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This is a great summary. The entire argument frustrates me, because the two sides appear to be "GMOs are safe!" and "GMOs are inherently harmful!" I can't take

This is a great summary. The entire argument frustrates me, because the two sides appear to be "GMOs are safe!" and "GMOs are inherently harmful!" I can't take either position, I want a way to assert "GMOs represent rapid and potent change with limited oversight, regulation, and trial periods!" There's no reason at all to oppose GMOs inherently. If you use CRISPR to turn one strain of well-established corn into another strain of established corn, no one is going to get hurt. But that's not what's happening; the point of concern is that these changes are going into national consumption with minimal testing. GMO-by-year makes more sense to me than any other position going, and yet somehow your comment is the first time I've seen it proposed.

nitrogen 10y ago
It seems kind of pointless to label entire products with "GMO" or "non-GMO" when it:s the particular strain or vendor that matters. If there is to be a nationwide GMO labeling requirement, I would like to see what modifications were made to each ingredient, or at least a unique cultivar identifier that can be viewed on the USDA website. I think publicly defined testing protocols could go a long way to assuage anti-GMO fears, but my main concern is monopolization of the food supply and an overuse of monocultures.
- colordrops 10y ago
  The idea behind general labeling is that you can decide to abstain from all GMOs if you so wish. Almost no one is qualified to determine which GMOs are ok based on sepcific changes to the DNA.
  - pessimizer 10y ago
    People are qualified to choose who they trust to say that a particular GMO is ok. Then they can avoid that GMO. You know; exactly like how we handle everything else that we are not expert in.
    - colordrops 10y ago
      Fair enough, I missed the "vendor" mention in the parent's comment. But my main point was to address the fact that labels with just "GMO" are pointless, which is certainly not the case.
      - nitrogen 10y ago
        They are pointless from a rational/scientific perspective, as they add no usable information w.r.t. safety or nutrition. Identifying strains specifically would satisfy both the scientific interest (quantifying safety) and the anti-GMO interest (feeling good about being non-GMO).
        colordrops 10y ago
        > as they add no usable information w.r.t. safety or nutrition. That is where the disagreement lies. It is not clear to everyone that all current and future GMOs are safe. To patronize and label skeptics as unscientific is intellectually dishonest and a form of orwellian groupthink. There are plenty of people in the industry that claim that GMOs are not very well tested. There is no scientific reason to believe that a dangerous GMO could not be inadvertently created. A degenerate case would be to insert pufferfish toxin genes into a tomato. Obviously no one would do that intentionally, but a much more subtle issue could be carried over in a more seemingly benign gene transfer. To claim that we understand everything that genes do is a utter lie. They are orders of magnitude more complex than software, and yet we introduce bugs into software all the time. There is also lot of money and political interest behind making GMO critics look bad. There is nothing unscientific about questioning the safety of a complex engineered product that we ingest. Just look at the recent Soylent fiasco, which is a much simpler to understand product than GMOs. We are not talking about flat earth or reptilian overlords here. This is a totally legitimate thing to question, and decide to opt-out on until there is more time and data available.
        Kalium 10y ago
        There's no reason to believe that a dangerous plant could not be inadvertently created through regular breeding, either. In fact, we know with 100% certainty that this has occurred. There is excellent reason to be skeptical of everything here. GMOs are not special. Given that we know the worst has occurred with non-GMOs, one would expect intense skepticism of non-GMO breeding. How much data would satisfy you?
  - Kalium 10y ago
    The idea behind the objection to that is that "Contains GMOs" actually tells you very, very little. It doesn't tell you what was modified, what the modifications are, or what they do.
    - colordrops 10y ago
      No, I was responding to the grandparent saying that labeling GMOs was pointless. It is not pointless to those who wish to avoid them altogether. You don't need to know what was changed if you main concern is the binary question of whether it is a GMO or not. It is also no true that it tells you very very little. It tells you that there are transgenic modifications to the product's genes. That's not "very very little".
      - Kalium 10y ago
        You and I will simply have to agree to differ on this subject. I don't agree that "there are transgenic modifications to the product's genes" is a substantive information gain.
        nitrogen 10y ago
        To put it in more concrete terms, unless P(bad|GMO) >> P(bad), the information gained by a generic GMO label is at best minimal. At that point a "contains GMO" label isn't much more useful than a "contains baryonic matter" label. In anecdotal terms, suppose I'm mildly allergic to a particular cultivar of apples, but some apples are okay. Saying that a product contains apples doesn't help me know whether it's safe for me to eat. This hypothetically allergic me would need to know that it contains red delicious apples, or granny smith apples. Some GMOs simply add vitamins. Those are likely to be safer than GMOs that increase herbicidal resistance, which are in turn likely to be safer than GMOs that introduce pesticides. If a subset of the population is sensitive to Bt toxin, they need to know what kind of GMO is in a product, not just that something has GMO (as Bt, according to other comments in the thread, can be used even on organic-labeled foods).
        10y ago
M_Grey 10y ago
This is the same problem we all run into when trying to express anything complicated. A vast majority of people hew to a polar position, make a lot of noise, and drown out the reasonable middle. Given that the reasonable middle is usually relatively small, and the type who is hard to sell shit to in the first place, they're ignored.
- sampo 10y ago
  > Given that the reasonable middle is usually relatively small In your opinion, who are the "reasonable middle" in the questions of (1) is evolution true, (2) are vaccines safe and (3) is climate change true? And are they small?
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    None of those are particularly controversial from a scientific perspective, only a political one. Meanwhile the long-term future and impact of GMO's and the companies who control them are genuinely uncertain, not merely political charged.
    - sampo 10y ago
      Actually, there is a slightly higher consensus (89% of scientists) in GMO safety than there is for human-influenced climate change (88% of scientists). http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-entine/post_8915_b_6572130.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-entine/post_8915_b_6572130...
      - M_Grey 10y ago
        >Meanwhile the long-term future and impact of GMO's and the companies who control them are genuinely uncertain... That article in no way addresses my point, and I'm not in the camp who believes that GMO's are currently unsafe. If you've been reading the comment chain, you'd be aware that the discussion is about the largely unregulated nature of the beast, not to mention economic implications. As for a consensus on AGW, IIRC wasn't that more like 97%? I mean, unless you pad out the numbers by looking at people outside of the relevant fields of course.

nitrogen 10y ago

It seems kind of pointless to label entire products with "GMO" or "non-GMO" when it:s the particular strain or vendor that matters. If there is to be a nationwide GMO labeling requirement, I would like to see what modifications were made to each ingredient, or at least a unique cultivar identifier that can be viewed on the USDA website. I think publicly defined testing protocols could go a long way to assuage anti-GMO fears, but my main concern is monopolization of the food supply and an overuse of monocultures.

colordrops 10y ago
The idea behind general labeling is that you can decide to abstain from all GMOs if you so wish. Almost no one is qualified to determine which GMOs are ok based on sepcific changes to the DNA.
- pessimizer 10y ago
  People are qualified to choose who they trust to say that a particular GMO is ok. Then they can avoid that GMO. You know; exactly like how we handle everything else that we are not expert in.
  - colordrops 10y ago
    Fair enough, I missed the "vendor" mention in the parent's comment. But my main point was to address the fact that labels with just "GMO" are pointless, which is certainly not the case.
    - nitrogen 10y ago
      They are pointless from a rational/scientific perspective, as they add no usable information w.r.t. safety or nutrition. Identifying strains specifically would satisfy both the scientific interest (quantifying safety) and the anti-GMO interest (feeling good about being non-GMO).
      - colordrops 10y ago
        > as they add no usable information w.r.t. safety or nutrition. That is where the disagreement lies. It is not clear to everyone that all current and future GMOs are safe. To patronize and label skeptics as unscientific is intellectually dishonest and a form of orwellian groupthink. There are plenty of people in the industry that claim that GMOs are not very well tested. There is no scientific reason to believe that a dangerous GMO could not be inadvertently created. A degenerate case would be to insert pufferfish toxin genes into a tomato. Obviously no one would do that intentionally, but a much more subtle issue could be carried over in a more seemingly benign gene transfer. To claim that we understand everything that genes do is a utter lie. They are orders of magnitude more complex than software, and yet we introduce bugs into software all the time. There is also lot of money and political interest behind making GMO critics look bad. There is nothing unscientific about questioning the safety of a complex engineered product that we ingest. Just look at the recent Soylent fiasco, which is a much simpler to understand product than GMOs. We are not talking about flat earth or reptilian overlords here. This is a totally legitimate thing to question, and decide to opt-out on until there is more time and data available.
        Kalium 10y ago
        There's no reason to believe that a dangerous plant could not be inadvertently created through regular breeding, either. In fact, we know with 100% certainty that this has occurred. There is excellent reason to be skeptical of everything here. GMOs are not special. Given that we know the worst has occurred with non-GMOs, one would expect intense skepticism of non-GMO breeding. How much data would satisfy you?
- Kalium 10y ago
  The idea behind the objection to that is that "Contains GMOs" actually tells you very, very little. It doesn't tell you what was modified, what the modifications are, or what they do.
  - colordrops 10y ago
    No, I was responding to the grandparent saying that labeling GMOs was pointless. It is not pointless to those who wish to avoid them altogether. You don't need to know what was changed if you main concern is the binary question of whether it is a GMO or not. It is also no true that it tells you very very little. It tells you that there are transgenic modifications to the product's genes. That's not "very very little".
    - Kalium 10y ago
      You and I will simply have to agree to differ on this subject. I don't agree that "there are transgenic modifications to the product's genes" is a substantive information gain.
      - nitrogen 10y ago
        To put it in more concrete terms, unless P(bad|GMO) >> P(bad), the information gained by a generic GMO label is at best minimal. At that point a "contains GMO" label isn't much more useful than a "contains baryonic matter" label. In anecdotal terms, suppose I'm mildly allergic to a particular cultivar of apples, but some apples are okay. Saying that a product contains apples doesn't help me know whether it's safe for me to eat. This hypothetically allergic me would need to know that it contains red delicious apples, or granny smith apples. Some GMOs simply add vitamins. Those are likely to be safer than GMOs that increase herbicidal resistance, which are in turn likely to be safer than GMOs that introduce pesticides. If a subset of the population is sensitive to Bt toxin, they need to know what kind of GMO is in a product, not just that something has GMO (as Bt, according to other comments in the thread, can be used even on organic-labeled foods).
        10y ago

M_Grey 10y ago

This is the same problem we all run into when trying to express anything complicated. A vast majority of people hew to a polar position, make a lot of noise, and drown out the reasonable middle. Given that the reasonable middle is usually relatively small, and the type who is hard to sell shit to in the first place, they're ignored.

sampo 10y ago
> Given that the reasonable middle is usually relatively small In your opinion, who are the "reasonable middle" in the questions of (1) is evolution true, (2) are vaccines safe and (3) is climate change true? And are they small?
- M_Grey 10y ago
  None of those are particularly controversial from a scientific perspective, only a political one. Meanwhile the long-term future and impact of GMO's and the companies who control them are genuinely uncertain, not merely political charged.
  - sampo 10y ago
    Actually, there is a slightly higher consensus (89% of scientists) in GMO safety than there is for human-influenced climate change (88% of scientists). http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-entine/post_8915_b_6572130.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-entine/post_8915_b_6572130...
    - M_Grey 10y ago
      >Meanwhile the long-term future and impact of GMO's and the companies who control them are genuinely uncertain... That article in no way addresses my point, and I'm not in the camp who believes that GMO's are currently unsafe. If you've been reading the comment chain, you'd be aware that the discussion is about the largely unregulated nature of the beast, not to mention economic implications. As for a consensus on AGW, IIRC wasn't that more like 97%? I mean, unless you pad out the numbers by looking at people outside of the relevant fields of course.