You are ignoring the process of the judicial system. Even if the country being extradited to was engaging in torture (North Korea, Saudi Arabia, USA, Iraq, etc.), a government body still has to make that decision whether torture would be a possible outcome for the person. I quote The UN Convention Against Torture:
Article 3
2. For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.
In Sweden that authority is the judicial branch, as detailed in the Swedish constitution. What you seem to be suggesting is that the Swedish prime minister should give out judicial guarantees, which is not in their power. The Swedish constitution sets up checks and balances in order to prevent such an autocracy.
Arguing that signed treaties are nothing more than a suggestion, instead of having the force of law, just to support your unjustifiable authoritarian narrative.
I argued for the opposite. I argue for strict interpretations of The UN Convention Against Torture, European Arrest Warrant Act and the Swedish constitution, which together protects humans rights and prevents autocracy. Your desire for extra-judicial decisions instead suggests an autocracy.
You're missing the point. The decision to extradite or not still has to be made in both a Swedish court, and get a green light from the country that surrendered the person, i.e. the UK, according to the European Arrest Warrant Act. The Swedish executive branch cannot make promises about extradition, as it neither has the power to overrule the judicial branch, nor make rogue extradition decisions, as that would violate the Swedish constitution.
Whether the person being extradited would be subject to torture is a matter for the Swedish court and the UK to investigate, as detailed in the UN Convention Against Torture.
So you have not yet managed to explain how Sweden could make an easy promise not to extradite.
The UN Convention Against Torture does not seem to forbid extraditing to countries where torture takes place. Article 3, paragraph 1, seems to indicate that extradition requests can be treated on a case-by-case basis, i.e. based on what the charges are, whether there's an equivalent Swedish crime, and the track-record of the destination country for treating criminals for such offenses. In this case it means that the Swedish judicial system had to get involved in order to make a ruling on whether to carry out the extradition request.
So I find your debunking to be fallacious, unless perhaps you've found an alternate official interpretation of it, or a paragraph that I missed.
The Swedish government (i.e. the executive branch) cannot make promises about extradition, as that is a matter for the judicial system. But the judicial system cannot rule on whether to grant an extradition request until one is received. If a minister tried to force their will through anyway, then that would be ministerial rule, which violates the constitution.
If an extradition request was made once Assange was in Sweden, it would have to be approved by both Swedish and UK courts due to them both following the European Arrest Warrant Act.
So I disagree with your premise that it is easy for Sweden to make such promises, when it seems to involve breaking both their constitution and EU law. It would be easier to just extradite Assange from UK directly.
I'm hearing that people in Norway are apparently already feeling sorry for their biggest mass murderer in history who might, maybe, have to stay locked up for 25 years.
"People," as in one blog article, or a verifiable chunk of the population?
Norway is not Sweden but it's probably not all that different either, so I wouldn't be surprised if the Swedes granted bail and Assange found a way to sneak into Russia.
There's no bail in the Swedish judicial system. They instead detain suspects if certain criteria are met, which this investigation seems to do on several points.
The most appealing explanatory mechanism I've read about center around the screens' blue light disturbing the circadian rhythm, as the brain interprets it as daylight, thus delaying sleepiness, e.g.:
The findings obtained in this study support this hypothesis that blue light possibly suppresses the secretion of melatonin more than the longer wavelengths of the visible light spectrum. Using amber filter in this study significantly improved the sleep quality. Altogether, these findings lead us to this conclusion that blocking the short-wavelength component of the light emitted by smartphones' screens improves human sleep.
I suspect this is related to the issue, but there may be multiple factors at play here.
Funding
The National Institutes of Health (R01-HD069609/R01-AG040213) and the National Science Foundation (SES-1157698/1623684) supported the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The Department of Children and Youth Affairs funded Growing Up in Ireland, carried out by the Economic and Social Research Institute and Trinity College Dublin. A. Orben was supported by a European Union Horizon 2020 IBSEN Grant; A. K. Przybylski was supported by an Understanding Society Fellowship funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
It also found that the use of digital screens 2 hours, 1 hour, or 30 minutes before bedtime didn't have clear associations with decreases in adolescent well-being, even though this is often taken as a fact by media reports and public debates.
Though it seems like this study had a reasonably strict study design, and may be a welcome addition to the body of literature, this claim belittles the adverse findings in systematic reviews and clinical guidelines:
We reviewed 67 studies published from 1999 to early 2014. [...] We found that screen time is adversely associated with sleep outcomes (primarily shortened duration and delayed timing) in 90% of studies.
Findings of significantly shorter total sleep time with greater mobile device screentime were reported in 10/12 studies, with 5/5 reporting greater subjective day-time tiredness or sleepiness.
For children ages 6 and older, place consistent limits on the time spent using media, and the types of media, and make sure media does not take the place of adequate sleep, physical activity and other behaviors essential to health.
The systematic reviews I linked to seem to each be based on a huge body of evidence. Individual studies can point either way, and be of different methodological quality, hence the preference for secondary sources to sum up the evidence. If you know of any reviews or assessments of greater than or equal quality then I would be excited to read it.
The BfR report, which was the basis for at least the EU reports was largely copied from Monsanto texts without listing those as sources: https://www.theguardian.com/en... . Given that Monsanto is far from a neutral party in this it makes the contents look rather suspect. Best case the guy in charge of the report was too lazy to do his job right, worst case he got a preprinted conclusion and only filled in some blanks.
These articles show a consistent style, giving undue weight by never reporting on the scientific consensus, and instead promoting the minority view of politicians, Greenpeace members, other environmental activists and study authors to criticize glyphosate, and often giving them a chance to rebut the few token sentences given by those defending glyphosate.
I note that the style is completely different for another The Guardian author, which even mentions the views of other regulatory agencies than IARC and BfR, and presents a case for why the 4,300 page report (see [2017/sep/15]) contains copied texts from the Glyphosate Task Force in a non-sensationalist way.
The plagiarism claim was also denied by BfR; and at the end of the article you linked, Arthur Neslen again was uncritical of the article's last cited study in which glyphosate is criticized, where the possible conflict of interest of the organic food researcher Charles M. Benbrook isn't even mentioned.
I meant mostly that citing each one was pointless since they just repeat the conclusions of the same review(s). Listing all of them makes it look as if you had veri
I am neither an expert nor paid by any biotech company like Bayer/Monsanto. I work full time as a software developer, but I do find controversial science topics intriguing, and I have some background in scientific skepticism and fact checking.
On the topic of Roundup/Glyphosate carcinogenesis, its relatively easy to google for reliable sources. In this case, even the Wikipedia articles on its safety have a comprehensive list of citations. And I just copied some of the relevant findings from the papers' abstract.
None of these government agencies actually did any research on the matter themselves
Agencies typically don't do their own research, as any one single primary study doesn't show much on its own. They instead perform a form of systematic review which aims to sum up multiple up high-quality papers to reach a conclusion of the current state of the science.
You could drop at least half those links since they all refer to the same study paid by monsanto to disproof the other study. [...] they all quote each other and ultimately a single scientist on Monsanto payroll.
I don't suppose you could point to which study that was composed by the Monsanto scientist, and why that study has a flawed conclusion?
To be pedantic, the court's decision mentions the finding that almost all of Schmeiser's canola had the patented gene:
The results of these tests show the presence of the patented gene in a range of 95-98% of the canola sampled.
This would indicate that he planted the patented seeds, whether knowingly or not. A lucky random mutation wouldn't spread out to an entire field in a single generation.
I don't know about "likely," as that seems a bit premature to say. From what I could sleuth, the focus seems to surround the surfactant used in Roundup, for which I could only find a single paper showing evidence for toxicity in petri dishes:
The surfactant polyoxyethylene amine (POEA), the major component of commercial Roundup, was found to be highly toxic to the embryos when tested alone and therefore could contribute to the inhibition of hatching.
The herbicide glyphosate and the insecticides malathion and diazinon were classified as probably
carcinogenic to humans (Group 2A).
[...]
For the herbicide glyphosate, there was limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans for non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The evidence in humans is from studies of exposures, mostly agricultural, in the USA, Canada, and Sweden published since 2001. In addition, there is convincing evidence that glyphosate also can cause cancer in laboratory animals.
That IARC evaluation was subsequently criticized, and other high-profile papers and agencies were unable to reach the same conclusions:
It appears that IARC has overreached in its conclusion by failing to consider the vast body of literature supporting the notion that glyphosate is not a carcinogen. Besides, IARC has failed to place potential hazard into a context of actual risk. When the conditions of glyphosate use in Egypt is rationally analyzed, it appears that exposure of the public to glyphosate is order of magnitudes far below the zero-risk dose.
In conclusion of this re-evaluation process of the active substance glyphosate by BfR the available data do not show carcinogenic or mutagenic properties of glyphosate nor that glyphosate is toxic to fertility, reproduction or embryonal/fetal development in laboratory animals.
Bias and confounding may account for observed associations. Meta-analysis is constrained by few studies and a crude exposure metric, while the overall body of literature is methodologically limited and findings are not strong or consistent. Thus, a causal relationship has not been established between glyphosate exposure and risk of any type of LHC.
The draft human health risk assessment concludes that glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic to humans. The Agency’s assessment found no other meaningful risks to human health when the product is used according to the pesticide label. The Agency’s scientific findings are consistent with the conclusions of science reviews by a number of other countries as well as the 2017 National Institute of Health Agricultural Health Survey.
Since glyphosate was introduced in 1974, all regulatory assessments have established that glyphosate has low hazard potential to mammals, however, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) concluded in March 2015 that it is p
At the risk of going on too great of a tangent from the article's topic; I don't think dark matter has any well-tested theory that describes it, only competing hypotheses and models. From my layman perspective, it seems that for the gravitational anomalies observed -- collectively called "dark matter" -- we currently know more about what it isn't than what it is.
the research could actually go towards helping prove that APGW is real, rather than just a theory.
I disagree with your choice of words, as "just a theory" makes it sound as if it's someone's hunch/idea/opinion/guess/hypothesis. A scientific theory is something very different, and presents both explanatory and predictive claims that have been tested and stood up to falsification attempts. A scientific theory can never be "proved," as those hard statements are reserved for mathematics and philosophy. Religious folk would muddy the waters with the same "just a theory" argument about the theories of evolution and heliocentricism, and it's very misleading.
It may also help identify better metrics so we can make an accurate prediction as well... since we know they have only failed in all of their models.
I must disagree here as well. Climate models tend to do pretty well at making predictions that are subsequently backed up by observations. See https://www.skepticalscience.c... for a primer on the topic, along with some illustrative videos.
One study estimated that GMO rennet (a.k.a. FDC/FPC) could account for up to 80% of the global market share of rennet.
As for taste, there shouldn't be a difference between the chymosin enzyme produced in calf stomachs and the chymosin enzyme produced by microbes. As described in a comparison of Gouda and Cheddar cheese making, there was no major sensory difference between bovine rennet and bovine FPC. Though camel-based FPC interestingly led to reduced bitterness.
What do you propose is the mechanism for your claim that non-GMO cheese taste better? It seems to me that you're engaging in some motivated reasoning.
Do you happen to have some video evidence of this? Why doesn't it happen when its refrigerated at the store, is there a specific temperature where this occurs? Why isn't its scale dyed? And why would the farmers go through the trouble of dying flesh, when feeding them carotenoids is so much simpler?
Well, first... it seems unlikely fish not swimming in antibiotics would need to be defended and/or prosecuted to the standard of not detrimental to human health.
Antibiotics are administered to the salmon as medicated feed. A responsible farm would only administer it when a bacterial infection is detected. Farmed fish doesn't "swim in it," as you make it out to be. Norway, which produces about 1 million out of 3.2 million tonnes of globally farmed salmon,[1][2], also use alternatives to antibiotics, such as vaccinations and separating generations, and disinfecting empty holdings.[2] The quantity of antibiotic use in Norway has dropped from 48 tons in 1987[3, page 271] to 1 ton in 2015[2], and the total antibiotic quantity used in 2009 was one twentieth of what the meat industry used per unit of meat produced in Norway. Then there's indoor tanks as mentioned in the article, which have little to fear from sea-borne bacterial infections, and don't use antibiotics.
The antibiotics used in farming in general also tend to be different from ones given to humans, and those farm animals that have been treated aren't slaughtered until a while after the antibiotics has run its course. So again, can you show that fish farming practices in general is detrimental to human health? It seems to me that it can indeed be done responsibly.
[...] since the fish don’t like eating soy and corn, the quality of this meat is very low. To compensate for that, farmers use antibiotics which keep the fish healthy, but these antibiotics end up in our bodies when we consume them.
This doesn't make sense to me. What does a purported food preference have to do with microbial infections? Neither the video nor the article it's referencing elaborates on that. It also assumes that fish being treated with antibiotics will be sent to the slaughter before the antibiotics have run their course, which isn't necessarily the case if, again, the fish farm is acting responsibly.
These articles present a lot of text about antibiotics. Could you extract the specific argument you wanted to make? I'm not going to do your job for you.
I appreciate the scrutiny of my sources for potential bias and conflicts of interest. I was worried about this as well, which was why I aimed for three corroborating sources. But you didn't specifically refute any points that were made, and instead just dismissed the authority of the article writers.
As for your claims, which contradicts my first reference, what are your counter-evidence that farmed salmon spend a considerable time swimming in antibiotics? And what is your evidence that use of said fish-specific antibiotic is detrimental to human health?
Where are you getting the info that GMO rennet is mostly used by the US? It's widely used in Denmark and Sweden as well. I would almost assume the same for any western country where the demand for hard cheese outpaces the demand for veal.
As for the comparison made, the parent I responded to specifically said "GMO anything," which I saw as fair game. But I think you're right in that topic which the article is about, this has been an unnecessary tangent.
They don't dye the flesh. That's one of the myths listed in the first article I linked -- tl;dr: farmed salmon is fed with the same caroteniods that wild salmon gets from crustaceans.
Personally, I can't taste the difference between farmed and wild, nor frozen or fresh. But uncontrolled anecdotes are next to useless.
I wouldn't be so harsh on people for using the term "GMO" incorrectly, as the term itself is unspecific, and is often broadened to include anything that has had its genes altered[1], even by nature.[2][3]
It would be so much simpler if people just referred to the specific technologies being utilized, as they all suffer from risk/reward issues, and there aren't clear ethical borders. An incomplete list of the technologies used include:
* Nature's own technique of random mutations with a natural selection filter on top
* Artificial selection by humans, which in ~10,000 years gave us massive, delicious mutants like the modern wheat and corn crops, and docile cows, pigs and dogs
* Cloning started around the 1800s in order to perpetuate popular varieties of e.g. apples, oranges and bananas, whereby a branch of the tree is cut off and re-planted
* Forced hybridization has been around the 1900s, where two distinctly inbred parental lineages are perpetually bred to produce sterile offspring (e.g. seedless watermelons, or mules for use by the British Empire as amazing pack animals)
* Radiation-induced mutation breeding (mutagenesis) has been around since around the 1930s, which forcefully increases the mutation rate and splits chromosomes in order to allow breeding with other species -- a technique the EU even calls GMO (see [1]) -- a lot of western staple crops are based on, or hybridized from, crops produced from this technique
* Chemically-induced mutation breeding is a more modern version of mutagenesis that's doesn't cause as much DNA damage -- still a GMO in the EU though (see [1])
* Transgenic modifications, where specific genes can be takes from unrelated species, was invented in the 1970s
* Cisgenic modifications, where the specific genes are taken from a species where it would have been possible to acquire it naturally through conventional breeding,[4] have been a classification of GMOs since around the year 2000
So GMO debates could be untangled massively if people just spoke about the specific technologies. For instance, I suspect based on your comment that you would be against transgenic GMOs and mutagenesis, but for cisgenic GMOs... while being on the fence about forced hybridization?
Slashdot Mirror
In Sweden that authority is the judicial branch, as detailed in the Swedish constitution. What you seem to be suggesting is that the Swedish prime minister should give out judicial guarantees, which is not in their power. The Swedish constitution sets up checks and balances in order to prevent such an autocracy.
Arguing that signed treaties are nothing more than a suggestion, instead of having the force of law, just to support your unjustifiable authoritarian narrative.
I argued for the opposite. I argue for strict interpretations of The UN Convention Against Torture, European Arrest Warrant Act and the Swedish constitution, which together protects humans rights and prevents autocracy. Your desire for extra-judicial decisions instead suggests an autocracy.
You're missing the point. The decision to extradite or not still has to be made in both a Swedish court, and get a green light from the country that surrendered the person, i.e. the UK, according to the European Arrest Warrant Act. The Swedish executive branch cannot make promises about extradition, as it neither has the power to overrule the judicial branch, nor make rogue extradition decisions, as that would violate the Swedish constitution.
Whether the person being extradited would be subject to torture is a matter for the Swedish court and the UK to investigate, as detailed in the UN Convention Against Torture.
So you have not yet managed to explain how Sweden could make an easy promise not to extradite.
The UN Convention Against Torture does not seem to forbid extraditing to countries where torture takes place. Article 3, paragraph 1, seems to indicate that extradition requests can be treated on a case-by-case basis, i.e. based on what the charges are, whether there's an equivalent Swedish crime, and the track-record of the destination country for treating criminals for such offenses. In this case it means that the Swedish judicial system had to get involved in order to make a ruling on whether to carry out the extradition request.
So I find your debunking to be fallacious, unless perhaps you've found an alternate official interpretation of it, or a paragraph that I missed.
The Swedish government (i.e. the executive branch) cannot make promises about extradition, as that is a matter for the judicial system. But the judicial system cannot rule on whether to grant an extradition request until one is received. If a minister tried to force their will through anyway, then that would be ministerial rule, which violates the constitution.
If an extradition request was made once Assange was in Sweden, it would have to be approved by both Swedish and UK courts due to them both following the European Arrest Warrant Act.
So I disagree with your premise that it is easy for Sweden to make such promises, when it seems to involve breaking both their constitution and EU law. It would be easier to just extradite Assange from UK directly.
I'm hearing that people in Norway are apparently already feeling sorry for their biggest mass murderer in history who might, maybe, have to stay locked up for 25 years.
"People," as in one blog article, or a verifiable chunk of the population?
Norway is not Sweden but it's probably not all that different either, so I wouldn't be surprised if the Swedes granted bail and Assange found a way to sneak into Russia.
There's no bail in the Swedish judicial system. They instead detain suspects if certain criteria are met, which this investigation seems to do on several points.
The most appealing explanatory mechanism I've read about center around the screens' blue light disturbing the circadian rhythm, as the brain interprets it as daylight, thus delaying sleepiness, e.g.:
Blocking Short-Wavelength Component of the Visible Light Emitted by Smartphones' Screens Improves Human Sleep Quality, Biomedical Physics & Engineering Express, 2018
I suspect this is related to the issue, but there may be multiple factors at play here.
Though it seems like this study had a reasonably strict study design, and may be a welcome addition to the body of literature, this claim belittles the adverse findings in systematic reviews and clinical guidelines:
Screen time and sleep among school-aged children and adolescents: a systematic literature review., Sleep Medicine Reviews, 2015:
Effects of screentime on the health and well-being of children and adolescents: a systematic review of reviews, BMJ Open, 2019:
American Academy of Pediatrics Announces New Recommendations for Children’s Media Use, American Academy of Pediatrics, 2016:
The systematic reviews I linked to seem to each be based on a huge body of evidence. Individual studies can point either way, and be of different methodological quality, hence the preference for secondary sources to sum up the evidence. If you know of any reviews or assessments of greater than or equal quality then I would be excited to read it.
Doesn't seem that way. It's caused by a bacteria, transmitted by insects.
The BfR report, which was the basis for at least the EU reports was largely copied from Monsanto texts without listing those as sources: https://www.theguardian.com/en... . Given that Monsanto is far from a neutral party in this it makes the contents look rather suspect. Best case the guy in charge of the report was too lazy to do his job right, worst case he got a preprinted conclusion and only filled in some blanks.
I wasn't aware of that accusation, thanks for the interesting dive. The skeptic in me does however first want to raise a few red flags in the reporting done by The Guardian's author Arthur Neslen. First of all, a surprising amount of them cover glyphosate and Monsanto:
[2015/jul/15]
[2015/nov/12]
[2016/jan/13]
[2016/mar/04]
[2016/may/16]
[2016/may/17]
[2017/may/24]
[2017/sep/15]
[2017/sep/28]
[2019/jan/15]
[2018/may/16]
These articles show a consistent style, giving undue weight by never reporting on the scientific consensus, and instead promoting the minority view of politicians, Greenpeace members, other environmental activists and study authors to criticize glyphosate, and often giving them a chance to rebut the few token sentences given by those defending glyphosate.
I note that the style is completely different for another The Guardian author, which even mentions the views of other regulatory agencies than IARC and BfR, and presents a case for why the 4,300 page report (see [2017/sep/15]) contains copied texts from the Glyphosate Task Force in a non-sensationalist way.
The plagiarism claim was also denied by BfR; and at the end of the article you linked, Arthur Neslen again was uncritical of the article's last cited study in which glyphosate is criticized, where the possible conflict of interest of the organic food researcher Charles M. Benbrook isn't even mentioned.
I meant mostly that citing each one was pointless since they just repeat the conclusions of the same review(s). Listing all of them makes it look as if you had veri
I am neither an expert nor paid by any biotech company like Bayer/Monsanto. I work full time as a software developer, but I do find controversial science topics intriguing, and I have some background in scientific skepticism and fact checking.
On the topic of Roundup/Glyphosate carcinogenesis, its relatively easy to google for reliable sources. In this case, even the Wikipedia articles on its safety have a comprehensive list of citations. And I just copied some of the relevant findings from the papers' abstract.
None of these government agencies actually did any research on the matter themselves
Agencies typically don't do their own research, as any one single primary study doesn't show much on its own. They instead perform a form of systematic review which aims to sum up multiple up high-quality papers to reach a conclusion of the current state of the science.
You could drop at least half those links since they all refer to the same study paid by monsanto to disproof the other study. [...] they all quote each other and ultimately a single scientist on Monsanto payroll.
I don't suppose you could point to which study that was composed by the Monsanto scientist, and why that study has a flawed conclusion?
This would indicate that he planted the patented seeds, whether knowingly or not. A lucky random mutation wouldn't spread out to an entire field in a single generation.
I don't know about "likely," as that seems a bit premature to say. From what I could sleuth, the focus seems to surround the surfactant used in Roundup, for which I could only find a single paper showing evidence for toxicity in petri dishes:
A glyphosate-based pesticide impinges on transcription., Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology, 2005:
Many things will kill unprotected cells in vitro. I don't suppose you know of any other papers, or even in vivo studies?
This is the evaluation by IARC that opened up for the lawsuits:
IARC Monographs Volume 112: evaluation of five organophosphate insecticides and herbicides, International Agency for Research on Cancer, 2015:
That IARC evaluation was subsequently criticized, and other high-profile papers and agencies were unable to reach the same conclusions:
A regulatory perspective on the potential carcinogenicity of glyphosate, Journal of Toxicology and Health, 2015:
The BfR has finalised its draft report for the re-evaluation of glyphosate - BfR, German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, 2015:
Systematic review and meta-analysis of glyphosate exposure and risk of lymphohematopoietic cancers, Journal of Environmental Science and Health, 2016:
EPA Releases Draft Risk Assessments for Glyphosate, Environmental Protection Agency, 2017:
Glyphosate toxicity and carcinogenicity: a review of the scientific basis of the European Union assessment and its differences with IARC, Archives of Toxicology, 2017:
At the risk of going on too great of a tangent from the article's topic; I don't think dark matter has any well-tested theory that describes it, only competing hypotheses and models. From my layman perspective, it seems that for the gravitational anomalies observed -- collectively called "dark matter" -- we currently know more about what it isn't than what it is.
the research could actually go towards helping prove that APGW is real, rather than just a theory.
I disagree with your choice of words, as "just a theory" makes it sound as if it's someone's hunch/idea/opinion/guess/hypothesis. A scientific theory is something very different, and presents both explanatory and predictive claims that have been tested and stood up to falsification attempts. A scientific theory can never be "proved," as those hard statements are reserved for mathematics and philosophy. Religious folk would muddy the waters with the same "just a theory" argument about the theories of evolution and heliocentricism, and it's very misleading.
It may also help identify better metrics so we can make an accurate prediction as well... since we know they have only failed in all of their models.
I must disagree here as well. Climate models tend to do pretty well at making predictions that are subsequently backed up by observations. See https://www.skepticalscience.c... for a primer on the topic, along with some illustrative videos.
One study estimated that GMO rennet (a.k.a. FDC/FPC) could account for up to 80% of the global market share of rennet.
As for taste, there shouldn't be a difference between the chymosin enzyme produced in calf stomachs and the chymosin enzyme produced by microbes. As described in a comparison of Gouda and Cheddar cheese making, there was no major sensory difference between bovine rennet and bovine FPC. Though camel-based FPC interestingly led to reduced bitterness.
What do you propose is the mechanism for your claim that non-GMO cheese taste better? It seems to me that you're engaging in some motivated reasoning.
Do you happen to have some video evidence of this? Why doesn't it happen when its refrigerated at the store, is there a specific temperature where this occurs? Why isn't its scale dyed? And why would the farmers go through the trouble of dying flesh, when feeding them carotenoids is so much simpler?
Well, first... it seems unlikely fish not swimming in antibiotics would need to be defended and/or prosecuted to the standard of not detrimental to human health.
Antibiotics are administered to the salmon as medicated feed. A responsible farm would only administer it when a bacterial infection is detected. Farmed fish doesn't "swim in it," as you make it out to be. Norway, which produces about 1 million out of 3.2 million tonnes of globally farmed salmon,[1] [2], also use alternatives to antibiotics, such as vaccinations and separating generations, and disinfecting empty holdings.[2] The quantity of antibiotic use in Norway has dropped from 48 tons in 1987[3, page 271] to 1 ton in 2015[2], and the total antibiotic quantity used in 2009 was one twentieth of what the meat industry used per unit of meat produced in Norway. Then there's indoor tanks as mentioned in the article, which have little to fear from sea-borne bacterial infections, and don't use antibiotics.
The antibiotics used in farming in general also tend to be different from ones given to humans, and those farm animals that have been treated aren't slaughtered until a while after the antibiotics has run its course. So again, can you show that fish farming practices in general is detrimental to human health? It seems to me that it can indeed be done responsibly.
2ndly through fourthly: Farmed salmon full of antibiotics
So the specific claim (at 1:50):
This doesn't make sense to me. What does a purported food preference have to do with microbial infections? Neither the video nor the article it's referencing elaborates on that. It also assumes that fish being treated with antibiotics will be sent to the slaughter before the antibiotics have run their course, which isn't necessarily the case if, again, the fish farm is acting responsibly.
wild salmon vs farmed
Salmon farming in crisis: 'We are seeing a chemical arms race in the seas'"
These articles present a lot of text about antibiotics. Could you extract the specific argument you wanted to make? I'm not going to do your job for you.
I appreciate the scrutiny of my sources for potential bias and conflicts of interest. I was worried about this as well, which was why I aimed for three corroborating sources. But you didn't specifically refute any points that were made, and instead just dismissed the authority of the article writers.
As for your claims, which contradicts my first reference, what are your counter-evidence that farmed salmon spend a considerable time swimming in antibiotics? And what is your evidence that use of said fish-specific antibiotic is detrimental to human health?
Where are you getting the info that GMO rennet is mostly used by the US? It's widely used in Denmark and Sweden as well. I would almost assume the same for any western country where the demand for hard cheese outpaces the demand for veal.
As for the comparison made, the parent I responded to specifically said "GMO anything," which I saw as fair game. But I think you're right in that topic which the article is about, this has been an unnecessary tangent.
They don't dye the flesh. That's one of the myths listed in the first article I linked -- tl;dr: farmed salmon is fed with the same caroteniods that wild salmon gets from crustaceans.
Personally, I can't taste the difference between farmed and wild, nor frozen or fresh. But uncontrolled anecdotes are next to useless.
I wouldn't be so harsh on people for using the term "GMO" incorrectly, as the term itself is unspecific, and is often broadened to include anything that has had its genes altered[1], even by nature.[2] [3]
It would be so much simpler if people just referred to the specific technologies being utilized, as they all suffer from risk/reward issues, and there aren't clear ethical borders. An incomplete list of the technologies used include:
* Nature's own technique of random mutations with a natural selection filter on top
* Artificial selection by humans, which in ~10,000 years gave us massive, delicious mutants like the modern wheat and corn crops, and docile cows, pigs and dogs
* Cloning started around the 1800s in order to perpetuate popular varieties of e.g. apples, oranges and bananas, whereby a branch of the tree is cut off and re-planted
* Forced hybridization has been around the 1900s, where two distinctly inbred parental lineages are perpetually bred to produce sterile offspring (e.g. seedless watermelons, or mules for use by the British Empire as amazing pack animals)
* Radiation-induced mutation breeding (mutagenesis) has been around since around the 1930s, which forcefully increases the mutation rate and splits chromosomes in order to allow breeding with other species -- a technique the EU even calls GMO (see [1])
-- a lot of western staple crops are based on, or hybridized from, crops produced from this technique
* Chemically-induced mutation breeding is a more modern version of mutagenesis that's doesn't cause as much DNA damage -- still a GMO in the EU though (see [1])
* Transgenic modifications, where specific genes can be takes from unrelated species, was invented in the 1970s
* Cisgenic modifications, where the specific genes are taken from a species where it would have been possible to acquire it naturally through conventional breeding,[4] have been a classification of GMOs since around the year 2000
So GMO debates could be untangled massively if people just spoke about the specific technologies. For instance, I suspect based on your comment that you would be against transgenic GMOs and mutagenesis, but for cisgenic GMOs... while being on the fence about forced hybridization?