What's the deal with GMO foods?
- Thread starter The Beast1
- Start date
- Status
KofiKingston
Robin
Zep said:
HA! Now that's what I call "putting your money where your mouth is"!
I guess our lobbyist friend there had no skin in the game, that's a shame tbh, would've loved to see him drink that stuff.
shameus_o'reaaly
Woodpecker
It's interesting-while I can see that GM crops will, at some point, be a necessary part of diet, I plan to avoid them until the bugs are worked out and I'm compelled to eat them.
Outside of scaremongering that GMO plants are "unnatural" or that they'll turn me and my plants infertile, GMOs are worrying on another level.
Regarding the corn that would kill off any insect which ate it-yes, that preserves harvests, but think about how the need for that developed. The insects become resistant to pesticide, so they eat sprayed crops and breed in greater numbers, spraying has to be stepped up so the sprays which repel the resistant pests risk damaging the crop, so Monsanto develop a strain that the bug won't eat- this is like the race between antibiotics and diseases. The bug will adapt to that eventually
OK, they grow better in nutrient-poor soil. WHY is the soil nutrient-poor? Could intensive farming and lack of crop rotation, topsoil deprivation, cumulative effects of pesticide overuse, have anything to do with that? Has anything been done to address those factors?
(if yes, never mind-I'm not an agronomist).
It was touted as a humanitarian solution to send engineered seeds to Africa. It's not humanitarian; their diets are markedly different, even the strains of similar crops are equally different, and the biggest agricultural problem facing african nations is displacement, environmental devastation, not quality of the crops. Zimbabwe was called the breadbasket of Africa; now it barely produces enough to feed it's own population. New corn and wheat strains won't fix that.
It may be safe to eat or at least without obvious side-effects to the consumer, but there's never not a downside.
The increase in allergies, Crohn's etc has a tenuous connection to increased pesticide use (there is a study but I can't find it) since
sensitivity to certain foods is heightened by nicotinoid treatment. Bees avoid some sprayed plants, are harmed by others-will Monsanto work on engineering new bees?
Outside of scaremongering that GMO plants are "unnatural" or that they'll turn me and my plants infertile, GMOs are worrying on another level.
Regarding the corn that would kill off any insect which ate it-yes, that preserves harvests, but think about how the need for that developed. The insects become resistant to pesticide, so they eat sprayed crops and breed in greater numbers, spraying has to be stepped up so the sprays which repel the resistant pests risk damaging the crop, so Monsanto develop a strain that the bug won't eat- this is like the race between antibiotics and diseases. The bug will adapt to that eventually
OK, they grow better in nutrient-poor soil. WHY is the soil nutrient-poor? Could intensive farming and lack of crop rotation, topsoil deprivation, cumulative effects of pesticide overuse, have anything to do with that? Has anything been done to address those factors?
(if yes, never mind-I'm not an agronomist).
It was touted as a humanitarian solution to send engineered seeds to Africa. It's not humanitarian; their diets are markedly different, even the strains of similar crops are equally different, and the biggest agricultural problem facing african nations is displacement, environmental devastation, not quality of the crops. Zimbabwe was called the breadbasket of Africa; now it barely produces enough to feed it's own population. New corn and wheat strains won't fix that.
It may be safe to eat or at least without obvious side-effects to the consumer, but there's never not a downside.
The increase in allergies, Crohn's etc has a tenuous connection to increased pesticide use (there is a study but I can't find it) since
sensitivity to certain foods is heightened by nicotinoid treatment. Bees avoid some sprayed plants, are harmed by others-will Monsanto work on engineering new bees?
TheWastelander
Ostrich
Amazing things can be done with GMOs. Rice crops infused with Vitamin A were planted in the Philippines to help combat vitamin A deficiency there (which can lead to blindness), then a bunch of activist fuckers destroyed them.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_t...anti_gmo_activists_lie_about_protest_and.html
As someone who doesn't like pesticides being used on his produce, I think GMO fruits and vegetables engineered to be more resistant to insects and parasites (like the eggplants mentioned in the article) are potentially a really good thing.
The people wringing their hands over GMOs, vaccines, etc. are not particularly convincing. It seems like a bunch of paranoid religious beliefs to me.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_t...anti_gmo_activists_lie_about_protest_and.html
As someone who doesn't like pesticides being used on his produce, I think GMO fruits and vegetables engineered to be more resistant to insects and parasites (like the eggplants mentioned in the article) are potentially a really good thing.
The people wringing their hands over GMOs, vaccines, etc. are not particularly convincing. It seems like a bunch of paranoid religious beliefs to me.
roberto said:
Yes. Many of our problems, even some cultural ones like mass immigration, I would argue, stem from overpopulation. We touched on some serious ones like resource depletion in the California thread and there's just no question that we are in a position of population overshoot right now, and GMOs compounded the problem.
I don't quite agree with the bolded because as Veloce pointed out, we already produce enough food to feed far more than the number of people presently on the planet, but the system leaves a lot of waste and if we continue this model there will be many more problems in the future. In other words the technology is already here, but our systematic assumptions will lead to problems.
Truth be told I'm a lot more concerned about the availability of other resources going forward, foremost among them water.
As for the GMOs themselves, is there any real way to avoid them in the US, besides just avoiding things like corn syrup and the like? At some point in the future I want to start growing my own food and baking my own bread, which doesn't seem to be as hard as it sounds.
roberto said:
I see a lot of parallels between GMO and global warming, and honestly I think the people who should have the final say on what will basically amount to significantly higher food and energy costs, are the people on the edge who this will affect the most.
Even assuming worst case scenarios like GMO's cause cancer and the earth is warming and we're causing it, for someone with not enough to eat, or someone who can't afford the power bill to refrigerate their insulin, these are moot points.
It's all well and good to say 'let to poor folks die' but I wonder if you'd be singing a different tune if food and energy prices soared to the point where it affected you personally more than going from two cars to one?
Honestly I haven't seen any convincing evidence either way, and a lot of it basically feels like it's on the same tact as 'power lines/cell phones cause cancer' or 'vaccines cause autism'.
Seadog said:
There have been studies that suggest that long term cell phone use could increase cancer risk. That doesn't mean they cause cancer outright but that heavy use can increase your chances of getting some forms of cancer.
Vaccines is another issue. Most vaccines have been found to have negative effects on a small percentage of people who use them.
Vaccines have also become a way for Medical corporations to increase there profits. They lobby governments to mandate vaccinations for things that people are unlikely to contract.
One of the more famous recent examples is Gardisil which is supposed to vaccinate against HPV. This virus is supposed to be the cause of many forms of cervical cancer. Only a very small percentage of women will get cervical cancer. Yet the government was mandating the vaccination of all girls.
Is this in the good of the general public or is this just a way to line corporations pockets?
I don't believe that any of these subjects should be viewed in simplistic terms. We shouldn't be for or against all GMO's or vaccines. Instead we should take each vaccine/GMO on a case by case basis.
I also believe that we should have a choice in the matter barring extreme circumstances. So I should be able to buy GMO free food. I also shouldn't have to vaccinate my children when it is mandated not for health reasons, but to line a corporation's pockets at the taxpayer's expense.
I really want to post something constructive on this post but when it comes to GMOs and Vaccines and Global Warming for that matter, My science background tells me one thing but my skepticism tells me another. I have a lot of work to do currently and do not have the time to really dig in and research these topics as I should to give an informed, unbiased, comment on this issue. I don't want to talk out of my ass so take this with a grain of salt...
Something foul is up with GMOs, everybody in science that I know is being paid off or intimidated into head nodding on this shit in America. This is not the case outside America, I am in school with Saudis, Pakistanis, and Brazilians and there is a consensus outside of the US that labeling GMOs is a good thing and not eating them is a better thing. This extends to genetically modified animal products that do not spoil or decompose as they should. I will have considerable free time in September, I have every intention of looking into GMOs, Global Warming and Vaccines I will start my first thread on RVF once I can back up what I write with something solid.
Something foul is up with GMOs, everybody in science that I know is being paid off or intimidated into head nodding on this shit in America. This is not the case outside America, I am in school with Saudis, Pakistanis, and Brazilians and there is a consensus outside of the US that labeling GMOs is a good thing and not eating them is a better thing. This extends to genetically modified animal products that do not spoil or decompose as they should. I will have considerable free time in September, I have every intention of looking into GMOs, Global Warming and Vaccines I will start my first thread on RVF once I can back up what I write with something solid.
For the record there is a link between cell phones and leukemia/lymphoma. I do not carry my cell phone with me everywhere and maintain a hard line so I am not exposed to my cell phone too often. I know this for an absolute fact, and this is being suppressed by the powers that be. I worked on a document review project and I saw classified documents from major cellphone manufacturers and they are well aware of it and suppressed it, violently.
Oz.
Pelican
I could write a lengthy post with all the problems with GMO backed by numerous studies and research which include all the health problems that accompany modified foods, I don't have the time to do so at the moment but maybe soon.
If you think there is nothing wrong with them you're clearly delusional.
If you think there is nothing wrong with them you're clearly delusional.
Ziltoid
Pelican
And it's less delusional to believe that inserting a gene into a plant to make it grow more heartily in an arid climate or smell bad to bugs automatically makes it poisonous to humans?Oz. said:
Being inherently against "GMO crops" as in the sweeping generalizations people in this thread are expressing doesn't make much sense, seeing as they're modified in different ways to do different things. Even if we had hard evidence (which we don't) that a specific set of GMO crops were bad, that doesn't somehow mean they're all bad. :dodgy:
Also, hate to break it to you guys, but every fruit and vegetable you've ever eaten in your entire life has been genetically modified.
Wild bananas? Before humans started cultivating them they were stringy, starchy, filled with seeds, and tasted like shit. A few thousand years of genetic modification later, and you now have the ripe and delicious yellow fruit you've come to know and love.
Breeding to select for random mutations = A-OK
but apparently...
Tweaking genes manually to do exactly the same thing but better and faster = OMG poison?
:tard:
GMOs are the coolest thing in Artificial Selection. You Can get new traits in Years Instead of Decades or Hundreds of years. You can create new traits that you could not have with Plant Breeding 1.0. I don't know why people fuss over GMO... Most of the complaints seem to come from people who have little science education and instead spout wild conspiracy theories.
The Scientific Consensus is that the current crop of GMO Foods are Safe and show no nutritional differences between conventionally bred crops. Other than that the technology is ground breaking and will lead to more drought resistant crops, crops that can grown with less water, in salt water, basically the posibilities are endless with this type of plant breeding.
The Scientific Consensus is that the current crop of GMO Foods are Safe and show no nutritional differences between conventionally bred crops. Other than that the technology is ground breaking and will lead to more drought resistant crops, crops that can grown with less water, in salt water, basically the posibilities are endless with this type of plant breeding.
I agree with zigaz, but still think GMO foods should be outlawed. You don't need GMO foods to feed the world, just good farming practices.
The reason I'm against GMO's isn't the science, but the ethical track record of companies making them.
Monsanto is a very disturbed, unethical and domineering corporation who doesn't care about the health of its consumers, only its profits.
The reason I'm against GMO's isn't the science, but the ethical track record of companies making them.
Monsanto is a very disturbed, unethical and domineering corporation who doesn't care about the health of its consumers, only its profits.
Ziltoid
Pelican
...And this is a bad thing?Darius said:
If you dislike human technological and scientific progress so much, strip naked wand walk into the woods, see how long you last.
I presume if you ever get cancer, you won't stoop to taking any of those icky man made drugs created in a lab, right?
- Status