So what exactly is the problem with genetically modified fruits and vegetables? What’s the difference between, say, a loganberry or boysenberry which was modified by “natural” means such as cross-pollination and the wheat modified in laboratories. Aren’t they both essentially genetically modified? Has anybody ever heard a research report linking eating genetically-modified loganberries with all sorts of cancerous ailments? I understand the mistrust with new scientific advancements, but nobody raised a fuss about this with the old-fashioned botanist’s approach, have they?
That’s one of the biggest arguments pro-GM foods have used. A lot of what’s being done is simply speeding up processes that could be done by traditional breeding with enough time. However, the main difference with GM vs breeding is that you can use genes from any organism to modify any other organism with GM, while breeding has to rely on mutation and selection in order to get new genes. This is how you get wheat that expresses Bt toxin normally expressed by a bacterial species. This has the potential to introduce new types of problems not faced before, ranging from increased resistance in pests to the need for different types of processing to remove GM pesticides to good ol’ fashioned “don’t play God” arguments.
So basically, GM is old-fashioned breeding kicked up a notch.
Another concern is that because the GM process allows the combination of completely unrelated plants the possibility arises that allergans may appear where one wouldn’t expect them. While this may not be reason to outlaw GM entirely, (pesticide resistance seems to me a much greater concern) we’ve got the cart before the horse in that GM plants have become available before any sort of labelling regulations have been put in place. People with potentially fatal allergies have to be compulsive label readers to protect themselves. Those labels will cease to have any meaning if GM foods are not disclosed as such.
But GM plants are thoroughly tested for allergic potential. No company wants to release a product that people are allergic to. The cost of testing is negligible compared to the liability costs of releasing, say, a soybean with a brazil nut gene that people are allergic to.
As for labelling, since there is no fundamental difference between gene-spliced variations and traditional mutations-with-selection, labelling would only serve the interests of those people who have philosophical objections to the technology (luddites). Fortunately, we require labels only for health implications, otherwise labels would be required for all sorts of goofy, inconsequential aspects, such as whether they were picked by union workers, who the seeds were bought from, what state/country they were grown in, what kind of fertilizers were used, whether they were transported by truck or train, ad infinitum et nauseam.
so basically would you say that the controversy in the UK and Europe about labeling GM foods as being neo-Luddite paranoia? Or is there any proven instance of a GM food once regarded as safe being later shown to be harmful?
CurtC wrote: But GM plants are thoroughly tested for allergic potential. No company wants to release a product that people are allergic to. The cost of testing is negligible compared to the liability costs of releasing, say, a soybean with a brazil nut gene that people are allergic to.
This doesn’t make any sense to me. Of course companies release products that people are allergic to. The fact that there are some people who are allergic to peanuts doesn’t halt the production of Jif.
My mother is allergic to sodium lauryl sulfate. It is a very common additive that is derived from coconuts. It’s in almost every shampoo, toothpaste, soap and lotion on the shelves. It causes her to break out in a painful, itchy rash. If a company creates a new product that uses genetic material from coconuts she would like to have that information so that she would have the option to test the product before using it.
No company can guarantee that a product won’t cause an allergic reaction. They can only say that the statistically valid sample they took did not cause any. Someone with a known, potentially fatal allergy may want to be able to make his own choices about which foods to ingest. I think that is a reasonable desire.
I assume that the reasons for resisting GM labelling are a)the fact that “genetically modified” sounds scary and some people may avoid all such products out of hand and b)the companies desire to retain “trade secrets”.
The main difference between old-fashioned selective breeding and newfangle genetic engineering is that now, we have more control over the process. If you want a plant to produce a particular protein, it’s now possible to add exactly that protein, nothing more or less-- This is a degree of precision far beyond what we were able to do before. Yes, there’s still some risks, but as far as I can see, the risks are actually smaller than before.
A couple of potential problems I’ve read of are the result of techniques used to introduce the ‘foreign’ genes.
A desirable gene is wrapped in some sort of carrier (look up ‘jumping genes’) and shoved into a cell.
There is little control over just where the new gene goes; it can potentially disrupt the normal functioning of the host plant, so that toxic or allergenic products might be produced.
More likely, those ‘jumping genes’ could transfer themselves and their contents to other organisms. New Scientist has a piece in the June 24, 2000 issue, for example, citing a study that shows the ‘mariner’ gene, used in some current GE research, has naturally passed from one species to another. (The article isn’t on their Web site, as far as a quick search shows.)
Neither possibility is likely, but the risks are fairly high that widespread use of GE could end up causing problems down the road.
Isn’t there some question that genetically modified fish might mate with natural fish and cause some problems? I know fish aren’t vegetables and fruit, but wouldn’t cross pollinization cause problems, too?
'modified by “natural” means ’
Totally off subject.
What is natural, isn’t everything natural? Just because Man has intelligance and the ability to manipulate things doesn’t mean it’s “unnatural”. Genetically engineered fruit, animals, and humans - hopefully… are natural, cancer, retardation, nuclear weapons, tobacco smoke, forest fires, taxi drivers who can’t speak english, genetic disorders, mixing elements to make news ones…natural, all natural. Should “Unnatural”, have meaning? Should it even be a word?
Sorry for the interuption.
Farmer, restart this “natural/unnatural” question in Great Debates! It’s a good one.
Sorry about that Jois, I should have started it in GD or the pit.
Yes, the spread of introduced genes to “wild” varieties, along with possible allergens, is one of the biggest potential problems with GM foods. Many studies have been done to determine the rate at which it happens and what can be done to slow it. (Personally, I think many more need to be done) It’s pretty well accepted that stopping it completely is impossible, except in a few limited applications.
One method, probably the easiest, for slowing it is planting, say, corn in a field that is far away from any wild corn species. This can be problematic because the definition of “far away” can vary widely from species to species. Also, if an area is good for growing domestic corn, it’s probably also good for growing wild corn, so there’s probably some out there. However, it can be successful in cases like potatoes, which are wild only in America, meaning European farmers are free to grow all the GM potatoes they want without fear.
Sread of genes is harmful only in some cases. With pesticide genes, obviously, gene spread will increase the rate at which resistance develops among pests, which is bad. On the other hand, some other modifications, like altering the nutritional content by, say, lowering the ratio of saturated to unsaturated fat produced, may not be harmful if spread, because they may actually decrease the fitness of a plant carrying the modification. In that case, even if the modified gene spread into the wild population, it would be selected against and probably disappear quite quickly.
The biggest (and, IMHO, most valid) problem with GM foods is that each species is different and interacts differently with wild relatives. It will be a huge job to obtain all the data required to predict the effect of a modification. From what I’ve seen, I think a good start has been made, and scientists in the field are taking the risks very seriously.
rjk’s point about the possible disruption of native genes is valid, but before a GM crop is released, it will be tested to see just where the gene actually did insert, so I wouldn’t expect any problems from that.
Smeghead’s concerns about gene flow are of great concern to many. Having modified crops for herbicide resistance seems good until the gene flow to the wild relatives creates herbicide-tolerant weeds or superweeds.
Another is just genetic polution, already known to have happened in squash, carrots, maize, sunflowers, strawberries and sugar beets. I understand this is not considered to be too much of a problem right now.
Some scientists are calling for a the creation of a “gene register” to track which genes have been added to the crop gene pool. Right now the changes are “monogenetic” or single/relatively simple changes, the next generation may contain more complex changes.
The old fashioned botanist’s way of developing new strains introduced a “well characterized” trait, now large chunks of the donor genome is integrated at random.
[nitpick]
I don’t think anyone is trying to make GM foods by throwing in genes “at random”. It may not be possible to exactly determine the target area for insertion, but it’s not like people are grabbing chunks of DNA lying around and throwing them into crop species to see what happens.
[/nitpick]
Yes, that nitpick is a good one. I saw that phrase in Nature and decided speaker has to be anti-GM! But still unexpected results cannot be ruled out.
Another concern is that it is hard to get money proving that something is not toxic - a negative result. Some of our veggies were more toxic when first taken from the wild. Breeders then worked to reduce those toxins, now further alterations might reverse previous work. Since the introduction of thousands of GM foods on a global scale seems imminent, how carefully can we expect the monitoring of these products to be?
Anyone who raises objections to genetically modified food is usually an uninformed neo-luddite boob. There MAY BE valid concerns over genetic modification, but I have few. Genetic modification has produced countless drugs and hormones to medicine. Are you diabetic? Try to get along without the insulin that was produced by a genetically modified organism. Same for interferon, and any other of a number of proteins and enzymes we have. Food? Well, let’s see. What is the danger in having a food with higher nutritional value than one “naturally” availible? Zilch. The only danger is people fearing a technology they cannot comprehend.
Many I’m in a righteous mood today. Don’t know why, but between this and the lawn mowing thread, I’ve been a real prick.
Thank you, robinh. All the bleep I want is to know which foods I’m eating or thinking about eating have been mixed with genes from other foods that I or my children might have a reaction to. I don’t like the FDA and the USDA saying that I have no right to know if the foods I eat are GM. By doing that they take away my right to decide if the food is a potential allergen for us and do we want to risk trying it in a saf"er" environment like the hospital waiting room. Allergies are not even understood completely by the specialist that treat the condition. They can’t predict what new allergies a person is going to develop. The lab people running tests for the new GM products can run all of the tests on other people they want, but the only true test of the new food for allergen to ME is how I react to it. Ok, done ranting now.
Jois, not only is it hard to get money to prove that something is non-toxic, it’s not even possible to do. You can’t prove that something is absolutely safe. You can demonstrate that any health effects are below some threshold.
But I still haven’t heard any objections to gene-spliced foods that would not also apply to conventionally modified ones. Gene splicing is more precise, and therefore we can do more of it.
I’m not worried about either, but if you’re worried about the effects of randomly-modified genes, this is what happens in conventional plant modification. You either wait for natural variations to produce a desirable result, or apply some gene-damaging agent (such as mustard gas) to the cells and hope that you get useful variations. Gene splicing is more exact, so at least we get an idea of what areas we should concentrate the testing on.
The people who are so vocal against the technology have different motivations. Some are luddites, some are actually hostile to things that would increase the survival of the little brown people in poor countries, since they see human population as the worst problem. Greenpeace is a little of both.
How about Monsanto’s “terminator seeds”. They’re the genetically altered seeds that would produce fruit and vegetables with dead sterile seeds. This, of course, would keep the growers–whether U.S. farmers or “little brown” ones–from saving their own seed for growing in subsequent years. Instead they’d have to go back to the company year after year to get more seed. A great recipe for solving world hunger that! Please let’s not insult anyone’s intelligence by pretending these companies making GM seed and foods are into it for any other reason than profit.
Furthermore from what I’ve read, the great rush is not to produce vegetables with higher vitamin content, but to create ones that can tolerate pesticides in the field or last a long time on the grocery shelf. Man, just think! You could buy a tomato and have it last for a whole month before it goes bad. Yep, that’s sure what I want.