# GMO Foods - Safe? Effective? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 12, 2014, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gmo-foods-safe-effective/683522 "2014-03-12T09:14:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2014, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gmo-foods-safe-effective/683522/41 "2014-03-13T21:43:07Z")
> [@RaftPeople](#): > > I originally assumed you meant any product but when I thought about it later I realized you meant GM foods. > > So I retract 82% of the intensity of my post. > > Having said that, I don’t think exhaustive and comprehensive testing is a valid argument to claim safety given the economic constraints surrounding testing. I dunno, man, there has been a _lot_, both from within and outside the industry. > [@](#): > > I don’t have any evidence GM foods are unsafe and I don’t even have an opinion that they are unsafe, but you can’t claim something that we simply don’t have the resources to truly prove. See, I’m curious what you’d mean by “truly prove”, because GMOs are pretty solid science. > [@RaftPeople](#): > > I would challenge you to find fault with any position I’ve held regarding climate change - there is a thread in BBQ where you can post your results, if you can find anything. > Here’s the reason you won’t find anything, because my one and only position is non-controversial: > Computer models of a complex dynamic systems are very very difficult to get correct, and very very difficult to confirm. Statement retracted. I was in a bad and partisan mood because I had been reading posts by **Clothy** again. ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2014, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gmo-foods-safe-effective/683522/42 "2014-03-13T21:57:10Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > See, I’m curious what you’d mean by “truly prove”, because GMOs are pretty solid science. I’m just a big believer in not overstating what is known. Some people use phrases and words that imply we are in 100% territory, which in my opinion is pretty ridiculous for most things. **Shalmanese’s** phrase is solidly in that territory of overstating what is known. I don’t have a good answer for how to quantify the level of confidence, it may be extremely high, but we (scientists and humans) are constantly surprised by new knowledge. This has me curious though, I’m going to poke around and see if I can come up with anything that might make us more cautious. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2014, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gmo-foods-safe-effective/683522/43 "2014-03-14T00:43:20Z")
> [@RaftPeople](#): > > you can’t claim something that we simply don’t have the resources to truly prove. Which is a perfect argument from ignorance. We don’t have the resources t prove _anything_. We don’t have the resources to prove that there isn’t a man-eating dragon in my garage. Nonetheless, I am perfectly correct when I say that it is safe to enter my garage. Just because you can’t prove that there _isn’t_ a man-eating dragon in my garage doesn’t oblige me to assume that there might be. In the total absence of any evidence of a dragon, I am perfectly justified in my assumption that there is no dragon, and in my statement that my garage is safe. ---
**Author:** ![Honesty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/f04885/32.png) [@Honesty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Honesty)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2014, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gmo-foods-safe-effective/683522/44 "2014-03-14T01:10:37Z")
Though I don’t necessarily believe GMO foods are unhealthy, I see nothing wrong with being labeled as such. If people choose not to eat GMO foods, it’s a marketing problem not a labeling problem. My main issue with GMO foods is a scientific one. If you make every plant the same, you run the very real risk of a global food crisis, - Honesty ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2014, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gmo-foods-safe-effective/683522/45 "2014-03-14T01:29:13Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Yes and yes. Crop yields are vastly higher now than in pre-industrial times, nearly everywhere on earth. There are many reasons for this, including better fertilizers and pesticides, farm machinery, and irrigation systems. But genetic modification has played an enormous role in process of improving agriculture. > > It also has the potential for good effects on the environment. If you modify corn’s genome so that it repels pests automatically, you don’t need to spray on extra pesticides. If you modify wheat so that it can grow with less water, then you don’t need to pump as much water from lakes and rivers. There was even talk, a few years ago, of engineering a type of pig that would produce less waste than a normal pig–I’m not sure if it ever happened. Given how much environmental damage is caused by pig s\*\*\*, that would seem to be an all-around good. We already waste half the food we produce. Why is growing even more a selling point? So we can use more energy, more pesticides and throw even more away? SE Asia loses up to 80% of its rice harvest. We need to use more energy and resources and grow even more? [World wastes half its food, study finds](http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/10/world/world-food-waste/) ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2014, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gmo-foods-safe-effective/683522/46 "2014-03-14T01:47:49Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > Oh come on, literally in the post you quoted he clarified what he meant - that every GMO food currently widespread on the market is safe. I don’t have an opinion about GMO foods one way or the other. (At least, not here.) I just found his original comment eye-rollingly absurd, no matter how much it was “corrected” later. It indicates the sloppiest possible thinking about the topic, or at least the sloppiest connection between critical thinking and meaningful expression. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2014, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gmo-foods-safe-effective/683522/47 "2014-03-14T03:18:46Z")
> [@Honesty](#): > > Though I don’t necessarily believe GMO foods are unhealthy, I see nothing wrong with being labeled as such. If people choose not to eat GMO foods, it’s a marketing problem not a labeling problem. Do you also believe that, say, electric cars should be labelled with a warning on the dash saying “The American Cancer Society requires that all passengers be made aware that the air the are breathing has been in proximity to high voltage rechargeable batteries”? After all, it’s perfectly true. Right? And labelling doesn’t make people think it might be dangerous. Right? And if air in electric cars doesn’t cause cancer, well that’s up to the manufacturers to educate the public on. Right? And if people won;t drive electric cars because of such a label, well, that’s a marketing problem not a labeling problem. Of course this is utter nonsense. The mere existence of a special government-mandated label implies that the product is unsafe. If it’s not suspected of being unsafe why have the label. Now if you are saying that all ingredients should be labelled to the same level, I can get behind that. So that the label has to say " Hydroponic, grafted “Marshall” mandarin oranges treated with heptachlor" alongside “Roundup Ready oranges, untreated”. I am all for that. Anything else is demanding special labelling of GM, which of course implies a safety concern. ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2014, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gmo-foods-safe-effective/683522/48 "2014-03-14T06:21:28Z")
> [@](#): > > Nonetheless, I am perfectly correct when I say that it is safe to enter my garage. Just because you can’t prove that there _isn’t_ a man-eating dragon in my garage doesn’t oblige me to assume that there might be. In the total absence of any evidence of a dragon, I am perfectly justified in my assumption that there is no dragon, and in my statement that my garage is safe. Ok, then answer this question: Is it possible to create a GM food that has negative side-effects but passes testing? You seem to be taking the position that it’s impossible. I personally assume it’s very possible to create one and it’s possible it gets past testing. If you think I’m wrong, please elaborate on why it’s either not possible to create, or why you think testing would always find it. ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2014, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gmo-foods-safe-effective/683522/49 "2014-03-14T06:31:05Z")
**Blake** , just some quick googling found the brazil nut soybean allergy thing (which was caught during testing) so that changes the question because we now have proof that side effects can happen. The only remaining question is: Is it possible for a side effect to get past testing? If you think that’s impossible, please explain why you think that? ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2014, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gmo-foods-safe-effective/683522/50 "2014-03-14T07:21:55Z")
> [@RaftPeople](#): > > I’m just a big believer in not overstating what is known. > > Some people use phrases and words that imply we are in 100% territory, which in my opinion is pretty ridiculous for most things. **Shalmanese’s** phrase is solidly in that territory of overstating what is known. To the best of our knowledge based on an extensive (seriously, thousands of studies) body of research, these things are safe. Look, if you apply same standard to your computer, you wouldn’t use your computer. After all, there’s a chance that the CPU could cause it to explode. Unlikely, and by all the testing we’ve done it doesn’t happen, _but_ we don’t know with 100% certainty. Because we never will. But what we can say is that they are safe _beyond reasonable doubt_. That’s the standard in science. Not 100% certainty. > [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > I don’t have an opinion about GMO foods one way or the other. (At least, not here.) I just found his original comment eye-rollingly absurd, no matter how much it was “corrected” later. It indicates the sloppiest possible thinking about the topic, or at least the sloppiest connection between critical thinking and meaningful expression. No, it’s the correct stance based on the evidence. The mainstream, widespread GMO foods have all been tested to the point where it is beyond reasonable doubt that they are safe. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2014, 11:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gmo-foods-safe-effective/683522/51 "2014-03-14T11:04:58Z")
The other issue with labeling is that it would require a massive investment in infrastructure. Our system simply isn’t set up to manage two completely separate, parallel pipelines for what is essentially the same product. We cannot reasonably guarantee that any crop grown on a large scale is completely free of contamination, as the infamous StarLink corn incident demonstrated. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2014, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gmo-foods-safe-effective/683522/52 "2014-03-14T13:26:00Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > I don’t have an opinion about GMO foods one way or the other. (At least, not here.) I just found his original comment eye-rollingly absurd, no matter how much it was “corrected” later. It indicates the sloppiest possible thinking about the topic, or at least the sloppiest connection between critical thinking and meaningful expression. I chose my words carefully. In everyday life, we use statements like “The drinking water here is safe to drink” or “bananas are safe for babies to eat” all the time without anyone quibbling or equivocating. We all understand exactly what that means and we’re willing to use our common sense definition of the term to move forward without controversy. Yet, when we talk about GMOs, standards become arbitrarily higher and people expect statements to come laden with all sorts of caveats and careful phrasing because GMOs are the big bugaboo. This, as much as anything else, contributes to people’s unscientific apprehension of GMO. Maybe 10 years ago, the equivocation or caveats may have been warranted but the science has developed to the point where the evidence is incontrovertible and the statement needs to further defense. GMO is safe in the same way that you are safe from fan death and your kids are safe from satanic cults. GMO foods, available to consumers are safe to eat. It is a non-issue and you have better things to worry about. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2014, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gmo-foods-safe-effective/683522/53 "2014-03-14T13:33:19Z")
> [@Honesty](#): > > Though I don’t necessarily believe GMO foods are unhealthy, I see nothing wrong with being labeled as such. If people choose not to eat GMO foods, it’s a marketing problem not a labeling problem. My main issue with GMO foods is a scientific one. If you make every plant the same, you run the very real risk of a global food crisis, > > - Honesty They won’t all be the same. First, it’s impossible to prevent hybridization between most food crops. Second, even GMO strains will differ as they have to be adapted for differing latitutes, elevations and soil conditions. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2014, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gmo-foods-safe-effective/683522/54 "2014-03-14T13:37:51Z")
All I want to know is when can I get a glow-in-the-dark cat. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2014, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gmo-foods-safe-effective/683522/55 "2014-03-14T13:47:54Z")
> [@Honesty](#): > > My main issue with GMO foods is a scientific one. If you make every plant the same, you run the very real risk of a global food crisis Which is what happened in the Irish potato famine in the 1800s, when genetically identical plants all were struck down by the same pathogen. Wait, that was with a conventionally bred plant. Which reinforces the idea that overdependence on one or a few grain or vegetable varieties, however they are bred, increases the risk of insects or diseases wiping out a large percentage of the crop. It’s not a GMO issue per se. It’s been mentioned that testing has uncovered a potential health problem with a GM crop. Such was also the case with the conventionally bred Lenape potato in the 1960s, which had great disease resistance and made excellent potato chips, but which also made testers sick because of its unintentionally high solanine content. And let us not forget the [Killer Zucchini](http://www.uh.edu/~trdegreg/genetic_engineering_not_significantly.htm). _“…in New Zealand, there was an outbreak of food poisoning from a “killer zucchini” that hospitalized a number of people. Environmentalists jumped all over the story until it was determined that the culprit was “organic” zucchini. Plants are chemical factories that produce a multitude of toxins that protect them. An outbreak of aphid infestation had minimal impact on conventionally grown zucchini. The more vulnerable “organic” zucchini was genetically inferior because of inbreeding. They expressed dangerously high levels of the toxin curcubitan. Had this been a transgenic plant, we would be hearing about it ad nauseam, but being that it was “organic,” it was quickly consigned to an Orwellian memory hole.”_ ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2014, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gmo-foods-safe-effective/683522/56 "2014-03-14T14:13:25Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > I chose my words carefully. I’m sure you did, but even within a topic thread you should take care to make sure that such a sweeping statement has context. ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2014, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gmo-foods-safe-effective/683522/57 "2014-03-14T15:08:42Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > To the best of our knowledge based on an extensive (seriously, thousands of studies) body of research, these things are safe. Look, if you apply same standard to your computer, you wouldn’t use your computer. After all, there’s a chance that the CPU could cause it to explode. Unlikely, and by all the testing we’ve done it doesn’t happen, _but_ we don’t know with 100% certainty. Because we never will. But what we can say is that they are safe _beyond reasonable doubt_. That’s the standard in science. Not 100% certainty. Given the current testing methods, if a new change introduces a new protein, what test tells us human’s won’t have a problem with it? Are the rat/chicken feed tests for 90 days enough to be sure a human won’t have a reaction to that protein? ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2014, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gmo-foods-safe-effective/683522/58 "2014-03-14T15:18:09Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > Maybe 10 years ago, the equivocation or caveats may have been warranted but the science has developed to the point where the evidence is incontrovertible and the statement needs to further defense. I don’t think you actually understand this topic. “the science has developed to the point where the evidence is incontrovertible” This statement is completely wrong. Every single change requires new testing because there is no science (yet) that allows us to model all of these interactions and chemical pathways. Why do you think they test every single new change? Because currently it’s the only way to see the effects of that change, and testing is inherently not exhaustive. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2014, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gmo-foods-safe-effective/683522/59 "2014-03-14T16:12:04Z")
> [@RaftPeople](#): > > I don’t think you actually understand this topic. > > “the science has developed to the point where the evidence is incontrovertible” > This statement is completely wrong. > > Every single change requires new testing because there is no science (yet) that allows us to model all of these interactions and chemical pathways. > > Why do you think they test every single new change? Because currently it’s the only way to see the effects of that change, and testing is inherently not exhaustive. I think the problem here is to make it sound like if the testing is outside the science or that there was not enough done in the past for the experts to be confident. Testing is an integral part of science BTW, the science is there when testing is done. Organizations that do keep an eye on the issue report that the current efforts from industry at preventing issues and problems like the allergens are very good, but they also check and are flexible enough to intervene. There will be always risks regarding new technology, but one wishes many others would had been investigated at the levels GMOs have been subjected already. > **[Major Scientific Conference Convened to Review The Safety Of GMO Crops](https://biofortified.org/2012/05/25/major-scientific-conference-convened-to-review-the-safety-of-gmo-crops/)** > > Written by Steve Savage A major international conference scientific meeting titled “Risk Assessment in Agricultural Biotechnology” was held at the University of California, Davis.  It w… > [@](#): > > Roads Not Taken > > Looking back at the program from the 1988 meeting I was reminded that this risk assessment process was far from a rubber stamp. There were several ideas that were never pursued commercially because the risks were deemed to be too significant. > > For instance, it was decided that genetically engineered microbes should not be introduced live into the environment. It was decided that GMO crops should not be introduced into areas where there have weedy relatives (e.g. sunflowers in the Midwestern US). > > There was the idea of improving the amino acid balance of corn (which is low in lysine) by incorporating the gene for the lysine-rich seed storage protein from Brazil nut. Once the gene for the protein was isolated and expressed in a lab microbe, it was possible to test to see if that was the reason some people are allergic to Brazil nuts. It turned out that it was the allergen, so the project was discontinued at that very early stage. Some of the early examples of plant genetic engineering were done using something called the “gene gun.” That method often lead to insertions of multiple copies of the gene and so virtually all the work shifted over to the Agrobacterium vector approach – an organism from nature that is good at inserting single copies of genes into plant cells. > > Sixteen years and billions of acres into the biotech crop revolution, it seems that the prior years of risk assessment have paid off. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2014, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gmo-foods-safe-effective/683522/60 "2014-03-14T16:43:48Z")
> [@RaftPeople](#): > > Given the current testing methods, if a new change introduces a new protein, what test tells us human’s won’t have a problem with it? > > Are the rat/chicken feed tests for 90 days enough to be sure a human won’t have a reaction to that protein? By this standard, it is dangerous to introduce, for example, new conventionally bred varieties of supersweet corn for table use, since the proteins generated by newly acquired genes have not been safety tested in humans. I’m all for safety testing, especially if “new” proteins are considerably different from what’s occurred before in a food. But you’d think that if clinically significant changes in digestability or allergenicity were the consequence of genetic modification techniques in food production, we’d have seen some hint of it in the last 20 years. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gmo-foods-safe-effective/683522.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gmo-foods-safe-effective/683522.md?page=4)