5 ms·
What's the problem with GMOs?
by omouse 17y ago
What's the problem with GMOs?
- raintrees 17y agoQuick version: Monsanto is one of the companies creating GMO products and there methods are highly questionable to me. I would think that lack of thorough testing before releasing is a good start, in addition to cooking some of the test results to see what was desired and ignore what was detrimental to the test subjects. Isn't it currently illegal in the US to label a food as containing GMO's? Some of the same politicians that were instrumental in getting HMOs introduced into food markets (and the aforementioned ban on wording) were previous or became employees of Monsanto. Not the most disinterested of parties... Then there is the speculative links to species decline. Gene-modded soy is grown with the intention of being dowsed in pesticides, which are having negative impacts on surrounding plant and animal cultures. Fields in South America are now allegedly only capable of producing GMO corn, as cross pollination occurs, more bizarre plant reproduction ensues, until the line dies relatively prematurely (as it is designed to do) so that more seed _must_ be bought from Monsanto. And then there are the legal issues of Monsanto suing any farmer who complains that their fields have become contaminated for using Monsanto seed without paying for it. All I have read and heard so far is despicable behaviour on Monsanto's part, so I distrust their products, since I can not trust the corporation.
- rjurney 17y agoThats all fine, Monstanto is not nice. Again: whats wrong with GMO food?
- raintrees 17y agoI am sorry I rambled without answering that... I guess I have yet to learn of a GMO product that I want to consume. Breeding for traits, as I understand has been done for many, many years would seem to offer natural selection a way of killing of the inappropriate strains, in addition to giving humans time to consume, then observe any possible negative reactions (Don't eat the mushrooms with the red tops - bad!) Having a food factory produce vast quantities of recent experiments that overwhelm other sources of non-experiment strains gives me pause for concern. I understand from general consensus that we were told DDT was perfectly safe, and I vaguely remember seeing a promotional video showing children being sprayed with it, to show how "safe it was." I now understand that it is not safe at all. I guess it again circles around to whom do I trust? And is the information I am receiving accurate? I guess I am being a bit of a food Luddite...
- rjurney 17y agoThis year I lost every single one of my potatoes to scab. Imagine I planted those just after a civil war in central Africa. I need as much food - now, as I can get, right? Potato scab could seriously fuck me up. Therefore GMO potatoes sure seem like a great idea to me - if they're immune to scab. Before 'monocrops' were engineered, nations went to war over food because it was scarce. Disease killed entire crops. Since Borlaug bred disease resistant rice and wheat - war is down. Way down. We make enough food. Except - to keep up with growing populations, we have to use GMO technology to increase our agricultural output. Organic food is a first world nice to have. GMO food is a whole world MUST have. Here's two facts that may change your attitude - or at least make you question what you think you know. 1) The father of the monocrop, Norman Borlaug won the Nobel prize for saving a billion lives by increasing agricultural output enormously... and yet most people have never heard of him. Bizarre, isn't it? 2) During the famine and widespread starvation in Africa in the 80s, Greenpeace successfully opposed the export of 'chemical' fertilizers from Europe to Africa. They were banned. Bizarre, isn't it? The GMO fears are luddite. There is widespread misinformation. The FDA is incredibly strict here.
- calambrac 17y agoGosh, you really want to grow some crops, I see. Well, I've got these seeds that are completely resistant to disease, only they cost 10x more than regular seeds and they're engineered so that you don't get any more seeds from the results. But you'll get a huge yield, we promise, more than enough to keep coming back to us and buying. ...One year later... Oh, you say your crop failed? We didn't mention they needed twice as much water? That maybe they weren't as resistant to disease as we said? That there's another disease we hadn't engineered against? That the pesticides they were engineered to work in conjunction with will ruin your soil for everything else? Now you have no money left? Hmm, well... that sucks for you. Thank your government for our lucrative subsidies, though. When you commit suicide, I'm sure we'll be able to find a large corporate farming operation to come in and take over. GMO isn't the problem (that we know of). Abuse of GMO, for the purpose of locking farmers in, that's the problem.
- 17y ago
- biohacker42 17y agoThere's nothing wrong with GMO. The current applications of it are however completely uninteresting to me. They center around higher yields. That's achieved through pesticide resistance and pest resistance. There's also some for other properties like shipability. None of those features interest me. And despite the fact that the risk from them is arbitrarily close to zero, I chose not consume them, simply because again I don't see anything I care about. Lower prices don't tempt me because I can easily afford food. Additionally I am quite upset about agricultural subsidies and protectionism and would like to see those go away. Thus price reductions not related to the elimination of farm subsidies only serve to remind me of my anger at this policy.
- michael_h 17y agoIt's a risk/benefit problem. If things go wrong, we're talking about serious and permanent damage. What if roundup-ready plants end up messing with the bee population (or whatever)? What will happen to species down the food chain? What affects will arise after a while from bio-magnification? Point is, nobody yet knows. GMOs are fine, but you had better be 100% sure of what the consequences are.
- Femur 17y agoGMOs significantly increase crop yields and are helping feed a growing world population. I think most of the world is willing to take the risk of a few genes getting loose for the benefit of keeping the world fed.
- calambrac 17y agoExcept when they don't. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1082559/The-GM-genocide-Thousands-Indian-farmers-committing-suicide-using-genetically-modified-crops.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1082559/Th...
- billswift 17y agoActually, the two biggest benefits of GMOs should lead to their support by environmentalists; the fact that most environmentalists oppose GMOs, without knowing anything about the science in my experience, show their opposition is religious rather than rational. The two benefits are 1) because of their higher yields, less land need be cultivated, letting much go "back to nature", and 2) GMOs mostly need less cultivation, which means less fuels for tractors and less transportation for fertilizers, and less requirements for many pesticides.
- cb5 17y agoI was thinking about this the other day, a couple things that came to mind were - Is it not due to genetic diversity that we see the great complexity of species that have evolved on this planet, and the resiliency of the biosphere? It would seem that the introduction of species that are in many ways genetically identical would lead to similar problems that are found in the monoculture crop production of industrial farming, i.e. greater susceptibility to pests and disease. I also get the feeling that potential risks are not properly accounted for in the current system where wealth is often seen as arbitrary fiat capital and not as the health of our environment, the real wealth as it allows human beings to flourish and fuels the wealth of our ideas and actions. Say there were detrimental effects of gmo food consumption how long would it take the public to become informed? There is still widespread use of plastics and chemicals with documented scientifically evidenced deleterious health effects. I suspect more people are 'marketed to' than read scientific reports. There are the classic 'case study accomplishments' of gmo like the modified rice that provided vitamin A to a malnourished population. Counterpoint to this is that we live on an abundantly productive planet and the obstacles to proper nourishment of the members of our species are typically political. We don't see large percentages of other species that are under-nourished, we also don't see other species that have developed lopsided and convoluted systems as ours have. Regarding Monsanto et al. - " Big Biotech with Monsanto leading the pack wants to replace those millions of years with seeds like the Terminator (named for the action hero governor of California) which goes sterile after one growing cycle and obligates farmers (they sign binding contracts with Monsanto) to buy more, a process Mexican investigator Silvia Ribiero tags "bio-slavery". " - http://www.counterpunch.org/ross02142007.html http://www.counterpunch.org/ross02142007.html " Farmers are forced to sign contracts, agreeing to buy GMO seed at a company-fixed price. Monsanto's super-duper "Terminator" seed, named after California's action hero governor, goes sterile after one growing cycle and the campesinos are obligated to buy more. By getting hooked on Monsanto, Mexican farmers, once seed savers and repositories themselves of the knowledge of their inner workings, become consumers of seed, an arrangement that augurs poorly for the survival of Mexico's many native corns. " If the number of corn species declines what happens if something like Panama disease that affects bananas were to strike corn crops? Ever more genetic modification, beholden to just a few large corporations for the solution? A cynic might point out a certain degree of environmental havoc might work to the benefit of gmo companies as far as the short-sighted goals of a fiat currency profit are concerned. " Moreover, as farmers from other climes who have resisted Monsanto and refused to buy into the GMO blitz, have learned only too traumatically, pollen blowing off contaminated fields will spread to non-GMO crops. Even more egregiously, Monsanto will then send "inspectors" (often off-duty cops) to your farm and detect their patented strains in your fields and charge you with stealing the corporation's property. " " Mexican corn is, of course, not the only native crop that is being disappeared by global capitalism. Native seeds are under siege from pole to pole. In Iraq, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers come together to form the birthplace of agriculture, one of the very first acts of George Bush's neo-colonial satrap L. Paul Brenner was to issue the notorious Order 81 criminalizing the possession of native seeds. The U.S. military spread out throughout the land distributing little packets of GMO seeds, the euphemistically dubbed Operation "Amber Waves." To make sure that Iraq would no longer have a native agriculture, the national seed bank, located at Abu Ghraib, was looted and set afire. " - http://www.counterpunch.org/ross11212007.html http://www.counterpunch.org/ross11212007.html To see a company attempting to become an arbiter of food supply by claiming property rights over plants that have evolved to the benefit of all the species on this planet naturally raises some questions and opposition.