11 ms·

Remember that "GMO" opposition is anti-scientific nonsense, and has led to millions of children left blind or dead [1], making it probably worse than vaccine op

by acheron 12y ago

Remember that "GMO" opposition is anti-scientific nonsense, and has led to millions of children left blind or dead [1], making it probably worse than vaccine opposition, even if the vaccine opposition is more likely to affect you personally. [1] http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2014/03/15/golden-rice-opponents-should-be-held-accountable-for-health-problems-linked-to-vitamain-a-deficiency/ http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2014/03/15/go...

Attained 12y ago
Can't agree more. Don't forget that before we had GMO's we just blasted millions of seeds with radiation until we found mutants with cool characteristics, which we then branded as natural mutations, and mass distributed. I wonder if that's how Chipotle does it....
- Vendan 12y ago
  and before that we genetically modified them through forced selection. Modern crops(pre-GMO even) bear little to no resemblance to what they were originally. Anti-GMO sentiment is bullcrap.
  - researcher88 12y ago
    Isn't there a difference though? If I want to have a Scandinavian child, I just reproduce with someone from Sweden. If I want my child to be immune to the sun and skin cancer, I just add a gene from the leaf of a tree, inject it into his DNA and see what happens? I support GMOs but nuance is important.
    - splawn 12y ago
      "nuance is important" Says someone comparing plants with human children to make a point. (And no, not much of a difference, other than with modern technique we have more control over the results)
      - narrowrail 12y ago
        Perhaps the example was not the best, but surely you see the difference between splicing DNA from different species, and selecting certain specimen based on desired traits?
        splawn 12y ago
        I see the difference in the "means" (and one is way faster\efficient), but not in the "ends".
- collyw 12y ago
  Did we? I never heard of that approach, though it makes sense. (I studied biology many years ago).
  - a_bonobo 12y ago
    It was called atomic gardening and hasn't been that popular in quite a while, a) because understandably customers may have concerns and b) results are very, very random Here's one in Japan that seems to be still active: https://www.google.com/maps?q=2425,+Kamimurata,+Hitachiohmiya,+Ibaraki+319-2293,+Japan&hl=en&ll=36.527282,140.392935&spn=0.002112,0.003363&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=34.122306,55.107422&radius=15000.000000&t=h&z=18 https://www.google.com/maps?q=2425,+Kamimurata,+Hitachiohmiy... The circle in the middle is the radiation source, and the further away the plants were planted the less mutations occurred, with the plants right next to the source dying.
    - graeme 12y ago
      So this was not the normal method of breeding prior to GMOs? I always hear the argument above mentioned whenever GMOs are discussed. Fallacy aside, it's an emotionally persuasive argument. I'm wondering if it's a central talking point that was developed by a marketing team for forum use. What is the standard non-GMO breeding method?
      - a_bonobo 12y ago
        I don't know how normal atomic gardens were, looking at their history, it looks like they were relatively popular from the mid-40s to the 60s. There are more ways to raise the mutation rate in plants, for example, by using chemicals like ethyl methanesulfonate. Ironically, many "organic" companies still sell cultivars that have been mutated using these processes. I'd be more scared of a plant with several unknown, unpredictable mutations than of a plant that has a single, directed mutation. The most "standard" breeding methods are still the "manual" ones like hybridization, where you use two different plant lines that are as homozygous as possible (in other words, they have been inbred for many generations so there's little to no genetic variety, you won't have any surprises when you use them for breeding). One famous example are Norman Borlaug's high yield semi-dwarf wheat varieties (edit: made roughly at the same time as atomic gardens were en vogue) - he crossed dwarf wheat varieties from Japan that gave little yield with high-yield varieties from America that were so thin that if the season was good and the seeds were heavy, the plants would break from the weight. The resulting semi-dwarf varieties had good yield with a stable stem.
- graeme 12y ago
  This is an extremely weak argument. You seem to be saying "the old method had all the risks people use to argue against GNOs. Therefore, GMOs are fine." If the old methods were as bad as you suggest, that doesn't prove GMOs are good. It merely extends the anti-GMO argument to modern radiation breeding methods too. The most compelling anti-GMO argument is that they could produce an interaction we wouldn't have been able to predict due to complexity, and the interaction could have negative effects that would never have been produced by random selection in nature. Once this is in the wild, it could be impossible to eliminate. Critics argue we are aiming at known, limited upside benefits, while facing unknown, potentially much larger risks. Does this apply equally to radiation mutation breeding?
  - gambiter 12y ago
    > The most compelling anti-GMO argument is that they could produce an interaction we wouldn't have been able to predict due to complexity, and the interaction could have negative effects that would never have been produced by random selection in nature. The problem is, there is no proof in that statement. It's just suspicion, fear, uncertainty, doubt. Instead of proving an actual harm, anti-GMO people are asking the industry to prove a negative. It would be like asking for a cup of water, and I hand you a cup that I filled from my Brita filter. You complain saying the mechanism contains a carbon filter, and that you believe a carbon filter can contaminate the water. Suddenly you're forcing the burden of proof on me, essentially asking me to prove your fear incorrect. Your fear that is based on... nothing. That's not how science should work. If you have uncertainty about something after the initial studies have been completed to verify safety, the burden is on you to prove it's a danger. In the case of GMOs, the industry has thrown the public a bone, so-to-speak, and done extensive testing to show that the crops are safe, even when there is no indication that they SHOULD be unsafe. Now, don't get me wrong, there is evidence that PESTICIDES are unsafe, but there's no real evidence that just adding something like a carrot gene to rice is dangerous. NO. EVIDENCE. Yet that doesn't stop people from complaining. When the evidence doesn't support their view, they immediately say that the research was funded by the evil GMO corporations, and rarely even bother to actually look up the real study. It's like Aspartame... It's one of the most tested food ingredients in history, there is ample documentation to show that it is perfectly safe, yet some people still believe it causes everything from diabetes to cancer. How much solid, peer-reviewed proof do they have to back up their belief? None.
gregd 12y ago
So just so I understand where you're coming from, you linked to an op-ed piece in Scientific American as proof of what you're saying?
- frostmatthew 12y ago
  There's a lot more than what acheron linked to support his/her statement that "GMO" opposition is anti-scientific nonsense, the scientific consensus on the matter is equal to that of climate change. There was a Forbes article[1] last year that linked to a number of studies. If you're looking for a less journalistic take and want to poke around with the data/studies yourself check out GENERA[2] (a database of peer reviewed GMO studies). FiveThirtyEight did a good piece on the gap between "what the public thinks and what scientists know" and saw the widest margin in the subject of GMO safety[3]. A recent NYT op-ed explains some of the benefits of GMOs and what caused the author to change their stance[4]. [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2014/09/17/the-debate-about-gmo-safety-is-over-thanks-to-a-new-trillion-meal-study/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2014/09/17/the-debate-... [2] http://genera.biofortified.org/ http://genera.biofortified.org/ [3] http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/theres-a-gap-between-what-the-public-thinks-and-what-scientists-know/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/theres-a-gap-between-what... [4] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/25/opinion/sunday/how-i-got-converted-to-gmo-food.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/25/opinion/sunday/how-i-got-c...
  - gregd 12y ago
    I will have a look at what you've provided above shortly. However, my opposition to GMOs lie in the fact that GMO crops have led to a widespread INCREASE in herbicide use, particularly glyphosate, which is a wide spectrum herbicide to boot. Monsanto owns glyphosate AND RoundUp Ready seeds, so they profit surreptitiously on both ends.
    - bryanlarsen 12y ago
      Source? In my personal experience, usage of roundup-ready seeds decrease herbicide use. It allows the replacement of a cocktail of several selective herbicides with a single broad sprectrum one.
eli 12y ago
I'm not sure the hyperbole is helping the debate. Chipotle using non-GMO foods probably isn't causing anyone to go blind, right?
- Vendan 12y ago
  Another company folding to bad science isn't helping people either...
  - eli 12y ago
    "Folding"? It's what customers want. According to the article, the CEO of Chipotle believes GMO ingredients are fine. But I don't think it's the duty of a fast food restaurant to tell the public that they are wrong for wanting one ingredient over another.
  - shillster 12y ago
    Its called voting with your dollars.
    - Vendan 12y ago
      Just cause something is popular doesn't make it good science. The fact that people vote against GMO's in this way is, if anything, depressing.
- eloisius 12y ago
  It at least lends credibility to anti-GMO activism.
  - eli 12y ago
    If you were hoping to make the case for evidence-based nutrition and nutritional science on the backs of the America's fast food restaurants, I think you are in for a lot of disappointment.
- baldfat 12y ago
  It feeds the conspiracy.
raverbashing 12y ago
> Remember that "GMO" opposition is anti-scientific nonsense, What is scientific nonsense is generalizing, either one way or the other Golden rice looks like a great invention, but being in favor of it means that we can't oppose any GMO or any company producing GMOs? Each case is different.
- nashashmi 12y ago
  I support this point especially when I consider companies like Monsanto who genetically engineer crops to resist just their own brand of pesticides. If you were to genetically engineer products for everyone's good, it would make sense to enter such uncharted territories, but to do it solely for the good of one entity is simply horrific.
- Kurtz79 12y ago
  Thank you. As many other sticking points GMO tend to be polarizing, and acritically defending them makes a disservice to science same as considering them "evil". Humans have been genetically modifying food (and animals) long before DNA was known. Then again, like every other product meant for human consumption it should be subject to scrutiny and monitoring, to ensure saftety. And even then, most companies will tune food products to maximize profits, and this generally means favoring the looks, yield, consistency and shelf life of a product, as opposed to flavor and texture, with the result of food that looks and feels "artificial". In general banning all GMO is a fairly stupid political and marketing move, that has little bearing on the final quality of the product: if anything they should guarantee thier customers the freshness and the quality of the ingredients, independently of their origin.
nissimk 12y ago
Isn't GMO usually equivalent to excessive use of herbicides? Isn't the most common genetic modification "roundup readiness?" Adding vitamin A producing genes to rice sounds good, but spraying all of our foods with herbicides not so much. The interesting part is that wheat is not commonly GMO, but it is still sprayed with roundup in the harvesting process to increase yield.
- nissimk 12y ago
  I'm not opposed to GMO, but I am certainly opposed to patents on biological organisms. Also, I worry about increased use of pesticides and herbicides. The most common GMO crops are: canola, corn, cotton, soy and sugar beets. Canola, soy and sugar beet modification is for roundup readiness (glyphosate). Corn and cotton are modified to make them resistant to insects without using additional pesticides. Newer studies have shown potential risks to mammals from excessive intake of roundup: http://www.nature.com/news/widely-used-herbicide-linked-to-cancer-1.17181 http://www.nature.com/news/widely-used-herbicide-linked-to-c...
  - baldfat 12y ago
    Your arguing for GMO than. GMO use less herbicides and pesticides. http://reason.com/blog/2014/11/06/biotech-crops-use-less-pesticide-study-r http://reason.com/blog/2014/11/06/biotech-crops-use-less-pes...
    - narrowrail 12y ago
      Less than organic? Maybe they are against BigAg monocrops? It's not clear, but the two options you pose are not the only ones Also, pedantic lesson for ESL learners: "You're arguing for GMO then."
      - baldfat 12y ago
        Organic is unattainable except for the elite who pay more and use more land for less crops. http://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304431104579550002888434432 http://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230443110457... which is weakly responded to by http://www.cornucopia.org/2014/05/response-wall-street-journal-article-organic-farming-sustainable/ http://www.cornucopia.org/2014/05/response-wall-street-journ...
vixen99 12y ago
'Anti-scientific nonsense' suggests a measure of zealotry and someone who thinks they have total command of all the facts. How wonderful to be so sure. Don't you think a somewhat more circumspect tone would be appropriate and more persuasive? I guess the 'anti-scientific folk' in Switzerland, Australia, Austria, China, India, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Greece, Bulgaria, Poland, Italy, and Russia who have banned GMO crops altogether are beyond the pale.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Resorting to authority is a weak argument. There's logic and history as well - like the history of nobody ever got ill from GMOs. Or the logic of, we've massively altered wild foods for millennia and had no issues; why is it different to do it in the lab? But instead we have populist fear holding sway in all those countries instead.
  - gregd 12y ago
    There are an increasing number of studies listing the harmful effects of glyphosate (Roundup) poisoning. So saying that "nobody ever got ill from GMOs" is patently false. http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/15/4/1416 http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/15/4/1416 http://sustainablepulse.com/2013/04/27/dr-swanson-gmos-and-roundup-increase-chronic-diseases-infertility-and-birth-defects/#.UXsF-LW-2So http://sustainablepulse.com/2013/04/27/dr-swanson-gmos-and-r...
    - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
      Conflating the herbicide with the crop. GMOs are only tangentially involved here. Roundup is used on lots of crops, including non-GMO crops.
      - gregd 12y ago
        Monsanto specifically makes genetically modified seeds (seeds they sell and have patented) to withstand Roundup (an herbicide they sell). That is the antithesis of being tangentially involved.
realusername 12y ago
It's funny how people like the market when it's going like they want and dislike it when it's the opposite. The majority of the population does not want to eat GMO, everyone have their own reasons, maybe they are scientifically good, maybe they are scientifically bad but at the end it does not matter. People prefer non-GMO products, that's just a fact gathered by hundreds of polls and statistics. The only thing which is keeping the GMO business still alive is the fact that there is no labeling on GMO products thanks to the lobbies. If you really want to know if the GMO business can survive alone in a free market, just label it and see what happens, it would close the debate once-for-all.
- EStudley 12y ago
  People don't want GMOs because they've been force-fed propaganda by the anti-GMO crowd.. go ahead and place GMO labels on everything, and see how many people still oppose it when they find their favorite food with a GMO label on it.
  - realusername 12y ago
    Exactly, maybe it will change people's mind and they will accept it more, or it could be just the opposite and people would boycott lots of products. But until there is a label, it's difficult to know. At least with a label, we will see instantly if GMOs are making economic sense.
  - gregd 12y ago
    As a consumer, I deserve to know the truth about what is in the food that I purchase and feed to my family. If putting a GMO label on the food that has it, leads consumers to still purchase that, it's their right to do that. My question to you is, what harm is there in that label?
    - dfxm12 12y ago
      A label on your food isn't necessarily the truth. If you want want the truth, you really have to take that responsibility for yourself. The government is not good at labeling organic food[0], and there is no reason to believe they'll get GMO labeling right, since the same issues are involved. [0] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_certification#Issues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_certification#Issues
dabernathy89 12y ago
Much of the opposition to GMOs isn't related to the science, but to the business practices of GMO companies and the farming methods involved in the industry. I'm totally on your side about the anti-science nature of many anti-GMO activists, but there's more to it than that.
baldfat 12y ago
Neil Degrasse Tyson on GMO: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ecT2CaL7NA Best TL:DR in video form on the issue. It is 2 minutes long and it stumps every anti-GMO friend I have. They don't switch but they also can't argue "natural" apples, strawberries or wheat since they are all artificial.
- baldfat 12y ago
  OKAY with a downvote care to say why you disagree with Neil Degrasse Tyson's statement about GMO?
yourapostasy 12y ago
Not ignoring the benefits to GMO, but how can I be sure any long-term health risks are aggressively watched for by the Cargill's and Monsanto's of the world? The US and EU are reasonably good at food safety, but managing food-related health risks is much more complexly difficult, and few in the lay public even appreciate the distinction. Will the producers spend the budget to proactively and aggressively seek to test for health failure modes once the product is accepted by regulatory bodies and even consumers? No. Even if they happen to find suggestions of a potential defect, will they pursue those hints with well-funded efforts for timely conclusions? No. If long-term harm is found, will they continue to sell the product unless forced to retract by regulatory action or consumer backlash? Yes. Let me put it another way. Say there is a $10B annual profit on $100B annual revenue for just one GMO product. It is all on the line, including the hefty annual bonuses contingent upon that profit, by the personal action of the executive board upon the results of a study that isn't well-publicized, but internal scientists say the study's conclusion of a strongly-suggested causal link are legit. Through inaction, "we need to study this more before taking drastic steps", yet another profitable quarter and bonuses are assured. What do you reasonably expect to happen in the real world? The historical record conclusively shows the food industry as a whole does not work with extremely long-term (decades) health issues. They generally leave that up to the medical industry, which introduces an entirely different set of problems. It is only recently that the lipid hypothesis is coming under much more rigorous scrutiny. We continue to flood our supply chains with simple carbohydrates, even after ample evidence showing how they play a large role in harming our bodies when consumed in large quantities over decades-long periods. Understand I'm not claiming this is by malicious action. This is simply what happens under our current incentive structures and our current civilization's culturally-driven risk assessment mechanisms. As a species so far, we're pretty good at responding to fast-acting risks on short timelines, but as the risks' effects become more diffuse to detect over longer timelines, our capacity to respond, especially through committee-heavy organizations, is sharply diminished. Stepping back for perspective, this is actually somewhat a good problem to face. This signals our tool usage has gotten complex enough that we are facing increasingly longer timespans of effects, meaning over successive generations we are gradually building up surplus productive capacity to fund increasingly sophisticated and/or complex tools to address ever more complex problem spaces.
legulere 12y ago
This hasn't really much to do with science. Golden rice was planned to address the problem of a (almost) rice-only diet leading to vitamin-a deficiency. This completely ignores the other effects of such a imbalanced diet. Eating different kinds of food is like the number one recommendation of food scientists. The next step would be replacing the varieties of rice grown by golden rice. This includes the difficulty of distribution. This is really notable because one of the reasons for the project is that it's seen as too hard to distribute other sources of vitamin A (like pills) in those regions. There also might be a reduction of genetic diversity.

by acheron 12y ago

Attained 12y ago

Can't agree more. Don't forget that before we had GMO's we just blasted millions of seeds with radiation until we found mutants with cool characteristics, which we then branded as natural mutations, and mass distributed. I wonder if that's how Chipotle does it....

Vendan 12y ago
and before that we genetically modified them through forced selection. Modern crops(pre-GMO even) bear little to no resemblance to what they were originally. Anti-GMO sentiment is bullcrap.
- researcher88 12y ago
  Isn't there a difference though? If I want to have a Scandinavian child, I just reproduce with someone from Sweden. If I want my child to be immune to the sun and skin cancer, I just add a gene from the leaf of a tree, inject it into his DNA and see what happens? I support GMOs but nuance is important.
  - splawn 12y ago
    "nuance is important" Says someone comparing plants with human children to make a point. (And no, not much of a difference, other than with modern technique we have more control over the results)
    - narrowrail 12y ago
      Perhaps the example was not the best, but surely you see the difference between splicing DNA from different species, and selecting certain specimen based on desired traits?
      - splawn 12y ago
        I see the difference in the "means" (and one is way faster\efficient), but not in the "ends".
collyw 12y ago
Did we? I never heard of that approach, though it makes sense. (I studied biology many years ago).
- a_bonobo 12y ago
  It was called atomic gardening and hasn't been that popular in quite a while, a) because understandably customers may have concerns and b) results are very, very random Here's one in Japan that seems to be still active: https://www.google.com/maps?q=2425,+Kamimurata,+Hitachiohmiya,+Ibaraki+319-2293,+Japan&hl=en&ll=36.527282,140.392935&spn=0.002112,0.003363&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=34.122306,55.107422&radius=15000.000000&t=h&z=18 https://www.google.com/maps?q=2425,+Kamimurata,+Hitachiohmiy... The circle in the middle is the radiation source, and the further away the plants were planted the less mutations occurred, with the plants right next to the source dying.
  - graeme 12y ago
    So this was not the normal method of breeding prior to GMOs? I always hear the argument above mentioned whenever GMOs are discussed. Fallacy aside, it's an emotionally persuasive argument. I'm wondering if it's a central talking point that was developed by a marketing team for forum use. What is the standard non-GMO breeding method?
    - a_bonobo 12y ago
      I don't know how normal atomic gardens were, looking at their history, it looks like they were relatively popular from the mid-40s to the 60s. There are more ways to raise the mutation rate in plants, for example, by using chemicals like ethyl methanesulfonate. Ironically, many "organic" companies still sell cultivars that have been mutated using these processes. I'd be more scared of a plant with several unknown, unpredictable mutations than of a plant that has a single, directed mutation. The most "standard" breeding methods are still the "manual" ones like hybridization, where you use two different plant lines that are as homozygous as possible (in other words, they have been inbred for many generations so there's little to no genetic variety, you won't have any surprises when you use them for breeding). One famous example are Norman Borlaug's high yield semi-dwarf wheat varieties (edit: made roughly at the same time as atomic gardens were en vogue) - he crossed dwarf wheat varieties from Japan that gave little yield with high-yield varieties from America that were so thin that if the season was good and the seeds were heavy, the plants would break from the weight. The resulting semi-dwarf varieties had good yield with a stable stem.
graeme 12y ago
This is an extremely weak argument. You seem to be saying "the old method had all the risks people use to argue against GNOs. Therefore, GMOs are fine." If the old methods were as bad as you suggest, that doesn't prove GMOs are good. It merely extends the anti-GMO argument to modern radiation breeding methods too. The most compelling anti-GMO argument is that they could produce an interaction we wouldn't have been able to predict due to complexity, and the interaction could have negative effects that would never have been produced by random selection in nature. Once this is in the wild, it could be impossible to eliminate. Critics argue we are aiming at known, limited upside benefits, while facing unknown, potentially much larger risks. Does this apply equally to radiation mutation breeding?
- gambiter 12y ago
  > The most compelling anti-GMO argument is that they could produce an interaction we wouldn't have been able to predict due to complexity, and the interaction could have negative effects that would never have been produced by random selection in nature. The problem is, there is no proof in that statement. It's just suspicion, fear, uncertainty, doubt. Instead of proving an actual harm, anti-GMO people are asking the industry to prove a negative. It would be like asking for a cup of water, and I hand you a cup that I filled from my Brita filter. You complain saying the mechanism contains a carbon filter, and that you believe a carbon filter can contaminate the water. Suddenly you're forcing the burden of proof on me, essentially asking me to prove your fear incorrect. Your fear that is based on... nothing. That's not how science should work. If you have uncertainty about something after the initial studies have been completed to verify safety, the burden is on you to prove it's a danger. In the case of GMOs, the industry has thrown the public a bone, so-to-speak, and done extensive testing to show that the crops are safe, even when there is no indication that they SHOULD be unsafe. Now, don't get me wrong, there is evidence that PESTICIDES are unsafe, but there's no real evidence that just adding something like a carrot gene to rice is dangerous. NO. EVIDENCE. Yet that doesn't stop people from complaining. When the evidence doesn't support their view, they immediately say that the research was funded by the evil GMO corporations, and rarely even bother to actually look up the real study. It's like Aspartame... It's one of the most tested food ingredients in history, there is ample documentation to show that it is perfectly safe, yet some people still believe it causes everything from diabetes to cancer. How much solid, peer-reviewed proof do they have to back up their belief? None.

gregd 12y ago

So just so I understand where you're coming from, you linked to an op-ed piece in Scientific American as proof of what you're saying?

frostmatthew 12y ago
There's a lot more than what acheron linked to support his/her statement that "GMO" opposition is anti-scientific nonsense, the scientific consensus on the matter is equal to that of climate change. There was a Forbes article[1] last year that linked to a number of studies. If you're looking for a less journalistic take and want to poke around with the data/studies yourself check out GENERA[2] (a database of peer reviewed GMO studies). FiveThirtyEight did a good piece on the gap between "what the public thinks and what scientists know" and saw the widest margin in the subject of GMO safety[3]. A recent NYT op-ed explains some of the benefits of GMOs and what caused the author to change their stance[4]. [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2014/09/17/the-debate-about-gmo-safety-is-over-thanks-to-a-new-trillion-meal-study/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2014/09/17/the-debate-... [2] http://genera.biofortified.org/ http://genera.biofortified.org/ [3] http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/theres-a-gap-between-what-the-public-thinks-and-what-scientists-know/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/theres-a-gap-between-what... [4] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/25/opinion/sunday/how-i-got-converted-to-gmo-food.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/25/opinion/sunday/how-i-got-c...
- gregd 12y ago
  I will have a look at what you've provided above shortly. However, my opposition to GMOs lie in the fact that GMO crops have led to a widespread INCREASE in herbicide use, particularly glyphosate, which is a wide spectrum herbicide to boot. Monsanto owns glyphosate AND RoundUp Ready seeds, so they profit surreptitiously on both ends.
  - bryanlarsen 12y ago
    Source? In my personal experience, usage of roundup-ready seeds decrease herbicide use. It allows the replacement of a cocktail of several selective herbicides with a single broad sprectrum one.

eli 12y ago

I'm not sure the hyperbole is helping the debate. Chipotle using non-GMO foods probably isn't causing anyone to go blind, right?

Vendan 12y ago
Another company folding to bad science isn't helping people either...
- eli 12y ago
  "Folding"? It's what customers want. According to the article, the CEO of Chipotle believes GMO ingredients are fine. But I don't think it's the duty of a fast food restaurant to tell the public that they are wrong for wanting one ingredient over another.
- shillster 12y ago
  Its called voting with your dollars.
  - Vendan 12y ago
    Just cause something is popular doesn't make it good science. The fact that people vote against GMO's in this way is, if anything, depressing.
eloisius 12y ago
It at least lends credibility to anti-GMO activism.
- eli 12y ago
  If you were hoping to make the case for evidence-based nutrition and nutritional science on the backs of the America's fast food restaurants, I think you are in for a lot of disappointment.
baldfat 12y ago
It feeds the conspiracy.

raverbashing 12y ago

> Remember that "GMO" opposition is anti-scientific nonsense, What is scientific nonsense is generalizing, either one way or the other Golden rice looks like a great invention, but being in favor of it means that we can't oppose any GMO or any company producing GMOs? Each case is different.

nashashmi 12y ago
I support this point especially when I consider companies like Monsanto who genetically engineer crops to resist just their own brand of pesticides. If you were to genetically engineer products for everyone's good, it would make sense to enter such uncharted territories, but to do it solely for the good of one entity is simply horrific.
Kurtz79 12y ago
Thank you. As many other sticking points GMO tend to be polarizing, and acritically defending them makes a disservice to science same as considering them "evil". Humans have been genetically modifying food (and animals) long before DNA was known. Then again, like every other product meant for human consumption it should be subject to scrutiny and monitoring, to ensure saftety. And even then, most companies will tune food products to maximize profits, and this generally means favoring the looks, yield, consistency and shelf life of a product, as opposed to flavor and texture, with the result of food that looks and feels "artificial". In general banning all GMO is a fairly stupid political and marketing move, that has little bearing on the final quality of the product: if anything they should guarantee thier customers the freshness and the quality of the ingredients, independently of their origin.

nissimk 12y ago

Isn't GMO usually equivalent to excessive use of herbicides? Isn't the most common genetic modification "roundup readiness?" Adding vitamin A producing genes to rice sounds good, but spraying all of our foods with herbicides not so much. The interesting part is that wheat is not commonly GMO, but it is still sprayed with roundup in the harvesting process to increase yield.

nissimk 12y ago
I'm not opposed to GMO, but I am certainly opposed to patents on biological organisms. Also, I worry about increased use of pesticides and herbicides. The most common GMO crops are: canola, corn, cotton, soy and sugar beets. Canola, soy and sugar beet modification is for roundup readiness (glyphosate). Corn and cotton are modified to make them resistant to insects without using additional pesticides. Newer studies have shown potential risks to mammals from excessive intake of roundup: http://www.nature.com/news/widely-used-herbicide-linked-to-cancer-1.17181 http://www.nature.com/news/widely-used-herbicide-linked-to-c...
- baldfat 12y ago
  Your arguing for GMO than. GMO use less herbicides and pesticides. http://reason.com/blog/2014/11/06/biotech-crops-use-less-pesticide-study-r http://reason.com/blog/2014/11/06/biotech-crops-use-less-pes...
  - narrowrail 12y ago
    Less than organic? Maybe they are against BigAg monocrops? It's not clear, but the two options you pose are not the only ones Also, pedantic lesson for ESL learners: "You're arguing for GMO then."
    - baldfat 12y ago
      Organic is unattainable except for the elite who pay more and use more land for less crops. http://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304431104579550002888434432 http://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230443110457... which is weakly responded to by http://www.cornucopia.org/2014/05/response-wall-street-journal-article-organic-farming-sustainable/ http://www.cornucopia.org/2014/05/response-wall-street-journ...

vixen99 12y ago

'Anti-scientific nonsense' suggests a measure of zealotry and someone who thinks they have total command of all the facts. How wonderful to be so sure. Don't you think a somewhat more circumspect tone would be appropriate and more persuasive? I guess the 'anti-scientific folk' in Switzerland, Australia, Austria, China, India, France, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg, Greece, Bulgaria, Poland, Italy, and Russia who have banned GMO crops altogether are beyond the pale.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
Resorting to authority is a weak argument. There's logic and history as well - like the history of nobody ever got ill from GMOs. Or the logic of, we've massively altered wild foods for millennia and had no issues; why is it different to do it in the lab? But instead we have populist fear holding sway in all those countries instead.
- gregd 12y ago
  There are an increasing number of studies listing the harmful effects of glyphosate (Roundup) poisoning. So saying that "nobody ever got ill from GMOs" is patently false. http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/15/4/1416 http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/15/4/1416 http://sustainablepulse.com/2013/04/27/dr-swanson-gmos-and-roundup-increase-chronic-diseases-infertility-and-birth-defects/#.UXsF-LW-2So http://sustainablepulse.com/2013/04/27/dr-swanson-gmos-and-r...
  - JoeAltmaier 12y ago
    Conflating the herbicide with the crop. GMOs are only tangentially involved here. Roundup is used on lots of crops, including non-GMO crops.
    - gregd 12y ago
      Monsanto specifically makes genetically modified seeds (seeds they sell and have patented) to withstand Roundup (an herbicide they sell). That is the antithesis of being tangentially involved.

realusername 12y ago

It's funny how people like the market when it's going like they want and dislike it when it's the opposite. The majority of the population does not want to eat GMO, everyone have their own reasons, maybe they are scientifically good, maybe they are scientifically bad but at the end it does not matter. People prefer non-GMO products, that's just a fact gathered by hundreds of polls and statistics. The only thing which is keeping the GMO business still alive is the fact that there is no labeling on GMO products thanks to the lobbies. If you really want to know if the GMO business can survive alone in a free market, just label it and see what happens, it would close the debate once-for-all.

EStudley 12y ago
People don't want GMOs because they've been force-fed propaganda by the anti-GMO crowd.. go ahead and place GMO labels on everything, and see how many people still oppose it when they find their favorite food with a GMO label on it.
- realusername 12y ago
  Exactly, maybe it will change people's mind and they will accept it more, or it could be just the opposite and people would boycott lots of products. But until there is a label, it's difficult to know. At least with a label, we will see instantly if GMOs are making economic sense.
- gregd 12y ago
  As a consumer, I deserve to know the truth about what is in the food that I purchase and feed to my family. If putting a GMO label on the food that has it, leads consumers to still purchase that, it's their right to do that. My question to you is, what harm is there in that label?
  - dfxm12 12y ago
    A label on your food isn't necessarily the truth. If you want want the truth, you really have to take that responsibility for yourself. The government is not good at labeling organic food[0], and there is no reason to believe they'll get GMO labeling right, since the same issues are involved. [0] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_certification#Issues http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_certification#Issues

dabernathy89 12y ago

Much of the opposition to GMOs isn't related to the science, but to the business practices of GMO companies and the farming methods involved in the industry. I'm totally on your side about the anti-science nature of many anti-GMO activists, but there's more to it than that.

baldfat 12y ago

Neil Degrasse Tyson on GMO: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ecT2CaL7NA Best TL:DR in video form on the issue. It is 2 minutes long and it stumps every anti-GMO friend I have. They don't switch but they also can't argue "natural" apples, strawberries or wheat since they are all artificial.

baldfat 12y ago
OKAY with a downvote care to say why you disagree with Neil Degrasse Tyson's statement about GMO?

yourapostasy 12y ago

Not ignoring the benefits to GMO, but how can I be sure any long-term health risks are aggressively watched for by the Cargill's and Monsanto's of the world? The US and EU are reasonably good at food safety, but managing food-related health risks is much more complexly difficult, and few in the lay public even appreciate the distinction. Will the producers spend the budget to proactively and aggressively seek to test for health failure modes once the product is accepted by regulatory bodies and even consumers? No. Even if they happen to find suggestions of a potential defect, will they pursue those hints with well-funded efforts for timely conclusions? No. If long-term harm is found, will they continue to sell the product unless forced to retract by regulatory action or consumer backlash? Yes. Let me put it another way. Say there is a $10B annual profit on $100B annual revenue for just one GMO product. It is all on the line, including the hefty annual bonuses contingent upon that profit, by the personal action of the executive board upon the results of a study that isn't well-publicized, but internal scientists say the study's conclusion of a strongly-suggested causal link are legit. Through inaction, "we need to study this more before taking drastic steps", yet another profitable quarter and bonuses are assured. What do you reasonably expect to happen in the real world? The historical record conclusively shows the food industry as a whole does not work with extremely long-term (decades) health issues. They generally leave that up to the medical industry, which introduces an entirely different set of problems. It is only recently that the lipid hypothesis is coming under much more rigorous scrutiny. We continue to flood our supply chains with simple carbohydrates, even after ample evidence showing how they play a large role in harming our bodies when consumed in large quantities over decades-long periods. Understand I'm not claiming this is by malicious action. This is simply what happens under our current incentive structures and our current civilization's culturally-driven risk assessment mechanisms. As a species so far, we're pretty good at responding to fast-acting risks on short timelines, but as the risks' effects become more diffuse to detect over longer timelines, our capacity to respond, especially through committee-heavy organizations, is sharply diminished. Stepping back for perspective, this is actually somewhat a good problem to face. This signals our tool usage has gotten complex enough that we are facing increasingly longer timespans of effects, meaning over successive generations we are gradually building up surplus productive capacity to fund increasingly sophisticated and/or complex tools to address ever more complex problem spaces.

legulere 12y ago

This hasn't really much to do with science. Golden rice was planned to address the problem of a (almost) rice-only diet leading to vitamin-a deficiency. This completely ignores the other effects of such a imbalanced diet. Eating different kinds of food is like the number one recommendation of food scientists. The next step would be replacing the varieties of rice grown by golden rice. This includes the difficulty of distribution. This is really notable because one of the reasons for the project is that it's seen as too hard to distribute other sources of vitamin A (like pills) in those regions. There also might be a reduction of genetic diversity.