Genetically modified foods ?

I see a debate is raging in CA but what's the real story? I see the positives, more food, less hunger, less pesticide, less land used for farming but what are the negatives that have some people up in arms and why does the EU ban imports? All I read in the article is "they" say it's not the answer.

Genetically modified organisims (GMO) suffer from several worrisome problems. The most distressing is un tested or un anitcipated side effects. Many of the grains that have been modified to be more tolerant of pesticides or herbicides actually take more of the product to keep the pests at bay, not less. The farmers are also contractually locked into using these products sometimes at financial ruin or ecological ruin. There are strict rules imposed prohibiting farmers from keeping stocks back at harvest for seeding the next year. The lab coats have determined that the second generation seeds are abnormal to some degree. This also imparts a large financial burden on the farmer.

Also in some instances the ablity of the product to release it's nutrients has been compromised. This makes it less nutritious than it's non modified or better still, organic cousins.

The additives are carried over to us in the foods and the concentrations are not known nor fully studied for all hazards to people.

One book is "Genetically Engineered Food, A Self-Defense Guide for Consumers" by Ronnie Cummins & Ben Lilliston. More information at this site.

Organic Consumers Assoc.

Dave, let me introduce you to www.debunkers.org. A discussion board that used to be connected to www.junkscience.com but something happened and they seperated. The GM discussion rages on there. Unfortunately lots of posts were lost in the rift.

P.S. Anyone remember 'Attack of the Killer Tomatoes'?

If you live in America, you're already eating it and I don't see people falling over like flies. There are indeed potential dangers in mixing genes from dissimilar plants, for example if I use a peanut gene in corn then do I make people who are alergic to peanuts alergic to that corn? But thats an artificial example, thats not what they are doing.

They have already bread out all the flavor and nutrition in favor of better shipping and harvesting characteristics, so this is just the next best thing.

I don't see much evidence that the product itself is dangerous, they just can't prove that. Much more troubling than the actual changes they make are the other issues pellidon mentions. It's not that the second generation seeds are abnormal, they are designed to not be fertile on purpose so that the farmers will have to purchase more seed from the company rather than replant part of last years crop. I really don't like that at all. If you have to purchase the seed each year it does significantly offset the other benefits of using less pestacide or herbacide or whatever.

James, To answer your last sentence I would say yes. Less pesticides, fertilizers, and other chemicals is good, isn't it? What's wrong with buying new seed every year other than the cost? If you are producing 2X the product wouldn't that pay for the seed? If farmer "B" reuses his old seed and produces half as much who is more profitable? I don't know the answer and wouldn't assume anything.

The article said 800 million people go hungry. If it's questionable why don't we produce it and feed some of these people? Is starving to death better than GM food?

I must learn more and then come back with something relevant. When I see these protest and I don't see the right or left against it in mass I get suspicious.

Outside of the higher cost for the GM seeds and that more chemicals may be necessary and not always the cheaper chemicals to boot. GM seeds can ratchet margins down to even lower levels for farmers. One of the ways farmers ofset high costs was to use seed from one year to the next.

Another source of information is the book "Eating in the Dark" by Kathleen Hart. It talks about some of the impact that the major seed processors don't disclose or report about well.

With little effort GMO free foods are available and easy to find. As a sufferer of alergies from Dairy products I have become diligent in what I consume. Not perfect but better than before.

We just don't know about long term effects yet. It took ten years for BSE (mad cow) to mainfest in Britan and another 3-5 for a new variant of the human form Cruzfled-Jacobsen Diesease (spelling?) to pop up in humans there. We are a few years behind Britan and now it may be starting here.

corrected tiping on bse

I suspect that the higher cost of GM seeds does not "ratchet margins down." Presumably the higher cost of the seeds is offset by the higher yields or lower costs elsewhere. Otherwise, what would be the profit motive to buy such seeds?

The issue of allergies and GM foods is far from clear-cut. First of all, GM technologies can be used to make plants less allergenic too. Second, we eat plenty of foods that are made by traditional cross-breeding techniques that mix up genes much more than a targetted gene-splice. The more precise genetic changes are probably less likely to add allergens than other breeding techniques.

We don't know the "long term effects" any better for GM foods than we knew the long term effects of eating kiwi fruits or red seedless grapes, but we plunged ahead anyway.

However, we do know the "long term effects" of food deprivation, which is what many of the world's poor suffer from. If GM foods can help alleviate starvation in the world, then to me that far outweighs the potential for unknown harmful effects.

As for BSE (mad cow) and Creutzfeldt-Jacobs (which is just the same thing in humans), that isn't even a GM issue. The problem that led to that disease outbreak was the practice of feeding sheep to cows. Stop using animals as animal feed, and the problem will disappear. If mad cow breaks out in the U.S., then it's not because we are a few years behind Britain, but rather because we were too foolish to take the precautions that everybody knows need to be taken.

I know BSE is not a GM issue. Just a point of lack of forethought and follow up and the time lag some problems need to germinate. There were studies in the late 50's showing a link with cannibalism and BSE (or CJD) that was brought up at the start of feeding cow parts to cows. It was sluffed off. Now after several thousands of dead cows and some persons with CJD-NV the researchers are scrabbling and pointing fingers.

Higher yeilds can cause the market to drop the price so making more does not always equal more profit. The profit is with the Con Agra's or Monsanto's of the world. Farming is always a ragged edge business. The few farmers I still know don't use GM seeds, they can't afford the seeds and chemicals.

And we don't normally inject cross species plants to the scale that GM is capable of creating. Some good, some bad. In all better and more thorough research needs to be done.

One of the real problems with feeding the hungry is political. We can ship the grain to the docks where it is left to rot or sold to other markets. Or used as cattle feed and sold back to us in hamburgers and steaks.

My hope is that it is groundless fears. But knowing the industry and it's methods I am skeptical.

Most GM work in plants is beneficial, but some is just poorly thougth out--with is what I think Pellidon is trying to get across.

Think of this. You take a gene for resistance to a pesticede and insert it into the food crop. The idea is that now you can spray *everything* with RoundUp (or some similar brand of pesticide) and the food crop will survive and the weeds will die resulting in higher yields and higher purity (What, you didn't think that everything that ends up ground into your flower was wheat, did you?). The problem comes in with the tendency of plants to swap genes around *amongst* different plants. So, now you have pesticide resistant weeds in a few years. Great, now what do you do about the weeds? More to the point, what does your neighbor do? And, what does the rest of the public do now that you're spraying *much more* pesticide than you used to?

To give some background (I'm from the sticks, don't 'cha know), there are a few ways to kill weeds. One is to use a targeted pesticide, but those tend only to kill of a very narrow family of weeds and the plants become resistant fairly quickly (here, we're talking quick in evolutionary terms, so a dozen generations or less). The other way is to selectively apply a more broad spectrum pesticide--like RoundUp. You do it 'selectively' in whatever way is practical. In beans--what are sensitive to it--they use a trick that since the weeds grow more quickly(that's how they choke out the other plants--getting to the sun first) they tend to be taller. So, run a bar holding a rope soaked in herbicide over the crop but set at a height higer than the beans and lower than the weeds. You apply to only the weeds. Yeah!

One other method is to use a 'bean buggy'. It's a device towed behind a tractor with seats for poorly paid kids to sit on and spray the weeds with little sprayers. Sure, you get the weed, but you get the few plants around it, too. So, it's not as well targeted as the bar, but it's more effective.

Which to use is a tradeoff for the farmer to make. While we're on the topic of farmers making good business decisions, let's debunk the myth of profit margin and GM seeds. Most farmers (modern ones) are quite schrewd fellows and will run all of the numbers on GM seeds before they commit to it. They won't do it if they don't think it'll make them money.

The down side to that is the fact that there may be some costs that they miss (du-ah). These can be things like the neighbor using GM weed resistant crops and causing *our* weeds to become more resistant causing *us* to pay more to kill them. Things like that.

Did I miss anything? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Back when I was one of those poorly paid kids the bean buggy concept was to ride it and pick the weeds. Did not go over very well. We did not have to worry about it as my boss raised pigs. We couldn't sell those butggies either. That brings back fun memories (because we did not have to suffer the concept).

Here is a generically altered food that I would suggest to any fish monger. Some people call them golden trout but that is a different fish all together. I know these as Lightening trout and they are the result of breeding lighter colored rainbow trout and there may be some salmon in them as well.
If you like smoked salmon I would suggest you try these little guys smoked. No heavy fishy taste and I have been told that they taste more like meat then fish.

These fish are not all that big, I just had the picture taken as a goof.

GM foods are causing a stink? Why now and not when Mendelson messed around with the pea plants in the 1800's!!

To some degree GM foods are all around us: Pink Lady apples, seedless watermelons and so forth and on and on and ho hum...

We're not talking about crossing a dog with a hamster. IMO, this is simply a little further expansion/continuance whats been done for more than a hundred years although the technology allows us to accelerate/enhance the process much like computers.

I'm sorry but I don't see the fuss.

Indeed, it's just a refinement of what mankind has been doing for at least 10,000 years.

For example, corn/maize does not grow in its familiar form without human intervention. This is an alteration of a grass plant that humanity created at least 5000 years ago; if left by itself it would return to just being a tall savannah grass with small narrow seeds and never produce big ears of corn kernels.

I'm pretty skeptical about a lot of this food research though, given that the US always produces a wheat surplus, and pays farmers not to plant crops year after year. The fact that 800 million people around the world are starving isn't because current production yields aren't bountiful enough. It's because there's no economic incentive for the governments or corporations that have the crops to go out and feed all those starving people.

The average weight of the US population keeps increasing year after year, because more and more Americans are getting obese. That's because Americans in general are over-fed - there is no food shortage, and there is no practical need to genetically engineer ever-more productive crops. We already have literally more food than we know what to do with, more food than is good for us.

I think the smart thing to do is just find other ways to make "weeds" into useful crops. The same way our ancestors did with corn, millenia ago. (Btw, corn grows so fast you can see and hear it happen. Yet another trait selected into it, thanks to its grass-weed ancestry.)

Highlandsun,

If you have not read them, Frances Moore-Lappe's books, the Diet for a Small Planet series, talks about the same issues you bring up. Especially the lack of effort/care at getting the food to the areas that need it most. If we could GM distribution systems we might have a stab at stability.

We here have regularly seen tons of corn piled on the ground at the elevators because there is no room to store it. Out in the elements it rots, molds, feeds rats and eventually gets processed into cosmetics and plastics as it is no longer food quality. At the same time there is appeals to feed the hungry here or there and all this corn rots. The logistics of getting it where it would benefit is zapped by mostly political reasons by tin-pot despots.

AFWIW,

Rmember these GM foods are being created by the same august minds that have proven that Bumblebees can't fly and Saccharin is or is not cancer causing. Sometimes it is not thier fault, they are rushed to production by marketing experts to beat brand X to the store.

Thanks for the reminder Pellidon, those books have been on my to-read list for a while...

What I think would be interesting would be research into crossing hemp with some other food crop, as hemp is naturally pest-resistant already. Of course, it probably wouldn't work; research into producing hemp with low cannabis content shows that it's actually the cannabis that makes it pest-resistant. I guess bugs don't like getting high or something, maybe it impairs their flying too much and renders them impotent so they can't procreate...

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as hemp is naturally pest-resistant already

[/ QUOTE ] Yet another reason to legalize it. May be a lot of tiedie at fruit stands in the future. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/yellowlaugh.gif
You know tomatoes take 17 of the same elements to grow.
Thanks but I will have to pass on the wine, that pasta is kickin though, how about another bowl waiter.
Oh yeah this might be better then cocaine in the Coca Cola.

Could get pretty ugly - when you eat this, you get full *and* you get the munchies!!

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The defendants do not deny the presence of Roundup Ready canola in their fields in 1998, but they urged at trial that neither Mr. Schmeiser nor Schmeiser Enterprises Ltd. have ever deliberately planted, or caused to be planted, any seeds licensed by the plaintiffs containing the patented gene. The defendants further asserted that substantial damage and loss has been suffered by them because of the herbicide-resistant plants. It is said for them that it is not possible to control the growth of the Roundup Ready canola with normal herbicides, it interferes with crop selection, making it difficult to plant anything other than canola, and it requires the adoption of new farming practices.

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From here
If you search for more info on this you will find lots on it.

There is a big difference between Hybrids which have been around since Eden and GMO stuff which is quite new.

My Great Grandfather raised hemp back 100+ years ago when it was a legal crop for yarn for clothing and rope. My Grandfather never remembered anyone even trying to smoke it. They smoked cornsilks or stalks or something goofy. They didn't get high off it but it was priced decently for kids (free). Supposedly the hemp for the clothing and seed oil markets is very low in the cannabis content.

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highlandsun said:
What I think would be interesting would be research into crossing hemp with some other food crop, as hemp is naturally pest-resistant already. Of course, it probably wouldn't work; research into producing hemp with low cannabis content shows that it's actually the cannabis that makes it pest-resistant. I guess bugs don't like getting high or something, maybe it impairs their flying too much and renders them impotent so they can't procreate...


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Oh, god, can't *pant* stop *laugh* laughing *gasp*..... Stoner bugs.... *ack.....*

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I'm still having these humorous flash backs to the scene in Heavy Metal where the pilots get stoned. "Nose dive!" *laugh*