StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Let's expand our horizons.

Due to some of my friends bitching about Girl Scout Cookies poisoning them due to GM ingredients, ( ) I want the SDN Rundown on this topic.

What say ye?

Ideally, GM food is supposed to grow bigger, tastier, more resistant to disease, etc...

So on the surface, I have no problem provided it's safe to eat.

The issue is that, how can we trust it's safe to eat? I'd need assurances that it won't hurt me before I voluntarily eat it. With that said, given the shit I stuff into my mouth on a regular basis, if I find out I've been eating GM food all along...I won't freak out about it.

How do you know regular food isn't going to hurt you?

Potatoes are edible - unless they're green, because any green part of a tomato plants contains a toxin. One bite won't kill you, but too much green potato will sure make you miserable. Peanuts contain aflatoxin naturally. Rye contaminated with ergot is a Bad Thing. Are you sure those mushrooms are edible and not some deadly look-a-like?

Could someone conceivably manufacture a GM food plant containing a toxin that will make you sick? Yes, it's possible... but where's the motivation? 99.999999999999999999999999% of the people (at least) involved in this sort of thing want to make GM food BETTER, not make it something that will sicken customers. Could there possibly be unforeseen consequences? Yes, it's possible... which is why GM food undergoes testing prior to general release.

We've actually been modifying foods for millennia, and those thousands of years of breeding did, really, affect the genetics of the plants we eat. We've done cross-species grafts, hybridizing, all sorts of things to bring the characteristics of one plant to another. OK, now we can do that with individual genes. Sure, it's different, but it's also the same thing.

Where I get most concerned is the adding of pesticides to plant genetics, because those are potential human toxins. On the other hand, we eat stuff naturally full of such pesticides, like caffeine and theobromine.

I believe GM food should be labeled (there are concerns for allergic people in some instances, as well as just a general principal that you should know what you're eating) and there should be oversight and testing for new products, but I think properly managed it has far more potential for good than harm.

GM crops are safer as we know exactly what genes we are adding as opposed to the traditional approach of cross germinating which we can't be sure that genes we don't want won't be transferred.

Yeah people opposed to GMOs are fucking ignorant or stupid. If you can develop crops more resistant to insects, fungus, and other shit then that's less chemicals that you need to spray on them. Frankly the anti-GMO crowd are modern day anti-vaccination fuckwits. And it's not like humanity has just recently started genetically modifying our crops. We've been doing it since the birth of agriculture. Frankly if the anti-GMO crowd got half as worked up about the fact that pumping factory farm animals with antibiotics thus creating more and more dangerous strains of antibiotic resistant bacteria as they do about labeling food as GMO free or not they'd be doing the world a gigantic fucking favor.

The refined sugar in those cookies is going to give your friend an elevated risk of cancer. Do they care about that? Why are they eating cookies of all the terrible things you could eat if they care? You might want to drive that point home.

Does your friend know we now eat pigs with three extra vertebrate,and managed to make that happen just through selective breeding? Or that corn itself is an incredibly engineered plant that is completely unlike any natural plant? That was done by native peoples in the Americas thousands of years ago. We have no idea how.

The GMO stuff? No different then normal corn ect.. according to all research and practical observation as far as human health goes, and they've been on the market for about two decades now. Other issues do exist with GMO crops, concerning pesticide resistance and over fertilization, but these are separate from the mere fact of gene splicing and mainly about sustainability.

I think most of the time people have a knee-jerk reaction to stuff they don't fully comprehend (GM, contrails, videogames, female anatomy...).

Something I like to do is to present people with the text part of the following image, and ask their opinion on this product that is available in any supermarket:

Linking because I can't manage to resize the image...
Spoiler And then see them backpedal when I reveal what it really was.

Like the old "news story" on the dangers of Dihydrogen Monoxide, it is interesting to see how people just react without thinking why they are reacting.

Link to the source of the pic, with more pics.


As for my opinion on GMs, pretty much what Broomstick said. Knowledge and its application is good, but we always need to be vigilant in case of dickery.

Broomstick wrote:Could someone conceivably manufacture a GM food plant containing a toxin that will make you sick? Yes, it's possible... but where's the motivation? 99.999999999999999999999999% of the people (at least) involved in this sort of thing want to make GM food BETTER, not make it something that will sicken customers. Could there possibly be unforeseen consequences? Yes, it's possible... which is why GM food undergoes testing prior to general release.

You're approaching it the wrong way round. Yes, the vast majority want to make food better, but the thing is, the R&D money spent on a gene splice is spent whether it works or not. In order to stay solvent, companies doing GM research simply must release a certain percentage of them for sale. If a company is on the edge, and needs one more viable product to stay in business, any number of people involved have a huge motivation to downplay harmful effects, exaggerate benefits, etc.

Perfectly safe. I'm not a fan of the business practices of some of the huge companies like Monsanto, but GMO food itself is fine. All of our crops are genetically modified through artificial selection, we're just doing it a bit faster and more directly nowadays.

The only non-BS concern I'm aware of is of a GM strain of a wild plant out-competing its unmodified relatives and clobbering biodiversity, with unfortunate consequences in the event of a particularly nasty crop disease. How much hard information there is about the severity of that risk I'm not sure.

I think most people's problem with it is more visceral than anything. "Ooh, someone's had their fingers in these tomatoes, shouldn't eat them". This is probably why farmer's markets and such are starting to become a little more popular...

My own problem is mainly one of preserving 'heirloom' cultivars and breeds, but GMO's aren't really going to change that much and farming these crops/animals is always going to be small-scale and therefore fairly unlikely to be threatened by industrial agriculture. So for me the problem is moot.

I just want to know whether fruit/vegetable/meat I'm buying is GM and what it's been modified for. Something like "modified to be resistant to spoiling" or "modified to be resistant to agricultural insect pests while growing" on the label would be nice, and probably help people understand that there's not much to worry about.

Idiots will link the business practices of say Monsanto with GM foods itself, rather than acknowledging them as a separate issue. That is like saying using an ipad is hazardous to your health because Apple has some dodgy business practices (tax manipulation, dealing with Foxconn etc).

Skimmer gave some good examples of foods modified by selective breeding. I would add a few more.

1. The banana.

Remember when the Growing Pains actor Kirk what's his name and Ray Comfort confronted atheist with our apparent nightmare, the BANANA. Apparently it was designed so well that only GAWD could have done it. Unfortunately for them, they failed to realise the the banana's we eat have been selectively bred.

here is what a wild banana looks like.

2. Carrots

Would you eat a purple carrot? Has it been genetically modified? While the purple carrots were the original. It wasn't until the 16th century that Dutch farmers bred the orange carrots. We don't know whether it was because they liked the taste better (different colour carrots have differing nutrients and hence taste) or because orange was their national colour. But there you go.



I would be more concern about food security than food safety with GMOs. This actually suggests to me that countries if able, should develop their own GMOs or at least have more competition. What anti GMO idiots don't realise is, that they have help create the monster they are fighting, ie Monsanto. Their protests and delaying tactics actually make it possible for only corporations with big bucks like Monsanto to get their products on the market. If a small company has a product but can't it to market because of delays it would go bankrupt. Monsanto and big companies can weather the storm. In effect this decreases competition in the GMO sector and leads to oligopolies and monopolies. But then anti GMOs like Greenpeace have caused the death of 8 million kids from vitamin A deficiency related diseases by constantly delaying the testing and release of Golden Rice, and they can't see the link, so I don't expect too much reasoning ability from these people.

I personally think the wild banana looks tastier, actually. But then I hate the sort you can buy in stores round here with a passion anyway, so what do I know?

The real problems with GM foods is that consumers have no selection power on them. To this day, the main bulk of GM foods are those which are pesticide resistant, insect resistant or those which spoil slower.

For corn, soy and cotton, the consumer has no means of actually selecting for drought resistant or salt tolerant crops, because Monsanto has prevented us from being able to label foods as GM, due to the public backlash against GMO in the 90s. So, your corn is pooled together with non GMO corn and then sold to other manufacturers at the corn silo.


Its 'not' bad, but it does mean that the power of GM foods as it is now will be geared towards agribusinesses, because they are the ones who select which GM crops to grow. Not us consumers.


It doesn't help that GM foods which promise to be more beneficial to our nutritional needs such as golden rice are routinely sabotaged and targeted by 'environmental groups'. Fuck that! We created an environment where GMO plants which can actually benefit us, the consumer are selected against while big business gets permission to profit from GM foods that allow farmers to save money on herbicide but use so much that it actually creates more herbicide runoff....

Zaune wrote:The only non-BS concern I'm aware of is of a GM strain of a wild plant out-competing its unmodified relatives and clobbering biodiversity, with unfortunate consequences in the event of a particularly nasty crop disease.

There is also concern about using GM to increase protein. There were some experiments in incorporating protein-producing genes into some plants that triggered allergies in testing in susceptible individuals, at which point the project was discontinued (I am trying to recall more details so I can link to information but it was quite some time ago, and from printed text rather than on-line). Which, to my mind, is a case of proper safety testing.

Elheru Aran wrote:My own problem is mainly one of preserving 'heirloom' cultivars and breeds, but GMO's aren't really going to change that much and farming these crops/animals is always going to be small-scale and therefore fairly unlikely to be threatened by industrial agriculture. So for me the problem is moot.

There are also quite a few hobbyists growing heirloom vegetables in their backyards as well as small-scale commercial operations. I do it on a (very) small scale, and for several years have been exchanging seeds with others. I'd like to see some official encouragement of that sort of thing.

One of the things you quickly learn about growing heirlooms is that many of them are not as hardy/disease/pest resistant as modern heirlooms. When conditions are perfect they do very, very well but they frequently have more narrow tolerances. It gives one a greater appreciation for the hybrids.

mr friendly guy wrote:Would you eat a purple carrot?

Heck yes, I grow them myself in the backyard. Also white and yellow as well as orange.

We don't know whether it was because they liked the taste better (different colour carrots have differing nutrients and hence taste) or because orange was their national colour. But there you go.

I find the orange varieties tend to be sweetest. The white ones tend to be more woody, I usually put them in soups and stews where they will resist turning to mush no matter how long they're in the slow cooker.

But then anti GMOs like Greenpeace have caused the death of 8 million kids from vitamin A deficiency related diseases by constantly delaying the testing and release of Golden Rice, and they can't see the link, so I don't expect too much reasoning ability from these people.

^ That is a tragedy.

I have no problem with GM foods, and I would heartily encourage their continued development and use for the same reasons I support most from of biological research, cybernetics, genetic treatments for humans etc. I'm fed up with people saying "natural is best." If natural was best I'd be blind, my brother would be dead and my dad would be crippled.

Ultimately, given that Gm crops are intended to increase yields and reduce losses to diesease and pests, I'd rather take the small chance that they might have some minor side effects than the real problem of, you know, not having enough food.

Flagg hit it on the head when he said that anti-GM people are a new wave of anti-vaccine people. It's true, it's the same knee-jerk reaction "oh noes, you're tampering with nature!" You can substitute "nature" with "God's plan/work/creation" and suddenly they sound a lot less sensible. All we're doing is taking the work of thousands of years of selective breeding and compressing it to one or two generations. But, as with so many things, people hear a small amount of stuff about the subject, often with a biased spin on it and assume that's all there is.

The problem is, in developed nations the probability of not having enough food is low. So they can afford to say I will rather take natural foods. This is less of an option in developing nations, see the whole problems with Vitamin A deficiency. The problem is they project onto the developing nations, and manage to convince fools there to heed their scary story about GMOs. What's worse when its pointed out to anti GMO activists that the countries are poor and can't afford it, they just say lets take supplements or feed them other crops. Well if they could afford these other options there wouldn't be a problem in the first place.

Organisations like Greenpeace are like Marie Antoinette with the "then let them eat cake" line when she found out the poor people couldn't afford the cheaper bread. *

* Yes I am aware this quote is popularly attributed to her, but most probably not said by her.

Like I said, people hear a small part of the full story and latch onto it as if it were the whole truth.

And yes, I meant the "not having enough food" to be in a global sense, not a national or local one.

The Vortex Empire wrote:Perfectly safe. I'm not a fan of the business practices of some of the huge companies like Monsanto, but GMO food itself is fine. All of our crops are genetically modified through artificial selection, we're just doing it a bit faster and more directly nowadays.

This is what I get. Given the current situation of the US and it's relationship to corporations I can totally see someone being afraid,especially when they're just not sure what is going on.

Didn't they just get congressional protection from lawsuits? That sounds shady as all shit.

My worries about GM food are mostly the possibility of overusing uniform genes in a major crop, so that when some new parasite or disease comes around that suddenly ravages it, we don't have any genetic variation in our crops to survive and adapt to it.

Hopefully if we have redundant seed banks, we could reseed using an older version of the crop that isn't vulnerable, or engineer up a new version that isn't vulnerable.
I just don't want ALL of the non-GM crops to be wiped out. Genetic variation that comes about the natural way is healthy. Though with pollen carrying plant genes far and wide, it's hard to keep popular GM strains from becoming dominant.

Scrib wrote:

The Vortex Empire wrote:Perfectly safe. I'm not a fan of the business practices of some of the huge companies like Monsanto

This is what I get. Given the current situation of the US and it's relationship to corporations I can totally see someone being afraid,especially when they're just not sure what is going on.

Didn't they just get congressional protection from lawsuits? That sounds shady as all shit.

Essentially, and yes, yes it is.

Monsanto is becoming quite literally a real-life version of Weyland-Yutani as far as being ruthless goes. They're extremely nasty people on a business front. It's one of the big reasons why they're leaders in the GMO front-- nobody else wants to fight them.

Little example-- they design GMO crops that are resistant to certain bugs, okay? So, that's cool, makes farmers interested in them because then they don't have to use pesticides. They make it so they're resistant to certain weed killers, which is handy for the farmers... but not any others... and of course they manufacture the weed killers that the crops are resistant to. So farmers buy up the crops, which basically self-destruct in a few years because the genes are modified so aggressively that they break down sharply after a few generations (inbreeding effect). Not that it matters, because legally these farmers aren't permitted to hybridize crops with Monsanto genes, or save it for seed. They have to buy a new crop each year. And Monsanto has gotten to the point where it's one of the only suppliers of agricultural seed in the US...

KlavoHunter wrote: Though with pollen carrying plant genes far and wide, it's hard to keep popular GM strains from becoming dominant.

Guess what. If a neighboring farm with Monsanto seed ends up sending some pollen across your fence and it creates a hybrid with your seed, Monsanto can sue your pants off and win. They own the genes they splice up. It doesn't matter that this is something you can't help happening-- Monsanto will screw you for daring to allow your corn to fornicate.

Monsanto's terms of business require farmers to buy fresh seed every year. Its new Violator Exclusion Policy denies farmers who break the terms of its licences access to all its technology for ever. This summer it achieved its latest success in enforcing its stern line when it won a case against some Canadian farmers who had held on to seed.

From here: http://www.economist.com/node/14904184

I believe that's an accurate summation, but I could be wrong. If someone knows better, kindly point it out. I do know that they had a big part in preventing mandatory labeling of foods as GMO, which is a big question mark right there. Remove Monsanto, and I'd be a LOT happier about GMO in general. With them? I'd rather look at alternative options.

Oh, and to leave you with a bit of history? They came up with and manufactured Agent Orange for the US government. Lovely folks.

We now return you to your scheduled thread...

Other than Monsanto, I support all public projects that increase seed diversity and allow efficient GMO and breeding programs to run together in public universities to produce new plants capable of solving our ever-growing food production problems. As for Monsanto... I wish these guys didn't exist.

I have no problem with GM in general but it needs to be monitored very closely for the reasons mentioned above.

There are modifications that would be good for the company selling the food but bad for the person buying it. If you can manipulate it to spoil faster for example. In the supermarket it looks perfectly fine, so you buy it and then two days later it is spoilt so you have to throw it away and buy more.
Or you manipulate it in a way that makes it grow bigger but has the side effect of containing less vitamines / more afflatoxins and things like that.

So i believe GM has an incredible amount of potential to do good which can be turned into an incredible amount of bad by greed and therefore has to be regulated extremely well.

KlavoHunter wrote:My worries about GM food are mostly the possibility of overusing uniform genes in a major crop, so that when some new parasite or disease comes around that suddenly ravages it, we don't have any genetic variation in our crops to survive and adapt to it.

^ We've managed to achieve that problem just with ordinary, old-fashioned selective breeding. Look into the problems with bananas over the years. Cultivars like the Gros Michel can no longer be produced commercially, and the the Dwarf Cavendish and Grand Nain are threatened by yet another pest. Rinse and repeat on a slightly smaller scale for other some other plant cultivars that are essentially mass-produced clones due to inbreeding and clonal propagation.

We've also had some issues with animals, particularly species that are more often propagated by AI than natural fucking these days.

Broomstick wrote: ^ We've managed to achieve that problem just with ordinary, old-fashioned selective breeding. Look into the problems with bananas over the years. Cultivars like the Gros Michel can no longer be produced commercially, and the the Dwarf Cavendish and Grand Nain are threatened by yet another pest. Rinse and repeat on a slightly smaller scale for other some other plant cultivars that are essentially mass-produced clones due to inbreeding and clonal propagation.

We've also had some issues with animals, particularly species that are more often propagated by AI than natural fucking these days.

Yes, and if not monitored efficiently GM makes it even easier to end up in such dilemmas.