Is the definition of “organic” set such that GM foods cannot be organic? It’s not intutitvely obvious to me that the two are mutually exclusive. After all, are there any “organic” foods that are not, in some sense, genetic hybrids of wild varieties already? In fact, it seems that GM foods might make organic farming easier by designing in qualities that negate the need for chemical pesticides.
IANAGM expert, but I would suspect there is a spectrum of GM foods that go from “pretty much no different from old fashioned hybridization” to “wow, this is a whole new species that might grow legs and walk away”. OK, the last was a bit of an exageration, but are we reducing a very compex issue to a good/bad situation?
I’d be interested in hearing from those more knowledgeable on the subject than I am.
I am highly dubious of Collounsbury’s claim that eating genetically altered foods turned him into a constantly thirsty conservative republican Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Concerns for the safety of genetically modified foods are all based on theories and conjecture. We dont know for sure what the long term effects are. As much as scientist used to think that meats and fats were good for you, they might find something later on that would change their minds. Seedless crops might be good but what if the industry suffered some kind of production accident, how will the farms grow the shortfall if their plants cannot produce their seed? By interjecting artificiality into nature we then become dependent on that artificiality which then can be marketed and controlled.
Part of the European stance is that products containing GM should be labelled to give the consumer choice.
The problem is that governments know that many consumers do not want GM and would refuse to buy GM products meaning supermarkets wouldn’t stock them and therefore nobody would grow them.
We resent not being offered the choice. (Also once GM crops are grown, and cross pollenisation(spelling?) occurs nobody will have the choice of remaining GM free)
Although hybridisation(spelling?) has been happening for 100’s of years we have only been able to cross things that are already relatively similar which has forced us to make small incremental changes. GM gives us the possibility to take giant leaps into the unknown and that brings possible (not probable) risks.
The simplest anaolgy to the GM question that I can think of was the introduction of rabbits to Australia, result disaster. Solution Mixemtosis, result disaster.
I find myself torn on this arguement. Normally I am in favour of technology/science and pour scorn on the luddites. However once this genie is out of the bottle there will be no putting it back.
I trust you recognize that you’re picking on a slightly misused word rather than in any meaningful sense addressing my argument.
Let’s call them “small farmers,” shall we? I’m referring of course to farmers who have a small plot of land and eke out barely enough to live off of, plus sell to provide very basic necessities, and don’t have enough left over to save up for capital improvements.
Much of the GM stuff created today is in no way different than selective breeding in fast forward. Meaning - we could get to it in hundreds of generations of that particular species (many years) or we could do it in a few years of research.
As for it mixing or interbreeding with extant species, that’s about impossible if it does not go to seed - which is a good reason, next to that control issue of course. It’s all a conspiracy.
Furthermore: You’ve probably (read: most likely) all had GM food at some point in your lives, and, 'cept for a newt or two, look how healthful you are, unless you’re not, but it probably had nothing to do with GM.
Lastly: Concern should arise when people start turning green with anger, I wasted 8 bucks to see the results myself.
The vast majority of transformations is used for cloning in bacteria, and not meant to express any protein. They frequently only include fragments of genes. People can work for YEARS in labs, doing hundreds or thousands of transformations without ever expressing a protein of the gene they are cloning. Vectors with markers are used routinely when cloning in bacteria, and even with most mammalian cells, even if there, the resistance is only exploited when stable, rather than transient transfection is desired. You are also mistaken in stating that there were no way of knowing if you got your DNA into the organism. That is possible quite easily: Isolating DNA from the organism and looking for the sequence you introduced, e.g. via polymerase chain reaction. Which, if you have the right oligonucleotides at hand, is a lot quicker than inducing a protein expression, isolating protein, and showing that it is, indeed, present.
You are generalizing from yourself to others. I have several years of post graduate research experience myself, working both with bacteria and mammalian cells and worked on several projects in which expression of a protein was not the primary goal but something that might be done at the end of a long line of work. Cloning and transformation, on the other hand, were very relevant, e.g. for sequencing of a genomic fragment found in a ‘fishing expedition’ for genes regulated by certain circumstances. Yes, some time down the road, when having cloned the full gene, someone might transform cells to produce the protein. But that’s quite a way down the road.
Of course. The question is how drastic the difference is. Genes totally alien to the organism are unlikely to be easily compensateable.
We’re not talking transfer of plant genes into plants here. We’re talking transfer of genes taken from entirely different types of organisms.
From what I can tell, there are three basic lines of argument against GM foods.
Some kind of vague fear or unease associated with the concept of genetic engineering. This line of argument assumes that scientists are all these Dr. Frankenstein-type mad scientists who are doing this stuff willy-nilly and without safeguards. From what I can tell, most opponents seem to fall into this category.
The people who are arguing legitimate concerns- cross pollenization of GM foods with non-GM crops, Bt resistance, herbicide resistance, etc… These people are worth listening to- they’re raising important questions that we should consider.
The quasi-socialist/luddite types. These people are angry at GM foods because of their economic implications toward the poor. These guys seem to have an odd set of priorities- they decry GM food because it might actually be more efficient and make food cheaper, but would also potentially run the subsistence farmer out of business. These are the ones who decry GM-high-laurate canola because it may hurt the livelihoods of Filipino coconut growers. To me, this seems kind of asinine. If I was a detergent maker, I’d get really peeved if some socialist type told me I had to pay higher prices for coconut oil instead of cheap high-laurate canola oil just to help out some dude in the Phillipines. If they can’t compete, that’s their problem.
If you are going to fall for the whole “We don’t know the long term affects” argument for every conceivable product, you might as well forget about any human progress occuring. Everything has potential side effects and conseqeunces. If you wait for 50 years of testing before you use anything, technologic advancement as we know it would screech to a halt. Its all a risk benefit analysis. If you want to argue that it is bad because of economic reasons, fine, but to argue its bad for some potential unforseen health reasons, just forget about trying to convince me. We live in a country where we poison our bodies with high fat, high calorie, low nutritional value foods every day that over time has caused an epidemic of Diabetes and cardiovascular disease, but lets not use genetically modified food because 50 years from now there is a minute chance that someone might be harmed, despite no evidence to the contrary ever turning up that this migh be true.
People watch too many science fiction movies and really believe the attack of the 50 foot killer tomatoes is coming. There is very little difference between genetically modified food and the natural cross breeding that has gone on for centuries.
One detail regarding the GM process: It is not true that all transformations involve expressing a new protein. I’ve done work on “antisense” research, where the idea was to block expression of a specific protein without producing any new proteins. There are also “knockout” transformations where the screening process actually means you look for the lack of the protein you wish to knock out. Yes, it is trickier than looking for something new.
I wasn’t trying to be snarky or pick any of your nits but subsitence farming actually has a specific meaning. I had no way to know you really meant small farmer.
Now I have to ask what a small farmer is. How many acres does a farmer need before he becomes a large farmer?
Funny. So what you say is that you have the right to tell other people what relation of risks vs. benefits is the right one, and that it matters little what they actually consider acceptable? What you are talking about is not economy, it is colonization. It was precisely a gut feeling and being uncomfortable and hesitant about approving thalidomide that saved the US from the same troubles that then happened in Europe. Had the drug been rubberstamped without regard for long-term effects, the results would probably been horrible.
The fact that US citizens poison themselves with high fat, high calorie, low nutritional value food is nothing that any other nation needs to concern itself with other than providing them with the means to foster their next heart attack. It is as irrelevant as what you personally consider minute chances. Fact is that there have already been plenty of incidents that suggest care needs to be taken and that we don’t quite know enough yet about gene transfer into higher organism to start making bold claims. Surprises in gene therapy, for example, which, at its core, is nothing but genetically modifying humans, in whole or in part, have already ‘helped’ several people over one illness only to give them another, because the new genes didn’t quite integrate the way they were thought to.
False. But thanks for your comment.
Maybe you can show us a cite where some type of grain was cross bred with fish over the last centuries?
You see, it happens that similar proteins fulfill different functions in different organisms, having acquired new or lost old functions over the course of evolution. (E.g. cryptochromes are involved in the circadian clock in many organisms, but not in all of them do they react directly to light and have effects beyond circadian cycles, such as regulating growth in dependence on light). Frequently, proteins can also have entirely different functions dependent of the tissue you look at. To claim that introducing a given gene into a given organism is safe is to say you know you won’t experience any surprises. There’ve been too many surprises to make such claims and retain credibility.
A given mechanism might be disabled in one organism because it lost a certain protein. Introducing that protein and saying you are knowing what you do is stating that you know how the remnants of the mechanism will respond. Since, without the key protein, the other proteins have no longer been selected for functioning in this mechanism, that is jumping to conclusions. They might in fact do something completely different.
Another example: By the ‘junk science’ crowd, the fact that endocrine disrupters in some studies promoted hormone-driven gene expression and in others have suppressed expression driven by the same hormone has often been cited as proof of the lack of credibility of endocrine disrupter studies. In fact, it has in the meantime been shown that what these substances do entirely depends on the overal signal level. At one level, they promote gene expression, at another, they suppress it. Reliably and reproducibly. It’s ‘merely’ a feedback mechanism. Not everything that sounds completely wacko to people who believe everything some company tells them indeed is wacko. It’s just that physiological systems frequently are a wee bit more complicated, regulated through numerous feedback cycles, than they want you to know.
Because, if they’d admit they don’t quite know the ins and outs of the system they work with, you’d hardly consider their assertions that they know what they are doing particularly credible, or would you?
My question about GM crops:why can’t we go DIRECTLY to producing crops that will produce things we need right awy,like:
(1) crops that will produce alcohol directly (rather than us extracting sugar from cane, fermentingit,and distilling it)
(2) crops that will produce oils (as a substitute for dieseloil)
Seems to me weought to concentrate on this, and leave the foodsuply alone,
My problem is with the licensing process of “transgenic” crops. Corporations hold patents on specific seeds, and they may issue yearly licenses to farmers. If third world farmers can no longer afford to pay the yearly license for patented crops, they starve. Furthermore, farmers who own land next to transgenic crops have been successfully sued by patent-holders because of accidental wind cross-pollination.
I am extremely uncomfortable with the idea that a corporation may own a patent on edible plants.
Then you have been extremely uncomfortable since before you were even born. Patents were issued on conventional hybrids for decades before genetic engineering was invented.
You make claims of "many surprises" and real concerns, but give me an example and a source for a real concern over GM food that I can debate rather than some theoretical risk and I will gladly debate it with you. You can come up with a theoretical risk for just about any possible human advancement. Just give me a real source.
I don't know this for sure, but my guess is that most people who oppose GM modified food in this counrty or anywhere else don't have the first clue what is involved in it and simply oppose it because it is "unnatural." My problem with this whole issue is that there is a huge double standard in this country between things considered "natural" and "unnatural". You can market vitamins, minerals, supplements, ginseng, plant extracts and whatever other stuff in this country and basically make any claim you want about it to sell it. No one regulates this process. You have no obligation to warn of any of possible dangers, at least for the most part. Why? Because its "natural." You can't do the same thing with a drug that is manmade. And I am not arguing you should be able to make these claims, but there is simply a double standard for proof of efficacy between what is "natural" and what is "unnatural," to use for very generic terms.
Is there any proof that organic food is safer than the non-organically produced food? If so, I'd like to see it. Why does the burden of proof of safer or healthier food not fall on the organic farmers to prove it is indeed better?
As for the experts not knowing how the whole process exactly works, I could name you five drugs probably off the top of my head and probably 20 or 30 if I could look it up where the exact mechanism by which they work is not known, but they still are approved for use in humans, are for the most part safe and are extremely effective. I again come back to the fact that there is no way to know every conceivable detail of the way many chemicals work and if you expect that type of answer for every single thing you put in your body, chemical and biological technology would screech to a halt. Its an issue of how much proof do you need before allowing these crops to be used and is it really an issue of safety or is that just a smoke screen for just not wanting to deal with a new and possibly revolutionary technology.
The idea of patents troubles me less than the level of corporate control exercised now. This has absolutely not been the case for “decades before” GMO were invented. “Terminator” crops, which render their progeny infertile, are genetically modified for no productive advantage: they merely add an additional control mechanism. This bears almost nothing in common with patent enforcement of hybrids decades ago.
I already gave several. Allergic reactions to proteins not expected in a given kind of food. (Has happened with genetically modified food) Surprising cis-effects through disruptions of critical genes (has happened in gene therapy) and surprising trans-effects (continuously observed in genetic research).
These aren’t theoretical risks. Unless you consider sick people ‘theoretical’. The people contracting a leukemia-like syndrome thanks to unexpected gene integration patterns might take issue with that.
I would suggest you read a bit more posts by me in this thread rather than simply posting comments like this. You should also familiarize yourself a bit more with the discussion, rather than simply guessing wildly on the basis of nothing but catchword phrases and propaganda statements by the industry. Fact is that Europe, for example, would be much more receptive for genetically modified food that is labeled as such. That’s because such labeled food would give the individual customer a choice. But such choice is not wanted by the industry. Rather than complying with customer demands, they want the customer to be forced to eat whatever they dish out.
What is ‘this country’?
These drugs have been tested ad nauseam, including on humans, before they get on the market. And still, plenty of them show ill effects in a certain number of patients at a ratio that was not testable pre-market. For such cases, they are still officially in testing phase during the initial time on the market and can be pulled at any time.
Quite the contrary. The fallout of genomic and proteomic data of such studies would be tremendous. But the sad fact is that for many cases, there is not even a fraction of the possible data.
Quite right, it is an issue of how much proof you want. What makes your standard the right one? And what entitles you to tell, e.g., the population of the EU that they are wrong in their majority opinion?
Folks doing research in the field have working definitions; I’m frankly too lazy to go look them up right now, especially since I don’t see how the quantitative aspect of the definition is relevant to the phenomenon I’m describing.