The Pros and Cons of Genetically Engineered Food

[ronan]

I have a gut feeling that it is wrong to do this also. This is not the only reason I am against it, but it is part of it. One problem is that the industries that are carrying this out are managing to frame the debate as Prove it will be a problem. Which, of course, is very hard to do. On the other hand, the risks are enormous and the bruden of proof should be in their hands.

Right, the proof should be in their hands,

Aso like anything, it should be written on the product that there is GM and pesticide.
for example it is a stupidity the idea of organic label. organic should be the default.

Companies that use pesticide or GM should print this information on their product, especially when they say it is good, it would make a good advertisement according to them

 

[ElectricFetus]

ronan,

Your live a fantasy world: little we have eaten for the last 1000 years has been natural, every plant and animal has been breed and selected artificially and are grossly different from their natural counterparts! Your philosophy is based on a fallacy: see Appeal to Nature. Take common wheat for example, its a hybrid of three different types of grasses and had to be painstakingly bred together by taking advantage of rare chromosome duplication mutations that allow for a diploid plant to be breed into a hexaploid
virtually all the fruits, plants and animals we eat today have been heavily modified from their natural forms, and just because we today have the technology to gene splice a little faster than hybreeding and artificial selection does not make those foods any less unnatural they they already were!

Labeling products as natural or unnatural is wrong and irrelevant, a product should be label as good for you or not, how natural something is has nothing to do how good for you it is.

 

[iceaura]

little we have eaten for the last 1000 years has been natural, every plant and animal has been breed and selected artificially and are grossly different from their natural counterparts!

Confusing ordinary plant breeding with the direct insertion of strings of DNA from arbitrary sources into arbitrary sections of genome is badly misleading.

There is some excuse for the poorly educated ordinary American, who is lucky if they get a reasonable introduction to the basics of evolutionary theory in school, to mistake anything genetic for anything else genetic,

but there is no excuse for the actual corporations and developers of GMOs to be claiming that what they are doing is just more of the same. That is serious dishonesty. They know better.

 

[Simon Anders]

Confusing ordinary plant breeding with the direct insertion of strings of DNA from arbitrary sources into arbitrary sections of genome is badly misleading.

There is some excuse for the poorly educated ordinary American, who is lucky if they get a reasonable introduction to the basics of evolutionary theory in school, to mistake anything genetic for anything else genetic,

but there is no excuse for the actual corporations and developers of GMOs to be claiming that what they are doing is just more of the same. That is serious dishonesty. They know better.

glad you are here pointing out the BS.

 

[Simon Anders]

ronan,

Your live a fantasy world: little we have eaten for the last 1000 years has been natural, every plant and animal has been breed and selected artificially and are grossly different from their natural counterparts! Your philosophy is based on a fallacy: see Appeal to Nature. Take common wheat for example, its a hybrid of three different types of grasses and had to be painstakingly bred together by taking advantage of rare chromosome duplication mutations that allow for a diploid plant to be breed into a hexaploid
virtually all the fruits, plants and animals we eat today have been heavily modified from their natural forms, and just because we today have the technology to gene splice a little faster than hybreeding and artificial selection does not make those foods any less unnatural they they already were!

Labeling products as natural or unnatural is wrong and irrelevant, a product should be label as good for you or not, how natural something is has nothing to do how good for you it is.

That's up to us consumers to decide. I don't like preservatives in my food. Some scientists think they are just fine. I don't care. I don't want them and I want to know. Likewise with GM and pesticides and herbicides (these are often forgotten) and so on.

As far as wheat...that whole painstaking step by step process required species to actually mate with each other. Hence their children were similar in many ways to what was out there already. Second the slowness of the changes allowed these changes to be integrated slowly into ecosystems. Now we are just flinging shit out there in a chaotic fashion. How do the waste products of farmed salmon differ from the waste products? What changes will this make in the ecosystems around these farms or in the ocean in general? It's just a crap shoot, puns intended, out there. And with introductions of wide varieties of species it will be very hard to sort out the sources of problems, some of which may take years to build up to dangerous levels.

Exactly the kind of shit we should be avoiding as the results of our long abuse of nature are becoming clear.

 

[ElectricFetus]

Confusing ordinary plant breeding with the direct insertion of strings of DNA from arbitrary sources into arbitrary sections of genome is badly misleading.

There is some excuse for the poorly educated ordinary American, who is lucky if they get a reasonable introduction to the basics of evolutionary theory in school, to mistake anything genetic for anything else genetic,

but there is no excuse for the actual corporations and developers of GMOs to be claiming that what they are doing is just more of the same. That is serious dishonesty. They know better.

Thanks for the insults, lets not disuse American education or who I am as that is an ad hominem and has nothing of relevances to the issue accept to demonstrate that you can't make a logical argument. I would suggest your the one that ignorant, inserting a know gene(s) is far more predicable then hybridizing random species together, combining whole genomes and seeing what we get without any clue of what going together! There nothing ordinary about hybridizing organisms many of these species can't normally breed with each other without relying on rare mutations (genome duplications).

 

[ElectricFetus]

That's up to us consumers to decide. I don't like preservatives in my food. Some scientists think they are just fine. I don't care. I don't want them and I want to know. Likewise with GM and pesticides and herbicides (these are often forgotten) and so on.

As far as wheat...that whole painstaking step by step process required species to actually mate with each other. Hence their children were similar in many ways to what was out there already. Second the slowness of the changes allowed these changes to be integrated slowly into ecosystems. Now we are just flinging shit out there in a chaotic fashion. How do the waste products of farmed salmon differ from the waste products? What changes will this make in the ecosystems around these farms or in the ocean in general? It's just a crap shoot, puns intended, out there. And with introductions of wide varieties of species it will be very hard to sort out the sources of problems, some of which may take years to build up to dangerous levels.

Exactly the kind of shit we should be avoiding as the results of our long abuse of nature are becoming clear.

Labels are not a good idea with people like you, then again if there was a label like "this device emits EM radiation" on your computer then at least you would not be coming here anymore.

By your argument the killer bee is perfectly natural, being hybridized "naturally" it should have come out just as we expected. The slow integration of purple lucid is still killing american swamp lands, rather most domestic plants like domestic wheat simply can't compete in nature and has no interaction with ecosystem other then dieing off!

Farm Salmon has what to do with GM?

 

[Simon Anders]

Labels are not a good idea with people like you, then again if there was a label like "this device emits EM radiation" on your computer then at least you would not be coming here anymore.

If there were computers that did not emit EM, yes, it would be a good idea to label them, and I might buy one, if the damn thing worked, which is unlikely. So your 'analogy' here is a poor one. Despite the fact that I must be the irrational one, me and people like me, I managed to see through the weakness of your analogy while you did not.

By your argument the killer bee is perfectly natural, being hybridized "naturally" it should have come out just as we expected. The slow integration of purple lucid is still killing american swamp lands, rather most domestic plants like domestic wheat simply can't compete in nature and has no interaction with ecosystem other then dieing off!

There is nothing in my posts that indicates that all natural hybrids are harmless.

I cannot find references to 'purple lucid' despite my claims to be a botanist or whatever the appropriate -ist is. I really don't know whether this example has any relevence or not to our discussion.

I never made any claims that domestic wheat can compete in nature.

Farm Salmon has what to do with GM?

Try googling. It must have been a guess on my part. But a lucky one. I thought the rational people knew about the subjects they are debating and 'people like' me just react knee jerk out of fear or something.

 

[ElectricFetus]

If there were computers that did not emit EM, yes, it would be a good idea and I might buy one, if the damn thing worked, which is unlikely. So your 'analogy' here is a poor one. Despite the fact that I must be the irrational one, me and people like me, I managed to see through the weakness of your analogy while you did not.

Wait a minute you believe in harmful affects of EM as well? Well I can't argue with that: your completely engrossed in your fallacy!

There is nothing in my posts that indicates that all natural hybrids are harmless.

Their little natural about hybrids.

I cannot find references to 'purple lucid' despite my claims to be a botanist or whatever the appropriate -ist is. I really don't know whether this example has any relevance or not to our discussion.

I can't spell my bad Its a European swamp flower that be growing evasively in America. It a example of a natural plant functioning naturally.

I never made any claims that domestic wheat can compete in nature.

Good, then think twice about claiming GM plants can.

Try googling. It must have been a guess on my part. But a lucky one. I thought the rational people knew about the subjects they are debating and 'people like' me just react knee jerk out of fear or something.[/QUOTE]

No you explain it, the burden of proof is you: you mentioned the subject. I assume you know about because of some knee jerk reaction while I long ago forgot because it matters nothing.

 

[Simon Anders]

Wait a minute you believe in harmful affects of EM as well? Well I can't argue with that: your completely engrossed in your fallacy!

Clever not to respond to the main point. That your analogy sucked. The rest of the above is not an argument.

Their little natural about hybrids.

This is incorrect. But I should have written non-GM bred plants and animals.

I can't spell my bad Its a European swamp flower that be growing evasively in America. It a example of a natural plant functioning naturally.

And I wonder how it got introduced in America. See, this could be taken as a warning, that introductions of new species into ecosystems can have widespread effects. Of course we cannot avoid, given our mobility doing some of this accidently. We can however be vastly more careful than for profit businesses will be about doing this.

Good, then think twice about claiming GM plants can.

1) they already interbreed with non-GM crops. 2) It certainly seems possible to me that GM plants or animals may compete with nonGm species. I get to point out that I never made a claim you refute. Also your refutation assumes that GM plants will be just like other nonGM bred species and that the latter have never competed with natural species.

Try googling. It must have been a guess on my part. But a lucky one. I thought the rational people knew about the subjects they are debating and 'people like' me just react knee jerk out of fear or something.[/QUOTE]

No you explain it, the burden of proof is you: you mentioned the subject. I assume you know about because of some knee jerk reaction while I long ago forgot because it matters nothing. [/QUOTE]

No, I read newspapers. Here's a recent link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/708927.stm
Before you go on and assure us all that there is no reason to be concerned about this, you can acknowledge that I was correct and also that I did not get the information out of a Greenpeace brochure. So your knee jerk theory is, well, wrong.

 

[Simon Anders]

Oh, yes. I knew they had been planning this for a while.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3565041.stm In fact this has been in the mainstream press for a long time.

 

[ElectricFetus]

Clever not to respond to the main point. That your analogy sucked. The rest of the above is not an argument.

the analogy only sucks because you would fall for EM radiation scare.

This is incorrect. But I should have written non-GM bred plants and animals.

Then please tell me what makes a mule, liger orTangelo natural?

And I wonder how it got introduced in America. See, this could be taken as a warning, that introductions of new species into ecosystems can have widespread effects. Of course we cannot avoid, given our mobility doing some of this accidentally. We can however be vastly more careful than for profit businesses will be about doing this.

Right so! Now we have the technology to engineer organisms sterile.

1) they already interbreed with non-GM crops. 2) It certainly seems possible to me that GM plants or animals may compete with nonGm species. I get to point out that I never made a claim you refute. Also your refutation assumes that GM plants will be just like other nonGM bred species and that the latter have never competed with natural species.

My original point was GM could fix this possibly by making sterility a rule, the fact businesses don't do this is a problem you need to take up with business, its not GM fault.

No, I read newspapers. Here's a recent link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/708927.stm
Before you go on and assure us all that there is no reason to be concerned about this, you can acknowledge that I was correct and also that I did not get the information out of a Greenpeace brochure. So your knee jerk theory is, well, wrong.

lets look at it again your orgional comment:

How do the waste products of farmed salmon differ from the waste products? What changes will this make in the ecosystems around these farms or in the ocean in general?

Now explain to me how GM salmon are to blame for the problem inherent in fishers (GM or not). Your argued that farmed salmon produce waste products of potential hazard, I ask rightfully what that has to do with GM as all fisheries produce waste products, and most of them aren't GMOs! If your so worried why not ask for a fish that produces less waste? We could do it with genetic engineering, say be making a salmon that grows ten times faster? But your knee jerk reaction would forbid such a thing.

 

[Simon Anders]

the analogy only sucks because you would fall for EM radiation scare.

You really don't get it. The reason it sucks is that ALL COMPUTERS GIVE OFF EM. Wheras the issue at hand was dealing with products where some have certain sources, ingredients or qualities and some do not.

Then please tell me what makes a mule, liger orTangelo natural?

This time you made the assertion (that hybrids are not natural). The onus is on you. And a bit of a warning: look up "naturally occuring hybrids" and avoid embarrassing yourself.

Right so! Now we have the technology to engineer organisms sterile.

1) we do not know if this will be effective 2) interbreeding or breeding is not the only way new organisms affect ecosystems.

My original point was GM could fix this possibly by making sterility a rule, the fact businesses don't do this is a problem you need to take up with business, its not GM fault.

I am not mad at GM. I am angry at the companies who are playing fast and loose with the world. I am, right here, adding to the debate on the issue. I don't need you advice or your hallucinations that I am blaming a technology. I do not hold the inanimate responsible.

lets look at it again your orgional comment:



Now explain to me how GM salmon are to blame for the problem inherent in fishers (GM or not). Your argued that farmed salmon produce waste products of potential hazard, I ask rightfully what that has to do with GM as all fisheries produce waste products, and most of them aren't GMOs! If your so worried why not ask for a fish that produces less waste? We could do it with genetic engineering, say be making a salmon that grows ten times faster? But your knee jerk reaction would forbid such a thing.

Yup, could have been worded better and I left out a word. I meant that we do not know if the waste products from GM salmon will be different from current farmed salmon and what effect this will have on the environment. I have seen no studies by these companies related to, for example, the shit their new animals make as opposed to non GM Salmon.

My well thought out reaction is that corporations are profit driven and are not concerned about the environment until they are forced to be, with exceptions. I distrust them on issues like this, given years of looking into issues related to environment/industrial waste. Simply because I disagree with you you assume that I am having a knee jerk reaction. You may or may not have a knee jerk complacency or faith in corporate 'concerns' in this area. I don't know You do not seem better read, more up to date, more logical or less knee jerk than me, so keep your ad homs to yourself.

You didn't even know they were ready to introduce these GM Salmon into the human food supply, and widely, but you have faith that it is OK. Maybe that is not somehow knee jerk. But I notice that people who look down on 'people like me' never look at each other or themelves in terms of how they came to the decision that OH, the company has I am sure taken appropriate safety measures and environmental impact studies.

These companies are, essentially, making the assertion that a very widespread introduction of their 'product' is not harmful. Do you give their assertion the same kind of scrutiny and aggression you give my doubts about their assertion. I doubt it.

It is like talking to a monotheist.

 

[ElectricFetus]

Simon Anders,

Surely you never seen a geared analog computer? All life be it GM or not has DNA, protein, fats and carbohydrates, a GM organism usually will have nothing more. If I was to give you clone beef could you tell the difference between it source? If I was to give you GM beef that was engineered to be hairier could you tell the meat apart?

Sure there are natural hybirds (I did allow exception) there also natural GM, organism acquire gene from other organism all the time, bacteria uptake DNA, plants transfer plasmids, retroviruses act as gene carriers, their is not species barrier of such events.

If the organism can't breed their not much it can do to the ecosystem.

Why would the waste or the meat present any hazards worse then normal salmon waste and meat?

Your logic is based on fear of the unknown, everything has unknowns and nothing is impossible, people need to take reasonable chances if not we would still be in the stone age.

 

[ronan]

ronan,

Your live a fantasy world: little we have eaten for the last 1000 years has been natural, every plant and animal has been breed and selected artificially and are grossly different from their natural counterparts! Your philosophy is based on a fallacy: see Appeal to Nature. Take common wheat for example, its a hybrid of three different types of grasses and had to be painstakingly bred together by taking advantage of rare chromosome duplication mutations that allow for a diploid plant to be breed into a hexaploid
virtually all the fruits, plants and animals we eat today have been heavily modified from their natural forms, and just because we today have the technology to gene splice a little faster than hybreeding and artificial selection does not make those foods any less unnatural they they already were!

Exactly!

it is what I am saying that everything is natural, human and their construction are the result of nature,

GM food are also natural.

the point is not about natural or not, that is why i do not follow the Appeal to Nature which is based oin the fact that human is different from nature.

the point was on the danger of modyfing food while we have already a good slection fo food that have evolved with human by human slection.

Labeling products as natural or unnatural is wrong and irrelevant, a product should be label as good for you or not, how natural something is has nothing to do how good for you it is.

No, we should say what we added to the earth, being organic or noit in fac, we have to indicate what we did to the food, that is honesty.

That is people who has to decide what is good for them, not politics or companies.

 

[ElectricFetus]

ronan

Your definition on natural is controversial it bring up philosophical questions, Although I don't necessarily disagree with it I'm sure other here would. By your definition though the word synthetic has not meaning.

What we could do with genetic engineering is so much better then what we have. Imagine algea grown in bags on open desert, using just a few percent of land of all our existing farms the algae could produce all humans nutritional needs, old farm land could could restored to parries and forrest, no agriculture waste, no more farms were animals are enslaved for meat production (we can simply grow the GM meat in cell cultures running off GM algae broth). But no one would buy the stuff at present because they fear the new and different (it not "organic"!), to them this food could someone mutate them or destroy to earth somehow, rather they keep buying conventional food, needing more and more farmland, destroying more and more ecosystems, producing more and more waste, buying more and more meat and killing more and more animals.

For many years the pesticide Rotenone was consider organic by organic food groups and was used on food labeled organic, the reason for this was that Rotenone was produced from a plant root and was thus consider "natural" not "synthetic". Rotenone was latter implicated in causing parkinson's disease, oops! I want a label that says ever herbicide, pesticide, fertilized used per food product, a label like organic does not mean it has not been covered with pesticides and herbicides!

 

[ronan]

ronan

Your definition on natural is controversial it bring up philosophical questions, Although I don't necessarily disagree with it I'm sure other here would. By your definition though the word synthetic has not meaning.

yes,

in fact in everyday language I still use sometimes natural to talk abotu what was not man-made but to talk about what we were talking, as you said we can not use the argument from nature vs human

What we could do with genetic engineering is so much better then what we have. Imagine algea grown in bags on open desert, using just a few percent of land of all our existing farms the algae could produce all humans nutritional needs, old farm land could could restored to parries and forrest, no agriculture waste, no more farms were animals are enslaved for meat production (we can simply grow the GM meat in cell cultures running off GM algae broth). But no one would buy the stuff at present because they fear the new and different (it not "organic"!), to them this food could someone mutate them or destroy to earth somehow, rather they keep buying conventional food, needing more and more farmland, destroying more and more ecosystems, producing more and more waste, buying more and more meat and killing more and more animals.

Remember the law of the conversion of energy, that make any attempt to change the things to have side effects.

that is why it is dangerous

for meat, we just have to become vegetarian, we will gain lots more place anyway.

For many years the pesticide Rotenone was consider organic by organic food groups and was used on food labeled organic, the reason for this was that Rotenone was produced from a plant root and was thus consider "natural" not "synthetic". Rotenone was latter implicated in causing parkinson's disease, oops! I want a label that says ever herbicide, pesticide, fertilized used per food product, a label like organic does not mean it has not been covered with pesticides and herbicides!

I did not know about this one, interesting.

That is why in the last post, I said we should indicate all the things that we did to the food and the label organic should disapear.

 

[ElectricFetus]

The law of conversion of energy has nothing to do with if something has adverse side-effects or not. Things will have to change in order to people to continue socially and evolutionarily. By your argument having everyone go vegetarian would have produce side-effects.

 

[iceaura]

I would suggest your the one that ignorant, inserting a know gene(s) is far more predicable then hybridizing random species together,

No one had ever hybriidized "random species" together, before the advent of genetic manipulation techniques.

And if you were to make such a suggestion, it would simply be further evidence of the sorry state of your education - which, again, I do not blame or insult you for.

I do blame the corporations who are deliberately spreading this kind of confusion.

The idea that the expressions or other effects of genetic material from arbitrary sources inserted into arbitrary sections of the genome of a plant or animal are predictable and controllable, in our current state of knowledge and given the complexity of the systems involved, is a joke.

 

[ElectricFetus]

No one had ever hybriidized "random species" together, before the advent of genetic manipulation techniques.

And if you were to make such a suggestion, it would simply be further evidence of the sorry state of your education - which, again, I do not blame or insult you for.

I do blame the corporations who are deliberately spreading this kind of confusion.

The idea that the expressions or other effects of genetic material from arbitrary sources inserted into arbitrary sections of the genome of a plant or animal are predictable and controllable, in our current state of knowledge and given the complexity of the systems involved, is a joke.

Your statements are simply opinion reliant on the open definitions of "random" and "arbitrary". And even suggesting any condition of my eduction is and ad hominem. The insertion of a gene with known products and mechanism of action is far more predictable then the combination of genomes with unknown genes and pathways.