Thread: GMF Scare

What are your opinions on the genetic modified food scare.

enviro hype

as far as i'm aware, about zero people have died or been grievously injured through the ingestion of GMF

Originally Posted by jjg

What are your opinions on the genetic modified food scare.

They're complicated. What do you specifically want our opinions on?

I think it is silly. People like to ignore the modifications humans have done to pretty much every single thing we eat (EVEN 'organic' foods), yet the minute it is done in a lab as opposed to through husbandry and breeding, it is the devil's work. If this is the case, I hope I go to hell and eat like a king.

There are some legitimate concerns. Big companies like Monsanto monopolizing on crops. That hybrid corn monopoly, you can't even reseed and it's not verified that it even produces more crop.

Originally Posted by jjg

There are some legitimate concerns. Big companies like Monsanto monopolizing on crops. That hybrid corn monopoly, you can't even reseed and it's not verified that it even produces more crop.

I agree there are issues there. But that said, those have nothing to do with GM tech itself, but more to do with intellectual property law.

Agreed. What is this nonsense about proteins forming in fish that scientists can't identify? I'm not up on my mcrobiology, but you wouldn't even be dealing with a fish if unidentified proteins were forming.

Originally Posted by jjg

Agreed. What is this nonsense about proteins forming in fish that scientists can't identify? I'm not up on my mcrobiology, but you wouldn't even be dealing with a fish if unidentified proteins were forming.

Never heard of this. Do you have a source?

I'll look around. Apparently the scare is that these unknown proteins will change the bacteria in our stomachs.

Another argument is that they create allergies, makes you sterile and that cows don't like the taste of the alfalfa.

Originally Posted by jjg

I'll look around. Apparently the scare is that these unknown proteins will change the bacteria in our stomachs.

That's pretty vague. See if you can find a source on that. Sounds sort of scaremongering, and to be honest I wouldn't spread something like that around without a fairly solid grasp on the source and the details.

Originally Posted by jjg

Another argument is that they create allergies, makes you sterile and that cows don't like the taste of the alfalfa.

Those aren't arguments, they're claims. If they were clearly substantiated, they might support an argument. I've never heard of any research supporting any of these specific claims, but by all means post some if you have it. Research papers or mainstream press reports if you can't get those. Please, please, please don't link us to conspiracy theory/amateur environmentalist type websites. I would love to have an evidence-based debate about GM on the Biology forum, but any of that nonsense and this thread will be moved to Pseudoscience.

I tend to think the only real issues, though they are important issues, are the implications of the control GMO technology gives to Monsanto. They're practically the stereotype of an evil corporation bent on world domination. Some concern may be reasonable, Monsanto has a tendency of refusing to release its own experimental data, often court orders have been required to get Monsanto to release the results of its own safety testing. There may be evidence of some mild toxicity by some of Monsanto's GMO corn crops in rats, but the sample sizes are small, and we don't have human trials to compare it to. Monsanto doesn't like to make it easy for people to study the safety of their products.

A Comparison of the Effects of Three GM Corn Varieties on Mammalian Health

genetically modified food - Google Scholar
genetically modified organisms - Google Scholar

Some links to listings of articles on GMF's and GMO's.

I myself use insulin that is recombinant origin. Just like any technology, genetic recombination and modification has the power to harm or help.
I do worry about this power being in the hands of organizations(corporations) with a penchant for greed(profit before people).

Added later in edit;
Skimming through IFTS link I realized I'm far more frightened of the Roundup than I am of the GMO's. It would seem that herbicide resistant crops would tend to have more herbicide applied, hence more residue at the consumer end of the chain.

Although not directly related to food, there are some minor problems with herbicide-resistant crops escaping to become weeds elsewhere. I read recently about rape seed oil (canola) weeds (so-called "feral crops") being found that are resistant to both Monsanto's glyphosate-based Roundup and Bayer's gluphosinate-based herbicide. Resistance genes from one plant have thus found their way into another plant containing different resistance genes from another company. They could maybe cross with related non-crop species.

Corporate centralized control of the food supply is bad, as Haiti most recently rediscovered, but the scariest part of the GM avalanche is the apparent blindness of its proponents to the inherent hazards.

We have people talking about these fundamental level manipulations as if they were comparable to crossbreeding and natural selection - the same sort of thing, with the same risks and bad possibilities, as ordinary breeding efforts. We have people talking about this stuff as if there were some largely complete body of thoroughly vetted research fitted into a largely known and well-understood environmental context backing their assurances. We have people prattling goofy nonsense - such as atrazine resistant crops being developed to reduce the use of atrazine, or bred in insecticide production not encouraging evolution of resistance in target insects, or there being essentially no risk of these modifications getting loose into the general environment and incorporated into other plants or animals - in official venues and from influential positions.

Meanwhile they seem to be making quite obvious and flagrant mistakes. Last I heard, well over 75% of the corn and beans planted in the US was atrazine resistant via the same or indistinguishably similar stretch of shotgunned genetics actively controlling cellular transport and sequestration throughout the plants so modified - uh, guys, that's been a known bad idea since 1840s Ireland (potato fungus), relearned in 1970s America (corn fungus), and a consideration of ecological analysis at very basic levels for generations now.

But what can you say to people who set out to put Brazil nut proteins into soybeans, and only allergy tested the results because an outsider happened to notice what they were doing and had enough status to interject a note of alarm?

Did we learn nothing from the trans fat debacle? That was just the last few years.

These people cannot be trusted to be sensible. They are playing with dynamite and motivated, as well as blinded, by greed. They need adult, competent supervision - in particular, detailed and rigorous regulation by prudent and informed people who have no economic stake in the stuff.