Look at this abomination, the product of godless manipulation by farmers, turning it into a nightmarish version of its pure, natural, original form.
And if you think that’s bad, you should see the mad genetic tinkerers did to peaches and watermelon! Eeeeeviiiiiilllll.
Yup. And cows are no longer aurochs, sheep are no longer mouflon, chicken are no longer junglefowl. Every single domesticated organism we have — wheat, barley, rice, pig, lettuce, broccoli, EVERYTHING — has undergone extensive genetic modification.
@1: But in the case of animals, it has been at the extreme expense of their welfare.
You think watermelons would survive on their own in the wild?
Aren’t peanuts a GMO, too?
You think watermelons would survive on their own in the wild?
Beware wild watermelons!! They can sneak up on your and .. well, it isn’t pretty.
Many of my environmental science students come to class with a poor idea of what “natural” means. They see huge corn fields growing around here, so they assume corn is “natural” and has always existed in that form. They leave, I hope, with a bit more knowledge than that. I tell them that pretty much everything they eat, even if they buy it from a local organic farmer, has been genetically modified in some way. And that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Don’t forget popcorn. That is some crazy GMOing.
As for animals, domestication has been great for their species. Millions of cows live long and healthy lives, and the ones that we eat still get a better shake than they would from the tigers. Tigers, on the other hand, are getting wiped out by our sheer carelessness, while the domestic cat is on every continent getting food, vet care and fashion shows.
When the corn starts to walk itself to the silo; that’s where I draw the line.
I would really appreciate a serious scientific explanation of how the stuff done to corn in the lab is the same as, but faster, than what’s done by cross pollinating. More teaching and less pointing and laughing at the stupid people would be extremely helpful.
@PZ Myers # 3 – “You think watermelons would survive on their own in the wild?”
Sort of. Watermelons are believed to have been cultivated from Citrullus colocynthis, also known as the bitter apple. From the name, I suppose you can guess that it ain’t known for its sweetness.
The simple answer is that in either case, DNA is being selected for that gives the product some benefit for growing and/or the food quality.
It’s just that the change can be targeted in the lab, rather than needing to look at thousands of hybrids for beneficial DNA. The DNA used is already in nature.
@comfychair #9 – My objections to genetic modification are when changes are introduced to make a foodcrop more toxic (i.e. pest resistant) or able to withstand massive amounts of chemical poisons. The first kind of change is irresponsible, as there is zero testing done to verify safety in the human food chain; the second kind of change is dangerous, as the chemicals have a huge negative impact on farmland quality and the surrounding environment’s biodiversity.
But pissing and moaning about all genetic modifications? I fail to see how golden rice and high protein wheat are harmful, or how developing grains able to thrive in marginal soils is a threat to human existence.
@ #8
“When the corn starts to walk itself to the silo; that’s where I draw the line.”
Not me. I look forward to the day when pork chops grow on trees.
Broccoli is so interesting. A crossbreed of Asparagus and Cauliflower, done by Mr. Broccoli and attached his family name to the veg. A descendant of whom later bought up the rights to Fleming’s Bond books and made fortunes turning them into movies.
– or so the urban legend tells me, any mythbusters out there?
GMO is too easily applicable to anything with deliberately variant genes than its “root stock” [no pun intended]. It is a disguise of genes that have been mechanistically tinkered with to produce a specific variant able to achieve a specified purpose. The classic example is Roundup Resistant Corn. Roundup, a brand name of a powerful herbicide, is very effective and can be used on nonGMO corn but sparingly, raising the cost of the corn. Roundup resistant corn requires no special care from the Roundup used to kill all the weeds stealing nutrients from the soil away from the corn. So Roundup Resistant corn is more plentiful, easier to grow, cheaper overall.
Or so they told me, and am gullible enough to believe them. The point is; GMO is not from “simple” modification, such as cross-breeding, hybridization, etc. But from tinkering with the DNA in a LEGO style. Why anti-GMO’s think such tinkered DNA’s are inherently carcinogenic (i.o.w. “toxic”), baffles me. even Roundup: a poison targeted at Plants. Not recommended for animal consumption, but still not a human poison. So Roundup dusted corn, can be washed (recommended regardless), to eliminate the Roundup dust.
@ #12 – Gregory, you’ve hit some of the subtleties that many people who rant against GMOs miss, either through ignorance or ideology. Fortunately, I’ve just had direct experience with how to handle the first one in my environmental science classes.
I teach at an urban technical HS (in Philadelphia) so my students know about as much about farming as they do about theoretical physics. So when we started the unit on agriculture this week, one of the big questions that came up when we discussed modern agricultural methods was about GMOs, since this is something they’ve all encountered on the internet and feel like they can discuss. This let me lay out the distinctions that you made above and the point that PZ made as well: that there’s more than one type of GMO and they are quite different in technique, content, and goals for creating them.
What I found was that most of my students regarded all GMOs as being essentially chimerical (that is, containing genetic material from more than one organism and created by lab techniques) and were fairly scared of them. Naturally, I started by shaking up their perceptions by pointing out that the hybridization that humans have done for thousands of years produces an organism no less genetically modified than any other technique and that the same could now sometimes be done faster and more surely by direct manipulation in the lab. I pointed out that this is by far the bulk of what might be called GMOs and that chimerical ones were still relatively rare in comparison. Then I directed them into the consideration that the type and purpose of any particular modification was a much better measure of its usefulness and advisability than the fact that it was modified by whatever method. After a lot of discussion of examples (including things like commercial tomato varieties bred to make them thicker skinned and easier to ship but less flavorful) they really did grasp the nature of the public debate. Most were far more willing to eat something that had been modified by lab techniques afterwards, though most still expressed some caution (which I was thrilled with, since I’m on a constant mission to get them to think about the world with proper scientific skepticism.)
The point here is, that if I can lead a group of not-very-academically-minded high school students into a good nuanced understanding of GMOs, then most of the public could be gotten there too with proper education on the subject. Unfortunately, given the poor job the media generally does with these issues, I doubt that education will be happening anytime soon.
Okay, I’m going to look up the graphic creator to pass on the info where it will be most useful, but I’m surprised no one has already criticized this:
Great googly-moogly! Daishikyū, hinan shite kudasai! It’s ONE THOUSAND TIMES LARGER!
Except 190 mm = [19 mm] x 10.
that’s right, just 10.
Obvious to those of us with a bit of mathematics is that the creator intended to say
Obvious to those of us having familiarity with common mathematical misunderstandings and mistakes is that the creator clearly should have said:
Of course, corn that’s only 900 percent larger does not quite inspire the same awe as the
As far as I know there are no “synthetic” genes in GMO, so we’re basically transplanting known genes to modify an organism. Sure you could argue that these genes might have unforeseen interactions with other genes, making the final outcome unknown. But what about the naturally occurring mutations and interactions that are exploited in traditional breeding? How do you know if those are safe? You’re basically using nature to perform the “thousand monkeys” experiment, with no control of the actual genes that produces the change. How is this any safer than taking a well known, carefully studied gene and transplanting it? Do you really think every new strain of food is thoroughly tested before pushed to the marked?
@ Crip #16: If the length increases by a factor 10, the volume will increase by 10^3 = 1000 (assuming the overall shape is the same).
Sorry to bust your myth, but broccoli is not a hybrid; it belongs to the same species as cabbage, cauliflower, kale, kohlrabi, and Brussels sprouts (Brassica oleraceae ). The different forms were selected by farmers many years ago for their ability to overdevelop one part of the plant form (apical meristems for cabbage, inflorescences in broccoli and cauliflower, axial meristems in Brussels sprouts, stems in kohlrabi, etc.) Of course, what you see now has been further modified by modern breeding techniques, but as far as I know none of the co-called cole crops that are available to consumers now have been genetically engineered with foreign DNA.
Gregory @12 –At the risk of being soundly bashed, I agree with you. Imo, the term “GMO” is a poor one. Genetic modification is nothing new and will continue whether people are involved or not. It’s genetically engineering organisms (GEOs), or splicing hereto unrelated genes together, that concerns me (ie, the fabled pork genes in a tomato to create a longer shelf life).
Now, I admit the reason why is rather personal. To my great dismay, I have several food allergies that are pretty awesome so I have to eat rather plainly; I’d like my foods to be labelled so I have a choice to try or pass on my food purchases (ie, I prefer the “Envy” apple to the “Gala.”) Yes, at the market I would like to be able to be a good little discriminating consumer. Is there something terribly wrong with this?
Additionally, shouldn’t we be cautious in introducing new varieties and species to our collective biome without testing for environmental consequences? I am not aware of significant independent testing of GEO’s. Please that this as an honest request for edification.
I forgot to add that hybridization between asparagus (a monocot) and cauliflower (dicot) would be highly improbable. These two lineages have been evolutionarily separated for well over 100 million years.
What could be more natural than seedless fruits like seedless watermelon, navel oranges, or bananas? Clearly products of natural selection.
I think that there is a case to be made for adequate testing and regulation, but those are actually undercut by the Frankenfoods hysteria.
I choose to insulate myself from the dangerous effects of lab-engineered GMOs by never attempting to reproduce with them, insulating them from my presumably noble familial bloodline, although I have to admit that a roundup-resistant baby might have some advantages in this world. Nevertheless, whenever I consume them, I make a point of excreting them from my most unpleasant orifice. Take that, Monsanto!
Well, Erlend Meyer, if that’s your real name, be pedantic in a post about being mathematically pedantic if you will
I, however, will resolutely point out others’ errors while refusing to admit my own.
And, in any case, that would only be 999 times larger. 1000 the size, but 999 times larger. And don’t give me anything about the mathematical meaning of the tilde.
But naval oranges are natural! It just spits out the seeds before animals eat the fruit, thus automatic seed spitting. Not like seedless watermelons, where farmers gotta get all mechanistic and graft seedless flowers onto fertile stems.
erp. those expunged naval orange seeds will land directly under the tree and will not get any solar nourishment cuz mommy tree is hoggin all the light. So if they occurred naturally, they would long ago gone extinct. so farmers intervened…
Seedless watermelons are GOOD GMO. Watermelon seeds are deadly: swallow a seed and watermelon will grow in your tummy. My mommy told me that, so it must be true fact!!
…
Thank you mythbusters, re broccoli myth. I was doubly wrong. Not only was what I related a myth, but I related my myth incorrectly. Broccoli = Cauliflower X
Asparagus. I don’t remember what the original myth was, re Cauliflower X ____, so I just guessed “Asparagus”, above. Irregardless [sic], glad to know it is a myth, either way. {the ‘family naming portion’ is still unbusted}Except, I have actual video proof, from two guys talking, how bananas are as natural and unchanged now as the day they were created. Convenient hand-hold, easy to peel, long and firm and full of flesh. The perfect phallic shape for the good Christian to wrap his mouth around and suck.
This chart is bad at math, misleading, and completely ignores one of my main issues with GM crops. They are clones with 0 genetic diversity, unlike the old fashioned methods of plant breeding and seed production. F1 hybrids have the same problem, but without any worries about if the virus or bacterial insect toxin that has been engineered into my food will have negative effects. There were probably far more than 200 varieties of corn with differing uses that were grown in the Americas before Europeans arrived here. The varieties that existed pre-GM also have several hundred years of field testing in their favor. We are sure that they are safe for the environment and healthy food for humans. I also have to point out that genetically modifying corn and other food crops to contain a bacteria that paralyzes the gut of insects has been concurrent with a rise in obesity, digestive problems, and food allergies in the US. The entire factory farming model is broken. I do not think it is irrational to not trust large corporations who try to maximize profits at all costs and create trade monopolies while claiming to be humanitarians who are fighting world hunger.
What Tethys said. Especially the bit about allergies; my husband is allergic to bananas, for instance. What happens when someone decides that a given gene complex from bananas has useful properties and splices them into, say, tomatoes? How much care is being taken to ensure that those genes don’t also produce the allergen in question, and what guarantees do I have that when I go buy tomatoes at the store for a salad, my husband’s not going to keel over from anaphylactic shock?
You’re conflating the product with the company. It’s like saying “Hamburgers are bad because mcdonalds”. I forget the dudes name, but there is one guy who engineered a kind of rice or wheat that literally saved India from famine, but his products still have trouble finding a home to stop people from starving because frankenfoods.
Further and also, I think the rise of epedemic obesity and the surrounding health issues are a *lot* more complex than “these two lines on a graph from similar timeframes go up similarly”. Has there been anything *linking* the GM corn to these issues? Has a study been squashed by Big Corn?
You’re seriously sounding like a woo-devouring “NATURAL FOOD” freak here, Thethys.
(note: yes factory farming is broken and horrible, but not because of GMOs. Yes the giant conglomerates are terrible, but not because (exclusively) of GMOs)
Dalillama, Schmott Guy:
The actual answer is: pretty substantial care.
In point of fact, there have been several occasions in which the proteins being produced by a gene transfer crop were the troublesome ones that tended to trigger allergies in humans. Such was the case with a transplanted peanut gene. Point being, it was found in product testing and the seed never made it beyond the development stage. (I can try to find a link to the story if you’d like, it might take me a while).
Another good question might be: what guarantees do you have that a conventionally bred new varietal won’t trigger allergies? The answer pretty much boils down to “Well, that never happened with this crop before, so it probably won’t with the new crop either…”
By the way, if we ever manage to create a peanut that doesn’t trigger allergies, I will bet you all of the money in my pockets versus all of the money in your pockets it won’t be done via conventional breeding. If for no other reason than the fact that allergen-free peanuts is something already being worked on through GM research.
How likely is it that selective breeding should produce a plant that triggers some allergic reaction? Possibly without having much beneficial effect for the end user? Perhaps not so great, but you can’t rule it out. And there is no control on “naturally” bred crops, so what is it were to happen? GMO is intentional, allowing for much more deliberate testing.
@28: Allergies are definitely a concern. There was an incident early on where someone added a peanut protein to corn (to improve the amino acid profile – corn is low in lysine, and this peanut protein had lots). It reached the test-crop stage before anyone thought to try feeding it to people with peanut allergies (they reacted badly), and then the program was hastily killed and became a cautionary tale. Partly because of that, they are now very careful about potential immunogens in GMOs someone might eat. Many of the common ones (e.g. Roundup Ready) are small mutations in the interior of proteins the plant already has.
(I spent the first part of my career working on GMOs, though I do mostly cancer stuff now.)
And it’s absolutely true that agricultural GM, as it’s practiced right now, promotes monoculture and unsustainable practices (by favoring strains that maximize yield under optimal conditions, instead of those that can take what the local climate dishes out). That doesn’t have to be the case. But given how hard it is to get a GMO to market right now, that’s the only thing that makes economic sense.
#29 brought up Golden Rice – it’s got daffodil genes that make Vitamin A, which would keep millions of kids in rice-eating regions from going blind or dying for lack of it. The project was funded by charities and government grants, so it’s free to use, and it’s been ready for over a decade. And it still isn’t really in use, because various agitators will protest it, burn down fields with it, etc. All to protect kids from those nasty daffodil genes that would keep them from dying of malnutrition like nature intended. Given this, you can imagine how easy it is to get funding for more socially responsible applications of GM.
I think we’ll get there, especially as GM itself gets cheaper, but stigmatization campaigns (let’s label the dangerous scary GMOs) don’t help.
wow. @ 29 Tashiliciously Shriked. You are being dismissive of some real concerns that have no easy answers. We haven’t the science to answer them either, yet. So why not allow those of us who need to be careful the opportunity to at least make a friggin’ label choice? That is not a ban, merely information.
This is not just about us “special” people, either. While the rise of obesity and other health issues may not be related to GEOs, there is no science telling us they aren’t.
As for being just a bit more skeptical of corporate farming, please be so! From the conversations here it looks like very few posters actually grow their own food or realize just how involved/monopolizing Monsanto is at this time. It could be any corporation their size involved in an important part of our lives and without our knowledge, because we have no real reason to attend to the problem. We make assumptions that the science is being done to assure us that we don’t create unintended consequences. I really can’t say I would trust any large corporation to ensure of a products’ safety and would prefer to see a few well-run independent studies as proof. You know, we don’t even have the ability to accurately test for ingested allergies? (Man, I wish we did.) So how can we know about that part of the puzzle at all?
@ 30 Anri — I hope you are right about the care taken. Even though I can do without them, allergen-free peanuts probably won’t happen without engineering and it would benefit many.
I like this discussion of pros and cons. However, I am not sure the brain-trusts we have as representatives are up to doing a proper job of regulation of this emerging science.
Do you remember the pictures of the wild “bananas”, unhybridized fruits that bananas are said to be derived from, that were posted all over when The Bananaman came out with his cinematic masterpiece “The Atheist’s Nightmare”? They’re not even recognizable, and whoever first picked one and tried to eat it must have been very persistent and mighty hungry.
Modern bananas can’t reproduce on their own either, they are just hideous mutants. Another blow for the Paleo dieters.
@27 Tethys- There is actually no loss of biodiversity with GMO crops. When a trait is developed it is crossed back into every variety available. You mentioned corn. There isn’t just one type of roundup ready corn or Bt corn, you can get those traits in hundreds of different corn varieties. You can also still get the non-traited versions.
I also find your arguments relying on correlation to be weak. I am sure you have seen the fun website of spurious correlations where you can look at large existing data sets to investigate new and hilarious correlations.
Wouldn’t humanity have suffered a malthusian reversal, already, without Norman Borlaug’s high yield wheat and rice? It seems rather perverse for anyone who’s living a moderately comfortable well-fed existence todaty to complain about GMOs.
well OK I did not know that the discussion was about the “Idea” of GMO plant and there breeding comparing them to natural plant breeding.
I thought that the majority of the negative reaction stems from the actions agribusiness corporations as much form the plants themselves.
There is a well earned mistrust involved here.
In principle the technique is neither good nor bad the modifying takes place “in the lab” which greatly speeds up the process. Out here in the real world it is who is deciding to do what and why that is the concern.
I just read some where that because of the use of roundup on roundup resistant resistant crops there have now appeared through selection weeds that have developed resistance to roundup so that older types of weed killer have to be applied.
all of this repeated application of known toxic chemicals on the crops and through runoff and wind drift the surrounding environment is not an entirely benign event. the residue is not entirely on the surface but are in the water taken up by the plants.
We won’t even discuss the patenting as practice by the companies doing the developing of them because that sure does have some interesting history.
in the abstract is one thing how things work out in reality is something else.
uncle frogy
Sorry, the null hypothesis, like with vaccines, is that there is no effect until evidenced. Science cannot evidence negatives, as there is always one more test to be done. So science, can only evidence positives. Which is why scientifically there is no evidence for deities, creationism, ID, or vaccines cause autism.
penumbra @33
I saw a lot of lazy thinking and bad rationalisations in your post. Would you care to rephrase to present anything at *all* in a way that wouldn’t be roundly mocked if it were presented as proof by anti-vaxxers, YEC, Libertarians or Godbots?
There have indeed been weeds that have developed a resistance to glyphosate. However, this is a result of applying a selective pressure to a population, nothing to do with their GMOness. This will happen with any kind of weed management practice. The way to avoid this is to use multiple modes of action either at once or in rotation, and to have refuge areas planted.
Patenting of plants doesn’t require transgenic recombination, you can patent plants no matter how they are bred. People have been patenting plants since the 1930s.
@38 Nerd, I understand. Actually, obesity is not really as large a concern to me as the potential effects of releasing GEOs and the consequences. It’s complicated and I can see both benefits and pitfalls in this discussion. I would simply like to label GEOs available to me and let me make a choice. Thank you for correcting me on my science, but I’m still not comfortable with GEOs until we’ve seen the enormous benefits they seem to promise without the truly awful consequences we could see without some sort of testable framework. What would you suggest? Is this not reasonable?
@ 39 Oh, I could do without your assumptions. I’m vaccinated, an atheist and believe in evolution. Indeed I am familiar with animal husbandry and some of the genetics involved. I also know a bit about growing crops and the use of herbacides and pesticides and mono-cultures (which have both benefits and drawbacks).
You know, I would listen more carefully to what you do have to say if you didn’t insult me at the outset. I am here to learn. Thanks.
You still use the same kind of lazy thinking those groups use. So why not be called out on it?
I don’t think it is unreasonable, but it is frustratingly vague. The much maligned roundup ready crops have lead to a huge decrease in the toxicity of herbicides used, and have lead to a larger adoption of no-till farming, resulting in great benefit to soil health. Bt crops have lead to a massive drop in insecticides sprayed on crops.
What truly awful consequences do you think have come about through the use of GMOs?
@40
that is what I was trying to say that is how the resistant plants developed.
The development of roundup resistant plants was undertaken by the manufacturer of roundup not to increase the yield of the crop nor the health of the nation but to facilitate the increase in sales of Roundup and to that end they developed the crop and patented it and sell it thus developing another profit center in addition to selling roundup. That weeds also develop resistance by a much older path not unpredictable.
That is what they are doing the question is is that in the long run what we should be doing. We are on a treadmill, insects pests also develop resistance requiring new and stronger chemicals, and the same thing has been happening in medicine.
My money is on evolution to “win”
The spread of GMO’s is being led not by careful consideration by society as a whole with the aid of scientific expertise it is being led by corporations for the benefit of the corporation and it’s shareholders.
All of the incentives for corporations have long been understood to be for short term quarterly gain as it is expressed in share price. Is this what it is wise?
uncle frogy
They may have started it for profit and be the biggest developer, currently, but even then, boycott that company, not all GMO’s regardless of source. There are many GMO’s developed by agriscientists [horticulturalists] to benefit that crop’s yield in general and testing it in agriculturally threatened areas. E.G. Golden Rice.
Also, just because the company did it for profit, does not imply that the product is notgood.
Crip Dyke:
Why is that “obvious”? Why not, oh, corn is 3 dimensional, and 10^3 equals 1000, so, modern corn has 1000 times the volume?
Just a short comment: I think it’s absolutely essential to keep concerns regarding patenting, business practices, farming methods, government regulations, ecological impact, and monoculture issues completely separate from the discussion of GMO as such.
None of these problems are caused by GMOs, nor are they solved by banning GMOs. It’s simply a red herring.
Spraying with an herbicide increases realized yield. The glyphosate resistance trait allows those crops to be sprayed with an herbicide with a much lower EIQ than what was previously used. A corporation made a profit on something they developed, big whoop.
This is why I advocate for good farming and weed management practices, like using more than one mode of action for weed control, rotating crops, and planting refuge areas. Being against GMOs in general or Monsanto in particular does absolutely nothing to stop the development of weed resistance to herbicides. In fact, it probably increases the environmental damage done by agriculture.
slithey tove:
Well, the “GMO label” would not help a boycott (partly because Monsanto also makes plenty of money selling products to producers of non-genetically engineered foods), but, if there was a reason to boycott Monsanto – or, for that matter, any other primary seed producer, or herbicide producer, how would you do it? It’s very challenging to research what companies are behind the food products you buy, once you get beyond the “brand” label. Ironically, the anti-GMO crowd does not help here, they actually make it harder, because every google turns up tons of their articles, many of which are about linkages between Monsanto and other companies which appear to be spurious.
I don’t think there is a good reason (yet) to oppose Monsanto specifically. But, that doesn’t mean you should just say “boycott that company if you don’t like it”, because it’s just not feasible, barring a great deal of research that no one has done yet.
And don’t get fixed on Monsanto about this, because it is a problem that applies to many other food issues.
It’s genetically-modified turtles all the way down.
–
Jackson @ 40 – While I agree with you in general that any chemical pest or weed control technique can develop resistance, you might not want to cite Bt corn as an example of an unequivocally good GMO. I’ve been using a popular article for my students about this, reporting on a study that was published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences detailing the development of Bt resistance in the western corn rootworm. The gist of the study’s conclusions is that the constant presence of Bt in the fields has greatly accelerated the development of Cry3Bb1 Bt toxin resistance in the rootworms and also seems to have led to resistance to the mCry3A Bt toxin, even though it was not present in the study fields (the plants studied only carried the gene to produce the Cry3Bb1 toxin.) Since rootworms are a major corn pest, this is a fairly serious problem. Farmers once used the simple but less intensively productive technique of crop rotation to keep rootworms in check, but they were told this could be abandoned with Bt corn, thus keeping fields producing corn every year. Now, we are heading toward a time when we’ll be returning to crop rotation and the rootworm will have, in the meantime, developed resistance to an important pesticide group (at least in Iowa, where the study was conducted.)
This was my point above, when I said there was nothing wrong with GMOs in general, no matter how they are arrived at, but that we’d better do what we should do with anything new we develop: think carefully about how and why we’re using it and don’t just assume that it changes everything. Genetically engineering something doesn’t exempt it from the biological processes that govern everything else, nor should we be so foolish as to think so, as the Bt corn lesson shows.
While I agree that drawing causation from correlation, and that we should be attacking the corporations and not the technology, I think Tethys has a point when she says that
GE allows for far more radical and fast changes.
The example makes it obvious that it took 9000 years to obtain the modern ear.
Arguing that this is only a difference in quantity and not in quality is disingenuous and works only when preaching to the choir.
*”While I agree that drawing causation from correlation in this case is wrong“
Drop the paranoia. That is my suggestion.
I’m a chemist. Can I say there is no mercury in a kg sample of soil? It all depends upon what you define. Can I claim there is no mercury present? Absolutely not, as that requires the ability to detect one atom of mercury in 10^25 atoms total. Not feasible.
Say one ppm (10^-6)? Easily and readily done. We do it with USP tests on our products at work.
One ppb (10^-9)? Much harder and more expensive.
One ppt?(10^-12) Very expensive.
One ppq?(10^-15) Probably not, and extremely expensive with larger error bars than the measurement.
You should be getting the picture.
You need to define what you need to feel comfortable, and what realistically can be obtained.
Absolutes are for theologian, mathematicians, and philosophers.
@51 stwriley-
I think that jives pretty well with my post advocating for sound farming practices. I’m not a farmer myself, but everything I’ve seen about farming from farmers aligns with using multiple modes of action and refuge areas for pests. Did any companies really argue against that when Bt or RR crops first came out? I know that today the companies that distribute those traited seeds advise, and even print on the label that these pest management practices should be followed, but I don’t know what the case was 20 years ago.
Better Living Through Chemistry
(I’m so old)
No, this is not reasonable at all, which is why it has not been done yet.
You are asking for mandatory labeling because you don’t understand the science and that makes you uncomfortable. Fine, but the goal of avoiding GMOs could be easily accomplished by companies labeling GMO-free products. You demonstrate the exact reason that food companies, farmers, and scientifically literate folks oppose GMO labeling. You want to avoid GMOs yourself and scare others away from them for no good reason that you can state, other than that you imagine there could be unspecified ‘truly awful consequences.’ Consequences that have not been apparent for the twenty years that a dozen or so GMO crop species have been grown on millions of hectares in dozens of countries around the world. What truly awful consequences do you imagine there be with GMOs that do not exist with conventionally bred crops? If there are any, then you should be working to end the technology and not just label it.
The enormous benefits of GMO crops are already here, at least for the farmers, the environment, and yes, corporations, yet you still want more. Which is fine, and the benefits to the consumer are slowly increasing, but you should not hold up progress until you can demonstrate some harm or potential harm from GMO technology. Not harm from herbicides, or pesticides, or monoculture, protected plant varieties, or multinational corporations, as these are givens in all large-scale agriculture, but actual harm due to GMO technology that allows breeders to precisely manipulate a few genes, rather than randomly recombining or mutating tens of thousands of unknown genes, and hoping for the best.
@CripDyke: 10x larger in one dimension is 1000x larger in 3 dimensions. Think of a 1cm cube (or an inch if you must) and then picture how many of them you need to make a 10x10x10 cube.
grendelsfather #57
farmers, environment, corporations … something is missing
Actually, there is GMO labelling for any food product used in making licit pharmaceuticals. The QA departments are paranoid about any risk, and are overly safe when it comes to use of anything they, in their paranoia, consider unacceptable. They can’t demonstrate with evidence that any GMO product is unacceptable, but they avoid the problem without evidence. Which really goes against FDA/ICH regulations, where there needs to be a problem to avoid GMO materials.
Can we please have a GMO thread that doesn’t devolve into the same fallacies that we demonstrated were false the last n GMO threads????
1. Pesticide resistance is not a form of increased toxicity.
2. Pesticide and herbicide-resistant crops reduce the total pesticide use per acre.
3. Monsanto is NOT interested in locking customers in to using glyphosate because the patent for glyphosate expired years ago and not surprisingly their revenue stream from glyphosate has been dropping steadily ever since; Monsanto’s interest is in patented seeds, revenues of which now dwarf their herbicide revenue.
4. GMOs are extensively tested before release both for environmental impact and human health.
5. Non-GMO organisms have caused major problems — one traditionally-bred strain of celery had such high levels of psoralen that farm workers broke out in skin rashes from picking it.
6. GMO crops do NOT have “zero” bioversity. That would only apply if all GMO crops were cloned, and there are NO cloned GMO crops on the market. There are, however, many non-GMO crops that are clones, such as Cavendish bananas. And, really, any fruit or vegetable grown by propagation rather than seed is a clone, so if you hate the idea of eating a clone you should be favouring GMO crops over traditionals. And it gets worse — a lot of fruit trees are grown by propagating a graft onto another fruit tree, which means many of the apples we eat are clones from chimeric organisms — using traditional methods going back millennia.
These are statements that SHOULD NOT HAVE TO BE REPEATED. They have been reiterated numerous times on this blog and elsewhere. People really should read up on the science before jumping in with poorly thought-out anti-GMO rhetoric.
This is not to say there are no worthwhile discussions to be had. Here are some of the (many) GMO-related topics that are very much fair game:
1. How extensive should patent rights be?
2. What is acceptable as safety testing before commercialisation?
3. What measures should be taken to prevent contamination of surrounding crops and wild plants?
4. How do we prevent monoculture farming?
5. With labelling, how does one balance the right of consumers to know what they’re buying with the seller’s right not to be subjected to irrational fear campaigns?
But note that none of these is exclusive to GMOs. There are specific issues with GMOs on these topics, for sure, but all of them apply to traditionally bred crops — including patenting (the first US patent on an organism went to Louis Pasteur for a brewer’s yeast in 1873) — and frankly, I think the big issues that face sustainable agriculture will have to be addressed for both GMOs and non-GMOs alike.
Thanks, Chigau, for making a point that I haven’t gotten around to yet in this thread.
You intentionally ignore the following sentence in my response. This is exactly the type of quote mining that creationists and other anti-science types resort to. I have argued in other threads that the anti-GMO movement is exactly like other forms of science denial, but most of the adherents seem to be on the left of the political spectrum.
If you don’t feel that you personally have benefited from GMO crops, fine. But to dismiss the tremendous benefits to farmers and ecosystems around the world is very narrow sighted and self centered.
The anti-GMO crowd is responsible for holding up many of the benefits that would directly benefit consumers, especially in famine stricken regions of Africa and regions that could benefit from Golden Rice. It is highly hypocritical for them to hold up consumer benefits and then complain that there few consumer benefits.
grendelsfather
Don’t blame me.
You write poorly.
and you suck at mind-reading
re #58:
Your point is valid, only if “larger than” is interpreted as being a scale factor (multiplicative). I think Crip is interpreting “larger than” in the sense of arithmetical difference between A and B (i.e. A-B)
so if original is size A, and modern is 1000*A, then (1000A – A) = 999A
Crip is not befuddled by the 10^3 = 1000 maths, just the maths-english translation of “volume of B = 1000 times volume of A” into the phraseology of “B is __ larger than A”
maybe Crip’s point is to satirize “being pedantic”.
that’s the way I read Crip’s comment about this, YMMV. [being pedantic myself, my bad]
I’ve have seen this stated a number of times on this thread, yet I have heard no explanation of this seemingly counter-intuitive claim. If you are using less herbicide or less toxic herbicide, why do the crops need to be engineered to have a higher resistance to herbicide?
Can someone elucidate on this?
Yikes! You mean the 130 acres of nonGMO corn we planted over the weekend weren’t nonGMO? I’ve actually sampled a teosinte productd once. It was almost not palatable.
If applying say 5 kg/acre of herbicide is necessary to kill the weeds, but it also kills half of the desired plant, versus maybe 5% of herbicide resistant desired plants, which is of economic benefit to the farmer? Farmers are very cognizant of such costs.
I grow heirloom tomatoes because they have flavor and only need to ship 20′ from my backyard to my kitchen.
I grow overbred corn for the same reason. Virtually zero sugar>starch conversion between picking and cooking.
I don’t care how modified a vegetable is: I want it to taste good. Now if only they can breed or create Brussels sprouts that go from seed to harvest in less than ten months. I have been completely unsuccessful wIth them.
Sure. There isn’t some linear scale of toxicity that applies across all life forms. For instance the herbicide roundup (active ingredient is glyphosate) acts to block the shikimate pathway. It does this by inhibition the EPSPS enzyme, which is critical in the biosynthesis of the aromatic amino acids. Without being able to synthesize these amino acids, the plant dies. Humans and all other mammals, lack the ability to synthesize these amino acids anyways, so while being deadly to plants, glyphosate is relatively non-toxic to humans.
The original roundup ready trait (I’m not sure if it has been changed since its inception) was a single amino acid change in the EPSPS enzyme that made it much less able to bind to glyphosate, but still allowed for its enzymatic function. This trait therefore allows you to spray your field shortly after your crop emerges to kill all the other plant life while leaving your crop plants unaffected. You typically only need to spray once per growing cycle, as the crop plants get established and crowd out and provide a canopy for any late arriving weeds.
There are also many factors that go into evaluating how harmful something is to the environment. Cornell U maintains a list of the EIQ (environmental impact quotient) of all the pesticides used in agriculture. I encourage you to check out the site if you are interested to learn more. If you are interested in roundup ready corn, you can look up and compare the EIQ of glyphosate to the herbicide that was most widely used before, atrazine.
http://www.nysipm.cornell.edu/publications/eiq/default.asp
Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Round-up, is a non-selective herbicide, meaning that it will kill crops as well as weeds. It does have the huge advantage that it is relatively environmentally friendly, especially compared to older, more selective herbicides like atrazine. This benefit is due, in part, to its shorter persistence in the soil and to the fact that it targets a biochemical pathway that humans and other mammals do not have.
However, to glean the benefits of this more environmentally friendly herbicide, the crops must be engineered to be resistant, or “Round-up Ready,” through standard GMO techniques.
Re the size increase debate:
We only eat the surface area.
We don’t care about the cob.
Well, we used to but we have paper now.
Yeah, I can see how there would be confusion since the graphic displays lengths and then talks about it being “1000 times larger”, without explicitly stating it’s talking about volume. It also does this with the peach, which has a scale factor of 4 ( = 100mm/25mm) and the graphic just says “64 times larger” ( 64 = 4^3).
A good reminder to be clear about your units of measure. Interesting graphic nonetheless.
Nerd & grendelsfather:
Your comments explain why the GE plants have higher yields, but not how you can get away with using less (toxic) herbicide.
@Jackson:
So, is the inference that the weeds are also younger at that point and therefore less herbicide is needed to kill them?
Hmm, I wonder if this is a case of a panda who eats, shoots, and leaves. I am making the claim that with RR crops, you can use an herbicide that is less toxic. I don’t know the mass of atrazine you would need to use to get the same effect (glyphosate uses about a soda cans worth spread over a football field), but the EIQ is way lower with glyphosate usage than it is with atrazine.
Bt crops on the other hand, allow you to stop spraying with insecticide, because the plant produces CRY proteins, which protect it from insect damage.
Once again, the pro-GMO folks (like — unfortunately — PZ), astoundingly, cannot tell the difference between selective breeding and actually modifying the genome with tools. To the GMO groupies, a diamond cut for a ring by a jeweler and a stone you find on the beach are basically the same thing! After all, both of them have had pieces knocked off, it’s not as though the act of cutting is any different in any important way from being rolled along the sea floor. I am, as usual, boggled by the obtuseness and the willingness to hand-wave away concerns and blithely assume that problems will not develop — and also to ignore the fact that the overwhelming majority of the use of the technology (as opposed to the breeding method) is to make crops which are more resource-intensive to raise, making the various ecological problems we face worse.
I guess we’ll just have to wait for the GMO Chernobyl event — say, for example, the spliced peanut gene which makes the pollen of a common plant deadly to those with allergies, which then escapes the lab, contaminates the world over a period of a few years, and kills a huge swath of the population. (Considering that Monsanto’s GM crops regularly “escape”, this is not at all implausible. It has now been repeatedly confirmed that — even in countries which do not permit GM corn, and even considering that Monsanto scientists assured everyone that corn pollen was too heavy for GM pollen to travel — GM genes have contaminated wild maize. And that’s a scenario they actually considered in advance; considering that no sane person expects that they have foreseen all possible ways to screw up, permitting this to continue is insane.) Even ignoring dystopian unlikely sci-fi issues, the number of ways this technology is not merely capable of but likely to cause disasters of various scales is astonishing. The people who are trying ever so hard to poison the well by characterizing opposition as “anti-science” are totally irresponsible. PZ, how can you be anti-technology when the technology is guns or nukes, but think GM crops are just dandy?
In what ways do you think the differences matter? And by “tools” do you mean chemistry?
The technology is a breeding method. The most popular trait is Bt. In what ways do Bt crops require more resources than their isogenic lines?
Have anything specific in mind?
So, let’s see: glyphosate is less toxic than atrazine. But then wouldn’t you need a greater amount of glyphosate to have the same level of toxicity needed to kill weeds? Or do you mean less toxic in terms of non-plant damage (eg. humans or to fish and other wildlife due to runoff?)
But glyphosate could also be used on non-RR crops and have the same effects, so using RR seeds may provide greater yields, but doesn’t lead to using less of it, does it?.
@ The Vicar
Like you, I am also bothered by the conflation of generational breeding and direct gene manipulation or transgenic insertion as if they are equivalent processes. I am also irritated by the sneering and jeering and accusations of “anti-science” toward people who have questions regarding safety or wisdom of GMOs. Just because some things like Golden Rice may be beneficial and/or safe does not automatically mean all GMO creations have the same efficacy.
And now that contaminated maize is the intellectual property of Monsanto and anybody caught growing it owes Monsanto tens of thousands of dollars. (cf. Percy Schmeiser)
I see a lot of people trying to explain how RR crops require less pesticides per acre. I’ll make it simple. They don’t:
http://www.enveurope.com/content/24/1/24
Say what you will about the virtues of GMO crops (I’m looking at you, #61 chrislawson), pesticide resistant crops have, in practice, led to a massive increase in pesticide use. Tellingly, “The emergence and spread of glyphosate-resistant weeds is the second, and by far most important factor driving up herbicide use on land planted to herbicide-resistant varieties.”
@Trickster Goddess
I am a microbiologist who has worked in food safety and I am extremely hesitant to make any definite statements about GMO food safety, precisely because of how limited our current food testing methods are. What I find disappointing is that all people who raise questions about possible issues are lumped together and labeled as the “scientifically illiterate” anti-GMO crowd. And this very often by scientists who have no experience in food research. This is the kind of demagogic that I would expect from a creationist in a post about evolution.
You won’t see that, because it isn’t. What you’ll see is more of the lie (there’s no point softening language) that the two are basically the same. Of course there’s a good deal of nonsense talked about the alleged dangers of GMOs, but probably no more than the crap talked bout how they are going to feed the world. What’s needed to feed the world is a reduction in inequality, and the provision to small farmers in poor countries (who feed most of the world at present) of better facilities to irrigate, store and market their crops, and protection from the vagaries of world markets and the ambitions of international agribusiness.
This is simply bullshit, I’m afraid. “Golden rice” is not even ready for field use, and vitamin A supplementation is a perfectly adequate and well-tried answer to VAD (vitamin A deficiency) – the rates in the Philippines, for example, have fallen sharply in recent years, without a grain of golden rice being sold. The only effective use of “golden rice” so far has been as a propaganda tool for biotech companies, and faux-environmentalists such as Bjorn Lomborg and Patrick Moore. Nor is “golden rice”, contrary to the propaganda, free of commercial IPR constraints on its use:
Sad to see so many so-called progressives and sceptics here accepting big business and faux-environmentalist propaganda at face value.
Yes! This is exactly right.
If you use glyphosate on non-RR crops, you will kill them. It is a non-specific herbicide that will kill grasses (including grain crops) and broadleaf weeds, alike. In this respect, it may be considered more toxic to plants than atrazine, which is much more effective at killing broadleaf weeds. Farmers use a dose of atrazine that kills weeds, but leaves corn unscathed. As far as I know, any dose of glyphosate that kills weeds will also kill non-RR crops.
So, while it is true that the use of glyphosate has increased, much of that use has displaced more environmentally dangerous herbicides. And this is a very good thing.
I think your focus on the absolute volume of herbicide is missing the main point. As Jackson has so nicely explained, it is the toxicity that matters, and not the volume. One analogy in humans is the difference between ethanol and gasoline. They are both toxic, but you would be much better off drinking 10 ml of ethanol than 10 ml of gasoline.
grendelsfather@82,
As was pointed out on this blog not long ago (by PZ, no less), a problem with glyphosate in conjunction with RR crops is its very effectiveness: since no amount of it will kill the crop, its use produces a complete monoculture, with can lead to a drastic fall in animal biodiversity, as there are no “weeds” for insects and other small invertebrates to live on, and that in turn deprives birds and mammals of food.
Michael Anderburg #79
Sounds to me like the abstract you cite supports the notion that the effect on pesticide use depends quite a bit on the specifics. As you quote, “Bt crops have reduced insecticide applications by 56 million kilograms”.
In other words, there’s no “GMO does X”. It depends on how it’s used. Just like every other technology we have.
Jackson @ 55 –
We do seem to be pretty much on the same page, properly cautious about any specific new application but not opposed in general and perfectly willing to see the technology used properly.
About the crop rotation question, I hate to say that the answer is that they were still advocating this in 2012 when the first serious problems with rootworm resistance to Bt were hitting. Here’s a Grist article that covers what was happening at the time pretty well. Grist is one of my go-to sites for popular articles on environmental issues, since they’re very committed to both scientific fact and sustainability. You can generally count on them avoiding sensationalism and rumor to get at the facts of the matter, even when they don’t support a view that their readers might prefer.
Unfortunately, the push for intensive mono-cropping doesn’t seem to be slacking off much, especially from the agri-business giants like Monsanto, because it’s far more profitable for them if farmers adopt the practice. Meanwhile, agencies like the EPA have been urging (as they should) a return to more traditional crop rotation practices to control the rootworms, since (as specialized pests) they can’t maintain large populations that cause the kind of damage this outbreak did without corn being present in the fields every year. This is another case, as you’ve pointed out to others on this thread, of something other than the GMO crop itself being responsible for a poor outcome. This is one of those all-to-familiar cases of corporate interests trumping good science and proper practice because those things are less immediately profitable for the corporation.
#6 @iknklast
#15 @stwriley
GMO’s are organisms that possess a novel combination of genetic material obtained by genetic engineering techniques. I think this is common knowledge (see the Cartagana Protocol).
Saying that there is no difference between GMO’s and the products of thousands of years of farming is the same as telling atheists that they believe “something anyway”, or telling the IPCC that the earth has been warm before.
#17 @Erlend Meyer
The difference is the testing time: thousands of years or two years maximum. The NAS considers the risks of GMO’s ten times higher than traditional selection.
See http://www.btfskarnataka.org/docs/How%20safe%20does%20transgenic%20food%20need%20%20to%20be.pdf
#29 @Tashiliciously Shriked
I think there is no such person. Famines in India are caused by years of drought. No kind of rice grows without water, but infrastructure would help a lot.
Nick Gotts @83,
No one has ever claimed that there are no environmental costs associated with GMO crops, but in most cases, the costs are more tolerable than alternative methods. In some cases, GMOs provide distinct environmental advantages, such as herbicide resistant plants allowing no-till practices and BT-plants targeting only insects that feed on the crop.
What alternative would you propose? Going back to less effective, yet more toxic herbicides? Eliminating BT-crops and spraying non-selective insecticides on the whole field and whatever area is downwind? These options would be worse for the environment than the current situation. If you know of better options, I would love to hear them.
This is mostly correct, although I cannot find any quantitative statement of relative risk in the review you linked to or in the original NAS report ( http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10977&page=1 ). However, according to the figure in the review (Fig 3-1 in the NAS report) . . .
1) The risk is elevated only when talking about transferring a new gene in from a distantly related organism. Agrobacterium-mediated transfer of a gene from a closely related plant has the same or even lower risk as most conventional breeding methods. This suggests that once again, the focus should be on the product and not the process.
2) The NAS panel suggests in that same figure that there is an even greater risk for crops bred by commonly used mutation procedures, such as exposure to chemical mutagens and various types of radiation. Despite this higher risk, no one is calling for extensive testing of crops, such as the Star Ruby grapefruit and several wheat varieties, that were bred in this haphazard and unpredictable way.
I agree fully that the focus must be on the product, while experience with the process can give hints as where to look.
I do not agree that no one is calling for testing other than genetically engineered food.
From what I recall reading, the original semi-edible corn was itself a mutation. The seed parts that should have been up at the top, as in wheat, got relocated down to the leaf sites. It is seriously jacked up. (Wheat was also a mutation, but not so freakish.)
“Corn”, by the way, means grains or kernels, so it generally indicates whatever grain is most popular in the area.
As for that bit about volume: No, we don’t eat the cob, but the seed layer around it is fairly proportional.
It isn’t an eithor/or type situation. Low and no spray methods are preferable, especially if you happen to also live on the land that is being treated. There are multiple time proven techniques of pest control and weed control that do not involve GM crops or dousing large tracts of crop land in herbicide or pesticides, but since they do not qualify for federal subsidies they aren’t prioritized by agribusiness. Soil building with cover crops. Proper timed tillage to prevent the weeds. Goats for stubborn weed problems, plus bonus fertilizer. Crop rotation to obviate the need for pesticides. Maintaining windrows and adjacent plots of native habitat for birds, insects, spiders etc, is a proven, free strategy of long term integrated pest control. Growing something other than corn and soybeans is a simple and highly effective method of eliminating root worms. I don’t have a problem with the technology. I do have a problem with it’s implementation. There is no such thing as food safety data because the ag businesses tightly control their patented products and profit margins. Many things that most people would not consider food are added to food with no labeling requirements due to agri lawyers writing our food safety and farm policy. I do not want to eat BT at all. It is a bacterial disease that messes with the digestive system, and engineering it into food is simply idiotic.
QFT. Those coming out with this dishonest claim really should be aware they’re not fooling people who know anything about the subject.
grendelsfather@87,
Would you care to point out where I’ve expressed blanket opposition to the use of GMOs? Here, I have simply been questioning the exaggerated claims made for them – for example, all the bullshit about “golden rice”. My overall view is that at present, their primary function is as part of the agribusiness drive to maximise profit and corporate power without concern for either the environment or public health. It’s true that the problems with global agriculture go far beyond GMOs, and that they would almost certainly have useful roles in an environmentally sustainable and socially just agriculture; but they will not “feed the world”, or “save the environment”, and currently, by advancing the power of agribusiness, they are the cutting edge of a greed-driven system that is destroying the environment, and undermining food security.
Can you explain this further, what subsidies exclude forms of pest control like the ones you mentioned?
Is it only pesticide application that you object to, then? Are you opposed to other traits like Bt, or the innate potato or the arctic apple or any of the RNAi disease resistant traits?
I also don’t understand this part. How does agribusiness prevent others from doing safety tests? There do exist many food safety studies on animals relating to GMOs, so how where these done if agribusiness can prevent them.
@Nick Gotts
I work on developing disease resistant and biofortified versions of orphan crops through GE technology at a non-profit research institution. Why do you think what I do is bad for the people in parts of the world who grow these crops?
Vicar:
Breeding corn is a thing that humans do deliberately, with intent. And it is done with the available knowledge on what traits the plants have. It is artificial. In contrast, being rolled along a sea floor is natural, and has is not done with any intent for the stone to have any particulat appearance. So your analogy fails.
Vicar:
Turns out, that instead of using nuclear, the world stayed with coal. Guess what. Coal kills about 7500 people per year in the US, just from particulate pollution. Only a few years ago, that number was 13000/year, and as recently as 2004, it was 24000 per year. Coal is also a major contributor to global warming, contributing around 40% of CO2 emissions to a problem likely to raise sea levels by many meters; as sea level was 5 meters higher than today, when CO2 was only 300 ppm, compared to 400 ppm today. That threats at least tens of millions, and much more likely hundreds of millions of human lives. ( USGS slide on sea level rise) That’s what all the fear-mongering about Chernobyl contributed to. So thank you.
Vicar:
Nuclear weapons were specifically designed for mass-murder. Genetically engineered crops do have risks – which cannot be effectively regulated if people like you keep fogging up the discussion with mythology – but they are not designed for mass murder.
Jackson
I didn’t say they exclude IPM. I said that federal subsidies and profit margins, and the undue influence of corporate agribusiness on US federal farm policy are the drivers of our current system.
I do not object to pesticides. I object to indiscriminate and ubiquitous use of pesticides and herbicides. I object to them being engineered into my food. Bt that I can remove by washing the produce is ok.
Bt is a gut poison. I do not want it in my food at all. I believe you are referring to the naturally occuring compounds found in many foods like potatoes and various fruits? A plant enzyme is far less likely to cause an unexpected allergic or immune system response than a bacterial disease. I am not anti-technology. I am anti engineering BT and round-up resistance into the general food supply without any long term studies on the safety and nutrition of these products and without having to label it as such. I am also anti driving family farmers out of farming and anti corporate welfare for agribusinesses.
Orphan crops? I think the main objection is practical. Golden rice is a stupid solution to vitamin A deficiency in countries that have tropical climates and can grow better plant sources of vitamin A year round. The problem is not lack of vitamin A in food, it’s a problem of poverty. If you are so poor that you are subsisting on rice, being offered lower yielding but higher cost seed is not helpful. IMO the money that has been spent trying to develop golden rice would have been more effective spent improving the economic condition and food stability of the farmers it purports to help.
With respect to golden rice – I seem to recall the first field trials were in 2004, but now they are expecting it to be field ready in 2016. Do genetically engineered crops normally take 8 years to do that? I don’t know, but I cannot find another genetically engineered crop that did take 8 years.
I notice that goldenrice.org is clearly aware that the people who need it cannot pay more for it . They seem to know golden rice cannot make money. But for some reason, Monsanto is still protecting its perceived market value with highly aggressive licensing terms, and talking up a study that showed that US consumers would be willing to pay a premium for golden rice. (It was too funny to see Steven Novella, who is keen for good reasons to point out that most US consumers do not need vitamin supplements, refer to that study without criticizing it.)
Here is my prediction: If Monsanto gives up on the fantastical idea that golden rice can make money, then, golden rice will save some lives. Maybe a lot. If they keep grasping after an illusion, it will not do anybody any good.
Tethys:
if you are an insect.
but if you are human, toxicity is low . Low enough that the amounts you encounter by eating bt corn are insignificant. Yes, I have seen that gmwatch article on it, and as far as I can tell, it’s based on speculation about potential, not demonstrated differences between the protein produced by the gene in the bt plants, and the protein produced by the natural bacteria, and based on studies which subjected animals to amounts vastly higher than encountered in actual genetically engineered crops.
@Tethys
You said there are proven forms of pest control that don’t qualify for the same federal subsidies that go towards things like herbicide use. I was, and still am, wondering which subsidies those are. This isn’t some kind of gotcha question, I don’t farm so I am relatively ignorant of the specifics of farm subsidies.
Bt is a protein that is poisonous to insects with basic guts. It is not harmful to people. Even though it poses no safety issue, I agree that you shouldn’t have to eat it if you don’t want to. Luckily, there are two forms of labeling that exist so you can choose food that only has it sprayed on: organic and GMO-free.
I don’t follow the logic that a plant protein is less likely to be allergenic than a bacterial protein, can you explain the thought process there?
The arctic apple and innate potato are two recently approved GMOs in the US. The arctic apple was transformed to produce siRNA that silences an enzyme that makes apples turn brown when exposed to oxygen. The innate potato was engineered to produce less acrylamide and to resist black spots from forming as a result of mechanical pressure. There are also a few other traits that make use of the RNAi pathway to provide resistance to viral pathogens that attack the crop.
I am too, but I don’t see what that has to do with GMOs or pesticides.
I think it is easier to engineer plants to accumulate beta carotene than it is to solve world wide poverty. I know how to engineer staple crops of developing countries to produce beta carotene, so I will continue to work on that. If you know how to solve poverty I think it’s great that you will continue to work on that. I would be thrilled with having to trash all of my work because VAD, iron deficiencies, and famine have been eliminated from the world through economic policy.
Why is golden rice taking so long? Hmm, I wonder…
RoundUp was recently determined to be a carcinogen by the WHO. Roundup resistant weeds are evolving because of overuse. Overuse of pesticides and herbicides leads to resistant weeds and pests. Using Roundup ready crops and BT crops as prescribed leads to the overuse of these two once nearly invincible tools and ironically leads to the evolution of invincible pests. I’m not afraid to eat DNA. I prefer that i don’t get even larger doses of Roundup.
Yes, it was classified as a 2b, probable carcinogen, along with coconut oil, coffee, and being a carpenter. PZ had a post about carcinogens recently that you might find interesting: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/03/28/does-this-cause-cancer/#more-23154
Not overuse, just use. Any form of pest management can lead to resistance. It is imperative to use proper farming methods to avoid the development of resistance to any kind of pest management that you use. Bt and glyphosate are each one mode of action for the control of their respective pests. The more modes of action that exist and are used, the less likely the development of resistance.
The pests don’t become invincible, they become resistant to that particular mode of action. A weed developing resistance to glyphosate in its EPSPS enzyme does nothing to make it resistant to any other mode of action.
siger:
The claim is *not* that there is “no difference” between genetic engineering and thousands of years of breeding. The claim is that despite the differences, both mechanisms result in dramatic artificial modification of the genes, and thus have both risks and benefits. This is important, because most of the anti-GMO fearmongers go on and on about genetically engineered crops being unnatural. (If you don’t, good, but you are very much in the minority.) Crops bred for thousands of years are also unnatural. The risks commonly brought up, such as evolution of herbicide resistant weeds, overuse of herbicides or pesticides, evolution of new pest traits, invasive species, and so on, have all occurred for traditionally bred crops as well.
Opposing genetically engineered crops indiscriminately will not prevent large corporations from abusing people; large corporations will just switch to “gmo-free” products. Look at all the trouble “Whole Foods” has caused.
Regulating genetically engineered crops is essential (and so far, the regulation we have is working), but effective regulation cannot be based on fallacies.
In fact, the naturalistic fallacy, which many anti-GMO people subscribe to (my apologies if you personally do not), is what created the multi-billion dollar “organic food” industry, which charges a premium for its products based on imaginary health benefits, and drives a lot of food-shaming directed at people who cannot afford “organic” food. That’s what happens when fallacious thinking influences regulation, so effective regulation must be based demonstrated risks.
Citation needed.
QFT.
Some of those arguing against Bt corn–what would it take for you to admit that eating Bt corn at normal amounts in a healthy diet causes no problems? Essentially, how would you define the experiment to give positive, rather than null, results?
Science can’t prove ill defined negatives. You need to define what you consider acceptable up front. An example of rational regulation is the FDA’ GRAS list ,which does contain compounds, which at much higher doses than found in pharmaceutical formulation, can be toxic. Essentially, what is needed for you to not be paranoid about rationally based risk?
Somebody up there asserted that non-GMO corn was good, because it had been developed over time, by farmers or something. I just wanted to say “pellagra” and to remind that the changing technology turned that good food into something less nutritious.
Poor Americans started living on corn, but they weren’t processing it in the old way. They didn’t do the nixtimalization, which frees vitamins, and then big processors started taking out the germ, so it would not spoil during long storage.
I don’t really have a point, except that natural corn isn’t all that great, and some processing is good, some bad.
Oh, and most of the corn in this country is fed to animals being raised for meat, so there’s another step to research if you want to eat non-GMO meat. And some of that corn goes to cows, who are really not set up to digest it. (And some of those are old dairy cows, in giant feed lots.)
#103 @lewelly
You said
But I read this claim in the quotes I gave. @iknklast tells his/her students that “pretty much everything they eat, even if they buy it from a local organic farmer, has been genetically modified in some way” And @stwrilry tells his/her students “that the hybridization that humans have done for thousands of years produces an organism no less genetically modified than any other technique…”. The implicit message was clearly that the difference is non-existent or trivial.
Of course I speak solely for my own opinion,but I have the impression that there is not so much fearmongering as there are justified worries. I never heard the word “frankenfoods” from GMO-sceptics, but I did read it in Monsanto publicity. Would it not be handy for agrobusiness that the public starts to believe that all critici are hysteric fools? We should not fight strawmen, but have a reasonable conversation abour arguments without stabbing at te messenger.
Of course they did. And they must be taken seriously, then and certainly with new technologies. Agrobusiness tries to silence critics and run to the market, and that would be dangerous without testing.
Thorough testing and labeling of GMO’s should help to diminuish abuse by large corporations. Those corporations fight against thorough testing and labeling. Which creates rational critics.
Whereas every time the topic is raised here, the antin-GMO folks from the Greens/eco-freaks or the organic food movement have used that term. Not those of us who are skeptical of them. Always as skepticism/mockery from the anti-GMO folks.
US agricultural subsidy policy is complex, doesn’t make any sense, and attempting to explain it is way beyond my pay grade. Corn and soybeans are both heavily subsidized at taxpayer expense is the pertinent fact to why agribusiness focuses on those two crops.
You simply cannot solve the issue of unequal access to food and resources by increasing the cost of basic staple crops. Why would you waste valuable research money engineering more golden rice that nobody seems to want, when it has been shown that other lower tech methods are effective at improving VAD? Fortifying food staples such as flour and sugar is cheaper and more effective. Nutritionally, green leafy plants are excellent sources of A and iron . and can be grown year round in tropical climates Perhaps your technical efforts would be more effective with a disease and pest resistant, fast growing, very nutritious and tasty tropical spinach?
example of use of “frankefood” as a slur. From a “health group”.
one of the things I like least when discussing hot button issues is the reaction that is generated by the mere questioning of assumptions as has been demonstrated here with GMO’s.
Just because someone questions how this technology is being implemented by some now does not imply that they think any of the extreme positions taken by the anti-GMO faction are true nor that that agree with them in any way.
uncle frogy
Just another aside: All the traditional plants, modified so naturally, have been distributed around the world, into places that they never have been naturally. That has had some consequences.
Nerd #110
I actually read that whole acticle at your link.
I think I am stupider now.
Thanks.
soma!
I don’t work on rice, I work on cassava. We work on disease resistance, iron content, and beta carotene content.
Do you have numbers on this, because that doesn’t sound right. How much does it cost per year and what kind of penetrance do you get with vitamin A supplements? The kind of people this is targeted at don’t go down to the supermarket and buy flour and sugar.
Great, then Greenpeace can spend maybe 1/1000th of their annual budget and totally wipe out VAD forever by just handing out some seeds for some leafy greens. This seems like a great way for them to defeat GMOs, why haven’t they done this yet?
For those who don’t know, Cassava is a major starchy food source in tropical areas from Africa through south Asia. It is important to subsistence farmers.
The processed starch is known by a different name in the US. Tapioca. I have some tapioca pudding in my fridge, probably from cassava grown in Thailand.
@siger #107
Do you think those statements you quoted are wrong? Do you think that food as not been intentionally modified genetically by humans? I hear these statements made in response to arguments along the lines of, “I don’t like GMOs because I don’t want the genes of my foods to be messed with.” I think it is an appropriate response.
I hear it all the time. I see it on popular blogs, I hear it in conversation at parties, I see it on signs of protesters every week when I drive past Monsanto. It is important to speak against the non-sense promoted by Dr. Oz and Food Babe not simply because it is wildly wrong, but because it is wildly popular.
This is another of the things that I don’t understand. Currently, GMOs take many years and a couple hundred million dollars to get past all of the regulatory hurdles. Crops produced through outcrossing, grafting, mutagenesis, or any other breeding method needs none of that, yet is just as likely to cause the same problems that might potentially arise with GMOs.
siger:
You are dismissing the qualifier “in some way” as if it has no meaning. It does have meaning.
siger:
Again, the qualifying phrase is “any other technique”.
siger:
Both of the quotes you provided reject “non-existent”. As for “trivial”, note that genetically engineered foods are always subjected to substantial pre-market safety tests and research, which many traditionally bred foods are not. No one has suggested ending those tests, though, it would be good in principle for more independent research to be done. (Substantial independent research is already done. ) Since no-one here has advocates that safety research should end, “trivial” is also rejected.
Furthermore consider what people are reacting to: 20 years of aggressive propaganda which goes to a great deal of trouble to exaggerate the differences between the techniques as much as possible. Differences which continue to shrink as more and more breeding is guided by full-genome analysis. This is done with some “organic” crops too.
siger:
I do wonder where the term came from. Here is google ngram viewer and some early book appearances .
I do read the word “frankenfood” from anti-GMO people all the time, but, I tend to assume they are not sceptics.
siger:
This is precisely why it is dangerous for people to promote claims about risks of agrobusiness that are not based on evidence.
You should consider what Mark Lynas had to say about some of the claims promoted by anti-gmo people . He participated in anti-GMO activism for quite a while, and then came to describe many of their ideas as “conspiracy theory” . You do not seem to promote that view, but, many anti-GMO people do – and should you not object to it?
Nerd
But that’s exactly the problem, the Bt crops are actually widespread in the food supply. Corn in the form of an occasional meal would most likely be harmless. However Bt corn in the form of high fructose corn syrup or modified starch is an ingredient in a vast array of common foods and condiments. Soft drinks and fast food are full of it. Soybean oil is equally common. The average american consumes a lot of corn without ever knowing. I don’t care how non-lethal a poison Bt is to mammals. A little poison is still poison and I still don’t want it in my food.
@Tethys #118
So you are worried about CRY proteins in your HFCS and in your refined oils, because you think it is poisonous to you. You seem to care a great deal about what you eat. Out of curiosity, how confident are you in your knowledge about this subject?
One person’s poison is another person’s life saving medication. Context and dosage is everything. Heck, even dihydrogen monoxide has an LD50, and I bet you ingest that every day.
Tethys:
Do you oppose the growing of potatoes, tomatoes, or eggplant because they contain small amounts of solanine, which can be fatal at doses of 3 to 6 mg per kg of body weight, while the Bt protein shows no toxicity at far greater amounts?
Do you oppose the growing of plants that contain eugenol, such as cloves, nutmeg, vanilla, bay laurel, and celery?
Do you oppose the growing of chili peppers, which contain capsaicin, a toxin sometimes used for riot control?
Do you oppose the growing of coffee or chocolate, because about 200 mg per kg of body weight of caffeine can kill?
There are a huge number of common foods which contain small amounts of various poisons, which are nonetheless safe because the dosages consumed in typical amounts are tiny. Why do you assume this does not apply to the bt protein, which, so far, evidence shows is far less risky than any of the chemicals I listed above?
@llewelly
Because in the case of Bt toxins the problem is not whether the dose used is toxic for humans; the problem is you are using bacterial toxins in an environment – the human gut – that is full of microorganisms. In that context, the question of risks is not as simple as establishing the lethal dose.
I could give one example of how our understanding of what we consider safe changes: when I was a student there was a huge discussion about the safety of artificial sweeteners. The scientists kept pointing out that they are safe to use because of toxicological studies, and the discussions were not that different form those here, with plenty of non-scientific, hysteric arguments in use. But recently a paper was published about a possible link between sweeteners and diabetes (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v514/n7521/full/nature13793.html). I don’t consider one publication, which describes experiments on mice (which personally I don’t consider the best animal model in regards to humans) definitive proof. It’s more of a question mark – are our current testing methods sufficient?
You compare plant-derived toxins which have been part of human diet (and therefore also have been part of the human gut environment) for a long time now, to introducing novel bacterial genetic elements in one go, so to speak. Many foodborne pathogens produce toxins lethal to humans. B. thuringiensis is very closely related to B. anthracis, for example. Do you think that the same methods can ans should be used to establish the safety of Bt toxins in food as for the examples you have given? Do you think establishing the dose-response is enough to account for all possible risks?
elzbieta:
But then what is your example of a substance which has a surprising interaction with gut bacteria?
elzbieta:
Saccharin. Which has an origin that has nothing whatever to do with bacteria. In other words, demonstrating that surprising interactions with gut bacteria can occur with chemicals whose origin has nothing to do with a bacteria. Another example might be FODMAPs, which also appear to have a surprising interaction with gut bacteria. And FODMAPs are various carbohydrates which occur in many foods, some of which have been consumed for thousands of years. Or maybe not – the evidence seems to me about the same quality as the saccharin study you linked. Do you oppose the growing of all crops that contain FODMAPs?
Either way, there is no reason to believe that the bacterial origin of the protein suggests it is any more or less likely to have a surprising interaction with gut bacteria.
But, so far there is no evidence for any surprising interaction with the gut bacteria. You’re just speculating based on a single study relating to a very different chemical.
Furthermore, it’s a mistake to assume that just because we stop using something, we are automatically safe. We need to consider the consequences of the alternative:
(from here )
Is abandoning bt crops, based on some purely speculative risk, and returning to much more frequent spraying, really an improvement?
Remember what I pointed out in my previous comment: even though the evidence for the risks of nuclear power was vastly greater than the evidence for the risks of genetically engineered crops, we now know that stalling nuclear power due to to the fears of it, continued the use of much more coal, which has been shown to be far, far worse. And it is no longer likely that people can get the moribund nuclear power industry back on track fast enough to have a big effect on global warming; thanks to greatly exaggerated fears, the opportunity was missed entirely. And so far, there is no reason to believe genetically engineered crops present anywhere near the risk that nuclear power did.
Would it really be a good idea to return to demonstrated health risks of non-Bt crops, due to speculative fears of Bt crops?
@ llewly
dude I can see that you feel your favorite hobby horse is being attacked but there is nothing as good as you are painting it.
your comment about nuclear power is interesting. while it is true that we had to use coal to generate the power we wanted and that has added to global warming there is no way it is “far, far worse” we can not know that. The effect of increasing radiation waste pollution is not quantified. we can not even deal with what we have already let alone the amount we would generate if we switched entirely to nuclear power. You just sweep it a way with “far, far worse.”
I am not surprised it is how you have been arguing all along.
I suspect that the majority of the negative reaction comes from this over selling the idea as the perfect solution by mostly industry insiders at least that is the impression and people have all heard that line before and it has always proved to be some what less than promised if not in the long run a disaster.
uncle frogy
@llewelly
You miss my point. My criticism lies in the assumption that, following the current guidelins in food safety testing, we can establish whether there are any and/or what risks are involved with GMO-food consumption by humans. I think our understanding of food interactions are quite limited. We are already having problems when it comes to deciding about the safety food additives (hence the sweeteners example), and I am not talking about naive arguments about “toxic chemicals” vs organic food, but rather the real problem that if you look at those regulations between countries, there is no agreement here. Even though such decisions are made after rigorous scientific reviews by food research experts, they are not in agreement. And methods that are used currently are concerned only about toxicity, or possible carcinogenic or mutagenic effects, or microbial contamination in food.
Interactions with gut microbiota has not been widely researched far, and it is certainly not a requirement for food safety testing; there are no established guidelines or regulations in that aspect. That is why a paper in Nature is certainly not enough evidence to ban the use of saccharine as a food additive. But it is enough to create concerns about the limits of our methodology. (And a news piece from newyorker is certainly even less. Even then, I would consider golden rice to be not an example that should be used, considering the serious breach of ethics committed by the scientists involved in its safety testing: http://www.nature.com/news/china-sacks-officials-over-golden-rice-controversy-1.11998)
I have not worked in a nuclear power plant. I have worked in microbial food safety testing. The same arguments about the economy of such bans have been made about the extensive use of antibiotics in food animal production:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/11/us-antibiotics-livestock-idUSTRE80A1JF20120111
EU bans the use of antibiotics in animal farming for non-medical purposes, USA or China allow it (as far as I know). Who is right here?
Tethys #118
This shows you aren’t thinking through the problem.
All the stuff you mentioned is highly processed products made from corn starch. From which proteinacious materials like the Bt have been removed, and corn starch is basically carbohydrates. Then the chemical transformations occur from amlose and amylopectin to glucose, then to HFCS, requires further processing which includes industrial chromatography that further removes impurities like Bt proteins.
At what point do your worries become paranoia? When they are no longer founded in reality. The reality is in the example you gave, there should be no proteins. All I hear is fear, not rational thinking.
The question of GEOs vs non-GEOs as superior foods is a scientific, not theist discussion. When discussing health effects, a “no-effect dose” is a thing. There are different kinds of studies that can be done which could easily incorporate comparators. These studies are conducted routinely in animals and humans. Human longitudinal study results for GEO consumption are nonexistent.
In order to be a good researcher, one tries to remain neutral until enough data is available. The fact is that for most of us, the data are not available — at least not enough to make an intelligent decision. If Monsanto is doing the science, it is industry-funded and not publicly available unless the corporation releases it. For some of us, it is enough for Monsanto to assure you that their products are safe and thoroughly tested. I maintain a healthy level of skepticism, but it is not paranoia — I’m just not seeing the science behind the claims; the research findings are not transparent. Furthermore, the real world is a chaotic system and it is difficult to foresee some of the consequences of releasing novel organisms into our environment.
An aside to PZ: Though it affects CFANS, what do you think of the Multifunctional Agriculture Initiative/Graduate Student Assistantships Monsanto is offering at the University of Minnesota? I found the 7th objective interesting.
This is my last visit to this blog and post to this board.
And so it goes again…
At least I think. My usual disclaimer applies, I work for Monsanto, the views contained herein are entirely my own, I’d love to lay any grammatical errors, run on sentences or spelling mistakes at the feet of my reptilian corporate overlords, but they’ve told me not to, as only the PR folk get to do that (and they have better spell checkers)
It’ll be interesting to see how many of the arguments here are simply rehashing of the same old silliness seen in the previous GMO discussion, I’m guessing most…
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/08/25/crusaders-against-gmos/
Not so great, however, for the individuals of their species. If only species had the capacity to experience pain, loss, happiness and punk rock. Alas they don’t, that falls on individuals, and for the billions of individuals put to death so that we can eat them (or their babies) I’m not sure that if they could understand the concept of “good for the species” they’d be particularly moved (as they’d also, at this level of understanding, grasp that the horror of their own existence) (see I don’t *just* do GMO apologetics…. I can equally piss off both sides of any given debate… (as well as people who hate elipsese and nested parentheticals, anyone who enjoys English really)
Now back to our scheduled programming.
#12 Gregory in Seattle
Categorically untrue. Massive amounts of testing have been done to verify food and feed safety of pest resistant crops. Both by industry and academia. (I’d argue, although sadly sans evidence, that a big reason that industry safety studies come out smelling like roses is not that they’re hiding anything, but that they don’t release things that turn out to have off effects and try their damndest not to waste resources developing things that might be problematic (given the history of industry in general this likely seems rather hard to believe, but I’ve witnessed some pretty asinine reasoning as to why not to test a given gene)
Except that this isn’t true either, first plants aren’t engineered to withstand massive amounts of poisons (they are engineered in general to withstand witheringly small quantities of herbicides – and to date these herbicides are less negative to farmland and the surrounding environment than herbicides they replace) – commonly for roundup 2 quarts of 41% solution are applied per acre (in 25 gallons or so of water)
1 quart is about a liter, so essentially your massive quantity would be like applying a bottle of coke (which at 2L is a little over 2Q) over a football field (which is a little over an acre) and asserting that now the football field was covered in a massive quantity of coke.
#14
One wouldn’t apply roundup to corn when the actual ear was present (weed control is pointless at such a late stage) – it is applied early (v2-V6 stage) where weeds can still compete and impact yield of corn – also it isn’t a dust, but a spray (spraying may still be refered to as dusting, but roundup is applied in solution, not powder form)
#20
As mentioned above, I work at Monsanto. I currently work in corn breeding. In the US alone, last year, we released somewhere in the vicinity of 100 new varieties of corn. We generally, if I recall correctly, average fewer than one new GE trait per year across crops. Any new variety of corn that we release will go through, essentially, no testing for environmental consequences, or for health consequences (although if destined for food grade rather than feed grade they do have to go through significant testing required by the processors so that they’ll approve that variety for use in their plants) – whereas a GE trait has to go through 5+ years of testing for regulatory approval – most things that hit the market are subsequently heavily tested independently (there’d be fame to be had toppling a trait)
Tethys #27
completely ignores one of my main issues with GM crops. They are clones with 0 genetic diversity
This is categorically untrue. Commercially used GMOs are not clones, not at all. The technology would be dead in the water if this were the case. Take Corn in the US as an example:-
The US is generally subdivided into about 10 relative maturity zones (75 through 120 in increments of 5) which essentially measure the number of growing days you can expect for your corn. Hybrids are bred for by zone, to mature in the allotted time (+/- a few days). An RM 120 hybrid in RM75 (transplanting Texan corn to Canada) would fail miserably, it probably wouldn’t reach flowering before first frost. Yet a RR hybrid in Canada will have the same event as a RR hybrid in texas – both from the same instance that an agrobacterium inserted the gene into a corn plant (many years prior). Within each RM you don’t even get a single hybrid, you’ll have say, 50 offerings from Monsanto and subsidiarys, 50 offerings from Pioneer, 30 from Syngenta, 45 from assorted other companies – lets assume they’re all RR2 – this means that each of these genetically distinct varieties of corn contains a gene derived from a single agrobacterial infection once upon a time – so this one stretch of DNA is common, but the rest of the genome has no such restriction. Your main issue is bunk.
Nobody did this. You’re just flailing about and getting things monumentally wrong here.
#28
At least where I work, if we’re going to propose a gene (or set thereof) for testing, one of the first things that happens, before it is even approved for cloning (the process of building the DNA to put into the plant) is that it is run against databases of allergens to check for matches to any known allergen out there – if you get a hit for allergenicity (or toxicity) you’re not going to be even cloning the thing, never mind putting it in a plant.
Borlaug probably, although his modifications were not GMO by standard parlance, just GMO by the wider “hey everything is a GMO” so the argument falls down a bit there (he was all for GMO, but never did it himself, given that the bulk of his work predated genetic engineering by quite some time) – also nobody actually avoids Borlaugs ‘products’ – dwarf rice and wheat are pretty much standard.
How many selectively bred plants currently trigger allergic reactions? Lots of them…
Selective breeding has also led to varieties that are flat out toxic (Lenape potato)
There is no magic that makes selective breeding less risky than genetic engineering. There is however essentially no testing done.
#37
You mean the weed killer that would have been being applied the whole time anyway had RR not been available?
One could even, I think, go out and see if any other herbicides have seen weed resistance issues as a result of use… the answer is an emphatic yes, because evolution, this isn’t really however a good argument for or against the use of any given herbicide, just a cautionary tale not to think you’ve beaten the red queen.
This is such a bad parody of how corporations actually work (at least in my experience – sure, some companies may not operate that way, but they’ll tend not to be companies reliant on new tech for profit with a 10+ year R&D timeline). I worked in biotech for 5 years. If everything was about this next quarters gains I’d have been out of a job immediately as the area in which I worked wasn’t going to produce a fucking thing that was going to hit the market in the next decade. Quarterly gains my hairy arse. The area I work now – we churn out hundreds of new products a year, but each of these takes about 5-10 years to come to market, with significant investment along the way. Again, quarterly gains my hairy arse. Now, the profit motive is certainly part of what I work with – if I were to propose testing something that *might* increase yield but clearly would be allergenic or toxic – they’d shoot that idea right out of the water. If 5 years into testing it looked like it wasn’t going to make it as a product… boom, dead in the water, no throwing good money after bad.
#65
Most plants have no resistance to glyphosate. Glyphosate is however less toxic than most herbicides (and less environmentally damaging too) thus one has to engineer plants to be resistant to it in order that one might use it, in order that one might use a less toxic herbicide.
#81 Nick Gotts
• http://www.goldenrice.org/Content3-Why/why3_FAQ.php#Delivery
link “When are locally adapted Golden Rice varieties expected to be in the hands of resource-poor farmers?”
covers this – GR is being bred into locally adapted varieties, it is essentially ready, and would have been years earlier if it were not for the regulatory hurdles and environment of unfounded fear around GMOs in general.
http://www.who.int/nutrition/topics/vad/en/
Also suggests that while supplementation is a good thing, it hardly offers the sort of coverage that a year round diet which provided vitamin A would (25% and 50% reductions in mortality are certainly awesome, but wouldn’t it be better if supplements weren’t needed and those resources could be utilized differently?)
It is true however that claims GR is totally IP free are unfounded, I don’t think that there is too much to fear there, but the proof, as ever, is in the pudding – if GR is released and suddenly becomes burdensome then, well, we’re back to square one right? One needn’t really worry about the $10,000 bit at least, as the average household income in the phillipines is about 50% of that anyway (and the average farmer income far lower than this – it falls out at the 20th percentile
#97 llewelly
Golden rice has taken longer than that, predominatly because of regulatory restrictions. It is hard to even move seed about once it is GM (moving GE material across borders requires all manner of paperwork etc and will be opposed tooth and nail by the anti-GM crowd in general) then one must get approval for trials, then run the trials (and secure them etc) It generally takes ~10 years to get a GM crop from start to finish when you have the resources of a Monsanto, Syngenta or Pioneer – when you’re operating on far less than this… well, time gets you (plus to introgress the trait into multiple different lines is also going to take significant time – probably 2-3 years with the best resourcing out there, 4-5 without – plants don’t breed faster just because you had a good idea)
Which exactly are you leveling at Monsanto? As far as I can see (at least from Nick’s links above) AstraZeneca are the people being yelled at for aggressive licensing, with Monsanto essentially gifting their technology. I’m not sure why you’d target Monsanto as being responsible for anything being held up, given that the licensing isn’t what is holding GR up, but the massive anti-scientific opposition and the regulatory burden that same has created.
122 Elizabetha
Bt toxins are specific to insects and only work at alkaline pH levels, in the human gut they will be significantly digested. So, unless you either are an insect, or for some reason have an alkaline gut full of insects, Bt toxicity still really doesn’t apply to the situation.
127 Penumbra
scholar.google.com
http://genera.biofortified.org/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed
The data is available, in bucketloads. Industry funded, independent. One simply cannot make the claim that data are not available, at this point if you can’t find the data you’ve no business claiming to be a researcher, good or otherwise.
As an aside (assuming my prior rather long comment got postponed due to sheer size or number of links, or PZ being paid off by Whole Foods)…
I’m also not overly happy about the whole “Everything is GMO!” – generally I think we all know that if someone is talking about something that is GMO they’re specifically talking about transgenics, not some pedants version of genetic modification. I find it a pretty weaksauce comeback really (and have, given that statement, probably used it myself in abundance over the years)
Ewan R, I think I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again, I always appreciate your contributions to these threads, and I look forward to you comment appearing at some point.
In order to get around (possibly) auto moderation… an HBO miniseries, brought to you by me skiving off work half the morning…
And so it goes again…
At least I think. My usual disclaimer applies, I work for Monsanto, the views contained herein are entirely my own, I’d love to lay any grammatical errors, run on sentences or spelling mistakes at the feet of my reptilian corporate overlords, but they’ve told me not to, as only the PR folk get to do that (and they have better spell checkers)
It’ll be interesting to see how many of the arguments here are simply rehashing of the same old silliness seen in the previous GMO discussion, I’m guessing most…
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/08/25/crusaders-against-gmos/
Not so great, however, for the individuals of their species. If only species had the capacity to experience pain, loss, happiness and punk rock. Alas they don’t, that falls on individuals, and for the billions of individuals put to death so that we can eat them (or their babies) I’m not sure that if they could understand the concept of “good for the species” they’d be particularly moved (as they’d also, at this level of understanding, grasp that the horror of their own existence) (see I don’t *just* do GMO apologetics…. I can equally piss off both sides of any given debate… (as well as people who hate elipsese and nested parentheticals, anyone who enjoys English really)
Now back to our scheduled programming.
#12 Gregory in Seattle
Categorically untrue. Massive amounts of testing have been done to verify food and feed safety of pest resistant crops. Both by industry and academia. (I’d argue, although sadly sans evidence, that a big reason that industry safety studies come out smelling like roses is not that they’re hiding anything, but that they don’t release things that turn out to have off effects and try their damndest not to waste resources developing things that might be problematic (given the history of industry in general this likely seems rather hard to believe, but I’ve witnessed some pretty asinine reasoning as to why not to test a given gene)
Except that this isn’t true either, first plants aren’t engineered to withstand massive amounts of poisons (they are engineered in general to withstand witheringly small quantities of herbicides – and to date these herbicides are less negative to farmland and the surrounding environment than herbicides they replace) – commonly for roundup 2 quarts of 41% solution are applied per acre (in 25 gallons or so of water)
1 quart is about a liter, so essentially your massive quantity would be like applying a bottle of coke (which at 2L is a little over 2Q) over a football field (which is a little over an acre) and asserting that now the football field was covered in a massive quantity of coke.
#14
One wouldn’t apply roundup to corn when the actual ear was present (weed control is pointless at such a late stage) – it is applied early (v2-V6 stage) where weeds can still compete and impact yield of corn – also it isn’t a dust, but a spray (spraying may still be refered to as dusting, but roundup is applied in solution, not powder form)
#20
As mentioned above, I work at Monsanto. I currently work in corn breeding. In the US alone, last year, we released somewhere in the vicinity of 100 new varieties of corn. We generally, if I recall correctly, average fewer than one new GE trait per year across crops. Any new variety of corn that we release will go through, essentially, no testing for environmental consequences, or for health consequences (although if destined for food grade rather than feed grade they do have to go through significant testing required by the processors so that they’ll approve that variety for use in their plants) – whereas a GE trait has to go through 5+ years of testing for regulatory approval – most things that hit the market are subsequently heavily tested independently (there’d be fame to be had toppling a trait)
Tethys #27
completely ignores one of my main issues with GM crops. They are clones with 0 genetic diversity
This is categorically untrue. Commercially used GMOs are not clones, not at all. The technology would be dead in the water if this were the case. Take Corn in the US as an example:-
The US is generally subdivided into about 10 relative maturity zones (75 through 120 in increments of 5) which essentially measure the number of growing days you can expect for your corn. Hybrids are bred for by zone, to mature in the allotted time (+/- a few days). An RM 120 hybrid in RM75 (transplanting Texan corn to Canada) would fail miserably, it probably wouldn’t reach flowering before first frost. Yet a RR hybrid in Canada will have the same event as a RR hybrid in texas – both from the same instance that an agrobacterium inserted the gene into a corn plant (many years prior). Within each RM you don’t even get a single hybrid, you’ll have say, 50 offerings from Monsanto and subsidiarys, 50 offerings from Pioneer, 30 from Syngenta, 45 from assorted other companies – lets assume they’re all RR2 – this means that each of these genetically distinct varieties of corn contains a gene derived from a single agrobacterial infection once upon a time – so this one stretch of DNA is common, but the rest of the genome has no such restriction. Your main issue is bunk.
Nobody did this. You’re just flailing about and getting things monumentally wrong here.
#28
At least where I work, if we’re going to propose a gene (or set thereof) for testing, one of the first things that happens, before it is even approved for cloning (the process of building the DNA to put into the plant) is that it is run against databases of allergens to check for matches to any known allergen out there – if you get a hit for allergenicity (or toxicity) you’re not going to be even cloning the thing, never mind putting it in a plant.
Borlaug probably, although his modifications were not GMO by standard parlance, just GMO by the wider “hey everything is a GMO” so the argument falls down a bit there (he was all for GMO, but never did it himself, given that the bulk of his work predated genetic engineering by quite some time) – also nobody actually avoids Borlaugs ‘products’ – dwarf rice and wheat are pretty much standard.
How many selectively bred plants currently trigger allergic reactions? Lots of them…
Selective breeding has also led to varieties that are flat out toxic (Lenape potato)
There is no magic that makes selective breeding less risky than genetic engineering. There is however essentially no testing done.
#37
You mean the weed killer that would have been being applied the whole time anyway had RR not been available?
One could even, I think, go out and see if any other herbicides have seen weed resistance issues as a result of use… the answer is an emphatic yes, because evolution, this isn’t really however a good argument for or against the use of any given herbicide, just a cautionary tale not to think you’ve beaten the red queen.
This is such a bad parody of how corporations actually work (at least in my experience – sure, some companies may not operate that way, but they’ll tend not to be companies reliant on new tech for profit with a 10+ year R&D timeline). I worked in biotech for 5 years. If everything was about this next quarters gains I’d have been out of a job immediately as the area in which I worked wasn’t going to produce a fucking thing that was going to hit the market in the next decade. Quarterly gains my hairy arse. The area I work now – we churn out hundreds of new products a year, but each of these takes about 5-10 years to come to market, with significant investment along the way. Again, quarterly gains my hairy arse. Now, the profit motive is certainly part of what I work with – if I were to propose testing something that *might* increase yield but clearly would be allergenic or toxic – they’d shoot that idea right out of the water. If 5 years into testing it looked like it wasn’t going to make it as a product… boom, dead in the water, no throwing good money after bad.
#65
Most plants have no resistance to glyphosate. Glyphosate is however less toxic than most herbicides (and less environmentally damaging too) thus one has to engineer plants to be resistant to it in order that one might use it, in order that one might use a less toxic herbicide.
#81 Nick Gotts
• http://www.goldenrice.org/Content3-Why/why3_FAQ.php#Delivery
link “When are locally adapted Golden Rice varieties expected to be in the hands of resource-poor farmers?”
covers this – GR is being bred into locally adapted varieties, it is essentially ready, and would have been years earlier if it were not for the regulatory hurdles and environment of unfounded fear around GMOs in general.
http://www.who.int/nutrition/topics/vad/en/
Also suggests that while supplementation is a good thing, it hardly offers the sort of coverage that a year round diet which provided vitamin A would (25% and 50% reductions in mortality are certainly awesome, but wouldn’t it be better if supplements weren’t needed and those resources could be utilized differently?)
It is true however that claims GR is totally IP free are unfounded, I don’t think that there is too much to fear there, but the proof, as ever, is in the pudding – if GR is released and suddenly becomes burdensome then, well, we’re back to square one right? One needn’t really worry about the $10,000 bit at least, as the average household income in the phillipines is about 50% of that anyway (and the average farmer income far lower than this – it falls out at the 20th percentile
#97 llewelly
Golden rice has taken longer than that, predominatly because of regulatory restrictions. It is hard to even move seed about once it is GM (moving GE material across borders requires all manner of paperwork etc and will be opposed tooth and nail by the anti-GM crowd in general) then one must get approval for trials, then run the trials (and secure them etc) It generally takes ~10 years to get a GM crop from start to finish when you have the resources of a Monsanto, Syngenta or Pioneer – when you’re operating on far less than this… well, time gets you (plus to introgress the trait into multiple different lines is also going to take significant time – probably 2-3 years with the best resourcing out there, 4-5 without – plants don’t breed faster just because you had a good idea)
Which exactly are you leveling at Monsanto? As far as I can see (at least from Nick’s links above) AstraZeneca are the people being yelled at for aggressive licensing, with Monsanto essentially gifting their technology. I’m not sure why you’d target Monsanto as being responsible for anything being held up, given that the licensing isn’t what is holding GR up, but the massive anti-scientific opposition and the regulatory burden that same has created.
122 Elizabetha
Bt toxins are specific to insects and only work at alkaline pH levels, in the human gut they will be significantly digested. So, unless you either are an insect, or for some reason have an alkaline gut full of insects, Bt toxicity still really doesn’t apply to the situation.
127 Penumbra
scholar.google.com
http://genera.biofortified.org/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed
The data is available, in bucketloads. Industry funded, independent. One simply cannot make the claim that data are not available, at this point if you can’t find the data you’ve no business claiming to be a researcher, good or otherwise.
I am in agreement with penumbra’s #127 and elzbieta #125.
Science doesn’t know much about the biota that is my digestive system, so any claims to safety are based on conjecture. Logic dictates that any substance that kills insects is likely to also have negative health impacts on other animals, especially if that substance is also a living organism. I myself have developed an allergy to soybeans, so there is nothing paranoid about my lack of trust in the scientists. If you are unfamiliar with the effects of consuming allergens, I assure you that having an inflamed digestive tract is painful, unpleasant, and quite debilitating. It is also really unhealthy in the long term to have your immune system constantly on high alert. Grocery shopping has been turned into a ridiculously complicated undertaking, and I resent having to pay more money for the honor of not being made sick by so called food. I understand the science, I just find the fact that moderate increases in non-lethal health effects are not documented at all by the current system contradict any possible claims to long term food safety or equivalence.
That bolded part is my all too real concern, which is not a “minor” insignificant health problem, especially from a nutritional standpoint. A food that has the “common” side effect of causing diarrhea is causing a net loss in nutrients. Food that makes you sick is not food, its poison. Duh!
No, it really doesn’t. We know the exact mechanism by which the bt toxins kill insects. If it were some ephemeral “oh, this kills insects, but we have no clue why” then yes, sure, you’d have a point that caution, but that isn’t the situation in which we find outselves.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1857359/#R62
these proteins are highly specific (on a per protein basis) to subsets of insects. They require the alkalinity of the insect gut to be active (nowhere in the human gut does the pH become remotely close to alkaline enough, with 7.4 being about as high as it gets (compared to 10 or 11 in the target species midgut) and then bind to specific proteins found only in insect guts in order to work.
Your fear would like be being scared of insect viruses because hey, if it kills an insect, it probably kills other animals too… right?
I fully comprehend your pain, I’m a Crohn’s patient and am all too familiar with the debilitating nature of digestive tract inflammation.
None of this has anything to do with GMOs though. None of it.
Ewan:
My apologies – I got the two companies mixed up.
I did not argue that Monsanto or anyone else was holding anything up. Pointing out that it is absurd for anyone to act like there is a substantial profit potential in golden rice does not imply that Monsanto is holding anything up, nor does pointing out that golden rice has taken longer to develop than other crops. You appear to have gotten my comment confused with other things in the thread.
Pointing out that the crop is unlikely make a profit does not imply that I am “targeting” Monsanto.
I realize it’s difficult for you to not get angry at people who are spreading mythology about genetically engineered crops, but you really need to do something about your habit of misreading and strawmanning people who largely agree with you on the utility and safety of genetically engineered crops.
Llewelly, apologies if that wasn’t what you meant, but the following:-
Cannot, I feel, be read as anything other than a suggestion that unless Monsanto (or whoever is doing whatever to licensing in order to make a buck) give up this idea, that golden rice will not save lives. To me this reads exactly as if the company seeking to profit is the cause of the hold up. Perhaps I’m still misreading this, but I don’t think so, neither do I think I am constructing a straw man argument here. My use of the word targeting may be a tad off the mark… blaming, accusing, suchlike… something with less malice of forethought associated with the word. I’ll add poor wording choice to the list of things I’d like to attribute to my corporate overlords.
unclefrogy:
I have for over 20 years consistently argued that we should focus primarily on solar and wind (and I think recent developments show I was probably correct to do so). I am not any kind of a “big name”, so I guess it is not a surprise you would not know that, but it is nonetheless true. My argument only relies on the fact that if we had used more nuclear power, we would have used less coal, and we would have less global warming to deal with. It does not require that nuclear power be sufficient to solve global warming all on its own.
In any case, it is not true that the effect of radiation pollution has not been quantified. It has been quantified, but there is a huge range of disagreement. Nonetheless, even the highest numbers do not approach the death rate from coal pollution – even if global warming is not considered.
Again I am not surprised you do not know this, but, it is nonetheless true that I have argued for over 20 years that the nuclear power industry is guilty of undermining its own case by over-selling its promise and downplaying or even ignoring its consequences. So at least we partly agree. However – I think that all the way up until the 1990s, it was relatively rare for people to cleanly separate nuclear power from nuclear weapons. (Indeed, it has been argued, and I think correctly, that many of the safety problems that contributed to the Chernobyl disaster are the result of prioritizing turning U-238 into Pu-239 over power generation – and Pu 239 was used primarily for weapons, though of course it can be used for power generation too, but it’s most effective to generate Pu-239 in dedicated reactors, rather than dual purpose reactors.) And thus I think that a great deal of the fear of radiation results from conflation of the two – a problem the nuclear power industry has been complicit in.
But that doesn’t change the fact that the anti-nuclear fearmongers contributed a lot of problems – it only means the nuclear industry itself was complicit.
I will admit that in my second comment I left out some qualifiers and thus unintentionally implied that exaggerated fears were solely responsible, but in my first comment I said:
which ought to have made it clear that the implication was unintentional.
Ewan:
That is the aspect I intended. But “will not save lives” does not imply “is preventing use right now”.
Well, then I will need to think up a new way to make that point sometime, but I am not going to do it now. I apologize for confusing anyone.
In retrospect, I ought to have looked up the article Mark Lynas article MattP linked about the destruction of the trial crop in the Phillipines, and made some use of it. But, I didn’t think of it.
llewelly.
the problem I am having with these discussions is down playing of any negative results and the sweeping away of any concern as if it comes from the lunatic fringe.
There is history here of great new developments that were seen as great improvements that had troubling side effects some times marked by dead bodies of all kinds. I will not try to make any kind of a list of some with pros and cons it could easily stretch in to a moderate sized book. The public remembers many such things and is wary.
I think there is a great potential in genetic engineering on this level for good and bad. I do not want to throw the baby out with the bath water but maybe we could change the water. Try and look at the long term effect more for all of us as human beings on earth and by long term I mean 100’s of years not corporate long term of merely 10 years or so.
If we should decide to rely on nuclear we will have to plan for 1000’s of years.
I think we the time has run out for any more short term thinking and solutions unless jebus is coming to save us all.
uncle frogy
Instead of just making noise, suggest the type and length of experiments you want to see. Then ask the right question, which is “it is feasible to run these experiments”. Science can’t prove negatives. Your experiments must show positive evidence for problems, and on a reasonable time scale. Otherwise, all you are attempting to do is have science prove negatives.
unclefrogy:
See David Archer’s work .
You see, by choosing coal over nuclear, we already provoked consequences that will extend for tens of thousands, even up to 100,000 years. And those are consequences we will need to plan for; we cannot assume the oceans will stop rising in 2100 when so many of the current projections end. Hopefully, if we make the right choices, sea levels will stabilize in centuries, but that in and of itself is planning for the long term. I suspect something similar is true for ocean acidification, but I don’t know.
And there are a great many other non-radioactive pollutants with similar or longer lifetimes. inorganic mercury, for example, remains toxic forever. Same is true of toxic metals in general.
In most cases, I don’t see much reason to believe non-radioactive waste disposal sites do not also require thousands of years of planning.
I don’t think any of the alternatives to nuclear actually get us out of needing to plan for thousands of years. Solar does simplify some long-term planning concerns, because almost all of its resource requirements are more or less fixed at build time, and don’t expand much as time goes on. (Similar for wind, but there are more maintainece concerns.) But that does not change the fact that once it is decided to convert a large area of animal habitat to solar power, it’s going to be that way, having some ecological effect, for a long time. It’s a fixed ecological impact, unlike for nuclear or coal, whose ecological impacts would continue to expand over time, but it’s still a thing that needs to be planned for on long time scales. If you put the solar on rooftops instead, a better solution, then you need to plan for the lifespan of the buildings. Then there is the ecological impact of mining the minerals needed. That could last for a long time too. Here I have to admit I don’t know how long, because in the vast majority of cases, there has been no attempt restore ecosystems of abandoned mining areas – I only know that in most cases all of the chemicals used remain dangerous after centuries. Of course, in that respect nuclear is worse than solar, because nuclear requires continuous mining, whereas solar requires a fixed amount of mining, and then you are done. But coal is worse than nuclear still, because it requires more mining per unit of energy. And my example was about past mistakes, so the choice would have been between nuclear and coal, more or less.
I do not believe there is any escape from planning for 1000s of years. We got away with it for so long only because available resources once dwarfed human consumption. That hasn’t been true for at least 50 years now though, and it is not likely to be true for a very long time – the human population will be living close to our available resources for quite awhile, and thus, what seems like a small error on the scale of 50 years, could be an extremely serious error on the scale of thousands of years.
In my view, the focus on the risks that nuclear waste will present for thousands of years into the future is an artifact of the relatively straightforward science of understanding the half lifes and decay chains of radioactive elements. It gives people concrete numbers to attach their fears to. It is often the case that the rhetoric focusing on the long half lives of some radioactive materials fails to mention that in most cases, it is the materials with shorter half lives that pose far greater demonstrated risks.
So what you’re suggesting is that new technologies need to be tested for longer than we’ve had electricity before we go ahead and use them?
I frankly don’t see how that differs from an outright ban in any meaningful sense at all, unless I’m misreading you and you merely propose continued assessment… which is absolutely something that happens anyway.