Genetically Modified food

it's my understanding that gmos are pretty fucked up for about 4 million reasons. americans don't care that much, europeans care more. the things monsanto is doing with patents on seeds that inherently spread and grow on their own volition (or that of the wind), plants that die after the first growing cycle, and the obvious lobbying/bribing at all levels of government is fucking scary.

my question for you watmm: is this seen as a big issue in your local/national politics?

yeah, it's a huge issue. Monsanto's policies are insanity.

With that said, I'm not terribly opposed to genetically modifying crops in general, but more studies on long-term effects really ought to be done before it should (imo) be used as widely as it currently is. The most upsetting part about GM crops is the bizarre politics surrounding the technology, and here in the states, I find it to be pretty fucking bizarre that companies do not have to alert you in any way whatsoever that you are buying genetically modified foods...

It's a very warped issue, it really is hard to get to the bottom of it. A lot of the good things you hear about genetic modification are technically true with one small but crucial fact missing, and that is that virtually no matter what happens they involve a movement of organisms into being proprietary. Terminator genes are a part of this but it wouldn’t make sense not to put them in, the industry couldn’t make money off a seed that is infinitely reproducible. I think golden rice probably does potentially help a nutrition problem and that was released in a non profit way (I think) but there is clearly in my eyes an ulterior motive of agreement with the technology. And I’m not against the technology as such, in fact I'm confident it is safe, but ultimately no agrochemical companies are targeting the small fry farmers - this is always going to be about advancing already wealthy and enormous corporate farms, which is just a bit of a grim future for vegetables and for anyone who is a farmer who isn’t already rich.

Thing is, humans have been 'genetically modifying' crops through selective breeding for centuries, the most famous example is the Dutch turning the original purple carrots to an orange colour in celebration of their king. Now we can be more precise with specific genetics we can speed up the process which in years before to lots of time and dedication. Genetic modification is the only way we can support the ever growing human population as we can produce larger crops. There is also the massive issue that global warming has had over the last few years, in the UK and Australia there have been incredibly dry springs and torrential rain in summer, this is very bad for most of the grain crops and that is why grain and the price of food has risen so highly. We could in the future see crops that can survive these drier periods and can protect themselves from rot damage in the wetter times.

People fear science, they think that we are 'messing around with nature' however there is no such thing, there is a lot of crazy un-researched claims that are there to scare the public. There has in recent years been a dramatic increase in coeliac disease (this is the allergic reaction to gluten) but this is because we have SELECTIVELY BRED grains to produce more gluten as it is more nutritional and gives a higher yield. The problem here is that our digestive system has not yet evolved to deal with this amount of gluten.

Organic food is for twats who live in Fulham and wear loafers.

Genetic modification is IDM

Agreed, I'm not opposed to GMO but the anti-competitive patents/intellectual property does worry me.

My only real issue is Monsanto and similar companies don't seem to want any other seeds out there. They are actively trying to fuck small farmers over. Watched a documentary once about Canadian farmers, who have been using family seeds for generations, getting a letter in the mail letting them know they are about to be sued. "We found Monsanto plants in your field". Turns out the seeds got there by either wind or falling off trucks driving by the farm. These farmers have been wiped out by Monsanto just by chance happenings. Not to mention the farmers where totally unaware Monsanto was searching around in there field in the first place.

Eat GM foods if you want but leave people like me with an option. Thanks to cross-pollination, I do not have the option of having untouched soy. That annoys me.

I got offered some illegal gentically modified aquarium fish in the pub the other day

the lad said they'd been injected with uranium to but i did a bit of research and they turned out to be glofish which danio's that have a jellyfish gene so they can do reasearch on thier organs (danios can regrow thier own hearts)

the European GM law wont allow them over here but these managed to slip through in an order for some pet shop and they pose no real threat to anything and just look pretty and glow in the dark

at the end of the day humans have been warping or modifing nature to suit its own needs for a while now and the GM fear thing is mainly to control monopoly on countries food industries rather than feeding the world like Michael (RIP chamone) would have wanted

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10 Reasons Why We Don’t Need GM Foods

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i just want to say that technologies such as grafting are simply not comparable with modern genetic modification. you can insert any such gene into anything, essentially. this can lead to a new species unintentionally filling some niche, killing off the local species and then if the new species dies off there are bigger consequences for the whole food chain.

i think gm foods can help with world hunger obviously, but there needs to be extremely tight regulatory control and long term research to make me confident in widespread gmo use. of course in america most of our crops are already gm. taking legality out of it, the consequences for rampant use of a destructive crop simply outweigh the benefits of feeding a few more people.

hell, in america they need the government to pay them to rotate their fucking crops. farming is fucked anyways. the problem with world hunger isn't so much growing food for everyone, it's transportation or education of locals who must adapt to modern earth.

it's hard to cover all the ramifications of a technology like gmo

not to mention the idiotic short sightedness of roundup ready crops.

duh they will build up a tolerance

  On 5/18/2011 at 5:35 PM, rixxx said:

Thing is, humans have been 'genetically modifying' crops through selective breeding for centuries, the most famous example is the Dutch turning the original purple carrots to an orange colour in celebration of their king. Now we can be more precise with specific genetics we can speed up the process which in years before to lots of time and dedication. Genetic modification is the only way we can support the ever growing human population as we can produce larger crops. There is also the massive issue that global warming has had over the last few years, in the UK and Australia there have been incredibly dry springs and torrential rain in summer, this is very bad for most of the grain crops and that is why grain and the price of food has risen so highly. We could in the future see crops that can survive these drier periods and can protect themselves from rot damage in the wetter times.

 

People fear science, they think that we are 'messing around with nature' however there is no such thing, there is a lot of crazy un-researched claims that are there to scare the public. There has in recent years been a dramatic increase in coeliac disease (this is the allergic reaction to gluten) but this is because we have SELECTIVELY BRED grains to produce more gluten as it is more nutritional and gives a higher yield. The problem here is that our digestive system has not yet evolved to deal with this amount of gluten.

my gf has to abstain from gluten, I wasn't aware of this info you mentioned.

  On 5/18/2011 at 7:01 PM, Velazquez said:

  On 5/18/2011 at 5:35 PM, rixxx said:

Thing is, humans have been 'genetically modifying' crops through selective breeding for centuries, the most famous example is the Dutch turning the original purple carrots to an orange colour in celebration of their king. Now we can be more precise with specific genetics we can speed up the process which in years before to lots of time and dedication. Genetic modification is the only way we can support the ever growing human population as we can produce larger crops. There is also the massive issue that global warming has had over the last few years, in the UK and Australia there have been incredibly dry springs and torrential rain in summer, this is very bad for most of the grain crops and that is why grain and the price of food has risen so highly. We could in the future see crops that can survive these drier periods and can protect themselves from rot damage in the wetter times.

 

People fear science, they think that we are 'messing around with nature' however there is no such thing, there is a lot of crazy un-researched claims that are there to scare the public. There has in recent years been a dramatic increase in coeliac disease (this is the allergic reaction to gluten) but this is because we have SELECTIVELY BRED grains to produce more gluten as it is more nutritional and gives a higher yield. The problem here is that our digestive system has not yet evolved to deal with this amount of gluten.

 

 

my gf has to abstain from gluten, I wasn't aware of this info you mentioned.

I'm not sure it's true, although I'm not saying it's out of the question

  On 5/18/2011 at 5:35 PM, rixxx said:

Thing is, humans have been 'genetically modifying' crops through selective breeding for centuries, the most famous example is the Dutch turning the original purple carrots to an orange colour in celebration of their king.

I find breeding animal/plant with desired trait, to try and hone in on desired trait, very different than adding rabbit genes to plants...

Ok well you're not going to use the genetics of a rabbit in a plant and the fact is we share at least 60% of the genetics a plant has anyway. If we're made of the same stuff why no improve? I think this boils down to the fact that people fear technologies.

Also:

"Although the use of molecular modification techniques in crop improvement engendered controversy from the beginning, GM crops have experienced unprecedented adoption rates since their initial introduction in 1996. By 2008, the latest year for which statistics are available, roughly 10% of cropland was planted in GM crops. Transgenic crops were grown on more than 300 million acres in 25 countries by more than 13 million farmers, 90% of whom were small-holder, resource-poor farmers" Fedoroff (2010)

I'm not for or against GM I just hate to see extremist miss use research to meet their own objectives and what's worse is that people swallow it without any caution.

it's not just an outright fear of "technology" like someone might be afraid of change or spiders. it's the feeling that we're not using any caution here. we're just throwing all these gm crops out there and we don't know what will happen in the long term. if something as fundamental as growing food can be totally fucked by these technologies, that is something that you SHOULD be scared of.

i don't have to go into what could happen, but imagine if the terminator gene makes its way into the food chain, or imagine how much roundup you'll have to use on roundup ready crops 30 years from now.

my point is that the train has indeed left the station, but if something goes wrong with this huge experiment.....

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  On 5/18/2011 at 7:47 PM, xxx said:

I feel that our DDT/Thalidomide/Agent Orange scenario with GMO is coming i.e. "we didn't know it would be so dangerous".

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they don't know anything because they didn't do proper testing

who is going to do the testing? monsanto?.

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they already do the "testing" that they present to the fda etc

go figure there might be a conflict of interest writing your own test for regulatory committees.

it's true

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  On 5/18/2011 at 10:10 PM, rixxx said:

Ok well you're not going to use the genetics of a rabbit in a plant

google that shit, they have used it in poplar trees. among who knows what else

edit-My concern has nothing to do with fear. We have climbed to the top of the food chain without any help from "super" crops. I find it unnecessary. People aren't starving from lack of resources, its lack of yummy, yummy CASH.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13421374

who needs nukes when you got modified watermelons? DEPLOY THE FRUIT MAN

  On 5/18/2011 at 5:35 PM, rixxx said:

Thing is, humans have been 'genetically modifying' crops through selective breeding for centuries, the most famous example is the Dutch turning the original purple carrots to an orange colour in celebration of their king. Now we can be more precise with specific genetics we can speed up the process which in years before to lots of time and dedication. Genetic modification is the only way we can support the ever growing human population as we can produce larger crops. There is also the massive issue that global warming has had over the last few years, in the UK and Australia there have been incredibly dry springs and torrential rain in summer, this is very bad for most of the grain crops and that is why grain and the price of food has risen so highly. We could in the future see crops that can survive these drier periods and can protect themselves from rot damage in the wetter times.

 

People fear science, they think that we are 'messing around with nature' however there is no such thing, there is a lot of crazy un-researched claims that are there to scare the public. There has in recent years been a dramatic increase in coeliac disease (this is the allergic reaction to gluten) but this is because we have SELECTIVELY BRED grains to produce more gluten as it is more nutritional and gives a higher yield. The problem here is that our digestive system has not yet evolved to deal with this amount of gluten.

exactly, almost anything we eat, crop wise, is a result of how we have bred it over the centuries of agriculture. Genetically modified food is a great in concept. The only real problem is the for-profit companies that want to control how you do it.

wont let me edit... but I was going to add: for example, kale, cauliflower, cabbage, brussel sprouts, and broccoli are all variations of the same plant. Humans have just bred this one plant to give them different desired traits.

  On 5/19/2011 at 1:56 AM, Bubba69 said:

wont let me edit... but I was going to add: for example, kale, cauliflower, cabbage, brussel sprouts, and broccoli are all variations of the same plant. Humans have just bred this one plant to give them different desired traits.

Really? That's amazing. What did the original plant look like? Source?