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> it's highly unscientific to start feeding a large population with foods that haven't passed any testing It's not unscientific at all. Whether to perform exte
by Blahah 12y ago
> it's highly unscientific to start feeding a large population with foods that haven't passed any testing
It's not unscientific at all. Whether to perform extensive testing on foods is not a function of science but of public opinion.
The science tells us that all plant-derived foods outside a very small group of sources are extremely likely to be safe for the vast majority of people. There are very few exceptions, but there are some, like potatoes and tomatoes, which are both derived from poisonous wild ancestors so new strains need to be checked for reversion to the wild state. I say 'the vast majority of people', because some tiny number of people can have allergic reactions to any food, whether derived from a GMO or not.
We don't perform any testing at all on the majority of new foods introduced. This includes new plant strains bred by various mutagenesis strategies, where vast numbers of mutations are induced by chemicals or with x-rays. By comparison, GMO-derived foods receive extensive testing, but only due to public opinion, not because they are inherently more dangerous. They are in fact inherently more safe. In the process of producing a new strain by genetic modification, very few changes will be made to the genome, and they will tend to be highly predictable, whereas the conventional breeding process is highly unpredictable and introduces lots of unwanted effects. This has been demonstrated in dozens of studies.
> So, if you want to help the hungry, re-engineer the political and the economical system
This can only be said from a position of first-world comfort. It would be wonderful if we could solve the resource distribution problem. But let's not kid ourselves: it would be crazy to only try to fix the economics. What's the timescale on that change? A very long time. How likely is it to work? Not at all likely. Improving agricultural yields through technology is something we definitely can achieve, and the timescale is predictable. Hungry people will choose the technology that allows them to feed themselves now, not the promise that if the entire world economy changes they may one day get some food.
- noiv 12y agoOn the last point: This kind of reasoning has been repeated over and over again with any "food technology" rolled out since the beginning of agriculture 12,000 years ago. Still people are hungry. Maybe it is time to find out whether working on the root cause actually fixes the hunger in the world.
- Blahah 12y agoFood technology has, in the last 100 years, almost completely eradicated famine and has raised over a billion people out of severe nutritional deficit. I'm not saying don't try to fix other things. I'm saying do both.
- noiv 12y agoIn the last 100 years food waste has amounted to 1.3 billion tons per year. That's almost half of the global production. There is clearly no need to produce more food to solve hunger.
- Blahah 12y agoThat would only be true if the food wasted would otherwise be going to the world's hungry. This is not the case. Most of the world's poor do not import food, they grow it in their immediate vicinity. Increased yields help them directly. If you have a solution to the food distribution problem, by all means let's work on that at the same time. But there's no reason not to work on crop efficiency.