Isn’t that the technology that Bill Gates was promoting in recent years?
Is that all just talk at this point? Any plans to put it into action?
Question: in the context of this post, what does “treated foods” mean?
(We all know there are problems with “processed” foods – too much salt, vitamin loss, etc. But that isn’t what is meant, is it?)
I absolutely agree with your post, although I am not a geneticist I want to clarify on the last paragraphs mention o pesticides.
GMO foods have the potential of being actually safer for consumers, workers and the environment than even Organic foods.
The “Organic” label really has no relation to safety, it only indicates that the substances used are naturally occurring.
As natural is in no way related or connected to safety this comparison is absolutely invalid.
In fact some of the most commonly used pesticides in organic farming have far more significant environmental and health impacts.
One example is Rotenone, which is also used to kill fish has a demonstrated link to Parkinson’s disease in farm workers.
Unfortunately for us consumers labels like organic are best thought of as being similar to a kosher mark. It is a branding effort to market products at a particular market segment that holds a particular world view.
To be clear I am not arguing against that labeling in this post, but stating that for those who do not ascribe to those world views, but that those who are more interested in gauging real risks there is a complete lack of transparency.
As consumers we really lack any mechanism to judge safety or impact at the point of sale.
While anecdotal, I have tried to have conversations about this with friends. Some do subscribe to a naturalist viewpoint in their world view, but the majority (self-selection bias warning) I talk to assume that there is a documented, real safety advantage for themselves, their family, farm workers and environments. If this is the reason for the original poster posing the question I would caution that the implications of ‘organic’ does not directly map to your concerns.
Also note that Many organic products on the market have been developed with chemical and nuclear mutagenesis. And the nuclear version is very different than irradiation but would in theory provide a higher risk compared to GMOs as the mutations are purely random.
As others have pointed out, GMO food is safe. The entire situation is created by gullible people who are easily swayed by their political arena. It’s akin to those otherwise healthy people who won’t eat gluten besides not having celiac disease, because a friend of theirs said its bad.
I tend to go out of my way* to avoid foods that proclaim “GMO-free” because they seem to use that as a reason to charge me more money.
*Not too far out of my way, though. If it’s the only option, I’m not going to waste my time going someplace else.
Irradiated food? Where is that available? I remember reading about it years and years ago, but it was my understanding then that it would never be used because of silly objectionists. If it’s in use today, then bravo!
Sure, but the risks for coal plants have those spikes, too.
And the thing with organic food is that you’ll see a lot of people saying things like “I buy organic food because I oppose cruel treatment of animals”. Except that organic has nothing at all to do with how humanely animals are treated. You can have cruel organic food, or humane non-organic, just as easily as humane organic or cruel non-organic. Say what you actually mean. If you oppose cruelty to animals, then buy cruelty-free food.
They would lose their shit if they knew that a lot of “conventional” produce is bred using radiation to induce mutations in plants, and then growing the resulting seeds to see what happens. If it turns out to be handy, they cultivate them.
Several sorts of popular produce has been produced this way- for example, Rio Red and Star Ruby graperfuits, Calrose rice, Golden Promise barley (used in the UK for beer and whisky), etc…
To me, that seems a LOT more haphazard than deliberately inserting specific genetic material into a plant’s genome for a specific purpose.
A lot, something like 1/2 to 3/4, of dried herbs are irradiated to prevent spoilage and contamination. So if you buy those little jars of spices at the grocery store you’ve almost certainly had some irradiated food.
Certainly so. In my circles, the anti-GMO folks are predominantly right wing, not left. Don’t know so much about the nuclear power, as I don’t hear about that often. I’m fine with both.
I agree, I also see it with right wingers as left wingers. I suppose it is for different purposes.
Maybe for the left its for being closer to nature, the right worrying that it may compromise their safety. Who knows. I too am fine with both. I think Nuclear power should be admired by both. Its clean, and it saves money. The GMO thing should follow the same, it allows more people to eat and live on hardier plants, and saves money (supply and demand, growing crops that are harder to fail).
I agree, but I think it’s important to note the category of ‘evil’ that would be at play here; It’s not so likely to be the Bond Villain Dr Evil cackling maniac type of evil. That’s fairly rare. it’s more likely to be the banal evil of profit motive ignoring externalities - the same kind of evil that deals with disposal of hazardous waste by shipping it to developing countries for their children to pick over in landfills, or the same kind of evil that concludes it’s cheaper, therefore better, to clad high rise buildings with flammable plastic.
Why would randomly making changes to an organism’s genome “seem” safer than taking a known characteristic, inserting that, and then knowing what to look for in the testing of it?
I don’t think he was talking about a crop duster, since he said that most people aren’t observant enough to notice the difference between that and a contrail. There are probably very few people who wouldn’t notice THAT difference.
So Flyer, tell us more! What have you seen that’s vastly different from contrails, which most people aren’t observant enough to notice the difference?
I got it backwards… I meant to say that the genetic engineering is a lot less haphazard than irradiating plants and seeing what happens.
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Those are some unusual circles you move in. Perhaps they are crop circles?
Darn you, Monsanto!!! :mad:
I remain mystified at the banality of GMO Evil that encompasses many thousands of scientists as well as employees of food companies, Monsanto and myriad other corporations, not to mention politicians, think tank members, random Internet posters* - all heedlessly promoting and selling technology that they realize will sicken and kill them and their families.
Hardly seems banal at all, hmmm?
*at least we’re enjoying a bounty of $hill Bucks and orgitastic parties before we croak of GMO Diseases.
shrug Don’t know what to tell you, but that’s the case. My folks and extended family, especially, and their friends are very much Republican, and are “natural cure” type people, tend towards anti-vaxxing, and are very much anti-GMO; very much the type of people that Kevin Trudeau and his “Natural Cures They Don’t Want You To Know About” cater to. This is hardly a partisan position, in my experience. I have a few on the left that have similar resrvations, but the majority of the anti-GMO folks I know are on the right, not left.
Basically, for them it’s all part of the chemtrail/fluoride in the drinking water type of nuttery. The people who take the “Coast to Coast AM” program on radio seriously, not as an amusing diversion.
I’m also in favor of nuclear power and GMOs but before you get so hung up on the left as getting the blame here, I have looked at this issue in many past discussions, in essence there are several liberals in government that were in favor of nuclear power and Obama also did help directly on the continuation of the few nuclear power being build now. As for the rank and file… while one can find a good number of leftists being against GMOs or Nuclear power the reality is that there is a very significant number of right wing conservatives that are also opposed to them.
And then one should ad that when one looks at a country like France that did successfully employ nuclear power for most of its needs, the way they did it looks not just liberal but socialist too.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=20159242&postcount=122
I just can not picture the current congress to be willing to do any of those things.
Even though very right wing states like Arizona did talk about things like making a nuclear dump facility since other states are not willing to do it. Unfortunately, after talk about that waste facility, now there is just silence. Regarding the GMO issue I also noticed that anti GMO groups actually boasted about the high number of conservatives that also support their reprehensible opposition to the technology.
Actually, if you check polling data, attitudes towards GM foods are not greatly different when left/right or Democratic/Republican affiliation are considered. The big difference is in leaders of the anti-GMO movement, who tend by a considerable margin to be left of center. Just look at who’s pushed mandatory labeling laws.
- I consider it false equivalency to suggest that (for instance) Democrats have as big an anti-science problem as Republicans. The GOP has a lot more to answer for - but that doesn’t mean that Dems/the left can be complacent about antiscience lunacy in their ranks. We need to demand better of our leaders.
**Antivax nuttery in my experience is a bi/multipartisan disease.
Are you suggesting it won’t happen because of those things? I think we could probably find good examples of corporations happy to fuck people over in order to make a profit - outside of the GMO arena, most likely, but I’m fairly sure the phenomenon exists.