It takes stones to call out pirates on boingboing.
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Or we could have solved this problem 20 years ago with sterile pollen or sterile seed plants, but Greenpeace insisted on having contamination instead. Such plants are used by plant breeders and the sterile pollen apocalypse hasnāt happened. The risk level of this technology is probably a lot lower than the risks associated with chewing gum that kills a couple people a year by choking and maybe someone that gets crushed by a fork lift pallet of Juicy Fruit.
Well, Iām not a single purpose account
Didnāt say you were. 
I am more concerned about the outcomes than the process (arenāt you?)
Sure!
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
I agree for the most part.
However, I am concerned that most of the funding for GMO research appears to be from private, self-serving corporations (and universities that are also funded by these same corporations) as more public funding is cut for this type of research.
Many keep comparing (over and over again like a mantra) GMO safety consensus with climate change consensus. The huge difference between the two for me (in regards to the actual consensus) is that you most often see self-serving corporations that are behind most of climate change denial and FUD, while solid research that supports climate change is often done by far less biased sources.
On the other hand, study after study that supports GMO safety is very often linked to self-serving corporations (who have a very bad track record of lying to the public). That makes me uncomfortable especially when I see universities that research GMOs are also getting their funding from these same self-serving corporations like Dow chemical, Monsanto, etc.
It seems like the science is mostly sound despite these uncomforable ties to industry, but Iām not willing to completely throw caution to the wind and agree that thereās true consensus like we see with climate change.
Is there true consensus or manufactured consensus when most everyone whoās telling us that all GMOs are safe are plucking most of their data from research that was funded by the same industry that benefits from that same āconsensusā? Iām worried that the data may be skewed to favor industry and thereās very valid reasons to worry about that considering their track records.
Iād like to see a list of all the research studies that arenāt funded directly or indirectly by the industry and see how that matches up with all the other studies. What percentage of studies that support GMO safety are funded by industry? Iād like to see that too.
This is one of the reasons I really think there should be labeling. I just donāt trust an untrustworthy industry to do the right thing.
This is not to say there isnāt also industry that benefits from saying GMO are unsafe so that muddies the waters on the other side as well. But, if theyāre wrong, Iām not eating unsafe food, either.
Anyway, my main concern with GMOās is Monsantoās ties to it. The GMO industry (and society) as a whole would benefit greatly if Monsanto wasnāt in the mix. Theyāve been proven liars over many years and they do a disservice to the industry just by being involved in it.
To be honest I think the industry are sabotaging themselves with opposition to labeling.
I agree.
What I get tired of is all the hyperventilating about it.
I think thereās plenty of hyperventilating coming from both sides of the issue. Believe it or not, I donāt have much of an issue with GMOs for the most part. I think if there was horrible, obvious problems with it, far more scientists and even whistleblowers would have come forward by now. But, at the same time I donāt want to get a bunch of shit from sarcastic, pendantic people just because I ask questions about it either.
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Benjamin Franklin was an anti-vaxxer and his son died as a result.
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Having read the report, I can say that the UCS mainly took issue with endlessly repeated claims by industry that GM crops increased yields rather than preserved some of the yields in some cases that had actually been increased by public breeding efforts.
(I donāt remember a money shot, perhaps that was a different website?)
Also, both weeds with resistance to Roundup and insects with resistance to Bt are popping up everywhere, since basic evolutionary biology was ignored in pursuit of a quick buck. This means industry is responding by coming out with stacked traits including resistance to the much more toxic 2,4 D, which will now be sprayed indiscriminately until that cash cow runs dry.
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No, I am comparing hysteria to new, unfamiliar tech that feels yucky
Well, like I said, that comes off as a bit harsh for those who maybe support labeling because theyāre not comfortable with GMOs for various reasons. For example, while Iām not anti-science nor āhystericalā about GMOs (and even see their benefits), Iām not 100% content with industry-sponsored research either, nor Monsantoās involvement, etc.
As I said before, I support labeling
Right, thatās why I thought youād like the article I linked to. The writer supports GMOs and labeling as you do.
different technhology, different risk?
mutation by radiation or cross breeding also involves shuffling genes around. Its very similar but is a brute force and clumsy technique since lots and lots of genes are changed with little fine control
for the argument to be valid you have to prove that the other non GMO techniques dont cause such problems. For example, the poisons solanine and chaconine have accidentally been amplified to toxic levels in some potato breeds using plain old cross/selective breeding.
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even if the interviewer uses all the wrong arguments and all the logical fallacies, it doesnt mean the girlās position is right. All it proves is that the interviewer is stupid
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You mean cytoplasmic male sterility? That wonāt stop seeds from falling off of a truck and outcrossing. Or someone saving and planting their seed, contract be damned. You canāt have it both ways, since one parent has to be sexually viable. Have you seen Jurassic Park? āLife finds a way.ā
But seriously, that was a public relations disaster that was self-inflicted by Monsanto for stupidly naming a technology people were already leery of after an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie about an indestructible killer robot. Yeah. Good work, guys.
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Iāve read the report and have it saved. Please feel free to quote the passages where they say no benefits without qualifying it several different ways. Typically they say āno benefit compared to insecticide treatment.ā when the selling point is that the GMO provides control equivalent to the insecticide. Itās the usual word salad. By all means pull a couple quotes that are free from BS, if you can.
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.
No judgements perhaps, but certainly a few baseless assumptions. I havenāt had cable in 20 years. I donāt have a cellphone. I do have a car, but it is tiny and rarely used. However, I am also a frontline mental health care worker, and as such I get paid shit. On top of that 60 hour/week job I have several business ventures that are slowly and only potentially going to make me money. At that point I will likely buy organic. Until then, your assumptions are rooted in smugness combined with ignorance.
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.
Spoken like someone with absolutely no meaningful grasp of poverty or even scarcity.
But if they could see the picture clearly, and the actual costs of everything, they might change their mind.
Maybe they would. Certainly most of the homeless kids I worked with have a fairly good sense that the world is screwed up and they are not to blame. Not sure they would be too worried about āchanging their mindā about the food they can just barely afford (if at all).
Sure, industrial farming has its costs, but it also produces a lot of food for a lot of people. Iām glad people are working to expand and improve organic food supplies etc. But that wonāt feed 7 billion, not at current prices. So the prices need to come down for it to be even remotely realistic for at least 3/4 of the population (and more likely >90%).
Label away, do whatever you feel. But donāt pretend that purist food is anything other than an indulgence of the (relatively very )wealthy. Until and unless you take up subsistence farming.
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Going back to point I was making about the limitless God-like conceit of GMO opponents. Of course they know better than the scientists and hereās a mere child who knows better than the farmers!
GMOs donāt yield better, because she says so. We could have also used a parrot, and then the parrot would be smarter than farmers too!
That is one of the central points of the anti-GMO movement - that if you shop at Trader Joeās you automatically know more about agronomy than people that do it for a living.
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Well the question of why farmers would use GMO technology and even pirate the technology puts GMO critics in a corner, because the GMO critics only explanation (as far as I can tell) is that farmers are simply stupid the world over. Because according to the critics, there is no rational explanation.
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Totally agree about the āTerminatorā label. The companies should roll out a new technology under a happy name and bring it to market. At this point there is no real reason not to since the pollen apocalypse fairly tales wonāt translate into actual regulations, and with GMOs having achieved so much market share thereās no substitute product available.
LordInsidious, because the new strains are more resistant to disease, produce better output or whatever. Point being, the difference between GMO corn and regular corn is about the same as the difference between different strains of regular corn.
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Using people as guinea pigs? Wow, with unfounded hyperbole like this Boing-Boing may be making steps to become the new Natural News. For starters there is still zero evidence - zero - linking GMO crops to any illness in humans after over 25 years of consumption! Damn near every study which is released claiming to find warning signs (Seraliniās rat study, the pig heart study, etc) is found to be so riddled with flaws and conflicts of interest that they are held up as examples of how not to do science.
Furthermore, if GMO companies are using people as guinea pigs then so are ānaturalā farmers who introduce new varieties. Ever eat sushi? Your rice was created through irradiation. Ever eat bananas? That was genetic modification (although the supposedly ānaturalā kind). Any new variety must be held up to the same standards as GMO but strangely they are not.
The anti-GMO camp is riddles with hypocrisy and outright fabrications. Seriously, it would probably benefit their cause if most of them shut their mouths and stopped bringing shame on their side. Monsanto may be an immoral money-making machine but at least the science behind GMO has facts on its side.
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GMO corn is probably going to increasingly be using the traits from other strains as those traits are mapped more precisely. In the early days of GMO commercialization, companies were in a rush to put in whatever they had handy to get a return on investment, and nothing much bad happened as a result. But as our overall knowledge increases, GMO crops will be closer to the products of traditional breeding. The interaction of plant and pest is a genetic treasure trove of targets, probably much richer than anything in the area of chemical pesticides.
Hybrids can also result in toxins that are not present in either parent: S. tuberosum and S. brevidens produced not only the usual glycoalkaloids, but also the toxin demissidine, which is not produced in either parent (Laurila et al., 1996)
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[quote=āmcwyrm, post:25, topic:7129, full:trueā]And you didnāt 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?
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In many cases, if they arenāt, they bloody well should be.
My biggest problem with the whole GMO debate is that itās brute force. I donāt trust Monsanto or any of the other GMO companies to do independent research on these things. I want independent studies. Not merely on the human consumption (toxicity) issues, but also on yields and return on investment. Weāve been doing this for long enough that such studies are possible. And failures should be reported too. And this should be true for any and all new agricultural methods or technology, if only because both producers and consumers deserve full knowledge.
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Iāve always thought BoingBoing was pretty good on science. Now youāre going to side with anti-GMO pseudoscience? How incredibly disappointing. The scientific consensus is that genetically engineered food is safe.
Employing children as a propaganda tool to spread anti-scientific misinformation is not laudable, itās pathetic. Unbelievable.
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