GMO vs Non-GMO

[jason]

To sort of go along with Dinosaur's thread on Global Warming, lets try and keep this non-political.

What are your thoughts on the whole GMO vs Non-GMO foods? Are they healthy for you as they say? Do you find a taste difference? Are they a "global saver" as some people say?

 

[wvbreamfisherman]

I'll take a crack. The hoorah is mostly hysteria. There are some areas to be concerned about, for example driving the development of pests resistant to things like BT, and the possibility of herbicide resistant genes to non-crop plants. Those have been addressed IMHO, but there is room for improvement.

I think there is a huge upside potential to address deficiency diseases and increase yields, resist droughts, etc.

JMHO, YMMV
Addendum- forgot to mention the potential for allergic reactions. So far this seems to be rare to non-existent, but certainly something to watch for. (Also fairly easy to test for.)

 

[ppine]

Starting with Gregor Mendel, humans have messed with the genetics of plants and food crops for hundreds of years. We tend to select for a few cultivars that do well and promote those. Monocultures make us very vulnerable. Remember the Irish potato famine.

There is a whole field of ethno-botany that promotes the use of a wide genetic pool of diverse plant types. In Peru to this today you can buy more than 50 kinds of potatoes. Genetic diversity provides resistance and resilience to problems associated with crop raising.

 

[wvbreamfisherman]

Actually, it started well before Mendel- it's just that Mendel did it methodically and with scientific method. Imagine trying to feed America today using native corn (maize).

Even primitive farmers selected seeds from the best crops to reuse.

 

[Theosus]

Not worried about it, except where patents start to come into play. some of the stuff they do with so called "suicide seeds" is really scary. For example - you buy a few sunflower seeds, pick the best sunflower and strip out its seeds and plant them. You get a bunch more sunflowers for free. But with suicide seeds, you buy the first batch, and any seeds in the plant are sterile. You have to go back to the grower for more. Why is this legal and what keeps this sterility gene from being carried to other plants by bees?
I grow grapes - if I buy some "patented" vines from a certain nursery and then propagate my own through any of several means, they can come back and sue me. This seems wrong on a fundamental level. The nurseries even have the right to come by and take DNA samples of my plants to make sure I haven't cultivated my own from their vines!

This trend towards patenting life is scarier than most anything else people come up with.

If it wasn't for people trying to improve crops, we would all have starved to death. GMO allows us to produce the food for 8 billion shaved apes to continue to produce shaved apes at exponential rates. We need a little bit of sterility genes in about half of us as it is...

 

[Theo]

I don't exactly like the idea of introducing foreign DNA into another organism. Mainly because for every peer reviewed article that says it is okay, you can find another peer reviewed article that says it isn't okay. And I don't buy the argument that GMO's are the same thing as selective breeding.

And as far as feeding the world goes, production has never been the problem. Distribution is.

 

[CozInCowtown]

Unless the World goes to Heirloom only seeds hybrid plants are going to be your primary option at the grocery store.
Actually I think they have been doing that for the last month or so without any complaints.
People have been cross breeding crops and critters for a few years now without any major catastrophes....just saying.
JMO,
DC

 

[dinosaur]

Well, I don't want to get into any philosophical or scientific discussion. But I wouldn't mind a strawberry the size of a watermelon.

 

[Theo]

Well, I don't want to get into any philosophical or scientific discussion. But I wouldn't mind a strawberry the size of a watermelon.

All of the really big strawberries I've run across have been all pulp and no taste.

 

[dinosaur]

All of the really big strawberries I've run across have been all pulp and no taste.

And...the obvious answer is more engineering.

 

[wvbreamfisherman]

Heck, it's quite possible to ruin a fruit with conventional breeding- for example the Red Delicious apple. One lie in two words. Mealy, tasteless, easily bruised- but it is indeed red.

 

[jason]

No what about those who have allergies? Say you take a gene from fish and put it into a vegetable. What if the allergy passes through to the vegetable. Now someone allergic to fish eats the vegetable and has a reaction. How do you prevent this? I only know of one cross gene like this, the "fish tomato" Fish tomato - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

How would people with allergies prevent reactions to items they previously would not have?

I have no problems with selective breeding which I think some are talking about. I grow about 50+% of heirlooms so I can save the seeds of the better performing vegetables to grow next year. Although sometimes those pesky hybrids are just too easy to grow.

 

[Grandpa]

There is a big difference between cross breeding for hybrids and GMO's where the actual DNA structure is modified. Maize was developed from the little ancient ears to the big beautiful ears we have now by selective and cross breeding. There can be a lot of discussion to the pros and cons of these improvements or the lack thereof. But the scariest part of this discussion concerns the patents being issued for the GMO's. Most of these are now in the hands of Monsanto Chemical. This takes a formerly pure competitive product (see econ 101) to a monopoly where Monsanto gets a cut from every seed sold or planted. Now that is scary.

 

[Theo]

There is a big difference between cross breeding for hybrids and GMO's where the actual DNA structure is modified. Maize was developed from the little ancient ears to the big beautiful ears we have now by selective and cross breeding. There can be a lot of discussion to the pros and cons of these improvements or the lack thereof. But the scariest part of this discussion concerns the patents being issued for the GMO's. Most of these are now in the hands of Monsanto Chemical. This takes a formerly pure competitive product (see econ 101) to a monopoly where Monsanto gets a cut from every seed sold or planted. Now that is scary.

Here is a link to go along with your post.

Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia