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Time to call out the anti-GMO conspiracy theory

14K views 65 replies 16 participants last post by  TWall 
#1 ·
#32 ·
I do not question anyone's integrity.
And there are many branches of research that I support, for example in the medical field, and in both directions.

There are facts on both sides these days, and I think it must be possible to discuss them in a civilized way without anyone feeling offended.

25-30 years of genetic engineering research are much too short to judge the long-term consequences. That's a fact too.
It has not been proven that there are no sequelae, e.g. in the human genome, if you take the modified food for many years.
It is not even possible to say something about it yet.

Only when this technique is used for many years on all foods (there are still only certain plants, if you observe the cultivation in the whole world) will you see what happens, to what extent dependencies arise (income dependencies, chemistry dependencies) and to what extent humans are used.
Laboratory tests results are not what happens on the fields and the field research is not what will happen in different locations. Just like with beekeeping.

But I think all people should be allowed to determine these changes, the farmers and scientists and the consumers.
Anti GMO is like a religion. It is based on faith not facts.
Just like GMO is.
To be skeptical and to listen to and even provoke the arguments of both sides is important for learning processes.
 
#33 ·
I do not question anyone's integrity.
Except that you did; your own words: There are no independent researchers in my eyes.

25-30 years of genetic engineering research are much too short to judge the long-term consequences. That's a fact too.
No, it is not a fact. There are very well developed toxological, etc, frameworks which can accurately determine long-term health risks (similar for environmental) over periods of one-to-two decades. I *literally* teach this stuff for a living. You're repeating propaganda from anti-science groups; there is no basis in reality for your claim.

If you actually care about the reality of how we quantify long-terms risks I'd suggest the following books:
Toxicological Risk Assessment of Chemicals: A Practical Guide
Fundamentals of Toxicology: Essential Concepts and Applications
Probabilistic Approach for Deriving Acceptable Human Intake Limits and Human Health Risks from Toxicological Studies: General Framework.

It has not been proven that there are no sequelae, e.g. in the human genome, if you take the modified food for many years.
Actually, it has, at multiple levels.

Firstly, there is no known physical, chemical or biological process by which genomic changes can be induced by GMOd foods. In fact, for that to occur a lot of established biology (e.g. how digestion & nutrient absorption works) would have to be completely wrong.

Secondly, it is physically impossible for GMO'd genes/proteins to have a different biological effect when consumed that a non-GMO'd variant; the GMOd portions of an organisms are still DNAs and the encoded protein (not counting knockout GMOs, which lack genes rather than having new ones), and our bodies process them the same as any other consumed DNA or protein. The average food item you eat has between 20,000 and 60,000 genes/proteins. GMOs have - at most - and extra 10 (most have 1). Unless you think GMO DNA is magical, it cannot have any effect different from that of the already foreign (to you) DNA and genes in your food.

Lots of info here: http://www.nap.edu/catalog/23395/genetically-engineered-crops-experiences-and-prospects

Again, you are merely parroting propaganda from anti-GMO groups that has no basis in reality.

Only when this technique is used for many years on all foods (there are still only certain plants, if you observe the cultivation in the whole world) will you see what happens, to what extent dependencies arise (income dependencies, chemistry dependencies) and to what extent humans are used.
Again, no. The entire fundamental underlying principal of science (and the statistics we rely on) is to make accurate inferences about what occurs in the large scale through observations/experiments on samples/subgroups.

Laboratory tests results are not what happens on the fields and the field research is not what will happen in different locations.
Good thing that GMO's go through multi-site field trial before approval, then! Glad you agree (even if you don't realise it) that the framework used to approve GMOs and assess their safety is robust, and takes into account environment-specific events.

But I think all people should be allowed to determine these changes, the farmers and scientists and the consumers.
You do understand that farmers around the world are clamouring for GMO's - right? Its why they've been so successful. No one forces farmers to buy them; farmers buy them because they provide value to the farmer. And by-and-large, consumers don't seem to care.

If we're going to label foods for reasons of risk, it makes far more sense to label foods grown using compost or manure as fertiliser; unlike GMO's, there is an actual, proven risk. Organic produce (and conventional produce fertilised with manure or compost) is about 20x more likely to carry pathogenic bacteria than crops grown conventionally. In contrast, analysis of over a trillion (yes, trillion, with a 't') consumed GMO meals finds no measurable risk.

But yeah, lets label the GMOs :scratch:
 
#34 ·
SuiG.....
But yeah, lets label the GMOs
Why not label them? It doesn't matter why somebody decides for themselves not to or to eat it. You mention testing of trillions. Well pork is tested by trillions and when you go buy it it is labeled pork. I eat it but yet know many who for religious reasons that don't eat it. I don't want them to take pork off the shelf but don't mind that it is labeled pork and don't care if somebody doesn't eat it. I think it is not too much to ask to know what you are eating and for the person eating it getting to make the decision for what ever reason on wether to eat it or not.
Cheers
gww

Ps so it is ok to force products to label sodium content and added ingrediants but to hide gmo?
 
#36 ·
Why not label them? It doesn't matter why somebody decides for themselves not to or to eat it. You mention testing of trillions. Well pork is tested by trillions and when you go buy it it is labeled pork.
And GMO'd corn is labelled 'corn'...

...and GMO'd soy labelled 'soy'.

What you are proposing is that foods be identified down to the breed/strain. So to take your pork example, instead of saying 'pork', you are proposing the packaging would have to say "Cheshire pork", or "Landrace pork". Producers/packagers have the option to do that already - "angus beef" being a common one that makes me laugh every time I see it.

Aside from being ridiculous (and how would you label hamburger that may contain meat from a dozen breeds of cow, or a cereal that may be made of ten or twelve different strains of wheat), it provides no benefit to the consumer, and provides significant cost to the producer. After all, they now need to create separate transportation, storage and processing lines to keep the strain/breeds identifiable.

I think it is not too much to ask to know what you are eating and for the person eating it getting to make the decision for what ever reason on wether to eat it or not.
And that information is not missing. If there is corn in it, its labelled as such.

Ps so it is ok to force products to label sodium content and added ingrediants but to hide gmo?
That would be a false equivalency on your part; GMO isn't an ingredient added to food, its a breeding method.

We don't label breeding methods on food, and requiring only one be labelled makes no sense. After all, mutagenic breeding (most plant crops), line breeding (most animal breeds), forced/interspecies hybridisation (most vegetables), and induced polyploidy (all cereals), all create far larger and uncontrolled changes to the genomes than does GMO. All produce much less predictable outcomes than GMO. And all are completely unnatural and do not (in many cases, cannot) occur in nature.

So if we're labelling breeding methods, why only GMOs, and not the ones which incur far larger changes to the organisms biology and which are equally - if not more so - "unnatural"?
 
#37 ·
SuiG....
Good enough answer for me at my knowlage level. I am not invested hard enough in the subject to care enough to learn more to decide if I totaly agree or not and so find no fault with your answer at my current knowlage level. I also will not work to learn more (unless on accident) on purpose cause there are enough things now that I am doing and don't know that I won't get to before I die.
Cheers
gww
 
#38 · (Edited)
Thanks for the detailed information, SG.
I need some time to study now.

I am generally in favor of labeling foods, but as permitted proportions are genetically engineered there, I do not see much purpose in them either.

But since I find it basically fair to be able to choose, at the moment I buy organic food from labels that control themselves.
So I will continue to watch the discussion and see how it develops.

Eduardo started this thread.
I assume that it is important to him that in the Portuguese orchards the bees are not poisoned directly by spraying, so the argument that the defense is built into the plant is certainly an advantage.

Are there any studies on the extent to which the guttation water of the plants or the resins they are segregating and which the bees may use has an impact on bee health?
 
#40 ·
I am generally in favor of labeling foods, but as permitted proportions are genetically engineered there, I do not see much purpose in them either.
As someone who (well, my wife, to be accurate) produces/sells food at the small scale, I'm generally opposed to labelling laws. They are very expensive to implement, especially at the level of the small producer.

But since I find it basically fair to be able to choose, at the moment I buy organic food from labels that control themselves.
And it is a voluntary labelling, which is what I prefer as the costs are incurred by choice, and farmers/producers will do so if is to their advantage. We looked at getting organic certification for the dairy goat operation we are in the process of building, but decided against it. The cost of certification, plus the additional cost of buying certified & traceable feed, far outweighs the additional price we could charge for cheese. It also illustrates just how arbitrary the organic label is - because our goats will be eating predominantly wild fodder, with only 10-20% of their winter diet coming from feed, its almost impossible to get certification (we need to get soil testing done throughout our property, whereas someone growing fodder needs only have each separate field tested)...even though they are eating a far more "natural" diet (bush, trees, sedges, etc) than any goat eating a 100% organic feed diet :scratch:

Are there any studies on the extent to which the guttation water of the plants or the resins they are segregating and which the bees may use has an impact on bee health?
Lots, as measuring the release of Bt into the environment is a mandatory part of the certification process for all Bt crops. The best type of study to look for are meta-analyses, which pool the data from multiple studies and analyze it in-bulk. These (along with the individual studies they assess) show now harm to bees & other pollinators: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18183296

You can even feed bees a pure diet of Bt-pollen without incurring a measurable detoxification response: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28688300
 
#44 ·
So the lack of diversity with banana multiplication is now treated with GMO...I hope this works. I hope it for the small farmers.

And how do you want to solve the starvation of people who have no access to farmland and water, because this was bought by speculators?
 
#45 ·
So the lack of diversity with banana multiplication is now treated with GMO...I hope this works. I hope it for the small farmers.
Its not an issue of genetic diversity; you're thinking of the Cavendish (most common type shipped to Europe/N. America as a fruit) which is under attack by a different disease (tropical race). This is an issue for some African farmers, as some produce this as an export crop. But that's not the type of banana we're talking about here. Cavendish production in Africa is largely run by large companies, so the loss of those bananas is more of an economic/jobs issue than a survival issue.

The banan's Graham & I are referring to are generally quite different; some are small dessert bananas, but most are starchy plantains. Very starchy, usually cooked prior to consumption. Much more genetically diverse than the fruit/dessert strains grown for richer nations. And a lot of effort was put into breeding a resistant strain, with no success. The genes which provide protection come from sweet peppers.

And how do you want to solve the starvation of people who have no access to farmland and water, because this was bought by speculators?
Not an issue in Uganda, where most people are farmers, and not at all relevant to GMOs or other farming methods.
 
#49 ·
How can you guarantee it´s staying with NPO organizations and it will not happen like in India?

By the way, was Vandana studying at your university?

http://vandanashiva.com/?page_id=2

In 1995, Indian Agriculture was reoriented from being focused on National Food Security, which rests on the livelihood and ecological security of our small farmers, to being focussed on corporate control and corporate profits, which are made possible by the corporate written rules of “free” trade, trade liberalization, and globalization. Enabled by these rules, agrichemical giants entered India and started to control the seed sector. Where once farmers grew, saved, and replanted seeds, they were now forced to buy seed-chemical packages that allowed companies to extract super-profits from farmers through royalty collection.
In 2009 alone, 30 new brands of Bt Cotton were introduced in India in order to create an illusion of choice for farmers. In reality, the introduction of Bt cotton meant that farmers could no longer afford seeds and were forced to buy them on credit from companies, creating a cycle of debt that continues till today. *
In spring 2015, during the harvest festival of Baisakhi, more than 100 farmers of West UP committed suicide. Their crops had failed due to unseasonal rains. This climate instability is part of climate change, and industrial agriculture is a major driver of climate change. Farmers’ suicides are a result of high cost-low return farming, the stresses due to the debt resulting from this exploitative system, their vulnerability to volatile markets, and a chaotic climate.
 
#50 ·
How can you guarantee it´s staying with NPO organizations and it will not happen like in India?
When it comes to subsistence farmers, no company is going to develop products for them - there is no market there for them to sell too. By definition, these farmers lack the means to buy into more advanced agricultural seeds and technologies.

Subsistence farmers are a major target for NGO's who support human development. The goal is to give these farmers the resources to go from farming to simply stay alive, to being able to profit and advance economically.

In terms of your posts regarding India, the situation is much more complex than the simplified version your source describes. Most cotton seeds sold in the west (GMO or conventional) are hybrid seeds - meaning that they are the offspring of two separate cotton breeds. When you cross two breeds in this fashion, the plants that grow from the resulting seeds experience a phenomenon called "hybrid vigour". This essentially means that the "children" of the cross out-grow and out-rpoduce the parental strains. This is great for farmers as they get much higher yields (most vegetables and cereals you buy - organic or conventional - are from hybrid stocks), but they come with a limitation - they don't breed true, and if you cross the hybrids and collect the seeds, the next generation will under-perform.

Bt cotton was the first hybrid crop ever introduced into India, and Indian farmers either ignored, or didn't take seriously, or didn't understand, the instructions they received on using the new seeds. This led to a pretty large loss in cotton output for a few years, as many farmers replanted seeds from the first years crop. It caused a lot of issues for the farmers, but it also spurred the development of the first non-patented and non-hybrid Bt cotton. This is now the most commonly grown form of cotton in India, is is considered to be directly responsible for increasing farmer incomes and reducing environmental impact within India's cotton industry: http://www.isaaa.org/resources/publications/briefs/41/download/isaaa-brief-41-2009.pdf
 
#54 · (Edited)
SG,
don´t feel offended. I´m not questioning your personal good intentions. I visited your profile and saw you are interested in beekeeping so you are not an influencer in my eyes just as I´m not one. :)

Who is pure enough in your eyes to head and work for a farming NGO?
Perhaps those should work in a voluntary capacity.

I´m not against GMO per se, I just don´t want this to be in the hands of a few unscrupulous people.

rwurster,
I got your last post on my email account before you edited it. Are you contributing? SG seems to me a person who can look out for himself. As he is a teacher he must be used to skepticism.

Well, I´m very glad I got the links so I can discuss this with both sides in europe. Thanks again, SG.
 
#55 ·
SG,
don´t feel offended.
I don't feel offended. I'm simply pointing out that any time you are faced with facts that are inconvenient to your beliefs, you explain away those facts by claiming the sources are biased or untrustworthy.

According to you:
  • Mark Lynas "was paid for this" ("this" being accepting the evidence and going from an anti-GMO advocate to a pro-GMO advocate) --> post #2
  • Any scientist who publishes data you don't like cannot possible be independent or unbiased --> post #24
  • And now, an NGO which provided modern agricultural tools to subsistence farmers must be lying in their reports because they've hired competent people with relevant experience to their mission.

At no point have you ever provided any evidence any of your claims are true. You simply dismiss those who have the data showing your beliefs to be unfounded as biased or otherwise untrustworthy.

Perhaps those should work in a voluntary capacity.
So people who disagree with you are not allowed to make a living? And I fail to see how it is at all relevant - many of your anti-GMO advocates are paid for their "work", and most anti-GMO NGO's have paid staff and executives. So I assume you'll stop quoting those sources as well, given that being paid for your expertise is somehow disingenuous in your book...

I´m not against GMO per se, I just don´t want this to be in the hands of a few unscrupulous people.
So then you should be ecstatic that the ISAAA exists and hires the best people in their field, instead of complaining that they exist and hire the best people in their field. ISAAA gives away, for free, all of their GMOs and conventionally grown crops. They give away, for free, training in modern farming methods. They buy, or convince companies to sign over, patent rights to seeds, stocks and GMOs, and then give them away for free. They advice governments on safe and effective GMO policies, for free. They perform environmental and social impact studies, and give the results away for free.

The very thing you say you want is the entire reason for their existence.

And yet, somehow, in your mind they are evil, or to be mistrusted because they've hired people with relevant experience.

Here's a challenge for you. Name one of your anti-GMO groups that's done half as much for subsistence farmers, and ensuring seed/stock availability free of intellectual property restraints, than the ISAAA.
 
#56 ·
IMHO are the problems of hunger and non-supply caused by civil wars, drought or flooding, natural disasters, climate change and dictatorship.

So it does not matter how and if agriculture is funded, it does not even matter if there is a genetically engineered agriculture or not. There are no solutions as long as there is a global market.
Genetic engineering can also lead to an oversupply, a drop in prices, so that nobody is helped.

In my opinion, there will only be an improvement if the global market economy is abandoned and there are more tariffs and own currencies. Then the countries can act freely.

The map you have set reminds me of a World Conquest card. It scares me.
The infrastructure is the same as in a war. We Germans are very influenced by our past.

I've set the link from India, that's enough.
I do not feel like justifying myself for something that matches my democratic freedom, and I am very grateful to have (still) this choice.
 
#59 ·
A very impressive reading: "What if much that you think you know about agriculture, farming and food isn't actually true? What if there are "myths" that have been intentionally and mostly unintentionally spread about these issues? What if the truth about these issues matters for the future of humanity?" source: http://appliedmythology.blogspot.pt/2018/
 
#64 ·
Personally, my favorite oldie is parathion. Did a really good job on most every insect or animal it came in contact with including birds, and many 4 and even 2 legged animals.
 
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