Genetically Modified Foods

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a990409.html

I thought this reply was a little one sided - Cecil seems to be saying that there are NO disadvantages to genetically modified crops, when in fact they could easily cause problems for wildlife. Making plants resistant to herbicides simply encourages the use of even larger amounts of herbicides that can get into rivers and kill plants that may be food for animals feeding off them, and poisons can build up in the food chain. Plants producing their own pesiticides have an unnatural advantage over other plants, and if they spread, their advantage could swamp out other plants that may be essential food for other animals. Genetic engineering should not be used recklessly like this.

2

Okay, maybe it’s just because I come from an agricultural/farming background, but I feel that genetically modified foods are safe, and a great idea:

  1. Genetically modifying plants have been around for centuries (well, actually millenia), but by more natural means. Just about every rose bush we have is the result of a weed that bloomed pretty being crossed with another weed that had good root stock being crossed with another weed that rebloomed all summer long, and eventually you end up with a plant that makes blooms three or four inches wide that blooms all summer long.

  2. Monsanto makes their corn resistant to Roundup (glyphosate, and since they’re allowing other people to make it, it’ll be less expensive, too). Roundup is one of the safest herbicides, environmentally speaking. Once it has dried, it is inert, and there is no residual left in the soil.

  3. Bt Corn reduces the amount of pesticides being used in farming, which can cause problems (when used improperly, which most farmers never do).

  4. Roundup resistant corn allows a farmer to kill weeds by spraying, rather than plowing. Excessive plowing=excessive erosion; less plowing=less erosion.

  5. The amount of testing that goes into these products means that the chances of an unsafe product reaching the market is very unlikely. It has happened in the past, but once the problem is determined, the entire farming industry moves quickly to correct it.

3

Hey, I’m not an environmentalist freak, I know you can’t make a mutant plant that eats people, and I know you can’t have your genes affected by genetically modified DNA. I just think that some companies might go too far - If these plants become widespread they can adversely affect populations of other animals that feed on plants driven out by competition or who feed on these plants. For instance - Ladybirds feed on greenfly. If all greenfly are killed as they cannot feed off the plants then ladybirds will die out and so on up the food chain.
As to your first point, selective breeding is very different from genetic engineering - you cannot introduce a trait (such as pesticide production) by selective breeding unless one plant of the species already has that trait.

4

Let’s ban bioengineering until we know that there is no chance, however small, that something may go wrong. Let’s also ban wind power. There is a chance that having a bunch of windmills blocking the air may change weather patterns. They also kill birds. Solar is scary as well; what happens if we absorb all the light that used to reflect back into space. Gasoline is too dangerous to carry around in the gas tanks of cars, and hydrogen is worse. Remember the Hindenberg? Tomatoes belong to the same family as deadly nightshade. Are we sure they are safe?

5

There have been several lengthy debates on this topic in the recent past. Do a search for GD threads and you’ll find them. That wasn’t meant to be rude, just a heads-up.

6

I have no problem with these sort of foods, except for the company that covered up the fact that they were using gentically engineered corn, so I couldn’t get the tacos I love so much. :slight_smile:

The real reason I’m chiming in is to ask about Cecil’s parenthetical about canola. What’s the deal there? Is there a scourge of canola rampaging across the country?

I’m waiting for the genetically engineered apple that can’t be bruised by the occasional ignorant grocery bagger. Bulletproof apples. Mmmmm.

7

Look folks, genetically engineered foods have been around for centuries if not millenia. The tomato Europeans found when they first came to the Americas was small and had a husk around it, a bit like tomatillos, I think. Most plants have been bred and cross bred for greater disease-resistance and increased yield. For that matter, nature itself does this – a plant which is more resistant to a pest or disease is more likely to grow old enough to reproduce than one which isn’t.

Say you found a few plants growing naturally in a field which survived a blight others in that same field had succumbed to. I assume you would plant seeds from those plants hoping to grow more which were resistant to the blight. Is this really that different from the genetically engineered foods you’re objecting to? If so, how? Because man did the splicing, not nature?

I am an environmentalist, but I can’t hold with the argument that all natural things are good for man and all artificial things are bad. Among other things, I’ve read too many mystery novels. Hemlock and digitalis are 100% natural and quite deadly.

I’ll brace myself for the response.
CJ

8

This may not be strictly on thread, but the header was simply “Genetically Modified Foods”

A third basic argument over GM crops is the concern (well founded or not) over the inherent risks of monoculture crop strains. When single (or few) crop strains dominate agricultural production you run the risk of wholesale losses due to opportunistic variants of viruses, blights, pests, etc.

An associated risk is the potential loss of genome diversity as ‘super’ crops come to dominate the market place and unpatentable legacy seed is lost through disuse. Genome patenting is in some ways a much more important issue than the simple fact of genetic engineering.

In keeping with the current thread, IMHO Nukeman’s questions were either answered in the original column, or could be fairly dismissed with some research (eg, check out the residual properties of "Round-Up"™.

9

I’d be very keen to hear more on the throwaway line on canola…

Gp

10

Dan, I am NOT saying that we should ban all Genetic modification! In fact, I am in favour of it (I hate it when people who know nothing about the subject get all worked up about how they are going to be mutated by genetically modified food) I just thought that the column was one sided - it seemed to be saying that scientists should go ahead and genetically modify everything they like, that there was no danger from it. There may be no direct danger to humans, but making plants invincible to all predators could easily affect the environment.

Smeghead, the whole point of this board is to comment on columns - there may be Great debates threads on this subject but I wanted to make a point on this particular column.

Pgwalk - What questions, exactly, have I asked? I was making a point - Some genetically modified crops could damage the environment, as I have explained.

Genetic engineering does not seem to reduce pesticide use - it just increases the use of Bt corn etc - this is still a toxin, and can still kill butterflies and other insects essential to the food chain. It would be better to use natural methods that work nearly as well as pesticides, are cheap, and the insects never become resistant to them. An example is introducing ladybird eggs which hatch out and eat greenfly.

11

Nukeman:
If you aren’t raising questions about GM foods I don’t know what we are doing here. Personally, my main concern is over their wide spread adoption.

The questions you raise (your concerns) are, to some extent, ill founded. Herbicide resistant crops do reduce the total use of herbicides in many cases, as weeds can be attacked early in their growth cycle. It has been fairly well shown that Monarch (and other) butterflies are not significantly impacted by pest resistant plants (yet) despite persistant early “reports” to the contrary. The wide spread introduction of ladybugs (ladybirds?: regional colloqial variation?) has made them epidemic at certain times of year in certain parts of the country. This has its own ecological implications for other insects and their food chains.

I think most of us agree that low impact farming is an ideal that must be pursued but let’s not forget that high-yield farming is what has enabled our standard of living and therefore made this discussion possible.

12

Syzygy wrote:

Just to clear up what happened with Starlink corn, it wasn’t just one company, and it wasn’t covered up as far as I know. Starlink was not approved for human consumption, because it contained a protein that caused it to be digested slowly. Often, foods that are allergenic are slow to digest, so Starlink was approved for animal feed, pending tests that would clear it for humans. Whoever did this split approval underestimated the problems in keeping the corn separate, and a small amount of it found its way into the human-bound corn supply.

I think that the fact that Starlink was genetically engineered was a little bit of a red herring in this case, because the problem was not that it was GE, but that it produced this protein. Conventionally modified corn could also produce new proteins. This story gave several people the impression that there was something inherently dangerous about GE food, and that our food supply is largely GE-free. At least in the US, GE foods are in just about everything.

13

In general, US “ladybug” == UK “ladybird”. I don’t know about Canada.

14

I thought Cecil’s column was one of the more balanced commentaries I’ve seen on the subject. I’m a professional agriculture and conservation worker, but without an economic interest in any GE crops. In general, the vast tonnages of herbicide and pesticide used in agriculture have been reduced by introduction of GE crops. Soil erosion has been reduced.

It is not possible to produce the amounts of food expected of our agriculture by use of “natural” means such as ladybugs and organic farming techniques. Consumer prices at the grocery store would increase ten-fold without use of chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides.

I’m not saying the GE process is foolproof, but at present, it’s reducing applications of toxic elements on crops, and saving soil. The risks seem to be minimal, as long as the companies producing these crops are doing sufficient testing, which it seems they have to date.

15

Sorry. The reason they are made herbicide resistant is so that you can apply more herbicide. I personally don’t see that as a “good thing”.

16

Three things really bug me about GM’s:

**They aren’t being held to any testing requirement. **

New drugs have to go through a rather lengthy clinical trials process, and even then we end up with the ocasional mishap (fen/phen for example). The genetic process of adding a flounder gene to a tomato to keep it from freezing or adding bt to potatoes to keep them from getting eaten sounds cool, but there’s no foresight being applied except to turn the dollar.

Any testing that is done, the technicians sign an agreement that they will allow the company to retain publishing rights over the results of the study. It’s a requirement for funding and to use their seeds in the first place. Guess what happens when the results of the testing don’t show nice things about the product? (You’d think we’d have learned with the tobacco companies)

It allows companies to “patent” something that belongs to us all.

When you use Monsanto’s Roundup Ready crops, you sign an agreement to relinquish your right to replant the seeds or sell the seeds derived from them to anyone. Penalties are spelled out in the contract, and are incredibly stiff.

Heaven forbid that farmers have historically used basic conservation methods, replanting the seeds that they create. The seed companies have hated this, and of course one of the first things they researched was how to force all farmers in all crops to come back to the seed market every year.

Also, these patents are often far-reaching. Agracetus won a patent in 1994 for exclusive European rights over the next 20 years over any and all genetically altered soybeans created by their method or any other method.

The concept that we as a culture should allow one of our most treasured posesions, our knowledge of agriculture passed down for millenia, to be ursurped by a bunch of money-grubbing corporations is a bit irresponsible of us.

They aren’t labelled.

As a matter of fact, since the industries have gotten to capital hill already, it is illegal to advertise that your food is NOT genetically altered. Heaven forbid that you give yourself an unfair advantage over the huge corporations.

Also, it has let the transgenic food sneak in under the radar of the common person. If you told someone that 60% of the food in their grocery store was GM, they wouldn’t believe you.

[sub]I wish I could find the reference to unexpected allergic reactions… something like a soybean being spliced with a peanut gene, but of course unlabelled… suddenly kids start going into shock for eating things that should be harmless[/sub]
Cecil’s handling of the subject was pretty much right on. The problem isn’t really like “The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” variety. Rather, it’s that stupid people will do stupid things. Give them more power, and the effects of their stupidity are even more far-reaching.

17

Personally, I can’t see the big problem with terminator seeds (or whatever other companies are calling their equivalent products). Sure, it makes the seeds less desireable, but it’s not like anyone’s forced to use them. A farmer can choose to buy Monsanto seeds that he has to buy again every year, or he can choose to buy non-Monsanto seeds which he can replant. Presumably, most farmers know their trade well enough to choose whichever one is best for their purposes.

I certainly wouldn’t believe that, since I’d expect the figure to be more like 95%. All I can think of in most grocery stores (even all-organic stores) that isn’t genetically modified is the fish.

18

No,no,no!

Cross-breeding is NOT genetic Engeneering. There is a HUGE difference between the two. Confusing the two will only muddle the debate.

Cross-breeding consists of taking a plant with one (consistant) trait and cross polinating it with a plant with another (consistant) trait.
Genetic Engineering consists of extracting the genetic code for a certain trait and placing it into another plant, so that the plant will also have that trait.

Let’s say I want a tulip that is red and has small petals. (ok, cultural bias, so sue me :))
Using cross-breeding, I would find a species that is red and a species that has small leaves. Next, I would cross-polinate the two several hunderd times. I would then take the most favourable results and cross-polinate those. I would repreat the process until the result is satisfactory.
Using Genetic Engeneering I would investigate what gene causes small petals and extract that gene. Next, I would insert the gene into a red tulip. Now, some of these results will fail, so to be on the safe side, I’d make several batches. Next, I would select the best batch and clone it.
see the difference? Genetic engineering has NOT been around for millenia, it is not a method which has been tried and tested by nature and it is not cross-breeding!

Having said all this, Genetic-engineering, cross breeding and whatever else is out there is a means to an end. The result is what counts here. Both methods may have unpredictable and long-lasting effects on the environment in the long run. Both need more thorough testing before being sold on a commercial basis. Both can be used irresponsibly.
If we are going to debate the merrits and faults of GE, lets focus on the results, not the methods.

19

No,no,no!

Cross-breeding is NOT genetic Engeneering. There is a HUGE difference between the two. Confusing the two will only muddle the debate.

Cross-breeding consists of taking a plant with one (consistant) trait and cross polinating it with a plant with another (consistant) trait.
Genetic Engineering consists of extracting the genetic code for a certain trait and placing it into another plant, so that the plant will also have that trait.

Let’s say I want a tulip that is red and has small petals. (ok, cultural bias, so sue me :))
Using cross-breeding, I would find a species that is red and a species that has small leaves. Next, I would cross-polinate the two several hunderd times. I would then take the most favourable results and cross-polinate those. I would repreat the process until the result is satisfactory.
Using Genetic Engeneering I would investigate what gene causes small petals and extract that gene. Next, I would insert the gene into a red tulip. Now, some of these results will fail, so to be on the safe side, I’d make several batches. Next, I would select the best batch and clone it.
see the difference? Genetic engineering has NOT been around for millenia, it is NOT a method which has been tried and tested by nature and it is NOT cross-breeding!

Having said all this, Genetic-engineering, cross breeding and whatever else is out there is a means to an end. The result is what counts here. Both methods may have unpredictable and long-lasting effects on the environment in the long run. Both need more thorough testing before being sold on a commercial basis. Both can be used irresponsibly.
If we are going to debate the merrits and faults of GE, let us focus on the results, not the methods.

20

Thanks, puk, for clearing that up. I’d missed it earlier.

There’s a big difference between breeding two plants together, vs. extracting DNA from one organism, coating it on golden pellets, and shooting it into seeds of another plant.