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GM foods
MartianDust
Elite Ranger
in Zocalo v2.0
Here in UK they are going to start planting them much to my own personal dismay. But I would like to know whether you are For or against GM foods?
Thanks,
:)
I tried posting a poll til I realised its for mods only (not fair) ;)
Thanks,
:)
I tried posting a poll til I realised its for mods only (not fair) ;)
Comments
However I can see the concern about the genetic modifications effecting the ecosystem, especially since the UK is a "small" island (compared to the country of Canada shall we say?)... And there's the issue that since plants reproduce with pollen, there's little stopping cross-pollination between theoretically pure plants and GM plants...
I'm curious to hear other arguments though :)
-Φ
[B]Agreed. Done properly (now, [i]there's[/i] a loaded word), I have nothing at all against General Motors making food. Or General Electric, for that matter. [/B][/QUOTE]
Exactly. I mean, if they can make hugely complex mechanical devices that can spin 500 times a second while moving through the air at 200m/s 10km above the surface of the earth, I think GE is more than capable of producing food.
[B]Actually here in Canada it's strangely never been an issue...It's not marked on the packages or anything. In fact, I believe some grocery stores have maybe a single aisle for organic foods (including non-GM), so I assume many foods are GM...
[/B][/QUOTE]
I just dont realy care or think about it much. I dont care what the Geanone of the planet is. aslong as it does not kill me.
Actlly this issue has been on the CBC a few time. All it was some un-educated tree hugers\ Religous people.
Meh. They still need to do more research.
Like the HUMMER.
;)
-R.
[B]Sure, there are dangers, but the potential benefits are huge.[/B][/QUOTE]
Well, the question just is who is taking those profits.
Some bigger corporations have been modifying genes so that seeds produced by that grain doesn't grow, meaning that corporation would get very profitable automatic fare-collection system.
(also controlling food is good way to control people and that's just what this globalization and "free" capitalism wants)
[B]Exactly. I mean, if they can make hugely complex mechanical devices that can spin 500 times a second while moving through the air at 200m/s 10km above the surface of the earth, I think GE is more than capable of producing food. [/B][/QUOTE]
Well, in genes there are millions or more propable billions of things. (which can go wrong)
And they still don't know much how they work.
So your analogy falls little short.
Round-up (a broad-band herbicide) ready soybeans allow the spraying of a single type of herbicide that kills all weeds except the modified soybeans, where previously it would take two to three differing chemicals at higher levels to offer the same level of weed reduction.
Bt corn has a genetic trait of the certain bacteria that prevents rootworm (a common pest for US farmers) from attacking the roots of young corn stalks. This completely eliminates a round of insecticide that would have been needed.
Other GM crops hold promise for areas of the world that do not normally have the means. GM wheat varieties can be made hardier and better able to handle arid climates. Potatoes have been modified to contain higher level of proteins to help alleviate malnutrition poor areas on India ( [url]http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993219[/url] )
One of the most controversial issues surrounding GM foods is the control of the IP. Companies like Monsanto have enacted almost Draconian restrictions to keep control of their product. In the end the question comes can anyone really own the patent or control of a genome?
Jake
On the other hand, I am against all human intervention in the global eco-system, so no GM food please.
[B]The fact stands that ALL food you eat are genetically manipulated, sure we havent been pllucking genes out in a controlled fashion, but by controlling what grows and what does not, no food we eat look exactly the same as they did 20 000 years ago.
[/B][/QUOTE]
Thats very true. All foods are maniupulated in some way.
But I actually FEAR GM foods. Partly cos there still hasn't been enough research done and what Phi said above about cross pollination that scares me, of the damage as it won't be irreversable and without knowing the full effects yet to the ecosystem, like I said scarey!
I agree that it would be more economical and would save 3rd worlds countries which is a good thing. Here more ppl are against GM and organic food has become more popular but is still more expensive which is a shame.
The government was saying about making bad food more expensive so ppl loose weight as they now recognise we have an obesity problem, but while they do that IMO they should reduce the price of more healthy foods.
Another reason which is personal to me but is an increasing problem is ppl with food allergies which I myself suffer from.
And I can't help worrying that GM foods will only increase this problem for ppl because of the genetics they put in the plants. I read about a certain type of fish is put into some food. Can't remember what, was a long time ago now :) but surely someone with food allergies for instance to fish would have probs?! Then I look at how it would effect the human body even more than food does now.
Am I going on a tangent? I know I get carried away sometimes. :)
Anyway until its been researched enough I will always be against it. And as I said above, UK are more against than fore at the moment but no doubt the Government always know best. :rolleyes:
It wouldn't be so bad if they put glass domes over GM crops to stop risk of spreading to other non GM's.
Btw thanks for you comments. :)
The hard path is what is currently being done. We view nature as the enimy where we must engineer corn beet and pigs to become warriors to divide and conquer nature. We use the term genetic engeneering. Engineering is quality control, production efficancy, predictable outcomes, low ratios of thermodynamics, utility. We are taking these standards, these thingsthat western society has contrsucted and try to fit something that has been evolving and working quite well for millions of years. But now corperations are claiming and patenting genes. You can't own genes. they didn't invent them, nature created them before any of us were in dipers. genes do not belong to a country or a corperation, they should and need to belong to a world trust. To quote Rifkin "...if our children grow up in a world where they come to think of life, the blueprints, the genes, the chromosomes, the cells, the organs, and the organisms simply as intellectual property, as inventions, as utility, we write intrinsic value out o the human algebra."
How lets talk about herb and pesticide tolerance. You create super weeds and super bugs. Despite all the resistance you can't kill every critter, some will just be resistant. Only the strong survive to reproduce. Now you have to sprey more and and get more genetic engennerring done. Soon the food is too toxic to eat. If you think this is overdrama, you may be right. But we have antibiotic resistant bacteria now showing up in homes from the fanatic use of anti bacterial baby wipes.
When this happens,a nd you find cross polination caused bad results what do you do? Everything else we have engennered that was found to be unsafe can be recalle. You can't recall an ecosystem to a lab. there is no way to know if this will happen or not. If we can not determine the risk then we should not follow that corse of action at all.
"The hard path is old fashioned, primative, sophomoric, 19th century, tool and die applied science going under the rubric of the frontier. You take that little corn and make it into a warrior armed with genetic weapons... and send it out into the field to fend of the environment. The irony is, in physics and chemistry they are way beyond that.... The're talking about compex theory, dissipated structure, embeddedness. Where are the biologists? They are back in the 19th century."
What is the soft path? Its finding what the corn is natually resistant to and suseptable to and plant it in locations where it will grow best. An eligant, organic, natural approch. No engeneering or recombination. Socratic over Baconian. upgrade classical breeding and folk wisdom collected through the ages with state of the art genetic sciences and find ecosystems best suited for the new, naturally bred plant. This happened in oregon with wine grapes. In California they just planted what they wanted and forced it to grow. Here in my state they looked at the soil, the water, and weather and planted what was best for the environment.
[B]Round-up (a broad-band herbicide) ready soybeans allow the spraying of a single type of herbicide that kills all weeds except the modified soybeans, where previously it would take two to three differing chemicals at higher levels to offer the same level of weed reduction.[/B][/QUOTE]
What if some weed crosses with this "supersoybean"?
Then we would have weed that would be damn hard to kill.
For example, there's one weed that looks pretty much like oats. What if that crosses with some GE oat which is resistant to herbicides?
Then only way for defending against it would be to gather those by hand. (it's not fun, I can guarantee, so in larger scale herbicides are only option against it)
And seeds of this weed can already stand ten years in ground and start to grow when conditions are right.
(BTW, this free trading without any checks isn't so good as claimed, this weed is one of those "import stuffs", it have come to Finland with imported oat seeds)
Yes, allergens, along with other problems can result from GM products if not controlled properly. That’s why GM products are regulated by the FDA, and require FDA approval before they hit the market. The instance Biggles points out was from a breed of GM corn branded Starr that was not intended for human consumption (animal feed), but inadvertently ended up in some taco shells (I think that was the only “contaminated” product).
[quote] What if some weed crosses with this "supersoybean"?
Then we would have weed that would be damn hard to kill.[/quote]
I’ve seen the superweed argument over and over, and to my knowledge, it just hasn’t come true. This is for several reasons, first many commercial GM crops are hybrids, meaning they are the combination of two differing breeds of the same plant (one containing the GM genome) that are specifically pollinated a certain way. Male from one strain pollinates the female from another (I won’t get into the mechanics here). The net effect is an offspring that is stronger than either of the parents. Another effect of the hybridization is that, generally the second generation is much, much weaker than the hybrid and by no means a superplant. Add to that the fact that plants do not pollinate outside their species (what other plant would a soybean cross with?). Could someone create a superweed, yes, but they would have to intend to. Will someone create a superweed? Extremely unlikely.
Concerning whether GM crops are the right path or not, at some point we may not have a choice. There are currently 6 million people on this earth, and by some accounts we are very close to maximum food production. The UN predicts that we will add 3 billion more souls to this planet in the next 75 years. In the 40s and 50s, it was predicted that we’d run out of food by the 1970s. That “crisis” was kept at bay by significant advances in farming technology over those 30-40 years. If we are to continue to keep up with the needs of the population in this world, we are going to have to use those tools that are at our disposal, and that could include GM crops.
Jake
[B]There is actually an issue here larger than if GM is safe or not. Jeremy Rifkin covered these issues in his 2000 speech at the University of Quebec in montreal. He called it the hard and soft path for genetic engineering.
[/B][/QUOTE]
I would take the views of Jeremy Rifkin with a grain of salt. He is a border-line luddite who seems to care more for political rangling than truely helping the world or the environment. He may have some good points to make, but he overshadows those points with extreme views and actions that guided more by politics than common sense.
[url]http://www.activistcash.com/index.cfm?org_id=121[/url]
[B]If we are to continue to keep up with the needs of the population in this world, we are going to have to use those tools that are at our disposal, and that could include GM crops[/B][/QUOTE]
One way for that would be to use more grain to feed humans instead of those giant "factorys" which raise "beefs" to put between layers of burgers.
[B]There is actually an issue here larger than if GM is safe or not. Jeremy Rifkin covered these issues in his 2000 speech at the University of Quebec in montreal. He called it the hard and soft path for genetic engineering.[/B][/QUOTE]
That "soft" path sounds all lovely, but it suffers from one problem: You can't feed 6 billion (or more) people by just growing stuff where it grows best. There isn't enough surface of the earth to do that.
Jake
[B]The allergy thing is actually a serious problem. At one point some company spliced a gene from some nut (I think it was brazil nuts) into a few different foods. Suddenly all these people were allergic to all these random foods and noone could figure out why. Eventually they found out that these foods all had one thing in common: they had the nut's gene in them, and all the people getting allergic to them were allergic to the nut. [/B][/QUOTE]
you know id never even thought of that. from my point of view thats quite disturbing as i have a very severe nut allergy. do u know where i might find out more about that case?
[url]http://www.pioneer.com/biotech/brazil_nut/default.htm[/url]
The incident I referenced earlier was actually corn and had nothing to do with nuts. Some corn called StarLink that was for animal consuption only made it into some taco shells to be sold by Taco Bell and had not been approved for human consumption due to some questions about allergien. The corn itself had not shown any negative heath effects on human, though it had not been fully tested.
[url]http://www.cast-science.org/cast-science.lh/biotechnology/20000925.htm[/url]
Jake
[B]I did some research, actually no soybeans containing genetic material from a brazil nut were ever allowed to go to market. Pioneer, a major seed provider in the US, was testing them at the University of Nebraska to see if they could create a higher protien bean. After tests on blood serum showed that the beans could cause an allergic reaction in those with nut allergies, any further development was dropped. [/B][/QUOTE]
Well, I blame my inaccurate knowledge on the fact that it came from a lecture given by an environmentalist. :)
Also corperations didn't care about feeding the world before Gm were invented. They didn't try nor care. The only reason why they are interested is because they want to play with their toys.