6 ms·

I've been preaching this sentiment for a few years, it's always fun to sign those petitions in the grocery store while telling the petitioner they are way off b

• sspiff 10y ago
  Or sweet, orange carrots: they were originally purple and bitter and had a woody core, but were selectively bred to reduce bitterness in Persia. Centuries later, they were selectively bred to be orange by Dutch royalists (in support of the royal House of Orange).
  • jdimov10 10y ago
    Does selective breeding count as GMO?
    • tremon 10y ago
      At least it's sufficiently similar to muddy the debate with UD.
      • sspiff 10y ago
        What is UD here? Uncertainty and doubt? Do you mean that the comparison using selective breeding is some kind of false argument or a straw man? I feel like selective breeding is sufficiently similar to warrant comparison. You could easily do both short-term and long-term harm or good with both if you can get people to eat what you breed.
        • tremon 10y ago
          Yes, I mean that pointing to selective breeding as if it's "all the justification for gene splicing you'll ever need" is a false equivalence. Sure, you can compare them, but you can not point to a few similarities and then wave any differences away. As one example: with selective breeding, you can at least be confident that the resulting strain is viable within its ecosystem since it is itself the product of numerous generations. Gene splicing does not come with that same viability guarantee. And I do mean that it is harmful to both sides of the debate. I have no clue whether the characterization above is even remotely valid. But most of the rhetoric is so content-free that it does not help me alter my view around GMO, in either direction. And lastly: US (and many other international) corporations do not have a good track record when it comes to acknowledging and respecting human health. The backlash against GMO is, I feel, at least partly attributable to the tobacco, food and oil industry, and the "sciences" that were complicit.
          • vonmoltke 10y ago
            > As one example: with selective breeding, you can at least be confident that the resulting strain is viable within its ecosystem since it is itself the product of numerous generations. Like hell you can. Genetic diseases and deformities have been present as long as life itself, and human selective breeding has certainly brought out traits in cultivated plants and animals that would not be present without human intervention into their ecosystem.
    • sspiff 10y ago
      I feel like they're different shades of the same colour, at least.
    • JimmyM 10y ago
      I mean, it's often much worse. http://www.petpugdog.com/pug-breathing-problems http://www.petpugdog.com/pug-breathing-problems http://thesharpeivet.co.uk/services/skin-problems/ http://thesharpeivet.co.uk/services/skin-problems/ http://web-dvm.net/what-has-happened-to-the-german-shepherd-dog-breed/ http://web-dvm.net/what-has-happened-to-the-german-shepherd-... http://www.lsu.edu/deafness/incidenc.htm http://www.lsu.edu/deafness/incidenc.htm http://news.discovery.com/animals/pets/toy-dog-breeding-causing-horrific-brain-problems-140212.htm http://news.discovery.com/animals/pets/toy-dog-breeding-caus... There are undoubtedly issues with GMO if it is abused - but the fact that it is capable of sharp distinctions between right and wrong and can be legally controlled is good, and should be embraced. Happy to see GMO companies take steps in this direction. You can't reliably control whether someone breeds dogs to suffer hip dysplasia or constant headaches due to their brain being too large for their skull. Less emotively, you can't reliably control whether apple breeders end up with over-sweet mush that no-one wants or banana breeders end up with infertile crops. We can and (I believe) should control whether or not Monsanto engineers defective crops designed to maximise their profits at the expense of farmers (note: Monsanto has not actually marketed or sold the famous 'sterile' or 'terminator' seeds at time of writing, although they own the patent). We can and should control whether or not a GMO dog is created that suffers from hip dysplasia or injurious brain problems.
      • eumoria 10y ago
        Suicide plants with the sole purpose of completely controlling the seed supply should be illegal. No loopholes, no bullshit. Illegal.
        • JimmyM 10y ago
          I agree. I also think that dog breeding should be illegal, though, which is a much less popular stance.
        • tynpeddler 10y ago
          Funnily enough, one of the reasons the terminator gene was created was because anti-gmo activist wanted assurances that artificially created genes wouldn't escape into the wild. In addition, farmers who rotate crops also want terminator seeds because it reduces the number of volunteer plants in subsequent harvests. Most of the anti terminator stuff I've read betrays a deep lack of understanding about how the underlying technology actually works.
    • patall 10y ago
      Some "fun" facts on that: - applying massive radiation (on plants) to increase the mutation rate does not count as GMO - modern Gene Editing like TALEN (and probably CRISPR soon) are currently being interpreted as non-GMO by the regulators
      • dikdik 10y ago
        I believe you are correct here, however, I do not think there is much of a difference in the end result. The popular phrase is that past techniques (radiation, selective breeding) are like taking a hammer to a genome, whereas new techniques are like taking a scalpel to a genome.
    • ucaetano 10y ago
      No. Neither does gene editing using CRISPR: http://www.nature.com/news/gene-edited-crispr-mushroom-escapes-us-regulation-1.19754 http://www.nature.com/news/gene-edited-crispr-mushroom-escap... Since in this case you're not adding new functionality, only disabling certain "features". [Edit] I'm not saying I agree with this definition, only that it's the one being used by the regulator in the US.
  • Zelmor 10y ago
    Selective breeding is not the same as injecting the genome sequences of deep sea fish species into your plats to produce new chemical elements we have no fucking idea of what they do to consumers during 60+ years of consumption.
    • jjoonathan 10y ago
      > injecting the genome of deep sea fish species You inject genes, not genomes. Injecting genomes is how breeding works, not how genetic engineering works. > to produce new chemical elements New elements are exclusively the domain of stars, nuclear physics, and particle accelerators. They have nothing to do with biology. I'll continue on the assumption that you meant "molecules." > no fucking idea of what they do It's the other way around: in selective breeding you're trying random genomes until you get literally anything that works. It would take tons of additional study to figure out why it worked, how it worked, and what the side effects are. Contrast to genetic engineering where you start with a very specific biological goal in mind, often the production of a single molecule or small set of molecules whose structure and characteristics have been extensively studied. Suppose you set out to produce more Bt protein in the plant's leaves so that it's toxic to insects while the competition breeds a plant that seems to be similarly resistant to insects. Which plant is safer? In both cases you have to do a study to find out, but in the case of the GMO you can use ultra high sensitivity studies because you can purify Bt and test its effects on mice and humans. In contrast, the plant produced by breeding would have to have an absurdly huge sample size to achieve the same sensitivity. Historically, plant breeders don't bother. Both approaches are almost always good enough, but of the two genetic engineering allows for much more precise risk prediction and characterization. That's one of genetic engineering's strong points, not weak points.
    • collyw 10y ago
      GMO doesn't involve "injecting the genome of deep sea fish species into your plants" either.
    • golergka 10y ago
      That comment confirms almost all stereotypes I have about anti-GMO people.
• crdoconnor 10y ago
  In the case of GMO foods it's the extra pesticides slathered on them that actually worries me. I'd prefer explicit pesticide labeling but GMO labeling is a close enough approximation. GMO usually means an extra dollop of roundup.
  • jjoonathan 10y ago
    I thought it was the other way around: GMO gives you better selectivity, meaning you can use less pesticide to get a given yield? I can't speak for glyphosate, but for Bt I seem to remember that you need 10x or 100x the concentration if you spray it on account of not being able to distribute it perfectly evenly.
    • ino 10y ago
      The problem is that historically the US and now global companies have a bad record of consumer protection and low regulation, specially when it comes to new technology, and you can't trust companies to act on the best interests of consumers. (lead poisoning, fracking, tobacco industry, pharma testing, environmental disasters by oil companies, agent orange and many, many more)
    • cmrdporcupine 10y ago
      Glyphosate use is way _up_ because it's a non-selective herbicide so you never used it the way they use it now. Back then you'd use it at certain times of the year when the field was barren, or maybe along a hedgerow here and there. You had to be careful because it would just as easily destroy your crop as the weeds. Now they blast the whole field with it (and it drifts next door into my field, where I am growing grape vines that are hyper-sensitive to the stuff.) The end result is a huge loss in biodiversity. I don't care about GMO for its health effects in the food chain. I care about its environmental effects.
      • vonmoltke 10y ago
        > Now they blast the whole field with it (and it drifts next door into my field, where I am growing grape vines that are hyper-sensitive to the stuff.) You can't blame genetic modification for shitty farmers. That's like blaming NSA surveillance on the Internet.
• teekert 10y ago
  Hehe, exactly, and even then, companies will mutate the crap out of yeast (for beer for example, or bacteria for Yoghurt) to make them more efficient. When they reach a satisfactory level of increased efficient they don't use said yeast/bacterial strain. Instead, they will put a wild-type yeast in a UV oven and screen for exactly the same mutations as artificially induced in the first strain. Only in the second case the process is called: Classical strain enhancement.
• littletimmy 10y ago
  This terrible argument seems to crop up again and again. Selective Breeding IS NOT Genetic Engineering. Suppose I told you that I wanted a good-looking dog. There are two ways to get that. On one hand, I could get a great male dog and mate it with a great female dog and produce a good-looking dog for you. On the other hand, I could take any dog and perform plastic surgery to make it into the dog you want. Although the final product may be similar, does anyone believe those two processes are the same? It's absolutely a nonsensical assertion. To put this in terms of logic, you're arguing that because Process X and Process Y both lead to Outcome Z, Process X and Process Y are equivalent. We know that the general case of this argument is false (e.g. bribing a police officer or not committing crime both keep you out of jail, but they are not the same processes). If you want to argue that this argument holds in the special case of GMOs, you have to argue for it! You cannot just state it and expect us to believe it because it is false in the general case.
  • collyw 10y ago
    Its targeted gene mutation versus random gene mutation - not very different if you ask me.
    • cmrdporcupine 10y ago
      There's a difference between marker assisted selection ('traditional' breeding aided by the use of genetic analysis to look for desired traits early) and physically editing the genome. I suspect you'd find most GMO critics are fine with the former. Most worrisome there have been several cases where funding for breeding programs has been cut because the 'new hotness' of genetic engineering pulls in more industry funding. An example is the 'Arctic' non-browning GMO apple here in Canada. It's a sad stupid story. Non-browning already exists as a potential trait in the natural Malus genome. Selective breeding had already produced apples here and there that had this trait. Despite this federal funding and regulatory approval was extended to the GMO program and cut from traditional breeding. And an existing non-GMO non-browning apple was ordered destroyed from a research centre. Meanwhile the Arctic apple even after approval for sale has only generated controversy, and now consumers who are suspicious about GMO will be suspicious about _any_ apple that demonstrates non-browning, GMO or not.
• a_imho 10y ago
  >Once people realize most of their food has had GMO's in it for years and to eat all non-GMO will cost them double or triple, they will all simmer down. I don't think most of the food consumed globally has GMO in it, even so for countries with significantly smaller GDP than the US. Agree though, give as much transparency as you can, put on as many information as possible and let the customers decide what they want.
  • pilom 10y ago
    Well almost all corn, rice, grapefruit and peanuts produced worldwide are GM depending on your definition.
• mason240 10y ago
  This is a terrible idea because crops are commodity. Imagine if when writing software, you had to label the brand of every proccesser used in all development machines. Not to mention the huge advantage this would give to larger farms.