Support GMO foods

[tupac chopra]

untested? Glyphosate has been more thoroughly tested than pretty much all 'organic' herbicides combined. It is effective at killing weeds, highly nontoxic to animals, and has been in the food supply for longer than I've been alive.

Uh oh...look out.
Largest international study into safety of GM food launched by Russian NGO

According to the Nags, the experiment will try to establish whether the GM maize and its associated herbicide cause cancers, reduce fertility or cause birth defects. The scientists also want to know whether the mixture of chemicals present in Roundup (Monsanto’s tradename for its glyphosate herbicide) are more or less toxic than its active ingredient glyphosate.

Bruce Blumberg, another board member, who is a biology professor at the University of California, Irvine, said: “The cultivation of herbicide resistant crops is widespread in the US, and the use of the herbicides to which these crops are resistant has increased many-fold in the decades since they were introduced. There is a notable lack of published, peer-reviewed data on their safety, as well as data on the safety of the increased use of herbicides with which they are grown.”The planned study will have no input from the biotech industry or the anti-GM movement, said Sharoykina.“Comprehensive scientific safety studies on GMOs and their related pesticides are long overdue. All previous studies caused controversy for various reasons: choice of animal, insufficient statistics, duration of tests, research parameters, and researchers’ connections to the anti-GMO movement or the biotech industry.

 

[arkirk]

If I am not mistaken there was also some concern about expression in the bacterial population of the digestive tracts of animals that ate this stuff.

 

[tupac chopra]

del

 

[tupac chopra]

Now, the study may in fact be neutral and legitimate. I don't automatically come to a conclusion without the specific details of who the scientists are and what their controls and methods are.

No of course not
If you say that you are unbiased that's good enough for me.

By the way though...do you know the specific details of all the scientists and methods and controls that the slide you kept posting use?
Of course you do don't you

 

[Axulus]

Now, the study may in fact be neutral and legitimate. I don't automatically come to a conclusion without the specific details of who the scientists are and what their controls and methods are.

No of course not
If you say that you are unbiased that's good enough for me.

By the way though...do you know the specific details of all the scientists and methods and controls that the slide you kept posting use?
Of course you do don't you

We do know that funding source doesn't tend to bias GMO results of published papers:

However, The NAGS has a pretty piss poor reputation in that they have twice made flashy press releases on studies that they funded claiming a harmful GMO result, and then the paper never gets published.

Why is it that you would be up in arms if Monstanto was fulfilling the same role as NAGS, and yet you completely give NAGS a pass? It's curious that you completely ignored that part of my post.

 

[tupac chopra]

We do know that funding source doesn't tend to bias GMO results of published papers:

.

Not from that chart we don't Though I'm sure it convinces you who just claimed you make no conclusions without knowing the scientists involved and the controls and methods.

 

[Axulus]

We do know that funding source doesn't tend to bias GMO results of published papers:

.

Not from that chart we don't Though I'm sure it convinces you who just claimed you make no conclusions without knowing the scientists involved and the controls and methods.

We all know where you stand on the issues: a study conceived of and organized by an anti-GMO group is a "serious" study, and you make zero demands for any safety studies whatsoever for the 3,000+ seeds developed from mutation breeding techniques which have been introduced into our food supply over the last 60-70 years. You've utterly failed to address any of these points. I'm surprised you don't wish to comment on these two issues because, as of now, they remain uncontested, demonstrating irrational bias.

And guess what, anti-GMO zealots have actually increased the danger of our food supply and to the environment with irrational demands like yours for high regulation and unreasonable hurdles for testing/studies for GMOs and only GMOs, making the technique used much less often than other far more risky techniques:

Crop breeders increasingly are using radiation and gene-altering chemicals to mutate seeds, creating new plant varieties with better yields -- all without regulation.

The United Nations’ Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture program has received 39 requests this year for radiation services from plant breeders in dozens of countries, the most since records began in 1977, according to program head Pierre Lagoda. The group in Vienna promotes developing more “sustainable” crops by irradiating them to resist threats like drought, insects, disease and salinity.

Mutation breeding, after booming in the 1950s with the dawn of the Nuclear Age, is still used by seed developers from BASF SE to Dupont Co. to create crops for markets that reject genetic engineering. Regulators don’t demand proof that new varieties are harmless. The U.S. National Academies of Science warned in 1989 and again in 2004 that regulating genetically modified crops while giving a pass to products of mutation breeding isn’t scientifically justified.

“The NAS hits the nail on the head and I don’t think that any plant- or crop-scientist will disagree,” said Kevin M. Folta, a molecular geneticist and interim chairman of the horticultural sciences department at the University of Florida. “Mutation breeding is absolutely the least predictable.”

Health Risks

The increase in mutation breeding raises questions of fairness and safety compared with genetic engineering, a regulated technique used by companies such as Monsanto Co. that involves transferring specific genes from one species to another. Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soybean, a blockbuster product in the U.S. and Brazil, can’t be grown in the European Union, where national governments have cited concerns about risks to health and the environment.

In contrast, mutagenesis deletes and rearranges hundreds or thousands of genes randomly. It uses a man-made process that mimics with a greater intensity what the sun’s radiation has done to plants and animals for millennia, spawning mutations that sometimes are beneficial or hazardous to the organism.

The randomness makes mutagenesis less precise than St. Louis-based Monsanto’s genetically modified organisms, known as GMOs, the NAS said in a 2004 report. It’s the breeding technique most likely to cause unintended genetic changes, some of which could harm human health, the academy said.

Fewer Hurdles

Still, mutagenesis is gaining in popularity because it’s a far cheaper way to give crops new traits than the $150 million to $200 million that companies such as Monsanto pay to get a new GMO on the market. Mutant crops also face no labeling requirements or regulatory hurdles in most of the world.

“These difficulties in getting a GMO to the market, we don’t have it in mutation breeding,” Lagoda said in an Oct. 16 phone interview.

Breeders have registered more than 3,000 mutant varieties with Lagoda’s program, a partnership between the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Those varieties are just “the tip of the iceberg” because many breeders actively avoid revealing how they create new plants, Lagoda said.

This year alone, Lagoda’s program has gotten requests to help irradiate 31 plant species, ranging from sugar beets from Poland and wheat from the U.K. to rice from Indonesia and potatoes from Kenya....

http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2013/11/mutant-crops-drive-basf-sales-where.html

Thanks anti-GMO zealots

 

[Axulus]

I don't know what bizarro world you live I , but in the real world, every super market I've been for the last 10 years has had aisles, whole parts of the store with nothing but certified non-GM foods, and organic blue corn chips. Whole foods is a store with nothing BUT that.

Fact: all grocery stores are not whole food stores. Fact: one or two aisles of "whole foods" do not constituted most of the aisles in a grocery store nor most of the food SOLD in a grocery store. Finally, this type of labeling is voluntary (which means that is not mandated). So, one cannot KNOW the cause of a lack of a label on the food. Perhaps the ingestion of GMO food inhibits reasoning faculties?

Actually, it's far more likely that ingesting any of the 3,000+ mutation bred food varieties that have been introduced into the food supply over the last 70 years are inhibiting your reasoning faculties. You are advocating a government policy that will decrease GMO sales further though increase in costs and irrational fear, which will further increase the use of mutation breeding techniques, substantially increasing the risk to human health and the environment, not to mention the loss of benefits from the traits the GMO techniques themselves provide.

Thanks anti-GMO zealots

 

[laughing dog]

Fact: all grocery stores are not whole food stores. Fact: one or two aisles of "whole foods" do not constituted most of the aisles in a grocery store nor most of the food SOLD in a grocery store. Finally, this type of labeling is voluntary (which means that is not mandated). So, one cannot KNOW the cause of a lack of a label on the food. Perhaps the ingestion of GMO food inhibits reasoning faculties?

Actually, it's far more likely that ingesting any of the 3,000+ mutation bred food varieties that have been introduced into the food supply over the last 70 years are inhibiting your reasoning faculties.

Handwaving fear mongering nonsense.

You are advocating a government policy that will decrease GMO sales further though increase in costs and irrational fear, which will further increase the use of mutation breeding techniques, substantially increasing the risk to human health and the environment, not to mention the loss of benefits from the traits the GMO techniques themselves provide.

More handwaved fear-mongering. balderdash. That hyperbolic rhetoric would be laughable if it did not contain the noxious notion that consumers do not need nor deserve easy access to information they may deem relevant. What makes it even sadder is that it comes from an advocate of markets which work best with information.

The persistent and vehement hyperbolic unreasoning rhetoric employed by GMO advocates in this thread makes me wonder what they really fear from providing consumers with more relevant information.

Thanks anti-GMO zealots

That is overwhelming ironic.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Look up Rowlett Institute GMO on Google. There are a couple of videos where the head of the operation explained it was not the pesticide that caused the problems. It was the implanted genes and they replicated in the creature...insects and mammals who consumed the product. You are failing to recognize the complexity of what is being done here and the complexity of the study...about 3 million dollars worth of study...A study not done in the U.S. though thoroughly peer reviewed in Europe. My information did not come from Serlini.

 

[Enigma]

Actually, it's far more likely that ingesting any of the 3,000+ mutation bred food varieties that have been introduced into the food supply over the last 70 years are inhibiting your reasoning faculties.

Handwaving fear mongering nonsense.

Given that the entire thread thus far has been "handwaving fear-mongering nonsense" about the crop equivalent of doing surgery with laser cutters, "handwaving fear-mongering nonsense" about the crop equivalent of doing surgery with a rusty sawblade seems incredibly sane and reasonable by comparison.

You are advocating a government policy that will decrease GMO sales further though increase in costs and irrational fear, which will further increase the use of mutation breeding techniques, substantially increasing the risk to human health and the environment, not to mention the loss of benefits from the traits the GMO techniques themselves provide.

More handwaved fear-mongering. balderdash. That hyperbolic rhetoric would be laughable if it did not contain the noxious notion that consumers do not need nor deserve easy access to information they may deem relevant. What makes it even sadder is that it comes from an advocate of markets which work best with information.

Where can I find out what foods at the supermarket have been mutation bred? Why has nobody in this thread who have proclaimed their worries about GMOs expressed any sort of concern about what essentially amounts to GMOs as applied by a sledgehammer?

The persistent and vehement hyperbolic unreasoning rhetoric employed by GMO advocates in this thread makes me wonder what they really fear from providing consumers with more relevant information.

The silence from those opposing GMOs on issues that would inevitably be a concern if lack of GMO testing was a concern seems more damning.

 

[laughing dog]

Given that the entire thread thus far has been "handwaving fear-mongering nonsense" about the crop equivalent of doing surgery with laser cutters, "handwaving fear-mongering nonsense" about the crop equivalent of doing surgery with a rusty sawblade seems incredibly sane and reasonable by comparison.

Rhetorical nonsense is rhetorical nonsense.

Where can I find out what foods at the supermarket have been mutation bred?

"Mutation bred"? Since I don't know what that means, I certainly couldn't answer the question.

Why has nobody in this thread who have proclaimed their worries about GMOs expressed any sort of concern about what essentially amounts to GMOs as applied by a sledgehammer?

I have no idea what that means. But you'd have to ask those people. But if it is concern to significant number of consumers, then I have no problem with labeling the food. Of course, none of it is really relevant to the informing anyone of GMO foods.

 

[arkirk]

Look up Rowlett Institute GMO on Google. There are a couple of videos where the head of the operation explained it was not the pesticide that caused the problems. It was the implanted genes and they replicated in the creature...insects and mammals who consumed the product. You are failing to recognize the complexity of what is being done here and the complexity of the study...about 3 million dollars worth of study...A study not done in the U.S. though thoroughly peer reviewed in Europe. My information did not come from Serlini.

View attachment 2235

Loren: Anybody can dig up an empty insult and sling it at anybody. I don't put this past you. It's a shame we cannot discuss actual serious issues without this type of insult being slung at people who have spent their lives doing reasearch YOU OBVIOUSLY DON'T UNDERSTAND.

 

[tupac chopra]

Not from that chart we don't Though I'm sure it convinces you who just claimed you make no conclusions without knowing the scientists involved and the controls and methods.

We all know where you stand on the issues: a study conceived of and organized by an anti-GMO group is a "serious" study, and you make zero demands for any safety studies whatsoever for the 3,000+ seeds developed from mutation breeding techniques which have been introduced into our food supply over the last 60-70 years. You've utterly failed to address any of these points.

I did. we are still waiting for your reply.

 

[tupac chopra]

Where can I find out what foods at the supermarket have been mutation bred? Why has nobody in this thread who have proclaimed their worries about GMOs expressed any sort of concern about what essentially amounts to GMOs as applied by a sledgehammer?

Here is a problem. GMO advocates have a theory (which may be correct and it may not be correct) that their methods are safer.
But this is in fact an untested assumption until long term tests are done. In fact I posted evidence that scientists themselves have been surprised that what they found did not match their own assumptions in this regard.
http://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?3933-Support-GMO-foods&p=121105&viewfull=1#post121105

There are at least two points to consider.

1.GM methods are the most different methods. They are more different when compared to traditional or natural methods than "mutation breeding", is to older methods.. So we need to make sure we know what we are doing. We ned to test rather than endlessly repeat the mantra "it's more precise, we know what we are doing".

2. it's still relatively easy to put a halt the GM foods if it turns out that our assumptions were wrong.

If we find out that this very different method has problems that we didn't understand then we don't want to find we have contaminated the entire planet.

How many times have the "experts" fucked things up before.

 

[Axulus]

We all know where you stand on the issues: a study conceived of and organized by an anti-GMO group is a "serious" study, and you make zero demands for any safety studies whatsoever for the 3,000+ seeds developed from mutation breeding techniques which have been introduced into our food supply over the last 60-70 years. You've utterly failed to address any of these points.

I did. we are still waiting for your reply.

Can you point out the post? It seemed like you were evading the questions.

 

[tupac chopra]

Loren: Anybody can dig up an empty insult and sling it at anybody. I don't put this past you. It's a shame we cannot discuss actual serious issues without this type of insult being slung at people who have spent their lives doing reasearch YOU OBVIOUSLY DON'T UNDERSTAND.

Yes. It is actually a serious issue.
It's unfortunate that people are against or resistant to actually doing the long term tests before we possibly contaminate the entire planet.
How will the GMO advocates get the GMO out of the food chain if we find problems we didn't understand?
Lets do the tests before we get to the point of no return

 

[Loren Pechtel]

View attachment 2235

Loren: Anybody can dig up an empty insult and sling it at anybody. I don't put this past you. It's a shame we cannot discuss actual serious issues without this type of insult being slung at people who have spent their lives doing reasearch YOU OBVIOUSLY DON'T UNDERSTAND.

I was calling tinfoil on the notion that the genes were replicating in the beings that ate the GMO plants.

1) This makes no sense. DNA isn't capable of self-replication. It requires the machinery of a cell to replicate.

2) If DNA is getting from the gut into the hosts' bloodstream they have a medical problem.

3) If consumed DNA can replicate in the being that consumed it why doesn't it happen with the ordinary DNA that's in the food?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Where can I find out what foods at the supermarket have been mutation bred? Why has nobody in this thread who have proclaimed their worries about GMOs expressed any sort of concern about what essentially amounts to GMOs as applied by a sledgehammer?

Here is a problem. GMO advocates have a theory (which may be correct and it may not be correct) that their methods are safer.
But this is in fact an untested assumption until long term tests are done. In fact I posted evidence that scientists themselves have been surprised that what they found did not match their own assumptions in this regard.

It's the old-style breeding techniques that are the sledgehammer. GMO is a carefully applied scalpel.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Here is a problem. GMO advocates have a theory (which may be correct and it may not be correct) that their methods are safer.
But this is in fact an untested assumption until long term tests are done. In fact I posted evidence that scientists themselves have been surprised that what they found did not match their own assumptions in this regard.

It's the old-style breeding techniques that are the sledgehammer. GMO is a carefully applied scalpel.

That analogy works exceedingly well, considering the incredibly rigorous process that new surgical techniques have to go through in order to be approved or endorsed by the AMA, or for that matter, insurance companies.

What sort of taints the issue is the fact that the people weilding the scalpel are driven largely by profit motive, which in and of itself wouldn't be so bad if some of their behavior wasn't so craven (e.g. suing local farmers for replanting GMO seeds without their permission). That they present themselves in an amoral way leads to the public not considering them a credible source on claims as to the safety and health benefits of GMO foods, thus consumers remain suspicious.

Primarily this is because biotech companies continue to insist on the commercialization and legal control of their products. Thus it remains a commodity for them to sell, and American consumers are sticking to their guns: "Let the buyer beware."