GMO foods a good thing or bad?

If everyone will be completely honest about it, there's only one thing about GMO foods that's certain at this point in time; the jury is still out.

All of this arm waving and gloom-and- doom speculation is doing absolutely NO good whatsoever. Not a single person here - or anywhere else, for that matter - has enough information to make ANY determination of any kind on the issue. Some here, especially 'typical animal', are making complete fools of themselves in attempting to pronounce judgement based solely on scare tactics and misrepresentation. That's NOT intelligent in the least.

Meanwhile, there *are* some things that need immediate attention. First and foremost is a legal change in the rules/regulations/laws that would make it possible for independent studies to be made to determine the impact of GMO products on the environment and human/animal health. Safeguards could be put in place that would protect the investment of the GMO developers and their intellectual property while not hindering safety tests by qualified independent researchers.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

"complete fools of themselves" in the eyes of who? There are only "some" people who are reading these posts, it's not that many.

Read-only, you seem to pronounce things and then consider them true. What I'm doing and others are doing is trying to have reasonable discussion. I did not use any scare tactics or misrepresent anything.

Do you think predicting the end of the world is a "scare tactic"? Why, because it seems outlandish to you? I'm giving it as my honest opinion, if anything is scaring anyone (which is highly unlikely here imo) it's due to the facts and not some tactic.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Say whatever you like - I still maintain that you are going off the deep end unnecessarily. Despite what you said (above and elsewhere) you have NO facts! Just supposition and idle handwaving. I prefer a logical and scientific approach, not supposition. <shrug>

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

"You're all going to die" is sort of the definition of scare tactic. Especially since people have been predicting that for thousands of years, and especially since it's usually followed with "unless" (insert political desire here.)

 

Just thought I'd mention this in passing. Along with your other problems with facts, you seem unaware (from what you said above) that this thread has had well over 9 thousand views. Do you honestly consider that many to be only "some people"????

I've no idea what constitutes more than "not many" on the planet where you live, but over here on planet Earth we consider 9 thousand to be a fairly significant number.

 

There's nothing wrong with a theoretical argument, a huge amount of science is based on theoretical arguments. Professionals (including scientists) use common sense theoretical arguments every day to direct their work. Sure it would be nice to have a parallel universe where we could test all this stuff out.

It's not the definition of scare tactic. If a ranger warned you that if you went into the woods you were all going to be eaten by lions and say "oh that's just a scare tactic"? There's no "tactic" involved there, that's just the reality.

It's true that such wording could be/has been used to scare people, however at the same time to dismiss it or be biased against it just because of its importance is wrong also. I agree that it's an emotive issue and so it may be hard to look at it in an unbiased way for both sides.

I certainly have no political agendas. If I could go back now, I would become an ecologist. I think now it's one of the only things genuinely worth doing for its own sake, to try to safegaurd the planet. Unfortunately I ended up in an unrelated field due to having little clue of the true state of the world at the time.

Some forums are like that to make it seem popular. Every single refresh of the page, preview, back, edit, save&reload etc. all counted as a "view". Once I was on a forum where it said there was something like 300 people "viewing".... and nobody had posted in that forum for days.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

At best, it's possible that a search engine is directing people there, but then they'd end up on the first page and not here. There is no long list of people following our discussion!!!

 

I probably account for 10 of those views as I have stopped by several times to follow the discussion.

 

Yes, that would be a scare tactic.

There's a mountain lion loose in our canyon. There have been plenty of emails from the rangers to our biking group saying "there have been mountain lion sightings in Pen. Canyon, so be careful." If one of those emails said "don't go into the canyon or you will ALL DIE!" then that would be a scare tactic. (also would be false.) I'd expect such a foolish ranger to be replaced with someone smarter pretty quickly.

Very much agreed there. Thus I see great value in toning back the emotion so the discussion can be more rational.

This happens in a great many threads here. Futilist, for example, is convinced the world will end shortly after 2015, and becomes very angry when anyone questions him. He calls them names, questions their intelligence etc. As a result there's not much intelligent discussion in that thread. Compare that to Carcano's thread about how the world will change when oil becomes very scarce. Much less emotion, much less name calling, and overall more intelligent discussion.

 

By cherry-picking the things you think you can respond to, you're missing my whole point entirely! And that's rather sad AND bordering on dishonesty.

You've called this a "discussion" yet you have NO information on which to make ANY statements. Again, all you have are suppositions and a fear of the unknown.

My point is simply this: you might as well try discussing the presidential election 20 years from now. You have no information on which to base thoughts on that OR GMO foods. You're just making up things as you go.

I still say the *only* way to approach the subject is by paving the way to FORCE adequate testing of these things by independent agencies and organizations. Instead of sitting in your corner and mumbling about something you don't understand, it would be FAR more profitable to start encouraging people to push their elected representatives to get off their duffs and start addressing the problem of lack of good, scientific information.

 

Thanks billvon.

Read-Only, you seem to me to just be instinctively aggressive and confrontational, making little to no sense at all... a totally nonsensical way to respond. Oh how dare I call my earlier long exchanges a "discussion"... yeah right. I think I'll consider your posts as "read only" from now on.

 

I made perfect sense - evidence and facts *always* outweigh idle speculation. If you aren't bright enough to realize that simple fact, too bad. And it was YOU who called it all a discussion, not me. So climb down from your highhorse.

 

not always.
evidence and facts seems to suggest that GMO industries do not want active debates about the subject.
the wiki articles i've read were missing the GMO definitions source.
the new zealand equivalent of the USDA was missing the science report funded by the royal society.
speculation could lead to the most probable reason for this.
any suggestions?

 

Yes, *always*.

The specific things you listed need to be investigated, not speculated about. Don't wast time and effort doing nothing but guessing - get busy and find the *facts*!

 

That will take a full generation, starting now for the GMOs now marketed and starting again for each new one that comes out of the labs (at least, each significantly different new one).

The testing would include ecological effects over at least two sunspot and El Nino cycles, economic effects over two business cycles, and the maintenance of control populations planting comparable (not throwback or otherwise inferior) non-GMOs. That would be In addition to the medical stuff, including complete reproduction cycles to grandchildren.

That is how new crops and animal breeds have been tested for hundreds of years now - despite being much more familiar to begin with. The reason farmers are so conservative and cautious is illustrated by events such as the Irish potato famine. Millions of people starved, you see - the memory of that kind of thing creates cultural habits and practices and traditions that can save your ass. Peruvians, who bred the potato from the wild, bred dozens of different ones and planted them all rather than culling for the highest yield or the like - familiarity, you see? Generations of experience.

Again: it took forty years for the flaw in the Irish potato to show up. Agriculture is like that.

Since that is not going to happen, we are faced with the normal human situation of risk assessment in a condition of uncertainty. That is speculation, of course - all assessments of risk are speculative - but not idle: crucial. The profiteers on this stuff are not waiting for the hazard assessment to be completed - or even started. They're planting now, large acreages.

And one of the time tested principles of farming and husbandry, so basic it has boiled down to a proverb, is: don't put all your eggs in one basket. Do not, say, in three years convert 90% of the NA soybean crop to just a couple of varieties from just a couple of corporations, all with a single stretch of unfamiliar new code in common. That would be really stupid, right? Because if it turned out to have a major problem, we'd be up the proverbial creek.

 

There are a few flaws there.

First off, are you talking about human "generations" or plant generations? It makes a huge difference because a human generation is about 30 years while a plant generation, corn as an example, is around 130 days. Under lab conditions (greenhouse conditions and even tighter) you could go through MANY plant generations in a relativity short time. You could also divide the growing chambers (for lack of a better word) into many, many different sections to do simultaneous tests on things like drought-tolerance, excessive water tolerance, different lighting conditions, temperatures, etc. In other words, definitive results - real facts - could be obtained in considerably less time than you seem to be thinking of.

The soybean thing is a bit of a stretch also. Because the original varieties would still be available to fall back on. If not from those particular companies, then from other sources the world over. The actual reality is similar to something I mentioned earlier - there are currently over 17,000 varieties of rice in existence today.

 

Read-only this is problem with GMO's

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=do-seed-companies-control-gm-crop-research

 

In India there is all kinds of opinions on the GMO controversy

http://www.gmo-free-regions.org/gmo-free-regions/india/gmo-free-news-from-india.html

 

You don't actually believe any of that nonsense, do you? Do you even know when the sunspot cycle was discovered? I'll give you a hint: it wasn't "hundreds of years ago".

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

It looks to me like you are just inventing a nonsensical testing standard as a way to effectively ban GM food. New drugs are developed and tested in perhaps a decade. There is no reason to require longer-term testing of food than that. And the lack of problems thus far validates current methods.

Also, you've mentioned the potato famine a couple of times now. It is a very poorly chosen example, since it is a natural example of something you think GM food could cause. In other words: a problem not unique to (indeed, not even identified in) GM food. In addition, GM methods could provide built-in solutions to such problems. It is an example against your point, not in favor of it.

 

Another site on GMO foods

And its not just pesticide resistance to these crops , it is also that , the only place to buy these crop seeds is by one company

Hence a monopoly

http://www.responsibletechnology.org/

 

Literally true, but they don't have a monopoly on seeds, just on that one crop. If you don't like it buy another one. It's somewhat confusing for you to say "these seeds are horrible" and "they're really hard to get!"

It's like saying that McDonald's has a monopoly on Big Macs. Literally true. But if you don't like it, there are plenty of other hamburgers out there.