Really? I don’t mean irradiated with IR, but some type of ionizing radiation. I had no idea they were doing these with dried herbs these days, because, well, dried herbs had been available prior to cheap radiation sources, I thought.
That is completely unsurprising to me. My initial post on the matter was to agree with Chronos that opposition to GMOs and nuclear power crosses party lines. In my circle, it happens to be more on the right side, (as a counterpoint to some posts in this thread which smeed to imply it was mostly a “left” thing. )
Are GMO products safe to consume? It depends on the product. Are arctic apples (that don’t brown) or golden rice safe to consume? Absolutely. Is corn that produces the insecticide bt safe to eat? If you aren’t a caterpillar, yes. Are roundup ready soybeans safe to eat? That may depend on how much roundup residue is on them. Plants with a fish gene to make them more resistant to freezing? Unless you are allergic to that fish protein, sure.
Are they safe for the environment? Bt corn may be rough on monarch butterflies. Roundup ready soy may be rough on farm hands and the downwind neighbors, especially in places with weaker safety regulations than the US.
Irradiated food? Completely safe to consume. Much safer than the untreated foods – it makes sure there are no residual live bacteria or agricultural pests lurking in those spices. But there are some risks in moving around the radioactive material used to do it, which need to be managed. Of course, that material would otherwise be nuclear waste from reactors, so maybe it’s safer to make it a valuable commodity.
You don’t necessarily need to use radioactive material to irradiate food. You can produce X-rays in a variety of ways that just need you to be able to plug into a power outlet.
I’m suggesting that damning entire technologies (or medical interventions, in the case of vaccination or water fluoridation, or chemtrails, or whatever the Fear Du Jour is) on the basis that Corporations/Big Pharma Are Evil is not a reasonable viewpoint. Beyond the scientifically illiteracy involved, it postulates a conspiracy of (at least) silence on the part of vast numbers of people who themselves stand to be seriously affected if the antis’ claims are valid.
Which makes zero sense to me.
No, no, he’s right. I spend about half of my time figuring out how to make it harder to repair cars without going to the dealership, how to consume more fuel to enrichen the oil companies (they secretly own us, of course), how to decrease safety by specifying cheaper steel, planning obsolescence, and just generally trying to figure out how otherwise to screw over our customers. And because it’s an industry-wide plot, I can’t simply drive a competitor vehicle. The evil you know is better, right?
Pretty much, any of us who don’t work on organic communes are involved in this conspiracy. It’s time the world know.
I wish the companies that fervently espouse anti-GMO activism would pay more attention to keeping shit out of their food and drink products.
An investigation has showed alarming levels of fecal-type bacteria in coffee drinks from several chains, and the “worst offender”, Costa Coffee has promoted its anti-GMO stance and urged other coffee producers to “say no to genetic modification”.
Not that other corporate food and beverage companies are immune from the problem, but there’s a special irony that numerous firms that tout their wonderful organic/non-GMO products (including Jeni’s Ice Cream and Chipotle) have been selling us contaminated food.
Anti-gmo is right up there with whatshisface claiming that God created the banana as the perfect food. Bananas as we know them, and more importantly all the cereal grains (and meat animals, for that matter) are genetically modified, just the slow way via selective breeding.
OK, understood and agreed - the banal evil of corporations would be a reason to regulate the level of allowable evil in general, not to restrict any particular technology.
I guess there might be exceptions if there are technologies that are inherently dangerous and liable to run out of control, if any such exist.
OK, I have to get involved here because there’s so much hyperbole on both sides of this debate that important nuance is being lost.
To get one thing out of the way, to the question “are today’s GMOs safe?” the overwhelming evidence suggests that this can be answered with an unequivocal “yes”, and any possibility of hazards often can be shown to exist in equal or greater probabilities in non-GMO products. Is mutagenesis through chemistry or ionizing radiation riskier than genetic engineering? The National Academy of Sciences certainly believes so.
There are, however, two issues to keep in mind moving forward. And herein lie some of the subtler nuances of this question. The first is that transgenic bioengineering has unbounded scope to introduce more diverse and more novel genetic combinations in the future than have been done to date, potentially creating genuinely novel DNA combinations from distantly related species that will require more robust safety protocols than exist today. The second is that many of the large international players involved in this, one of the world’s largest industries, are frankly about as trustworthy as the tobacco and fossil fuel industries as far as self-regulation and voluntary disclosure are concerned. This is not an argument against science and progress; it is an argument for responsible public policy.
The first point – potential future risks – has been addressed in the literature, for example:
… A significant limitation may occur in the future if transgenic technology results in more substantial and complex changes in a foodstuff. Methods have not yet been developed by which whole foods (as compared with single chemical components) can be fully evaluated for safety. Progress also needs to be made in developing definitive methods for the identification and characterization of protein allergens, and this is currently a major focus of research. Improved methods of profiling plant and microbial metabolites, proteins, and gene expression may be helpful in detecting unexpected changes in BD organisms and in establishing substantial equivalence.
Likewise, the National Academy of Sciences rates both biolistic and agrobacterium transfers of rDNA from distantly related species to be at the highest level of risk of unintended genetic effects, roughly on a par with chemical and ionizing mutagenesis:
Hazards associated with genetic modifications, specifically genetic engineering, do not fit into a simple dichotomy of genetic engineering versus nongenetic engineering breeding. Not only are many mechanisms common to both genetic engineering as a technique of genetic modification and conventional breeding, but also these techniques slightly overlap each other. Unintentional compositional changes in plants and animals are likely with all conventional and biotechnological breeding methods. The committee assessed the relative likelihood of compositional changes occurring from both genetic engineering and nongenetic engineering modification techniques and generated a continuum to express the potential for unintended compositional changes that reside in the specific products of the modification, regardless of whether the modification was intentional or not (Figure ES-1).
On the second point – trustworthiness of the principal actors and the need for regulation, a Canadian panel looking into the future of bioengineering made dozens of recommendations including this one:
The Panel recommends that the Canadian Biotechnology Advisory Commission (CBAC) undertake a review of the problems related to the increasing domination of the public research agenda by private, commercial interests, and make recommendations for public policies that promote and protect fully independent research on the health and environmental risks of agricultural biotechnology.
Which concern is supported by facts like this:
Monsanto consistently outspends all other agribusiness companies and interest groups to protect and maintain industrial agriculture’s dominance over our food system … In 2008—the year the previous federal Farm Bill was completed—the company reported a whopping $8.8 million in lobbying expenditures (see table below) intended to influence decisions in Congress, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and other federal agencies … According to documents the company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, it spent $100 million on advertising in fiscal year 2011, $87 million in FY 2012, and $95 million in FY 2013.
http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-system/genetic-engineering/lobbying-and-advertising.html#.VubFfLUmx8E
To draw a rough and imperfect analogy, asking whether GMOs are harmful is a lot like asking whether “manufactured foods” are harmful – i.e.- the question is essentially meaningless, and almost everything we eat is in some sense “manufactured” or at least processed and none of it has harmed us yet, with a few very rare exceptions that have nothing to do with their manufacturing provenance but are simply related to substances or additives that have turned out not to be as safe as previously believed.
So the moral of the story is that efforts to establish regulatory regimes and testing and labeling protocols for genetically engineered products are not entirely misguided when looking at the long term, even though many such demands today may be motivated by unfounded fears and self-serving interests. The complete story has to include the potential for much broader bioengineering strategies in the future, and the fact that none of the global industries with vested interests involved can be trusted any more than we have ever been able to trust the tobacco or fossil fuel industries.
The cautionary tale here is not about GMOs having ever caused harm or the silliness of buying non-GMO “organic” labeled foods because they’re better for you (if organic produce looks and tastes better, which it often does, go for it – but in general, the “non-GMO” label is pretty useless as an indicator of anything at all). The cautionary tale is all about the future, when the scope of genetic engineering explodes into new realms that will require much more rigorous oversight and testing than we have provisions for today. I’ll say it again: This is not an argument against science and progress; it is an argument for responsible public policy. Any other attitude – like blanket support of all GE activities including unknown future ones as unconditionally perfectly safe – is reckless and irresponsible, the modern equivalent of “trust the tobacco companies – after all, more doctors smoke Camels than any other brand!”
Thank you for that thoughtful post. And as I tried to point out above, the potential hazards include not only direct changes to the food, but indirect risks, like the over-use of roundup and subsequent hazards to the people downwind on the farmer.
Good to hear you finally acknowledge this, after multiple previous threads in which you emphasized alleged hidden dangers and suggested that the National Academy of Sciences was likely to back you up (which as you note, it did not.)
So…Hidden Dangers lie in the future (not that any current or pending research is cited), and…MONSANTO!!! BIG TOBACCO!!!
I would argue that’s not a basis for sound public policy (and not fact-based, since many new drugs and food products have been or are being researched/produced by small companies).
The “moral of the story” is that each proposed food or medical product generated through biotechnology needs to be evaluated on its own merits, and safety concerns need to have a specific basis, not general alarums about “bad things could happen”.
And anti-GMOers need to stop relying on anecdotes and bad science (like Seralini’s outpouring and the infamous “pig inflammation” study), and to cease fearmongering on the basis of Nefarious Corporate Influence. These bankrupt tactics are the same as those used by antivaxers. AVers wave their hands about ever-more “dangerous” vaccines in the research pipeline (as with warnings about unspecified new GMO products), tout anecdotes (“I know someone whose kid became autistic in the doctor’s office right after vaccination!” “Animals on my uncle’s farm won’t eat GMO feed!”), utilize horrendously bad science like that of Wakefield and the Geiers, and tell us vaccines can’t be trusted because, ya know, Big Pharma.
Beyond the NAS’ reassuring conclusions, there are hundreds of international panels and science organizations that have weighed in on GMO safety, and their conclusions are overwhelmingly positive. An enormous amount of research has been done, much of it independent of food and chemical producers, and it too is overwhelmingly in support of GMO food safety.
Should we do more research? Absolutely, and it’s going on constantly. Should new restrictions be placed on biotechnology? If rationally based, sure. Can we use pesticides more wisely on all sorts of crops, GMO and non-GMO while protecting endangered species? Of course. Could some GMO food in the future cause allergy or other unintended health consequence? Perhaps - after all, we’ve seen this on rare occasions with conventionally hybridized crops. Should we stop utilizing hype to discuss the subject, and stick with science? You bet.
wolfpup, we already have whole foods composed of the products of genetic material from widely-variant species. My supper yesterday included components produced by Triticum aestivum, Bos taurus, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Gallus gallus, Glycine max, Elaeis guineensis, Capsicum annuum, and Allium sativum. And that’s just the ones I’m sure of: There are probably a few more, too. I’m not sure how much more diverse than that you can get-- That’s already representatives of all three kingdoms of macroscopic life. Are you worried that, even those foods are safe individually, they might combine in some way to produce toxic results?
There are a number of concurrent concerns, reflected in a number of reports from the National Academy of Sciences and other sources, some of which I cited. It’s not a matter of toxicity per se which is relatively straightforward to test for, but concerns about potential long-term systemic effects of whole foods, which are notoriously difficult to test for – as we’ve discovered with additives, transfats and the like, and whole classes of foods that are now viewed as unhealthy.
As noted in the quote from the journal of toxicology, there are concerns that more and more powerful transgenic technologies may lead to products for which we don’t currently have adequate testing protocols. Biolistic gene transfers, for instance, although not particularly new, suffice as an example because they introduced risks of random and unintended changes that are similar to those of induced mutagenesis but much higher on the risk scale than traditional selective breeding. And finally, as the NAS has noted, any genetic engineering that introduces DNA from more distant species poses an elevated risk of unintended changes compared to closer species. This was illustrated in Figure ES-1 in one of my previous links; there’s a clearer one here with a good explanatory narrative:
Safety of Genetically Engineered Foods: Approaches to Assessing Unintended Health Effects
The question arises: which drugs and foods now in the research pipeline or under testing (golden rice, anticancer medications etc.) would wolfpup delay or ban because there might be “unintended consequences” that could only be prevented by unspecified stringent new regulations?
Reiterating the National Academy of Sciences panel’s conclusions on GMO food safety:
“The design and analysis of many animal-feeding studies were not optimal, but the large number of experimental studies provided reasonable evidence that animals were not harmed by eating food derived from GE crops. Additionally, long-term data on livestock health before and after the introduction of GE crops showed no adverse effects associated with GE crops. The committee also examined epidemiological data on incidence of cancers and other human-health problems over time and found no substantiated evidence that foods from GE crops were less safe than foods from non-GE crops.”
In case anyone doubts it, here are a couple of examples of the cross-pollination between antivaxers and anti-GMOers: March Against Monsanto has shown its antivax colors, and this site references a couple of prominent antivaxers who want us to believe that the use of Roundup on Roundup-Ready GMO crops is poisoning America.
No, there are synthetic substances that are allowed also as well as non-synthetic substances that aren’t. Here are the standards:
https://www.ams.usda.gov/grades-standards/organic-labeling-standards
Allowed and prohibited substances:
OK, wolfpup, so we also don’t have whole-food testing for the whole grilled cheese sandwich I ate. Are you worried about that? What did you have for supper yesterday, and was it whole-food tested? If you’re willing to tolerate the risks of those untested whole foods, what’s different with genetically-engineered foods?
Are there retirements that genetically engineered foods be tested for safety in the US? I was under the impression there weren’t, they were deemed “presumed safe”.
That being said, “More powerful” transgenic technologies probably increase safety, by allowing more precise genetic editing.
Wow! At least four argumentative fallacies rolled into a single sentence! That has to be some kind of a record. This kind of hyperbole is not helpful to your argument or to furthering the discussion. To wit:
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Poisoning the well by comparing any lack of total enthusiasm for GMOs with anti-vax lunatics.
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False syllogism: “Here’s an idiot who believes ‘x’. You believe ‘x’. Therefore you must be an idiot.”
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False premise / false equivalence: I don’t believe the same thing about GMOs that anti-vax nutters believe (or that particular group of anti-GMOers), any more than I believe in anti-vax nuttery. I was quite clear on what I believe about the safety of GMO foods. I was trying to provide context and nuance, but I appear to have run into a heavily invested Monsanto stockholder.
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Fallacy of the excluded middle: It’s possible to be thoughtfully cautious about the future path of GE without condemning the GMOs we have today or detracting from their indisputable value.
“Different” compared to what? Clearly, the National Academy’s National Research Council believes the risks of unintended health effects are higher with some types of GE than others, and higher than with selective breeding. There is some speculation that there may be greater risk potential with more fundamental genetic manipulation in the future. All of which is summed up in the headline quote from the report Elements of Precaution: Recommendations for the Regulation of Food Biotechnology in Canada – An Expert Panel Report on the Future of Food Biotechnology prepared by The Royal Society of Canada at the request of Health Canada, Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and Environment Canada:
“The risks in biotechnology are undeniable, and they stem from the unknowable in science and commerce. It is prudent to recognize and address those risks, not compound them by overly optimistic or foolhardy behaviour.”
– Editors - Nature Biotechnology (October 2000)
I just answered that: Different compared to the foods that you and I are already eating which have likewise not been subject to whole-food testing.