The Big Footy GMO megathread

[YES! YES! YES!]

I haven't seen to many people talk about GMOs on BF, so I thought it was worth starting a thread up.

About a week ago, Scotland has decided to ban GMOs from being grown in their country in order to protect their £14 billion food/drink industry. This includes some GMOs already approved for safe use by the EU (such as maize).

Do you believe that GMOs possess a threat to the environment/human health? Do you believe that they have potential for growing agriculture sustainably?

 

[little graham]

South Australia recently banned GMO's as well. We learnt by experience. We allowed Monsanto to sponsor gm canola crops and the exact thing the doomsdayers told us would happen, happened. The GM canola infected all the non gm canola with diseases the GM was created resistant to, wiping out the season.

 

[Lebbo73]

South Australia recently banned GMO's as well. We learnt by experience. We allowed Monsanto to sponsor gm canola crops and the exact thing the doomsdayers told us would happen, happened. The GM canola infected all the non gm canola with diseases the GM was created resistant to, wiping out the season.

How about the GM corn that grows with its own insecticide in it. Apparently it causes massive tumours in lab mice.

 

[little graham]

How about the GM corn that grows with its own insecticide in it. Apparently it causes massive tumours in lab mice.

Agent orange, the insecticide they dumped on the Vietnamese population, does the same thing

 

[Footypie32]

How about the GM corn that grows with its own insecticide in it. Apparently it causes massive tumours in lab mice.

As someone that is still undecided about GM foods, how would this situation be different if farmers were growing non-GM corn and spraying their own insecticide on it? Which I assume they would have to do.

 

[Long Live HFC]

oh for * sake, lol. cue the fear and paranoia.

As someone that is still undecided about GM foods

if you want to learn about GMOs you'd probably find only a dozen or so BF users who were a worse pick to ask

 

[YES! YES! YES!]

How about the GM corn that grows with its own insecticide in it. Apparently it causes massive tumours in lab mice.

I heard a couple aspects of that experiment were disputed by other scientists.

One of these was that the GMO-fed mice developed tumours after 1.5-2 years (which is the typical lifespan of a Mose anyways).

Another was that the sample population of mice tested was small (something like 10 mice). Therefore the results were more likely to be influenced by random error.

 

[YES! YES! YES!]

As someone that is still undecided about GM foods, how would this situation be different if farmers were growing non-GM corn and spraying their own insecticide on it? Which I assume they would have to do.

When you introduce a foreign gene into an organism's cells, there is a greater risk it can unintentionally interact with other proteins/genes.

For example, the insecticide protein product may bind to an endogenous protein (such as a transcription factor) and upregulate the expression of another protein that may be toxic/carcinogenic to the mice.

With that said there hasn't been any undisputed proof that GMOs have done this before.

Also when harvesting, applied insecticides can be washed off crops, whereas GMO insecticides remain inside cells of crops throughout its entire lifetime.

 

[Long Live HFC]

I heard a couple aspects of that experiment were disputed by other scientists.

One of these was that the GMO-fed mice developed tumours after 1.5-2 years (which is the typical lifespan of a Mose anyways).

Another was that the sample population of mice tested was small (something like 10 mice). Therefore the results were more likely to be influenced by random error.

yeah i dont remember the particulars but the rat study was s**t.

Elsevier has announced that they are retracting the infamous Seralini study which claimed to show that GMO corn causes cancer in laboratory rats. The retraction comes one year after the paper was published, and seems to be a response to the avalanche of criticism the study has faced. This retraction is to the anti-GMO world what the retraction of the infamous Wakefield Lancet paper was to the anti-vaccine world.

https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-seralini-gmo-study-retraction-and-response-to-critics/

 

[Sydney Bloods]

people are idiots, GM crops is simply an extension of what farmers have being doing for centuries.
We can just do it faster and more precisely now.

But just like with slow process of things such as cross pollination and breeding stronger strains there is no linear graph.
Some things work some things don't. What's needed is robust protections in place to ensure GM seeds are tested properly before sale.
additionally we need to stop the anti competitive nature of the companies who produce those seedlings.
and put very tough restrictions not only on pattens but when they can be applied how long they can stand for and ensure "fair use" policy applies to fields that become cross pollenated with GM crops.

the simple fact is currently in aus the only commercial crops which are permitted to be GMO (although thats really BS) is cotton and some flowering plant for you garden. now the reason we know the restrictions on GM plants is a load of bullshit is quite simple. the legislation which granted to government the power to restrict there growth was enacted some 20 years after GMO seeds were available commercially.

there is ample reasons to be cautious and we simply can not have open slather especially dodge US owned companies acting the way they do. But the doom sayers as usual can go 2 full sentences with making s**t up.

 

[BringBackAus]

Nah they're perfectly fine.. only idiots would come to scientific conclusions that they're not.

 

[YES! YES! YES!]

I don't believe that there is any harms consuming the current GMOs available.

With that said, I do believe that there should be a precautionary principle to test if new GMOs are safe.

Whenever you transfer a foreign gene into a crop, there is always the risk that the transferred gene product can un-incidentally interact with other parts of the crop.

For example, if a gene product was transferred into a plant to increase water retention (and resist drought), it could interact with a transcription factor that up-regulates the production of a toxin.

With that said the chances of this occurring are very low because most of the time, gene products work by interacting with targets they can 3-dimensionally bind to. Most gene products in an organism have a different 3D shape, which means the transferred gene product will most likely interact with it's intended target only.

 

[placebo]

If you're anti-GMO, you're scientifically illiterate and are actively hurting hundreds of millions of people worldwide.


I'll quote from my recent post in the 'Things That s**t Me' thread:

"If you're anti-GMO's, you're really not all that different at all to anti-vaxxers. Not only do you completely, fundamentally misunderstand science (and you are totally in the minority as far as scientific consensus goes), your beliefs actually strips people of a better, more efficient product and major health benefits to developing countries. GMO's have factually helped saved hundreds of millions of lives. That is a fact. Sitting on your arse bitching and whining about Monsanto (whilst understanding very little about anything) achieves nothing, and such belief actively hurts people worldwide."

 

[Long Live HFC]

If you're anti-GMO, you're scientifically illiterate and are actively hurting hundreds of millions of people worldwide.


I'll quote from my recent post in the 'Things That s**t Me' thread:

"If you're anti-GMO's, you're really not all that different at all to anti-vaxxers. Not only do you completely, fundamentally misunderstand science (and you are totally in the minority as far as scientific consensus goes), your beliefs actually strips people of a better, more efficient product and major health benefits to developing countries. GMO's have factually helped saved hundreds of millions of lives. That is a fact. Sitting on your arse bitching and whining about Monsanto (whilst understanding very little about anything) achieves nothing, and such belief actively hurts people worldwide."

yep!

http://www.geneticliteracyproject.o...-food-off-of-plates-of-hungry-in-africa-asia/

and all too often, people conflate monsanto's questionable business practices with biotechnology or GM foods as a whole. shits me too!

 

[Illinois Nazi]

But my aunty knows someone who caught autistic the day after eating GM food.

 

[Dry Rot]

If you're anti-GMO, you're scientifically illiterate and are actively hurting hundreds of millions of people worldwide.


I'll quote from my recent post in the 'Things That s**t Me' thread:

"If you're anti-GMO's, you're really not all that different at all to anti-vaxxers. Not only do you completely, fundamentally misunderstand science (and you are totally in the minority as far as scientific consensus goes), your beliefs actually strips people of a better, more efficient product and major health benefits to developing countries. GMO's have factually helped saved hundreds of millions of lives. That is a fact. Sitting on your arse bitching and whining about Monsanto (whilst understanding very little about anything) achieves nothing, and such belief actively hurts people worldwide."

I'm anti-GMO but the starving masses in broken arse countries can eat what they choose. I just don't want to eat it here.

 

[Long Live HFC]

I'm anti-GMO but the starving masses in broken arse countries can eat what they choose. I just don't want to eat it here.

why?

 

[Dry Rot]

why?

I don't believe that it is safe. Hasn't been tested for long enough and I have little faith in studies these days, after what I have learned about dodgy radiation and mobile phone studies.

 

[Long Live HFC]

I don't believe that it is safe.

why? do you have evidence that it is 'unsafe' or are you just going with your gut?

Hasn't been tested for long enough

2 decades and trillions of tonnes of food consumed. how much testing would satisfy you?

and I have little faith in studies these days

oh, so nothing would.

 

[BringBackAus]

* GMO's. If people think there's no health repercussions, then the damage is already done to their head and they may as well keep eating them. Given the current science we have on them with the FDA modifying the legislation of some that were eaten only a few years ago to "not fit for human consumption".

 

[little graham]

On Thursday, March 5, at 6 a.m., around 1,000 female members of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) armed with sticks and knives broke into a cellulose company in San Paulo State and destroyed millions of samples of genetically modified (GM) eucalyptus saplings. In a press release, the group reported that the GM prototype contained “a carcinogenic pesticide

http://panampost.com/belen-marty/2015/03/09/landless-women-workers-destroy-gmo-lab-in-brazil/

FuturaGene Brazil Technology, a firm based in the city of Itapetininga, was the object of the protest by the rural farm workers, who were seeking to draw attention to the alleged danger of planting genetically modified organisms,

 

[little graham]

**** GMO's. If people think there's no health repercussions, then the damage is already done to their head and they may as well keep eating them. Given the current science we have on them with the FDA modifying the legislation of some that were eaten only a few years ago to "not fit for human consumption".

The same amigos keep trolling the same threads here, you find that they stand up for the people booing goodes, they get rather narky when you talk the invasion in 1788 and they tell us bananas have more radiation that nuclear power. When you show these fools videos of cops shooting unarmed women in the back, they say she deserved it.

I agree let them poison their children, only if we can keep them and the mutant kids that gmos produce, locked up behind barbed wire.

 

[Long Live HFC]

**** GMO's. If people think there's no health repercussions, then the damage is already done to their head and they may as well keep eating them. Given the current science we have on them with the FDA modifying the legislation of some that were eaten only a few years ago to "not fit for human consumption".

lol. placebo was right about the 'scientifically illiterate' description, hey?

 

[placebo]

why? do you have evidence that it is 'unsafe' or are you just going with your gut?



2 decades and trillions of tonnes of food consumed. how much testing would satisfy you?



oh, so nothing would.

There's nothing you can do about people who are wilfully ignorant unfortunately.

It's the classic "I have no basis for my argument, nothing to back it up whatsoever, no studies, no evidence, no formal logic behind any of my views, but goddamn, I'm gonna believe it anyway based on nothing but a bad feeling which is based on nothing" trick, very similar to anti-vaxxers.

 

[sproketman]

people are idiots, GM crops is simply an extension of what farmers have being doing for centuries.
We can just do it faster and more precisely now.

They are fundamentally different approaches. Agricultural selection is iterative over many generations, a trial-and-error process where the next generation does not vary much from the previous one. Genetic modification changes the plant/animal at a base level, with second order effects that we may not uncover until many years down the track.

Geneticists only recently discovered that what they thought were 'junk' genes in the human genome weren't that, while advances in the field epigenetics has made the previously discredited theory Lamarckian evolution somewhat more credible. Meanwhile nutrition science can't even agree which macronutrients you need to eat, and in what balance.

The science isn't in - in many ways we're working blind. If people want to be precautionary about what they eat, fair enough.