It always makes me want to duck whenever anybody says ‘We know exactly what we’re doing.’ People who think they know exactly what they’re doing stop watching out for unexpected problems; which is a bad idea.
No, they don’t know exactly what they’re doing. It’s necessary to insert the gene, then grow the crop out to see what happens; which often isn’t what was predicted; which is why not all of multiple strains make it to market, and some of the ones that do don’t perform as promised. That’s trial and error. And to the best of my knowledge they’re not checking for subtler effects in changes of nutrition.
Obviously nothing that’s hit the market so far is out and out poisonous.
Glyphosate’s a systemic. That means it’s taken up into the plant. You can’t just wash systemics off, because they aren’t only on the surface, they’re all through the plant.
Some of the most common GMO’s are modified specifically in order to be able to tolerate the use of pesticides (herbicides are pesticides) which they would otherwise not be able to survive. They’re meant specifically to be used with pesticides.
Many of the other common GMO’s are modified so as to express a pesticide throughout the plant, and the whole time the plant is growing in the field. This doesn’t reduce the use of the pesticide, it increases it. The fact that the application is done through the plant and not by a sprayer doesn’t mean it’s reducing the use.
You are . . . not helping. I’m a strong proponent of GMOs. But if you’re not even familiar with the basics, maybe leave this one for the real scientists?
To the OP, “food is safe.” Until it’s not. I can conventionally breed food to make it unsafe. It’s been done. I could CRISPR something to make it unsafe, although doing that accidentally certainly stretches the imagination.
Genetic modification of corn reduced pesticide application from from ~200 g/ha in 1996 to ~10 g/ha in 2010. While yields went up, requiring less agricultural land to produce more food.
Beyond the fact that no crop is “drenched” in herbicide, mjmlabs might be interested in knowing about what herbicides were used before Roundup came along.
Products like alachlor, cyanazine and atrazine were not exactly the equivalent of fairy dust sprinkled on crops. Precursor chemicals often had higher acute toxicity, remained longer in the soil before breaking down and even had carcinogenic potential (Roundup’s alleged carcinogenicity is based on an IARC report produced under dubious circumstances and which contradicts findings by numerous other health agencies and organizations).
Oh, and to my knowledge no genetically modified wheat has been approved for sale in the U.S. or anywhere. Testing has been done. “Modifications tested include those to create resistance to herbicides, create resistance to insects[10][11][12] and to fungal pathogens (especially fusarium) and viruses,[13][14] tolerance to drought and resistance to salinity[15] and heat,[16] increased[17][18] and decreased[19] content of glutenin, improved nutrition (higher protein content, increased heat stability of the enzyme phytase, increased content of water-soluble dietary fiber, increased lysine content),[20][21] improved qualities for use as biofuel feedstock, production of drugs via pharming and yield increases.”
As has been said: absolutely untrue. Insecticides kill bugs. Fungicides kill fungi. Herbicides kill plants (including, very often, desired plants.) All of them are pesticides.
What do you think happens to the plant at harvest? Do you think all bits of it, roots and all, are removed from the environment? If you do think that: it isn’t true.
Again, that only works if you ignore the production of pesticide by the corn itself.
Yields per acre have been going up over the past century or more for a whole lot of reasons. Nutrition per acre may be a separate issue. And any increase in yield due to the specific common GMO traits is short lived, as the massive reliance on those specific GMO traits leads to resistance in the insects and weeds affected.
That would require Cry protein production of 190 g/acre. So no, that doesn’t only work if we ignore the same stuff that organic farmers ignore when they apply Bt spores at a kilo per acre.
Bt maize was introduced over 20 years ago and we’re still seeing improved yields due to reduced Ostrinia nubilalis and Helicoverpa zea, even with increasing temperatures (DOI 10.1073/pnas.1720692115 , 10.1038/s41598-018-21284-2), despite whatever myths Big Organic may be whispering in the ears of gullible non-scientists.
And never mind the decrease in carcinogenic mycotoxins.
As a bruised and bedraggled veteran of the co-op *movement, I am fascinated by the awesome power of “Big Organic”. And, of course, I am horrified at how its crushing power oppresses plucky, idealistic upstarts like Cargill and Monsanto. Sad.
(Say what you will about the counterculture, without which there might not be a Whole Foods. Yay, us.)
I think you’re misunderstanding that one a little bit; it’s not like they’ve somehow engineered these plants to somehow start producing malathion in their tissues or anything like that. They’re generally existing anti-insect chemicals- usually from other plants or from bacteria.
The one I’m most familiar with is the Bt maize that **Ruken **refers to. It’s corn that’s been genetically modified to express specific proteins (Cry proteins) that a certain sort of bacteria(bacillus thuringiensis) naturally produce, and which specifically messes up insect digestive systems, due to the fact that they’re highly alkaline, as opposed to the digestive systems of birds, mammals, etc… Different species of Bt produce different proteins, which affect different sorts of insects.
In fact, Bt bacteria is used, like **Ruken **also describes, by organic farmers who spray it or dust it on their crops, and is generally considered non-toxic.
So it’s not like it’s an “insecticide” in the common usage of the term- it’s much more benign than that.
Bump, I know all that. I’ve been farming (organically) since the 1970’s.
Bt is an insecticide. What’s doing the job, in either the organic or the GMO version of the application, is a toxin which is naturally produced by bacillus thuringiensis – or at any rate, a very similar material; I believe there are slight differences in the GMO form, which aren’t thought to make a practical difference. It’s a toxin which is only known to attack certain insects at certain life stages; but it’s still an insecticide. And it attacks a large number of insects in addition to the target pests.
so the amount applied by the organic technique is going to be less, not the same, because he’s been comparing the protein amount in the GMO plant to the total bacteria amount in the organically-allowed product.
And that’s assuming that the organic farmer applies every seven days for four months; which isn’t necessarily what’s happening. But even if we assume it is: no, the pesticide use isn’t reduced. And then there’s dicamba. There’s been a lot of resistance to Roundup developing in weeds; so the new thing is dicamba-resistant soybeans. Dicamba used to be used primarily in cold weather in the fall, for clearing fields; but there are now soybeans GMO’d to be resistant to it, and for this use dicamba’s now applied during the growing season. Problem is, dicamba doesn’t stay where it’s put; if the weather’s at all warm, it volatilizes and drifts, sometimes for significant distances; and this appears to happen even with formulations that are supposed to resist volatilization. And it kills strains of soybeans that don’t have the resistant trait – and also quite a lot of other things including vegetable crops and tree crops. So the GMO dicamba-resistant soybeans are causing a huge problem.
Is the technology essentially evil? No, it’s a tool. Is the way it’s currently being used beneficial and nothing but beneficial? No; it’s a tool being used by some researchers who are seriously trying to learn; by a few people who really are trying to do good; but mostly by a handful of very large companies who make much of their money from selling seeds and pesticides in combination, who want to have as many people as possible buying their product, and who are heavily invested in short-term results.
The entire issue is tangled up in a lot of misinformation – some of it deliberate – on all sides; and also tangled up in attempts to monopolize the food production capabilities of the entire planet.
I am a bit miffed at you lot for fuzzying public perception of the term “organic.” Strictly speaking, as chemists use the term, any compound containing carbon is organic. Coal is organic. We really need another term for “food grown without artificial pesticides.”
Strictly speaking, the term in the 18th century meant “made by/from organs” (e.g. made by plants and animals), and then was co-opted by chemists in the 19th century to include anything containing carbon (even if the substance in question was utterly toxic to natural organs). When speaking generally (outside of chemistry), returning to the original usage makes sense.
What’s that thing I just used to click on the multiquote link? Can’t be a mouse. Mice are furry rodents.
There are a huge number of words in English with multiple meanings. Lots of people seem to think it makes some sort of point to pick on this one. It doesn’t.
It’s originally a reference to considering the farm as a whole as a living organism, which is – in another sense of the word organic – an organic part of a whole ecological system. (See sense 4, here:
It’s also a reference to the organic matter in the soil.
And, yes, it fits with “made by plants and animals.”
ETA: There’s a very great deal more to organic farming than just “grown without artificial pesticides.”
Nice! After my previous comment I was musing on the exact route to lead to that term being used in farming, I didn’t really think people had reached on purpose back to the 18th Century.
Oh, definitely, in the farming context it’s a full community-of-practice - it’s slightly unfortunate (linguistically) that some of the practices involve specific choices on chemicals that may or may not line up with the organic chemistry definitions, mainly these days because it leads to too many discussion thread derailments :D.
Nitpick: I don’t think the word was used for farming practices until the early 20th century. The first use is generally credited to Lord Walter Northbourne in 1940, and it was popularized by J. I. Rodale in the 1940’s, although there were certainly people working in the field earlier in the 20th century.