of mutations IIRC tend to have shortened lifespans and various health issues. There's something to be said about how biology doesn't give a crap about how a gene got there and all, and that activating something doesn't necessarily mean there will be side effects, but we're talking about genes that affect the growth and development of the physiology of the animal here, not some gene that will have no other affect besides producing a fluorescing protein or green fur or something like that. No, evolution doesn't always work out nice and smooth, but it does do some honing over millions of years, and this does change something that the rest of the animal has not honed to. It's possible that this will have no effect on the animal's health, but my guess is that accommodating the rest of the body with a stronger heart, bigger bones, and better tendons to suit these changes may be the Required Secondary Powers needed to make this trait mean anything beneficial to the mouse.
Haven't seen them complaining about prohibition either. You'd think that the government spending billions telling people what they can and can't grow and consume in their own homes and jailing those who get caught doing it anyway would be seen as a pretty big violation of government overstepping its bounds (especially given that it would put a few of the founders in a federal prison, but sometimes I think they are more into idealized characters of the founders then historical accuracy anyway), but I haven't heard anything about them protesting that one. Small government is not something they care about. They want their government. I think the most damning piece about them is, as you pointed out, that they suddenly appeared once Obama won. I heard nothing from the right about small government until then, but suddenly once the little R after the president's name changed to a D, then they were all about the concept of limited government....but claimed it was for totally non-partisan reasons, natch. Although it remains to be seen (and I'll certainty change my opinion of them if proven wrong), I suspect the majority of the calls for limiting government from the right will stop the moment the little D after the president's name changes to an R, and I highly doubt much else, like what that president actually does, will affect that. You'd think if they really were for small government they'd be for better or worse supporting Ron Paul, but they're not. That says something, namely that real small government would cut the parts of big government they like.
I don't see how the concept means much anyway. I don't care if the government is big or small, I care about the results it gets. For some things, sure, there's too much government, for others, maybe there should be more. Some programs and regulations are excessive, others are necessary. Seems like the 'small government' thing, whatever merit is sometimes has and sometimes doesn't, is more of an easily digested talking point than anything meaningful.
Yeah, I don't get some of the comments here. The way I see it, we've pretty much only got two options. One, a massive publicly funded program to develop, test, and produce drugs, which would cost tax dollars but could provide drugs without concern for the end profit, or two, the privately funded drug companies that do the R&D themselves, but who ultimately need a profit motive to continue to exist. There is no third option, where the drug companies just make drugs for the fun of it and give them away/let their research be used by generics companies without compensation. They simply wouldn't exist without the ability to get a return on investment, and that means patents. These things aren't brought by the Pharma Fairy. If you don't like it, advocate the first option. I wouldn't have a problem with more publicly funded research, if it meant making people's lives better with new medical developments. It'd certainty be better than some of the bullshit tax dollars get pissed away on. But don't blame the companies that you can't have the best of both worlds.
At which point the 3 billion people at risk for malaria would step in and using that same logic take the exact opposite stance. Malaria kills millions of people. What would it be to let that continue if there was a way tom stop it, or at least cut back on it?
If you're trying to imply that GE mosquitoes will have some sort of crazy unforeseen consequences, those are pretty bad examples to make your point with. Neither of those really have much to do with genetic engineering. As far as I know there are a handful of theories for CCD, but no one has linked it to GE crop in any way (besides the typical crazies who blame GE crops for animal sterility, autism, cancer, droughts, missing socks, ect).
As for the so-called superweeds, there is no such thing. Maybe you were talking about glyphosate resistant weeds? That's certainty a topic worth discussing, but ultimately when you apply selection pressure to a fast reproducing population (like weeds) eventually you see a genetic shift, and it doesn't matter how. Resistant weeds have emerged in the past with previously used systems (if you think herbicide resistance in crops didn't exist until the advent of genetic engineering then you've got a lot to learn), they will emerge in future systems (although hopefully the new ideas of using a good multi-year rotation using numerous different herbicides with varying modes of action will help prevent this as it is mostly over-reliance a particular herbicide not over-use of the herbicide that creates resistance), and the fact that a transgene was involved doesn't change how population genetics works (although it has suddenly made it somehow controversial).
Is eradicating malaria, West Nile, etc. really worth the risks?
Yes. Ok, so lets say that some animals will lose out on a meal every now and again. Is there anything that would be completely destroyed in the absence of one species of mosquito species? Is there anything critical to the survival of an entire ecosystem dependent on the presence of this type of mosquito? I highly doubt it. Other bugs will replace them, and they'll get eaten instead. Things more important then this have gone extinct before, and it wasn't the end of the world. Ecosystems are rarely so fragile. And even if it did, even if we assume you're right, so what? Malaria kills millions of people. Am I going to ask the environment to take one more for the team if it means saving them? You're damned right I am.
Well, there is some truth to the idea. Before our modern food system, the one the organic advocates seem to so resent, famine and malnutrition were not uncommon (in too much of the world, they still are).. Food poisoning gets a bit more complected because if you're eating relatively fresh from a system that doesn't give any chance for cross contamination, you've got lower odds, but if you've got food stored, then you're going to want some sort of preservative. Food additives could go either way, since some additives like iodine in salt and folic acid in bread. I don't see additive as a group as going one way or the other since just about anything could be an additive. But anyway, an abundance of food provided by modern agricultural practices (not whatever organic is offering) certainty contributed to longer lifespans.
When you say 'worsening quality of our food sources' then I'd ask what you mean by that. If you mean the fact that people think food comes out of a box or a can, and no one views plants as food, then yeah, that's a problem. Sodas, way too much meat, greasy fried everything, sugary processed cakes and candies and other things with transfats, and high fructose corn syrup in everything because our government subsidized corn, ect., then absolutely. That is a problem here in the US. Not enough emphasis on the basics, on simple fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains, herbs & spices. Everything has a brand name and a labeled package.
On the other hand, if you're talking about the 'organic food vs non-organic food' thing mentioned higher up on the thread, like the notion that there's a problem with using pesticides and herbicides and genetically engineered crops and artificial hormones and all that, then you're absolutely wrong. Those are all useful tools, the danger of which has been either fabricated or grossly overblown. I'm glad my country uses those things and lament the lack of understanding of agricultural science that has caused them to become 'controversial.'. I assume that since you say you're a European (based on your sig, Italian?) you hear people hating on those sorts of things a lot (then again, the same is largely true here in the US, but I get the perception that public opinions are even worse in Europe), but for food and agricultural issues it is Europe that has the higher percent of people who are on the wrong side of science.
I can sympathize with that. I tell people this: organic food is dogma. Sure, you could cite the studies showing that organic food is not all it is cracked up to be (though for every one of these the Rodale Institute or some other usually well connected group makes another saying just the opposite), or show the successes of modern agricultural science, It isn't science, it isn't reason, it is appeal to nature, technophobic, nonsense. Yes, there are good things in organic production practices, like how we need to pay greater attention to soil flora, better implementation of biodiversity (both inter- and extra-species), and the use of biological controls (like using predatory insects or mating disruptors). But at the same time, it doesn't matter how safe (to your health or the environment) or sustainable any given thing is, if the big cheeses who law down the organic standards deem it unnatural, then you can't use it. That's just idiotic. If you find some way to produce a pesticide very safely, very cheaply, and without using much resources, then test it and find it does no damage to people and has very little impact on the environment, sane people would think that's great. But you could never use in in organic. You could, however, use the sap extracted from some toxic twig. Make no mistake, they DO use pesticides on organic food. Some of them are quite nasty, and because they don't work as well as conventional pesticides, may need sprayed more. So an efficient well studied pesticide is rejected in favor of one that is more harmful and less well studied just because it is natural. That I think is just dumb.
Fun fact: if you eat your daily recommended amount of conventionally grown fruits & veges, you'll get about 1500 mg of toxic, dangerous, poisonous, pesticides, some of which can kill you in sufficient quantities. Oh no, how could those bastards at the FDA (or whatever your local regulatory body is) allow us to be poisoned like this? Well, that 1500 mg? All natural, produced in the plant, by the plant, for the plant. Less that 1 mg of that comes from synthetic pesticide sprays. A few orders of magnitude less, ooh, scary. Anyway, because of things like this, if we were to go all organic, we'd either have to have sever billion people disappear, or cut down one crapload of rainforest and jungle to make up for it (as in, we'd need more than we actually have). In fact, if we were farming with techniques form last century, we'd have to do that too. If you've ever seen a forest, thank those big bad chemical pesticides and fertilizers. The inefficiency of organic is anything but environmentally friendly, and if is were to somehow expand too dramatically, it would be ecological suicide (not that that will ever happen because pesticides look a lot nicer when you're hungry).
And by the way, conventional agriculture doesn't limit itself. It doesn't say 'Oh, the organic people advocate crop rotation and to-till methods, so I won't use those.' The reason your average farmer wouldn't say something like that is because they're not morons, and indeed, both of those so-called organic techniques are regularly used by the big so-called industrial farmers. And then the anti-technology anti-science thing, ugh. Genetically modified food is safe. There have been hundreds of studies on that, a vast scientific consensus backing it, I mean, it is baffling that this is still up for debate. Yet organic rejects genetic engineering, when the GE crops used have cut pesticide use, the no-till methods they've facilitated have prevented erosion to the soil which in tern prevents fertilizer runoff into aquatic environments, and have been found to be safer (less insect holes in your corn means less fungal infection which means less mycotoxins). They saved the Hawaiian papaya industry, in fact, while the organic promoters are blathering on about how genetic engineering doesn't work, the organic growers were planting rows of the GE papayas around their fields because the GE ones kept out the papaya ringspot virus
I think that's more of a language issue. As far as I know, the organic standards thing is the same in Europe as in the US, it's just that in some European languages they use the term biological. In German the use the prefix 'Bio-', in French they use the term 'biologique,' and I think in Italian the use the word 'biologica'. So basically, Europeans tend to call it biological, but it is the same thing that English speakers call organic.
It really is a better term when you think about it, because organic in general relies on biologically derived inputs as opposed to chemical ones. And yes, they still do use inputs; the whole 'organic food is pesticide free' thing is simply not true (and even if they didn't, plants naturally produce an order of magnitude more pesticidal secondary metabolites internally then you're going to get from properly applied spray residues). They'll just use fertilizers and pesticides that are derived from naturally occurring sources as opposed to being manufactured (and yes this includes manure [which is probably good to add to the soil every now and again no matter what system you use]), in other words, of biological origin as opposed to chemical.
The whole thing is a still just clever marketing based on a big idiotic appeal to nature fallacy that serves no purpose other than to separate the gullible and the scientifically illiterate from their money (if it occurs to you that the origin of a substance has no bearing on its chemical properties, then you know more about chemistry & biology than the organic movement) and undermine the integrity of agricultural technology and food science in the public's eye for profit, but the term 'biological' is still better than 'organic.' Not by much I guess since all food is going to biological in nature just like all food is organic but at lest this says something a little more specific about the production practices.
Were they laughing off the idea of extraterrestrial life itself, or the stuff you commonly see in popular culture...you know, the people who treat Roswell like a Mecca, go on about grays and abductions and crop circles, anyone who agrees with Ancient Aliens Guy, ect.? It is one thing to speculate that, out of countless stars, it is possible that there exists more than one planet with some sort of life (while admitting that there is no evidence whatsoever to indicate that that is the case and acknowledging our general lack data), and it is hard to say that such an idea deserves to be dismissed outright, however the idea has certainty attracted more than its fair share of things to be rightly laughed off. I never really noticed that scientists completely dismiss the notion of non-terrestrial life, if anything, I'd have assumed just the opposite is true. I'd guess that either your relatives are not representative of scientists as a whole for one reason or another, just chose to go with what evidence is actually verifiable rather than get into the whole 'billions of stars times non-zero possibility of life equals...' thing, were thinking not of the concept itself but of of the nonsense various spacey nutters go on about, or just didn't want to look like said nutters in front of everyone else by acknowledging the possibility.
About corn, it is definitely a caryopsis fruit. I've never heard anyone define it as anything else. Though we do have to keep in mind that corn is a bit of an oddball, what with the inconvenient parts having been bred out of the ancestral teosinte and all.
I guess I get where you're coming from with the peanuts. I wasn't really trying to imply that they were vegetables. When I first listed them I did so more to mention that they weren't actually (botanical) nuts and to highlight their relation to beans (since strangely few people make the connection), but then put that line in later and forgot to remove them from the first part. Botanical fruit though they may be I wouldn't call them vegetables. What I'm surprised no one caught was when I mentioned rice along with peppers and beans. What you eat there is just the endosperm after the rest has been milled off, so I don't really know if you could still call it a fruit at that point. Not sure putting those rice in a list like that is entirely fair.
And I forgot to mention olives, another botanical fruit that is considered a vegetable. I never liked olives anyway.
That had nothing to do with government greed. It was the right ruling. Should the government tax tomatoes as vegetables? Well, you might say that they are a fruit, and vegetables are things like cucumbers, squash, peppers, eggplant, string beans, pea pods, corn, okra, right? Problem is, everything I just mentioned is also botanically a fruit (fruits that, for some strange reason, people don't embarrass themselves by pointing out that that they're botanical fruits like they do with tomatoes). Cucumbers and squash are pepos (which are actually a type of berry), corn (and wheat and rice) is a type of fruit called a caryopsis, peanuts and string beans are legumes, and eggplant and peppers are berries. Fruit has both a culinary AND scientific meaning. Culinary, it is a sweet part of the plant that is almost always a botanical fruit, but that does not imply that a botanical fruit is also a culinary fruit. Scientifically, milkweed pods, cotton pods, and those little helicopters that fall from maple trees are fruits. Chocolate covered cucumber sound good to you? What about tomato ice cream, or pea pod pie? No? That's because they're not fruits in the everyday speech. You're going to stop calling peanuts and almonds nuts (peanut is a legume and almond is a drupe) or stop calling potatoes root vegetables (they're tubers, which are stems), and no one is calling rice, peppers, or string beans fruits, so why this fixation on the fact that tomatoes are botanical fruits?
Vegetable has no scientific meaning, so it is perfectly reasonable to consider something a botanical fruit and a culinary vegetable. Just by mentioning the term, we know that we're speaking in culinary or horticultural terms, not pure botanical terms. Something can be a root and a vegetable (like carrots) a stem and a vegetable (like potatoes), a leaf and a vegetable (lettuce), a flower and a vegetable (broccoli), and things can be a botanical fruit and a vegetable too. Culinary fruits don't need to be a botanical fruit either. The best example is the strawberry. The actual fruits are the the little seeds on the outside (called achenes), whereas the culinary part is just the large swollen receptacle, which is a modified stem. I think botanists consider the whole thing, both the achenes and the receptacle to be the fruit, so that is a pretty weak example, but that should at least make you think about what a fruit really is. Historically, rhubarb was considered a fruit at times. However, if I gave you a cashew apple (yes, every cashew nut has a fruit to go along with it) or if I gave you the 'fruit' of a native cherry or Japanese raisin tree, you might not be able to tell that they aren't actually fruits. The lleuque 'fruit' doesn't even come from an angiosperm (only angiosperms have fruit)! If any of those were commercially cultivated, what would we call them? Vegetables? Should we regulate something that in terms of cultivation and use is more similar to a cherry like a radish just because of some botanical nitpick? I don't think so.
So, if we were speaking strictly scientifically, we'd treat corn, chili peppers, and pea pods the same as apples, grapes, andbananas. But that'd be pretty darned stupid, right? That's why we don't do it. The government made the right call there. I imagine someone was just being a smartass to get out of some taxes.
If it can't have offspring, then you can't breed that gene into it.
I can't think of one either, but the issue of breeding doesn't apply because most every grain or vegetable you eat is an F1 hybrid, so it doesn't matter if the actual crop grown can reproduce. See cytoplasmic male sterility for something not quite the same but similar (although that's not used anymore for reasons unrelated to the sterility).
I think it is interesting that the people who don't want labeling somehow claim they are for the free market.
Simple really. You want labeling for GE food, create a demand and buy it. Actually, that's already happened in the form of the organic label. What isn't in the free market is demanding that the government impose mandatory labeling just because you want it. It wouldn't be free market to have mandatory labeling for Kosher food, Halal food, or vegan food. It wouldn't be free market to demand that food produced by grafting, tissue culture, somaclonal variation, induced polyploidy, embryo rescue, wide crosses, mutagenesis, ect. be labeled. It isn't free market to have the government impose labeling for GE food. You want labels for any of the above, that's on you. And no, it isn't like labeling for allergens (or pretty much anything else of that matter) or ingredients, because allergens are specific things that we know are dangerous to some people, and ingredients are the actual things inside a product (not the variety); genetic engineering on the other hand is not a thing but a process, one that we know isn't inherently dangerous (at least no more than any other plant improvement method), and one that, presently anyway, is used only to produce crops that are by any objective measure substantially equivalent to their non-GE counterparts.
You're confusing genetic manipulation with breeding.
And so are you. Breeding is genetic manipulation, but not genetic engineering, and just because something has been genetically manipulated does not mean it has been bred OR genetically engineered; there are other plant improvement techniques out there besides those two, and most people have never even heard of them and have no idea they're eating them. Grapefruit, wheat, nashi, apples, bananas, triticale...they all have their nifty little stories if you're willing seek them out.
You can breed wolves to become poodles, but you can't breed them so they glow in the dark; you can genitcally menipulate them to, by introducing genes from unrelated life forms.
The thing to consider here is that none of that really matters. It sounds significant, but at the end of the day it's all just code to the cell. Transgenic, cisgenic, antisense, wild type, mutant, whatever, the plant cells don't care.
Nothing about breeding food is dangerous
Let me ask you, what if I said that genetic engineering accidentally produced a potato that unexpectedly had dangerously high levels of a poisonous glycoalkaloid, and that it also made celery that had so much of carcinogenic psoralen that the harvesters got rashes after just touching the plants? How do you feel about the safety of the technique that produces things like that? Because I lied. They were developed, and those side effects were unintentional, but they weren't made with GE. Nope, that celery and the Lenape potato were developed with conventional breeding. It is absolutely false that there is nothing dangerous about breeding. When you change genes, there can be unintended consequences, and it doesn't really matter how you change them. It has happened with GE, it has happened with breeding. Provided you don't do anything stupid, genetic engineering is no more inherently risky than breeding. Actually, it just might be safer, because now you know exactly the gene you're manipulating, whereas with breeding you randomly mix many genes. In the case of the Lenape potato, they were trying to introduce pest resistance genes from wild potatoes. Had they moved the genes with GE instead of using breeding, the genes for increased solanine wouldn't have come along for the ride.
You think you're being very clever, but the green revolution has not fed anyone that otherwise would have starved.
Funny, pretty much every reputable source says otherwise. I guess all those prizes Norman Borlaug got were for his good looks.
Who told you that? That's not true, at all.
Pretty much every crop & soil scientist out there will tell you that.
The herbicides kill off beneficial nematodes and other organisms which live in the soil. Healthy topsoil can be over 40% living organic material. After using these herbicides, it drops to 0%.
And if that were the alternative you'd have a point. But the alternative is tillage. Inputs are never disirable, but it isn't a question of 'does this do harm' so much as 'does this do the least harm.'
google for "superbugs", the first time I ever did (relevant since google remembers what you've searched for) the first bunch of results were all relevant.
I know there's resistance but I've never heard of the resitnat weeds possessing any attributes besides their resistance (at least in this particular case anyway).
The point I'm making is that engineering these plants to be pest-resistant or chemical-resistant is a loser's game, because they will become resistant to it themselves.
Uh, yeah. there's been a Red Queen's race in agriculture for ages. GE doesn't change that. Of course pests will develop resistance. That's always happened, it is always going to happen.
Meanwhile, there are potential harmful side effects, and indeed Bt corn has already gone toxic in the 20th generation (just try finding the citation any more, though. I'm sure I have a bookmark saved somewhere, maybe even scrapbook'd the article, but elefino where it is now. It was all over when it happened..
I think you mean this. Turned out to be a fungus, but the transgene go the public blame. Funny thing is, Bt corn is actually safer due to lowerlevels of mycotoxin. Corn that doesn't get chewed on has less open area for fungal infection which means lower mycotoxins.
That's because you're being disingenuous.
Nutrition facts describe the nutritional content of something. The variety used to make it is entirely different. Its the difference between knowing a car's MPG and knowing the elemental composition of the alloy used in the tailpipe.
That's a bunch of shit. It's not a common issue that has always been in agriculture, because the technology has never existed to do these things on this scale.
We've used herbicides before genetic engineering, and we've had resistant weeds before genetic engineering. There are even non-GE herbicide tollerant varieties of some crops out there. We've bred pest resistant varieties, and pests have overcome those varieties. For example, there's no GE wheat on the market, but they still use herbicides on wheat, and they still have pest issues that require new varieties. Surely you don't deny this? And surely you're not calling the notion that a Rainbow papaya is different from Golden Rice is different from Arctic apple is different from Bt corn to be a bunch of shit?
Attacking a straw man is still a fallacy, and it's what you're doing, because I never said nature knew what it was doing; in fact, I said it didn't.
You started off by advocating organic agriculture. If you don't think that's an appeal to nature, either you don't know what an appeal to nature is or you don't know what organic farming is.
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Everything that you read on /. about intellectual property applies to the IP that Monsanto et al apply to their products and research. In fact, it's worse, because the wind doesn't blow proprietary software from nearby windows and OS X boxes onto your linux systems, causing you to owe the IP owners money and disabling your ability to build your own software.
But you would neither say that operating systems are therefore bad, or that Linux does not exist. This is why we need more publicly funded research, like the Rainbow papaya.
GMO seeds are also highly optimized to solve certain problems, and can fail miserably in other climates where local strains have been bred to adapt to local conditions.
That point has more to do with widely sold hybrid lines than GE. GE just adds on one or two traits, the rest of the breeding (which is conventional, non-biotech) is what determines the vast majority of the plants characteristics. That highlights the importance of locally adapted varieties and biodiversity, but is more an argument against the seed industry than genetic engineering. If you wanted to blame any technique for that, it would be conventional breeding and hybridization, not the cry protein for insect resistance or epsps or bar gene for herbicide tolerance, as neither of those are going to mean anything with respect to climatic interactions. The best thing to do would be to improve local varieties, and that is what some projects seek to do, for example, that's what the Golden Rice people plan to do, and I know there's some people at Cornell doing that with Bt eggplant. I know Monsanto does that in the US and Europe, and I'd have to assume they do it to a degree in other parts of the world.
The farmers in India who are committing suicide en masse because their crops have failed are not just phobic about science. They got fucked in the ass.
Here's a good piece on that I highly recommend reading for what the actual numbers say. It's a bit different than it is often made out to be. And when crops do fail, again, it is not the transgene responsible.
The GMO salmon that are safe to eat are so big because they never stop growing, so they never stop eating. Is that a species that you think would have no ecological impact if accidentally released into the wild?
From what I hear (and keep in mind that I know a lot more about agronomy and horticulture than aquaculture, so this is hardly my area of knowledge here) the fish will be kept in tropical waters (well, in the mountains of Panama, so that if they do escape they will end up in tropical waters), which should prevent them from getting to wild populations even if they do escape (since salmon don't do well int tropical water), and the fish are all sterile females. I think they might be triploid too. Will this be enough? I personally don't know enough to say, like I said, not my field, I don't know anything about Panamanian aquaculture, but there are precautionary measures in place.
Perhaps for you the issue is not safety, you there are a lot of people who do believe that GE crops are harmful, and they still protest even non-corporate genetic engineering. For example, farmers growing the Rainbow papaya, and the researchers working on the the pest resistant potatoes at the University of Ghent in the Netherlands and the low GI wheat at CSIRO in Australia have all experienced vandalism problems, despite the non-corporate nature of those GE crops, and people have been hating on Golden Rice for years. You can take issue with IP issues if you want, but lets remember that, first, the legal issues are not exclusive to the technology (non-GE crops are patented too, and so are tons of other things out there, so lets not single out one subject), and second, for most people, they are against the technology itself, not just any IP issues.
Also, if you don't like the corporations, demand more publicly funded research and a more rational approval process. As it currently stands, only large corporation can jump through all the hoops to get their crops approved. If that were changed, we'd see a lot more university created GE crops on the market without the profit motive baggage, and that would be a good thing if you ask me.
I'm not aware of any plants that have naturally built man-made pesticides into their DNA sequences
Then you know nothing about plant physiology. There are thousands of chemicals, called secondary metabolites, out there designed to protect plants from pests. Have you ever stopped to wonder why plants aren't entirely consumed by the billions of insects that would love to eat them, or how conventional breeding produces pest resistance, or where organic pesticides come from? Consider horseradish as an example. You think the plant produces allyl isothiocyanate for the hell of it? Nope, that's a bona fide pesticide. It isn't just natural for plants to produce pesticides, it is ubiquitous. Some of them, even in plants you eat (like the crucifers) are quite toxic. AS for the 'toxin' put into GE crops, it is only a toxin to the Lepidoptera. It isn't active in the human gut (it only activates in alkaline environments) and it works by binding to specific receptors in the Lepidoptern gut. If there were no Lepidoptera, we wouldn't even know those proteins are 'toxins.' In fact, no LD50 has been discovered for it because, to mammals, its just another protein.
Trying to sneak it under the radar - that's the true evil.
I disagree that it is being snuck, at least, any more than any other plant improvement method. There is a big difference between sneaking something in and not publicizing it. If you buy something, you don't know if it has been produced with selective breeding, hybridization, wide crosses, issue culture, grafting, somaclonal variation, embryo rescue, chemical and radiation mutagenesis, induced polyploidy, and anything else Most of the time, except for some fruit, you don't even know what variety of the crop you're eating (and there's going to be more difference between two varieties and a GE crop and its non-GE isogenic counterpart). None of those are labeled or advertised either, heck, most people don't even know what half those things are. With respect to labels, I don't see why genetic engineering should be any different. If you want to label something as being produced by somaclonal variation, or as being polyploid, or as coming from a grafted plant, or as being GE, or as not being any of those, that's fine. In fact, I'd like to see that. But if you don't want to, you shouldn't have to, any more that you should have to explicitly label things as kosher, halal, or vegan. And you could say the same of labeling for inputs. How many people know what pesticides, fertilizers, fungicides, plant growth regulators are on their food? Again, most people don't even know what a PGR is and are completely unaware of all the plant hormones sprayed on fruit.
Basically, any product, food or otherwise, could have more information given about it. But realistically, you need a cutoff for what is required. That cutoff should be determined by real concerns (like containing soy or tree nuts or other known allergens), not by simply wanting to know.
Also, it is fairly easy to tell what is and isn't GE. Corn, soy, cottonseed, canola, sugar beet, alfalfa, summer squash, and papaya (from Hawaii). If it has any of those in it, due to the way those commodity crops are processed, consider it GE unless it says otherwise. The only times you would be unsure are when you eat sweet corn or summer squash.
I see it like the 'evolution is just a theory' labels on textbooks. It is entirely true, evolution IS just a theory, but what does it imply? It implies that evolution is something to be distrusted, that it lacks credibility. Do the same thing thing with GE crops. Put the label on there, and it is true, but what does it imply. Hmm, why does this need a label?
Not very high.
Already done. If you look at the Rainbow papaya, you can save seeds from that GE crop. Granted, it is the only non-corporate GE crop approved for commercial cultivation, but the point is, it can be done. It is mostly regulation holding back other such crops from other universities and NGOs. The regulatory barriers to entry are so high that only corporations can get in, and that's a fault of the system that encourages this, not the technology. Also, farmers must sign the contract before they purchase the seed, and they're free to buy other seed if they choose. That they don't says to me that they feel it is worth it for the benefits they get. I personally don' find the situation to be optimal, but that's how it works in the absence of stronger publicly funded presence. And most of them would buy the seed again even without the contract; the seed is hybrid after all (meaning that while you get the benefits of hybrid vigor the first year, you lose genetic stability the next). Now, if we had apomixis traits, well, that would be cool (and it would shut down Monsanto's seed business overnight).
As for preventing genes to wild plants, I first must point out that no one seems concerned that mutations created by non-GE means escaping never bother anyone, and second, that was one of the reasons for the development of genetic use restriction technology, aka GURTs, or more commonly known as the oft despised terminator technology. If you want that, good luck, not after the way its been demonized.
And that's why it says 'while every GM crop must be individually evaluated as genetic engineering is a process not a product.' It'd be like saying 'vaccines are safe.' Obviously, just because you have some dead microbes in a syringe doesn't mean it is safe, therefore all vaccines must be tested individually. But we'd still have no problem stating that vaccines are generally safe. However, if a study finds that vaccines are safe, it is likely referring to the widespread fears that they cause autism or something. What does this study say about a new type of modification? Well, not necessarily anything, but it would hopefully cause people to be less paranoid about the technique used.
Ugh, some of those ads were reason enough to avoid them.
I wouldn't be surprised if unchecked muscle growth also leads to bone/tendon damage/poor muscle control/heart issues etc.
I think that would probably be the most likely scenario, if not simply because people with these sorts of mutations IIRC tend to have shortened lifespans and various health issues. There's something to be said about how biology doesn't give a crap about how a gene got there and all, and that activating something doesn't necessarily mean there will be side effects, but we're talking about genes that affect the growth and development of the physiology of the animal here, not some gene that will have no other affect besides producing a fluorescing protein or green fur or something like that. No, evolution doesn't always work out nice and smooth, but it does do some honing over millions of years, and this does change something that the rest of the animal has not honed to. It's possible that this will have no effect on the animal's health, but my guess is that accommodating the rest of the body with a stronger heart, bigger bones, and better tendons to suit these changes may be the Required Secondary Powers needed to make this trait mean anything beneficial to the mouse.
Haven't seen them complaining about prohibition either. You'd think that the government spending billions telling people what they can and can't grow and consume in their own homes and jailing those who get caught doing it anyway would be seen as a pretty big violation of government overstepping its bounds (especially given that it would put a few of the founders in a federal prison, but sometimes I think they are more into idealized characters of the founders then historical accuracy anyway), but I haven't heard anything about them protesting that one. Small government is not something they care about. They want their government. I think the most damning piece about them is, as you pointed out, that they suddenly appeared once Obama won. I heard nothing from the right about small government until then, but suddenly once the little R after the president's name changed to a D, then they were all about the concept of limited government....but claimed it was for totally non-partisan reasons, natch. Although it remains to be seen (and I'll certainty change my opinion of them if proven wrong), I suspect the majority of the calls for limiting government from the right will stop the moment the little D after the president's name changes to an R, and I highly doubt much else, like what that president actually does, will affect that. You'd think if they really were for small government they'd be for better or worse supporting Ron Paul, but they're not. That says something, namely that real small government would cut the parts of big government they like.
I don't see how the concept means much anyway. I don't care if the government is big or small, I care about the results it gets. For some things, sure, there's too much government, for others, maybe there should be more. Some programs and regulations are excessive, others are necessary. Seems like the 'small government' thing, whatever merit is sometimes has and sometimes doesn't, is more of an easily digested talking point than anything meaningful.
Yeah, I don't get some of the comments here. The way I see it, we've pretty much only got two options. One, a massive publicly funded program to develop, test, and produce drugs, which would cost tax dollars but could provide drugs without concern for the end profit, or two, the privately funded drug companies that do the R&D themselves, but who ultimately need a profit motive to continue to exist. There is no third option, where the drug companies just make drugs for the fun of it and give them away/let their research be used by generics companies without compensation. They simply wouldn't exist without the ability to get a return on investment, and that means patents. These things aren't brought by the Pharma Fairy. If you don't like it, advocate the first option. I wouldn't have a problem with more publicly funded research, if it meant making people's lives better with new medical developments. It'd certainty be better than some of the bullshit tax dollars get pissed away on. But don't blame the companies that you can't have the best of both worlds.
It turns out that the real father is a raptor?
At which point the 3 billion people at risk for malaria would step in and using that same logic take the exact opposite stance. Malaria kills millions of people. What would it be to let that continue if there was a way tom stop it, or at least cut back on it?
If you're trying to imply that GE mosquitoes will have some sort of crazy unforeseen consequences, those are pretty bad examples to make your point with. Neither of those really have much to do with genetic engineering. As far as I know there are a handful of theories for CCD, but no one has linked it to GE crop in any way (besides the typical crazies who blame GE crops for animal sterility, autism, cancer, droughts, missing socks, ect).
As for the so-called superweeds, there is no such thing. Maybe you were talking about glyphosate resistant weeds? That's certainty a topic worth discussing, but ultimately when you apply selection pressure to a fast reproducing population (like weeds) eventually you see a genetic shift, and it doesn't matter how. Resistant weeds have emerged in the past with previously used systems (if you think herbicide resistance in crops didn't exist until the advent of genetic engineering then you've got a lot to learn), they will emerge in future systems (although hopefully the new ideas of using a good multi-year rotation using numerous different herbicides with varying modes of action will help prevent this as it is mostly over-reliance a particular herbicide not over-use of the herbicide that creates resistance), and the fact that a transgene was involved doesn't change how population genetics works (although it has suddenly made it somehow controversial).
Is eradicating malaria, West Nile, etc. really worth the risks?
Yes. Ok, so lets say that some animals will lose out on a meal every now and again. Is there anything that would be completely destroyed in the absence of one species of mosquito species? Is there anything critical to the survival of an entire ecosystem dependent on the presence of this type of mosquito? I highly doubt it. Other bugs will replace them, and they'll get eaten instead. Things more important then this have gone extinct before, and it wasn't the end of the world. Ecosystems are rarely so fragile. And even if it did, even if we assume you're right, so what? Malaria kills millions of people. Am I going to ask the environment to take one more for the team if it means saving them? You're damned right I am.
Well, there is some truth to the idea. Before our modern food system, the one the organic advocates seem to so resent, famine and malnutrition were not uncommon (in too much of the world, they still are).. Food poisoning gets a bit more complected because if you're eating relatively fresh from a system that doesn't give any chance for cross contamination, you've got lower odds, but if you've got food stored, then you're going to want some sort of preservative. Food additives could go either way, since some additives like iodine in salt and folic acid in bread. I don't see additive as a group as going one way or the other since just about anything could be an additive. But anyway, an abundance of food provided by modern agricultural practices (not whatever organic is offering) certainty contributed to longer lifespans.
When you say 'worsening quality of our food sources' then I'd ask what you mean by that. If you mean the fact that people think food comes out of a box or a can, and no one views plants as food, then yeah, that's a problem. Sodas, way too much meat, greasy fried everything, sugary processed cakes and candies and other things with transfats, and high fructose corn syrup in everything because our government subsidized corn, ect., then absolutely. That is a problem here in the US. Not enough emphasis on the basics, on simple fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains, herbs & spices. Everything has a brand name and a labeled package.
On the other hand, if you're talking about the 'organic food vs non-organic food' thing mentioned higher up on the thread, like the notion that there's a problem with using pesticides and herbicides and genetically engineered crops and artificial hormones and all that, then you're absolutely wrong. Those are all useful tools, the danger of which has been either fabricated or grossly overblown. I'm glad my country uses those things and lament the lack of understanding of agricultural science that has caused them to become 'controversial.'. I assume that since you say you're a European (based on your sig, Italian?) you hear people hating on those sorts of things a lot (then again, the same is largely true here in the US, but I get the perception that public opinions are even worse in Europe), but for food and agricultural issues it is Europe that has the higher percent of people who are on the wrong side of science.
I can sympathize with that. I tell people this: organic food is dogma. Sure, you could cite the studies showing that organic food is not all it is cracked up to be (though for every one of these the Rodale Institute or some other usually well connected group makes another saying just the opposite), or show the successes of modern agricultural science, It isn't science, it isn't reason, it is appeal to nature, technophobic, nonsense. Yes, there are good things in organic production practices, like how we need to pay greater attention to soil flora, better implementation of biodiversity (both inter- and extra-species), and the use of biological controls (like using predatory insects or mating disruptors). But at the same time, it doesn't matter how safe (to your health or the environment) or sustainable any given thing is, if the big cheeses who law down the organic standards deem it unnatural, then you can't use it. That's just idiotic. If you find some way to produce a pesticide very safely, very cheaply, and without using much resources, then test it and find it does no damage to people and has very little impact on the environment, sane people would think that's great. But you could never use in in organic. You could, however, use the sap extracted from some toxic twig. Make no mistake, they DO use pesticides on organic food. Some of them are quite nasty, and because they don't work as well as conventional pesticides, may need sprayed more. So an efficient well studied pesticide is rejected in favor of one that is more harmful and less well studied just because it is natural. That I think is just dumb.
Fun fact: if you eat your daily recommended amount of conventionally grown fruits & veges, you'll get about 1500 mg of toxic, dangerous, poisonous, pesticides, some of which can kill you in sufficient quantities. Oh no, how could those bastards at the FDA (or whatever your local regulatory body is) allow us to be poisoned like this? Well, that 1500 mg? All natural, produced in the plant, by the plant, for the plant. Less that 1 mg of that comes from synthetic pesticide sprays. A few orders of magnitude less, ooh, scary. Anyway, because of things like this, if we were to go all organic, we'd either have to have sever billion people disappear, or cut down one crapload of rainforest and jungle to make up for it (as in, we'd need more than we actually have). In fact, if we were farming with techniques form last century, we'd have to do that too. If you've ever seen a forest, thank those big bad chemical pesticides and fertilizers. The inefficiency of organic is anything but environmentally friendly, and if is were to somehow expand too dramatically, it would be ecological suicide (not that that will ever happen because pesticides look a lot nicer when you're hungry).
And by the way, conventional agriculture doesn't limit itself. It doesn't say 'Oh, the organic people advocate crop rotation and to-till methods, so I won't use those.' The reason your average farmer wouldn't say something like that is because they're not morons, and indeed, both of those so-called organic techniques are regularly used by the big so-called industrial farmers. And then the anti-technology anti-science thing, ugh. Genetically modified food is safe. There have been hundreds of studies on that, a vast scientific consensus backing it, I mean, it is baffling that this is still up for debate. Yet organic rejects genetic engineering, when the GE crops used have cut pesticide use, the no-till methods they've facilitated have prevented erosion to the soil which in tern prevents fertilizer runoff into aquatic environments, and have been found to be safer (less insect holes in your corn means less fungal infection which means less mycotoxins). They saved the Hawaiian papaya industry, in fact, while the organic promoters are blathering on about how genetic engineering doesn't work, the organic growers were planting rows of the GE papayas around their fields because the GE ones kept out the papaya ringspot virus
I think that's more of a language issue. As far as I know, the organic standards thing is the same in Europe as in the US, it's just that in some European languages they use the term biological. In German the use the prefix 'Bio-', in French they use the term 'biologique,' and I think in Italian the use the word 'biologica'. So basically, Europeans tend to call it biological, but it is the same thing that English speakers call organic.
It really is a better term when you think about it, because organic in general relies on biologically derived inputs as opposed to chemical ones. And yes, they still do use inputs; the whole 'organic food is pesticide free' thing is simply not true (and even if they didn't, plants naturally produce an order of magnitude more pesticidal secondary metabolites internally then you're going to get from properly applied spray residues). They'll just use fertilizers and pesticides that are derived from naturally occurring sources as opposed to being manufactured (and yes this includes manure [which is probably good to add to the soil every now and again no matter what system you use]), in other words, of biological origin as opposed to chemical.
The whole thing is a still just clever marketing based on a big idiotic appeal to nature fallacy that serves no purpose other than to separate the gullible and the scientifically illiterate from their money (if it occurs to you that the origin of a substance has no bearing on its chemical properties, then you know more about chemistry & biology than the organic movement) and undermine the integrity of agricultural technology and food science in the public's eye for profit, but the term 'biological' is still better than 'organic.' Not by much I guess since all food is going to biological in nature just like all food is organic but at lest this says something a little more specific about the production practices.
I present to you 'organic' salt.. Good for seasoning french fires, and making chemists' heads explode.
Were they laughing off the idea of extraterrestrial life itself, or the stuff you commonly see in popular culture...you know, the people who treat Roswell like a Mecca, go on about grays and abductions and crop circles, anyone who agrees with Ancient Aliens Guy, ect.? It is one thing to speculate that, out of countless stars, it is possible that there exists more than one planet with some sort of life (while admitting that there is no evidence whatsoever to indicate that that is the case and acknowledging our general lack data), and it is hard to say that such an idea deserves to be dismissed outright, however the idea has certainty attracted more than its fair share of things to be rightly laughed off. I never really noticed that scientists completely dismiss the notion of non-terrestrial life, if anything, I'd have assumed just the opposite is true. I'd guess that either your relatives are not representative of scientists as a whole for one reason or another, just chose to go with what evidence is actually verifiable rather than get into the whole 'billions of stars times non-zero possibility of life equals...' thing, were thinking not of the concept itself but of of the nonsense various spacey nutters go on about, or just didn't want to look like said nutters in front of everyone else by acknowledging the possibility.
About corn, it is definitely a caryopsis fruit. I've never heard anyone define it as anything else. Though we do have to keep in mind that corn is a bit of an oddball, what with the inconvenient parts having been bred out of the ancestral teosinte and all.
I guess I get where you're coming from with the peanuts. I wasn't really trying to imply that they were vegetables. When I first listed them I did so more to mention that they weren't actually (botanical) nuts and to highlight their relation to beans (since strangely few people make the connection), but then put that line in later and forgot to remove them from the first part. Botanical fruit though they may be I wouldn't call them vegetables. What I'm surprised no one caught was when I mentioned rice along with peppers and beans. What you eat there is just the endosperm after the rest has been milled off, so I don't really know if you could still call it a fruit at that point. Not sure putting those rice in a list like that is entirely fair.
And I forgot to mention olives, another botanical fruit that is considered a vegetable. I never liked olives anyway.
That had nothing to do with government greed. It was the right ruling. Should the government tax tomatoes as vegetables? Well, you might say that they are a fruit, and vegetables are things like cucumbers, squash, peppers, eggplant, string beans, pea pods, corn, okra, right? Problem is, everything I just mentioned is also botanically a fruit (fruits that, for some strange reason, people don't embarrass themselves by pointing out that that they're botanical fruits like they do with tomatoes). Cucumbers and squash are pepos (which are actually a type of berry), corn (and wheat and rice) is a type of fruit called a caryopsis, peanuts and string beans are legumes, and eggplant and peppers are berries. Fruit has both a culinary AND scientific meaning. Culinary, it is a sweet part of the plant that is almost always a botanical fruit, but that does not imply that a botanical fruit is also a culinary fruit. Scientifically, milkweed pods, cotton pods, and those little helicopters that fall from maple trees are fruits. Chocolate covered cucumber sound good to you? What about tomato ice cream, or pea pod pie? No? That's because they're not fruits in the everyday speech. You're going to stop calling peanuts and almonds nuts (peanut is a legume and almond is a drupe) or stop calling potatoes root vegetables (they're tubers, which are stems), and no one is calling rice, peppers, or string beans fruits, so why this fixation on the fact that tomatoes are botanical fruits?
Vegetable has no scientific meaning, so it is perfectly reasonable to consider something a botanical fruit and a culinary vegetable. Just by mentioning the term, we know that we're speaking in culinary or horticultural terms, not pure botanical terms. Something can be a root and a vegetable (like carrots) a stem and a vegetable (like potatoes), a leaf and a vegetable (lettuce), a flower and a vegetable (broccoli), and things can be a botanical fruit and a vegetable too. Culinary fruits don't need to be a botanical fruit either. The best example is the strawberry. The actual fruits are the the little seeds on the outside (called achenes), whereas the culinary part is just the large swollen receptacle, which is a modified stem. I think botanists consider the whole thing, both the achenes and the receptacle to be the fruit, so that is a pretty weak example, but that should at least make you think about what a fruit really is. Historically, rhubarb was considered a fruit at times. However, if I gave you a cashew apple (yes, every cashew nut has a fruit to go along with it) or if I gave you the 'fruit' of a native cherry or Japanese raisin tree, you might not be able to tell that they aren't actually fruits. The lleuque 'fruit' doesn't even come from an angiosperm (only angiosperms have fruit)! If any of those were commercially cultivated, what would we call them? Vegetables? Should we regulate something that in terms of cultivation and use is more similar to a cherry like a radish just because of some botanical nitpick? I don't think so.
So, if we were speaking strictly scientifically, we'd treat corn, chili peppers, and pea pods the same as apples, grapes, andbananas. But that'd be pretty darned stupid, right? That's why we don't do it. The government made the right call there. I imagine someone was just being a smartass to get out of some taxes.
If it can't have offspring, then you can't breed that gene into it.
I can't think of one either, but the issue of breeding doesn't apply because most every grain or vegetable you eat is an F1 hybrid, so it doesn't matter if the actual crop grown can reproduce. See cytoplasmic male sterility for something not quite the same but similar (although that's not used anymore for reasons unrelated to the sterility).
I think it is interesting that the people who don't want labeling somehow claim they are for the free market.
Simple really. You want labeling for GE food, create a demand and buy it. Actually, that's already happened in the form of the organic label. What isn't in the free market is demanding that the government impose mandatory labeling just because you want it. It wouldn't be free market to have mandatory labeling for Kosher food, Halal food, or vegan food. It wouldn't be free market to demand that food produced by grafting, tissue culture, somaclonal variation, induced polyploidy, embryo rescue, wide crosses, mutagenesis, ect. be labeled. It isn't free market to have the government impose labeling for GE food. You want labels for any of the above, that's on you. And no, it isn't like labeling for allergens (or pretty much anything else of that matter) or ingredients, because allergens are specific things that we know are dangerous to some people, and ingredients are the actual things inside a product (not the variety); genetic engineering on the other hand is not a thing but a process, one that we know isn't inherently dangerous (at least no more than any other plant improvement method), and one that, presently anyway, is used only to produce crops that are by any objective measure substantially equivalent to their non-GE counterparts.
You're confusing genetic manipulation with breeding.
And so are you. Breeding is genetic manipulation, but not genetic engineering, and just because something has been genetically manipulated does not mean it has been bred OR genetically engineered; there are other plant improvement techniques out there besides those two, and most people have never even heard of them and have no idea they're eating them. Grapefruit, wheat, nashi, apples, bananas, triticale...they all have their nifty little stories if you're willing seek them out.
You can breed wolves to become poodles, but you can't breed them so they glow in the dark; you can genitcally menipulate them to, by introducing genes from unrelated life forms.
The thing to consider here is that none of that really matters. It sounds significant, but at the end of the day it's all just code to the cell. Transgenic, cisgenic, antisense, wild type, mutant, whatever, the plant cells don't care.
Nothing about breeding food is dangerous
Let me ask you, what if I said that genetic engineering accidentally produced a potato that unexpectedly had dangerously high levels of a poisonous glycoalkaloid, and that it also made celery that had so much of carcinogenic psoralen that the harvesters got rashes after just touching the plants? How do you feel about the safety of the technique that produces things like that? Because I lied. They were developed, and those side effects were unintentional, but they weren't made with GE. Nope, that celery and the Lenape potato were developed with conventional breeding. It is absolutely false that there is nothing dangerous about breeding. When you change genes, there can be unintended consequences, and it doesn't really matter how you change them. It has happened with GE, it has happened with breeding. Provided you don't do anything stupid, genetic engineering is no more inherently risky than breeding. Actually, it just might be safer, because now you know exactly the gene you're manipulating, whereas with breeding you randomly mix many genes. In the case of the Lenape potato, they were trying to introduce pest resistance genes from wild potatoes. Had they moved the genes with GE instead of using breeding, the genes for increased solanine wouldn't have come along for the ride.
You think you're being very clever, but the green revolution has not fed anyone that otherwise would have starved.
Funny, pretty much every reputable source says otherwise. I guess all those prizes Norman Borlaug got were for his good looks.
Who told you that? That's not true, at all.
Pretty much every crop & soil scientist out there will tell you that.
The herbicides kill off beneficial nematodes and other organisms which live in the soil. Healthy topsoil can be over 40% living organic material. After using these herbicides, it drops to 0%.
And if that were the alternative you'd have a point. But the alternative is tillage. Inputs are never disirable, but it isn't a question of 'does this do harm' so much as 'does this do the least harm.'
google for "superbugs", the first time I ever did (relevant since google remembers what you've searched for) the first bunch of results were all relevant.
I know there's resistance but I've never heard of the resitnat weeds possessing any attributes besides their resistance (at least in this particular case anyway).
The point I'm making is that engineering these plants to be pest-resistant or chemical-resistant is a loser's game, because they will become resistant to it themselves.
Uh, yeah. there's been a Red Queen's race in agriculture for ages. GE doesn't change that. Of course pests will develop resistance. That's always happened, it is always going to happen.
Meanwhile, there are potential harmful side effects, and indeed Bt corn has already gone toxic in the 20th generation (just try finding the citation any more, though. I'm sure I have a bookmark saved somewhere, maybe even scrapbook'd the article, but elefino where it is now. It was all over when it happened..
I think you mean this. Turned out to be a fungus, but the transgene go the public blame. Funny thing is, Bt corn is actually safer due to lower levels of mycotoxin. Corn that doesn't get chewed on has less open area for fungal infection which means lower mycotoxins.
That's because you're being disingenuous.
Nutrition facts describe the nutritional content of something. The variety used to make it is entirely different. Its the difference between knowing a car's MPG and knowing the elemental composition of the alloy used in the tailpipe.
That's a bunch of shit. It's not a common issue that has always been in agriculture, because the technology has never existed to do these things on this scale.
We've used herbicides before genetic engineering, and we've had resistant weeds before genetic engineering. There are even non-GE herbicide tollerant varieties of some crops out there. We've bred pest resistant varieties, and pests have overcome those varieties. For example, there's no GE wheat on the market, but they still use herbicides on wheat, and they still have pest issues that require new varieties. Surely you don't deny this? And surely you're not calling the notion that a Rainbow papaya is different from Golden Rice is different from Arctic apple is different from Bt corn to be a bunch of shit?
Attacking a straw man is still a fallacy, and it's what you're doing, because I never said nature knew what it was doing; in fact, I said it didn't.
You started off by advocating organic agriculture. If you don't think that's an appeal to nature, either you don't know what an appeal to nature is or you don't know what organic farming is.