Support GMO foods

[Will Wiley]

CONGRATULATIONS to those who have referenced online research and panel sources.

The last 5 pages have been an intersting read--interesting only for the references.

OTOH, the bickering is ZERO interesting and I skim through it if at all,
so take this reader's opinion into consideration, guys.

So I scrolled up this page and found zero citations. Is that why you're complaining?

Here is an interesting one
Researchers Uncover Multiple Sources of Bias in GMO Risk Assessments

The GMO risk assessment process claimed to protect the public acts instead to protect industry. Scientists Hartmut Meyer and Angelika Hilbeck reviewed Monsanto’s rat toxicology studies on GM maize NK603 and identified flawed methods that bias results in industries’ favor. One such method is the use of multiple unrelated ‘pseudo-controls’ that make aberrant results look normal. Pseudo-controls have become a common component of other GMO risk studies, not only feeding trials. Meyer and Hilbeck also found that GMO studies routinely fail to use procedures like randomized selection of animals and blinded experiments, both of which guard against biased and inaccurate results. When they examined the written judgements of government-appointed regulators, however, Meyer and Hilbeck found such methodological flaws were criticized only when studies reported results unfavorable to industry. Thus systematic bias originates from both flawed GMO research methodology and the double standards of GMO regulators.

Meyer and Hilbeck’s recent analysis adds further weight to the argument that widespread industry-favorable bias exists within the GMO risk assessment process (from research, to publication, to regulation).

http://www.enveurope.com/content/pdf/2190-4715-25-33.pdf

 

[arkirk]

No, I am not.

You are saying ridiculous things

Then feel free to indicate hat those 'things' are, and to provide evidence that they are ridiculous.

and asking ridiculous questions about my personal beliefs

Not at all. Beliefs are completely irrelevant.

and things that for me have no exact and final answer.

If you don't have the answers, it would be wise to find them out before expounding an opinion

Your choice between Monsanto and caution is clearly on the side of the monopolist whether it is in our economy or in the world environment.

I am making no such choice. Monsanto is not synonymous with GMOs, and even if they were, what you present is a false dichotomy that arises only from your faith. I am not making choices that exist only in your head.

I have to laugh when you diverge into talking about gun barrels and water pipes.

I am glad to hear you got a laugh out of the analogy. I hope you also thought about it, and how it highlighted the ridiculousness of your equally laughable analogy

You are not acknowledging that agriculture has changed extremely in the last 50 years

No, I am not; because I am not psychic and have no idea what odd tangent you might want me to acknowledge. If you want to talk about the overall state of agriculture in the last 50 years I can; but as GMO is a tiny part of that story, it would be off topic in this thread.

and so has the number of extinctions of both flora and fauna.

Feel free to provide an example of any extinction caused by GMOs.

The change is all in the direction of monoculture and also in the direction of ever increasing environmental damage. Being as you don't care about the rising rate of extinctions,

You at not psychic either; please refrain from making guesses about what I care about; you are clearly very bad indeed at it.

would it be fair to say you could welcome DDT back into your life.

Actually, in the case of DDT, yes, it should be still used in malaria areas; banning DDT outright was almost certainly a bad thing that resulted in millions of needless deaths.

That was an EFFECTIVE PESTICIDE.

Yes, it was.

It has fuck all to do with GMOs though. So why you think it is relevant is beyond me.

I spent 25 years in the municipal wastewater treatment business and have done loads of receiving water testing.

And in all those years, did anyone ask you to focus on the topic at hand, rather than rambling off on weird tangents?

I can tell you our current course of pollution is ever increasing and the extinctions also are.

But apparently you can't tell me how this relates to GMOs, or why you are going on about it.

We are not managing our natural resources well and one of the major problems is something called NON POINT SOURCES....ie. agriculture.

So, not GM agriculture? Just agriculture in general? I can see why that's a worry, but not how it is relevant to this thread.

It seems to me that you associate all these things that are only related by the side of politics they come from; and that this habit is so ingrained that you cannot imagine that they might not be scientifically related.

It is possible to support GMOs while still supporting a wide range of environmentalist positions. I choose to support that for which the evidence indicates the benefits outweigh the risks - and I do not care what the environmentalist dogma might be.

I know it is hard for you to grasp, but just because I think you are wrong on this topic - GMOs - that doesn't imply that I must oppose your position on, for example, pesticides in groundwater. The two things are not linked. I know you really really want them to be, so that it is easy for you to pick sides. But they really are not; and there are not just two 'sides'; there are more than twice as many sides as there are topics.

Ecological questions are not a battle between good and evil. They are a series of skirmishes between not too bad and a little bit worse; or between almost good enough and a touch better. And the only side to be on is the one supported by scientific studies. Because there is no other way to match expectations to reality.

There are no shortcuts; following dogma from people who were right the last five times is no guarantee of being on the right side of the sixth question. To be reliably right more often than not requires both education and reason.

Groundwater and surface water pollution is DIRECTLY RELATED TO agricultural non point source discharges. You have only to use your head to understand this. I am not going to attempt to educate you in this matter. The studies you and Monsanto want us to confine our considerations are studies of their design and intended to facilitate their market position. Ecological questions are not questions. They are outright market battles over the short term profits our economy can deliver to those who seek to deploy polluting and monopolistic technologies. They are outright battles to protect the ecosystems that provide us with the ecological services that keep us alive. These two battles continue unabated on the corporate side because they constantly provide data that conflicts with reality and their financial and legal resources allow them to get away with it.

I have not made a big issue with GMO as a possible concept for increasing resistance in crops to pests...or genetic research into medical gene splicing. It is instead a matter of using GMO's to facilitate the deployment of persistent toxic chemical agents. Our world has been reduced to a series of authorities who operate like black boxes okaying some human behavior and utterly ignoring some aspects of their policies. This whole issue of GMO's revolves around government bureaucracy that failed to do studies on the basis of the assumption that GMO's are essentially similar to non-GMO's. They are NOT and they are subject to secondary conditions that already exist in industrial agriculture. They were produced to interface with existing agriculture and chemical interventions with persistent industrial chemicals. They are simply another selling operation and they don't really have any usefulness outside of industrial agriculture.

Along with nuclear power, strip mining, the international practice of practicing for war, actual war, clear cut forest harvesting, factory farms, electronics manufacturing, CO2 production from fossil fuel use, etc. etc., GMO deployment in our environment is perhaps a lesser threat. Our water environment is in serious trouble and conventional breeding is producing some plants that require less watering. We need to adapt as a society to living in the environment we will be facing in the future far more than to hustle each other and promote more environmental problems.

 

[Axulus]

Chipotle to Stop Using Genetically Altered Ingredients

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/27/business/chipotle-to-stop-serving-genetically-altered-food.html

Well, that's one restaurant I won't be visiting. Tons of Mexician options in my area and I don't want my dollars contributing to anti-science fear mongering. It would be like a restaurant proclaiming that all their water served is blessed by priests before hand. Why support woo when there are so many other options out there?

 

[bilby]

So I scrolled up this page and found zero citations. Is that why you're complaining?

Here is an interesting one
Researchers Uncover Multiple Sources of Bias in GMO Risk Assessments

The GMO risk assessment process claimed to protect the public acts instead to protect industry. Scientists Hartmut Meyer and Angelika Hilbeck reviewed Monsanto’s rat toxicology studies on GM maize NK603 and identified flawed methods that bias results in industries’ favor. One such method is the use of multiple unrelated ‘pseudo-controls’ that make aberrant results look normal. Pseudo-controls have become a common component of other GMO risk studies, not only feeding trials. Meyer and Hilbeck also found that GMO studies routinely fail to use procedures like randomized selection of animals and blinded experiments, both of which guard against biased and inaccurate results. When they examined the written judgements of government-appointed regulators, however, Meyer and Hilbeck found such methodological flaws were criticized only when studies reported results unfavorable to industry. Thus systematic bias originates from both flawed GMO research methodology and the double standards of GMO regulators.

Meyer and Hilbeck’s recent analysis adds further weight to the argument that widespread industry-favorable bias exists within the GMO risk assessment process (from research, to publication, to regulation).

http://www.enveurope.com/content/pdf/2190-4715-25-33.pdf

And here's an interesting one from a less blatantly biased source: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tplants.2015.03.011

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Huh? Doesn't gene splicing have the same random chances that you get with simple reproduction and thus not a lower WTF risk?

With Monsanto, the purpose of gene splicing is to increase crop plant tolerance to chemical herbicides and pesticides. Once the tolerances are achieved in the target plant, then everything else gets polluted with these poisons. The actual GMO process only facilitates poisoning of the environment and in itself is sometimes of little other consequence. It is not just GMO plants flooding our environment. It is also their companion poisons. That shouldn't be too hard to understand. The WTF risk is the wholesale spreading of industrial chemicals and an off chance of WTF from the GMO itself. The GMO, displaces other organisms in the space it occupies and contributes to the diversity barrenness. We can be extincting other organisms that later will prove to be indispensible to our own survival. It is the sheer scale of industrial agriculture that is the greatest threat and does the greatest harm, regardless of GMO's or not.

These are related problems that need to be addressed seriously, IMO. A lot of the more sober objections to widespread adoption to GMO is what I see as a very rational perception that not enough protections are being put in place against unintended consequence: overuse of herbicides and pesticides, the possible accidental release of GMOs as an invasive species, and corporate malfeasance in the developing world where farmers (and for that matter, governments) are vulnerable to potentially devastating litigation.

Of course those issues aren't as sexy or interesting as "GMO corn might give you cancer!" or "GMO apples cause rectal inflamation in Spaniards!" GMOs have the same problem as gentrification: the general concept is great, but the devil's in the details.

 

[ApostateAbe]

CONGRATULATIONS to those who have referenced online research and panel sources.

The last 5 pages have been an intersting read--interesting only for the references.

OTOH, the bickering is ZERO interesting and I skim through it if at all,
so take this reader's opinion into consideration, guys.

My thoughts, too.

 

[scombrid]

Here is an interesting one

I'll say. In apologizing for Seralini they say:

The aim of our analysis of these studies
was to find out whether the set of EFSA criteria with its
10 requirements is met by generally applied standards
in scientific toxicology and carcinogenesis research. Our
compilation revealed that the EFSA criteria and requirements
applied to the Séralini study are hardly fulfilled by
any of these publications

Yeah, those studies are likely crap just like Seralini.

Example citation #48:

48. Lee HJ, Gimm YM, Choi HD, Kim N, Kim SH, Lee YS: Chronic exposure of
Sprague–Dawley rats to 20 kHz triangular magnetic fields. Int J Radiat
Biol 2010, 86(5):384–389.

49. Liang J, Pei X, Zhang Z, Wang N, Wang J, Li Y: The protective effects of
long-term oral administration of marine collagen hydrolysate from chum
salmon on collagen matrix homeostasis in the chronological aged

Furthermore, if industry safety trials aren't to be trusted. (safe bet there). Don't pull a Seralini and do crap work. Do valid studies.

And then don't hold up crap studies as evidence of your position or you just make yourself look like a crackpot in league with the likes of Mercola and Natural News. That ends up bolstering the industry position.

 

[scombrid]

Groundwater and surface water pollution is DIRECTLY RELATED TO agricultural non point source discharges.

Yeah, so? Unless you are going to demonstrate that GMO makes this worse then I don't see the relevance to this thread.

Industrial agriculture strip mined the soils of the Mississippi drainage long before Monsanto came up with GMO soy and maize. Likewise the dead zones in the GoMex and Chesapeake didn't need any help from GM crops in forming.

It is instead a matter of using GMO's to facilitate the deployment of persistent toxic chemical agents.

Toxic chemicals weren't part of the agriculture process before Roundup Ready crops came to be?

Has the total amount of toxic chemical agents deployed in agriculture actually increased with the introduction of Roundup Ready crops? This is a question I have not seen addressed by any of the anti-GMO evangelists. I'm not sure they are familiar with basic agriculture practices.

It wasn't Roundup that bleached the sassafras, grapes, sour wood trees, poke weed, and more up to 3/4 mile down drift of a cotton field back home in 1995 or 1994. It killed the tomatoes in our garden 400m away from the field. That herbicide was called Command.

We need to adapt as a society to living in the environment we will be facing in the future far more than to hustle each other and promote more environmental problems.

Yeah, and we need to use sound science in advocacy of that goal or we strengthen the position of the corporatists.

 

[tupac chopra]

I'll say. In apologizing for Seralini they say:

The aim of our analysis of these studies
was to find out whether the set of EFSA criteria with its
10 requirements is met by generally applied standards
in scientific toxicology and carcinogenesis research. Our
compilation revealed that the EFSA criteria and requirements
applied to the Séralini study are hardly fulfilled by
any of these publications

Yeah, those studies are likely crap just like Seralini.

Likely?
If there are problems then why not point them out? You haven't done a very good job so far.

 

[Will Wiley]

I'll say. In apologizing for Seralini they say:

The aim of our analysis of these studies
was to find out whether the set of EFSA criteria with its
10 requirements is met by generally applied standards
in scientific toxicology and carcinogenesis research. Our
compilation revealed that the EFSA criteria and requirements
applied to the Séralini study are hardly fulfilled by
any of these publications

Yeah, those studies are likely crap just like Seralini.

Example citation #48:

48. Lee HJ, Gimm YM, Choi HD, Kim N, Kim SH, Lee YS: Chronic exposure of
Sprague–Dawley rats to 20 kHz triangular magnetic fields. Int J Radiat
Biol 2010, 86(5):384–389.

49. Liang J, Pei X, Zhang Z, Wang N, Wang J, Li Y: The protective effects of
long-term oral administration of marine collagen hydrolysate from chum
salmon on collagen matrix homeostasis in the chronological aged

Furthermore, if industry safety trials aren't to be trusted. (safe bet there). Don't pull a Seralini and do crap work. Do valid studies.
And then don't hold up crap studies as evidence of your position or you just make yourself look like a crackpot in league with the likes of Mercola and Natural News. That ends up bolstering the industry position.

If all the studies are crap. The industry studies and the Seralini "copycat" study, then the logical step is to cancel FDA approval for anything that was approved on the basis of a "crap study".
What you appear to be saying is that the FDA approval should stand, even though the study was "crap". Your position appears to be that anyone can release or sell anything unless someone else proves it to be a risk.
This is a major reversal of responsibility. Please correct me if I have misunderstood, as it's not entirely clear, but you appear to nonchalantly accept that the industry studies are "crap", even though the products could pose a health risk

 

[Togo]

With Monsanto, the purpose of gene splicing is to increase crop plant tolerance to chemical herbicides and pesticides. Once the tolerances are achieved in the target plant, then everything else gets polluted with these poisons. The actual GMO process only facilitates poisoning of the environment and in itself is sometimes of little other consequence. It is not just GMO plants flooding our environment. It is also their companion poisons. That shouldn't be too hard to understand. The WTF risk is the wholesale spreading of industrial chemicals and an off chance of WTF from the GMO itself. The GMO, displaces other organisms in the space it occupies and contributes to the diversity barrenness. We can be extincting other organisms that later will prove to be indispensible to our own survival. It is the sheer scale of industrial agriculture that is the greatest threat and does the greatest harm, regardless of GMO's or not.

These are related problems that need to be addressed seriously, IMO. A lot of the more sober objections to widespread adoption to GMO is what I see as a very rational perception that not enough protections are being put in place against unintended consequence: overuse of herbicides and pesticides, the possible accidental release of GMOs as an invasive species, and corporate malfeasance in the developing world where farmers (and for that matter, governments) are vulnerable to potentially devastating litigation.

Of course those issues aren't as sexy or interesting as "GMO corn might give you cancer!" or "GMO apples cause rectal inflamation in Spaniards!" GMOs have the same problem as gentrification: the general concept is great, but the devil's in the details.

I see a lot of this in terms of European regulations. The big concern is about food labelling, food tracking, food sourcing. If you can't demonstrate where the food came from, how it was produced, and what went into making it, then it isn't considered safe. This runs headlong into the US mentality as food as an interchangeable commodity, where labelling and source tracking is seen as merely a plot to restrict trade. In a culture where people want to know where their food comes from, how it was grown, who was paid to produce it and under what conditions, GMOs are a liability, and there are a growing number of suppliers who just don't want to have to deal with potential loss of sales, even if the food is cheaper.

 

[arkirk]

Yeah, so? Unless you are going to demonstrate that GMO makes this worse then I don't see the relevance to this thread.

Industrial agriculture strip mined the soils of the Mississippi drainage long before Monsanto came up with GMO soy and maize. Likewise the dead zones in the GoMex and Chesapeake didn't need any help from GM crops in forming.

It is instead a matter of using GMO's to facilitate the deployment of persistent toxic chemical agents.

Toxic chemicals weren't part of the agriculture process before Roundup Ready crops came to be?

Has the total amount of toxic chemical agents deployed in agriculture actually increased with the introduction of Roundup Ready crops? This is a question I have not seen addressed by any of the anti-GMO evangelists. I'm not sure they are familiar with basic agriculture practices.

It wasn't Roundup that bleached the sassafras, grapes, sour wood trees, poke weed, and more up to 3/4 mile down drift of a cotton field back home in 1995 or 1994. It killed the tomatoes in our garden 400m away from the field. That herbicide was called Command.

We need to adapt as a society to living in the environment we will be facing in the future far more than to hustle each other and promote more environmental problems.

Yeah, and we need to use sound science in advocacy of that goal or we strengthen the position of the corporatists.

Monsanto and other agricultural chemical manufacturers are treating our environment and environmental awareness as a marketing factor that must be overcome for their products to be sold in the quantities they require in order to meet a certain profit margin. Monsanto is a corporation with an immense legal team. Their involvement in GMO's is an integral part of their attempt to monopolize a non GMO industry as well as GMO's. Unfortunately, there are parallel natural responses to their activities that make themselves known in mass actions in the environment as a whole in addition to the market that is their focus. The widespread deployment of persistent chemical pesticides and herbicides leads to a kind of chemical entropy that becomes apparent in perhaps a million different ways AFTER THEIR PRODUCTS ARE SPREAD FAR AND WIDE AND their market value disappears. Their chemicals continue to exist as environmental stressors long after they become too dilute to serve their original purpose and still affect non target organisms which may be extremely sensitive to them. A known example of the principle I am addressing might well be made more clear in the situation with DDT and another being Asbestos. These problem materials were commercially distributed for wide scale deployment in our environment and continue to be problematic long after they have been banned.

I used to work at the Joint Water Pollution Control Plant of the Los Angeles Country Sanitation Districts in Carson California. That plant had a customer, the Rose Chemical Company which produced DDT and used the plant as a disposal facility for its DDT production wastes. When DDT was banned, Rose no longer discharged to JWPCP, but, due to the pollution of interceptor lines from years of discharges the plant remained in violation of DDT discharge limitations for more than 30 years after the ban. Similar situations exist with many chemical producers all over the country. There are inherent problems with producing materials that are toxic to organisms for deployment into the environment. These products generally were deemed "superior" if they had residual effects. The problem with this is persistence.
It is a difficult thing to try to consider our entire environment and to devise tests that guarantee "safety" of a product. You always have to say "safe" to what or whom? There is no category of thing man can produce that is in all cases "safe." The EPA's task is monumental and it exists in a hostile corporate environment. Instead of cooperating in scientific investigation of the fates of our chemical productions and distributions, we have corporations who spend far more on hiring lawyers to defend their corporate oxen from being gored by any finding of any researcher. That is a good part of why there is a dearth of accurate information in many cases. I don't think it pays to joust over these issues with lawyers or biostitutes. It doesn't pay to trust these people once you have been in permitting hearings and seen them at work suppressing studies and also fighting funding for adequate research, regulation and control.

 

[fromderinside]

Here is an interesting one
Researchers Uncover Multiple Sources of Bias in GMO Risk Assessments

The GMO risk assessment process claimed to protect the public acts instead to protect industry. Scientists Hartmut Meyer and Angelika Hilbeck reviewed Monsanto’s rat toxicology studies on GM maize NK603 and identified flawed methods that bias results in industries’ favor. One such method is the use of multiple unrelated ‘pseudo-controls’ that make aberrant results look normal. Pseudo-controls have become a common component of other GMO risk studies, not only feeding trials. Meyer and Hilbeck also found that GMO studies routinely fail to use procedures like randomized selection of animals and blinded experiments, both of which guard against biased and inaccurate results. When they examined the written judgements of government-appointed regulators, however, Meyer and Hilbeck found such methodological flaws were criticized only when studies reported results unfavorable to industry. Thus systematic bias originates from both flawed GMO research methodology and the double standards of GMO regulators.

Meyer and Hilbeck’s recent analysis adds further weight to the argument that widespread industry-favorable bias exists within the GMO risk assessment process (from research, to publication, to regulation).

http://www.enveurope.com/content/pdf/2190-4715-25-33.pdf

And here's an interesting one from a less blatantly biased source: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tplants.2015.03.011

Ok. They both seem to be correlational and political. Any Fisher plot studies?

 

[fromderinside]

Monsanto and other agricultural chemical manufacturers are treating our environment and environmental awareness as a marketing factor that must be overcome for their products to be sold in the quantities they require in order to meet a certain profit margin. Monsanto is a corporation with an immense legal team. Their involvement in GMO's is an integral part of their attempt to monopolize a non GMO industry as well as GMO's. Unfortunately, there are parallel natural responses to their activities that make themselves known in mass actions in the environment as a whole in addition to the market that is their focus. The widespread deployment of persistent chemical pesticides and herbicides leads to a kind of chemical entropy that becomes apparent in perhaps a million different ways AFTER THEIR PRODUCTS ARE SPREAD FAR AND WIDE AND their market value disappears. Their chemicals continue to exist as environmental stressors long after they become too dilute to serve their original purpose and still affect non target organisms which may be extremely sensitive to them. A known example of the principle I am addressing might well be made more clear in the situation with DDT and another being Asbestos. These problem materials were commercially distributed for wide scale deployment in our environment and continue to be problematic long after they have been banned.

I used to work at the Joint Water Pollution Control Plant of the Los Angeles Country Sanitation Districts in Carson California. That plant had a customer, the Rose Chemical Company which produced DDT and used the plant as a disposal facility for its DDT production wastes. When DDT was banned, Rose no longer discharged to JWPCP, but, due to the pollution of interceptor lines from years of discharges the plant remained in violation of DDT discharge limitations for more than 30 years after the ban. Similar situations exist with many chemical producers all over the country. There are inherent problems with producing materials that are toxic to organisms for deployment into the environment. These products generally were deemed "superior" if they had residual effects. The problem with this is persistence.
It is a difficult thing to try to consider our entire environment and to devise tests that guarantee "safety" of a product. You always have to say "safe" to what or whom? There is no category of thing man can produce that is in all cases "safe." The EPA's task is monumental and it exists in a hostile corporate environment. Instead of cooperating in scientific investigation of the fates of our chemical productions and distributions, we have corporations who spend far more on hiring lawyers to defend their corporate oxen from being gored by any finding of any researcher. That is a good part of why there is a dearth of accurate information in many cases. I don't think it pays to joust over these issues with lawyers or biostitutes. It doesn't pay to trust these people once you have been in permitting hearings and seen them at work suppressing studies and also fighting funding for adequate research, regulation and control.

I like your argument even though it isn't a scientific one. Suppression of any research because it impacts your product or gores your cash cow just isn't ethical.

So I'm doubling down by presenting your argument again.

 

[arkirk]

Here is an interesting one
Researchers Uncover Multiple Sources of Bias in GMO Risk Assessments

The GMO risk assessment process claimed to protect the public acts instead to protect industry. Scientists Hartmut Meyer and Angelika Hilbeck reviewed Monsanto’s rat toxicology studies on GM maize NK603 and identified flawed methods that bias results in industries’ favor. One such method is the use of multiple unrelated ‘pseudo-controls’ that make aberrant results look normal. Pseudo-controls have become a common component of other GMO risk studies, not only feeding trials. Meyer and Hilbeck also found that GMO studies routinely fail to use procedures like randomized selection of animals and blinded experiments, both of which guard against biased and inaccurate results. When they examined the written judgements of government-appointed regulators, however, Meyer and Hilbeck found such methodological flaws were criticized only when studies reported results unfavorable to industry. Thus systematic bias originates from both flawed GMO research methodology and the double standards of GMO regulators.

Meyer and Hilbeck’s recent analysis adds further weight to the argument that widespread industry-favorable bias exists within the GMO risk assessment process (from research, to publication, to regulation).

http://www.enveurope.com/content/pdf/2190-4715-25-33.pdf

And here's an interesting one from a less blatantly biased source: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tplants.2015.03.011

Ok. They both seem to be correlational and political. Any Fisher plot studies?

A few rats with a very modest diet indeed. These studies are too narrow and do not deal with how the products would be applied in the environment.

 

[bilby]

...

Your position appears to be that anyone can release or sell anything unless someone else proves it to be a risk.
This is a major reversal of responsibility. ...

Actually, it is the principle guiding the entire food industry, and has been since the year dot. What you are calling for is a reversal of responsibility, but only for strains produced using one specified set of techniques, while giving a pass to all other bioengineering methods.

To apply a more stringent system of control might be wise; but if so, it would need to be applied to all food, not just GMOs; or just Organic food; or just Corn; or just strains produced by radiation mutagenesis; or any other subset of 'food' you might come up with.

Any such more stringent control system would, of course, result in an instant famine if applied overnight. So it would need to be phased in over a VERY long time.

And before you could even start, you would need to define what constitutes a 'risk'; nothing is 100% risk-free, but clearly a regulation banning the sale of all food would be a touch impractical. Some common foods are more risky than others; Lima Beans contain cyanide; Rhubarb contains oxalate; Potatoes and Tomatoes contain solanine; most baked or fried foods contain acrylamide; and almost all foods contain oxidane. These things are all potentially lethal. Perhaps we should ban them, until a Genetically Modified version without the hazardous chemical content can be developed?

 

[tupac chopra]

...

Your position appears to be that anyone can release or sell anything unless someone else proves it to be a risk.
This is a major reversal of responsibility. ...

Actually, it is the principle guiding the entire food industry, and has been since the year dot.

The entire food industry? Really?
Not in Australia (or anywhere I'd say)

All genetically modified (GM) foods intended for sale in Australia and New Zealand must undergo a safety evaluation by Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ). FSANZ will not approve a GM food unless it is safe to eat.

http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/consumer/gmfood/gmoverview/Pages/default.aspx

It is the responsibility of companies that have developed GM foods to demonstrate the safety of that food and to supply FSANZ with the raw data from scientific studies to prove this. The data must be obtained using sound scientific methods and be collected according to strict quality control criteria.This procedure is no different to that used for new chemicals and drugs and is standard practice for standards-setting agencies like FSANZ internationally

Aren't you glad you are paying for that?

What you are calling for is a reversal of responsibility, but only for strains produced using one specified set of techniques, while giving a pass to all other bioengineering methods.

It's already in place.

 

[bilby]

Actually, it is the principle guiding the entire food industry, and has been since the year dot.

The entire food industry? Really?
Not in Australia (or anywhere I'd say)

All genetically modified (GM) foods intended for sale in Australia and New Zealand must undergo a safety evaluation by Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ). FSANZ will not approve a GM food unless it is safe to eat.

http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/consumer/gmfood/gmoverview/Pages/default.aspx

It is the responsibility of companies that have developed GM foods to demonstrate the safety of that food and to supply FSANZ with the raw data from scientific studies to prove this. The data must be obtained using sound scientific methods and be collected according to strict quality control criteria.This procedure is no different to that used for new chemicals and drugs and is standard practice for standards-setting agencies like FSANZ internationally

Aren't you glad you are paying for that?

What you are calling for is a reversal of responsibility, but only for strains produced using one specified set of techniques, while giving a pass to all other bioengineering methods.

It's already in place.

It's fucking stupid to single out one methodology in this way. It remains stupid even after it is implemented, and, in those places where it has been implemented, it should stop, because it is a waste of money and effort.

Either test ALL food to this standard, or none.

Of course, given the much higher standard to which GM food is held in Australia and New Zealand, anyone who is worried about what they eat to that extent, should choose tested and safe GM food over the untested Organic food fertilised with shit.

 

[tupac chopra]

It's fucking stupid to single out one methodology in this way.
.

What is fucking stupid is to say that Seralini's study is crap, and then say that Monsantos study is not crap even though it has the same short comings. That is fucking stupid. It is fucking stupid to say that GMO's have been scientifically shown to be safe and then admit that the studies are crap.
That is fucking stupid

 

[bilby]

It's fucking stupid to single out one methodology in this way.
.

What is fucking stupid is to say that Seralini's study is crap, and then say that Monsantos study is not crap even though it has the same short comings. That is fucking stupid. It is fucking stupid to say that GMO's have been scientifically shown to be safe and then admit that the studies are crap.
That is fucking stupid

Yeah, it would be. I dodged that bullet then