> I don't think this is meant to affect how apples look initially, only once they've been bitten into/cut so that the white part is open to the air.
I know, my point was that so far my experience with apples made to be better commercially fail when it comes to taste. I wonder if this will be different.
Here is a nice 2013 article about a man who hunts old and abandoned orchards for old heirloom apple varieties. It also explains about the genetics of apples.
If you like the apples made by a particular tree, and you want to make more trees just like it, you have to clone it: Snip off a shoot from the original tree, graft it onto a living rootstock, and let it grow. This is how apple varieties come into existence. Every McIntosh is a graft of the original tree that John McIntosh discovered on his Ontario farm in 1811, or a graft of a graft. Every Granny Smith stems from the chance seedling spotted by Maria Ann Smith in her Australian compost pile in the mid-1800s.
This disgusts me.
I have a right to know what is in the food I (might) eat. If indeed there is no risk from GMO products (plant or animals), or animals given antibiotics, or cows given hormones to increase milk production, etc. then it falls upon those industries to educate and convince me of this point-of-view, not to hide the information or (in some cases) make it illegal to report the GMO/non-GMO status.
I didn't notice how much I care until I recently went on vacation and there was no declaration on the restaurant menu on where the meet comes from and what it may contain.
> no declaration on the restaurant menu on where the meet comes from and what it may contain.
I actually don't know what you mean here. Do restaurants normally list the farm they get their meat from? Around here (Pittsburgh, PA) I don't think I've ever seen that, except at the "eat local" places, where it's basically their selling point, but they're not the norm.
Yes, country of origin. Did that beef come from China, Argentina, United States, or Switzerland?
For instance, I do not eat eat oysters from China (due to their record of gross pollution) or japanese seafood after the Fukushima incident (which continues to poison the ocean).
While it's commonly understood that coal-fired power plants release more radiation than (properly operated) nuclear plants per year, with Fukushima we are talking about a core meltdown and uncontrolled release for nearly a decade!
We are talking about anywhere from 100 to 400 Tons of contaminated water per day. It is truly a man-made disaster being ignored.
The oyster example makes sense, although it is pretty exceptional given shellfish are basically harbor water filters. The Japan fish prohibition seems like overreacting. The effect from Fukushima on fishing from the pacific would not be measurable and dwarfed by other concerns such as plastic and mercury.
I have a hard time thinking of general reasons why you’d care of the meat was from, say, USA vs. New Zealand. Assuming you trust your local regulators that approved the meat for import.
You are right about the meat origin. The only thing people really care about is if it local or foreign. The local laws are stricter than what the EU allows. Also how animals are kept.
What kind of label would you like to see in this case, where an 'ingredient' has been removed? In this case a particular gene is being repressed, so that protein will be in less abundance than usual - nothing has been added, but one particular gene has been removed.
I would doubt anyone would disagree with you in wanting to provide accurate information about what you are consuming. The question is, does a generic "GMO" label tell you anything useful when applied as a label, and conversely, does it tell you anything useful when not applied as a label? I'm not sure that label provides any meaningful information.
Critics are typically ok with selective and cross breeding, and not ok with transgenics. This makes sense as they're in completely different risk domains. I'm far more comfortable with genetic alternation happening via natural mechanisms than by transgenics. The latter relies on the "genius" of the human, something which is inherently fragile.
This is the same tactic the tobacco companies used when people suspected harm caused by cigarettes. When you introduce a foreign process to the world, it's up to the introducer to prove harmlessness, not for the consumer to prove harmfulness. There have been, to this day, no long term tail-risk studies done on GMOs.
Sure you can, though only probabilistically. That's precisely why fiddling with something as critical as the food supply is a bad idea, as it's likely we'll only discover potential problems when it's too late.
That paper is so bad, it's not even wrong. It's just clever word-trickery by someone who is quite skilled in writing in an authoritative and scholarly tone.
He does have the courtesy to recognize that his thinking goes against the scientific method:
"While evidentiary approaches are often considered to
reflect adherence to the scientific method in its purest
form"
But then he just declares that his principle is superior to the scientific method:
"In the case of ruin, by the time evidence comes it will by definition be too late to avoid it."
He knows nothing about biology or argiculture:
"The ecological implications of releasing modified organisms into the wild are not tested empirically before release."
(In reality, crop plants don't survive in the wild even if you release them. No more than farm animals would.)
But then in section 12.8 he goes on to explain why he actually knows better than people who actually have domain expertise in the relevant sciences. It is a crafty tactic: He almost manages to convince you that you shouldn't listen to experts, and then he cites that there is a historical track record of experts having been wrong in their subject domains. And that you should listen to outsiders like him.
> This makes sense as they're in completely different risk domains.
Why? There are always many unknowns with cross breeding.
> transgenics
Not all GMO is taking genes from other species. Some, like this article, simply turn off the expression of a specific gene.
> The latter relies on the "genius" of the human
How is that any different than selective breeding?
> something which is inherently fragile.
We've selectively bread many species into very unhealthy breeds. Just look at many do breeds with hip or breathing issues. Selective and cross breeding isn't without risks either.
> We need honest conversation about agricultural biotechnology, both about the facts regarding its health and environmental risks and benefits, and also about how this technology fits with or conflicts with our values about large scale monoculture farming and big companies having too much influence and about the harm that some modern technologies certainly do to the natural world. Sadly, the essay by Taleb et.al. poses as objective argument but is clearly advocacy trying to hide in a rationalist’s clothing. It doesn’t hide very well, and in its deceit only further polarizes discussion of an important risk issue we do have analyze carefully, objectively, and honestly.
I think the bigger issue I have with this kind of argument (beyond the lack of solid scientific basis) is that we do so many things that are known to actually be terrible or have terrible ramifications if done wrong (burning coal, mining coal, removing mountaintops to mine, drilling for gas, drilling for oil, transporting gas and oil thousands of miles, &c) and yet very few people blink an eye.
The day every person who is concerned about the effects of GMO plants also is as concerned and vocal about the amount of greenhouses gases, particulate matter, as well as the toxic and radioactive chemicals released by coal powered power plants, then we can start to talk. Those emissions are known to be extremely dangerous to us and the environment. Yet, no one seems to care because they're used to it -- it's not a change.
Conveniently, nobody talks about mutagenic breeding, or hitting seeds/plants w/ radiation or mutagenic chemicals to see what you get. Surely if selectively inserting well-known genes into plants is risky, mutating plants with completely unknown gene combinations is even more so? Yet, you hear no call to label such foods. Once again we see that pretty much every objection to GMO can also be leveled against other widely-accepted breeding and farming techniques.
Labelling GMO/non-GMO status tells you nothing about what is actually in the food you eat, in the same way that labelling Scrum/non-Scrum status tells you nothing about what is in the software you use.
The only thing a label that says “GMO” would tell you is that there has been more regulatory review of what is in it than if it wasn't a GMO.
Antibiotics: don't make it into your beef in an amount that will affect your life. You can consume more drugs by drinking tap water in LA.
Hormones: I guess we should ban birth control as well, correct? Because that's all it is...
But, I believe in a free society, so if people wish to remain ignorant of science, that's their prerogative. But it's important to recongize those are just marketing campaigns: there is nothing "healthier" about eating beef raised antibiotic/hormone free, all other things being equal (living conditions for the animals).
The issue many people have with antibiotics and hormones aren't always about what is made into the food. (Though, yes, there are a lot of people that worry about that.)
Issues around proper usage of antibiotics, especially now with the constant emergence of new resistant strains of bacteria is one concern, along with proper disposal and excess dosage making it into the environment. There are also animal welfare issues and concerns, I'm unfortunately not well-versed enough in ranching to know how true those are. (And as a vegetarian find growing animals for food repulsive to begin with.)
Hormones stem again from animal welfare issues.
It's unfair to just toss out all concerns over hormones and antibiotics just because some concerns aren't merited or as merited.
> Hormones: I guess we should ban birth control as well, correct? Because that's all it is...
We don't usually give birth control hormones to male humans. I don't know if they are bad when they are given to animals (it's forbidden here in Europe) but female hormones are definitely not good to developing children or adult males.
They're just good/neutral (well, not functionally neutral of course, but not causing unplanned disruption) to adult females because they're part of their normal physiology.
> We don't usually give birth control hormones to male humans.
This comment presents a false premise. The amounts in beef are ridiculously small, especially when compared to other foods. Any "advantages" to "hormone free beef" are pseudoscience and a marketing campaign, and that's it.
I did say that I don't know if there's a problem with hormones given to animals.
My point was the original comment implying that hormones are not harmful because they are used for birth control, which is shortsighted and plain wrong.
Yet "microdosing" seems to be a thing in SV & the Bay. Who to believe?
Bottom line: You clearly don't mind the idea of additional hormones in farm-raised beef. That's great you've made a decision based on your risk assessment and information.
I'm simply asking to be extended the same courtesy. I want information to make my own informed choice.
Apples are a great at storage. Some can be extremely hardy if kept in a mostly dry and cold place. It was one reason they became so popular: you could keep them over winter in a root cellar.
This is how we get out-of-season apples. They basically get stored in refrigerated warehouses.
Granted not all apples are like this. Some become mealy pretty quickly.
For anyone reading who has an apple tree, quick correction: cold and humid.
My crop easily lasts for 3 months in my storage fridge (and I don't take the time to sort them to properly eliminate bruised fruit, etc), but the key is cold and humid, not cold and dry.
Put the information on the package. Let consumers decide, irrational or not, there's a market for nonGMO. If you want to supplant that market with GM foods, do it through informing consumers not blending in with food they already trust. The labeling games producer's play with our food is really unfortunate.
Problem with that is it sounds scary. Some big companies already are and hide the text on the bags, but your average consumer sees it and thinks it’s full of chemicals.
Personally, I’d rather eat a gm crop that’s been altered to resist insects than eat an organic crop that’s been sprayed with organic pesticides such as (the now not used) rotenone.
I don't understand why you're being downvoted. Usually people rave about how the free market is the solution to all problems. You can't have a free market in which you can make rational decisions without adequate information. If one actor can lie or hide facts then it ceases to be a free market.
Didn't the big companies already fight down a labeling law? Maybe it's in my jurisdiction, but they want to shove their GMO stuff down the public's throat without the public having a say.
That's why people distrust GMO - the companies that distribute don't want informed choice going on.
Browned apples aren't bad apples. You can currently splash a little lemon juice over them to the same effect (denaturing the enzyme that causes browning chemically instead of suppressing its expression generically).
The browning only appears as the apple's flesh starts oxydizing after having taken a bite (or a slice) of it and exposing it to the air.
It helps in no way to assess the freshness, taste, quality or anything about the apple. It just makes the exposed flesh turn brown after a few minutes.
In this case, it's just oxidation, they're not rotten.
More concerning is the (now) routine injection of carbon monoxide (CO) gas into packaging of beef steaks and mince. The meat can be literally spoilt/rotting, but will appear deep red and fresh in the packaging. One sniff betrays the appearance, however.
And antibiotics is now routine in pre-shredded cheese packages to reduce mold growth.
It annoys me that fruit/vegs has to "look good". Anyone that has grown their own carrots know that the results you get are far from the "ideal carrot" :')
That being said, I believe GMO food is the future. It's safe and environmentally friendly: we can use far less land and water to produce larger amounts of crops.
I think were shooting ourselves in the foot. We did the same with antibiotics. Disease gets worse and we make super bugs and are more and more reliant on our defenses. Eventually GMO will be the same thing. You won't be able to grow nonGMO crops because we have weaponized the crop killers to such a high degree.
News flash : “nonGMO” crops are already genetically modified from wild plants, just through a more painstaking process of cross breeding and artificial selection over random mutations. This is already happening and would happen anyway.
All genetic modifications aren't created equal. If you can get to it from cross breeding, it's probably not that foreign a trait, but if you to say splice pea DNA with mesquito DNA or something, that result could have consequences consumers would rather not worry about when buying produce. I'm not saying it's a fine dilineation or anything and I'm not anti science, but there are more nuanced regulations in food labeling today than GMO nonGMO.
With the availability of genetic sequencing you can get from anywhere A -> B in the reachable genetic search space through selective breeding, and still qualify for regulatory purposes as non-GMO. You can get out of that loophole by prohibiting the non-GMO label for anything that was bred based on direct genome sequencing, but that's a game a whack-a-mole as I come up with another scheme.
And at the end, what's the point? Regulate what you actually care about in the food, not what process was taken to get there.
They don't get worse. The antibiotic-resistant "superbugs" are not actually super in any other way. They just have a resistance to antibiotics. In other ways, they are just normal bugs, not super.
Just like vaccinations make people immune to certain diseases, but doesn't give us any other superpowers.
It's not an apples to apples analogy, but if let's say there's a parasite that activates on an enzyme present in tomatoes. You respond by modifying tomatoes to produce less of that enzyme. The result is only parasites capable of reproducing with smaller and smaller quantities of that enzyme present are able to survive which shows huge gains. However, this would prove to be extremely detrimental to tomatoes producing "normal" quantities of said enzyme.
It's a hypothetical and a strained one at that, but all I'm saying is there are often long term consequences to short term gains that may not be considered in a prisoners' dillema ecological/economic scenario.
I'm not convinced market forces alone would be able to actually fix problems of this nature, but I'm inclined to consumer education over under labeling as a component in the mix.
Eh, it's a rough example. Plants produce something plant eater (fungal, bacterial, insect) is attracted to and we're modifying the levels. Semantics of the relationship be damned, there can be evolutionary consequences.
Plants produce food: starch and sugars (and a bit of protein). We're not modifying the levels of those.
The apple case is about modifying the levels of an enzyme, polyphenol oxidase [1]. But that is not what plant-eaters are interested in. They're interested in the food in an apple, not some enzyme levels.
This is disingenuous. Will cold climates somehow adapt to better kill cold-hardy GMO potatoes? The same mechanics behind antibiotic resistance don't apply universally to what we use GMO for.
Sure, it's not 1:1, and I don't think all GMOs are created equal. I'm just saying chasing profits in the short term might have unintended long term consequences that could be avoided in certain situations.
The "ugly vegetable" movement is slowly picking up (or maybe just in my social circle). Like you I grew up with a garden and it never dawned on me until college that people shun "ugly" produce.
I also believe in the promise of GMO food. Unfortunately the business practices of the main players get wrapped in with junk science for many in the anti-GMO crowed. It becomes an involved process to convince someone I don't think that someone's business practices are ethical while I admire the science they do, and isn't always received well.
Totally. I'm a big fan of spending far less to buy "ugly" produce from the grocery store's "ugly product" section. It tastes exactly the same, and all turns into poop regardless of how it looks on the shelf.
There is a problem though, GMO and agricultural research in general is oriented towards making produce survive better the transportation, have better yields, look better in the shelves so that they are sold more easily, etc. The goal is to improve the industrial processes, but there is little regard for the actual nutritional value of the food and the health implications.
I fear that with GMO we're going to go much farther and more quickly in that direction than we've been able so far using only "traditional" selective breeding. And that's already had a big impact on fruits and vegetable which have now less vitamins and minerals than varieties that used to be grown a few decades ago.
There's at least one startup trying to take advantage of the ugly produce gap. I've only received one box so far, but it was all great produce and some of it quite hard to figure out what made it imperfect.
Seems interesting but as with a lot of things, it doesn't deliver to my city. I really would like a platform to "watch" certain startups and get notified when they come to my city. Yes I could sign up for their newsletter but I don't care to get all the spam until they do come to my city.
If your goal is environmental health, using less land, less water, then you're better off tackling the larger cause: animal production. It dwarfs crops by those metrics.
> That being said, I believe GMO food is the future. It's safe and environmentally friendly
There is nothing in GMO technology that prevents making an unsafe or environmentally unfriendly GMO food.
It's just a tool, one that gives food makers power to produce a wider variety of new foods more rapidly than they could with non-GMO techniques. Whether they use it to produce safe foods or dangerous foods is up to each food maker.
> Anyone that has grown their own carrots know that the results you get are far from the "ideal carrot" :')
To get good carrots, make sure you are digging/disturbing at least 8 inches of soil so that the carrots can easily grow downwards. Otherwise, when they face resistance, they will fatten and sprout other carrot limbs, etc.
Carrots are an interesting one. In rural America, where I grew up in the midwest, it used to be that you could fill an entire truck bed for $10 US with the "ugly" carrots from farmers who had large rejection stocks. No idea if this is still done today but I have no reason to believe it isn't.
We used to do the same thing with the drop apples that fell off the trees before they were picked. If you picked ALL of them, to clean up, we used to get them for $1 per 100 lb grain bag. Some of them were mush or partly rotted, or just ugly, but who really cares, when they're going to be mostly pig food? There were always enough nice apples to save out a couple bags for freezing or making pies or applesauce.
I'll buy a bag or two, just to encourage research into what benefits these types of genetic modification techniques can bring to market. I hope their business results are as successful as their produce results seems to be.
It was a bit shocking to me when I first walked into an American super market to see tomatoes all the same big size and shining red color. This is in sharp contrast to what we get in India - they come in all sizes and different shades of orange, green and red.
Even though the American ones were instantly attractive, it slowly dawned on me that perhaps something is wrong. Now I appreciate the Indian vegetables a lot more.
You guys are freaking out about apples, but I'm excited for the application of (the concept of) silencing towards humans. I don't think* it quite works this way & I'm sure biologics are similar, but it would be amazing if you could do the same thing for humans. Imagine doing that for people who have psoriasis. Would be amazing if the body took to that & could continue producing cells that react properly.
It is happening. Hemophilia being cured at Marin Bio [1].
There are a bunch of therapies where Cas9 is being used by to therapeutically knock out or repair particular proteins. Indications currently targeted at Intellia: ATTR, Hepatitis B, AATD, PH-1, etc. [2].
87 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 132 ms ] threadLemon juice used to be the trick, but if this does the trick then cool.
I know, my point was that so far my experience with apples made to be better commercially fail when it comes to taste. I wonder if this will be different.
A lot of the commercial varieties have lineages that are high in sugar.
Here is a nice 2013 article about a man who hunts old and abandoned orchards for old heirloom apple varieties. It also explains about the genetics of apples.
If you like the apples made by a particular tree, and you want to make more trees just like it, you have to clone it: Snip off a shoot from the original tree, graft it onto a living rootstock, and let it grow. This is how apple varieties come into existence. Every McIntosh is a graft of the original tree that John McIntosh discovered on his Ontario farm in 1811, or a graft of a graft. Every Granny Smith stems from the chance seedling spotted by Maria Ann Smith in her Australian compost pile in the mid-1800s.
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/04/heritage-appl...
I didn't notice how much I care until I recently went on vacation and there was no declaration on the restaurant menu on where the meet comes from and what it may contain.
Edit: For clarification, I live in Switzerland
Restaurants here are required to declare origin of the meat and will clearly state meat from certain places may contain those extra ingredients.
I actually don't know what you mean here. Do restaurants normally list the farm they get their meat from? Around here (Pittsburgh, PA) I don't think I've ever seen that, except at the "eat local" places, where it's basically their selling point, but they're not the norm.
For instance, I do not eat eat oysters from China (due to their record of gross pollution) or japanese seafood after the Fukushima incident (which continues to poison the ocean).
More than all the coal plants and mines in the US?
While it's commonly understood that coal-fired power plants release more radiation than (properly operated) nuclear plants per year, with Fukushima we are talking about a core meltdown and uncontrolled release for nearly a decade!
We are talking about anywhere from 100 to 400 Tons of contaminated water per day. It is truly a man-made disaster being ignored.
https://www.google.com/search?q=fukushima+tons+of+water+per+...
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-02/fukushima-radiation...
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/376607-leakage-radiation-fukushim...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/11/world/asia/struggling-wit...
I have a hard time thinking of general reasons why you’d care of the meat was from, say, USA vs. New Zealand. Assuming you trust your local regulators that approved the meat for import.
I would doubt anyone would disagree with you in wanting to provide accurate information about what you are consuming. The question is, does a generic "GMO" label tell you anything useful when applied as a label, and conversely, does it tell you anything useful when not applied as a label? I'm not sure that label provides any meaningful information.
Because you (or anyone?) certainly knows all the genes that have been selected via cross and selective breeding and all possible ramifications, right?
You cannot prove something is harmless. Thats literally the opposite of science... you can not prove a negative.
He does have the courtesy to recognize that his thinking goes against the scientific method:
"While evidentiary approaches are often considered to reflect adherence to the scientific method in its purest form"
But then he just declares that his principle is superior to the scientific method:
"In the case of ruin, by the time evidence comes it will by definition be too late to avoid it."
He knows nothing about biology or argiculture:
"The ecological implications of releasing modified organisms into the wild are not tested empirically before release."
(In reality, crop plants don't survive in the wild even if you release them. No more than farm animals would.)
But then in section 12.8 he goes on to explain why he actually knows better than people who actually have domain expertise in the relevant sciences. It is a crafty tactic: He almost manages to convince you that you shouldn't listen to experts, and then he cites that there is a historical track record of experts having been wrong in their subject domains. And that you should listen to outsiders like him.
Why? There are always many unknowns with cross breeding.
> transgenics
Not all GMO is taking genes from other species. Some, like this article, simply turn off the expression of a specific gene.
> The latter relies on the "genius" of the human
How is that any different than selective breeding?
> something which is inherently fragile.
We've selectively bread many species into very unhealthy breeds. Just look at many do breeds with hip or breathing issues. Selective and cross breeding isn't without risks either.
> We need honest conversation about agricultural biotechnology, both about the facts regarding its health and environmental risks and benefits, and also about how this technology fits with or conflicts with our values about large scale monoculture farming and big companies having too much influence and about the harm that some modern technologies certainly do to the natural world. Sadly, the essay by Taleb et.al. poses as objective argument but is clearly advocacy trying to hide in a rationalist’s clothing. It doesn’t hide very well, and in its deceit only further polarizes discussion of an important risk issue we do have analyze carefully, objectively, and honestly.
I think the bigger issue I have with this kind of argument (beyond the lack of solid scientific basis) is that we do so many things that are known to actually be terrible or have terrible ramifications if done wrong (burning coal, mining coal, removing mountaintops to mine, drilling for gas, drilling for oil, transporting gas and oil thousands of miles, &c) and yet very few people blink an eye.
The day every person who is concerned about the effects of GMO plants also is as concerned and vocal about the amount of greenhouses gases, particulate matter, as well as the toxic and radioactive chemicals released by coal powered power plants, then we can start to talk. Those emissions are known to be extremely dangerous to us and the environment. Yet, no one seems to care because they're used to it -- it's not a change.
The only thing a label that says “GMO” would tell you is that there has been more regulatory review of what is in it than if it wasn't a GMO.
When you consume food, you are consuming the GMO/non-GMO elements by definition.
Hormones: I guess we should ban birth control as well, correct? Because that's all it is...
But, I believe in a free society, so if people wish to remain ignorant of science, that's their prerogative. But it's important to recongize those are just marketing campaigns: there is nothing "healthier" about eating beef raised antibiotic/hormone free, all other things being equal (living conditions for the animals).
Issues around proper usage of antibiotics, especially now with the constant emergence of new resistant strains of bacteria is one concern, along with proper disposal and excess dosage making it into the environment. There are also animal welfare issues and concerns, I'm unfortunately not well-versed enough in ranching to know how true those are. (And as a vegetarian find growing animals for food repulsive to begin with.)
Hormones stem again from animal welfare issues.
It's unfair to just toss out all concerns over hormones and antibiotics just because some concerns aren't merited or as merited.
We don't usually give birth control hormones to male humans. I don't know if they are bad when they are given to animals (it's forbidden here in Europe) but female hormones are definitely not good to developing children or adult males.
They're just good/neutral (well, not functionally neutral of course, but not causing unplanned disruption) to adult females because they're part of their normal physiology.
This comment presents a false premise. The amounts in beef are ridiculously small, especially when compared to other foods. Any "advantages" to "hormone free beef" are pseudoscience and a marketing campaign, and that's it.
My point was the original comment implying that hormones are not harmful because they are used for birth control, which is shortsighted and plain wrong.
Bottom line: You clearly don't mind the idea of additional hormones in farm-raised beef. That's great you've made a decision based on your risk assessment and information.
I'm simply asking to be extended the same courtesy. I want information to make my own informed choice.
It looked like I just bought it when I found it again.
Realizing that honestly made me uncomfortable.
This is how we get out-of-season apples. They basically get stored in refrigerated warehouses.
Granted not all apples are like this. Some become mealy pretty quickly.
My crop easily lasts for 3 months in my storage fridge (and I don't take the time to sort them to properly eliminate bruised fruit, etc), but the key is cold and humid, not cold and dry.
http://www.foodrenegade.com/your-apples-year-old/
Personally, I’d rather eat a gm crop that’s been altered to resist insects than eat an organic crop that’s been sprayed with organic pesticides such as (the now not used) rotenone.
That's why people distrust GMO - the companies that distribute don't want informed choice going on.
Sigh.
It helps in no way to assess the freshness, taste, quality or anything about the apple. It just makes the exposed flesh turn brown after a few minutes.
More concerning is the (now) routine injection of carbon monoxide (CO) gas into packaging of beef steaks and mince. The meat can be literally spoilt/rotting, but will appear deep red and fresh in the packaging. One sniff betrays the appearance, however.
And antibiotics is now routine in pre-shredded cheese packages to reduce mold growth.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/experts-why-cut-a...
That being said, I believe GMO food is the future. It's safe and environmentally friendly: we can use far less land and water to produce larger amounts of crops.
And at the end, what's the point? Regulate what you actually care about in the food, not what process was taken to get there.
They don't get worse. The antibiotic-resistant "superbugs" are not actually super in any other way. They just have a resistance to antibiotics. In other ways, they are just normal bugs, not super.
Just like vaccinations make people immune to certain diseases, but doesn't give us any other superpowers.
It's a hypothetical and a strained one at that, but all I'm saying is there are often long term consequences to short term gains that may not be considered in a prisoners' dillema ecological/economic scenario.
I'm not convinced market forces alone would be able to actually fix problems of this nature, but I'm inclined to consumer education over under labeling as a component in the mix.
Also, pest insects are not parasites. They're just insects that like to eat tomatoes, just like we do. Eating food is not parasitism.
The apple case is about modifying the levels of an enzyme, polyphenol oxidase [1]. But that is not what plant-eaters are interested in. They're interested in the food in an apple, not some enzyme levels.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphenol_oxidase
I also believe in the promise of GMO food. Unfortunately the business practices of the main players get wrapped in with junk science for many in the anti-GMO crowed. It becomes an involved process to convince someone I don't think that someone's business practices are ethical while I admire the science they do, and isn't always received well.
I fear that with GMO we're going to go much farther and more quickly in that direction than we've been able so far using only "traditional" selective breeding. And that's already had a big impact on fruits and vegetable which have now less vitamins and minerals than varieties that used to be grown a few decades ago.
"Brown" is a sign of aging. And generally, fruit and vegetable nutritional content declines with aging.
So, by hindering these apples' browning, is this essentially facilitating their selling us a less nutritious product?
https://www.imperfectproduce.com/
There is nothing in GMO technology that prevents making an unsafe or environmentally unfriendly GMO food.
It's just a tool, one that gives food makers power to produce a wider variety of new foods more rapidly than they could with non-GMO techniques. Whether they use it to produce safe foods or dangerous foods is up to each food maker.
To get good carrots, make sure you are digging/disturbing at least 8 inches of soil so that the carrots can easily grow downwards. Otherwise, when they face resistance, they will fatten and sprout other carrot limbs, etc.
Even though the American ones were instantly attractive, it slowly dawned on me that perhaps something is wrong. Now I appreciate the Indian vegetables a lot more.
There are a bunch of therapies where Cas9 is being used by to therapeutically knock out or repair particular proteins. Indications currently targeted at Intellia: ATTR, Hepatitis B, AATD, PH-1, etc. [2].
[1] http://investors.biomarin.com/2017-07-11-BioMarins-Investiga...
[2] http://www.intelliatx.com/pipeline/