Different technologies, different risks. Okay, so I get that you don’t think there’s any risk with GMOs. That’s very nice for you. But I don’t understand how you get from there to wanting to negate everyone else’s right to assess the risk for themselves and make their own decisions. Are you having a problem understanding the concept of informed consent?
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Another example from the Kevin-O’Leary-Acts-Like-Asshole-Gets-Schooled genre:
O’Leary vs. Chris Hedges back in the OWS days.
It gives me a pain right here every time I remember that my taxes pays that detestable prick’s salary. Not that he needs it.
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LordInsidious’s question didn’t make a lot of sense. Farmers “do the GMO” for a number of reasons unrelated to the labelling discussion. If there is, indeed, no difference then there is no reason (from a consumer’s standpoint) to select one over the other.
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But of course EPSPS is normally found in corn.
No one is negating any of your rights. Go ahead - assess the risks and make your own decisions.
And you didn’t answer my question - are conventional breeders who introduce novel traits into new crop varieties and the release them into the food supply involved in research on human subjects?
Do you guys not see why that’s alienating rather than reassuring?
Be aware you’re chatting with someone who’s decided to make a single purpose account just for this thread. (Edit: I was wrong, not a single purpose account, has old disqus account with boingboing.)
Sadly, aside from some shilling, I think dickish pedantry and generally trying to appear smarter than everyone else is the main goal for some here.
They often (ironically) use the fallacy of extension to debate against what they perceive as a fallacy of extension… and nothing really moves forward in these “conversations” because of it.
It’s shill 101. Poisoning threads on the topic with general nastiness, frustratingly obtuse exaggerations of other’s points, etc. - Next thing you know no one wants to discuss it because of all the hassles. Of course, if you call a shill a shill, they’ll whip out their favorite “tin-foil hat” retorts, etc.
On the plus side, by many of them being assholes, it hurts Monsanto’s already deservedly shitty image even more so.
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[quote=“mcwyrm, post:24, topic:7129, full:true”]But of course EPSPS is normally found in corn.[/quote]Except I didn’t say any EPSPS. I said “a variant EPSPS from Agrobacterium”, and the fact it is somewhat different from anything that occurs in corn or soy is obviously the whole reason companies bothered to add the genes. What do you hope to accomplish by ignoring what I said?
Thank you for pointing that out. But you know, it’s not like it’s unusual for someone here to criticize people cautious of GM by acting as if the technology doesn’t actually do anything. I would encourage any of them to take a step back and think whether such a patronizing approach really reassures anyone.
But I suppose if they actually want to be condescending and frustratingly difficult to talk to, like you suggest, they are doing a good enough job.
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If the standard is that any novel form of a protein needs to appear on the label you realize you’re targeting conventional crops as well, right?
I’ve been saying all along that once we fix up that educational system we’ll have some ten year olds straightening our collective asses out!
Luckily, sometimes we produce gems anyway. 
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uhh … not a single purpose account.
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You know, this could have been a reasonable conversation, if this were the order these messages appeared in. But the you-raise-an-objection-after-I-answer-it format is not something I want to proceed with.
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That’s a great example interview, thank you. If one wants to see what an obtuse, asshole troll looks like in real life on video, there’s Kevin O’Leary in all his dickhead glory. When Chris Hedges intelligently challenges him, Kevin O’Leary just does that same, old, tired dodge and weave that online trolls do… Doing things like inanely “correcting” Hedges on the specific languange of his unwarranted insult “no, I said nutbar… not nutjob”, etc.
What would these assholes ever do without being purposefully obtuse to others when they’re not simply being dense?
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The whole discussion about labeling needs to die. GMO need to be labeled, period.
I don’t think it’s necessary, and I’d eat GMO (after trials), very gladly. However, my opinion should not dictate what the rest of society does, and, as we can see the labeling issue distracts from the main issues concerning GMO crops.
In the end, the technology will improve and people will accept it, just like happened with potatoes in Europe. In the beginning nobody wanted to eat them, eventually ended up being one of the main crops in the cold Europe. Vaccines were opposed and some people claimed that Jenner wanted to turn people into cows.
In this cartoon the satirist Gillray mocks those people:
Being shady and hiding information we are not going to make people more supportive of GE.
However, I also demand strict tagging and testing for every single new hybrid variety, then. We know for a fact that some crops like tomato and potato can produce really nasty chemicals that can kill you or give you really bad food poisoning (solanins), and the sheer number of recombinant events on one of these cross breedings should give you nightmares, if you are concerned about a few genes.
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uhh … not a single purpose account.
I apologize. I stand corrected on that part.
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Well, I’m not a single purpose account, and I have always found O’Leary to be an arrogant asshole. Were I to ever present a product on Dragon’s Den I would specifically exclude his ignorant ass from any business of mine.
That said, I have literally ZERO issue with the concept of a regulated application of genetic engineering technology to food production (and many other things). Yes, the techniques are different, but I am more concerned about the outcomes than the process (aren’t you?). Lots of ongoing breeding and husbandry create all sorts of new varieties and issues. To be honest, my issues with GMO, such as they are, focus entirely on the idea that genes might be patented or otherwise unavailable to all of us (since nobody invented DNA).
To be honest I think the industry are sabotaging themselves with opposition to labelling. The simple fact is, most people won’t give a robin’s turd about the labelling after a short while, if at all. Most people choose foods based on price, freshness and flavour - usually in that order. Just let them have their labels and in 3 years only the people who give a crap will be checking for them.
Sure, organic heritage whatever would be great, but most of us don’t live in an organic cashless utopia and must balance food costs against the rest of the cost of living. I’d love to buy all organic, but it would mean my children would not have adequate clothing, no access to recreation (like sports) and I don’t know what else. My kids eating organic apples but not getting any exercise doesn’t seem like a good tradeoff to me. It’s not me being lazy, it’s me just barely balancing the budget each month - just like most people and especially most families (it was different pre-kids).
If GMOs increase food supply, decrease hunger or malnutrition and otherwise improve the lot of humanity, then good. If it is just a profit centre without those key benefits, then screw it. If it’s somewhere in the middle then we should just carry on. Label it if we must, but I personally could care less. What I get tired of is all the hyperventilating about it.
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There’s a nice blog on the Internet that occasionally posts pretty reasonable information and links to articles about GMO beyond the basic scare stuff… let me see if I can find it…
Ah, here it is: http://boingboing.net/tag/gmos
I’d skip the top article, but the rest are great.
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Here: take fifteen minutes out of your life and watch Dr. Thierry Vrain’s TEDs talk “The Gene Revolution; The Future of Agriculture”. He is a former Agriculture Canada research scientist.
He just might know what he’s talking about…
The problem is that there are different things in GMO crops, which will of course depend on the modification in question. In some cases, the difference will be a result of secondary choices enabled by the genetic modification. In the case of the various types of Bt corn, you’ll have Bt toxins designed (or rather chosen) to kill a variety of pests. These toxins are apparently mostly safe for human consumption, but since that conclusion is based primarily on animal trials conducted only for a period of months, I see no reason why some people wouldn’t want to apply the precautionary principle and avoid them (by buying more expensive, non-GMO corn). In the case of Roundup ready crops, the modification to the plant seems even more innocuous, but it has the secondary effect of allowing the engineered crops to be treated with rather large quantities of glyphosate herbicide, which remain as part of the final product (crop). Glyphosate is not acutely toxic to humans, but it may not be neutral either; recent research suggests that it can cause long-term problems by interfering with cytochrome p450 enzymes. Again, I see no reason that people shouldn’t have the option of paying more to avoid this if they want to. (edited: glyphosate is herbicide, not a pesticide)
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The part that really got me was his (near last) comment about her being young and as she grows and confronted with evidence from the other side, would change her mind…
Would he, if confronted with evidence contrary to his opinion change his mind?
answer is probably - if my sponsors tell me to change.
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I sympathize with your sentiment and realize that, for a lot of us, our short-term survival comes first. You gotta pay the rent, feed the kids, etc. However, I’d just like to point out that “food costs” go way beyond the price tag on your cereal, and that if you were to properly assess the cost of current “normal” food vs their local, organic, etc. counterparts you would quickly come to the conclusion that the supermarket stuff is actually a lot more expensive. But that would require thinking about all the energy that went into making it, all the oil running those gigantic unmanned farms, all the fossil fuels in the fertilizers and pesticides, not to mention the oil used for shipping the food all over the world. And you need to factor in the government subsidies artificially keeping the price low, and the subsidies that go into R&D of industrially-produced food, which small organic farmers get none of. AND you need to think about the health costs associated with eating shitty, nutritionless tomatoes or all the processed corn products we depend on for no reason other than the government decided a long time ago to promote corn. The obesity, the diabetes, all the doctor care, medicine, equipment, and staff that goes into taking care of folks who could have avoided illness had they eaten better. Then you can also add the cultural costs, such as the number of communities destroyed by farms having to get bigger and bigger yet employing less and less people, to the point that once-vibrant towns close up, schools close up, and the few kids that remain get bussed hours back and forth to centralized schools just because there’s not enough people left to justify a school in your town. All the tax dollars that have to go into solving those new problems, all the unemployment created by that food system, not to mention the overall decrease in the quality of life that many people have had to go through because of our economic focus on giant farms that once seemed like a good idea (aka the Green Revolution.)
Once you factor all of that and compare it to what you’re gaining when you buy vegetables from a farmer that lives near you, ships locally, grows food in a more healthy way (forget the organic label, let’s just stick to actual healthy farming practices) you might realize that the price increase in your food budget is actually a bargain.
I make no judgements about your spending habits. All I can say is, I’m a lot happier and healthier spending my money on genuinely good food than a monthly cable bill- it’s just a matter of priorities. There are people who truly can’t afford to live that way and I certainly don’t shit on their predicament… but there’s a lot of us who actually could live that way but choose not to, simply because they don’t see the value in doing so. But if they could see the picture clearly, and the actual costs of everything, they might change their mind.
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