What's worse, GMO foods or starving?

[bascule]

http://www.bangkokpost.net/News/28Aug2007_news02.php

 

Greenpeace protesters in Bangkok dumped tonnes of papayas on the doorstep of the Agriculture and Cooperatives Ministry.

 

The result? The surrounding crowd snatched them up.

 

Don't get me wrong: I understand there are potential risks involved with GMO crops. I'd support them being labeled as genetically modified. I understand there are exploitative corporations trying to enforce intellectual property laws on them.

 

But... but... people are starving. Doesn't that take precedence?

[iNow]

Yeah... It's pretty sad that a fear of science is preventing the actualization of survival.

[insane_alien]

i'm all in favour of them as well. i'm pretty sure that if there was anything wrong with them then we would have had deaths by now. and chemically they look exactly the same.except maybe a bit richer in one compound and less rich in another.

[YT2095]

it`s only a faster more specific form of what Nature does Anyway for the most part, My wheat and Chilis are Genetically Modded, I selectively cross breed them all the time or selectively choose them for Next year.

 

the best performers get to go another year, the less get eaten

[Fuzzwood]

I really dont see the problem with this. Dont get me wrong, sometimes Greenpeace does good things (sometimes they are just hypocritical; steaming with a diesel powered boat around oil rigs to make them stop drilling ), but other times i think they are a bunch of whiners.

[Phi for All]

I think there is a huge potential for both solving the world's hunger problems *and* permanently harming our biosphere. The fact that foods are being designed like drugs on a massive scale really scares me.

 

I think the organizers at Greenpeace didn't think this one through. There were probably stories in the Bangkok news about all the fruit from their first protest sitting there rotting. The reaction from the second protest seems pretty predictable.

[YT2095]

I dunno, I don`t fear the scale or the chem or biology of it, I fear the Greed/money aspect of it and the bad things that can bring about, like cutting corners or Convenient "Oversight(s)".

 

it`s mans Greed that I don`t trust.

[Phi for All]

I dunno, I don`t fear the scale or the chem or biology of it, I fear the Greed/money aspect of it and the bad things that can bring about, like cutting corners or Convenient "Oversight(s)".

 

it`s mans Greed that I don`t trust.

I agree that greed is the driver, but what about effects that are already being seen? I remember reading about declining birth rates in ladybugs that ate aphids that had eaten GMO crops. That kind of thing can be potentially devastating.

[YT2095]

Hmmm... I didn`t know about that, but if it`s True and is a result of GMO crops (and not some other factor) than yes, that is indeed cause for concern.

[ecoli]

Hmmm... I didn`t know about that, but if it`s True and is a result of GMO crops (and not some other factor) than yes, that is indeed cause for concern.

 

The real problem is that, as humans, we want to see GMO's as the silver bullet that will end hunger in third world nations.

 

Therefore, we will tend to overlook things like inadvertent environmental affects and root social causes of these problems. It happened in the chemical "revolution" of the 50's and it could happen again.

[Phi for All]

Hmmm... I didn`t know about that, but if it`s True and is a result of GMO crops (and not some other factor) than yes, that is indeed cause for concern.

Here is the article I read about the ladybugs. It may be a bit biased but they have some good resources backing them up.

[YT2095]

fine, but rather than jump ahead of ourselves here and formulate strong opinions one way or the other (as these protesters seem to have done) it would be Prudent to look at All the evidence 1`st before making these choices.

 

I myself do Artificial "natural selection" and also breeding/hybridizing, I see no problem with that.

[Phi for All]

I myself do Artificial "natural selection" and also breeding/hybridizing, I see no problem with that.

Of course not, people have been doing that for ages. But do you take genes from completely different organisms (like fish) and modify your crops that way? Your garden is bigger than most but it's not on a scale that's likely to jeopardize your immediate environment. You are also not breeding for longer shelf life or enhanced taste at the expense of nutrition (iceberg lettuce is the #1 lettuce crop in the US and has the lowest nutrition value as well; it is hardy and survives mass shipping better than other varieties).

 

You also don't modify your crops to be toxin-resistant, then claim that they will need less pesticides to keep them healthy. Monsanto breeds crops that are resistant to their own pesticide Roundup, but then locked farmers into contracts requiring them to continue to use Roundup (even though their patent was about to expire). Since the crops are toxin resistant, farmers have to use more Roundup than with natural crops, helping Monsanto sell GMO crops AND more Roundup than ever before.

[Sisyphus]

So basically the only real problems from GM crops is not the process itself, but unscrupulous agribusinesses genetically modifying varieties to counterproductive (but profitable) ends. What is needed is more public knowledge, so educated consumers can distinguish the good from the bad. Hysterical technophobes help nothing.

[Phi for All]

So basically the only real problems from GM crops is not the process itself, but unscrupulous agribusinesses genetically modifying varieties to counterproductive (but profitable) ends. What is needed is more public knowledge, so educated consumers can distinguish the good from the bad. Hysterical technophobes help nothing.

I wouldn't say it's the only real problem at all. Because GMO producers were able to force the FDA in the US to recognize GMO crops as "just like regular crops", a whole host of regulatory testing was averted. That's how they were able to get away with no labeling in the first place. Who knows what may "crop" up in the next decade or so now that FDA testing has been thwarted. The process is far from sound.

 

The money making aspect is driven by patents which require GMO foods to practically be cloned, causing a homogeneity that threatens the biodiversity in our food supply. Allergies have been linked to the lack of diversity that happens when mass production limits variety, and many GMO foods (again unlabeled) contain genes from nuts to which many people are deathly allergic. It is the process itself which insures that problems will continue.

 

Already there are "superweeds" which have gained resistance to natural predators and chemical herbicides through cross-pollination with GMO crops. Introduction into natural settings is inevitable and unavoidable. And GMO producers are making sure farmers destroy their non-GMO seed stocks so the changes are irrevocable. This is a combination of greed and bad process but I just wanted to show that this is not mere technophobia at work.

[SkepticLance]

Of all topics we could discuss, this is the one with the most bulldust attached.

 

For example : the statement that 'superweeds' arise from cross pollination. Over the past 12 odd years, in excess of 250 new weeds resistant to the herbicide glyphosate have come into existence as a result of natural selection. At the same time, less than six have come into existence from cross pollination with GM glyphosate resistant crops. However, those six make a great horror story to foist off onto an unsuspecting population!

 

In any case, clearing up those 'superweeds' is easy, and is done repeatedly. Spray them with a different herbicide and they are gone.

 

In the 12 odd years that GM foods have existed, it is estimated that over 2 billion people have eaten them, and millions eat them every day. For example, GM insect resistant corn in the form of corn flour is eaten daily by millions of people of Mexican descent. It is basically a staple in their diet.

 

In spite of this, there has never been a single case where a health detriment, no matter how minor, has been ascribed to the fact that someone's food is genetically modified.

[Phi for All]

In spite of this, there has never been a single case where a health detriment, no matter how minor, has been ascribed to the fact that someone's food is genetically modified.

... if you don't count the more than 30 deaths associated with GMO l-tryptophan supplements.

[foodchain]

Well, I guess the future better welcome GMO just about everything, I still don’t think its going to fix any real lasting underlying issues that for whatever reasons people simply wont realize. Sure, break laws that support a species of life from going extinct so some people can work, and then when you have three times that amount of people, maybe they can just eat each other, who knows.

[iNow]

Phi for All - I am not certain where you draw the line between GM plants and plants artificially selected via other mechanisms. The vast majority of statements you've made would apply equally to splicing, cross pollination, and all manner of other techniques which we've performed for centuries.

 

 

Seriously, how WOULD a cow survive unless we raised them? That's not the type of animal which survives on it's own in the wilderness.

[SkepticLance]

To Phi for All

 

The levo-tryptophan story is a perfect example of the total crap that is spread by the anti-GM movement. Here is a government health description of what really happened.

 

http://www.cfs.gov.hk/english/programme/programme_gmf/programme_gmf_gi_info3.html

 

Myths and Facts

 

 

 

Did L-tryptophan from GM source cause severe illnesses, the Eosinophilia Myalgia Syndrome (EMS), and even deaths? In 1989, there had been an outbreak of the disease Eosinophilia Myalgia Syndrome (EMS) affecting over 1500 people with at least 37 deaths in the USA. EMS is characterized by flu-like symptoms, intense muscle pain and skin inflammation and even memory disturbances. The cause of this outbreak was linked to certain batches of a dietary supplement, L-tryptophan (an essential amino acid), manufactured in Japan. Some people believed that the use of GM bacterium for the production of L-tryptophan was the main cause.

 

It has been reported that the manufacturer had changed the production procedures by reducing amount of activated carbon used in a purification step. The development of EMS was, in fact, found to be linked with the presence of contaminants, which was probably introduced by the poor purification step, rather than the GM bacterium itself.

 

Levo-tryptophan is one of those bullshit food supplements that do absolutely nothing to assist health, but which have made millions of dollars for those companies prepared to sell garbage. The manufacture involves the use of bacteria in fermenters to make the stuff. The process also produces a number of toxins. In the case above, the manufacturers were using a GM bacteria which was OK, but then changed the toxin removal process in order to save money. Result, lots of toxins were not removed.

 

Government studies that followed squarely pointed the finger at the reduction in toxin removal and not at the use of GM bacteria. However, the anti-GM movement refuse to believe this, since it does not fit in with their own little dogmatic beliefs.

 

Personally, I would like to see all bullshit food supplements removed from the market, along with all other scams.

[foodchain]

To Phi for All

 

The levo-tryptophan story is a perfect example of the total crap that is spread by the anti-GM movement. Here is a government health description of what really happened.

 

http://www.cfs.gov.hk/english/programme/programme_gmf/programme_gmf_gi_info3.html

 

Myths and Facts

 

 

 

Did L-tryptophan from GM source cause severe illnesses, the Eosinophilia Myalgia Syndrome (EMS), and even deaths? In 1989, there had been an outbreak of the disease Eosinophilia Myalgia Syndrome (EMS) affecting over 1500 people with at least 37 deaths in the USA. EMS is characterized by flu-like symptoms, intense muscle pain and skin inflammation and even memory disturbances. The cause of this outbreak was linked to certain batches of a dietary supplement, L-tryptophan (an essential amino acid), manufactured in Japan. Some people believed that the use of GM bacterium for the production of L-tryptophan was the main cause.

 

It has been reported that the manufacturer had changed the production procedures by reducing amount of activated carbon used in a purification step. The development of EMS was, in fact, found to be linked with the presence of contaminants, which was probably introduced by the poor purification step, rather than the GM bacterium itself.

 

Levo-tryptophan is one of those bullshit food supplements that do absolutely nothing to assist health, but which have made millions of dollars for those companies prepared to sell garbage. The manufacture involves the use of bacteria in fermenters to make the stuff. The process also produces a number of toxins. In the case above, the manufacturers were using a GM bacteria which was OK, but then changed the toxin removal process in order to save money. Result, lots of toxins were not removed.

 

Government studies that followed squarely pointed the finger at the reduction in toxin removal and not at the use of GM bacteria. However, the anti-GM movement refuse to believe this, since it does not fit in with their own little dogmatic beliefs.

 

Personally, I would like to see all bullshit food supplements removed from the market, along with all other scams.

 

Personally I don’t think the anti GMO crowd is purely dogmatic beliefs. Dealing with environmental issues for at least right now and historically escapes being black and white science, or more or less it always has. On one tip in a more scientific endeavor is how do you know the outcome of a GMO over the course of say a million years? Can anyone in science actually state something factual about that? Is evolution perfectly understood in every possible facet to some 100% level? The list could go on. I mean what about plasmid transfer among GMO bacteria and non or native versions for instance?

 

A lot of where GMO tries to find work or applications of such is in regards to food. There is a maximum efficiency I would say or roof to what earth as a total system can support in regards to life. I would also say we don’t know what this is, and from current living standards we might have already passed such if not already done much worse. So to couple with growing extinction rates now of modern life or how should I say more native or natural forms of life we supplement into the ecosystem GMOs. Now the total effect of human behavior on an environment in itself is a massively complicated endeavor, with the most part it being nothing but an uphill struggle for any time for conservation efforts. Its also looked on for the most part as pathetic by some, or being a liberal green tree hugger. Most people do not view evolution into the equation, or the fact that if tomorrow all that was left was humans on the earth that our survival would probably be reduced to death in short order, that’s also backed by science if you want to check.

 

So in the meantime you have to be able to take environmental science, and really social science and meld the two together, in the hopes really for sustainability. Now most people probably don’t care to keep organisms or species alive for the study or sustainment of life, or even the understanding of humans from such a point, or for the most part probably do not understand in any fine detail that environmental change chiefly is not a great friend of life historically, see mass extinction.

 

What I am trying to get at here is that science cannot attest to the true effects over time of the introduction of GMO, nor do I think past some BS argument can they really control the reality of such. I also doubt for science to be able to control the social aspect of it, or else I would think science might have found a way to end war by now. I do not look at it from a playing god perspective, I look at it from what do we really know and what are we really doing and is ignorance present in that somewhere, and the answer to that is currently yes.

 

Lastly, what is GMO going to do for any real issues? Is some super GMO going to be created that will feed an infinite number of people or an infinite period of time in a finite reality? Its a band aid or really diversion from issues that the global community needs to come to grips on, and that is the reality of things basically in my opinion. I also don’t find my approximation to much skewed from what’s going on really.

[SkepticLance]

foodchain said :

 

Personally I don’t think the anti GMO crowd is purely dogmatic beliefs.

 

A little history here. The first few years of GM foods and crops saw remarkably little opposition, though Greenpeace and others were making a few murmers. The situation changed with an experiment by a chap called Professor Pusztai. He tested some raw GM potatoes on rats and showed serious health problems, primarily starvation. Sadly, he was carrying out what appeared to be a highly incompetent experiment. For example, he did not have a proper control, and it was later shown that feeding ordinary (non GM) raw potatoes to rats had the same effect. However, in the six months or so it took to demonstrate this, Greenpeace and a whole swathe of others took up the anti-GM mantle.

 

In due course, the anti-GM lobby groups were shown to have no scientific backing, as Pusztai's experiment was shown to be so much garbage (strangely, the anti-GM lobby still quotes these experiments, as though the results had not bee shown to be rubbish). Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and the rest have been searching ever since for a scientific reason to oppose GM.

 

This is a clear case of lobby groups taking up a cause in the light of scientific evidence, and then refusing to let go when the evidence evaporates. The levo-tryptophan nonsense is a further example of the grasp for scientific validity to support their stance, and their refusal to let go when the evidence disappears.

 

Another good example is monarch butterflies. An experiment showed that the pollen of corn, genetically modified for insect resistance, was toxic to monarch larvae in large doses. This was taken by the anti-GM lobby as 'proof' that GM is environmentally harmful, and they still quote this to the present day. The problem is that monarch larvae do not encounter enough GM pollen to harm them. And researchers then discovered that GM corn fields actually supported far more monarchs than non GM. This is logical bearing in mind that non GM corn fields are routinely sprayed with insecticide.

 

There are lots more examples like this. I would suspect that eventually, the anti-GM lobby will get their wish, and find a modified crop that is genuinely harmful. That crop will, of course, be immediately removed from cultivation. However, it will instigate another round of hysteria.

[bombus]

GMOs have nothing to do with feeding the world. They are to do solely with profit for the companies that develop them.

 

There is already plenty of food in the world for everyone. The problem is one of distribution NOT production.

 

Also, some GM crops are designed so that they can withstand huge doses of pesticide, and are closely linked to the pesticides industry. Others have the 'doomsday gene' so the second generation is infertile thus tying growers to the companies. The idea of pesticides being produced by the GMOs themselves is nonsense as pests soon develop resistance. (Another thread but did you know that more crops are lost to pests now than before the introduction of pesticides!)

 

GMOs are a big con.

[YT2095]

You are also not breeding for longer shelf life or enhanced taste at the expense of nutrition

You also don't modify your crops to be toxin-resistant

 

well no, not Exactly, But....

 

 

this is one of mine, get the picture

[SkepticLance]

bombus said

 

GMOs have nothing to do with feeding the world. They are to do solely with profit for the companies that develop them.

 

This statement is one of those horrible generalisations frequently made by the pseudoreligious. True, many GM crops and foods are very much to do with profit. However, there are many others also. For example : the vitamin A enhanced rice, called golden rice, was developed by a pair of Swiss researchers who were working to develop a better food for the third world, based on the fact that 2 million rice eaters die every year from diseases related to vitamin A deficiency. It was their plan to release it free of charge to those who needed it. Sadly, this has not happened, due to the protest action of the anti-GM organisations. As a result, those 2 million deaths continue each year unabated.

 

bombus also said :

 

Others have the 'doomsday gene' so the second generation is infertile thus tying growers to the companies.

 

This gene, later labelled as the 'terminator' by the anti-GM movement, was developed by the US Dept. of Agriculture (not industry) in order to meet the anti-GM demand for a means to prevent cross pollination. It is quite ironic that a trait developed to meet their demands was immediately attacked by them as a tool of capitalism to tie farmers to one supplier. As a result of the hysterical response of the anti-GM organisations, this gene is not used commercially.

 

The irony is that a very effective tool for stopping cross pollination has been prevented from use by those who claim to be most concerned about that cross pollination. However, the anti-GM organisations have a long history of outright stupidity.