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They're not the future, they've been the present for a long time now.
I know they already exist, but better genetically modified crops could come about. And it could be used more widespread. There are people that even I know that don't know what GMO means, but are as afraid of it as they are of gluten. They just equate GMO=unhealthy
I've never bought the premise that GMO=unhealthy, but I have serious reservations about the business practices of companies like Monsanto.
Exactly. If Monsanto is the head honcho of GMOs in the future, we're not going to make much progress, in terms of public opinion.
Maybe if there was another big GM company that actually cared about the environment and health rather than focusing solely on profit and monetary gain, we'd see more people understanding that GMOs aren't the problem inherently.
I don't think Monsanto is all that bad a company, actually. It's just they've been relentlessly targeted by tech reactionary groups and a lot of people believe their propaganda.
Mark Lyans, one of the former heads of Greenpeace apologized publicly for smearing GMO and Monsanto, and details how it was the anti-GMO groups that are responsible for there being only a couple of very large Monsanto like companies doing research - by systemically doing all they could to raise the cost of developing GMO, they ensured that only really large, really profit-oriented companies like Monsanto could actually do GMO research on any practical level. Projects like Golden Rice, which are more or less 'open-source like', have been completely thwarted by the tech reactionaries.
Glad people see that if Monsanto has unethical business practices, that doesn't necessarily make GMOs bad. (Just like Comcast's existence doesn't make broadband internet inherently bad.)
Though I have also heard that Monsanto's practices have been exaggerated - here is a link:
...
This doesn't completely exonerate Monsanto (and there are sadly a lot of cases where businesses behave unethically and no one notices - I'm glad that people are paying attention and trying to determine what's right here), but it's important to separate their practices from the incredible benefits that GMOs have.
IF you really dig into the details of that case, which I did as an originally anti-GMO-anti-Monsanto person, now much more educated on the topic, you find out that it was misrepresented by activists - it's not that they grew a crop with Monsanto's cross-breeding, it's that they then specifically selected the seeds with Monsanto's "round-up ready" gene, and used them 100% exclusively in their next crop (as well as the pesticide that is the point of having that crop-strain) when only ~40% of their previous crop contained the gene from wind-based cross pollination. If they hadn't used only that crop, and kept it around 40%, they could have played ignorant, but they very clearly were using Monsanto's product without paying them.
That's the deal there - they sued because the guy straight up changed from his crop to using their plant, and they won because they should have, it was obvious as the sun being in the sky.
To note, though, one wonders what the outcome would have been if he'd simply sold the 40% and replanted his own...
Why is Monsanto evil?
Why does everyone hate Monsanto?
Personally I don't think that eating GMO has worse effect on your health than eating traditionally grown crops sprayed with pesticides.
What I am worried about is the what effect it will have that companies have patents on our food. Anyone who has studied economics 101 knows that companies who can control the marked will do so in order to maximize their profits, not because they are evil companies but because that's how economics works.
I am sure everyone has seen the Nestle CEO saying companies should control access to water and can imagine what effect it will have on peoples lives when profits are number 1.
I also worry about the effect on the environment. Genes will jump to other plants and give them the same abilities as the GMO plants. Try Googling "Super PigWeed" to see what I'm talking about.
I also worry about not being able to "vote with my money". GMO producers have fiercely resisted attempts for mandatory markings. They have even attacked producers who have put "GMO Free" on their packings, saying it suggests GMO is bad. I want to "vote with my money".
You might be pleased to hear that the first version of Roundup Ready soybeans loses patent protection in 2015.
I wonder if it'll end up like Disney copyrights.
patents are unlikely to get extended in the same fashion. I think in part because they are so much shorter, companies are used to & counting on patents expiring.
Gene patents extend also to 'normal' breeding, you don't need GMOs to patent plant DNA used for traditional and marker-assisted-breeding...
Here is the thing, even if GMO does = unhealthy, I'm sure if you give people from poor nations a choice they would rather have that than nothing or scraps.
Poorer nations have the food. The problem is with wealth distribution and food distribution. In the US, 30% of food is wasted that is grown. The idea that there is a food shortage is exaggerated. It's just mishandled.
Kind of. A lot of Ag companies are pretty much at a stand still with GM production because they keep suing each other over copyrights/patents. I couldnt see that getting much better with more acceptance.
See, all the people "freaking out" about them have a valid concern, they're just not voicing it correctly (for most of them because they're just bandwagoning and have no clue what they're talking about, but for some, there's a legitimate issue here). The "issue" isn't that they're modified (which we've been doing for millennia with selective breeding), it's that there's no standard for testing them beyond the basics (does it have arsenic?). GMO's have, on occasion, expressed "ghost in the machine" variances that the modification did not expect, or that their specific modification to produce a pesticide themselves results in no mechanism for stopping that production. It's those "ghost in the machine", unexpected results of code, that seem more prevalent or possible when the code is spliced - presumably removing naturally occurring mechanisms against certain code-formations, something we honestly just don't understand that well even on an academic level, let alone how poorly understood it is to a layman.
In all cases where this has happened (with things like arsenic or pesticides being produced by the plant itself), the company itself (Monsanto in that case) removed the offending GMO from the market, but until there are regulations for testing these products so we don't have to rely on a group some find disreputable to tell us when their products are concerning, considering they also have a history of selling unsafe products without protection (Haiti). Until a third-party says it's safe, no one's going to trust Monsanto, regardless of whether most of what's said about them is false - there's just enough truth in it to be concerned. While they'd never get something already banned by the FDA through, such as arsenic-producing plants, there's no testing which exists to determine whether other chemicals may be harmful, nor whether non-banned chemicals may be a post-production result of the genes. It's not an absurd request to expect your food, when modified by directly changing multiple aspects of it on a genetic level (something we simply do not understand comprehensively), to be examined.
It's not that, de facto, people who don't just fearfully criticize it don't have a point. They have a valid point - there's no quality control outside of trusting the person selling it to you, which is universally a bad idea.
It's all the nutcases who fear-monger GMO that keep the legitimate concerns from being addressed.
Environmental scientist here.
You're not wrong, but I don't think this misunderstanding about the actual technical risks of artificial horizontal gene transfer is the real source of public confusion.
Rather, public confusion is caused primarily by opponents of GMOs conflating the risks of GMOs themselves with the risks of industrial agriculture practices.
Many GMOs are designed to facilitate industrial agriculture practices such as heavy pesticide use, heavy fertilizer use, and monoculture. These practices do indeed pose threats to both human and ecological health. But not because of how golden rice got its gene to produce more vitamin A. These same threats apply to all crops grown with those practices, not just GMOs.
There is also substantial confusion over what constitutes "genetic modification", since that term includes both selective breeding - an ancient practice - as well as modern horizontal gene transfer tecniques.
So while I wholeheartedly agree that organic agriculture has enormous potential and that we should be switching to it wherever possible, this business of tarring GMOs with the same brush as standard industrial ag practices is obtuse and counterproductive.
Golden rice contains beta-carotene, which is provitamin A. It's an important distinction because you can't OD on beta-carotene (if you do, it just turns your skin orange, called carotenodermia). This distinction has very often been glossed over by environmental activists, who claim that the beta carotene makes this rice dangerous (are carrots dangerous?) I think it's illustrative of how various environmental movements have cynically used golden rice as a symbol of GMOs and, since it had no direct benefit to rich western nations, they were able to lead successful opposition movements against it, all for the mere price a few thousand blind brown children per year in the really poor countries where they will never have to visit. Watching this unfold has done a lot to destroy my faith in liberal movements in general.
I'm curious- what are your opinions on organic versus non organic? It seems like the regulation on it falls into a similar grey area as GMO, and it seems to me that it's a perfect opportunity to overcharge for product based on a popular obsession with social and ecological food purity. What substantive differences are there in the ultimate effect on the human body?
Cheers.
Well, the evidence appears to be mixed regarding the benefits of organic food over non-organic food - in part because of how different metrics are interpreted. So for example when comparing two vegetables, absolute yields (i.e. mass) per acre might be higher for the non-organic produce, but nutritional content (vitamins, minerals, protein) might be higher for the organic produce. Which is "better"? It depends on the relative value of the metric in question. Do you care more about nutrition or calories?
As for food "purity"/"quality", there is no doubt that organic foods are - statistically - much less likely to contain pesticide residues (although not necessarily zero, since organic farms can have non-organic neighbors). But organic crops carry their own risk. You're less likely, for example, to get E. coli poisoning from lettuce grown with synthetic fertilizers than with cow manure. Again, it's a subjective call as to which form of hazard is more important with respect to human health.
As for regulation, that is not something I can speak about with any real expertise. My understanding is that US Organic certification is quite rigorous, but - like anything - it isn't perfect and so there is some abuse of the system. That means that some percentage of products labelled organic in the grocery store probably aren't completely honest. But certainly the proportion of fraudulent products is quite small.
Excellent points. I'd just like to add that there are some very interesting aspects of permaculture in terms of overa yield and land fertility that are worth mentioning.
By mixing crops in a given plot, as well as mixing species, the risks of losing whole crops to blight, insects, etc. is greatly reduced. Issues are easier to isolate, and spread more slowly, so can be contained.
Crops can be mixed to maximize topsoil generation and improve fertility through natural interactions. This can result in a mixed plot having an overall higher yield, being continuously productive throughout the season.
All this means less need for fertilizers and pesticides, which means less expensive production and less negative environmental impacts. The trade off is that this requires more labor.
The problem is that there isn't large scale, or coordinated, or even particularly scientific research being done on this, that I am aware of. Which is frustrating because it has huge potential.
Since you're an environmental scientist, I'm not sure whether to interpret that as you actually knowing better than I do about the benefits of organic vs. non-organic food, or as you being someone with a "pro-natural", purist bias which might have led you to become an environmental scientist in the first place. (That's an honest question, I'm not being sarcastic or rhetorical.)
My own (skeptical) research and reading online has me inclined to believe that u/dual_citizen_kane would be misinformed by your comment.
That said, it's my (completely amateur) understanding that organic foods:
Do not contain any additional nutritional benefit than their non-organic counterparts, and
Contain pesticides (organic pesticides), some of which are known to be more dangerous than synthetic pesticides, and in general are less rigorously regulated Re: Rotenone, linked to Parkinson's Disease
So I'm having a hard time believing that the reason an organic crop might have pesticides is solely because of non-organic neighbors. I take that as you saying organic means pesticide-free, and that's not true. Organic means that the pesticides used, if they're used, are organic; it's a label given by humans meaning "non man-made". Since chemicals and molecules will behave according physical laws within the plant and within our body with no regard to their origin (man-made or organic), there is no sense in using organic-ness as a legitimate value when considering the health benefits of the pesticides we choose to ingest.
A better measure might be the toxicity and amount of the actual pesticides being used in organic vs. non-organic farming. A more important question that consumers should be interested in, is whether synthetic pesticides and the amount that they are used in, is dangerous and worth avoiding. Evidence suggests the answer to that question is an unequivocal "no." (I point to to the same blog post linked to point 1. above to do the explaining.)
When I make the decision of "what's better?" at the grocery store, honestly, I look for the non-organic labels, because the evidence I've seen points to them being the safer, more tightly regulated, and more affordable option.
I refer mostly to Steve Savage's Applied Mythology blog posts as, as well as the USDA's document "Pesticide Residue Testing of Organic Produce".
A truly excellent response. I really couldn't have said it better myself as someone who makes transgenic fruitflies for a living (just look at the username.)
<High five across the lab bench>
The issue isn't the GMO but the business and legal entities which deal with them. The problem isn't the technology but the fact that it's monopolized by a small number of organizations (pretty much just one) through IP which precludes it from being worked on by all the scientists of the world freely and without restriction which is the best guarantee and safeguard of public safety and environmental safety
It Windows vs Linux all over again and this time the consequences of letting Windows win might be catastrophic.
Another problem you haven't mentioned is that companies invested in GMOs are doing it for short-sighted profit and could care less about long-term social implications or damage to the environment. Look at Monsanto who developed and manufactured Agent Orange, DDT, PCBs, Bovine growth hormone and others. They knew it was bad, but they did it anyways because there was money to be made. Now their ultimate goal is to control the world's food supply through genetically modifying crops so that the consumer is dependent upon them and then they can charge whatever they wish. It starts under the ruse of being more convenient, economical, more yield per acre etc. until they have their foot in the door and then things change. This business model is similar to Microsoft's Embrace, Extend, Exterminate tactics. Many other countries around the world have recognized the drawbacks and have rejected genetically modified food for such reasons. Just think of the power a military can have if they had control over another country's food supply.
Actually, that's not true. There are pretty high standards for testing GMO's for safety or allergies or whatever before they can be sold to the general public. Much higher then that for "naturally bred" plants.
If anything, I wonder if the regulatory standard is too high, and makes it too difficult for smaller GMO companies to compete with giants like Monsanto.
It's also not true that GMO plants are somehow "arsenic producing". Arsenic is an element. It can end up in plants from the soil, and that's a problem, but it has nothing to do with GMO's. In fact there have been a number of cases where dangerous levels of arsenic were found in organic rice.
My response to this comment is going to be blunt, so sorry if I offend you.
Your comment is an apologist argument for the anti-GMO hysteria in the world today.
The "ghost in the machine" point is based on a non-understanding of science. I'm finding it hard to actually refute because it is a confused argument that makes little sense in terms of the science, so if you have any sources for the points you are attempting to make it would help.
Your argument is also based on a false premise, GMO development and sale is one of the most regulated fields in science today. The only thing I can think of in the same field which is more regulated would be cloning. Even if you get the okay to develop a GMO good luck with actually getting it to market, making any sort of profit from it and keeping it safe from destruction by environmental activists.
On top of that no one is saying, or has ever said, that we should give multinational companies a free hand when developing GMO's and that GMOs should go to market before rigorous testing. The only argument coming from the scientific community is that we should slightly reduce the current, and wholly excessive, regulations to a sane level. Our current regulations were made by biased people who had no understanding of GMO science and so they are unfit for purpose.
That's not to say there aren't worrying issues involved with GMO development. We need to properly discuss access to GMO plants and patent issues. We also need to deal with the issue of giant multinationals having such control over our food sources. Do note though that none of these issues are direct problems with GMOs, they are problems found in our current GMO development system.
The only real concern with actual GMO development is what level of safety testing is needed before we release a GMO. Erring on the side of caution is good but we aren't doing that currently, we are currently going much further than erring on the side of caution and are actually just blocking GMO development.
And by overdoing the regulatory apparatus we are enabling Monsanto by blocking any competition into a now extremely expensive market to break into.
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Do you really think we don't test the genomes of the products of genetic engineering before serving them to consumers?
I don't mean to be rude, but what exactly are you referring to for your "ghost in the machine" example? I googled the phrase in relation to GMO and almost nothing comes up (this post was a top result). Do you have a source for this?
A plant can't produce arsenic any more than it can produce helium or gold. Either the arsenic is present in the environment already, or it isn't.
Plant cannot create arsenic but plants can bio-accumulate arsenic (pull arsenic from the small concentrations in the soil and make much larger concentrations in the fruit of the plant).
Beyond that, I would actually guess that u/Raleon meant to say cyanide, which is very easy to synthesize in a plant.
And are more a concern with traditionally bred varieties that have been known to kill entire herds of cattle. See Tifton85 for example.
Don't see any outrage about that though...
There was quite a stir over the cyanide producing cattle killing grass when it first was reported as GMO grass. When it turned out not to be GMO grass the story died quietly. Except you still find a lot of references to cyanide producing GMO grass among anti-GMO people.
Gotta love organic raw almonds too.
The point is that it is clear the guy has no idea what he's talking about, and yet his is the second-highest rated comment in this thread.
There are plenty of independent studies that all clearly show GM crops pose no health concerns. I wrote a detailed reply in another post on this thread mentioning some of them.
It's not just that Monsanto has a history of selling dangerous chemicals to the public, they are modifying plants 1st to be able to survive greater quantities of their own pesticide so that they can sell more roundup, and 2nd they have the patent seeds that produce plants that cant produce second generations to force farmers to buy more seeds. We are having serious global problems with pollution and sustainability and Monsanto's trying to expand profit margins by exacerbating both of those problems. GMO's are a great idea, but I would seriously prefer grants for university and small start-up testing programs to the avaricious corporate juggernaut Monsanto.
edit: as u/deathdom points out Monsanto has the technology for terminator seed patented but they don't sell it though.
I will add however that Monsanto is trying to create a legal equivalent of the terminator gene by suing farmers for replanting seeds, and dumping about 7 million a year in tallied lobbying expenses.
GMO plants often require less pesticide than the alternative
I don't understand the logic of people who support seed replanting and oppose terminator seeds.
It costs millions of dollars to develop a GMO crop. How do you expect the economics to work if everyone can just buy a single batch of the seeds and replant them? Keep in mind that most farmers already buy their seeds new each year rather than replanting old seeds.
If all it required was a one time purchase the initial seeds would have to cost an absolute fortune to justify the research and development. This would completely exclude all but the richest farmers who could afford the initial investment.
Patents are the lifeblood of the scientific industry. They are the tool we use to make innovation valuable. Without patents commercial science is no longer viable.
The 2nd one is complete bullshit. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/top-five-myths-of-genetically-modified-seeds-busted
They intended to use it, but stopped due to backlash. Do you really think they spend all that money on developing terminator technology with the expectation that they were just going to shelve it?
If you're worried about GMOs then Terminator genes would be something you would want. AFAIK they are meant to be used to keep GMO crops from becoming super invasive species.
Edit: also AFAIK farmers already buy most of their seeds from companies
Once they have greater control of the market and choices are more limited, they could easily implement it to have ultimate control over agriculture. "Oh, you need next year's seed and can only get it from us? Guess what, the price just doubled! Oh, and if you use social media to complain about it, we will blackball you and you'll get nothing!"
Monsanto also gives away the rights to Golden Rice (which has the potential to save 670,000 children's lives per year) for free.
So... they aren't all bad.
You are hopefully aware that Monsanto is also making bt corn, which is corn that expresses a protein that destroys bug digestive systems while having no effect on mammalian digestive systems, and therefore much less pesticide needs to be used on the corn. If you weren't aware of this, then you need to do more actual research on the subject. If you were aware of this, then you're shilling for the anti-GMO conspiracy theorists while knowing that you're lying, and you should stop.
Farmers are under no obligation to continue buying seeds from Monsanto or anyone else. If a farmer wants to buy normal seeds, he certainly can, but his yields will not be as reliable. If he wants a more guaranteed outcome to his work for the year, then he buys the seed that was developed at great expense. The company that developed that seed is not unreasonable to want to profit off of it - do you work for free? Neither do I, and it's absurd to expect Monsanto or any other company to do so.
Your second point is a big misconception. The plants can produce viable seeds, it's just that these progeny probably won't have the desired trait. When farmers don't grow transgenic crops they will be growing hybrid plants instead, which operate under the same principles. No commercial farmers grow the seeds they produce.
In regards to the terminator gene: another huge misconception. The gene was developed to alleviate ecological concerns associated with GMOs, namely gene flow. It has nothing to do with stopping farmers from growing a second generation.
No offense but that science is a pile of bull poo. What are your sources? There is very little as accurate and as precise as gene manipulation.
The actual changes made are very accurate and precise, but we don't have nearly comprehensive enough models of all of the enzymatic cascades and various other interactions to be able to say that we really know what we're doing with GM.
I am absolutely for GM, but while the layman is just scared because of "playing god" or whatever their reason is, there are legitimate reasons to consider that any modifications could result in unpredictable side effects.
We don't have those models for traditional breeding either. And considering they once made excellent potatos that just so happened to be potentially deadly through traditional breeding...
Also, a lot of the "defences" of GMOs have things completely backwards.
GMO's shouldn't be presumed safe because regular food is safe; a lot of things we eat on a regular basis are naturally potentially dangerous, so we should presume the same of GMOs.
Just take soy, one of the most widely harvested crops on earth; it also contains chemicals that may disrupt hormones in humans, whose effects we're still trying to figure out. Cassava is a "wonder crop" for the developing world that produces an amazing amount of food per acre in marginal conditions, but at the same time certain varieties contain enough cyanide to kill someone if it's not prepared correctly.
That's not to say either of those crops should be eliminated - we couldn't get rid of them if we wanted to, they're too important. But those are known dangers we can account for, and we need to figure out if GMOs have any dangers first before becoming dependent on them and failing to account for them.
Plants can produce a huge number of chemicals in their biology - that's what makes them valuable. But we shouldn't make the wrong assumptions and act like new plant-produced chemical compounds introduced into the food system are automatically safe before extensively studying them.
I think the problem here is that GMO's are held to a much higher regulatory standard then normal food plants already, and I'm not sure that makes sense.
How do you prove that something isn't a danger? How do you tell the difference between something that is not dangerous, and something that is dangerous, but that we've failed to find the danger in yet?
I agree that rigorous standards should be established for testing prior to putting new GMOs into mass production (and after), but the argument is rarely centered on that; it's either "GMOs! YEAH!" or "No GMOs!" It's like ultra environmentalists calling for the world to stop using fossil fuels today, as in right this second, and then complaining that "nothing is being done" when we continue to use fossil fuels one second later. If those opposed to GMOs for the dangers that are actually potentially real in them would organize their argument a bit, they may actually solve the problem they perceive. Instead, we get a bunch of fools that read a pamphlet about how bad Monsanto is, and then they make their picket signs and go to town.
Unbiased testing.
Our own subreddits are telling the story of how automation is making GMOs obolete.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Automate/search?q=farming&restrict_sr=on
It's a poster-worthy example of the informal logical fallacy "Appeal to nature".
DEPENDENT is the key word here. We likely will be, and there's no mechanism in place when there could be, which I think is most people's realistic gripe with the whole thing right now.
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Sure, but I think the intent is to refer to expansion and acceptance of GM crops, and the fact that they are present now and will continue to be necessary.
Technically yes, but the ones we have now are boring and more or less business oriented.
Do we have rice which will germinate in the Sahara and Siberia? nope, we have corn which is resistant to a certain kind of pesticide.
Uhhh.... Golden Rice??
That's not boring or business oriented.
One is easy, the other is a lot more complicated.
Genetically modified crops should not be blocked, however, patents and monopolies on food genetics should be blocked.
"Open source" food is the future.
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Why? Nobody will bother if they can't recoup the tens of millions they put into R&D.
Aren't we getting a little old to be saying things like "say scientists"?
The problem with that phrase is that it can be misleading. "Scientists say" implies a consensus, when in fact you may have simply found a couple of crackpots. In this case, though, we have "more than 20 of the most eminent botanists and ecologists in the world" making the case. In other words, there IS a consensus. "Scientists" in this context means exactly what we think it does. There's not really anything wrong with using it in this context.
yes... yes we are
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GMO's are a source of control. The control itself is never an 'evil' thing, but throughout human history when one group gets control over another, that power gets abused.
The old cliche,
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I can't help but wonder if it would happen to me.
If farmers don't want to use the advanced crops, they don't have to buy them. They do buy them, because the extent that they are better outweighs the price they pay.
The roundup patents are starting to expire, by the way. Roundup soybean expires in 2015.
Personally, I think patent law is an important way to encourage investment. The protected period might be a little on the long side for bioengineering, but it should definitely exist.
The patent on RR1 beans expires this year, however the variety patent on all beans from Monsanto, Bayer, DuPont Pioneer, etc are still active so seed cannot be saved unless you are given approval to do so by said PVP owner/holder. However, universities will now have access to the trait for their public varieties.
Read that as "genetically modified cops"...now I'm super disappointed.
I prefer my cops to be cybernetically modified.