Support GMO foods

[bilby]

Scientific method:
1. Observe phenomena
2. Hypothesize why
3. Test hypothesis
4. Modify hypothesis
5. GOTO: 2

If you start at 2, you fail at 3. When it is measured That GMO is causing health problems (through the use of longitudinal studies), then we move to step 2.

The problem with the Luddites is that they don't care. They have their hypothesis, and they'll be damned if steps 1,3,4 or 5 will stop them. Labeling won't help; what you need is a tightly controlled study where one group eats food with a novel GM tait inserted into the same base eaten by the control, preferably with the control having an inert gene inserted where the trait was in the transgenic version as a second control group and a fourth group with the expressed protein as an equal part of their diet in addition to the non-transgenic version. It needs to be done with something that has a fairly long lifecycle, not cancer-laden rats. My thought would be to use rabbits or guinnea pigs.

After that study is finished, they'll demand human studies to prove it is safe.

And after the human trials, they will discover that one of the researchers is related to someone who once worked for Monsanto; declare the whole excercise to be tainted by this association; and demand that the entire process be done over from scratch.

 

[tupac chopra]

Scientific method:
1. Observe phenomena
2. Hypothesize why
3. Test hypothesis
4. Modify hypothesis
5. GOTO: 2

If you start at 2, you fail at 3. When it is measured That GMO is causing health problems (through the use of longitudinal studies),

So you want to put GMO's in the food chain and then later study them to see if they are harmful.
The smart thing to do would have been to test them first and then put them in the food chain if they were not found to be harmful.

 

[Jarhyn]

Scientific method:
1. Observe phenomena
2. Hypothesize why
3. Test hypothesis
4. Modify hypothesis
5. GOTO: 2

If you start at 2, you fail at 3. When it is measured That GMO is causing health problems (through the use of longitudinal studies), then we move to step 2.

The problem with the Luddites is that they don't care. They have their hypothesis, and they'll be damned if steps 1,3,4 or 5 will stop them. Labeling won't help; what you need is a tightly controlled study where one group eats food with a novel GM tait inserted into the same base eaten by the control, preferably with the control having an inert gene inserted where the trait was in the transgenic version as a second control group and a fourth group with the expressed protein as an equal part of their diet in addition to the non-transgenic version. It needs to be done with something that has a fairly long lifecycle, not cancer-laden rats. My thought would be to use rabbits or guinnea pigs.

After that study is finished, they'll demand human studies to prove it is safe.

Particularly problematic is that such a study can't be done. There's som much endogenous viral load in everything we eat that everything in our food supply is transgenic in some way. It happens constantly. Every different subspecies of wheat is different because it's got different genes in different proportions, owing to some kind of mutation or sexual recombination (which is inherently transgenic in and of itself). GM is not a thing that either exists or doesn't, it's more a question of 'GM with respect to what?'. Caulflower Mosaic Virus has infected and mutilated many genomes over the years. To think that using it to target a specific genome has somehow MGICALLY done more damage than before is niave at best.

 

[Jarhyn]

Scientific method:
1. Observe phenomena
2. Hypothesize why
3. Test hypothesis
4. Modify hypothesis
5. GOTO: 2

If you start at 2, you fail at 3. When it is measured That GMO is causing health problems (through the use of longitudinal studies),

So you want to put GMO's in the food chain and then later study them to see if they are harmful.
The smart thing to do would have been to test them first and then put them in the food chain if they were not found to be harmful.

No. I want to do the scientifically responsible thing and judge our current attempts to find something and finding nothing as finding nothing. Call a spade a spade. If replicable studies do show damage I want the damaging strain, and nothing else, to be banned on the basis of the known mechanism of damage. If a strain that is otherwise identical but not damaging is later found, then we should use that strain instead.

You crusade against GM as a whole. I think you are dishonest and disinterested in the science. If you were interested in anything more than a. Irrational interest in protecting the works of 'nature's God' you would attack a strain rather than all such 'unnatural' works of men.

It is your refusal to specialize and insistence to demonize all GM and transgenic everything that I find suspect and deplorable. Name an application. Specialize. But do not
Demonize a general action. To do so marks you a religious zealot.

 

[arkirk]

Molecular biologist Masaharu Kawata studied Monsanto's safety reports on its herbicide-tolerant soy and found them to be non-science-based.

EXCERPT: Toxicology studies using Bt toxins alone, instead of Bt corn or potato, or E-coli proteins alone instead of GM soy protein would be like eating hops to determine the effects of beer. Safety studies on RR soybeans using samples subjected to high heat and never sprayed with Roundup would be like removing the percussion cap from a bullet, testing the bullet for safety and declaring all bullets are the same and therefore safe. Just don't put them in a gun. Is it any wonder that the results of Monsanto's safety studies differ from so many other published studies? GMOs are perfectly safe. Just don't eat them.​

Are substantial equivalence and safety studies for GM soy fraudulent?

It looks like Monsanto has all its bases well covered....with lawyers.

They rattle on about the "expense" of labeling their shit and do everything possible to keep the public from really knowing about their products.

The link said enough to get a handle on how this outfit works. Shills here, shills there, shills everywhere!

It makes bilbys suggestion impossible...or at least illegal.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And that causes huge logistics costs that you want the rest of us to bear even though we don't care about whether it's GMO or not.

SERIOUSLY?!

View attachment 2264

If the "huge logistics costs" associated with accurate labeling were THAT burdensome, we all would have starved to death decades ago.

Furthermore, "(genetically modified Oryza Sativa)" is pure scare tactics.

No moreso than "partially hydrogenated soybean oil". It's the actual name of the product being used.

The problem is that you have to bend over backwards to carefully separate things which are impossible to tell apart short of expensive testing. Where else in our supply chain do we have such?

- - - Updated - - -

Some have already been mentioned in this thread. AFIAK nobody has done a study to see just how big they would be, we can clearly see they would be big.

Obviously "we" cannot. And if it is so obvious, it should be easy to demonstrate. Until you do, your claim is bullshit.

It's obvious the costs are high. We've already had an estimate of a small part of the cost upthread.

What's hard is to pin down the costs.

 

[Jarhyn]

So you want to put GMO's in the food chain and then later study them to see if they are harmful.
The smart thing to do would have been to test them first and then put them in the food chain if they were not found to be harmful.

No. I want to do the scientifically responsible thing and judge our current attempts to find something and finding nothing as finding nothing. Call a spade a spade. If replicable studies do show damage I want the damaging strain, and nothing else, to be banned on the basis of the known mechanism of damage. If a strain that is otherwise identical but not damaging is later found, then we should use that strain instead.

You crusade against GM as a whole. I think you are dishonest and disinterested in the science. If you were interested in anything more than a. Irrational interest in protecting the works of 'nature's God' you would attack a strain rather than all such 'unnatural' works of men.

It is your refusal to specialize and insistence to demonize all GM and transgenic everything that I find suspect and deplorable. Name an application. Specialize. But do not
Demonize a general action. To do so marks you a religious zealot.

Molecular biologist Masaharu Kawata studied Monsanto's safety reports on its herbicide-tolerant soy and found them to be non-science-based.

EXCERPT: Toxicology studies using Bt toxins alone, instead of Bt corn or potato, or E-coli proteins alone instead of GM soy protein would be like eating hops to determine the effects of beer. Safety studies on RR soybeans using samples subjected to high heat and never sprayed with Roundup would be like removing the percussion cap from a bullet, testing the bullet for safety and declaring all bullets are the same and therefore safe. Just don't put them in a gun. Is it any wonder that the results of Monsanto's safety studies differ from so many other published studies? GMOs are perfectly safe. Just don't eat them.​

Are substantial equivalence and safety studies for GM soy fraudulent?

It looks like Monsanto has all its bases well covered....with lawyers.

They rattle on about the "expense" of labeling their shit and do everything possible to keep the public from really knowing about their products.

The link said enough to get a handle on how this outfit works. Shills here, shills there, shills everywhere!

It makes bilbys suggestion impossible...or at least illegal.

if you want to study the effect o BT trait in the genome, the logical course would be to exclude the BT construction protein from the BT gene, leaving only its precursors and the proteins contained by its flanking genes, and compare that to a control of a the exact same strain with the BT gene left out. I want to see that study, but even if it showed some negative externality related to the BT logistics chain, it would apply only to a single BT strain. Only a trait resulting from the insertion location could show a methodological flaw to GM and that's also limited only to insertions at that location using that method. It is not an attack against GM.

Your biases are showing as clearly as a streaker's dangly bits when you attack GM rather than individual and specific expressions of it. There is no natural. There is no nature's good. There is no environs past the psychotic murder machine that we have an ethical duty to spit in the eye of.

 

[bilby]

Scientific method:
1. Observe phenomena
2. Hypothesize why
3. Test hypothesis
4. Modify hypothesis
5. GOTO: 2

If you start at 2, you fail at 3. When it is measured That GMO is causing health problems (through the use of longitudinal studies),

So you want to put GMO's in the food chain and then later study them to see if they are harmful.
The smart thing to do would have been to test them first and then put them in the food chain if they were not found to be harmful.

What Jarhyn wants is irrelevant; they are already in the food chain, and despite your ideological belief to the contrary, the reason they are there is that they were tested, and found not to pose any plausible risk that other new strains of food crops do not also pose. GMOs are not given special treatment, because there is no plausible reason to do so - other techniques to modify food crops are not tested even to the degree that GMOs are, so it would be pointless to test more thoroughly - that would be like putting a three inch thick door on a cardboard bank-vault.

 

[arkirk]

Can somebody tell me if they like eating Roundup? Why else would it be a benefit to genetically engineer "Roundup ready" (resistant to Roundup) GMO crops if we were also getting a little roundup in our diets. Back to the drawing boards...genetically engineer humans that are resistant to corporate bullshit! When roundup and other toxic petrochemicals become so prevalent in fields where food is grown, it is a certainty those who eat that food are being exposed to these chemicals. It should be a right to know what chemicals you are eating.

FYI non-stick surfaces on cookware yield chemicals that are detectable in the blood of people who eat food prepared on them. These chemicals are not naturally occurring in the human body...just saying....do these people really care what is in your body...HELL NO!

Almost every crop, GMO or not, organic or not, uses a chemical pesticide to prevent their crops from being devoured by insects. You wouldn't want to drink any of those pesticides straight from a cup, Round-up or not, organic or not. With a forced GMO label, it won't serve the ends that you may expect from a little extra knowledge. It will be misleading. You will be led to think that the non-GMO products are safer than the GMO products, and it is absolutely not true.

You know, if you are proud of and certain the stuff is okay, you can put your name on it...like so many produce crops..Chiquita for example. They are confident their bananas are okay. If you have any doubt you don't have to buy that brand. It is not a burden so much as it is a responsibility of the producer to let buyers know what they are eating. Industrialization of agriculture has produced a society of sheep willing to eat about anything. You're right in there with them.

 

[bilby]

Almost every crop, GMO or not, organic or not, uses a chemical pesticide to prevent their crops from being devoured by insects. You wouldn't want to drink any of those pesticides straight from a cup, Round-up or not, organic or not. With a forced GMO label, it won't serve the ends that you may expect from a little extra knowledge. It will be misleading. You will be led to think that the non-GMO products are safer than the GMO products, and it is absolutely not true.

You know, if you are proud of and certain the stuff is okay, you can put your name on it...like so many produce crops..Chiquita for example. They are confident their bananas are okay. If you have any doubt you don't have to buy that brand. It is not a burden so much as it is a responsibility of the producer to let buyers know what they are eating. Industrialization of agriculture has produced a society of sheep willing to eat about anything. You're right in there with them.

DEFINITION of 'Commodity'

1. A basic good used in commerce that is interchangeable with other commodities of the same type. Commodities are most often used as inputs in the production of other goods or services. The quality of a given commodity may differ slightly, but it is essentially uniform across producers. When they are traded on an exchange, commodities must also meet specified minimum standards, also known as a basis grade.

(my bold - source)

Chiquita may want consumers to think that their bananas are better than other bananas of the same variety; but that is pure marketing bullshit. If the bullshit persuades consumers to prefer their brand to the extent that it covers the cost of labelling, then well and good; but if Heinz are making banana puree, they don't care what brand of bananas they use; they want to buy the cheapest bananas that meet their quality requirements. And quality can be determined visually, or by sampling the product stream. There is no way to look at a cob of corn and say 'This is GMO' or 'This is not GMO'; and there is no way to look at a jar of banana puree and say 'This was made only using Chiquita bananas'. You can measure sugar, fat, and protein content; freshness (mould or bacterial contamination levels); You can even make quality judgements by tasting and/or smelling the finished product. But none of that tells you whether GMOs are present.

If consumers are dumb enough to pay a premium to have produce labelled 'GMO Free' or 'Organic', then that's up to them. But I do not accept that I should pay a premium to satisfy their ideological demands.

 

[tupac chopra]

What Jarhyn wants is irrelevant; they are already in the food chain, and despite your ideological belief to the contrary, the reason they are there is that they were tested,

Well can you finally quit dodging and squirming and tell us all when Monsanto's GM corn was subjected to a long term test?

That should be easy for you to do. Unless you are just parroting something you read on some blog somewhere...right?

 

[bilby]

What Jarhyn wants is irrelevant; they are already in the food chain, and despite your ideological belief to the contrary, the reason they are there is that they were tested,

Well can you finally quit dodging and squirming and tell us all when Monsanto's GM corn was subjected to a long term test?

Who said it was? When was non-GM corn subjected to a long term test? Why should such a test be needed? What would the test be looking for? Or is it just a fishing expedition?

That should be easy for you to do.

Why would it be easy for me to acquiesce to your irrational and arbitrary demands?

Unless you are just parroting something you read on some blog somewhere...right?

I am not 'parroting' anything; There are literally hundreds of papers published on GMO safety, many of which have already been referred to in this thread. That none of them meet your arbitrary and irrational standards matters not one whit to me; or to anybody. Your demands for tests to be done and paid for by other people are unconvincing; Whenever a test is done that shows a result you don't like, you immediately declare it invalid anyway, often on the basis that it was done by, or paid for by, a GMO manufacturer, or someone you can declare to be linked to such an organisation. Clearly the only testing you would accept is testing you have funded personally, or better still that you have personally carried out. That being the case, My response to your calls for testing is simple - Go right ahead.

 

[tupac chopra]

A recent paper.
Biological impact of feeding rats with a genetically modified-based diet

Abstract: This work was conducted in the context of postmarketing biosafety assessment of genetically modified products. It presents a systematic approach based on a chronic toxicity study on Wistar albino rats, with a range of combined parameters including biochemical, histopathological, and cytogenetic to evaluate the negative impact of a genetically modified (GM) diet on animal health. Histopathological and biochemical analysis procedures were performed in the liver, kidney, and testis. Cytogenetic analysis was evaluated in germ cells and the liver. The results revealed that the laboratory diet used in our investigation was proved experimentally, using the PCR assay, to contain genetically modified components without being labeled as such. The results of all parameters evaluated in our investigation were consistent and confirm that the GM diet fed to rats for 30, 60, or 90 days has deleterious histopathological and histochemical impacts. Biochemical alterations in alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, creatinine, uric acid, and malondialdehyde concentrations were also observed. Genotoxicity of the GM diet was also demonstrated in germ cells as increased numbers of cells with chromosomal aberrations and in liver cells as increased ratios of DNA fragmentation. In conclusion, the results of the present work indicate that there are health hazards linked to the ingestion of diets containing genetically modified components

 

[tupac chopra]

Well can you finally quit dodging and squirming and tell us all when Monsanto's GM corn was subjected to a long term test?

Who said it was? When was non-GM corn subjected to a long term test? Why should such a test be needed? .

Seeing as it is indicated that ..."there are health hazards linked to the ingestion of diets containing genetically modified components"

 

[bilby]

Who said it was? When was non-GM corn subjected to a long term test? Why should such a test be needed? .

Seeing as it is indicated that ..."there are health hazards linked to the ingestion of diets containing genetically modified components"

And if true, that would indicate that non-GM corn should be tested because...?

 

[tupac chopra]

Seeing as it is indicated that ..."there are health hazards linked to the ingestion of diets containing genetically modified components"

And if true, that would indicate that non-GM corn should be tested because...?

Weird. Really weird.
You justify them being released into the food chain on the basis they were tested and found to be not harmful. But when this "safety" is called into question with a peer reviewed study suddenly that criteria doesn't mean anything any more.

 

[bilby]

And if true, that would indicate that non-GM corn should be tested because...?

Weird. Really weird.
You justify them being released into the food chain on the basis they were tested and found to be not harmful. But when this "safety" is called into question with a peer reviewed study suddenly that criteria doesn't mean anything any more.

I think you are letting your emotions cloud your ability to read. You may wish to review my last few posts, with specific attention to prefixes such as 'non-', which I believe render your responses even more futile than usual...

 

[Axulus]

A recent paper.
Biological impact of feeding rats with a genetically modified-based diet

Abstract: This work was conducted in the context of postmarketing biosafety assessment of genetically modified products. It presents a systematic approach based on a chronic toxicity study on Wistar albino rats, with a range of combined parameters including biochemical, histopathological, and cytogenetic to evaluate the negative impact of a genetically modified (GM) diet on animal health. Histopathological and biochemical analysis procedures were performed in the liver, kidney, and testis. Cytogenetic analysis was evaluated in germ cells and the liver. The results revealed that the laboratory diet used in our investigation was proved experimentally, using the PCR assay, to contain genetically modified components without being labeled as such. The results of all parameters evaluated in our investigation were consistent and confirm that the GM diet fed to rats for 30, 60, or 90 days has deleterious histopathological and histochemical impacts. Biochemical alterations in alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, creatinine, uric acid, and malondialdehyde concentrations were also observed. Genotoxicity of the GM diet was also demonstrated in germ cells as increased numbers of cells with chromosomal aberrations and in liver cells as increased ratios of DNA fragmentation. In conclusion, the results of the present work indicate that there are health hazards linked to the ingestion of diets containing genetically modified components

Is there any junk that isn't beneath you to try to peddle, so long as it has the conclusion that you agree with?

The experimental material consisted of a laboratory diet of mainly 60% yellow maize and 34% soybeans. The major nutritional contents of the laboratory diet were 22% protein, 3.48% fat, and 3.71% fiber. Currently, GM varieties of yellow maize and soybeans are produced for animal feed (Nowicki et al., 2010). Another well-balanced diet containing wheat, with the same nutritional value as the laboratory diet, was used as the non-GM diet.

In other words, the experimental group got GM maize and soy, the "control" group got non-GMO wheat. Extremely unscientific to have that kind of variation between the two test groups, which introduces all kinds of potential confounding variables other than GMO.

You can further tell it's junk when they generalize about all GMOs from this single "test", something which no scientist with any credibility whatsoever would do:

there are health hazards linked to the ingestion of diets containing genetically modified components

 

[tupac chopra]

A recent paper.
Biological impact of feeding rats with a genetically modified-based diet

Is there any junk that isn't beneath you to try to peddle, so long as it has the conclusion that you agree with?

The experimental material consisted of a laboratory diet of mainly 60% yellow maize and 34% soybeans. The major nutritional contents of the laboratory diet were 22% protein, 3.48% fat, and 3.71% fiber. Currently, GM varieties of yellow maize and soybeans are produced for animal feed (Nowicki et al., 2010). Another well-balanced diet containing wheat, with the same nutritional value as the laboratory diet, was used as the non-GM diet.

Seems like what the safety studies do as well.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691514000568

This study claimed to show that the GMO was safe, yet they fed the control group GMO as well. Go figure.
That was a study funded by DuPont.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Scientific method:
1. Observe phenomena
2. Hypothesize why
3. Test hypothesis
4. Modify hypothesis
5. GOTO: 2

If you start at 2, you fail at 3. When it is measured That GMO is causing health problems (through the use of longitudinal studies),

So you want to put GMO's in the food chain and then later study them to see if they are harmful.
The smart thing to do would have been to test them first and then put them in the food chain if they were not found to be harmful.

The only problem with that idea is that it is illogical to expect -- much less to attempt -- to be able to prove a negative. The basic concept here is that GMOs can be assumed to be safe until proven otherwise, primarily because they pose no IMMEDIATELY identifiable health risks (toxicity, allergic reactions, etc). Long term testing that later finds GMOs have some unexpected health or environmental effect would drive new regulations that restrict and/or ban certain types of GMOs or certain processes in their manufacture.

That kind of sucks, because by that point the damage will have already been done. But that is basically how alcohol, tobacco, cocaine, frozen orange juice concentrate, high-fructose corn syrup and Airborne all ended up on the market. Later studies (in alcohol's case, about 12,000 years worth of anecdotal and scientific evidence) found some of these products to be fairly benign, some slightly harmful, and some turned out to be VERY harmful. And while there's no doubt in my mind that sooner or later a sloppily or overly-complicated GMO strain is going to create exactly the kinds of problems you're worried about, it's generally best practice to cross that bridge when we get to it.