Does anyone notice there's a step missing between "GM wheat found" and "we need to be concerned about it", namely "GM wheat is a cause for concern because <X>"?
Because it destroys the natural heterogeny of the wild gene pool, depriving us of hardier crops and enslaving us to a corporation whose sole purpose for being is profit-taking, with a short term frame of reference and the minimum of environmental or social concern?
Keep in mind that genetically modified wheat is different from regular wheat for the DNA that was added to GM kind. When non-GM and GM wheat combine the results can differ. They can go from a fully functional cross breed wheat or more often (based on documentaries at least) a non-functional wheat plant (leaves growing from where the seed should be, etc), kinda like you breed horse and a donkey and get a mule (it can't reproduce or bear fruit).
If it is cross bread with GM wheat it's probably patented by law. If it is non functional it is a direct loss to the farmer. It's really a lose-lose situation.
NOTE: there is a chance that GM/non-GM hybrid won't contain any patented genes or be hampered in any way. However in large number of wheat plants you'll notice larger degree of mutants.
"Because it destroys the natural heterogeny of the wild gene pool"
I'm not sure I understand this. By adding a plant with different properties and specific trait you're interested in, you add to the heterogeny of the wild gene pool, not destroy it. It's not like majority of wheat was suddenly replaced with that one ideally cloned plant. If it survives to the next year, it will just mix even more.
That's not because of genetic modification, that's because of commercial farming practices, which really aren't related. We've done a fine job of homogenizing bananas without any genetic twiddling, for instance.
I agree with you that it's a concern, though I'm more concerned by the fact entire crops and indeed potentially entire foods can be wiped out by one pathogen more than worrying about genetic diversity abstractly.
On the contrary, the GM industry is based upon industrial farming. They are the same environmentally irresponsible, energy-consuming, short-minded, hugely profitable beast.
That GM wheat is someones intellectual property and there's extensive case law of farmers having their lives destroyed by being declared the equivalent of "software pirates". Its almost an exact analogy right down to small businesses being shaken down for protection money. This is not theoretical or sci fi but established case law and precedent.
Right now there could be an Ag website with a bunch of wheat farmers trying to figure out why anyone cares about a bunch of SCO source code discovered to be contaminating the linux kernel source.
The nightmare scenario isn't even one farmer having his life and livelihood destroyed, but everyone nearby especially downwind is probably shaking in their boots, or should be.
Also using plague language, we have discovered the first patient, but we have not isolated patient zero yet. This may (or may not) be a much bigger contamination.
Surely, by discovering Monsanto wheat in the wild, their argument here weakens. Their original argument was that, since their wheat cannot reproduce, it must have been planted by the farmer. And, since the farmer was spraying it with RoundUp, which only Monsanto wheat is resistant to, it's probable that the farmer knew that he was infringing on Monsanto's IP (let's leave the discussion about how ridiculous patenting wheat is for another time).
If a mutant Monsanto strain is discovered that can reproduce, everyone can claim they might unknowingly be using that, and Monsanto won't have a case.
Does it matter if you know that you have been infringing a patent? People get software patents enforced on them all of the time that didn't know the algorithm was patented.
If you are a farmer the sue happy Monsanto, or the fact that foreign nations stopped wheat imports means the concerned step is filled in quite nicely. For the general populace GM fear maybe.
Here's a classic case of Caution Before Proliferation. If the thing that you make can grow and multiply, whether it's engineered in DNA or C, a responsible creator has an obligation to ensure the end result can be rendered safe and inactive with reasonable care.
When there are so many middle-men in the distribution, from truckers to the actual farmer involved, this reasonable care becomes harder and harder. Every link is a potential failure point in the chain of security.
Evolution says that GM wheat in the wild will be weeded out in the process of natural selection, because GM wheat are made to grow big and resists certain pesticide, which is costly uses of its resources in a wild environment. Instead of growing big and juicy, maybe it needs to compete against other plants.
In other words, GM wheats and plants varieties need humans to proliferate.
Extraordinary claims etc... etc... You make this assertion based on what data? Was it studied with the same scrutiny of the FDA? Because I can recall at least 4 medicines off the top of my head approved by the FDA that were recalled in the last few years for causing very serious unforeseen side-effects. Now those are drugs, things we (presumably) have an option of not taking.
What about things that grow on their own and we don't have an option of saying no to? I.E. Food?
Nothing I've said is extraordinary. "But it's safe already!" is an extraordinary claim. "The only thing that's different is..." is an extraordinary claim.
"Methinks" is pretentious snark
- eksith
...That's an extraordinary claim too, so feel free to call irony on that.
Was the strain of wheat you're eating now, that was cross-pollinated with another one, safe to eat? Is it more or less safe than the GM one? Was it studied by the FDA?
The strain of wheat I was eating already has hereditary homogeneity that my digestive tract is already accustomed to and countless numbers of my peers including my parents were already exposed to in the first place.
What we have here is a massive overdose of "engineered", and that's the operative word here, homogeneity of a new strain which, besides being abandoned by this company for reasons they claim is a lack of market, could have unforeseen effects.
My original line was "Was it studied with the same scrutiny of the FDA?" As in people are fallible and new medicines, like new breeds of wheat, can have unexpected effects on the human body regardless of how emphatically the investigators of said products claim they are safe for human use. "New" anything takes time for such a claim. We haven't spent enough of it.
Every one of the millions of random mutations in a new generation of anything makes it "new". The only difference is that GM wheat has a targeted mutation, rather than a random one.
The difference is that the random mutations are random across the genome while the GM wheat is universally altered in the same way. So, while you might not be harmed by the millions of random mutations in the non-GM slice of bread you eat, it's conceivable that if you eat a GM slice of bread where ever single cell has the same mutation your body might not react so favorably.
Yes, indeed, but I'd submit at this point that the idea that existing GM food is dangerous after being consumed by so many people for so long is itself the extraordinary claim. If it's so dangerous, we shouldn't be arguing about it, it should be here. Because we're already consuming it in quantities far, far greater than any possible scientific study could ever bring to bear, and while that does not prove it's absolutely, utterly harmless, it does put a cap on how dangerous it can be.
Arguments implicitly based on the idea that we haven't done it yet and we need to be careful about what we may do in the future are uselessly disconnected from the real world.
It may also be true that it was insufficiently tested before release (I don't know, really), but that does not change the fact that it's out there now, and people are not keeling over dead, and there doesn't seem to be an appreciable signal coming from the GMness of the food in general. Or you'd be pointing to it, instead of theorizing.
Thank you for writing a cogent, and much appreciated, calm reply with logic and reason. I can't dispute part of my reply was assertion as well, but (and I'm not making up excuses) I felt pithy remarks for either case weren't helpful.
A migrating bird could have eaten a few seeds and in the course of traveling long distances, pooped it out. This happens all the time with migrating birds.
As a biologist, the furor over GM plants drives me crazy. Crazy! Why?
We've been genetically modifying plants for hundreds of years. Mendel himself fucked around with plant genetics - crossing plants is nothing more than fiddling with genetics. People were messing with genetics hundreds - thousands - of years before Mendel and they just didn't realize it.
Hell, people have been messing with the genetics of animals for thousands of years, selectively breeding dogs, horses, goats, cows.
Just because we are able to modify genetics precisely doesn't mean it is any different. If anything, we should have fewer problems (e.g. how many german shepherds have hip dysplasia because of inbreeding?)
Edit: Don't have time to respond to all the replies, but there are some good arguments there. I acknowledge that this post was over the top - but simply because all the press one sees about GM = evil. Things are never black and white.
If you assume that the whole world benefits if no one uses GM plants, which is almost universally true except for a handful of crooks who would gain, then if Japan is part of the world, they directly benefit from participating in a boycott. This is an example of the classic freeloader problem where people too lazy to participate in the boycott will be rewarded just as much as the more ethical people who do participate.
More people would understand why GM plants are evil if they were more properly called patented copyrighted licensed intellectual property, which happens to be in the form of living plants. Kind of like the renaming games played around certain ethnic groups. Another classic example of using name games to influence opinion is "He's not anti-abortion, he's pro-life", that kind of garbage.
You can also get a slavery vibe going. If you modify 0.001% of the wheat genome, the multinational mega corp literally owns that living thing. So if you genetically modified my grandma to cure her glaucoma using corporate intellectual property, then they'd own a human being, right? Maybe a more direct example would be a genetically engineered fertility treatment would clearly mean the baby would be the owned property slave of the corporation who invented the treatment, right? After all, thats the decision we've made with wheat...
As a non-biologist, the comparison with cross-breeding does not seem reasonable to me.
With cross-breeding, I can get characteristic A from some corn, characteristic B from some other corn, and end up with corn with A+B. And also maybe over time taller, or larger.
With GM, I can do a much larger range of things taking genes from fish and putting them in corn (for example), which we currently poorly understand. The kinds of things we would like to do (make plants which grow fast and are hard to kill) seem like exactly the kinds of things that might lead to serious issues (we make a plant which we lose control of, grows fast, and is hard to kill).
Cross-breeding is fine, inbreeding is not. When you identify A+B makes a taller plant, you start breeding the children C with each other to isolate the "tall" gene. Soon you are inbreeding the descendent's of A+B.
Most "breeds" of dogs are horribly inbred so that they maintain their traits. Same goes for "heritage" vegetables, "fancy" rats, or any other organism that humans have selectively cultivated.
The problem with GM isn't that we've been "modifying" them. As you say, we've been doing that since the dawn of civilization (probably earlier).
The problem with GM is speed.
Those thousands of years acted as a wonderful buffer to see what works, what doesn't. What creates healthier humans and what has the potential to wipe out whole villages with a single mutation. It also provided us with ample time to adjust our digestive tracks to the new types of food we were ingesting.
Dogs didn't become poodles in a thousand years. They became work dogs and watch dogs first and many hundreds of such generations of selection of traits. And we've seen the detriments of speedy breeding already. Dogs with breathing problems, hip and other bone problems. Dogs that can barely lift their own heads, have glaucoma, diabetes and other preventable misery.
The difference between those thousands of years of breeding dogs and today? A few decades of speed.
You sound well meaning and I believe it to be the case. However, I also believe you probably have a subconscious bias resulting from over exposure to one side of this question.
The difference between GM and natural modification of genetics subsequent to the (however you measure it, extremely recent) advent of agriculture can be summarized as one of scale (individual sites are far larger), totality (homogeneity of genes, frequently near-absolute destruction of other plants within the zone of growth), and mindset (commerciality: view toward maximum and permanent human-centric functional yields, with all of the technology and complexity that brings to being - machinery, energy consumption, chemical fertilization, potentially pesticides though these are often claimed to be used less with GM, and a clear and solely profit-taking motive for the GM supplier).
Many people who maintain a conservative view towards GM (many don't "actively oppose" it, they simply don't buy it or support it where possible) do so recognizing that homogeneity is unnatural, dependence upon an external source for seeds eviscerates the fundamental security of farming, the integrity of the farmers relationships to their land, and large multinational companies are generally profit taking soulless beasts with a history of shafting anyone and everyone possible.
I would invite people who are still on the fence on this issue to consider this single document which shocked me of late - it is a collection of 'heritage' potatoes from New Zealand, ie. those brought with European settlers only 200 years ago. Try reading this document, then try to find even four different potatoes available in your area via modern industrial agriculture! http://www.koanga.org.nz/media/wysiwyg/Potato-Trial-2013-sml...
As a biologist, the "All GM is bad!" stuff drives me crazy. But you do yourself no favours by ignoring legitimate concerns.
Case in point: Monsanto. Their notorious Roundup-ready plants have been GM'd to be resistant to herbicides that will kill off all other plants.
I would cheerfully eat a plant that had just been GM'd to have such resistance. But I would be rather more concerned about it after it was used as designed: repeatedly sprayed with massive doses of toxic substances.
Even if they're completely correct about all traces of that gunk being gone by the time their plant winds up on my plate, you still get the herbicides and/or the breakdown products washed into the water table; you still get farmers skipping crop rotation and fallow seasons in favour of just growing the same crop over and over and fixing the perceived problems by dumping yet more fertiliser and yet more herbicides onto them.
And you still wind up encouraging the evolution of herbicide-resistant weeds requiring yet-more GM and yet-more poisons. You still get yet-more need for yet-more poisons of questionable safety being dumped into the food chain.
I've no problem with eating a plant that's had its genes tinkered with. But I'm totally against Roundup-ready crops and the like. And that's a perfectly rational, informed position to hold.
These are reasonable arguments. My biggest problem is that all GMO gets lumped together. Legit GM that helps increase drought-hardiness in water-starved Africa gets lumped with Roundup-GMO.
I agree my post was way over the top, but damn, you never hear anyone advocating for GM. It is all going to kill you, spread to every other plant and sterilize the whole world.
As with most things, the truth is somewhere in the middle. :)
My perception is just the opposite: it seems like the advocacy is overwhelmingly in favor of GM.
EDIT: For example, here in America, we can't even get laws passed requiring the labelling of GMOs. I'm not talking about a ban; just a law that would allow people to know whether or not they are purchasing a "Roundup Ready" crop.
Yes, it seems fairly clear now that Roundup Ready crops have lead to increases in pesticide use which is only going to worsen as weeds become increasingly resistant
Herbicide-resistant crop technology has led to a 239 million kilogram (527 million pound) increase in herbicide use in the United States between 1996 and 2011, while Bt crops have reduced insecticide applications by 56 million kilograms (123 million pounds). Overall, pesticide use increased by an estimated 183 million kgs (404 million pounds), or about 7%.
Contrary to often-repeated claims that today’s genetically-engineered crops have, and are reducing pesticide use, the spread of glyphosate-resistant weeds in herbicide-resistant weed management systems has brought about substantial increases in the number and volume of herbicides applied. If new genetically engineered forms of corn and soybeans tolerant of 2,4-D are approved, the volume of 2,4-D sprayed could drive herbicide usage upward by another approximate 50%. The magnitude of increases in herbicide use on herbicide-resistant hectares has dwarfed the reduction in insecticide use on Bt crops over the past 16 years, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
The problem is one of scope. With GM, traits are introduced in plants that stem from different kind if life, often bacteria that would never naturally be accessible using selective breeding. Plants that are resistant to herbicides for example. This is on one side a blessing - you can just spray roundup on your fields and the crop lives while the rest dies. On the other side, no one can predict the effect these changes will have on the ecosystem.
I'm not very much concerned that GM food in itself is dangerous to consume. I'm far less certain that growing gene manipulated crops is as safe as it's made to be. What happens if two gene modified plants inter-breed? We've had enough accidents with "naturally" [1] selected plants and ruined a couple of ecosystems. We don't have that many ecosystems left.
Add to that the whole economical dimension: Gene modified plants prevent farmers from creating their own seeds for limited gain. The ones profiting big time are monsanto and friends.
Some countries carefully restrict imports of certain plants, animals and foodstuffs to avoid upsetting their ecosystem. This essentially boils down to the restriction of import of genes. Are you opposed to this? Can't genetic modification essentially amount to the same thing?
(I'm happy with genetic modifications in general, but I think that it's prudent to be cautious because of potential upsets to the ecosystem.)
I used to be terrified by GM foods because the big companies that make them intentionally contaminate farmers fields, then sue them, and the farmers lose everything. The only reason I'm not terrified anymore is my "gentleman farmer" great uncle died, so I have no direct family in the line of fire.
Imagine growing what amounts to an overgrown garden, some dude takes a sample, detects "contamination" containing their "intellectual property" and next thing you know, you're bankrupt and homeless. I could probably survive that, but for my elderly uncle that would have been a death sentence. Killing someone to make a relatively small amount of money seems inhumane, but its the American way.
GM = horrifically evil in practice. In theory I agree 100% there is nothing wrong with it as a technology. However as a business its a disaster. I'm not willing to kill my uncle so some monsanto exec can get 61 Ferraris with his bonus instead of 60 this year.
I feel terrible for the poor farmer who owns the field the contamination was detected on. Its like, euthanasia time for legal reasons for that poor guy, his life is basically over now.
GM isn't bad per se. However Monsanto's business practice + GM is evil. Pure evil (much in a way software is ok, but Microsoft brand of lock software is absolutely evil).
If there was an OSS licence on all GM food I might consider it, non-horrible.
You don't have to look as far as the genetic modifications themselves.
1) Monsanto ran test plots. The presumed protocol was for them to remain isolated and to be destroyed upon completion of the testing, so that the test lines did not enter the ecosystem. This has not occurred. Either they lied, or they were negligent.
2) Monsanto scientists trotted out estimates of the usable lifespan of Roundup. Many years prior to this, we have pervasive problems of Roundup resistant "superweeds" that can be worse than the original weed problems Roundup was supposed to solve. The scientists lied, or were incompetent. (I'm sorry, but when you use your scientific... predictions to justify widespread ecological modification, mistakes immediately rise to the level of incompetence. Also, there have been reports that, internally, Monsanto scientists were worried about and predicting these results. However -- contrary to the spirit of science -- this information was not shared publicly. Granted, it may not have consisted entirely of measured results. But it consisted of deep concerns for the impact and repercussions of the "experiment" -- the unfettered application of previous work and results -- being conducted in the public sphere.)
3) Monsanto seems intent upon cornering the marketplaces of seedstock for ever more species of crop plant. Such activity has the distinct air, in my opinion at least, of monopolization.
4) Monsanto has U.S. Federal legislation passed that exempts it from liability and from State law.
I don't need to get at far as looking at the direct fallout of the genetic modifications upon downstream consumption, before I start to become quite opposed to Monsanto.
Now, as for the modifications themselves. I'm still uncertain about the consumption of the modified genes, themselves. But there has been increasing evidence that the Roundup herbicide -- the other half of this commercial cocktail -- is not as benign to human health as originally argued. For some years, I've been reading that components of Roundup are more active with respect to human health and more enduring in the environment than originally expected.
And most recently, interesting discussion has evolved about the effect of Roundup upon microflora in the human gut.
Of course, one might easily imagine or expect corresponding effects upon other animal species.
Monsanto, unlike open science, seems to be acting to keep all this quiet, to the extent they can. What we have, in significant part, as the resulting action of this company, is not scientific exploration but rather commercial exploitation that appears to stand significantly in the way of the former.
Horrible news. You know, M$ argues wrongly that the GPL is viral, but with GMO we have much more like viral, actually reproduces itself without anyone choosing to allow it — and it is PROPRIETARY.
GMO as a technology is not the problem. The problem is that it is PROPRIETARY life. That is insane. And like proprietary software, it isn't inherently malicious, but it MIGHT be!
We need to stop all GMO patenting. That's the first step.
52 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 111 ms ] threadIf it is cross bread with GM wheat it's probably patented by law. If it is non functional it is a direct loss to the farmer. It's really a lose-lose situation.
NOTE: there is a chance that GM/non-GM hybrid won't contain any patented genes or be hampered in any way. However in large number of wheat plants you'll notice larger degree of mutants.
I'm not sure I understand this. By adding a plant with different properties and specific trait you're interested in, you add to the heterogeny of the wild gene pool, not destroy it. It's not like majority of wheat was suddenly replaced with that one ideally cloned plant. If it survives to the next year, it will just mix even more.
I agree with you that it's a concern, though I'm more concerned by the fact entire crops and indeed potentially entire foods can be wiped out by one pathogen more than worrying about genetic diversity abstractly.
On the contrary, the GM industry is based upon industrial farming. They are the same environmentally irresponsible, energy-consuming, short-minded, hugely profitable beast.
Right now there could be an Ag website with a bunch of wheat farmers trying to figure out why anyone cares about a bunch of SCO source code discovered to be contaminating the linux kernel source.
The nightmare scenario isn't even one farmer having his life and livelihood destroyed, but everyone nearby especially downwind is probably shaking in their boots, or should be.
Also using plague language, we have discovered the first patient, but we have not isolated patient zero yet. This may (or may not) be a much bigger contamination.
If a mutant Monsanto strain is discovered that can reproduce, everyone can claim they might unknowingly be using that, and Monsanto won't have a case.
When there are so many middle-men in the distribution, from truckers to the actual farmer involved, this reasonable care becomes harder and harder. Every link is a potential failure point in the chain of security.
In other words, GM wheats and plants varieties need humans to proliferate.
What about things that grow on their own and we don't have an option of saying no to? I.E. Food?
What we have here is a massive overdose of "engineered", and that's the operative word here, homogeneity of a new strain which, besides being abandoned by this company for reasons they claim is a lack of market, could have unforeseen effects.
My original line was "Was it studied with the same scrutiny of the FDA?" As in people are fallible and new medicines, like new breeds of wheat, can have unexpected effects on the human body regardless of how emphatically the investigators of said products claim they are safe for human use. "New" anything takes time for such a claim. We haven't spent enough of it.
Yes, indeed, but I'd submit at this point that the idea that existing GM food is dangerous after being consumed by so many people for so long is itself the extraordinary claim. If it's so dangerous, we shouldn't be arguing about it, it should be here. Because we're already consuming it in quantities far, far greater than any possible scientific study could ever bring to bear, and while that does not prove it's absolutely, utterly harmless, it does put a cap on how dangerous it can be.
Arguments implicitly based on the idea that we haven't done it yet and we need to be careful about what we may do in the future are uselessly disconnected from the real world.
It may also be true that it was insufficiently tested before release (I don't know, really), but that does not change the fact that it's out there now, and people are not keeling over dead, and there doesn't seem to be an appreciable signal coming from the GMness of the food in general. Or you'd be pointing to it, instead of theorizing.
Didn't they say the same thing about DDT?
We've been genetically modifying plants for hundreds of years. Mendel himself fucked around with plant genetics - crossing plants is nothing more than fiddling with genetics. People were messing with genetics hundreds - thousands - of years before Mendel and they just didn't realize it.
Hell, people have been messing with the genetics of animals for thousands of years, selectively breeding dogs, horses, goats, cows.
Just because we are able to modify genetics precisely doesn't mean it is any different. If anything, we should have fewer problems (e.g. how many german shepherds have hip dysplasia because of inbreeding?)
Edit: Don't have time to respond to all the replies, but there are some good arguments there. I acknowledge that this post was over the top - but simply because all the press one sees about GM = evil. Things are never black and white.
More people would understand why GM plants are evil if they were more properly called patented copyrighted licensed intellectual property, which happens to be in the form of living plants. Kind of like the renaming games played around certain ethnic groups. Another classic example of using name games to influence opinion is "He's not anti-abortion, he's pro-life", that kind of garbage.
You can also get a slavery vibe going. If you modify 0.001% of the wheat genome, the multinational mega corp literally owns that living thing. So if you genetically modified my grandma to cure her glaucoma using corporate intellectual property, then they'd own a human being, right? Maybe a more direct example would be a genetically engineered fertility treatment would clearly mean the baby would be the owned property slave of the corporation who invented the treatment, right? After all, thats the decision we've made with wheat...
With cross-breeding, I can get characteristic A from some corn, characteristic B from some other corn, and end up with corn with A+B. And also maybe over time taller, or larger.
With GM, I can do a much larger range of things taking genes from fish and putting them in corn (for example), which we currently poorly understand. The kinds of things we would like to do (make plants which grow fast and are hard to kill) seem like exactly the kinds of things that might lead to serious issues (we make a plant which we lose control of, grows fast, and is hard to kill).
Most "breeds" of dogs are horribly inbred so that they maintain their traits. Same goes for "heritage" vegetables, "fancy" rats, or any other organism that humans have selectively cultivated.
The problem with GM is speed.
Those thousands of years acted as a wonderful buffer to see what works, what doesn't. What creates healthier humans and what has the potential to wipe out whole villages with a single mutation. It also provided us with ample time to adjust our digestive tracks to the new types of food we were ingesting.
Dogs didn't become poodles in a thousand years. They became work dogs and watch dogs first and many hundreds of such generations of selection of traits. And we've seen the detriments of speedy breeding already. Dogs with breathing problems, hip and other bone problems. Dogs that can barely lift their own heads, have glaucoma, diabetes and other preventable misery.
The difference between those thousands of years of breeding dogs and today? A few decades of speed.
The difference between GM and natural modification of genetics subsequent to the (however you measure it, extremely recent) advent of agriculture can be summarized as one of scale (individual sites are far larger), totality (homogeneity of genes, frequently near-absolute destruction of other plants within the zone of growth), and mindset (commerciality: view toward maximum and permanent human-centric functional yields, with all of the technology and complexity that brings to being - machinery, energy consumption, chemical fertilization, potentially pesticides though these are often claimed to be used less with GM, and a clear and solely profit-taking motive for the GM supplier).
Many people who maintain a conservative view towards GM (many don't "actively oppose" it, they simply don't buy it or support it where possible) do so recognizing that homogeneity is unnatural, dependence upon an external source for seeds eviscerates the fundamental security of farming, the integrity of the farmers relationships to their land, and large multinational companies are generally profit taking soulless beasts with a history of shafting anyone and everyone possible.
I would invite people who are still on the fence on this issue to consider this single document which shocked me of late - it is a collection of 'heritage' potatoes from New Zealand, ie. those brought with European settlers only 200 years ago. Try reading this document, then try to find even four different potatoes available in your area via modern industrial agriculture! http://www.koanga.org.nz/media/wysiwyg/Potato-Trial-2013-sml...
Case in point: Monsanto. Their notorious Roundup-ready plants have been GM'd to be resistant to herbicides that will kill off all other plants.
I would cheerfully eat a plant that had just been GM'd to have such resistance. But I would be rather more concerned about it after it was used as designed: repeatedly sprayed with massive doses of toxic substances.
Even if they're completely correct about all traces of that gunk being gone by the time their plant winds up on my plate, you still get the herbicides and/or the breakdown products washed into the water table; you still get farmers skipping crop rotation and fallow seasons in favour of just growing the same crop over and over and fixing the perceived problems by dumping yet more fertiliser and yet more herbicides onto them.
And you still wind up encouraging the evolution of herbicide-resistant weeds requiring yet-more GM and yet-more poisons. You still get yet-more need for yet-more poisons of questionable safety being dumped into the food chain.
I've no problem with eating a plant that's had its genes tinkered with. But I'm totally against Roundup-ready crops and the like. And that's a perfectly rational, informed position to hold.
I agree my post was way over the top, but damn, you never hear anyone advocating for GM. It is all going to kill you, spread to every other plant and sterilize the whole world.
As with most things, the truth is somewhere in the middle. :)
My perception is just the opposite: it seems like the advocacy is overwhelmingly in favor of GM.
EDIT: For example, here in America, we can't even get laws passed requiring the labelling of GMOs. I'm not talking about a ban; just a law that would allow people to know whether or not they are purchasing a "Roundup Ready" crop.
Really? Who is doing all the advocating to prevent labeling of food with GM ingredients? It's completely one-sided in the industry.
http://www.enveurope.com/content/24/1/24/abstract
Herbicide-resistant crop technology has led to a 239 million kilogram (527 million pound) increase in herbicide use in the United States between 1996 and 2011, while Bt crops have reduced insecticide applications by 56 million kilograms (123 million pounds). Overall, pesticide use increased by an estimated 183 million kgs (404 million pounds), or about 7%.
Contrary to often-repeated claims that today’s genetically-engineered crops have, and are reducing pesticide use, the spread of glyphosate-resistant weeds in herbicide-resistant weed management systems has brought about substantial increases in the number and volume of herbicides applied. If new genetically engineered forms of corn and soybeans tolerant of 2,4-D are approved, the volume of 2,4-D sprayed could drive herbicide usage upward by another approximate 50%. The magnitude of increases in herbicide use on herbicide-resistant hectares has dwarfed the reduction in insecticide use on Bt crops over the past 16 years, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
I'm not very much concerned that GM food in itself is dangerous to consume. I'm far less certain that growing gene manipulated crops is as safe as it's made to be. What happens if two gene modified plants inter-breed? We've had enough accidents with "naturally" [1] selected plants and ruined a couple of ecosystems. We don't have that many ecosystems left.
Add to that the whole economical dimension: Gene modified plants prevent farmers from creating their own seeds for limited gain. The ones profiting big time are monsanto and friends.
[1] as in "not gene modified"
(I'm happy with genetic modifications in general, but I think that it's prudent to be cautious because of potential upsets to the ecosystem.)
Imagine growing what amounts to an overgrown garden, some dude takes a sample, detects "contamination" containing their "intellectual property" and next thing you know, you're bankrupt and homeless. I could probably survive that, but for my elderly uncle that would have been a death sentence. Killing someone to make a relatively small amount of money seems inhumane, but its the American way.
GM = horrifically evil in practice. In theory I agree 100% there is nothing wrong with it as a technology. However as a business its a disaster. I'm not willing to kill my uncle so some monsanto exec can get 61 Ferraris with his bonus instead of 60 this year.
I feel terrible for the poor farmer who owns the field the contamination was detected on. Its like, euthanasia time for legal reasons for that poor guy, his life is basically over now.
If there was an OSS licence on all GM food I might consider it, non-horrible.
1) Monsanto ran test plots. The presumed protocol was for them to remain isolated and to be destroyed upon completion of the testing, so that the test lines did not enter the ecosystem. This has not occurred. Either they lied, or they were negligent.
2) Monsanto scientists trotted out estimates of the usable lifespan of Roundup. Many years prior to this, we have pervasive problems of Roundup resistant "superweeds" that can be worse than the original weed problems Roundup was supposed to solve. The scientists lied, or were incompetent. (I'm sorry, but when you use your scientific... predictions to justify widespread ecological modification, mistakes immediately rise to the level of incompetence. Also, there have been reports that, internally, Monsanto scientists were worried about and predicting these results. However -- contrary to the spirit of science -- this information was not shared publicly. Granted, it may not have consisted entirely of measured results. But it consisted of deep concerns for the impact and repercussions of the "experiment" -- the unfettered application of previous work and results -- being conducted in the public sphere.)
3) Monsanto seems intent upon cornering the marketplaces of seedstock for ever more species of crop plant. Such activity has the distinct air, in my opinion at least, of monopolization.
4) Monsanto has U.S. Federal legislation passed that exempts it from liability and from State law.
I don't need to get at far as looking at the direct fallout of the genetic modifications upon downstream consumption, before I start to become quite opposed to Monsanto.
Now, as for the modifications themselves. I'm still uncertain about the consumption of the modified genes, themselves. But there has been increasing evidence that the Roundup herbicide -- the other half of this commercial cocktail -- is not as benign to human health as originally argued. For some years, I've been reading that components of Roundup are more active with respect to human health and more enduring in the environment than originally expected.
And most recently, interesting discussion has evolved about the effect of Roundup upon microflora in the human gut.
Of course, one might easily imagine or expect corresponding effects upon other animal species.
Monsanto, unlike open science, seems to be acting to keep all this quiet, to the extent they can. What we have, in significant part, as the resulting action of this company, is not scientific exploration but rather commercial exploitation that appears to stand significantly in the way of the former.
GMO as a technology is not the problem. The problem is that it is PROPRIETARY life. That is insane. And like proprietary software, it isn't inherently malicious, but it MIGHT be!
We need to stop all GMO patenting. That's the first step.