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We are seeing that still today: plenty of irrational opposition to GMOs. Eventually years from now they'll replace the old stuff, and people will wonder what al

We are seeing that still today: plenty of irrational opposition to GMOs. Eventually years from now they'll replace the old stuff, and people will wonder what all the fuss was about.

astrodust 10y ago
I'm not patently opposed to GMOs, but without reasonable disclosure on what's been spliced into your food and limitations on patentability of these organisms we could be heading into a disaster zone. Today corn is corn. What if in the future it's more fish than corn? What if you can't grow it without a license from the "manufacturer"? What if it cross-breeds with traditional corn and you can't even grow that because of patent implications? That's the fuss.
- vvanders 10y ago
  Yes, for a lot of people it's not GMOs which are the issue but the way companies that use GMOs behave. As a consumer I want to the right to patronize companies that don't purchase seeds from these companies, however under the current state of things there's no way to distinguish which produce/companies these are.
  - VLM 10y ago
    Its the classic "I'm not opposed to the tech, just opposed to the management". Likewise I'm pretty chill with nuclear power. From a tech side its a total win. Nuclear power plants managed by mega corporations, oh not so happy about that idea. But nuke plants in general, without American style management, sure, they're cool.
- Avshalom 10y ago
  That's two different fusses. One is a legal issue. The other is... piscaphobia?
- nostrademons 10y ago
  Here's what wild corn looks like: http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2009/03/23/corn_domesticated_8700_years_ago/ http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2009/03/23/corn_domesti... The difference between teosinte and maize is about 5 genes. We've been genetically modifying corn for nearly 10,000 years, but we've just done so really inefficiently. If you want to eat raw, non-GMO corn, here's what's for dinner: http://www.silae.it/files/imgs/maiz2.jpg http://www.silae.it/files/imgs/maiz2.jpg If you want to eat this, it took a few thousand years of hybridization, selective breeding, and culling: http://pngimg.com/upload/corn_PNG5273.png http://pngimg.com/upload/corn_PNG5273.png (Patents expire after 17 years, anyway; it's likely that 17 years after the first teosinte plants were cross-bred to make maize, the breeder had a complete monopoly on them anyway.)
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >The difference between teosinte and maize is about 5 genes. We've been genetically modifying corn for nearly 10,000 years, but we've just done so really inefficiently. I'm all for inefficiency when too much efficiency can cause a problem.
    - astrodust 10y ago
      Decentralization is inherently inefficient because redundancy is inefficient. Sometimes inefficient is not really a problem because you have bigger priorities, like genetic diversity and avoiding a single point of failure.
  - vvanders 10y ago
    > We've been genetically modifying corn for nearly 10,000 years, but we've just done so really inefficiently. We've also been doing it massively distributed which means it can adapt and change independent of a single/couple organizations. Yes, it's inefficient but that's also somewhat of a feature in that we don't have a single point of failure.
    - nostrademons 10y ago
      If the history of both tech and biotech is any indication, GMOs will be massively distributed on timescales much shorter than 10,000 years. Patents last for 17 years, and if drugs like penicillin or acetaminophen are any indication, generic competition springs up almost as soon as the patent is expired. It's pretty unlikely that the original development of agriculture was decentralized. In fact, we have pretty good evidence that it was intensely centralized in a few places, and that tribes that had this technology then outcompeted, conquered, and killed all the hunter/gatherer bands that resisted using it.
- keepper 10y ago
  Today, corn is corn That's because many see domesticated crops as a different thing than GMO crops... and of course, use the assumed bad behavior of one company, as a detriment to the science behind crop enhancement.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  Just make the entity that plants the IP responsible for replacing any seed it contaminates. That doesn't protect against global seed contamination, but we aren't teetering on that precipice.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    The problem with the "teetering" moment is these things have a way of sneaking up on you. Exponential growth in GMO crops would push this from an "in fifty years" thing to "in ten years" which is basically tomorrow. I also doubt Monsanto and other big GMO organizations are going to give away anything ever unless they're forced to. Their answer to everything is "sue me" because they know they'll bury you.
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      I'm basically proposing a principle that could be cast into law. Plant a crop with IP attached to it, then you better clean up after yourself. Monsanto would probably lobby against such a law, but so what, screw them and pass it anyway. I'm pretty sanguine about the teetering. Among other things, companies like Monsanto (and thus their competitors) like to do things like maintain big seed banks. So do academics and hobbyists.
MrTortoise 10y ago
irrational is fairly dismissive of the great swathes of perfectly rational suspicion. We have a terrible track record at introducing entire animals into eco systems. And the argument about eventually they will replace the old stuff is amusing because once something is gone and you wait a generation then by defintion you cannot remember what the fuss was about. When your plants no longer seed themselves and have small amounts of genetic variation itl just be a memory that this is only beneficial to a small group of people.
- baddox 10y ago
  The question is, do we really have that much more actionable data about recently (geologically/evolutionarily speaking) domesticated plant and animal food sources than we do about even more recently introduced GMO food sources? It's not like most food staples are really more "natural" or "wild" than GMO food courses.
  - virmundi 10y ago
    Yes it is more natural than GMOs. GMOs take genes from another creature, and inject it into the plant. We take known poison producers and inject them into our food because those poisons are helpful in combating some pest. The actionable data for traditional food (even that which is selectively bred) is that the majority of the population is fine with it. They've been fine with it for hundreds to thousands of years. Now if the question is would I have eaten a tomato when it was brought back from the New World? Maybe. I would said, especially since I wouldn't have any other point of reference, "Others have eaten it. They're ok. And it's one of God's creations." With GMOs, I have to ask the questions, "Do I think this is food? Do I think this is safe because I know that CEOs are rushing out things they know are bad for me." So we have evidence that GMOs are bad [0]. We know that CEOs put a low premium on safety and following the law [1]. Given that as a context, is it really irrational to pause and say, "Scientifically, do I trust this stuff? Should we require more research to see how hybridized plant-imals work?" I don't think so. 0 - http://www.hangthebankers.com/10-scientific-studies-that-prove-gmos-are-toxic/ http://www.hangthebankers.com/10-scientific-studies-that-pro... 1 - http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/business/international/vw-diesel-emissions-scandal-explained.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/business/internation...
coldtea 10y ago
>The difference between teosinte and maize is about 5 genes. We've been genetically modifying corn for nearly 10,000 years, but we've just done so really inefficiently. Given that the food industry has a long history of using whatever crap they can find if they can get away with it, and producing all kinds of addictive or harmful monstrosities if they can help them make a bigger buck (not very unlike the tobacco industry making their cigarettes more addictive with all kinds of crap), yeah, I'm suspicious. Very suspicious. If it weren't for laws and regulations, they'd be adding lead in children's milk if it was cheaper to produce.
- jamiepenney 10y ago
  The Chinese had a problem with almost exactly that - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal they added melamine to milk to raise the apparent protein levels, so they could water down the milk.
- bduerst 10y ago
  Which is why we (thankfully) have the FDA to help weigh in on the situation in the U.S.: >Credible evidence has demonstrated that foods from the [genetically engineered] plant varieties marketed to date are as safe as comparable, non-GE foods. http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodScienceResearch/GEPlants/ucm461805.htm http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodScienceResearch/GEPlants/ucm4618...
  - coldtea 10y ago
    Well, given that government agencies have been overlooking things for ages too, I would still remain suspicious.
ars 10y ago
It's not in the slightest irrational. Until you test it, you don't actually know it's safe, you just assume it is. If years from now everyone eats, that just means they've done enough involuntary human testing that people feel it's safe. It's the "involuntary" part of the testing that is bothering people right now. You might say "it's safe", but he might reply "you don't know that".
guelo 10y ago
Irrational? California is adding glyphosate to its list of known carcinogens.
- DanBC 10y ago
  California's list of known carcinogens includes just about anything, even if the dose needed to cause cancer is far larger than the dose needed to kill you in some other way. With reference to other stuff that gets sprayed on crops glyphosate is amazingly safe. (Herbicide is a significant cause of death by suicide world wide, and glyphosate reduces that because it's safer than others). If you're spraying it on crops you want to be careful. But if you're just eating the crops: you're not going to get cancer from glyphosate.
  - nkurz 10y ago
    To the downvoters: You likely don't understand how out of control the California list of known carcinogens is. I recently went to a Fry's Electronics store, and on the path to registers were non-ironic signs reading "All items on this aisle may contain substances known to the State of California to cause Cancer, or Birth Defects, or other Reproductive Harm." It has been pointed out that if in the State of California one were to sell the coins handed back as change after the sale, they too would require legally require a safety warning about the cancer risk. My favorite warning is that of Dharma Trading Post, a silk importer: "To conform to state laws, our labels make everything sound like a deadly poison, even simple things like sawdust and seaweed. The law says you have to warn everyone about everything, regardless of how obvious, stupid or remote the possibility. Anyway, we are now labeled to the "max". Please don't hold it against us." http://www.dharmatrading.com/home/safety-information.html http://www.dharmatrading.com/home/safety-information.html There are many reasons why you can legitimately be afraid of glyphosate. It's presence on California's list of chemicals requiring a Prop 65 warning should not be one of them.
- bduerst 10y ago
  Since it was added in 2015, it was disproven that glyphosate alone causes cancer. The original study used glyphosate with GBFs, the latter of which are likely to cause cancer.
kartan 10y ago
There is people that oppose GMOs business model. "...Monsanto originally sold the soybeans to farmers under a limited use license that prohibited the farmer-buyer from using the seeds for more than a single season or from saving any seed produced from the crop for replanting..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowman_v._Monsanto_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowman_v._Monsanto_Co. Global farming should not depend on patented seeds that can be made scarce as an economic strategy. It is, at least, extremely risky from an economic point of view. But it gets worse from a legal point of view. I'm all for developing new ways of farming. But if patents are so bad for software, they can be worse if we allow to patent gens.
- heliumcraft 10y ago
  I agree with you, but have in mind that patents are not limited to GMOs and affect 95% of seeds in commercial use, including the "organic" ones. There is a popular perception that only GMO seeds are patented but that's not the case.
- bduerst 10y ago
  Seed licensing is an agricultural practice that was adopted before GMO technology was available, and isn't unique to it either. I'm all for a healthy skepticism of technology, but layman critics of GMOs routinely confuse standard industry practices (such as licensing and monocultures) with the GMO technology itself.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    When was it adopted? By whom? How widely was it practiced? Were any objections raised?
    - bduerst 10y ago
      Licensing? 1970's, farmers, quite widely because of the usefulness of new private hybrid species, none.
      - 10y ago
ska 10y ago
There is also rational opposition to GMOs, or at least to aspects of how they are used. It is disingenuous but surprisingly common for people to pretend otherwise.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > There is also rational opposition to GMOs, or at least to aspects of how they are used. No, there is rational opposition to certain aspects of the use of particular crops, some of which happen to be GMOs. Since, to the extent that opposition is rational, it has nothing to do with the mechanism by which the traits that are problematically exploited were generated, it is completely irrational to generalize that rational opposition to "GMOs", or even attach it to GMOs.
  - ska 10y ago
    That is at best an oversimplification. You cannot so easily separate the trait selection mechanism from the industrial practice and economics made possible by it in a meaningful way. It's not just particular crops, after all, it's also particular techniques. Sure you can object to the blanket label "GMOs" being insufficiently precise - but that's not terribly interesting. Personally, I don't find "All GMOs are bad" and "All GMO resistance is irrational" stances to be very distinguishable in their intellectual laziness. Your mileage may vary.
  - cauterized 10y ago
    Given that one of those traits is "unable to reproduce", it's got everything to do with the mechanism by which they were generated.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    The entire field of ecology has a fairly strong anti-GMO stance which you'll find baked into textbooks. See Odum & Barrett (2009) https://www.worldcat.org/title/fundamentals-of-ecology/oclc/752776433?referer=br&ht=edition https://www.worldcat.org/title/fundamentals-of-ecology/oclc/... There's an entire chapter on the topic of GMO. Dismissing objections as antiintellectual is simply false.
noam87 10y ago
Irrational? The problem isn't replacing "engineered via slow selection" corn vs "efficiently GMO'ed corn". The problem is replacing over 300 unique varieties of corn, and over 40,000 unique varieties of rice with 3 or 4 patented, flavourless, often less nutritious varieties. Stop pretending all opponents of GMO food are scientifically illiterate new-age types. I owe my life to GMO (cancer immune therapy)... hell, I am GMO. But there is nothing inherently good about progress. Nuclear technology can be used to provide clean, cheap energy to entire cities... or it can be used to eradicate an entire town in a matter of seconds and bring decades of unimaginable human suffering. Using GMO to help third world countries grow foods they otherwise couldn't? Great. But that's not the full story, is it. Where is the great progress in getting the same bland, flavourless, overly-sweet two or three varieties of rice, corn, and potatoes in every friggen store? Is driving Indian farmers to suicide and suing small farmers who accidentally grow your crop because the wind blew progress? Is destroying thousands of years of man-driven biodiversity progress? Coming from a country where real vegetables are sold, it's depressing. Everything tastes the same in North America. Every salad, every sauce. Same shit. People don't oppose Monsanto because they hate science, they oppose monsanto because it's the Enola Gay of GMO.
- bduerst 10y ago
  Your comment is a pretty accurate depiction of the irrational opposition to GMOs. Monocultures have been an agricultural practice since the 1800s, long before GMOs and Monsanto. It's for sure a risky practice, but even if you removed Monsanto or even GMO technology from the agricultural industry, you would still have farmers monocropping hybrids. It seems you're more upset at what agriculture has become under capitalism and economies of scale, because the majority of consumers select for food based on lowest price, and not flavor or variety like you prefer.
  - xorcist 10y ago
    Because monocultures have been around for over a century, opposing them is irrational? That doesn't make sense. If your goal is to increase biodiversity, it would (at least on the surface of it) seem entirely rational to boycott GMO products. Would you care to elaborate why this is not the case?
venomsnake 10y ago
And plenty of it rational. I am against having my nation's food security tied to a monopolist. I am against monocrops which single blight could eradicate with a single supplier of seeds.
- a_c_s 10y ago
  These issues are orthogonal to GMO's. Monopolies should be handled like any other: by anti-trust authorities. Banning a specific type of technology is a poor substitute. Bananas are a monoculture due to the way they are propagated: they've been this way for over a century (and a single blight is currently wiping out the Cavendish variety that is ubiquitous in the USA). What you are asking for is to make a system of polyculture profitable: this is a worthwhile endeavor but an entirely different challenge than fighting the use of gene splicing techniques.
yourapostasy 10y ago
...irrational opposition to GMOs... My opposition is to the corporate entities behind GMOs. There is no way that I will trust any part of my food supply to corporate entities that can trivially raise an army of attorneys and specialists to silence even legitimate critics with valid evidence through legal, regulatory, political, and professional channels. The same entities that push for a carb-laden diet when there is plenty of evidence for decades it is actively harmful advice, are now behind the push for GMOs; I won't trust their offerings based upon what they are actively already doing today.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > The same entities that push for a carb-laden diet when there is plenty of evidence for decades it is actively harmful advice, are now behind the push for GMOs No, they aren't. First of all, because there is no "push for GMOs". There are a number of companies, small and large, investing in various crop technologies (and usually the same firms do both GMO and non-GMO work), and those that actually have products are selling -- and thus, "pushing for" -- those products, whether GMO or otherwise. But there is no generalized "push for GMOs". Also, many big agribusiness firms are cooperating the propaganda against GMOs, and actively promoting non-GMO and Organic products. If you aren't going to trust agricultural megabusinesses, that really restricts your food options, but it weighs on both sides of the GMO issue.
Alex3917 10y ago
> plenty of irrational opposition to GMOs. If GMOs are actually safe, then why goes the government need to pass laws making planting non-GMO crops illegal? (C.f. Order 81 in the Iraq constitution, written by the U.S. government.) The whole argument that GMOs are inherently safe doesn't even make sense; it's like saying all drugs are safe or all food is safe. It's just corporate propaganda that's marketed to the ignorant pro-science crowd. I can't believe that people here consistently fall for it, given that it's basically on the same level as what Idiocracy is making fun of with Brawndo.
imtringued 10y ago
Even if we assume that GMOs have no downsides and they solve world hunger. The problem is actually far simpler than you might think: Solving world hunger is impossible by increasing supply since demand will rise accordingly. The only solution is to decrease demand especially for meat since most plants are fed to animals. If we didn't "refine" our plants into meat then we could have instead fed the entire world population already without GMO. World hunger is largely a political problem and often it's solved by simply freeing up the markets and allowing global trade. The disadvantages include things such as vendor lock-in into expensive proprietary seeds that you can only obtain from a single supplier with compulsory proprietary herbicide/pesticide and you might become a target of lawsuits because cross pollination cannot be prevented.

We are seeing that still today: plenty of irrational opposition to GMOs. Eventually years from now they'll replace the old stuff, and people will wonder what all the fuss was about.

astrodust 10y ago

I'm not patently opposed to GMOs, but without reasonable disclosure on what's been spliced into your food and limitations on patentability of these organisms we could be heading into a disaster zone. Today corn is corn. What if in the future it's more fish than corn? What if you can't grow it without a license from the "manufacturer"? What if it cross-breeds with traditional corn and you can't even grow that because of patent implications? That's the fuss.

vvanders 10y ago
Yes, for a lot of people it's not GMOs which are the issue but the way companies that use GMOs behave. As a consumer I want to the right to patronize companies that don't purchase seeds from these companies, however under the current state of things there's no way to distinguish which produce/companies these are.
- VLM 10y ago
  Its the classic "I'm not opposed to the tech, just opposed to the management". Likewise I'm pretty chill with nuclear power. From a tech side its a total win. Nuclear power plants managed by mega corporations, oh not so happy about that idea. But nuke plants in general, without American style management, sure, they're cool.
Avshalom 10y ago
That's two different fusses. One is a legal issue. The other is... piscaphobia?
nostrademons 10y ago
Here's what wild corn looks like: http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2009/03/23/corn_domesticated_8700_years_ago/ http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2009/03/23/corn_domesti... The difference between teosinte and maize is about 5 genes. We've been genetically modifying corn for nearly 10,000 years, but we've just done so really inefficiently. If you want to eat raw, non-GMO corn, here's what's for dinner: http://www.silae.it/files/imgs/maiz2.jpg http://www.silae.it/files/imgs/maiz2.jpg If you want to eat this, it took a few thousand years of hybridization, selective breeding, and culling: http://pngimg.com/upload/corn_PNG5273.png http://pngimg.com/upload/corn_PNG5273.png (Patents expire after 17 years, anyway; it's likely that 17 years after the first teosinte plants were cross-bred to make maize, the breeder had a complete monopoly on them anyway.)
- coldtea 10y ago
  >The difference between teosinte and maize is about 5 genes. We've been genetically modifying corn for nearly 10,000 years, but we've just done so really inefficiently. I'm all for inefficiency when too much efficiency can cause a problem.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    Decentralization is inherently inefficient because redundancy is inefficient. Sometimes inefficient is not really a problem because you have bigger priorities, like genetic diversity and avoiding a single point of failure.
- vvanders 10y ago
  > We've been genetically modifying corn for nearly 10,000 years, but we've just done so really inefficiently. We've also been doing it massively distributed which means it can adapt and change independent of a single/couple organizations. Yes, it's inefficient but that's also somewhat of a feature in that we don't have a single point of failure.
  - nostrademons 10y ago
    If the history of both tech and biotech is any indication, GMOs will be massively distributed on timescales much shorter than 10,000 years. Patents last for 17 years, and if drugs like penicillin or acetaminophen are any indication, generic competition springs up almost as soon as the patent is expired. It's pretty unlikely that the original development of agriculture was decentralized. In fact, we have pretty good evidence that it was intensely centralized in a few places, and that tribes that had this technology then outcompeted, conquered, and killed all the hunter/gatherer bands that resisted using it.
keepper 10y ago
Today, corn is corn That's because many see domesticated crops as a different thing than GMO crops... and of course, use the assumed bad behavior of one company, as a detriment to the science behind crop enhancement.
maxerickson 10y ago
Just make the entity that plants the IP responsible for replacing any seed it contaminates. That doesn't protect against global seed contamination, but we aren't teetering on that precipice.
- astrodust 10y ago
  The problem with the "teetering" moment is these things have a way of sneaking up on you. Exponential growth in GMO crops would push this from an "in fifty years" thing to "in ten years" which is basically tomorrow. I also doubt Monsanto and other big GMO organizations are going to give away anything ever unless they're forced to. Their answer to everything is "sue me" because they know they'll bury you.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    I'm basically proposing a principle that could be cast into law. Plant a crop with IP attached to it, then you better clean up after yourself. Monsanto would probably lobby against such a law, but so what, screw them and pass it anyway. I'm pretty sanguine about the teetering. Among other things, companies like Monsanto (and thus their competitors) like to do things like maintain big seed banks. So do academics and hobbyists.

MrTortoise 10y ago

irrational is fairly dismissive of the great swathes of perfectly rational suspicion. We have a terrible track record at introducing entire animals into eco systems. And the argument about eventually they will replace the old stuff is amusing because once something is gone and you wait a generation then by defintion you cannot remember what the fuss was about. When your plants no longer seed themselves and have small amounts of genetic variation itl just be a memory that this is only beneficial to a small group of people.

baddox 10y ago
The question is, do we really have that much more actionable data about recently (geologically/evolutionarily speaking) domesticated plant and animal food sources than we do about even more recently introduced GMO food sources? It's not like most food staples are really more "natural" or "wild" than GMO food courses.
- virmundi 10y ago
  Yes it is more natural than GMOs. GMOs take genes from another creature, and inject it into the plant. We take known poison producers and inject them into our food because those poisons are helpful in combating some pest. The actionable data for traditional food (even that which is selectively bred) is that the majority of the population is fine with it. They've been fine with it for hundreds to thousands of years. Now if the question is would I have eaten a tomato when it was brought back from the New World? Maybe. I would said, especially since I wouldn't have any other point of reference, "Others have eaten it. They're ok. And it's one of God's creations." With GMOs, I have to ask the questions, "Do I think this is food? Do I think this is safe because I know that CEOs are rushing out things they know are bad for me." So we have evidence that GMOs are bad [0]. We know that CEOs put a low premium on safety and following the law [1]. Given that as a context, is it really irrational to pause and say, "Scientifically, do I trust this stuff? Should we require more research to see how hybridized plant-imals work?" I don't think so. 0 - http://www.hangthebankers.com/10-scientific-studies-that-prove-gmos-are-toxic/ http://www.hangthebankers.com/10-scientific-studies-that-pro... 1 - http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/business/international/vw-diesel-emissions-scandal-explained.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/business/internation...

coldtea 10y ago

>The difference between teosinte and maize is about 5 genes. We've been genetically modifying corn for nearly 10,000 years, but we've just done so really inefficiently. Given that the food industry has a long history of using whatever crap they can find if they can get away with it, and producing all kinds of addictive or harmful monstrosities if they can help them make a bigger buck (not very unlike the tobacco industry making their cigarettes more addictive with all kinds of crap), yeah, I'm suspicious. Very suspicious. If it weren't for laws and regulations, they'd be adding lead in children's milk if it was cheaper to produce.

jamiepenney 10y ago
The Chinese had a problem with almost exactly that - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal they added melamine to milk to raise the apparent protein levels, so they could water down the milk.
bduerst 10y ago
Which is why we (thankfully) have the FDA to help weigh in on the situation in the U.S.: >Credible evidence has demonstrated that foods from the [genetically engineered] plant varieties marketed to date are as safe as comparable, non-GE foods. http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodScienceResearch/GEPlants/ucm461805.htm http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodScienceResearch/GEPlants/ucm4618...
- coldtea 10y ago
  Well, given that government agencies have been overlooking things for ages too, I would still remain suspicious.

ars 10y ago

It's not in the slightest irrational. Until you test it, you don't actually know it's safe, you just assume it is. If years from now everyone eats, that just means they've done enough involuntary human testing that people feel it's safe. It's the "involuntary" part of the testing that is bothering people right now. You might say "it's safe", but he might reply "you don't know that".

guelo 10y ago

Irrational? California is adding glyphosate to its list of known carcinogens.

DanBC 10y ago
California's list of known carcinogens includes just about anything, even if the dose needed to cause cancer is far larger than the dose needed to kill you in some other way. With reference to other stuff that gets sprayed on crops glyphosate is amazingly safe. (Herbicide is a significant cause of death by suicide world wide, and glyphosate reduces that because it's safer than others). If you're spraying it on crops you want to be careful. But if you're just eating the crops: you're not going to get cancer from glyphosate.
- nkurz 10y ago
  To the downvoters: You likely don't understand how out of control the California list of known carcinogens is. I recently went to a Fry's Electronics store, and on the path to registers were non-ironic signs reading "All items on this aisle may contain substances known to the State of California to cause Cancer, or Birth Defects, or other Reproductive Harm." It has been pointed out that if in the State of California one were to sell the coins handed back as change after the sale, they too would require legally require a safety warning about the cancer risk. My favorite warning is that of Dharma Trading Post, a silk importer: "To conform to state laws, our labels make everything sound like a deadly poison, even simple things like sawdust and seaweed. The law says you have to warn everyone about everything, regardless of how obvious, stupid or remote the possibility. Anyway, we are now labeled to the "max". Please don't hold it against us." http://www.dharmatrading.com/home/safety-information.html http://www.dharmatrading.com/home/safety-information.html There are many reasons why you can legitimately be afraid of glyphosate. It's presence on California's list of chemicals requiring a Prop 65 warning should not be one of them.
bduerst 10y ago
Since it was added in 2015, it was disproven that glyphosate alone causes cancer. The original study used glyphosate with GBFs, the latter of which are likely to cause cancer.

kartan 10y ago

There is people that oppose GMOs business model. "...Monsanto originally sold the soybeans to farmers under a limited use license that prohibited the farmer-buyer from using the seeds for more than a single season or from saving any seed produced from the crop for replanting..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowman_v._Monsanto_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowman_v._Monsanto_Co. Global farming should not depend on patented seeds that can be made scarce as an economic strategy. It is, at least, extremely risky from an economic point of view. But it gets worse from a legal point of view. I'm all for developing new ways of farming. But if patents are so bad for software, they can be worse if we allow to patent gens.

heliumcraft 10y ago
I agree with you, but have in mind that patents are not limited to GMOs and affect 95% of seeds in commercial use, including the "organic" ones. There is a popular perception that only GMO seeds are patented but that's not the case.
bduerst 10y ago
Seed licensing is an agricultural practice that was adopted before GMO technology was available, and isn't unique to it either. I'm all for a healthy skepticism of technology, but layman critics of GMOs routinely confuse standard industry practices (such as licensing and monocultures) with the GMO technology itself.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  When was it adopted? By whom? How widely was it practiced? Were any objections raised?
  - bduerst 10y ago
    Licensing? 1970's, farmers, quite widely because of the usefulness of new private hybrid species, none.
    - 10y ago

ska 10y ago

There is also rational opposition to GMOs, or at least to aspects of how they are used. It is disingenuous but surprisingly common for people to pretend otherwise.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> There is also rational opposition to GMOs, or at least to aspects of how they are used. No, there is rational opposition to certain aspects of the use of particular crops, some of which happen to be GMOs. Since, to the extent that opposition is rational, it has nothing to do with the mechanism by which the traits that are problematically exploited were generated, it is completely irrational to generalize that rational opposition to "GMOs", or even attach it to GMOs.
- ska 10y ago
  That is at best an oversimplification. You cannot so easily separate the trait selection mechanism from the industrial practice and economics made possible by it in a meaningful way. It's not just particular crops, after all, it's also particular techniques. Sure you can object to the blanket label "GMOs" being insufficiently precise - but that's not terribly interesting. Personally, I don't find "All GMOs are bad" and "All GMO resistance is irrational" stances to be very distinguishable in their intellectual laziness. Your mileage may vary.
- cauterized 10y ago
  Given that one of those traits is "unable to reproduce", it's got everything to do with the mechanism by which they were generated.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  The entire field of ecology has a fairly strong anti-GMO stance which you'll find baked into textbooks. See Odum & Barrett (2009) https://www.worldcat.org/title/fundamentals-of-ecology/oclc/752776433?referer=br&ht=edition https://www.worldcat.org/title/fundamentals-of-ecology/oclc/... There's an entire chapter on the topic of GMO. Dismissing objections as antiintellectual is simply false.

noam87 10y ago

Irrational? The problem isn't replacing "engineered via slow selection" corn vs "efficiently GMO'ed corn". The problem is replacing over 300 unique varieties of corn, and over 40,000 unique varieties of rice with 3 or 4 patented, flavourless, often less nutritious varieties. Stop pretending all opponents of GMO food are scientifically illiterate new-age types. I owe my life to GMO (cancer immune therapy)... hell, I am GMO. But there is nothing inherently good about progress. Nuclear technology can be used to provide clean, cheap energy to entire cities... or it can be used to eradicate an entire town in a matter of seconds and bring decades of unimaginable human suffering. Using GMO to help third world countries grow foods they otherwise couldn't? Great. But that's not the full story, is it. Where is the great progress in getting the same bland, flavourless, overly-sweet two or three varieties of rice, corn, and potatoes in every friggen store? Is driving Indian farmers to suicide and suing small farmers who accidentally grow your crop because the wind blew progress? Is destroying thousands of years of man-driven biodiversity progress? Coming from a country where real vegetables are sold, it's depressing. Everything tastes the same in North America. Every salad, every sauce. Same shit. People don't oppose Monsanto because they hate science, they oppose monsanto because it's the Enola Gay of GMO.

bduerst 10y ago
Your comment is a pretty accurate depiction of the irrational opposition to GMOs. Monocultures have been an agricultural practice since the 1800s, long before GMOs and Monsanto. It's for sure a risky practice, but even if you removed Monsanto or even GMO technology from the agricultural industry, you would still have farmers monocropping hybrids. It seems you're more upset at what agriculture has become under capitalism and economies of scale, because the majority of consumers select for food based on lowest price, and not flavor or variety like you prefer.
- xorcist 10y ago
  Because monocultures have been around for over a century, opposing them is irrational? That doesn't make sense. If your goal is to increase biodiversity, it would (at least on the surface of it) seem entirely rational to boycott GMO products. Would you care to elaborate why this is not the case?

venomsnake 10y ago

And plenty of it rational. I am against having my nation's food security tied to a monopolist. I am against monocrops which single blight could eradicate with a single supplier of seeds.

a_c_s 10y ago
These issues are orthogonal to GMO's. Monopolies should be handled like any other: by anti-trust authorities. Banning a specific type of technology is a poor substitute. Bananas are a monoculture due to the way they are propagated: they've been this way for over a century (and a single blight is currently wiping out the Cavendish variety that is ubiquitous in the USA). What you are asking for is to make a system of polyculture profitable: this is a worthwhile endeavor but an entirely different challenge than fighting the use of gene splicing techniques.

yourapostasy 10y ago

...irrational opposition to GMOs... My opposition is to the corporate entities behind GMOs. There is no way that I will trust any part of my food supply to corporate entities that can trivially raise an army of attorneys and specialists to silence even legitimate critics with valid evidence through legal, regulatory, political, and professional channels. The same entities that push for a carb-laden diet when there is plenty of evidence for decades it is actively harmful advice, are now behind the push for GMOs; I won't trust their offerings based upon what they are actively already doing today.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> The same entities that push for a carb-laden diet when there is plenty of evidence for decades it is actively harmful advice, are now behind the push for GMOs No, they aren't. First of all, because there is no "push for GMOs". There are a number of companies, small and large, investing in various crop technologies (and usually the same firms do both GMO and non-GMO work), and those that actually have products are selling -- and thus, "pushing for" -- those products, whether GMO or otherwise. But there is no generalized "push for GMOs". Also, many big agribusiness firms are cooperating the propaganda against GMOs, and actively promoting non-GMO and Organic products. If you aren't going to trust agricultural megabusinesses, that really restricts your food options, but it weighs on both sides of the GMO issue.

Alex3917 10y ago

> plenty of irrational opposition to GMOs. If GMOs are actually safe, then why goes the government need to pass laws making planting non-GMO crops illegal? (C.f. Order 81 in the Iraq constitution, written by the U.S. government.) The whole argument that GMOs are inherently safe doesn't even make sense; it's like saying all drugs are safe or all food is safe. It's just corporate propaganda that's marketed to the ignorant pro-science crowd. I can't believe that people here consistently fall for it, given that it's basically on the same level as what Idiocracy is making fun of with Brawndo.

imtringued 10y ago

Even if we assume that GMOs have no downsides and they solve world hunger. The problem is actually far simpler than you might think: Solving world hunger is impossible by increasing supply since demand will rise accordingly. The only solution is to decrease demand especially for meat since most plants are fed to animals. If we didn't "refine" our plants into meat then we could have instead fed the entire world population already without GMO. World hunger is largely a political problem and often it's solved by simply freeing up the markets and allowing global trade. The disadvantages include things such as vendor lock-in into expensive proprietary seeds that you can only obtain from a single supplier with compulsory proprietary herbicide/pesticide and you might become a target of lawsuits because cross pollination cannot be prevented.