But there’s something else to consider: something that hasn’t been properly considered for, honestly, the entire history of the world. How do the native inhabitants of the land that the telescope is proposed to be built on feel about it?
That's absolutely not true. That was considered, quite intensively. The TMT folks bent over backwards to make sure that the people who's nucleotides happen to include the certain chemical arrangement called Hawaiian were well consulted, cultural sensitivities taken into consideration, ect. They actually planned it to be built in an area somewhat not as good for viewing in order to minimize any potential impact on cultural practices on the summit. Until the popular bandwagon got rolling, most people were in support of it.
While many in the media picked up one or two of the soundbites or demands and harped on them as ridiculous or backwards, the reality of the situation is this: a culture that’s many thousands of years old was — in the same imperialist spirit as much of the world — conquered and forced to live in a world they did not choose for themselves.
Maybe thousands, though newer estimates put it at about 800 years IIRC, with previous inhabitants maybe getting killed off by the second wave of immigrants who are the ancestors of Hawaiians. Either way, no one gets to choose the world they were born into. Maybe I wanted to be a citizen of the British Empire, damned colonial rebels. If you have actual prejudice and present issues, that is a legitimate concern. Something that happened to your ancestors, even if it was wrong, not so much.
Earlier this year, many Hawaiians protested the construction of this telescope, seeking to halt its construction until their concerns were addressed.
Many of their concerns were either wrong (for example, that it would damage aquifers) or unprovable (that it would damage the 'spiritual waters' of the Mauna). What do you say about concerns like that? To be fair, mistakes were made in the past with other telescopes, so having concerns about keeping things right is absolutely justified, but that isn't the same as disregarding the environmental impact statement and spreading rumors.
I don't get why people are bending over backwards to justify this. If Christian groups try to influence others, especially science, for their religious/cultural reasons, it is wrong. When, say, Switzerland banned minarets for their 'cultural' reasons, that was also wrong...for the Swiss to say 'You Muslims are of the wrong non-native race/culture so suck it up' is bullshit and everyone knows it. If I were to say that I hold claim to a certain plot of land simply because of my race, everyone would call me an asshole, and rightfully so. That Hawaiians suffered wrongs a century ago should be acknowledged, but it does not justify the same.
I've had them. Gros Michael is good, but I don't think it is better or worse that Cavendish, just different, and while I can only speak from my own experience I don't think it tastes like artificial banana flavoring. But different people like different things; maybe Gros Michael is the best variety for some people. My personal favorite variety is Pisang Awak (followed by Muraru), now there's a variety that it is a real shame isn't more widely available.
Well,while those advances are real and significant, we do also have people actively working to keep those advances from being utilized. Wouldn't want to tamper with the genetics of a seedless man made fruit, which often has an extra set of chromosomes, and sometimes is a hybrid with a parent that has banana streak virus integrated naturally into its genome...nope, wouldn't want to mass with that picture of biological integrity.
As it stands right now, it looks like the most promising research is the use of somaclonal variants. This is, to make a long story short, when you generate clones with slight random genetic variations which are then grown out and screened for their level of disease resistance. This seems to be the way things will go, which is fortunate, because then we don't have to deal with the anti-GMO crowd trotting out their usual manure.
Having tried a fair bit more bananas that most people, I disagree. I would say Cavendish is just fine. Sure, there is diversity in banana fruit tastes, and IMO Cavendish is not as good as, say, a Pisang Awak, but I don't get where people call it bad. I've had worse varieties.
and won't survive a plane crash like your laboratory-born neo-fruit.
Cavendish has been cultivated for well over a century. Not exactly what you'd call a 'neo-fruit,' as if that would be a bad thing anyway.
Bananas form a substantial part of the diet in certain parts of the world, particularly Africa. In developed countries it is a 'just' fruit; elsewhere it is more of a staple. So, yes, this could be pretty bad.
A fair point in some cases, however, this particular strain hits most types of cultivated bananas. Even if the banana export market diversified away from Cavendish to include some of the many other varieties, this would still be a problem.
I don't know, there are quite a lot of people who think Snowden is some crazed anti-American terrorist sympathizer. I would not be surprised at all if a disturbingly large segment of that group bought this bullshit hook line and sinker.
However, they are grafted onto -- orange roots and stems.
Well, not quite. Poncitrus is a different genus, and is quite different from a true citrus. Poncitrus is often used as a rootstock because it is quite hardy...in fact, Poncitrus can even survive frosts down to USDA zone 6a. Unfortunately, they taste like crap, and despite attempts no one has been able to produce a palatable citrange (a Citrus x Poncitrus hybrid). This leaves them as a novelty for northern gardeners (yep, even if you live in a place with cold winters, you too can grow an orange, just don't use it for anything except marmalade...also they're thorny monsters) and as a rootstock for commercial oranges.
Not all citrus are infertile. It is true that the common orange, Citrus × sinensis, is a hybrid of C. maxima and C. reticulata, but it is not a recent hybrid, and it is a fertile hybrid. Some of them are infertile (sometimes this is the result of being treated with mutation inducing radiation, also unlabeled), but that's not really why they are grafted. Most fruit crops (with a few exceptions like papaya, watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew, and some of the less commonly cultivated fruits like golden berry and kiwano, which all have short lifecycles) are propagated asexually, either through cuttings (like blueberries, figs, gooseberry, dragonfruit, and kiwis) or offshoots (like blackberries, bananas, and strawberries), but very commonly for larger woody tree fruit (and nuts) through grafting. This is done to get genetically identical crops. The thing with long generation crops like most fruits is that, unlike vegetables and grains, it would take many decades more than a breeder is going to live to get a tree that produces true to seed (in most cases, peaches kind of sort of do it). So if you plant a seed from an orange, apple, pear, mango, lychee, ect. you will get a plant, but just like the offspring of a person is always going to be different, the fruit quality will vary, and usually not for the better. This is the main purpose for grafting, although it is also used to speed the time to first harvest, and to impart specific traits to the crop, for example, dwarfing rootstocks are often used in apples, table grapes (Vitis vinifera) are often grafted onto fox grape (V. labrusca) for phylloxera resistance, and pears are sometimes grafted onto quince (an under appreciated fruit in a related genus) for dwarfing.
Now, if they were all sold as plain Gala apples, that might be different.
They are though. You are confusing bud sports with varieties. Bud sports are like varieties of varieties, so there's the original Gala, but there's also mutants that pop up every now and again, emerging from a single bud, hence the name. You've been eating those bud sports your whole life and probably never even realized it. Even notice color variation between two of the 'same' type of apples from different farms? That's not just environmental differences you're seeing there. A lot of things go unlabeled at the store. You never see blueberries labeled as Vaccinium angustifolium, V. corymbosum, or V. ashei, the three most common species of blueberry. You never see if a squash is the Daisey variety, or the Daisy variety (to commercial varieties of yellow crookneck). You never see that a tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) has for example the Ph-3 gene from S. pimpinellifolium for late blight resistance. I've never seen a watermelon juice containing produce state if the watermelons came from a diploid watermelon with the natural two copies of each chromosome or the triploid varieties, with a chemically induced additional set of chromosomes (made by doubling the natural two to four with a chemical like colchicine or oryzalin and then crossing a two with a four to get a seedless three chomosome containing watermelon plant that so many are fond of). There's an entire world of crop science that your average shopper doesn't know about and takes completely for granted as the browse t
And favoring the GM industry might even end up killing the Organic Foods industry. Didn't know it was some kind of government mandate to favor a side of an industry against any other.
Do you not see the logical contradiction of that sentence? If the organic industry cannot exist without undue burden being placed on genetic engineering (not true at all by the way), then the government must place that burden because to do otherwise would be to favor those who use biotechnology? Then you say the government shouldn't be favoring industries?
Because the people who are paying the bills want it.
Argumentum ad populum. You still haven't exaplined why it its good idea, just that a lot of people want it (when you word the question a specific way that it), no doubt due to years of fearmongering. Fortunately, we live in a republic, not a direct democracy. Do you really want to claim that doing otherwise, especially when it comes to regulations, is a good idea?
Well, I suppose if developing something that makes the world a better place and funding further research by patenting it, eventually allowing to to fall into the public domain as it has, is what you consider an 'abuse of the system', then it looks to me like you're probably just dead set on hammering home an indefensible point.
An orange grown from a orange tree that has been grafted onto the rootstock of another plant is genetically no different than an orange grown for an orange tree that has its own roots.
Irrelevant. I just want to know what I'm buying. I want to know if I'm buying an unnatural Franken-orange. Why are you supporting keeping that hidden from me?
See what I did there? You're partially right, but not entirely, about the genetics, by the way. While actual gene transfer from rootstock to scion shoot is, as far as I know, restricted to to point of tissue contact (although that does indeed happen), grafting has been shown to alter gene expression. Why or why not is that sufficient for labeling? And that's just one example of many I could use. Take bud sports for example, like Gale Gala and Autumn Gala, both naturally occurring somatic mutants of the original Gala apple. Not labeled, and even if they were, the average person has no idea what a bud sport is.
That is a misconception. Plenty of non-GE crops are patented. The plant patent system is older by far than genetic engineering. Honeycrisp apple, for example, is non-GE, and until a few years ago was under patent by the University of Minnesota, who developed it and used the patent royalties to fund further research (hence why it was patented at all). That they are different in one way does not mean they are not substantially equivalent.
The information isn't hidden. Corn, soy, cotton, canola, sugar beet, alfalfa, summer squash, papaya, apple, potato...those are the species you need to remember. Saying that the information is hidden is like saying that because bacon is not labeled as Haraam that Islamic dietary guidelines are hidden. PErhaps if you are too lazy to learn about your own beliefs they are hidden, or maybe if you have a fearmongering ax to grind you'll call them that, but how can something I explained in a single line ever be considered hidden?
And furthermore, I've seen just as much case indicating that we should label if something was produced via hybridization, inbreeding, grafting, somaclonal variation, bud sport selection, mutagenesis, wide crossing/embryo rescue, grafting, tissue culture, or any of the other things I could demand. Where's my label indicating if a bean come from a high aerenchyma line, or the label saying if my sweet corn was from a high maysin line, or my labeling indicating if my tomato has genes from Solanum pimpinellifolium, or my label indicating that my Vitis vinifera was grafted on V. labrusca? Can you give a rational reasoning as to why only one thing, which just so happens to have public controversy, should be singled out?
No, it's not, and you did not answer the question.
If I don't want to eat Broccoli, Tomatoes, etc... or GM crops for that matter I do not need to justify why I don't want to eat them to a judge and jury in a court of law.
I never said anything of the sort. You have every right to not eat them. Just like Jews have every right to eat Orlah fruit and Muslims have every right to avoid gelatin. You are confusing a right you have with an obligation for society to cater to your belief system. And you know, I would never dream of insulting a Muslim, Jew, Hindu, ect. for holding to a dietary restriction that I myself do not hold. I would never call them names for that. But then again, they're not trying to pass off their dogma as science and attempting to craft legislation favoring their belief system, are they?
Unless someone is forcing you to eat corn, soy, canola, cottonseed, sugar beet, alfalfa, summer squash, and certain papayas, apples, and potatoes (the GE species), you have no leg to stand on, as I have just told you exactly what to look for if you wish to avoid GE crops. It isn't that hard.
Asbestos was also once safe. And so was Talidomide.
Saying 'science was wrong before' is a bad argument when creationists use it, bad when anti-vaxxers use it, and bad when GMO denialists use it.
GE salmon farmers want to engage in unfair competition with regular farmers, even if they need to grease up the FDA.
Yeah, that's why it took two and a half decades of testing, all that corruption fast tracking it. You are making things up. And what exactly do you mean by 'unfair competition?' You mean producing something rather than hitting hard the declining wild stocks? You know, if any other technology were being used, I'll bet everyone would be up in arms that some would spitefully choose to do more harm to the environment than adopt new technology, but suddenly when genetic engineering is involved, that's somehow okay and preferable.
I will now pay double for wild salmon,
And I'll choose the option with less environmental impact.
Oh, and they can forget about ever exporting farmed salmon to Europe.
No, innocent until proven guilty is a pretty good standard. Do you have evidence that GE crops are intrinsically dangerous? Because I have plenty of reason to think otherwise. Saying there might be some potential but as of yet unknown unknown is as compelling as warning me about the invisible pink unicorn.
Especially because the guys who want to prove it safe have huge financial motivation and anyone trying to prove the opposite just wants to eat food because they purchased a lifetime subscription to a digestive tract.
Really, you mean to say there isn't a multi-billion dollar organic industry out there, and plenty of professional activists staking their careers on making noise? And you mean to imply all those in academic positions who work with GE are part of some money making plot? That's bullshit and you know it.
If I buy ice cream and it has peanuts in it, the label has to have peanuts included in the ingredient list
Yes, but those peanuts don't say that peanuts are allotetraploids, or say if they have genes from wild Arachis species in it, for example like the TxAG- 7 line's descendants do as a result of some complex and clever 'conventional breeding', and I don't see you demanding that they do so.
Also, you're assuming that every company and corporation on the planet that creates GMO foods (and now food animals) has people's best interests first and foremost,
By that logic, every for-profit company is suspect, as are their products. That stance works equally well against electronics, clothing, cars, pocket knives, wine, and coffee, all produced by corporations
and you're also assuming that they're utterly flawless and nigh-unto-omniscent when it comes to testing and checking the end product for safety.
No, just that as far as anyone can tell they are, which is the absolute best that is humanly possible. I could make your vague, non-falsifiable argument against wifi, vaccinations, electric cars, cell phones, or any number of things. If you have an actual concern, voice it. Otherwise, you are just saying 'bad things might happen and you can't prove they won't' which describes most everything.
Is it also a lie when pork is not explicitly labeled as Haraam? Why or why not, when it is clearly true? Are pork producers also in the wrong for lying to Muslims by not labeling their bacon as something that anyone who actually cares would already know? Why or why not?
We can turn that same argument around and claim that the main way GMO manufacturers are swaying people is by concealing facts.
They're not concealing anything. That's opposing the mandating of something. There's a difference between hiding something extremely easy to find like the fact that corn, soy, cotton, canola, alfalfa, sugar beet, summer squash, papaya, apple, and potato have GE varieties and actively forcing someone to put a label on their product with just enough information to scare people, but no more than that. Oh bugger, did I accidentally just say that 'concealed' fact of what is GE? Darnedest thing, how hard was that?
People want to believe that Genetically modified foods are going to be a savoir. The companies producing them sure don't show concern for anything but profits.
People say the same things about pharmaceutical companies and vaccines. They're wrong, and for the same reasons you are. You are also implying that technology is a corporate thing. You are also wrong about that.
Kneejerk reactions like this show why the anti-GMO movement, after trying so hard to ban GE, now makes such a big stink over the labeling issue, despite no other genetic alteration technique facing the same scrutiny, and why producers aren't keen on having the labeling forced on them.
The sort of thing I mean was Monsanto suing farmers adjacent to those with GM crops for "stealing" their product via cross pollonation by insects and wind.
That's not what happened though. The case you are likely referring to, the Schmeiser case, involved the guy intentionally selecting for and propagating GE crops after he was cross pollinated. It would be like if I threw a Star Wars DVD at you, and then you copied and mass produced it for financial gain, and when you get rightfully sued by Disney, you tell everyone you got sued because someone tossed a disk at you.
Slashdot Mirror
This article is pretty off on some things.
But there’s something else to consider: something that hasn’t been properly considered for, honestly, the entire history of the world. How do the native inhabitants of the land that the telescope is proposed to be built on feel about it?
That's absolutely not true. That was considered, quite intensively. The TMT folks bent over backwards to make sure that the people who's nucleotides happen to include the certain chemical arrangement called Hawaiian were well consulted, cultural sensitivities taken into consideration, ect. They actually planned it to be built in an area somewhat not as good for viewing in order to minimize any potential impact on cultural practices on the summit. Until the popular bandwagon got rolling, most people were in support of it.
While many in the media picked up one or two of the soundbites or demands and harped on them as ridiculous or backwards, the reality of the situation is this: a culture that’s many thousands of years old was — in the same imperialist spirit as much of the world — conquered and forced to live in a world they did not choose for themselves.
Maybe thousands, though newer estimates put it at about 800 years IIRC, with previous inhabitants maybe getting killed off by the second wave of immigrants who are the ancestors of Hawaiians. Either way, no one gets to choose the world they were born into. Maybe I wanted to be a citizen of the British Empire, damned colonial rebels. If you have actual prejudice and present issues, that is a legitimate concern. Something that happened to your ancestors, even if it was wrong, not so much.
Earlier this year, many Hawaiians protested the construction of this telescope, seeking to halt its construction until their concerns were addressed.
Many of their concerns were either wrong (for example, that it would damage aquifers) or unprovable (that it would damage the 'spiritual waters' of the Mauna). What do you say about concerns like that? To be fair, mistakes were made in the past with other telescopes, so having concerns about keeping things right is absolutely justified, but that isn't the same as disregarding the environmental impact statement and spreading rumors.
I don't get why people are bending over backwards to justify this. If Christian groups try to influence others, especially science, for their religious/cultural reasons, it is wrong. When, say, Switzerland banned minarets for their 'cultural' reasons, that was also wrong...for the Swiss to say 'You Muslims are of the wrong non-native race/culture so suck it up' is bullshit and everyone knows it. If I were to say that I hold claim to a certain plot of land simply because of my race, everyone would call me an asshole, and rightfully so. That Hawaiians suffered wrongs a century ago should be acknowledged, but it does not justify the same.
I've had them. Gros Michael is good, but I don't think it is better or worse that Cavendish, just different, and while I can only speak from my own experience I don't think it tastes like artificial banana flavoring. But different people like different things; maybe Gros Michael is the best variety for some people. My personal favorite variety is Pisang Awak (followed by Muraru), now there's a variety that it is a real shame isn't more widely available.
Well,while those advances are real and significant, we do also have people actively working to keep those advances from being utilized. Wouldn't want to tamper with the genetics of a seedless man made fruit, which often has an extra set of chromosomes, and sometimes is a hybrid with a parent that has banana streak virus integrated naturally into its genome...nope, wouldn't want to mass with that picture of biological integrity.
As it stands right now, it looks like the most promising research is the use of somaclonal variants. This is, to make a long story short, when you generate clones with slight random genetic variations which are then grown out and screened for their level of disease resistance. This seems to be the way things will go, which is fortunate, because then we don't have to deal with the anti-GMO crowd trotting out their usual manure.
Having tried a fair bit more bananas that most people, I disagree. I would say Cavendish is just fine. Sure, there is diversity in banana fruit tastes, and IMO Cavendish is not as good as, say, a Pisang Awak, but I don't get where people call it bad. I've had worse varieties.
and won't survive a plane crash like your laboratory-born neo-fruit.
Cavendish has been cultivated for well over a century. Not exactly what you'd call a 'neo-fruit,' as if that would be a bad thing anyway.
Bananas form a substantial part of the diet in certain parts of the world, particularly Africa. In developed countries it is a 'just' fruit; elsewhere it is more of a staple. So, yes, this could be pretty bad.
A fair point in some cases, however, this particular strain hits most types of cultivated bananas. Even if the banana export market diversified away from Cavendish to include some of the many other varieties, this would still be a problem.
Well, that must explain why there's so many dinosaurs around.
If you think investment in space is more important than, say, ensuring the future habitability of Earth
I was unaware those were mutually exclusive.
I don't know, there are quite a lot of people who think Snowden is some crazed anti-American terrorist sympathizer. I would not be surprised at all if a disturbingly large segment of that group bought this bullshit hook line and sinker.
However, they are grafted onto -- orange roots and stems.
Well, not quite. Poncitrus is a different genus, and is quite different from a true citrus. Poncitrus is often used as a rootstock because it is quite hardy...in fact, Poncitrus can even survive frosts down to USDA zone 6a. Unfortunately, they taste like crap, and despite attempts no one has been able to produce a palatable citrange (a Citrus x Poncitrus hybrid). This leaves them as a novelty for northern gardeners (yep, even if you live in a place with cold winters, you too can grow an orange, just don't use it for anything except marmalade...also they're thorny monsters) and as a rootstock for commercial oranges.
Not all citrus are infertile. It is true that the common orange, Citrus × sinensis, is a hybrid of C. maxima and C. reticulata, but it is not a recent hybrid, and it is a fertile hybrid. Some of them are infertile (sometimes this is the result of being treated with mutation inducing radiation, also unlabeled), but that's not really why they are grafted. Most fruit crops (with a few exceptions like papaya, watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew, and some of the less commonly cultivated fruits like golden berry and kiwano, which all have short lifecycles) are propagated asexually, either through cuttings (like blueberries, figs, gooseberry, dragonfruit, and kiwis) or offshoots (like blackberries, bananas, and strawberries), but very commonly for larger woody tree fruit (and nuts) through grafting. This is done to get genetically identical crops. The thing with long generation crops like most fruits is that, unlike vegetables and grains, it would take many decades more than a breeder is going to live to get a tree that produces true to seed (in most cases, peaches kind of sort of do it). So if you plant a seed from an orange, apple, pear, mango, lychee, ect. you will get a plant, but just like the offspring of a person is always going to be different, the fruit quality will vary, and usually not for the better. This is the main purpose for grafting, although it is also used to speed the time to first harvest, and to impart specific traits to the crop, for example, dwarfing rootstocks are often used in apples, table grapes (Vitis vinifera) are often grafted onto fox grape (V. labrusca) for phylloxera resistance, and pears are sometimes grafted onto quince (an under appreciated fruit in a related genus) for dwarfing.
Now, if they were all sold as plain Gala apples, that might be different.
They are though. You are confusing bud sports with varieties. Bud sports are like varieties of varieties, so there's the original Gala, but there's also mutants that pop up every now and again, emerging from a single bud, hence the name. You've been eating those bud sports your whole life and probably never even realized it. Even notice color variation between two of the 'same' type of apples from different farms? That's not just environmental differences you're seeing there. A lot of things go unlabeled at the store. You never see blueberries labeled as Vaccinium angustifolium, V. corymbosum, or V. ashei, the three most common species of blueberry. You never see if a squash is the Daisey variety, or the Daisy variety (to commercial varieties of yellow crookneck). You never see that a tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) has for example the Ph-3 gene from S. pimpinellifolium for late blight resistance. I've never seen a watermelon juice containing produce state if the watermelons came from a diploid watermelon with the natural two copies of each chromosome or the triploid varieties, with a chemically induced additional set of chromosomes (made by doubling the natural two to four with a chemical like colchicine or oryzalin and then crossing a two with a four to get a seedless three chomosome containing watermelon plant that so many are fond of). There's an entire world of crop science that your average shopper doesn't know about and takes completely for granted as the browse t
And favoring the GM industry might even end up killing the Organic Foods industry. Didn't know it was some kind of government mandate to favor a side of an industry against any other.
Do you not see the logical contradiction of that sentence? If the organic industry cannot exist without undue burden being placed on genetic engineering (not true at all by the way), then the government must place that burden because to do otherwise would be to favor those who use biotechnology? Then you say the government shouldn't be favoring industries?
Because the people who are paying the bills want it.
Argumentum ad populum. You still haven't exaplined why it its good idea, just that a lot of people want it (when you word the question a specific way that it), no doubt due to years of fearmongering. Fortunately, we live in a republic, not a direct democracy. Do you really want to claim that doing otherwise, especially when it comes to regulations, is a good idea?
Well, I suppose if developing something that makes the world a better place and funding further research by patenting it, eventually allowing to to fall into the public domain as it has, is what you consider an 'abuse of the system', then it looks to me like you're probably just dead set on hammering home an indefensible point.
An orange grown from a orange tree that has been grafted onto the rootstock of another plant is genetically no different than an orange grown for an orange tree that has its own roots.
Irrelevant. I just want to know what I'm buying. I want to know if I'm buying an unnatural Franken-orange. Why are you supporting keeping that hidden from me?
See what I did there? You're partially right, but not entirely, about the genetics, by the way. While actual gene transfer from rootstock to scion shoot is, as far as I know, restricted to to point of tissue contact (although that does indeed happen), grafting has been shown to alter gene expression. Why or why not is that sufficient for labeling? And that's just one example of many I could use. Take bud sports for example, like Gale Gala and Autumn Gala, both naturally occurring somatic mutants of the original Gala apple. Not labeled, and even if they were, the average person has no idea what a bud sport is.
That is a misconception. Plenty of non-GE crops are patented. The plant patent system is older by far than genetic engineering. Honeycrisp apple, for example, is non-GE, and until a few years ago was under patent by the University of Minnesota, who developed it and used the patent royalties to fund further research (hence why it was patented at all). That they are different in one way does not mean they are not substantially equivalent.
The information isn't hidden. Corn, soy, cotton, canola, sugar beet, alfalfa, summer squash, papaya, apple, potato...those are the species you need to remember. Saying that the information is hidden is like saying that because bacon is not labeled as Haraam that Islamic dietary guidelines are hidden. PErhaps if you are too lazy to learn about your own beliefs they are hidden, or maybe if you have a fearmongering ax to grind you'll call them that, but how can something I explained in a single line ever be considered hidden?
And furthermore, I've seen just as much case indicating that we should label if something was produced via hybridization, inbreeding, grafting, somaclonal variation, bud sport selection, mutagenesis, wide crossing/embryo rescue, grafting, tissue culture, or any of the other things I could demand. Where's my label indicating if a bean come from a high aerenchyma line, or the label saying if my sweet corn was from a high maysin line, or my labeling indicating if my tomato has genes from Solanum pimpinellifolium, or my label indicating that my Vitis vinifera was grafted on V. labrusca? Can you give a rational reasoning as to why only one thing, which just so happens to have public controversy, should be singled out?
That's your opinion
No, it's not, and you did not answer the question.
If I don't want to eat Broccoli, Tomatoes, etc... or GM crops for that matter I do not need to justify why I don't want to eat them to a judge and jury in a court of law.
I never said anything of the sort. You have every right to not eat them. Just like Jews have every right to eat Orlah fruit and Muslims have every right to avoid gelatin. You are confusing a right you have with an obligation for society to cater to your belief system. And you know, I would never dream of insulting a Muslim, Jew, Hindu, ect. for holding to a dietary restriction that I myself do not hold. I would never call them names for that. But then again, they're not trying to pass off their dogma as science and attempting to craft legislation favoring their belief system, are they?
Unless someone is forcing you to eat corn, soy, canola, cottonseed, sugar beet, alfalfa, summer squash, and certain papayas, apples, and potatoes (the GE species), you have no leg to stand on, as I have just told you exactly what to look for if you wish to avoid GE crops. It isn't that hard.
Asbestos was also once safe. And so was Talidomide.
Saying 'science was wrong before' is a bad argument when creationists use it, bad when anti-vaxxers use it, and bad when GMO denialists use it.
GE salmon farmers want to engage in unfair competition with regular farmers, even if they need to grease up the FDA.
Yeah, that's why it took two and a half decades of testing, all that corruption fast tracking it. You are making things up. And what exactly do you mean by 'unfair competition?' You mean producing something rather than hitting hard the declining wild stocks? You know, if any other technology were being used, I'll bet everyone would be up in arms that some would spitefully choose to do more harm to the environment than adopt new technology, but suddenly when genetic engineering is involved, that's somehow okay and preferable.
I will now pay double for wild salmon,
And I'll choose the option with less environmental impact.
Oh, and they can forget about ever exporting farmed salmon to Europe.
Not exactly something for Europe to be proud of.
No, innocent until proven guilty is a pretty good standard. Do you have evidence that GE crops are intrinsically dangerous? Because I have plenty of reason to think otherwise. Saying there might be some potential but as of yet unknown unknown is as compelling as warning me about the invisible pink unicorn.
Especially because the guys who want to prove it safe have huge financial motivation and anyone trying to prove the opposite just wants to eat food because they purchased a lifetime subscription to a digestive tract.
Really, you mean to say there isn't a multi-billion dollar organic industry out there, and plenty of professional activists staking their careers on making noise? And you mean to imply all those in academic positions who work with GE are part of some money making plot? That's bullshit and you know it.
That still doesn't make the case that GE crops should be labeled.
If I buy ice cream and it has peanuts in it, the label has to have peanuts included in the ingredient list
Yes, but those peanuts don't say that peanuts are allotetraploids, or say if they have genes from wild Arachis species in it, for example like the TxAG- 7 line's descendants do as a result of some complex and clever 'conventional breeding', and I don't see you demanding that they do so.
You picked a poor choice of example.
Also, you're assuming that every company and corporation on the planet that creates GMO foods (and now food animals) has people's best interests first and foremost,
By that logic, every for-profit company is suspect, as are their products. That stance works equally well against electronics, clothing, cars, pocket knives, wine, and coffee, all produced by corporations
and you're also assuming that they're utterly flawless and nigh-unto-omniscent when it comes to testing and checking the end product for safety.
No, just that as far as anyone can tell they are, which is the absolute best that is humanly possible. I could make your vague, non-falsifiable argument against wifi, vaccinations, electric cars, cell phones, or any number of things. If you have an actual concern, voice it. Otherwise, you are just saying 'bad things might happen and you can't prove they won't' which describes most everything.
Is it also a lie when pork is not explicitly labeled as Haraam? Why or why not, when it is clearly true? Are pork producers also in the wrong for lying to Muslims by not labeling their bacon as something that anyone who actually cares would already know? Why or why not?
We can turn that same argument around and claim that the main way GMO manufacturers are swaying people is by concealing facts.
They're not concealing anything. That's opposing the mandating of something. There's a difference between hiding something extremely easy to find like the fact that corn, soy, cotton, canola, alfalfa, sugar beet, summer squash, papaya, apple, and potato have GE varieties and actively forcing someone to put a label on their product with just enough information to scare people, but no more than that. Oh bugger, did I accidentally just say that 'concealed' fact of what is GE? Darnedest thing, how hard was that?
People want to believe that Genetically modified foods are going to be a savoir. The companies producing them sure don't show concern for anything but profits.
People say the same things about pharmaceutical companies and vaccines. They're wrong, and for the same reasons you are. You are also implying that technology is a corporate thing. You are also wrong about that.
Kneejerk reactions like this show why the anti-GMO movement, after trying so hard to ban GE, now makes such a big stink over the labeling issue, despite no other genetic alteration technique facing the same scrutiny, and why producers aren't keen on having the labeling forced on them.
The sort of thing I mean was Monsanto suing farmers adjacent to those with GM crops for "stealing" their product via cross pollonation by insects and wind.
That's not what happened though. The case you are likely referring to, the Schmeiser case, involved the guy intentionally selecting for and propagating GE crops after he was cross pollinated. It would be like if I threw a Star Wars DVD at you, and then you copied and mass produced it for financial gain, and when you get rightfully sued by Disney, you tell everyone you got sued because someone tossed a disk at you.