There's quite a bit of regulation on food, animal feed, and drugs for both. Unfortunately there was a large campaign to free the supplement market from having to comply with most of those regulations. It is why homeopathy can claim to cure shot when it does nothing. There is an old video from the campaign that basically says the FDA is going to arrest you for taking vitamins, complete with cinematic production quality and a celebrity so you know you can trust them.
The Food Safety Modernization Act is going to address most of the remaining loopholes in food and feed, but it still doesn't touch the dietary supplements market unfortunately. They have too strong of a lobby in congress. Hopefully shot like this will erode their support.
Well I'm already 99.9% sure, and so are all of the worlds top science organization and regulatory bodies.
If you applied the 2 human generation requirement to all other new products and chemicals, you would be limiting yourself to the state of the art medical science circa 1965 (average human generation interval is about 25 years). If you are unwilling to give up the last 50 years of medical advancements, I can understand. I wouldn't want to give them up either. Fortunately there is a way to determine the multigenerational impact of a new chemical, drug, or treatment regime WITHOUT having to wait 50 years to be sure it is safe. This is achieved by the use of Surrogate Models. Basically we use animals with much shorter generation intervals that are measured in weeks or months instead of decades, expose them to very high levels of the chemical every day for several generations, and look at the 2nd or 3rd generation and see if they are any different from the control animals who were NOT exposed. This is a basic requirement for safety testing for a range of different industries such as GMO seeds, pharmaceutical testing, chemical hazard testing for the chemical industry, etc.
That you are apparently unaware of this concept suggests that you should probably learn a bit more about the testing performed and the requirements for regulatory approval before deciding it is inadequate. I'd suggests the USDA/APHIS website as well as the FDA website.
I did not make that up, though I'll admit that I did mis-remember the magnitude of the difference. I thought it was more than a single percentage point. Would have been more accurate to say that they were essentially equal, instead of one being stronger than the other. Doesn't really change my point much 88 and 89% are both pretty high.
BSE - Has nothing at all to do with GMO. No GMO has ever inserted a prion protein into a plant so BSE and other transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (Kuru, CJD, and variant CJD in humans; chronic wasting disease in deer, etc.) are not relevant. EXCEPT that some researchers have developed a gene knock-out strain of cattle that does not contain the gene for the prion protein in the first place. Clearly a GMO that could make food safer.
Thalidomide - lots of chemicals can affect fetal development by interfering with the genome. That's why multigenerational genotoxicity studies in lab animals are part of the normal battery of tests to which a GMO are subjected before they can be considered safe. Generation interval for humans (disregarding the moral issues raised by testing on humans) is measured in decades. Generation interval in mice is measured in weeks. We can therefore look at multi-generational outcomes, with controlled doses, much more quickly and thus make decisions as to the safety of a new GMO in years instead of decades.
I've got no idea what you were getting at with regard to the jellyfish gene. All GMO at this point are based on well characterized single gene traits. The presence or absence of a single gene, producing a single protein, which performs a single well characterized action. It's not like companies are inserting random DNA segments to see what happens (that's what viruses do every day BTW). It is certainly *possible* that something could go wrong, which is why companies perform extensive internal testing before they decide to seek regulatory approval. The pipeline for developing gene traits is ~ 10 years from first concept to commercial approval, with the majority of that being internal testing. It's not like a new gene is discovered today and in seeds next year for sale.
Finally, you are essentially advocating infinite testing, which is both impractical and unnecessary. Testing under all possible permutations, no matter how similar they may be to permutations already tested. That is not science, that is paralysis based on irrationally high fear. This kind of testing is not really a call for testing, but a backhanded way to prevent approval. To pull out the tired old automobile analogy, cars kill thousands of people every year in the US yet we don't DEMAND that auto manufacturers make a perfectly safe car. We don't call for them to be tested on every single road in American at every single conceivable speed. Instead we've developed a battery of safety tests that we believe are highly predictive of the ultimate safety of a car. We simulate specific driving conditions and specific accident conditions, and base assessments on that. The same thing is done for GMO crops, with a much better success record thus far since no death or harm has ever been attributed to consumption of GMO food. Ironically, the same cannot be said for non-GMO organic foods.
What is special about the 80 to 120 year post-market approval date? Oh, you didn't know that the first GM seeds hit the market ~20 years ago?
Also, you may not be aware, but Monsanto tested their first GM seeds for several years before they received approval to sell them from the USDA/APHIS, FDA and EPA. How many years of testing is enough for you, and what do you base that requirement on?
Since the scientific consensus on the safety of current GMO crops is HIGHER than the scientific consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming, YES it is anti-science.
If you don't like gene patents, get involved in politics and lobby to have laws passed that strongly curtail or eliminate gene patents (I'd be right there with you, BTW). But blaming a technology because you don't like the ways in which one company is using it, is a little like railing against incompetent hammers because the contractor you hired to renovate you bathroom fucked it up.
Aside #1 - The original patent on glyphosate resistance should be expiring in the next 12 months (if it hasn't already), so we will see how reviled that particular technology is once everyone can use it free of charge. Aside #2 - Much of the practices documented by politically biased film makers like Polan have been industry standard practice for longer than GM technology has been available. For example, no-seed-saving clauses have been pretty standard in contracts for generations. Farmers consider them a fair trade because dedicated breeders can improve seeds much faster (even without modern molecular GM techniques) than busy farmer can do it themselves, and there are plenty of places one can buy non-contract encumbered seeds if one is so inclined. The fact that the vast majority of farmers have chosen the GM seeds (despite the higher costs) should make it pretty clear that farmers consider them worth the cost.
This idea that anybody who has reservations on going to town with GMO technology is a stupid luddite, because GMO is a technology that cannot possibly cause any unforeseen harm, is pretty idiotic in it self. I'm all for science but deregulating GMO and allowing greedy corporations to do anything they want without any oversight because GMO is a supposedly such a safe technology is not something I'm prepared to do.
No-one is claiming that having concerns about GMO is stupid, but in order to have strong reservations about the technology today you do have to be largely ignorant (as in unaware, not stupid) of the vast body of knowledge that currently exists as to the safety of the GMO products currently on the market. The fact that most of this information can be found with a simple search of pubmed or the USDA's website.
I can't speak for all nations, but no one is attempting to deregulate GMO in the US. Not mandating a GMO label is not the same thing as not regulating GMO. Each and every GMO variety has undergone Individual Review before being allowed to be sold commercially. The USDA/APHIS, FDA, and EPA all weigh in on the safety within their bailiwick before the product can be approved, and then post them on their website (linked to above). No one is even trying to prevent companies from labeling for GMO status voluntarily. What is happening is that regulators are trying to strike a balance between the costs and benefits of a label, by making sure that those paying the cost of the label are those who want it. I should not have to subsidize the irrational fears of my neighbors if they are fully capable of footing the entire bill themselves.
Finally, greedy corporations, are a completely separate issue from GMO. If you don't like the way the US seed industry operates (professional seed breeders have required contracts that preclude seed saving for many years before GMO seeds came along) then pass laws that change that aspect of their business, not some other, completely unrelated aspect. Monsanto et al. sell both GM and non-GM seeds, and there are non-profit companies developing GMO crops that can literally save lives and plan to GIVE AWAY the seeds they develop.
No, Monsanto is actually doing both things. Some traits are improved more rapidly through transgene technology (ie herbicide resistance or insecticide production in the roots), whereas most traits that they farmer actually gets paid for (ie yields) are more rapidly improved through "traditional" cross breeding. Monsanto does both. May sound like a nitpick, but it shows your ignorance (as in lack of specific knowledge, not stupidity) on this matter.
Also, they are not "entirely different". The same technology that can be used to insert a transgenic trait can also be used to transfer a single gene between cultivars within the same species. IIRC, the LPA (low phytic acid) allele was original discovered in corn by accident, and then using the same gene insertion technology was inserted into more productive strains of corn. The product ultimately failed on the market due to practical considerations (lower viability of the plant, and problems associated with segregating LPA corn from commodity corn in order to be able to get a higher price). More recent work along this line has solved the first problem by delaying the activation of the LPA allel until after the plant is fully grown so that it primarily affects phytate P deposition in the seed (which is desirable), but that doesn't adequately address the basic logistics question of how to get the higher priced corn to someone who will pay the higher prices. Especially since feed enzymes (phytase) can be used to break down the phytic acid in cheaper commodity corn just fine.
Furthermore, new CRISPR technology will make it possible to edit genes in place with no need to transfer DNA from another plant or species in order to get the desired gene into the genome. It is expected that this will be used to modify plants in all sorts of ways without crossing the species barrier. The future is here, and it has been shown to be safe thus far. At some point you need to just get over the fear and accept that we've got this covered, so you can worry about something that might actually hurt you.
Very different. For one thing there is a lot of research being done by people who are far more concerned with the welfare of the animals than they economics for the humans. These people are driving the animal welfare research agenda. People like Joseph Garner or Temple Grandin. Temple is world famous for her work on improving welfare in cattle slaughter plants. I met Joe back when he was a professor at Purdue. He has spent a lot of time working through the moral implications of various management techniques, cage size, environmental temperatures (performance ideal vs animal preferences), etc. His whole group at purdue were some of the most compassionate researchers I've ever known with regards to their research animals.
Your jaded view is just not consistent with the actual work being done by actual people I know in the field, or the actual changes I've witnessed in the last 15 years. I won't argue that we didn't need a kick in the ass, but there is a point where we should start to get credit for the progress we've made and the things we were already doing right, and I think that time has already come.
As I said, there are farms that do use anesthetic. Usually based on the animal welfare section of their production contract. I'm sure with a little research you can find out which brands require this sort of thing, if you are interested. Of course 6 years a vegetarian is quite a time, so you probably are not interested.
I was talking about their relative ranks, not trying to imply that they didn't have them. Animal perceive pain, but it's power as a motivator is not as strong. Hunger for hogs on the other hand is a much stronger motivator than for humans. Cattle are incredibly curious, they've been known to lick the grease off of a crank shaft just to feel the sensation, but sheep flee from novelty. Each animal perceives the world differently, and places different emphasis on different stimuli. The relative importance of each differ
The basic problem is that ag corporations are not financially incentivized to be humane to the animals
Just about any introductory class on animal husbandry will explain why this is not true. Animals that are abused (from their perspective, not our anthropomorphized perspective) increase the production of all sorts of stress hormones. These hormones cause animals to grow more slowly, get sick more often, produce less milk/wool/etc., delay rebreeding, and all sorts of other negative outcomes that are counter to what the farmer wants from an economic perspective. I won't pretend we maximize animal happiness, but we do try to minimize stress.
The problem is really that there clearly hasn't been sufficient effort put into making industrial scale farming also humane farming.
This may have been true in the past, but that is rapidly changing. Purdue University, where I got my graduate degrees, has a VERY strong animal behavior and welfare group focusing on commercial livestock. Many of the students who's programs overlapped with mine are working in industry on welfare programs designed to keep these very concerns top of mind. Won't say they always get their way, but a buddy of mine was just offer a huge salary to leave academia and design a layer welfare program for a large egg producer. He was told he'd pretty much get cart blanche to design and implement the program. He turned it down for family reasons, but I get the impression the job is his whenever he wants it. That is huge considering that Temple Grandin came to speak at Purdue while I was there, and she stood up and called the egg producers out on their unwillingness to even consider that their might be a better way. That was less than 10 years ago.
You claim that agribusinesses aren't being treated fairly (sometimes true) but you are painting with the same broad brush.
I don't believe that I am. I've found that there are a lot of animal WELFARE groups that are reasonable and earnest in their efforts, but there is a distinct difference between the animal welfare movement and the animal rights movement. The former is concerned with good stewardship, but practical enough to know that people will always want to eat meat. I consider myself a welfare advocate, and I have on several occasions objected when I've witnessed mishandling of animals. However, animal rights advocates seem to be far more concerned with their objective of complete elimination of animal use by humans to be bothered about being practical, honest, or fair. To be sure there are many who self identify as animal rights supporters who don't share that view, but in my experience that has been because they were unaware that there was another option. or that the two terms have different meanings.
You are right though, we have brought a large part of this down on ourselves by failing to engage with society as a whole.
They certainly don't like it, but it would be anthropomorphizing to assume that kicking them bothers them as much as it would bother you. I know it sounds callous, but large livestock are less concerned with physical pain than we are. There are lots of behavioral studies that show they place different priorities on different stimuli like pain, fear, hunger, etc. than people do.
Depends on the farm. Some production contracts require some sort of analgesic be used, but I'd guess that most piglets are castrated without anything.
Now, that said they don't cut off the scrotum (at least for pigs). Pigs scrotums are tight up against their rump.They slice open the scrotum, squeeze out the testicles and then cut the vas deferens. The scrotum will close up on its own after a couple of days.
For ungulates like sheep, goats, and cattle I know they cut the scrotum as well, but that's because their scrotums hang down like humans. They can also use a tool called an imasculator, which is essentially a pair of hot sheers that cut and cauterize at the same time.
At this point I normally remind everyone that most circumcisions are done sans anesthetic, and the majority of Americans see no problem with this. Piglets are usually a couple of days old at castration, so it's an apt comparison.
Ha! Poor word choice on my part. We castrate the male livestock, not the male animal handlers. Although there was a sow barn attendant who was standing too close to the front of a farrowing crate while changing a light bulb (or something like that) who was bit in the testicals by a sow. Said they could hear his scream clear on the other side of the barn, over all the sows in the gestation wing. Funniest damn story I was ever told about working with sows. He's fine now (he claims).
Gestation stalls can be beneficial because sows are large (300-600 lb), and can be quite violent when hungry, which is most of the time, but more so right after weaning off the piglets. It is not uncommon in group housed situations for them to injure each other badly enough to require medical interventions and very occasionally euthanasia. Also, these fights occurs most right after breeding, and the stress can lead to reduced viability of the delicate embryos. Fewer piglets per litter is both an indicator of reduced welfare AND a sign of reduced economic potential. The best is a hybrid situation where sows are kept in gestation stalls for a few weeks after weaning to ensure a calm dry off period, and a good start for the embryos, and then moving them into group housing.
Castration of boars, cuts down on off flavor (called boat taint), reduces aggression toward each other and their handlers (worker safety matter too), unexpected pregnancies at the slaughter house when males and females are housed together (very common), and rape. Yes, boats when housed together will rape each other. More recently a company has developed a non-surgical way to castrate pigs later in the growth phase (beneficial because boars are more feed efficient than barrows), but it is dangerous to male employees (the shot works on human males as well), and the industry doesn't yet know how consumers will perceive the technology called improvest.
These management decisions are not made lightly, and usually are made to optimize several different, and occasionally conflicting objectives.
As a member of the animal agriculture community for over 15 years, I've never understood the point of these laws. They are essentially an admission that there is a problem, and that we'd rather try to gag our opponents than address it.
I spend a lot of time on/. and other forums defending animal agriculture because, while I would be the first to admit we can do better, I think we do a much better job caring for our animals than most people believe. Animal rights groups do not concern themselves over much with things like facts, accuracy, or fair descriptions of why we do things the way that we do, but that does not mean that we should try to silence them. Instead we should be engaging with those willing to dig a little deeper than a 30sec sound byte, or a 5 paragraph news article by a writer with no direct connection to agriculture. We should explain, WHY we believe that gestation stalls are better than group housing for stalls, WHY castration of males is better for the animals and the humans who work with them, HOW we've developed programs like PQA Plus, TQA Plus, etc. These questions and misconceptions won't go away on their own, and gag laws do nothing to help our case.
And in each of those years, the saving were still infinitesimally small. Adding up a decade of savings makes the number appear bigger, but not if you also add up the budget over that same decade. At the end of the day, the savings are still a large drop in an much more enormous bucket and proportionally, not very significant. That is less than the price of one of the new joint strike fighters I suspect.
Stating $45million out of context helps no one. I'm sure there are much large potential savings in the defense budget, so why waste our limited time and attention on something so small, proportionally speaking.
The GAO estimates that this cost taxpayers around $45 million extra in a single year.
Lets put this into perspective. $45 million/yr works out to:
- 0.00129% of the 2014 total US expenditures ($3.5 Trillion) - 0.00409% of 2015 Discretionary Spending ($1.1 Trillion) - 0.00752% of the 2015 US Military Spending ($589.5 Billion)
Why is this news? I'm all for efficiency, but savings that small are not worth it in a budget that freaking large
You seem to missing the point where we (as in the REGULATORS) utilize testing and toxicology to VERIFY that our presumption of safety is, in-fact, valid.
No one invved in biotechnology believes that there is no risk. Just as with a new pharmaceutical we perform specific tests designed to quantify the various risks associated with a new GM trait. Your government does the same thing, I am sure, because that is the job of governments. The EFSA has already tested numerous GMO plants and affirmed their safety, but the EC (which is populated by politicians, not scientists) has refused to authorize any of them to be planted for political reasons (non-tarring trade barriers, political pandering, etc). The U.S. System puts the EFSA equivalent agencies in charge of deciding directly instead of only making determinations and the. Leaving the final decisions to someone else.
at the end of the day the European de facto GMO ban is about money. As much as Europeans like to characterize Americans as greedy capitalists gone wild, they are no different. They are just more circumpspect about how they let that greed show through. You are using biotechnology approvals as a way to protect domestic industry, and pretending it is about safety for political expedience. The vast majority of Europeans are spending far more on food so that european farmers can stay in business despite being inefficient. All nations do it (you should see the laws surrounding domestic sugar production in the U.S.), but the false flag of safety creates FUD surrounding a technology with an excellent track record this far.
I don't believe she is associated with a vet school. Interesting question though. The practicalities of vet practice (witnessed via a job shadowing and several part time jobs) are part of the reason I decided against vet school, and went to graduate school instead.
While she is an expert on animal welfare and behavior, the environmental foot print of agriculture is outside of her expertise. I suspect she'll be better informed than the average joe, but not better informed than the average animal scientists, and possibly less well informed than the average animal nutritionist. Nutrition at least has a clear connection to the environment. Behavior, not so much.
With that said, I've seen her speak several times at animal science conferences, and she came to receive an award from my University while I was there. She's an engaging speaker, and is more than willing to skewer those she sees behaving badly or defensively. (She slammed the egg producers pretty hard last time I saw here speak because of their reluctance to even consider that their hens might benefit from revised housing systems). I look forward to her answers.
Maybe not deliberately, but by omitting the range of techniques in between that blur the lines between GMO and selective breeding he creates the perception of 2 competing technologies when, in fact, there are numerous COMPLETEMENTARY techniques used to develop seeds (hybridization, cross-breeding, random mutagenesis, within species gene editing, targeted gene deletions, gene silencing, transgenic gene insertions.
Monsanto, Bayer, Dupont, Syngenta, et al. use Random Mutagenesis to develop crops for regions that don't allow GMO, but they ALSO use more "traditional" techniques like cross breeding for ALL regions. Many important traits (like yield) are controlled by multiple genes. GMO techniques are not cost effective ways to effect these multi-gene traits. They use the right tool for the job. Just because some of us don't know how a tool works, doesn't mean it can't and isn't being used safety, or that its use should be labeled.
You obviously don't know the first thing about genetic engineering, or about the complexity of gene interactions even in manipulated genomes..
With GMO we are inserting a single gene or short sequence of genes, that have been well characterized, into a known location on the genome. We are then testing to verify that the gene is located where we intended, doing what we intended, and not perturbing the system.
With random mutagenesis we are not only changing thousands of genes in unknown, and unknowable ways, but we are not requiring any characterization or testing of the result. (I'm sure the seed companies are doing some testing anyway because no one wants that kind of liability on their hands).
The deliberately designed world of computer programming is a HORRIBLE analogy for the complex milieu of gene interaction in multicellular eukaryotes. Random mutation not only has the potential to change an important gene, but it may change promoter and suppressor regions. Plants produce thousands of compounds that are potentially poisonous to humans (the dose makes the poison), and random mutagenesis is far more likely to increase the production of these compounds than targeted gene insertions.
Take the potato for example. Potatoes' produce a compound called solanine. Normal traditional cross breeding has on occasion resulted in strains that produce dangerously high concentrations of solanine. Random mutagenesis in potatoes is far more likely to unexpectedly increase solanine production than targeted insertion as long as the engineers are careful to target a region of the genome known to be unrelated to solanine production. That kind of targeting cannot be done with mutagenesis, or even traditional cross breeding, which makes it INTRISCIALLY more risky.
Now as a pragmatic scientist, and someone excruciatingly familiar with the risk assessment process used by the FDA, I recognize that the risks of mutagenesis are very low in practical terms. However, that makes the risk associated with GMO very low as well, as GMO is less intrinsically risky than random mutagenesis. Both CAN result in an unsafe product, but it is MORE LIKELY to happen with random mutagenesis that GMO. Throw in the fact that every GMO is extensively safety tested, and the assessments are reviewed by several independent agencies (who's incentives are all biased in the direction of being overly conservative) and the chance of an unsafe GMO actually getting to market if it is created are infinitesimally small at the moment.
Now I'm not fan of big donors swaying elections, but if Monsanto is spending that little, to accuse them of buying congress critters is to be ludicrously naïve regarding the price of doing business in politics. For example, their closest competitor (and market share leader for the last few years) spent $9 million on lobbying in 2014.
As the "hiding" claim. Nothing is being hidden. The power to enforce mandatory labeling requirements is rooted firmly in consumer protection laws. If the information is not needed to ensure safe use of a product, then forcing companies to put it on the label is an abuse of power. However, the authors of this law are not insensitive to the desire of consumers for more clarity. That is why they included provisions for the creation of a VOLUNTARY NON-GMO label to be regulated by the same group at the USDA that oversees the Certified Organic, Kosher, and Halal programs, which are all process verifications.
If you don't want to wait for the new labeling program, then just buy USDA Organic. The National Organic Program does not allow for the use of GMO crops. If it's GMO, it's automatically ineligible for the USDA Organic program.
The Market and the Government are already trying to offer you the clear choices you desire. They are even trying to make it clearer with the new labeling program. But they are trying to make sure that the program is not burdensome or unconstitutional, both of which would be the case for mandatory GMO labeling.
Slashdot Mirror
There's quite a bit of regulation on food, animal feed, and drugs for both. Unfortunately there was a large campaign to free the supplement market from having to comply with most of those regulations. It is why homeopathy can claim to cure shot when it does nothing. There is an old video from the campaign that basically says the FDA is going to arrest you for taking vitamins, complete with cinematic production quality and a celebrity so you know you can trust them.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=mel+...
The Food Safety Modernization Act is going to address most of the remaining loopholes in food and feed, but it still doesn't touch the dietary supplements market unfortunately. They have too strong of a lobby in congress. Hopefully shot like this will erode their support.
Well I'm already 99.9% sure, and so are all of the worlds top science organization and regulatory bodies.
If you applied the 2 human generation requirement to all other new products and chemicals, you would be limiting yourself to the state of the art medical science circa 1965 (average human generation interval is about 25 years). If you are unwilling to give up the last 50 years of medical advancements, I can understand. I wouldn't want to give them up either. Fortunately there is a way to determine the multigenerational impact of a new chemical, drug, or treatment regime WITHOUT having to wait 50 years to be sure it is safe. This is achieved by the use of Surrogate Models. Basically we use animals with much shorter generation intervals that are measured in weeks or months instead of decades, expose them to very high levels of the chemical every day for several generations, and look at the 2nd or 3rd generation and see if they are any different from the control animals who were NOT exposed. This is a basic requirement for safety testing for a range of different industries such as GMO seeds, pharmaceutical testing, chemical hazard testing for the chemical industry, etc.
That you are apparently unaware of this concept suggests that you should probably learn a bit more about the testing performed and the requirements for regulatory approval before deciding it is inadequate. I'd suggests the USDA/APHIS website as well as the FDA website.
I did not make that up, though I'll admit that I did mis-remember the magnitude of the difference. I thought it was more than a single percentage point. Would have been more accurate to say that they were essentially equal, instead of one being stronger than the other. Doesn't really change my point much 88 and 89% are both pretty high.
BSE - Has nothing at all to do with GMO. No GMO has ever inserted a prion protein into a plant so BSE and other transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (Kuru, CJD, and variant CJD in humans; chronic wasting disease in deer, etc.) are not relevant. EXCEPT that some researchers have developed a gene knock-out strain of cattle that does not contain the gene for the prion protein in the first place. Clearly a GMO that could make food safer.
Thalidomide - lots of chemicals can affect fetal development by interfering with the genome. That's why multigenerational genotoxicity studies in lab animals are part of the normal battery of tests to which a GMO are subjected before they can be considered safe. Generation interval for humans (disregarding the moral issues raised by testing on humans) is measured in decades. Generation interval in mice is measured in weeks. We can therefore look at multi-generational outcomes, with controlled doses, much more quickly and thus make decisions as to the safety of a new GMO in years instead of decades.
I've got no idea what you were getting at with regard to the jellyfish gene. All GMO at this point are based on well characterized single gene traits. The presence or absence of a single gene, producing a single protein, which performs a single well characterized action. It's not like companies are inserting random DNA segments to see what happens (that's what viruses do every day BTW). It is certainly *possible* that something could go wrong, which is why companies perform extensive internal testing before they decide to seek regulatory approval. The pipeline for developing gene traits is ~ 10 years from first concept to commercial approval, with the majority of that being internal testing. It's not like a new gene is discovered today and in seeds next year for sale.
Finally, you are essentially advocating infinite testing, which is both impractical and unnecessary. Testing under all possible permutations, no matter how similar they may be to permutations already tested. That is not science, that is paralysis based on irrationally high fear. This kind of testing is not really a call for testing, but a backhanded way to prevent approval. To pull out the tired old automobile analogy, cars kill thousands of people every year in the US yet we don't DEMAND that auto manufacturers make a perfectly safe car. We don't call for them to be tested on every single road in American at every single conceivable speed. Instead we've developed a battery of safety tests that we believe are highly predictive of the ultimate safety of a car. We simulate specific driving conditions and specific accident conditions, and base assessments on that. The same thing is done for GMO crops, with a much better success record thus far since no death or harm has ever been attributed to consumption of GMO food. Ironically, the same cannot be said for non-GMO organic foods.
What is special about the 80 to 120 year post-market approval date? Oh, you didn't know that the first GM seeds hit the market ~20 years ago?
Also, you may not be aware, but Monsanto tested their first GM seeds for several years before they received approval to sell them from the USDA/APHIS, FDA and EPA. How many years of testing is enough for you, and what do you base that requirement on?
Since the scientific consensus on the safety of current GMO crops is HIGHER than the scientific consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming, YES it is anti-science.
If you don't like gene patents, get involved in politics and lobby to have laws passed that strongly curtail or eliminate gene patents (I'd be right there with you, BTW). But blaming a technology because you don't like the ways in which one company is using it, is a little like railing against incompetent hammers because the contractor you hired to renovate you bathroom fucked it up.
Aside #1 - The original patent on glyphosate resistance should be expiring in the next 12 months (if it hasn't already), so we will see how reviled that particular technology is once everyone can use it free of charge.
Aside #2 - Much of the practices documented by politically biased film makers like Polan have been industry standard practice for longer than GM technology has been available. For example, no-seed-saving clauses have been pretty standard in contracts for generations. Farmers consider them a fair trade because dedicated breeders can improve seeds much faster (even without modern molecular GM techniques) than busy farmer can do it themselves, and there are plenty of places one can buy non-contract encumbered seeds if one is so inclined. The fact that the vast majority of farmers have chosen the GM seeds (despite the higher costs) should make it pretty clear that farmers consider them worth the cost.
This idea that anybody who has reservations on going to town with GMO technology is a stupid luddite, because GMO is a technology that cannot possibly cause any unforeseen harm, is pretty idiotic in it self. I'm all for science but deregulating GMO and allowing greedy corporations to do anything they want without any oversight because GMO is a supposedly such a safe technology is not something I'm prepared to do.
No-one is claiming that having concerns about GMO is stupid, but in order to have strong reservations about the technology today you do have to be largely ignorant (as in unaware, not stupid) of the vast body of knowledge that currently exists as to the safety of the GMO products currently on the market. The fact that most of this information can be found with a simple search of pubmed or the USDA's website.
I can't speak for all nations, but no one is attempting to deregulate GMO in the US. Not mandating a GMO label is not the same thing as not regulating GMO. Each and every GMO variety has undergone Individual Review before being allowed to be sold commercially. The USDA/APHIS, FDA, and EPA all weigh in on the safety within their bailiwick before the product can be approved, and then post them on their website (linked to above). No one is even trying to prevent companies from labeling for GMO status voluntarily. What is happening is that regulators are trying to strike a balance between the costs and benefits of a label, by making sure that those paying the cost of the label are those who want it. I should not have to subsidize the irrational fears of my neighbors if they are fully capable of footing the entire bill themselves.
Finally, greedy corporations, are a completely separate issue from GMO. If you don't like the way the US seed industry operates (professional seed breeders have required contracts that preclude seed saving for many years before GMO seeds came along) then pass laws that change that aspect of their business, not some other, completely unrelated aspect. Monsanto et al. sell both GM and non-GM seeds, and there are non-profit companies developing GMO crops that can literally save lives and plan to GIVE AWAY the seeds they develop.
No, Monsanto is actually doing both things. Some traits are improved more rapidly through transgene technology (ie herbicide resistance or insecticide production in the roots), whereas most traits that they farmer actually gets paid for (ie yields) are more rapidly improved through "traditional" cross breeding. Monsanto does both. May sound like a nitpick, but it shows your ignorance (as in lack of specific knowledge, not stupidity) on this matter.
Also, they are not "entirely different". The same technology that can be used to insert a transgenic trait can also be used to transfer a single gene between cultivars within the same species. IIRC, the LPA (low phytic acid) allele was original discovered in corn by accident, and then using the same gene insertion technology was inserted into more productive strains of corn. The product ultimately failed on the market due to practical considerations (lower viability of the plant, and problems associated with segregating LPA corn from commodity corn in order to be able to get a higher price). More recent work along this line has solved the first problem by delaying the activation of the LPA allel until after the plant is fully grown so that it primarily affects phytate P deposition in the seed (which is desirable), but that doesn't adequately address the basic logistics question of how to get the higher priced corn to someone who will pay the higher prices. Especially since feed enzymes (phytase) can be used to break down the phytic acid in cheaper commodity corn just fine.
Furthermore, new CRISPR technology will make it possible to edit genes in place with no need to transfer DNA from another plant or species in order to get the desired gene into the genome. It is expected that this will be used to modify plants in all sorts of ways without crossing the species barrier. The future is here, and it has been shown to be safe thus far. At some point you need to just get over the fear and accept that we've got this covered, so you can worry about something that might actually hurt you.
Very different. For one thing there is a lot of research being done by people who are far more concerned with the welfare of the animals than they economics for the humans. These people are driving the animal welfare research agenda. People like Joseph Garner or Temple Grandin. Temple is world famous for her work on improving welfare in cattle slaughter plants. I met Joe back when he was a professor at Purdue. He has spent a lot of time working through the moral implications of various management techniques, cage size, environmental temperatures (performance ideal vs animal preferences), etc. His whole group at purdue were some of the most compassionate researchers I've ever known with regards to their research animals.
Your jaded view is just not consistent with the actual work being done by actual people I know in the field, or the actual changes I've witnessed in the last 15 years. I won't argue that we didn't need a kick in the ass, but there is a point where we should start to get credit for the progress we've made and the things we were already doing right, and I think that time has already come.
As I said, there are farms that do use anesthetic. Usually based on the animal welfare section of their production contract. I'm sure with a little research you can find out which brands require this sort of thing, if you are interested. Of course 6 years a vegetarian is quite a time, so you probably are not interested.
I was talking about their relative ranks, not trying to imply that they didn't have them. Animal perceive pain, but it's power as a motivator is not as strong. Hunger for hogs on the other hand is a much stronger motivator than for humans. Cattle are incredibly curious, they've been known to lick the grease off of a crank shaft just to feel the sensation, but sheep flee from novelty. Each animal perceives the world differently, and places different emphasis on different stimuli. The relative importance of each differ
The basic problem is that ag corporations are not financially incentivized to be humane to the animals
Just about any introductory class on animal husbandry will explain why this is not true. Animals that are abused (from their perspective, not our anthropomorphized perspective) increase the production of all sorts of stress hormones. These hormones cause animals to grow more slowly, get sick more often, produce less milk/wool/etc., delay rebreeding, and all sorts of other negative outcomes that are counter to what the farmer wants from an economic perspective. I won't pretend we maximize animal happiness, but we do try to minimize stress.
The problem is really that there clearly hasn't been sufficient effort put into making industrial scale farming also humane farming.
This may have been true in the past, but that is rapidly changing. Purdue University, where I got my graduate degrees, has a VERY strong animal behavior and welfare group focusing on commercial livestock. Many of the students who's programs overlapped with mine are working in industry on welfare programs designed to keep these very concerns top of mind. Won't say they always get their way, but a buddy of mine was just offer a huge salary to leave academia and design a layer welfare program for a large egg producer. He was told he'd pretty much get cart blanche to design and implement the program. He turned it down for family reasons, but I get the impression the job is his whenever he wants it. That is huge considering that Temple Grandin came to speak at Purdue while I was there, and she stood up and called the egg producers out on their unwillingness to even consider that their might be a better way. That was less than 10 years ago.
You claim that agribusinesses aren't being treated fairly (sometimes true) but you are painting with the same broad brush.
I don't believe that I am. I've found that there are a lot of animal WELFARE groups that are reasonable and earnest in their efforts, but there is a distinct difference between the animal welfare movement and the animal rights movement. The former is concerned with good stewardship, but practical enough to know that people will always want to eat meat. I consider myself a welfare advocate, and I have on several occasions objected when I've witnessed mishandling of animals. However, animal rights advocates seem to be far more concerned with their objective of complete elimination of animal use by humans to be bothered about being practical, honest, or fair. To be sure there are many who self identify as animal rights supporters who don't share that view, but in my experience that has been because they were unaware that there was another option. or that the two terms have different meanings.
You are right though, we have brought a large part of this down on ourselves by failing to engage with society as a whole.
They certainly don't like it, but it would be anthropomorphizing to assume that kicking them bothers them as much as it would bother you. I know it sounds callous, but large livestock are less concerned with physical pain than we are. There are lots of behavioral studies that show they place different priorities on different stimuli like pain, fear, hunger, etc. than people do.
Depends on the farm. Some production contracts require some sort of analgesic be used, but I'd guess that most piglets are castrated without anything.
Now, that said they don't cut off the scrotum (at least for pigs). Pigs scrotums are tight up against their rump.They slice open the scrotum, squeeze out the testicles and then cut the vas deferens. The scrotum will close up on its own after a couple of days.
For ungulates like sheep, goats, and cattle I know they cut the scrotum as well, but that's because their scrotums hang down like humans. They can also use a tool called an imasculator, which is essentially a pair of hot sheers that cut and cauterize at the same time.
At this point I normally remind everyone that most circumcisions are done sans anesthetic, and the majority of Americans see no problem with this. Piglets are usually a couple of days old at castration, so it's an apt comparison.
Damn Autocorrect. I guess most people ARE more likely to mean Boat than Boar, but it still make me look like an idiot when I don't catch it.
Ha! Poor word choice on my part. We castrate the male livestock, not the male animal handlers. Although there was a sow barn attendant who was standing too close to the front of a farrowing crate while changing a light bulb (or something like that) who was bit in the testicals by a sow. Said they could hear his scream clear on the other side of the barn, over all the sows in the gestation wing. Funniest damn story I was ever told about working with sows. He's fine now (he claims).
Gestation stalls can be beneficial because sows are large (300-600 lb), and can be quite violent when hungry, which is most of the time, but more so right after weaning off the piglets. It is not uncommon in group housed situations for them to injure each other badly enough to require medical interventions and very occasionally euthanasia. Also, these fights occurs most right after breeding, and the stress can lead to reduced viability of the delicate embryos. Fewer piglets per litter is both an indicator of reduced welfare AND a sign of reduced economic potential. The best is a hybrid situation where sows are kept in gestation stalls for a few weeks after weaning to ensure a calm dry off period, and a good start for the embryos, and then moving them into group housing. Castration of boars, cuts down on off flavor (called boat taint), reduces aggression toward each other and their handlers (worker safety matter too), unexpected pregnancies at the slaughter house when males and females are housed together (very common), and rape. Yes, boats when housed together will rape each other. More recently a company has developed a non-surgical way to castrate pigs later in the growth phase (beneficial because boars are more feed efficient than barrows), but it is dangerous to male employees (the shot works on human males as well), and the industry doesn't yet know how consumers will perceive the technology called improvest. These management decisions are not made lightly, and usually are made to optimize several different, and occasionally conflicting objectives.
As a member of the animal agriculture community for over 15 years, I've never understood the point of these laws. They are essentially an admission that there is a problem, and that we'd rather try to gag our opponents than address it.
/. and other forums defending animal agriculture because, while I would be the first to admit we can do better, I think we do a much better job caring for our animals than most people believe. Animal rights groups do not concern themselves over much with things like facts, accuracy, or fair descriptions of why we do things the way that we do, but that does not mean that we should try to silence them. Instead we should be engaging with those willing to dig a little deeper than a 30sec sound byte, or a 5 paragraph news article by a writer with no direct connection to agriculture. We should explain, WHY we believe that gestation stalls are better than group housing for stalls, WHY castration of males is better for the animals and the humans who work with them, HOW we've developed programs like PQA Plus, TQA Plus, etc. These questions and misconceptions won't go away on their own, and gag laws do nothing to help our case.
I spend a lot of time on
And in each of those years, the saving were still infinitesimally small. Adding up a decade of savings makes the number appear bigger, but not if you also add up the budget over that same decade. At the end of the day, the savings are still a large drop in an much more enormous bucket and proportionally, not very significant. That is less than the price of one of the new joint strike fighters I suspect.
Stating $45million out of context helps no one. I'm sure there are much large potential savings in the defense budget, so why waste our limited time and attention on something so small, proportionally speaking.
The GAO estimates that this cost taxpayers around $45 million extra in a single year.
Lets put this into perspective. $45 million/yr works out to:
- 0.00129% of the 2014 total US expenditures ($3.5 Trillion)
- 0.00409% of 2015 Discretionary Spending ($1.1 Trillion)
- 0.00752% of the 2015 US Military Spending ($589.5 Billion)
Why is this news? I'm all for efficiency, but savings that small are not worth it in a budget that freaking large
You seem to missing the point where we (as in the REGULATORS) utilize testing and toxicology to VERIFY that our presumption of safety is, in-fact, valid.
No one invved in biotechnology believes that there is no risk. Just as with a new pharmaceutical we perform specific tests designed to quantify the various risks associated with a new GM trait. Your government does the same thing, I am sure, because that is the job of governments. The EFSA has already tested numerous GMO plants and affirmed their safety, but the EC (which is populated by politicians, not scientists) has refused to authorize any of them to be planted for political reasons (non-tarring trade barriers, political pandering, etc). The U.S. System puts the EFSA equivalent agencies in charge of deciding directly instead of only making determinations and the. Leaving the final decisions to someone else.
at the end of the day the European de facto GMO ban is about money. As much as Europeans like to characterize Americans as greedy capitalists gone wild, they are no different. They are just more circumpspect about how they let that greed show through. You are using biotechnology approvals as a way to protect domestic industry, and pretending it is about safety for political expedience. The vast majority of Europeans are spending far more on food so that european farmers can stay in business despite being inefficient. All nations do it (you should see the laws surrounding domestic sugar production in the U.S.), but the false flag of safety creates FUD surrounding a technology with an excellent track record this far.
I don't believe she is associated with a vet school. Interesting question though. The practicalities of vet practice (witnessed via a job shadowing and several part time jobs) are part of the reason I decided against vet school, and went to graduate school instead.
While she is an expert on animal welfare and behavior, the environmental foot print of agriculture is outside of her expertise. I suspect she'll be better informed than the average joe, but not better informed than the average animal scientists, and possibly less well informed than the average animal nutritionist. Nutrition at least has a clear connection to the environment. Behavior, not so much.
With that said, I've seen her speak several times at animal science conferences, and she came to receive an award from my University while I was there. She's an engaging speaker, and is more than willing to skewer those she sees behaving badly or defensively. (She slammed the egg producers pretty hard last time I saw here speak because of their reluctance to even consider that their hens might benefit from revised housing systems). I look forward to her answers.
Maybe not deliberately, but by omitting the range of techniques in between that blur the lines between GMO and selective breeding he creates the perception of 2 competing technologies when, in fact, there are numerous COMPLETEMENTARY techniques used to develop seeds (hybridization, cross-breeding, random mutagenesis, within species gene editing, targeted gene deletions, gene silencing, transgenic gene insertions.
Monsanto, Bayer, Dupont, Syngenta, et al. use Random Mutagenesis to develop crops for regions that don't allow GMO, but they ALSO use more "traditional" techniques like cross breeding for ALL regions. Many important traits (like yield) are controlled by multiple genes. GMO techniques are not cost effective ways to effect these multi-gene traits. They use the right tool for the job. Just because some of us don't know how a tool works, doesn't mean it can't and isn't being used safety, or that its use should be labeled.
You obviously don't know the first thing about genetic engineering, or about the complexity of gene interactions even in manipulated genomes..
With GMO we are inserting a single gene or short sequence of genes, that have been well characterized, into a known location on the genome. We are then testing to verify that the gene is located where we intended, doing what we intended, and not perturbing the system.
With random mutagenesis we are not only changing thousands of genes in unknown, and unknowable ways, but we are not requiring any characterization or testing of the result. (I'm sure the seed companies are doing some testing anyway because no one wants that kind of liability on their hands).
The deliberately designed world of computer programming is a HORRIBLE analogy for the complex milieu of gene interaction in multicellular eukaryotes. Random mutation not only has the potential to change an important gene, but it may change promoter and suppressor regions. Plants produce thousands of compounds that are potentially poisonous to humans (the dose makes the poison), and random mutagenesis is far more likely to increase the production of these compounds than targeted gene insertions.
Take the potato for example. Potatoes' produce a compound called solanine. Normal traditional cross breeding has on occasion resulted in strains that produce dangerously high concentrations of solanine. Random mutagenesis in potatoes is far more likely to unexpectedly increase solanine production than targeted insertion as long as the engineers are careful to target a region of the genome known to be unrelated to solanine production. That kind of targeting cannot be done with mutagenesis, or even traditional cross breeding, which makes it INTRISCIALLY more risky.
Now as a pragmatic scientist, and someone excruciatingly familiar with the risk assessment process used by the FDA, I recognize that the risks of mutagenesis are very low in practical terms. However, that makes the risk associated with GMO very low as well, as GMO is less intrinsically risky than random mutagenesis. Both CAN result in an unsafe product, but it is MORE LIKELY to happen with random mutagenesis that GMO. Throw in the fact that every GMO is extensively safety tested, and the assessments are reviewed by several independent agencies (who's incentives are all biased in the direction of being overly conservative) and the chance of an unsafe GMO actually getting to market if it is created are infinitesimally small at the moment.
Now I'm not fan of big donors swaying elections, but if Monsanto is spending that little, to accuse them of buying congress critters is to be ludicrously naïve regarding the price of doing business in politics. For example, their closest competitor (and market share leader for the last few years) spent $9 million on lobbying in 2014.
As the "hiding" claim. Nothing is being hidden. The power to enforce mandatory labeling requirements is rooted firmly in consumer protection laws. If the information is not needed to ensure safe use of a product, then forcing companies to put it on the label is an abuse of power. However, the authors of this law are not insensitive to the desire of consumers for more clarity. That is why they included provisions for the creation of a VOLUNTARY NON-GMO label to be regulated by the same group at the USDA that oversees the Certified Organic, Kosher, and Halal programs, which are all process verifications.
If you don't want to wait for the new labeling program, then just buy USDA Organic. The National Organic Program does not allow for the use of GMO crops. If it's GMO, it's automatically ineligible for the USDA Organic program.
The Market and the Government are already trying to offer you the clear choices you desire. They are even trying to make it clearer with the new labeling program. But they are trying to make sure that the program is not burdensome or unconstitutional, both of which would be the case for mandatory GMO labeling.