4 ms·

Also, what process is there for verifying that GMOs don't have any harmful side effects that you can't use for traditionally bred plants?

by Ma8ee 5y ago

stjohnswarts 5y ago
Animal and human testing just like virtually every other biological scientific endeavor. We also have gotten pretty good at detecting chemicals that would cause such issues. I guess I'm just throwing that out there.
- Ma8ee 5y ago
  The question was about what kind of testing that can be done on GMOs that can't be done on other types of organisms. The commenter that I was hoping to answer me claimed that it is harder to test traditionally bred organisms than GMOs.
snovv_crash 5y ago
With GMOs you know exactly where the differences are, so you can test very deeply on those components. Traditional breeding and these accelerated mutation processes could have differences anywhere, so you pretty much need to do a ground up re-evaluation of the whole organism to get the same safety coverage as GM. (yeah right, like traditional breeders are going to do that).
- Ma8ee 5y ago
  You assume that it is easy to predict exactly what effect some genes from some bacteria would have is, say, spinach. It is rarely so. In traditional breeding, you know what you start with, and crossing two variants from the same species never creates anything unexpected.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - snovv_crash 5y ago
    These processes are not crossing existing lines of plants. They bombard the seeds with radiation to massively increase the number of mutations, then select in the much more highly variable results for the traits they are interested in. There is nothing predictable or controlled about the process, it is just a way of getting a result quickly without getting a GMO label at the same time. It gives the same safety margins as traditional breeding, but is much less safe than GMOs.

4 ms·

Also, what process is there for verifying that GMOs don't have any harmful side effects that you can't use for traditionally bred plants?

by Ma8ee 5y ago

Also, what process is there for verifying that GMOs don't have any harmful side effects that you can't use for traditionally bred plants?

stjohnswarts 5y ago
Animal and human testing just like virtually every other biological scientific endeavor. We also have gotten pretty good at detecting chemicals that would cause such issues. I guess I'm just throwing that out there.
- Ma8ee 5y ago
  The question was about what kind of testing that can be done on GMOs that can't be done on other types of organisms. The commenter that I was hoping to answer me claimed that it is harder to test traditionally bred organisms than GMOs.
snovv_crash 5y ago
With GMOs you know exactly where the differences are, so you can test very deeply on those components. Traditional breeding and these accelerated mutation processes could have differences anywhere, so you pretty much need to do a ground up re-evaluation of the whole organism to get the same safety coverage as GM. (yeah right, like traditional breeders are going to do that).
- Ma8ee 5y ago
  You assume that it is easy to predict exactly what effect some genes from some bacteria would have is, say, spinach. It is rarely so. In traditional breeding, you know what you start with, and crossing two variants from the same species never creates anything unexpected.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - snovv_crash 5y ago
    These processes are not crossing existing lines of plants. They bombard the seeds with radiation to massively increase the number of mutations, then select in the much more highly variable results for the traits they are interested in. There is nothing predictable or controlled about the process, it is just a way of getting a result quickly without getting a GMO label at the same time. It gives the same safety margins as traditional breeding, but is much less safe than GMOs.