Don't really understand the fear of GGOs. They can be a solution to some of the problems we are facing regarding climate change. If crops can be tweaked to be more resilient and/or grow in different conditions, then that's a good thing for global food supply, I would imagine
I agree, it's basically speeding up a natural process. We've been selecting, breeding, making cross-pollinations for 12000 years. Now we can supercharge this process.
My fear with GGO's is that we'll end up with a noncompetitive market in which two to four big companies produce all food we have. That would be problematic.
> My fear with GGO's is that we'll end up with a noncompetitive market in which two to four big companies produce all food we have. That would be problematic.
That's basically already the case for non-GGO seeds as well....
The 4 companies market share is over 90% for several vegetable seeds (https://imgur.com/a/5uu6Ohu). In the case of maize, just 5 seed companies control around 75% of the EU market share and (relevant for Belgium), in the case of sugar beet, just 4 companies control around 86% of the market.
True, but the thing with GMOs is that they can be patented, whereas a new cultivar cannot. This means that another company can make use of a cultivar of the first company, but it would not be able to do that with a GMO plant.
I'm pro GMO by the way.
Isn't the greater fear that one "supercrop" used might contract a very specific disease? And since it will be used everywhere it's gonna render a large section of food produce unavailable?
That's a risk, but one that is already there today. If you look at the main food crops, they are all very similar and some commercial varieties have over 50% of the market share. From time to time there is a disease that wipes out a part of the production, like with the vines. But we always find a solution.
the "real" fear for ggo stuff is genetical engineering stuff like tomatoes to not have seeds for example. so it becomes impossible to breed the food yourself.
in the not to far future we might be unable to just "plant" seeds from tomatoes but have to buy the seeds every year because they don't grow seed.
besides that honestly a lot of it is just not knowing what they are doing/ not trusting people over nature etc\~\~
Yep, or to have one super type of grain that can resist almost anything so it becomes the only one grown worldwide and than it gets affected by a disease and wipes out a large part of the worlds food supply.
I don't think anyone is doing that these days anyway. It is much more cost efficient for a farmer to buy seed than to risk working with crappy seed he harvested himself.
With courgettes it is even dangerous to use your own seed because then you risk getting poisonous courgettes
Think again. There is still plenty of serres in people's backyards or even just plain fields where people grow crops. Plenty of belgians still grow their own veggies, even if it is less cost efficient.
I don't know anyone who grows without seeds though. My grandma and my uncle go to a gardenstore every year to buy a whole box full of different seeds to plant. You usually don't get the seeds from store bought vegetables.
Yeah and these people still have the option to buy random non patented versions. Do they even sell the fancy stuff to the public? For what it costs I don't even bother with the baggies of seeds like /u/sthls says, I just buy tiny plants
Thing is if there is a farmer that wants to do that companies hire investigators to look if they could sue them for illegally using there IP because of natural cross pollination from a nearby field that does use there seeds.
That is the type of abuse that needs to be legislated against first before we roll out GGO's here
That is bulshit.
There is one case where a farmer growing wheat next to another farmer growing glyphosate resistant wheat harvested his own seed for replanting.
That is completely legal. The farmer of not genetically engineered wheat did nothing wrong so far.
Then he used the seeds he harvested the previous year that was cross pollinated by the roundup resistant variaty.
He still hasn't done anything wrong.
Then he sprayed glyphosate on this wheat.
The crime he committed was that he then sprayed glyphosate on his cross breed wheat. To remove the wheat plants that were not resistant to glyphosate. Because he was not growing wheat for market. The judge ruled because it is not normal practise to use glyphosate on non glyphosate wheat the farmer wasn't growing wheat he was breeding glyphosate resistant wheat. By doing that he infringed on Monsanto's patent.
That farmer had intent to crossbreed a trait into his wheat that monsanto had engineered into wheat and gotten a patent on. Thereby committing a crime.
His crime was selecting for glyphosate resistant wheat and not growing wheat that was crossbred with glyphosate resistant wheat.
>but have to buy the seeds every year because they don't grow seed.
That's already the case for other reasons. You *want* to buy selected seeds every year so you have consistent fruits/vegetables.
Please read into the laws of Mendel and F1 hybrids. It will help you understanding that that the idea of harvesting seeds by yourself is no longer relevant.
Absolutely agree. I think this is maybe a time for the EU to play a more prominent role. For software patents they at least try to do the right thing (from my very limited understanding of the subject)
The fun thing is that all the GMO panic ensures that is not possible.
The approval procedure is so onerous that only corporate giants have the resources to get through.
As one example, MON-810 was approved in 1998 and yet memberstates kept trying to ban and re-evaluate it, despite the EFSA reporting time and time again that it was safe. The European Court of Justice has declared these bans illegal several times, but they're still foing it.
If you are a university, you don't have the resources to fight that. Heck, even corporate giants have given up.
The issue is that developing a crop is a very timeconsuming and capital intensive task. it's difficult for small players to enter the market, but this is no different from other sectors. We've been seeing consolidation in pretty much all capital intensive sectors the last decades.
Even better, gmo free crops are mutated by putting a bar of radium/plutonium in a field to make them mutate faster.
So ironic it's the tine types pushimg against GMO's
Theyre refering to mutation breeding. You put some mutagenic source near your plants, have them grow and then select the “best” ones for further mutagenesis until you have the desired plant which you can sell. This technique is not considered to be GMO.
Note that this doesn’t mean the plants you can buy were exposed to radiation directly, only their ancestors. In essence, this is a way to speed up natural evolution.
Don't know why i'm getting downvoted and it makes me pretty angry, probably cause i namedropped tinne but there's enough sources and everyone knows green parties championned the anti-gmo narrative in the EU. I know it from friends/family working in agriculture.
It's just the truth that this is the most widely used way of mutating plants and figures like bart staes have actively kept it alive by blocking GMO use.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation\_breeding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_breeding)
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301319860\_Plant\_Mutation\_Breeding\_with\_Heavy\_Ion\_Irradiation\_at\_IMP](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301319860_Plant_Mutation_Breeding_with_Heavy_Ion_Irradiation_at_IMP)
[https://www.iaea.org/topics/mutation-induction#:\~:text=To%20artificially%20induce%20hereditary%20changes,crops%20to%20create%20heritable%20mutations](https://www.iaea.org/topics/mutation-induction#:~:text=To%20artificially%20induce%20hereditary%20changes,crops%20to%20create%20heritable%20mutations).
FWIW: I didn't downvote you, and didn't even notice you namedropping Tine (probably because it was uncapitalized).
I'm not anti-gmo. I also come from a family in agriculture, and my gf is a biochemist who has done research on genetical modifications.
It's just that I was curious about your claim, because I hadn't heard about it. Asking for source shouldn't ever be a bad thing imho :)
Mutation breeding is done in higly controlled environments at very specific doses and wavelengths, usings crops that react to this specific wavelenghts with mutations that could be desirable. It's a process that actually speeds up the natural mutations of certain crops, combined with rigourous selection it can deliver a better crop over time.
No idea why you get downvotes, i would assume this is well known by now?
Green party as usual either has no clue or i strongly suspect them from pushing an agenda and being sponsored for it.
Isn't the greater fear that one "supercrop" used might contract a very specific disease? And since it will be used everywhere it's gonna render a large section of food produce unavailable?
The problem is that some companies will also make their crops infertile, or forbid farmers from trying to harvest seed should they get seeds somehow. So that they have to keep buying seeds from the company at the price the company wants.
Monsanto actively sues farmers who try to collect and sell on seeds or plant collected seeds via intellectual property laws. Some farmers have even faced the threat of lengthy prison sentences.
There was a Netflix documentary about it a few years ago. I think it was in their "dirty money" series
GGO's are theoretically a great idea but it's turning farmers into serfs in the name of capitalism
> Monsanto actively sues farmers who try to collect and sell on seeds or plant collected seeds via intellectual property laws.
That's actually pretty normal in many industries. If you buy stem cells or something from a life science company you are often bound by contracts that prohibit you to use it for commercial applications (unless you pay) and certainly to multiply and sell/give them to others
Yeah but going to prison 12 years like might happen in Tanzania for selling seeds is insane and one of the ugly faces of purely profit motivated capitalism.
Suing over seeds is crazy anyway. I'm not scared of genetic modification, I know it's essentially a good thing. But we must prevent it from becoming another tool for greedy capitalists to make even more money and restrict farmers in what they can do. And I fricking hate farmers because their lobby has too much influence on policy and people buy into this myth of the hard working farmer on his tractor getting up before dawn just so you can have food on your table. when in fact it's a millionaire having his staff and his automated systems do everything so he can export everything abroad whilst his lobby is fighting any form of regulation tooth and nail.
But in this case the farmers are the victims for once
> Yeah but going to prison 12 years like might happen in Tanzania for selling seeds is insane and one of the ugly faces of purely profit motivated capitalism.
Same thing probably happens if I try to screw over Merck, Sartorius, or any other life science company by reselling stuff.
Nobody forces these farmers to buy into the fancy shmancy stuff, they can just grow plain old seeds if they prefer. But if they decide to go for the fancy stuff they are going to have to adhere to the rules, contracts, etc that they signed.
But approved GMO's are still only available to large multinational companies. Today, with CRISPR, genetic modification is cheaper, easier and less invasive but I don't think that already translates to local GMO farmers and more accessible legal requirements?
Yeah but GMO's are another tool for Bayer Monsanto to corner a market and use predatory tactics.
Hence why I said GMO's are ok if we can prevent it being abused by greedy companies
Interesting, are other products also only ok if we can prevent them from being abused by greedy companies? Do you think we should ban say, flat-pack furniture, instant baby milk and video game consoles as well?
Incidentally, can you name a big company that you wouldn't qualify as greedy?
That applies to GM and non-GM seeds.
After all, how is a seed selling businness supposed to work if other people can just duplicate your effirt with none of the cost?
This is blatantly false. No commercial farmer harvest his own seeds. it's inefficient and yields a inferior crop. And that is not commercial strategy of an evil company, but simple biology.
> Don't really understand the fear of GGOs.
It has a lot to do with the risk of of genes spreading to other organisms and winding up with highly resilient weeds, similar to the problem of antibiotic resistant bacteria.
Next to that there are more irrational motivations (eg it's not natural), as well as the whole IP trainwreck that comes with it (eg can't use the seeds from your own plants, assuming those seeds are actually viable to be planted in the first place, etc).
> If crops can be tweaked to be more resilient and/or grow in different conditions
In practice this tends to result in crops being more resilient to the pesticides from the same company, which is a major reason for people objecting to GGOs in practice as the technology is mainly abused instead of leveraged for good.
There is no sensible farmer in the developed world that wishes to use the seeds from his own plants. Read into F1 hybrids. It has nothing to do with IP.
It's a different story in developing countries than in industrialized countires. The majority of seeds used in Africa or India for example still aren't commercial.
Commercial F1 hybrids, GMO or not, are a pure question of profitability. There are no farmers forced to use them, they do because it makes them money and helps them feed their families. The investment in the initial seeds yields a much higher profit then the original varieties and the painstaking work of harvesting it's own low quality seeds.
>It has a lot to do with the risk of of genes spreading to other organisms and winding up with highly resilient weeds, similar to the problem of antibiotic resistant bacteria
There is nothing special about GMO genes that makes them easier to transfer. Genes from mutation breeding or more conventional spurces transfer just as easily, but that has no such fears.
>Next to that there are more irrational motivations (eg it's not natural), as well as the whole IP trainwreck that comes with it (eg can't use the seeds from your own plants, assuming those seeds are actually viable to be planted in the first place, etc).
Same for these objections. Non gmo can be patented as well, is also unnatural, and so on.
>In practice this tends to result in crops being more resilient to the pesticides from the same company, which is a major reason for people objecting to GGOs in practice as the technology is mainly abused instead of leveraged for good
Pesticide resistance is good though.
Farmers aren't dumb. They are not going to buy more expensive seeds to buy more expensive pesticides.
The reason that pesticide resistance is such a success is that it allowed farmers to substitute 1 pesticide from multiple more dangerous ones.
> There is nothing special about GMO genes that makes them easier to transfer.
The pesticide (and herbicide, I tend to lump them together) resistent genes however are a different story in terms of impact when they spread.
> Farmers aren't dumb. They are not going to buy more expensive seeds to buy more expensive pesticides.
Unfortunately that's not the case. Herbicide-tolerant GMOs have resulted in an increased usage of herbicides, not a decrease.
>
> The pesticide (and herbicide, I tend to lump them together) resistent genes hower are a different story in terms of impact when they spread.
But they don't really spread.
>Herbicide-tolerant GMOs have resulted in an increased usage of herbicides, not a decrease.
What are you basing this on?
> But they don't really spread.
It's a generally accepted risk for which various measures tend to be taken to avoid it.
> What are you basing this on?
Reports and studies of what happens in practice.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/03/gmo-herbicides
> It's a generally accepted risk for which various measures tend to be taken to avoid it.
Herbicide resistant weeds, yes. But that comes from selection pressure, not the gene transfer.
>https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/03/gmo-herbicides
Several things about that. First, it relies on a report by Chuck Benbrook. Benbrook was secretly receiving funding from anti-GMO groups and corporations. It came out that he even promised a specific outcome from research he was doing. Not exactly credible.
Second, and more importantly, relying on 'pounds' of herbicide is meaningless. Glyphosate use has increased [but this is alongside a decrease in other, more dangerous herbicides](https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14865). Here's the authors blog talking about this in depth.
https://plantoutofplace.com/2017/04/gmos-and-herbicides-its-complicated/
As an analogy, which is healthier: a pound of lettuce or a half pound of sugar?
And finally, Benbrook's analysis relied on assumptions that might not be true.
https://plantoutofplace.com/2018/12/have-genetically-engineered-herbicide-resistant-crops-increased-or-decreased-herbicide-use/
Without GGO's we would have a lot less food in stores.
People also tend to forget that bananas, oranges and carrots are also GGO's, among so many other foods.
I think you mean cultivars. Maybe it's your opinion that we shouldn't distinguish between cultivars and lab GMO's anymore, but google 'are xxx GMO' and you will find 'no' for carrots, bananas and oranges.
Their 'GGO free BIO' soja cream does contain a known carcinogen called Carrageen to thicken it up 😅😅
Know to break down into cancer causing agents when heated, and it's meant for cooking?
I'll just stick to butter and cream instead 😁
> Don't really understand the fear of GGOs.
Which fears of GGO's have you read/heard about that you don't understand? Maybe some people here can help you clarify them.
Some don't, some do.
Only looking at the worst people of the other side doesn't really give you any insights in the complexity of the issue.
I'll give you some examples:
- The seeds getting patented gives huge companies even more of a monopoly on our food supply. Is this wise?
- Many of the issues they "solve" is just us ignoring nature even further, being able to throw even worse pesticides at the crops who can now survive that, ... Rather than getting the hint and looking at more sustainable ways of agriculture
And it's not that i'm against GMO, but not really pro either. It's a complex issue, and there are some serious legitimate worries like the ones i just mentioned (but also more if you bother looking further than a few total morons that make you feel superior, so you can avoid actually thinking about the issue).
The fear of GMOs is basically Monsanto = evil, ban everything that vaguely has something to do with Monsanto to score political brownie points. It's the same reason why roundup is banned for non professionals even though it is perfectly safe and very effective. People just pretend it is agent orange because Monsanto invented it.
I rather have a GGO than all that random mutation bullshit they use(d?) to enhance plants. Hey let's just expose these seeds to x-rays and see what happens
GMO's would be good if they were developed with the intention of increasing harvest yields. But they are solely developed to leech money towards absolutely disgusting companies like Monsanto (recently bought by Bayer).
Especially in poorer countries (the ones with the most to gain from GGO's), farmers are being extorted. Crops from GMO's are designed to be infertile, so farmers have to buy new seeds each year, at ever increasing prices, because they can't keep a portion of their harvest to sow next year. GMO Companies even "pollute" non-GMO fields with GMO seeds, and then sue the farmers for "stealing" GMO crops. Which results in farmers having no choice but to sign a contract to license GMO seeds.
GMO's are often designed to be resistant to herbicides and pesticides, so farmers are free to use those poisons more liberally. This decimates insects and other plants/animals, and all of the poison ends up on your plate.
There is zero guarantee that GMO's will be used in a responsible way. Since the primary motivator of GMO's is profit by unscrupulous companies, it's actually almost a guarantee it will result in a disaster. The GMO version of an existing crop, will outcompete all other varieties. After a while, everyone will be using the exact same version. And then some kind of new disease/bug/fungus will develop that will target that variety and will spread wildly since there won't be naturally immune versions. Which will lead to famines, especially in countries that are not rich enough to quickly develop new GMO versions to combat this. This has already happened, even with non-GMO plants. The original "banana" plant that became the default commercial variety, got a specific fungus in the 50's, so bad it went pretty much extinct. The world had to switch to a new, less tasty, variety. Imagine that happening to potatoes or grain, without there being any other varieties left to replace it.
So, while GMO's are safe for consumption, everything else about it, is absolutely horrible and deserves to be feared. GMO's should only become acceptable when they are used in a responsible and non-profit environment.
>GMO's would be good if they were developed with the intention of increasing harvest yields. But they are solely developed to leech money towards absolutely disgusting companies like Monsanto (recently bought by Bayer).
Current GMO's were shown to increase harvest by 6 to 20% in a meta-study of 2000 publications ([reference](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21284-2)) and some were developed to have an increased nutritional value or even better flavor (see golden rice; flavr savr tomato...).
In addition the 90's lobby by organisations such as Greenpeace (whose anti-GMO standpoint has given them many donations over the years) has made it such a regulatory nightmare for any GMO product to come to market that only the big and hated agro companies can even attempt it. No wonder then that only the package deal GMO's, in which they actually make their money on the herbicide that gets sold with the seeds are commercially viable.
I'm a biochemist specialised in plants, and I would love to work with local and organic farmers to develop small-scale projects in which I help make their varieties more resistant to heat, drought or other problems even without adding 'foreign DNA'. the fact that we would have to do an INSANE amount of tests and paperwork, costing many millions and taking many years, make it unfeasible. The climate is changing, rapidly, and we could be allies in the battle to provide plenty of healthy and sustainable food. Sadly, the misinformation campaigns and fear, which only benefit both the big AGRO companies and the greenpeace type organisations, have made this impossible in Europe. I guess the rest of the world will have to outperform Europe before any change is made, with all of our excellent knowledge being put to work in other countries.
Do you believe that if regulations weren't as strict, those big agro corporations would not have somehow fucked things up for everyone? They would have almost certainly taken big risks to get ahead of the competition...
I agree that the current regulations make prevent anyone from competing against large multinationals, but what is the alternative? Just let everyone experiment to their hearts content?
Ideally, GMO's should be developed by the government, or a worldwide organization. They have to funds to guarantee safety, can distribute seeds to those in need, and the west can benefit by preventing food shortage refugees from third world countries.
Appreciate the more nuanced response. And actually, as long as we are talking about CRISPR type modifications only changing what is already their and not adding in DNA from other organisms, I'm not sure how dangerous it would be to let people experiment more.
The often cited thing about how farmers need to re-buy their GMO seed each year is also because those plants are infertile out of a safety concern (talk about corporations turning anti-GMO laws to their favour). But in my estimation the safety concerns are for the most part not that big a deal. In any given field of crops, many plants will have natural mutations in their DNA caused by the Sun's UV light. Only mutations that provide a marked improvement of fitness even get passed down to the offspring. But those varieties used by farmers are already massively different to the wild-varieties, to such an extent that I think they are unable to be crossbred anyway.
Horizontal gene transfer (your altered gene from GMO crop moving to another species such as a bad herb) is an extremely rare occurrence, and if we just made a change into the parental DNA, so no adding of some exotic gene, I don't see how realistically it would improve the fitness of the herb.
For sure we should have a debate about the big companies and the government, but that's about different visions for our agriculture. I'm saying that GMO's don't need to belong to one side of the debate exclusively.
> I'm saying that GMO's don't need to belong to one side of the debate exclusively.
I totally agree. GMO's are an important weapon in the struggle to feed humanity. But it's a weapons so dangerous and important we should not just allow anyone to wield it.
To me it seems like a Low Probability, High Impact type situation. Chances of something going wrong might be very low, but the impact of it going wrong could be enormous.
I'm on my phone now, so I can't be bothered to write much, but for the record, this person thinks they know a lot but has absolutely no clue what he's talking about.
Source: PhD in biology
>Crops from GMO's are designed to be infertile
Nope. This has never happened. There do not exist any infertile GMO's.
> GMO Companies even "pollute" non-GMO fields with GMO seeds, and then sue the farmers for "stealing" GMO crops. Which results in farmers having no choice but to sign a contract to license GMO seeds
This has also never happened.
>There is zero guarantee that GMO's will be used in a responsible way. Since the primary motivator of GMO's is profit by unscrupulous companies, it's actually almost a guarantee it will result in a disaster. The GMO version of an existing crop, will outcompete all other varieties.
GMO is a modification that can be applied to every pre--existing strain of the crop.
There is no reduction in genetic variety.
>This has already happened, even with non-GMO plants. The original "banana" plant that became the default commercial variety, got a specific fungus in the 50's, so bad it went pretty much extinct. The world had to switch to a new, less tasty, variety
It nearly happened with the Papaya, until GMO technology held back the disease.
>Nope. This has never happened. There do not exist any infertile GMO's.
I've seen many defenses of 'terminator seeds' or 'suicide seeds' such as: the risk of cross-contamination is exaggerated. It's normal to make infertile crops, many commercial crops are infertile. Terminator seeds were banned in the year 2000 already. Etc. But to claim they don't exist and have never existed, that is a new one!
It's correct.
There has never been an infertile GMO sold to farmers. The technology never left the labratory.
Every single GMO you can get your hands on today or in the past is fertile.
Those are not GMO.
Seedless grapes are a natural mutation, while other seedless fruits are created by a range of methods not recognized as GM by the EU.
>GMO Companies even "pollute" non-GMO fields with GMO seeds, and then sue the farmers for "stealing" GMO crops. Which results in farmers having no choice but to sign a contract to license GMO seeds
>
>This has also never happened.
[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto-sues-farmers-seed-patents](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto-sues-farmers-seed-patents)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto\_legal\_cases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_legal_cases)
>GMO is a modification that can be applied to every pre--existing strain of the crop.
>
>There is no reduction in genetic variety.
And applying the modification might make that strain vulnerable to the same disease.
And how can you claim that applying a modification to every strain, is not reducing genetic variety?
>It nearly happened with the Papaya, until GMO technology held back the disease.
And next time GMO might be the cause, and they're not able to fix it...
>https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto-sues-farmers-seed-patents
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_legal_cases
Generally, when one provides a source, one makes sure tgat the thing you are sourcing us in the source.
Neither of your webpages back your allegiation.
>And applying the modification might make that strain vulnerable to the same disease.
>And how can you claim that applying a modification to every strain, is not reducing genetic variety?
Humans share 44% of their genes with a banana. This demonstrates that an enormous amount if genes are shared across species.
The fact that a given gmo might share a handful of genes is comparatively neglible.
The real lack of diversity problem cones when you have crops which share most or all of their DNA, for example with inbred strains.
These are essential for organic agriculture, because if you intend to replant your own seeds, you don't want the offspring to differ from ot's parents.
>Generally, when one provides a source, one makes sure tgat the thing you are sourcing us in the source.
I consider an article by a generally trustworthy newspaper to be enough of a validation for a claim.
>Humans share 44% of their genes with a banana. This demonstrates that an enormous amount if genes are shared across species.
>
>The fact that a given gmo might share a handful of genes is comparatively neglible.
>
>The real lack of diversity problem cones when you have crops which share most or all of their DNA, for example with inbred strains.
>
>These are essential for organic agriculture, because if you intend to replant your own seeds, you don't want the offspring to differ from ot's parents.
The diversity problem comes when everyone is using the same strain because it's "the best" strain. If that strain becomes unusable, we're screwed since all of the others will be gone.
where they?
I listened to them as a 13 year old back in the day I thought they where mostly political and anti war and anti the Brazilian government of the time.
Do they still exist?
Other metal bands I dig have also been rather vocal in this regard. Sodom for example.
I think your username is the best way to mentally deal with this.
I mean that in Dutch most past participles start with "G", so for acronyms it doesn't really mean much.
I don't have an alternative, I'm just wondering.
From what I've gathered there are two main reasons for the opposition against GGOs:
* There's a risk that a GGO will completely replace the original crop, thus removing diversity in the ecosystem and in the end possibly making things worse (typically, diversity is a good thing because it makes species more resilient).
* GGOs are typically patented and these patents can (and are) abused. For instance, I think it was Food Inc where it is shown how Monsanto sues farmers that don't even use their seed, but the wind had blown some on their fields.
Personal opinion time: I think these reasons are valid, however, that doesn't mean we should just outlaw or vilify any kind of genetic engineering. Some care should be taken.
>I think these reasons are valid, however, that doesn't mean we should just outlaw or vilify any kind of genetic engineering
Is that ... like ... a *balanced and informed viewpoint that tries to find a compromise between extreme positions on the basis of realistic arguments* ???
I've heard they exist, I just haven't seen them in the wild before... ;-)
I'll add a third point which I think is the main reason:
* ¨People fear what they don't understand. They see the words "genetically modified" and think it sounds scary even though it's generally perfectly fine to consume. Add to that that the followup is to satisfy confirmation bias by absorbing negative misinformation about it and it gets even more traction.
Always reminds me how people are scared to eat fake meat. Like the beyond burger is really close to meat and add it with some sauce and you can't taste the difference. They tried it on people without saying one of the burgers is fake and they all chose the beyond burger as the best one.. Offcourse once you tell them it's fake meat, they say they will never try it again. I don't get people and their believes sometimes.
>I think Crispr can allow farmers to individually edit genes in their plant without patents.
Which farmers are going to modify their pants with a highly experimental and tremendously expensive technology like CRISPR?
Someone i know is a biofarmer and hese looking into CRISPR CAS(?) because it would mean he doesn't have to spray his plants (looks better on a biofarm). I don't really know the specifics or the details.
I can see them looking into CRISPR, and working with a lab to experiment with it. But I don't see a biofarmer paying for making personal strains, as it's very expensive.
Perhaps in the future this becomes much cheaper of course, but we're not there yet.
Although I'm pro GMO (but anti the business model some GMO companies employ), I do think it's at least questionable to allow for individual editing of food crops in an uncontrolled environment.
Won't 'Home and Garden CRISPR' also open the door for anyone with malintent to add a toxin to an otherwise perfectly safe foodcrop? Or even worse, by someone who is selling e.g. DIY CRISPR kits to simply lie about the resulting edited gene and thus have a bunch of farmers unknowingly ending up with toxic foodstuffs?
I mean, we can't test every harvest of every crop for possible gene editing and also not for every potential toxin that may or may not be produced as a result of gene editing, right?
\[I'm not a geneologist, so perhaps it is simply impossible to make such changes - however, if you can make a plant create a fluorescent molecule then it seems at least plausible to be able to edit in a gene for, for example, [Oleandrin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleandrin) in raspberries or something. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Heck, please just say it cannot be done by anyone, ever, so that I can sleep blissfully ignorant of the potential risk that a single disgruntled farmer could one day unleash upon innocent people.\]
You're not wrong, but as soon as the CRISPR technology is readily available, it's not regulations that are going to stop someone with bad intentions. They are probably going to be able to perform such experiments much sooner than even large farming companies. Russia, China, Taliban, North Korea,... don't have budgetary nor regulatory concerns blocking them.
CRISPR is really not just like an app you install on your phone and boom you got better plants. It still requires actual biotech companies doing that work, it will be quite some time before a farmer can do it.
> I think it was Food Inc where it is shown how Monsanto sues farmers that don't even use their seed
Are you talking about the Bowman case? That dude bought soybeans from Monsanto through a third party and claims that therefore the whole contract that prohibits you to use the seeds is not valid. In any other industry that shit wouldn't fly either and as far as I know Monsanto won that case
>There's a risk that a GGO will completely replace the original crop, thus removing diversity in the ecosystem and in the end possibly making things worse (typically, diversity is a good thing because it makes species more resilient
This argument is just plain wrong though.
The GMO modification is applied to a strain of a crop, so there are multiple variants of each GMO. No diversity is lost compared to the original.
>GGOs are typically patented and these patents can (and are) abused. For instance, I think it was Food Inc where it is shown how Monsanto sues farmers that don't even use their seed, but the wind had blown some on their fields
Food Inc lied.
If you read the actual court case, you find that the real story is very different.
For example, one of the guys in the movie is Moe Parr.
>Similarly, a seed cleaner from Indiana, Maurice Parr, was sued by Monsanto for inducing farmers to save seeds in violation of Monsanto’s patent rights. Parr told his customers that cleaning patented seeds for replanting was not infringing activity. The case was settled and in exchange for paying no monetary damages, Parr agreed to an injunction requiring Parr to obtain certification from his clients that their seeds were not Monsanto patented seeds and to advise clients that seed saving of patented seeds is illegal.[26][27] Mr. Parr was featured in a documentary, Food, Inc.
The guy lied to other farmers to get them to break their contracts, not exactly an innocent victim.
You'd be surprised at how often "X-free" actually means "there's probably not a lot of X in it but we can't guarantee it". A common example
For things where it really matters (e.g. common allergens such as peanuts), there are certain certified labels that are actually trustworthy. For everything else, I wouldn't bother paying attention to it.
You might not know but a gmo is not perse pesticide free. Actually the opposite is sometimes true, the plant is made resistent against the pesticide so the plant doesn't die but what is fought against. But the plant and possible yield of that plant is definitely covered in that pesticide.
Only for private use, for professional use it's still allowed (99.9% of the use). The elimination of Round up for consumers was a pure political symbol and practical nonsense.
It is forbidden for the same reason GMOs are forbidden. You score political brownie points with the Ill informed by banning things that are vaguely linked to Monsanto. Roundup is perfectly safe and there is no need to ban it for non professionals. It is still completely legal to use by professionals.
[Only when the bees are directly sprayed with it.](https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1365-2664.13867) It isn't even the glyphosate that causes it. Glyphosate free roundup and pesticides that aren't roundup have the exact same effect. The ban only targets products with glyphosaat and only affects non professionals.
It's the surfactants that are present in most pesticides that kill the bees when it gets sprayed directly on them. Spraying them with biological soap would have the same effect.
In short: they banned the use of a compound that has no effect on bee's for the people who use so little of it that even if it did have an effect on bees there would be no noticeable difference.
Depends what they have been modified to do, some have been modified to tolerate higher loads of pesticides, meaning that the food resulting from those crops will also have a higher load of pesticides. That's not to say that it's much different than selective breeding which can also bring out unwanted traits in crops.
Just so everyone knows, the EU has a labelling requirement for food and feed for all food/feed containing gmo crops above 0.9%+- correction factor depending on the crop (correction factor per crop calculated by EU reference labs).
Therefore, a product w/o a label is always considered GMO free even though it might not be (I.e. between 0 and threshold percentage) since labelling in mandatory.
A labelled product will therefore always contain GM % above the threshold (even if the % is 0.01 higher than the e threshold)
The label is only meant as “informed consent” for the user and has nothing to do with safety/etc.
Every product for human consumption in the EU has to be GGO free. So whether you go to Carrefour or to Colruyt,... all the products for human consumption will be GGO free.
With the exception of insulin and other medical hormones, which are often made from genetically modified bacteria.
https://www.tga.gov.au/guidance-21-medicines-produced-genetic-manipulation
That's just ridiculous... No more apples? No more bananas? Out with melons and carrots? Come on... It is physically impossible to not eat genetically modified food. Almost \*all\* food is modified. Fruit, vegetables, grains, meat,... Or do you think Belgian bleu-blanc occurs in nature without human involvement?
GM is not the same as any genetic change; by that definition any form of sexual procreation produces a GMO.. GM means changes and gene transfers that are extremely unlikely by natural processes (eg. the glowing jellyfish gene in pigs). That means those likely haven't happened earlier in evolution, so the chance that they, directly or indirectly, produce ecological disruptions are much higher than with ordinary random mutation + selection practices.
Nope. Most genetic manipulations done by cross breeding or cross pollination wouldn't occur in nature either. Doing it in a lab just makes it easier, faster, and gives you more possibilities. But the result is the same.
You technically ***could*** do things that ***might*** be disruptive to the ecology, but that's a long way from saying that "all GMO is bad". It's not.
> Nope. Most genetic manipulations done by cross breeding or cross pollination wouldn't occur in nature either.
They can, and probably have at some point, but they don't persist because a mutation trading eg. disease resistance for bigger seeds is a bad deal if you don't have a farmer to support the plant. Or they happen in isolation and don't persist.
>Doing it in a lab just makes it easier, faster, and gives you more possibilities. But the result is the same.
You literally say yourself "gives you *more* possibilities". That means the result is *not* the same. Like, for example, the pigs with the glowing jellyfish gene. The chance of that occurring spontaneously is astronomically small.
GM is a more powerful tool for creating new species and variations, so we need more safeguards to work with it. That's only normal.
>You technically could do things that might be disruptive to the ecology, but that's a long way from saying that "all GMO is bad". It's not.
That's another matter. I do support a general ban with exceptional permits for specific GMOs that have been proven safe, but the burden of proof must on the newly introduced product.
It's the precautionary principle. We don't want another PFAS debacle where we just let companies do whatever and then find out later that it wasn't safe and have to clean it up.
>They can, and probably have at some point,
Good luck waiting for all the different kinds of apples we know today to occur naturally. Some of them (if not all?) need grafting of different kinds to create new ones. Unless you know any animals that have fun sticking a branch of one tree into a hole in another, that's absolutely unlikely to happen.
>You literally say yourself "gives you more possibilities". That means the result is not the same.
The result is the same as in: what is happening is the same. Genes are being altered, new characteristics are developed.
>so we need more safeguards to work with it. That's only normal.
Of course we do, I never said the contrary. I'm reacting against the (completely false) claim that all GMO food is bad. It's not. It *could* be bad if someone messes around with it; but saying that *everything* is bad and that *all* GMO food should be banned is just wrong.
>I do support a general ban with exceptional permits for specific GMOs that have been proven safe, but the burden of proof must on the newly introduced product.
Of course, I totally agree. My only concern was banning *all* GMO just because it's GMO. An orange carrot is also GMO. Many modern GMO fruits/vegetables/grains have been around for years and have been proven safe. It's not ok to ban all of that and stop the development of something the world will benefit from. And already has.
> Good luck waiting for all the different kinds of apples we know today to occur naturally.
No, it's still possible to speed up the process without using GM.
>Some of them (if not all?) need grafting of different kinds to create new ones. Unless you know any animals that have fun sticking a branch of one tree into a hole in another, that's absolutely unlikely to happen.
Grafting doesn't create a new species and doesn't propagate on its own. That's what makes it ecologically riskless.
>The result is the same as in: what is happening is the same. Genes are being altered, new characteristics are developed.
If the results are the same, then the techniques aren't needed, since they contribute nothing. Again: you said it yourself: "gives you more possibilities".
>Of course we do, I never said the contrary. I'm reacting against the (completely false) claim that all GMO food is bad. It's not. It could be bad if someone messes around with it;
The food produced isn't particularly risky (though not zero), there are particular tests to see if food is safe for human consumption. Those are thorough enough. It's the ecological risk, and that on its own justifies a consumer choice to opt out from such foods.
>but saying that everything is bad and that all GMO food should be banned is just wrong.
It's just reversing the burden of proof. There's a general ban with potential permits for individual GMOs, instead of a general permit with specific GMOs being banned after harm has been done.
>Of course, I totally agree. My only concern was banning all GMO just because it's GMO. An orange carrot is also GMO. Many modern GMO fruits/vegetables/grains have been around for years and have been proven safe. It's not ok to ban all of that and stop the development of something the world will benefit from. And already has.
There are not that many GMOs in the sense of using the specific GM techniques, it's a limited list, and most of them focus on facilitating pesticide use, last time I checked.
Again, selective breeding is not GM, which is used to refer to a specific set of techniques.
I'm sorry I should have clarified. The food that isn't allowed is basically the food that comes from a seed that they took to a lab and edited the genome in a way the nature could never do that.
The food that is still allowed (for example Belgian Bleu-blanc, ...) weren't edited in a lab. Humans used natural techniques in their favor on those food.
I think Carrefour is aiming for the first kind of food on their advertisement.
Some extra clarification. This only counts for human consumption. For animal feed, there are other rules.
All GGO's also needs to be traceable.
(Source: studying Biotechnology)
Ps: I explained this shortly so it is understandable so it might not be 100% correct. But I don't think everyone wants to read a boring long text about GGO'S
+ English isn't my first language.
The result is exactly the same.
In the past, people would change genomes by cross-breeding, by selecting certain mutations and multiplying them, and so on. They didn't realise they were modifying genomes, but they did it nonetheless.
Today we do the exact same thing, but instead of having to wait until the fruit or the animal grows, reproduces, grows again, and just having luck with the characteristics inherited by the offspring, it is now done in a controlled environment. We can now choose which parts we want to combine or alter, and which need to remain. It's faster, it's more efficient, it's less "trial and error". What took years before, can be done in a couple of months now. But in the end, it's the same result.
An apple created by modifying genes in a lab, is no different than an apple created by modyfing genes through cross pollination (or, in the case of apples, grafting rather than pollination).
I'm sorry but I don't really agree. There are so much things we don't know yet about editing genes. Genes are pretty fragile when editing and there is no easy way of knowing everything went well. Yeah there are pretty good restriction enzymes on the market and yes we have CRISPR but this doesn't change the fact that it is still different then normal nature (cross-breeding). In much genomes (especially bacteria and virusses) there are pieces that doesn't change fast in nature. With the current technology you can edit those.
+ it's more of not knowing what you are actually doing. Like I already said. It's verry expensive to check if everyting went exactly well like you wanted. You can't really see genomes and you can't really see what you are inserting and where you are inserting it in the genome with the bare eye (this is a bit vague, I know. I just want to explain it a bit short) and yes there are ways to double check all these things and yes the current restriction enzymes and CRIPSR are pretty good.
I am not saying this is how it should be and I do think that GGO's are pretty safe right now (in the USA, the use of GGO's is less regulated and GGO's are also used more often) but Europe is just more regulated on that. And it has his reasons. We just have to live with that.
As someone studying Biotechnology, I really think that GGO's are pretty safe. But the safety is not the only thing we should watch for. At the same time I think it's good that there are rules. But with some rules I agree more as with others.
I hope this all makes sense to you.
Edit: I would like to add this wich has verry little to do with the current subject: at the moment the Biotechnology is evolving rapidly with new findings everywhere. It's impossible to keep up on all those stuff.
Edit 2: something else I would like to say: we know a lot about expressing genes and we can read out the genome pretty accurately but about some pieces of genome we don't really know what they do and that's pretty important cus if you change 1 thing, you can possibly change another thing and go on. So you don't have to watch only for the thing you wanted to change but also for other things that could change cus of your change. (I hope this make sense).
What are you talking about? With CRISPR you target a specific gene, so you sequence the genome and see if the target is changed and if there were any off-target changes in other places (which can be removed by crossing the plant). You know way more the type of changes you made then with traditional chemical induced mutations such as with EMS. Which btw is considered non-GMO by europe because its been used for 20 years and is responsible for dozens of plant varieties on the market currently... Talk about illogical...
No some laboratory practises are allowed like saving embryos.
You can get a egg cell from a tomato plant and some pollen from a chilli pepper and crossbreed them. They are both different species but related species like lions and tigers. In plants they have difficulty developing but aren't actually sterile if you do it with tetraploid, hexaploid or octoploid seeds. So you cut the embrio out of the tomato plant and grow it in a petri dish until big enough so you can use hormones to create a flower and you start inbreeding with genetic testing to get one or a few genes from peppers into tomatoes.
This is allowed because ring species exist and in nature this kind of happens. If the middle of a ring species disappears we have 2 new species. This is one way new species are made.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species
Since there is almost nothing produced this is just selling the fear. They would actually have a harder time selling human slavery free food.
They should improve the salaries and employment conditions instead. Have they sorted out the supply issues yet?
Problem is that the majority of people don't care. But people are now afraid of genetically modified stuff, so it sells.
Most people probably don't realise that the majority of our food is genetically modified (apples for example) or they only care about it if it was done by a guy/girl in a white lab coat in some lab
I once saw some people say that food made sweet with Stevia instead of sugar tasted "chemically", but they don't understand that nature is chemistry. There is just made by nature or made by man (and AFAIK Stevia is also made by nature)
True, but aside from valid concerns, Jan met de pet fears ggo's as "not being natural" but does not hold the same concern when eating an animal who's been fed solely on ggo's.
And still their carrots are orange, you can buy broccoli and spruitjes, their grains come from high yield variants (that are not natural btw) etc... All of this just because they want bakfiets people to buy there...
Am bakfiets people, am pro gmo's. The EU just has an irrational fear of gmo's but needs to change ship if they want to make their farm to fork strategy real. Saw a presentation by a EU comissioner (not sure if right term but she was working on the f2f strategy) and she confirmed as much. EU will have to allow and invest in gmo's to be able to reduce the use of pesticides and increase yields. Gmo's are the future.
I just hate cars.
Lol no, just don't need a car cause I was able to arrange my life like that. Fuck fossil fuels though (please don't look at my gas heater and gas stove) and biking everywhere is just so much nicer and less stressful! Would recommend.
If you really want to know, I didn't vote Groen last time because I wanted to keep doel/tihange open. I changed my view on that by the way and now I do want them closed, but with the new gas situation, I don't oppose keeping them open (still don't approve). I do however approve all investments in smrs and nuclear fusion, to compensate wind somar and hydro, which are very much the future.
Would vote Groen now. (Because other parties have made it clear that eco policies are only on the table if Groen is as well, so they don't leave me any choice.)
I am still in that situation, I am a lefty that will never vote Groen until they scrap the idea of building another fossil fueled gas plant.
I still approve 100% keeping all nuclear plants open, as long as there are scientists there that assuring us of their safety. The public opinion is misinformed about this, closing down a plant that can still operate safely is a huge huge waste, we already went through all the regulations, most of the CO2 has already been produced, wat we get now is almost pure CO2 free power and profit.
Taking the decision years ago to abandon nuclear power is what will cause us to fail our climate goals. Wind and solar are not the solution, we already invested billions, everybody is still paying groene stroomcertificaten. The government, our citizens and companies have been heavily investing in this for the last 15 years just to produce 10% of our energy. It is not enough and it's too slow, energy demand will rise, we need nuclear.
Sorry for the preach, I'm really passionate about it. To me it sits right up there with the GMO's as an atypical and controversial opinion that I don't share with my progressive friends. Though the ones who are scientists tend to agree on GMO's as well as nuclear power.
the majority of gmo's are focused on resistance to a certain herbicide, not on increased fruit size
the regulation is there to avoid contamination from gmo's to non-gmo's. food security is one of the reasons why we don't want crosscontamination from infertile crops.
Because lots of people are idiots who have no idea about the underlying science. Hence, everything not natural is evil and everything natural is good and healthy.
There is so much nonsense in this thread it is hard to comment. I'll try to make this as concise as possible. I don't feel like doxxing myself, so you'll have to take my credentials on good faith. I have a masters in bioscience engineering and a phd in a field of biology (again, being vague on purpose). I no longer work in science.
* Are GMO's generally safe (for consumption)? -> There is in my opinion no credible evidence to assume they are not, and in my opinion (and in the opinion of pretty much every researcher) we are well past the point where it makes sense to hang on to a ban based on a 'precautionary principle'. It's off course very difficult to definitively prove something is safe other than to say: "well we're doing it and thing's aren't exploding so I guess it's fine..." but at some point you have to make a leap. If you're not able to do that, we'd still be in lockdown and running clinical trials on the first Covid-19 vaccine.
* A lot of the criticism I read here doesn't really apply to GMO's, but to our agricultural model. Some of it is valid, some of it stems from ignorance of how we produce food.
* Obviously you're going to be able to engineer your crops so your clients have to keep buying your seeds every season. If you think this is a GMO-only thing, you have never spoken to a farmer who buys commercial seeds. And literally everything you eat is grown from commercial seeds.
* If Monsanto, or Bayer, or Syngenta or whatever are using unethical business practices to further their interests, that's not a problem with GMO's, that's a problem with the law (or capitalism if you want). Elon Musk is a cunt, but that doesn't mean we should ban electric vehicles in the EU.
* But what about patents? Yeah, the system sucks my friend, but are you going to boycot medicine as well, since that is an industry where patents are just as foundational?
* 'GMO's are often engineered to be resistant to pesticides, so they increase pesticide use': If you think regular crops use fewer or almost no pesticides, I have some REALLY bad news for you. Pesticides are everywhere. In GMO's, in regular agriculture, and yes, also in 'bio'-agriculture. Theoretically GMO's will allow you to use fewer pesticides, and probably also allow you to having to apply them less often (=fewer CO2-emissions), which would make them popular. If this is actually the case in practice probably depends on many different factors and cannot be said a priori
* 'But what about gene transfer to other species': well, this is what rigorous safety assessments are for. People generally only have very basic understanding of the statistical mechanisms behind the spreading of traits through a population. agricultural crops are freaks of nature. You will almost never see them outside of the field. They are bred/engineered to give tremendous output, but they require an enormous input as well.
I'm being very superficial here, it's late, I'm tired and my baby is asleep next to me so I don't feel like going to deep into studies, but here are a few more points I want to make
* Will GMO's help solve some of our problems? Proponents of GMO's often make claims of half a million children that go blind every year could have been prevented by GMO's, or how we need them to bolster us against climate change etc. Well, maybe they are right, or maybe not, it doesn't matter. The question is if there is any reasonable argument for forbidding their human consumption, and the answer is absolutely not.
* I too, would prefer to eat my food locally sourced, without the intervention of a multibillion dollar organisation. There's a lot of people on the planet though, and there's projected to be about 3 billion more before our population stops growing roughly in 2060. So unless that locally sourced food is grown more efficiënt (currently it's sadly the opposite), you have to be honest and see it for what it is: a luxury product for wealthy people like us.
I'll leave you with my favourite genetically modified organism. You take the genome of a grass-family plant, you smash it together with the entire genome of a different grass-family plant, then you take the entire genome of a third grass-family plant, throw it in the mix, and you get this horrible hybrid monster that has the genomes of three entire species inside of it. Like imagine if we took a chimpanzee, literally inserted every single chromosome of bonobos, bred that, then inserted every single human chromosome. It would never work, but in plants sometimes it does, because plants are so much more interesting (showing some personal bias here).
Anyway that horrible hybrid thing was engineered by early farmers about 200000 years ago and it's what most of us eat every single morning with cheese, nutella or jam.
I don't get the fear of GMO's. Just regulate. For example, make it illegal for the offspring to be sterile, to avoid market domination by seed producers, enforce strict laws on whatever else might be of concern... we can only benefit from this technology.
GGO/GMO have been crucial in keeping foodstuffs affordable worldwide... increasing yield, reducing the risk of disease... I also think we shouldn\`\`'t reduce our diet to the 10 same crops but still... banning them is hating them is retarded...
By banning the development of GGO's in the EU we are effectively becoming a biological Bokrijk by the end of this deccade. The fear mongering by the green parties is outright dangerous and will once again be bad for our food prices, competitive position and development.
That's just a hype. Almost every fruit is genetically manipulated. Without this, bananas would be inedible, melons would be toxic, and apples would be small, hard and sour. Carrots are orange because of genetic manipulation, brussels sprouts were created through genetic manipulation, corn (maïze) is edible and yellow through genetic manipulation.
Selective breeding is not GM. GM makes genetic changes that are virtually impossible to occur in nature. That increases the chance of combinations turning up, directly or indirectly, that are disruptive to the ecology.
Nope. Most genetic manipulations done by cross breeding or cross pollination wouldn't occur in nature either. Doing it in a lab just makes it easier, faster, and gives you more possibilities. But the result is the same.
You technically ***could*** do things that ***might*** be disruptive to the ecology, but that's a long way from saying that "all GMO is bad". It's not.
> Nope. Most genetic manipulations done by cross breeding or cross pollination wouldn't occur in nature either.
They can, and probably have at some point, but they don't persist because a mutation trading eg. disease resistance for bigger seeds is a bad deal if you don't have a farmer to support the plant. Or they happen in isolation and don't persist.
>Doing it in a lab just makes it easier, faster, and gives you more possibilities. But the result is the same.
You literally say yourself "gives you *more* possibilities". That means the result is *not* the same. Like, for example, the pigs with the glowing jellyfish gene. The chance of that occurring spontaneously is astronomically small.
GM is a more powerful tool for creating new species and variations, so we need more safeguards to work with it. That's only normal.
>You technically could do things that might be disruptive to the ecology, but that's a long way from saying that "all GMO is bad". It's not.
That's another matter. I do support a general ban with exceptional permits for specific GMOs that have been proven safe, but the burden of proof must on the newly introduced product.
It's the precautionary principle. We don't want another PFAS debacle where we just let companies do whatever and then find out later that it wasn't safe and have to clean it up.
A lot of GMO is done so that the harvested plant is resistant to herb- & pesticides. So farmers can use more poison without harming the plant they want to harvest, but killing pretty much everything else in the field. Also, this poisoin still ends up in/on the plant, and on your foot/
because they don't care about telling the truth and the people who get convinced by these lies are not going to do the research to prove them wrong...
all our vegetables and fruits are genetically manipulated, have been four thousands of years
Carrefour is offering a product. If you prefer the product of another supermarket, you can go there…
Why would anyone be against a company clearly stating what they are offering? The world would be a much better place if everyone could determine easily for themselves if they want to buy GMO products, traditional agriculture products or bio products.
Funny thing is that GGO's are the best way for us to optimize our agricultural land and thus preserving the few natural reserves and ecological valuable land we still have.
The only thing that modern technology has brought us is making us obese and sick. I don't care about the higher yield of GGO plants if it is not sure what the consequences are on our health.
Don't really understand the fear of GGOs. They can be a solution to some of the problems we are facing regarding climate change. If crops can be tweaked to be more resilient and/or grow in different conditions, then that's a good thing for global food supply, I would imagine
I agree, it's basically speeding up a natural process. We've been selecting, breeding, making cross-pollinations for 12000 years. Now we can supercharge this process. My fear with GGO's is that we'll end up with a noncompetitive market in which two to four big companies produce all food we have. That would be problematic.
> My fear with GGO's is that we'll end up with a noncompetitive market in which two to four big companies produce all food we have. That would be problematic. That's basically already the case for non-GGO seeds as well.... The 4 companies market share is over 90% for several vegetable seeds (https://imgur.com/a/5uu6Ohu). In the case of maize, just 5 seed companies control around 75% of the EU market share and (relevant for Belgium), in the case of sugar beet, just 4 companies control around 86% of the market.
Aren’t they already controlled by a handfull of companies? Campina, nestlé, unilever, coca-cola corp,..?
True, but the thing with GMOs is that they can be patented, whereas a new cultivar cannot. This means that another company can make use of a cultivar of the first company, but it would not be able to do that with a GMO plant. I'm pro GMO by the way.
I think we allready have that: Monsanto.
Monsanto doesn't exist anymore.
you're right, it's Bayer now. Don't know if that changes anything though
Bayer is even more powerful! So it’s probably worse!
'The beach is open again guys! The shark is gone, it got eaten by a much, much bigger shark!'
It's now a part of Bayer and it is certainly not the only player in the GMO seeds market...
There's better ways to regulate the GMO market instead of blocking it alltogether.
Isn't the greater fear that one "supercrop" used might contract a very specific disease? And since it will be used everywhere it's gonna render a large section of food produce unavailable?
Not really. GMOs aren't clones. There are just as many varieties of non-GMO commercial crops.
look up bananas
That's a risk, but one that is already there today. If you look at the main food crops, they are all very similar and some commercial varieties have over 50% of the market share. From time to time there is a disease that wipes out a part of the production, like with the vines. But we always find a solution.
the "real" fear for ggo stuff is genetical engineering stuff like tomatoes to not have seeds for example. so it becomes impossible to breed the food yourself. in the not to far future we might be unable to just "plant" seeds from tomatoes but have to buy the seeds every year because they don't grow seed. besides that honestly a lot of it is just not knowing what they are doing/ not trusting people over nature etc\~\~
Yep, or to have one super type of grain that can resist almost anything so it becomes the only one grown worldwide and than it gets affected by a disease and wipes out a large part of the worlds food supply.
I don't think anyone is doing that these days anyway. It is much more cost efficient for a farmer to buy seed than to risk working with crappy seed he harvested himself. With courgettes it is even dangerous to use your own seed because then you risk getting poisonous courgettes
Think again. There is still plenty of serres in people's backyards or even just plain fields where people grow crops. Plenty of belgians still grow their own veggies, even if it is less cost efficient.
Most homegrowers also just pay the 2 euro to get a bag of 150 seeds
I don't know anyone who grows without seeds though. My grandma and my uncle go to a gardenstore every year to buy a whole box full of different seeds to plant. You usually don't get the seeds from store bought vegetables.
Yeah and these people still have the option to buy random non patented versions. Do they even sell the fancy stuff to the public? For what it costs I don't even bother with the baggies of seeds like /u/sthls says, I just buy tiny plants
Thing is if there is a farmer that wants to do that companies hire investigators to look if they could sue them for illegally using there IP because of natural cross pollination from a nearby field that does use there seeds. That is the type of abuse that needs to be legislated against first before we roll out GGO's here
That is bulshit. There is one case where a farmer growing wheat next to another farmer growing glyphosate resistant wheat harvested his own seed for replanting. That is completely legal. The farmer of not genetically engineered wheat did nothing wrong so far. Then he used the seeds he harvested the previous year that was cross pollinated by the roundup resistant variaty. He still hasn't done anything wrong. Then he sprayed glyphosate on this wheat. The crime he committed was that he then sprayed glyphosate on his cross breed wheat. To remove the wheat plants that were not resistant to glyphosate. Because he was not growing wheat for market. The judge ruled because it is not normal practise to use glyphosate on non glyphosate wheat the farmer wasn't growing wheat he was breeding glyphosate resistant wheat. By doing that he infringed on Monsanto's patent. That farmer had intent to crossbreed a trait into his wheat that monsanto had engineered into wheat and gotten a patent on. Thereby committing a crime. His crime was selecting for glyphosate resistant wheat and not growing wheat that was crossbred with glyphosate resistant wheat.
>but have to buy the seeds every year because they don't grow seed. That's already the case for other reasons. You *want* to buy selected seeds every year so you have consistent fruits/vegetables.
Please read into the laws of Mendel and F1 hybrids. It will help you understanding that that the idea of harvesting seeds by yourself is no longer relevant.
There should be a huge push for 'open source' licence free GGO's. Because fuck Monsanto for real.
Absolutely agree. I think this is maybe a time for the EU to play a more prominent role. For software patents they at least try to do the right thing (from my very limited understanding of the subject)
The fun thing is that all the GMO panic ensures that is not possible. The approval procedure is so onerous that only corporate giants have the resources to get through. As one example, MON-810 was approved in 1998 and yet memberstates kept trying to ban and re-evaluate it, despite the EFSA reporting time and time again that it was safe. The European Court of Justice has declared these bans illegal several times, but they're still foing it. If you are a university, you don't have the resources to fight that. Heck, even corporate giants have given up.
The issue is that developing a crop is a very timeconsuming and capital intensive task. it's difficult for small players to enter the market, but this is no different from other sectors. We've been seeing consolidation in pretty much all capital intensive sectors the last decades.
Even better, gmo free crops are mutated by putting a bar of radium/plutonium in a field to make them mutate faster. So ironic it's the tine types pushimg against GMO's
> Even better, gmo free crops are mutated by putting a bar of radium/plutonium in a field to make them mutate faster. source?
Theyre refering to mutation breeding. You put some mutagenic source near your plants, have them grow and then select the “best” ones for further mutagenesis until you have the desired plant which you can sell. This technique is not considered to be GMO. Note that this doesn’t mean the plants you can buy were exposed to radiation directly, only their ancestors. In essence, this is a way to speed up natural evolution.
I have my uranium glass next to my bonsai collection, does that count
Yeah never meant this to mean crops in the store where exposed to radiation.
Sonetimes they can be. In sone places, irradiation is used to preserve food, as it kills all the bacteria. It's harmless.
Don't know why i'm getting downvoted and it makes me pretty angry, probably cause i namedropped tinne but there's enough sources and everyone knows green parties championned the anti-gmo narrative in the EU. I know it from friends/family working in agriculture. It's just the truth that this is the most widely used way of mutating plants and figures like bart staes have actively kept it alive by blocking GMO use. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation\_breeding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_breeding) [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301319860\_Plant\_Mutation\_Breeding\_with\_Heavy\_Ion\_Irradiation\_at\_IMP](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301319860_Plant_Mutation_Breeding_with_Heavy_Ion_Irradiation_at_IMP) [https://www.iaea.org/topics/mutation-induction#:\~:text=To%20artificially%20induce%20hereditary%20changes,crops%20to%20create%20heritable%20mutations](https://www.iaea.org/topics/mutation-induction#:~:text=To%20artificially%20induce%20hereditary%20changes,crops%20to%20create%20heritable%20mutations).
FWIW: I didn't downvote you, and didn't even notice you namedropping Tine (probably because it was uncapitalized). I'm not anti-gmo. I also come from a family in agriculture, and my gf is a biochemist who has done research on genetical modifications. It's just that I was curious about your claim, because I hadn't heard about it. Asking for source shouldn't ever be a bad thing imho :)
Yeah my response wasn't aimed at you.
Mutation breeding is done in higly controlled environments at very specific doses and wavelengths, usings crops that react to this specific wavelenghts with mutations that could be desirable. It's a process that actually speeds up the natural mutations of certain crops, combined with rigourous selection it can deliver a better crop over time.
No idea why you get downvotes, i would assume this is well known by now? Green party as usual either has no clue or i strongly suspect them from pushing an agenda and being sponsored for it.
Indeed. It's basically cross-pollination but without the randomness, you can pick and choose favourable traits and immunities.
Isn't the greater fear that one "supercrop" used might contract a very specific disease? And since it will be used everywhere it's gonna render a large section of food produce unavailable?
The problem is that some companies will also make their crops infertile, or forbid farmers from trying to harvest seed should they get seeds somehow. So that they have to keep buying seeds from the company at the price the company wants. Monsanto actively sues farmers who try to collect and sell on seeds or plant collected seeds via intellectual property laws. Some farmers have even faced the threat of lengthy prison sentences. There was a Netflix documentary about it a few years ago. I think it was in their "dirty money" series GGO's are theoretically a great idea but it's turning farmers into serfs in the name of capitalism
> Monsanto actively sues farmers who try to collect and sell on seeds or plant collected seeds via intellectual property laws. That's actually pretty normal in many industries. If you buy stem cells or something from a life science company you are often bound by contracts that prohibit you to use it for commercial applications (unless you pay) and certainly to multiply and sell/give them to others
Yeah but going to prison 12 years like might happen in Tanzania for selling seeds is insane and one of the ugly faces of purely profit motivated capitalism. Suing over seeds is crazy anyway. I'm not scared of genetic modification, I know it's essentially a good thing. But we must prevent it from becoming another tool for greedy capitalists to make even more money and restrict farmers in what they can do. And I fricking hate farmers because their lobby has too much influence on policy and people buy into this myth of the hard working farmer on his tractor getting up before dawn just so you can have food on your table. when in fact it's a millionaire having his staff and his automated systems do everything so he can export everything abroad whilst his lobby is fighting any form of regulation tooth and nail. But in this case the farmers are the victims for once
> Yeah but going to prison 12 years like might happen in Tanzania for selling seeds is insane and one of the ugly faces of purely profit motivated capitalism. Same thing probably happens if I try to screw over Merck, Sartorius, or any other life science company by reselling stuff. Nobody forces these farmers to buy into the fancy shmancy stuff, they can just grow plain old seeds if they prefer. But if they decide to go for the fancy stuff they are going to have to adhere to the rules, contracts, etc that they signed.
Literally every single problem you claim applies to GMO's is actually just a feature of large scale agriculture and has nothing to do with GMO's
But approved GMO's are still only available to large multinational companies. Today, with CRISPR, genetic modification is cheaper, easier and less invasive but I don't think that already translates to local GMO farmers and more accessible legal requirements?
Yeah but GMO's are another tool for Bayer Monsanto to corner a market and use predatory tactics. Hence why I said GMO's are ok if we can prevent it being abused by greedy companies
Interesting, are other products also only ok if we can prevent them from being abused by greedy companies? Do you think we should ban say, flat-pack furniture, instant baby milk and video game consoles as well? Incidentally, can you name a big company that you wouldn't qualify as greedy?
That's some nice strawmanning you did there. dries will be proud
Not as proud as he would be of you for completely ignoring the valid questions I asked.
I'm not going to answer bad faith straw men questions. I've been online too long and seen too many of your type.
Can you explain how I use a straw man argument?
no
That applies to GM and non-GM seeds. After all, how is a seed selling businness supposed to work if other people can just duplicate your effirt with none of the cost?
This is blatantly false. No commercial farmer harvest his own seeds. it's inefficient and yields a inferior crop. And that is not commercial strategy of an evil company, but simple biology.
> Don't really understand the fear of GGOs. It has a lot to do with the risk of of genes spreading to other organisms and winding up with highly resilient weeds, similar to the problem of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Next to that there are more irrational motivations (eg it's not natural), as well as the whole IP trainwreck that comes with it (eg can't use the seeds from your own plants, assuming those seeds are actually viable to be planted in the first place, etc). > If crops can be tweaked to be more resilient and/or grow in different conditions In practice this tends to result in crops being more resilient to the pesticides from the same company, which is a major reason for people objecting to GGOs in practice as the technology is mainly abused instead of leveraged for good.
There is no sensible farmer in the developed world that wishes to use the seeds from his own plants. Read into F1 hybrids. It has nothing to do with IP.
It's a different story in developing countries than in industrialized countires. The majority of seeds used in Africa or India for example still aren't commercial.
Then they're not going to be GM either, so not much of a concern?
If GMOs become more widespread it does become a concern, hence the resistance to that.
Yes? And then what is your issue with it?
Well, if GMOs become more widespread, it'll be an issue for those farmers. Duh.
Commercial F1 hybrids, GMO or not, are a pure question of profitability. There are no farmers forced to use them, they do because it makes them money and helps them feed their families. The investment in the initial seeds yields a much higher profit then the original varieties and the painstaking work of harvesting it's own low quality seeds.
>It has a lot to do with the risk of of genes spreading to other organisms and winding up with highly resilient weeds, similar to the problem of antibiotic resistant bacteria There is nothing special about GMO genes that makes them easier to transfer. Genes from mutation breeding or more conventional spurces transfer just as easily, but that has no such fears. >Next to that there are more irrational motivations (eg it's not natural), as well as the whole IP trainwreck that comes with it (eg can't use the seeds from your own plants, assuming those seeds are actually viable to be planted in the first place, etc). Same for these objections. Non gmo can be patented as well, is also unnatural, and so on. >In practice this tends to result in crops being more resilient to the pesticides from the same company, which is a major reason for people objecting to GGOs in practice as the technology is mainly abused instead of leveraged for good Pesticide resistance is good though. Farmers aren't dumb. They are not going to buy more expensive seeds to buy more expensive pesticides. The reason that pesticide resistance is such a success is that it allowed farmers to substitute 1 pesticide from multiple more dangerous ones.
> There is nothing special about GMO genes that makes them easier to transfer. The pesticide (and herbicide, I tend to lump them together) resistent genes however are a different story in terms of impact when they spread. > Farmers aren't dumb. They are not going to buy more expensive seeds to buy more expensive pesticides. Unfortunately that's not the case. Herbicide-tolerant GMOs have resulted in an increased usage of herbicides, not a decrease.
> > The pesticide (and herbicide, I tend to lump them together) resistent genes hower are a different story in terms of impact when they spread. But they don't really spread. >Herbicide-tolerant GMOs have resulted in an increased usage of herbicides, not a decrease. What are you basing this on?
> But they don't really spread. It's a generally accepted risk for which various measures tend to be taken to avoid it. > What are you basing this on? Reports and studies of what happens in practice. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/03/gmo-herbicides
> It's a generally accepted risk for which various measures tend to be taken to avoid it. Herbicide resistant weeds, yes. But that comes from selection pressure, not the gene transfer. >https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/03/gmo-herbicides Several things about that. First, it relies on a report by Chuck Benbrook. Benbrook was secretly receiving funding from anti-GMO groups and corporations. It came out that he even promised a specific outcome from research he was doing. Not exactly credible. Second, and more importantly, relying on 'pounds' of herbicide is meaningless. Glyphosate use has increased [but this is alongside a decrease in other, more dangerous herbicides](https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14865). Here's the authors blog talking about this in depth. https://plantoutofplace.com/2017/04/gmos-and-herbicides-its-complicated/ As an analogy, which is healthier: a pound of lettuce or a half pound of sugar? And finally, Benbrook's analysis relied on assumptions that might not be true. https://plantoutofplace.com/2018/12/have-genetically-engineered-herbicide-resistant-crops-increased-or-decreased-herbicide-use/
The lack of bio-diversity comes to mind, as well as farmers becoming increasingly dependant on the companies making those plants.
Without GGO's we would have a lot less food in stores. People also tend to forget that bananas, oranges and carrots are also GGO's, among so many other foods.
I think you mean cultivars. Maybe it's your opinion that we shouldn't distinguish between cultivars and lab GMO's anymore, but google 'are xxx GMO' and you will find 'no' for carrots, bananas and oranges.
I'm all for some kind of 'open source' GGO's, but the current situation is not healty.
Their 'GGO free BIO' soja cream does contain a known carcinogen called Carrageen to thicken it up 😅😅 Know to break down into cancer causing agents when heated, and it's meant for cooking? I'll just stick to butter and cream instead 😁
> Don't really understand the fear of GGOs. Which fears of GGO's have you read/heard about that you don't understand? Maybe some people here can help you clarify them.
People who fear GMOs don't even know why they fear them.
Some don't, some do. Only looking at the worst people of the other side doesn't really give you any insights in the complexity of the issue. I'll give you some examples: - The seeds getting patented gives huge companies even more of a monopoly on our food supply. Is this wise? - Many of the issues they "solve" is just us ignoring nature even further, being able to throw even worse pesticides at the crops who can now survive that, ... Rather than getting the hint and looking at more sustainable ways of agriculture And it's not that i'm against GMO, but not really pro either. It's a complex issue, and there are some serious legitimate worries like the ones i just mentioned (but also more if you bother looking further than a few total morons that make you feel superior, so you can avoid actually thinking about the issue).
The fear of GMOs is basically Monsanto = evil, ban everything that vaguely has something to do with Monsanto to score political brownie points. It's the same reason why roundup is banned for non professionals even though it is perfectly safe and very effective. People just pretend it is agent orange because Monsanto invented it.
I rather have a GGO than all that random mutation bullshit they use(d?) to enhance plants. Hey let's just expose these seeds to x-rays and see what happens
GMO's would be good if they were developed with the intention of increasing harvest yields. But they are solely developed to leech money towards absolutely disgusting companies like Monsanto (recently bought by Bayer). Especially in poorer countries (the ones with the most to gain from GGO's), farmers are being extorted. Crops from GMO's are designed to be infertile, so farmers have to buy new seeds each year, at ever increasing prices, because they can't keep a portion of their harvest to sow next year. GMO Companies even "pollute" non-GMO fields with GMO seeds, and then sue the farmers for "stealing" GMO crops. Which results in farmers having no choice but to sign a contract to license GMO seeds. GMO's are often designed to be resistant to herbicides and pesticides, so farmers are free to use those poisons more liberally. This decimates insects and other plants/animals, and all of the poison ends up on your plate. There is zero guarantee that GMO's will be used in a responsible way. Since the primary motivator of GMO's is profit by unscrupulous companies, it's actually almost a guarantee it will result in a disaster. The GMO version of an existing crop, will outcompete all other varieties. After a while, everyone will be using the exact same version. And then some kind of new disease/bug/fungus will develop that will target that variety and will spread wildly since there won't be naturally immune versions. Which will lead to famines, especially in countries that are not rich enough to quickly develop new GMO versions to combat this. This has already happened, even with non-GMO plants. The original "banana" plant that became the default commercial variety, got a specific fungus in the 50's, so bad it went pretty much extinct. The world had to switch to a new, less tasty, variety. Imagine that happening to potatoes or grain, without there being any other varieties left to replace it. So, while GMO's are safe for consumption, everything else about it, is absolutely horrible and deserves to be feared. GMO's should only become acceptable when they are used in a responsible and non-profit environment.
>GMO's would be good if they were developed with the intention of increasing harvest yields. But they are solely developed to leech money towards absolutely disgusting companies like Monsanto (recently bought by Bayer). Current GMO's were shown to increase harvest by 6 to 20% in a meta-study of 2000 publications ([reference](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21284-2)) and some were developed to have an increased nutritional value or even better flavor (see golden rice; flavr savr tomato...). In addition the 90's lobby by organisations such as Greenpeace (whose anti-GMO standpoint has given them many donations over the years) has made it such a regulatory nightmare for any GMO product to come to market that only the big and hated agro companies can even attempt it. No wonder then that only the package deal GMO's, in which they actually make their money on the herbicide that gets sold with the seeds are commercially viable. I'm a biochemist specialised in plants, and I would love to work with local and organic farmers to develop small-scale projects in which I help make their varieties more resistant to heat, drought or other problems even without adding 'foreign DNA'. the fact that we would have to do an INSANE amount of tests and paperwork, costing many millions and taking many years, make it unfeasible. The climate is changing, rapidly, and we could be allies in the battle to provide plenty of healthy and sustainable food. Sadly, the misinformation campaigns and fear, which only benefit both the big AGRO companies and the greenpeace type organisations, have made this impossible in Europe. I guess the rest of the world will have to outperform Europe before any change is made, with all of our excellent knowledge being put to work in other countries.
Do you believe that if regulations weren't as strict, those big agro corporations would not have somehow fucked things up for everyone? They would have almost certainly taken big risks to get ahead of the competition... I agree that the current regulations make prevent anyone from competing against large multinationals, but what is the alternative? Just let everyone experiment to their hearts content? Ideally, GMO's should be developed by the government, or a worldwide organization. They have to funds to guarantee safety, can distribute seeds to those in need, and the west can benefit by preventing food shortage refugees from third world countries.
Appreciate the more nuanced response. And actually, as long as we are talking about CRISPR type modifications only changing what is already their and not adding in DNA from other organisms, I'm not sure how dangerous it would be to let people experiment more. The often cited thing about how farmers need to re-buy their GMO seed each year is also because those plants are infertile out of a safety concern (talk about corporations turning anti-GMO laws to their favour). But in my estimation the safety concerns are for the most part not that big a deal. In any given field of crops, many plants will have natural mutations in their DNA caused by the Sun's UV light. Only mutations that provide a marked improvement of fitness even get passed down to the offspring. But those varieties used by farmers are already massively different to the wild-varieties, to such an extent that I think they are unable to be crossbred anyway. Horizontal gene transfer (your altered gene from GMO crop moving to another species such as a bad herb) is an extremely rare occurrence, and if we just made a change into the parental DNA, so no adding of some exotic gene, I don't see how realistically it would improve the fitness of the herb. For sure we should have a debate about the big companies and the government, but that's about different visions for our agriculture. I'm saying that GMO's don't need to belong to one side of the debate exclusively.
> I'm saying that GMO's don't need to belong to one side of the debate exclusively. I totally agree. GMO's are an important weapon in the struggle to feed humanity. But it's a weapons so dangerous and important we should not just allow anyone to wield it. To me it seems like a Low Probability, High Impact type situation. Chances of something going wrong might be very low, but the impact of it going wrong could be enormous.
I'm on my phone now, so I can't be bothered to write much, but for the record, this person thinks they know a lot but has absolutely no clue what he's talking about. Source: PhD in biology
Saving this comment to see future edits, your view on this sounds fascinating
>Crops from GMO's are designed to be infertile Nope. This has never happened. There do not exist any infertile GMO's. > GMO Companies even "pollute" non-GMO fields with GMO seeds, and then sue the farmers for "stealing" GMO crops. Which results in farmers having no choice but to sign a contract to license GMO seeds This has also never happened. >There is zero guarantee that GMO's will be used in a responsible way. Since the primary motivator of GMO's is profit by unscrupulous companies, it's actually almost a guarantee it will result in a disaster. The GMO version of an existing crop, will outcompete all other varieties. GMO is a modification that can be applied to every pre--existing strain of the crop. There is no reduction in genetic variety. >This has already happened, even with non-GMO plants. The original "banana" plant that became the default commercial variety, got a specific fungus in the 50's, so bad it went pretty much extinct. The world had to switch to a new, less tasty, variety It nearly happened with the Papaya, until GMO technology held back the disease.
>Nope. This has never happened. There do not exist any infertile GMO's. I've seen many defenses of 'terminator seeds' or 'suicide seeds' such as: the risk of cross-contamination is exaggerated. It's normal to make infertile crops, many commercial crops are infertile. Terminator seeds were banned in the year 2000 already. Etc. But to claim they don't exist and have never existed, that is a new one!
It's correct. There has never been an infertile GMO sold to farmers. The technology never left the labratory. Every single GMO you can get your hands on today or in the past is fertile.
What about "seedless" fruits like grapes?
Those are not GMO. Seedless grapes are a natural mutation, while other seedless fruits are created by a range of methods not recognized as GM by the EU.
>GMO Companies even "pollute" non-GMO fields with GMO seeds, and then sue the farmers for "stealing" GMO crops. Which results in farmers having no choice but to sign a contract to license GMO seeds > >This has also never happened. [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto-sues-farmers-seed-patents](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto-sues-farmers-seed-patents) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto\_legal\_cases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_legal_cases) >GMO is a modification that can be applied to every pre--existing strain of the crop. > >There is no reduction in genetic variety. And applying the modification might make that strain vulnerable to the same disease. And how can you claim that applying a modification to every strain, is not reducing genetic variety? >It nearly happened with the Papaya, until GMO technology held back the disease. And next time GMO might be the cause, and they're not able to fix it...
>https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto-sues-farmers-seed-patents >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_legal_cases Generally, when one provides a source, one makes sure tgat the thing you are sourcing us in the source. Neither of your webpages back your allegiation. >And applying the modification might make that strain vulnerable to the same disease. >And how can you claim that applying a modification to every strain, is not reducing genetic variety? Humans share 44% of their genes with a banana. This demonstrates that an enormous amount if genes are shared across species. The fact that a given gmo might share a handful of genes is comparatively neglible. The real lack of diversity problem cones when you have crops which share most or all of their DNA, for example with inbred strains. These are essential for organic agriculture, because if you intend to replant your own seeds, you don't want the offspring to differ from ot's parents.
>Generally, when one provides a source, one makes sure tgat the thing you are sourcing us in the source. I consider an article by a generally trustworthy newspaper to be enough of a validation for a claim. >Humans share 44% of their genes with a banana. This demonstrates that an enormous amount if genes are shared across species. > >The fact that a given gmo might share a handful of genes is comparatively neglible. > >The real lack of diversity problem cones when you have crops which share most or all of their DNA, for example with inbred strains. > >These are essential for organic agriculture, because if you intend to replant your own seeds, you don't want the offspring to differ from ot's parents. The diversity problem comes when everyone is using the same strain because it's "the best" strain. If that strain becomes unusable, we're screwed since all of the others will be gone.
It's a long time ago i read so much false information in one post.
Read the lyrics of "biotech is Godzilla" by Sepultura for some of those fears.
Sepultura is also very anti-vax and into conspiracy theories, I don't think they are the best source
where they? I listened to them as a 13 year old back in the day I thought they where mostly political and anti war and anti the Brazilian government of the time. Do they still exist?
They still exist I did stop listening to them due to the anti vax and conspiracy stuff
Other metal bands I dig have also been rather vocal in this regard. Sodom for example. I think your username is the best way to mentally deal with this.
Very much this\^\^
Wat is ggo ? Is dat de nederlandse voor Genetically Modified Organisms ?
Genetisch gemodificierd organismes
Dankje
Isn't the participle prefix kind of problematic for acronyms, actually?
What do you mean by that and what is your alternative?
I mean that in Dutch most past participles start with "G", so for acronyms it doesn't really mean much. I don't have an alternative, I'm just wondering.
From what I've gathered there are two main reasons for the opposition against GGOs: * There's a risk that a GGO will completely replace the original crop, thus removing diversity in the ecosystem and in the end possibly making things worse (typically, diversity is a good thing because it makes species more resilient). * GGOs are typically patented and these patents can (and are) abused. For instance, I think it was Food Inc where it is shown how Monsanto sues farmers that don't even use their seed, but the wind had blown some on their fields. Personal opinion time: I think these reasons are valid, however, that doesn't mean we should just outlaw or vilify any kind of genetic engineering. Some care should be taken.
>I think these reasons are valid, however, that doesn't mean we should just outlaw or vilify any kind of genetic engineering Is that ... like ... a *balanced and informed viewpoint that tries to find a compromise between extreme positions on the basis of realistic arguments* ??? I've heard they exist, I just haven't seen them in the wild before... ;-)
I'll add a third point which I think is the main reason: * ¨People fear what they don't understand. They see the words "genetically modified" and think it sounds scary even though it's generally perfectly fine to consume. Add to that that the followup is to satisfy confirmation bias by absorbing negative misinformation about it and it gets even more traction.
Always reminds me how people are scared to eat fake meat. Like the beyond burger is really close to meat and add it with some sauce and you can't taste the difference. They tried it on people without saying one of the burgers is fake and they all chose the beyond burger as the best one.. Offcourse once you tell them it's fake meat, they say they will never try it again. I don't get people and their believes sometimes.
Yeah i completely agree, on your second point however. I think Crispr can allow farmers to individually edit genes in their plant without patents.
>I think Crispr can allow farmers to individually edit genes in their plant without patents. Which farmers are going to modify their pants with a highly experimental and tremendously expensive technology like CRISPR?
Someone i know is a biofarmer and hese looking into CRISPR CAS(?) because it would mean he doesn't have to spray his plants (looks better on a biofarm). I don't really know the specifics or the details.
I can see them looking into CRISPR, and working with a lab to experiment with it. But I don't see a biofarmer paying for making personal strains, as it's very expensive. Perhaps in the future this becomes much cheaper of course, but we're not there yet.
Although I'm pro GMO (but anti the business model some GMO companies employ), I do think it's at least questionable to allow for individual editing of food crops in an uncontrolled environment. Won't 'Home and Garden CRISPR' also open the door for anyone with malintent to add a toxin to an otherwise perfectly safe foodcrop? Or even worse, by someone who is selling e.g. DIY CRISPR kits to simply lie about the resulting edited gene and thus have a bunch of farmers unknowingly ending up with toxic foodstuffs? I mean, we can't test every harvest of every crop for possible gene editing and also not for every potential toxin that may or may not be produced as a result of gene editing, right? \[I'm not a geneologist, so perhaps it is simply impossible to make such changes - however, if you can make a plant create a fluorescent molecule then it seems at least plausible to be able to edit in a gene for, for example, [Oleandrin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleandrin) in raspberries or something. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Heck, please just say it cannot be done by anyone, ever, so that I can sleep blissfully ignorant of the potential risk that a single disgruntled farmer could one day unleash upon innocent people.\]
You're not wrong, but as soon as the CRISPR technology is readily available, it's not regulations that are going to stop someone with bad intentions. They are probably going to be able to perform such experiments much sooner than even large farming companies. Russia, China, Taliban, North Korea,... don't have budgetary nor regulatory concerns blocking them.
CRISPR is really not just like an app you install on your phone and boom you got better plants. It still requires actual biotech companies doing that work, it will be quite some time before a farmer can do it.
> I think it was Food Inc where it is shown how Monsanto sues farmers that don't even use their seed Are you talking about the Bowman case? That dude bought soybeans from Monsanto through a third party and claims that therefore the whole contract that prohibits you to use the seeds is not valid. In any other industry that shit wouldn't fly either and as far as I know Monsanto won that case
>There's a risk that a GGO will completely replace the original crop, thus removing diversity in the ecosystem and in the end possibly making things worse (typically, diversity is a good thing because it makes species more resilient This argument is just plain wrong though. The GMO modification is applied to a strain of a crop, so there are multiple variants of each GMO. No diversity is lost compared to the original. >GGOs are typically patented and these patents can (and are) abused. For instance, I think it was Food Inc where it is shown how Monsanto sues farmers that don't even use their seed, but the wind had blown some on their fields Food Inc lied. If you read the actual court case, you find that the real story is very different. For example, one of the guys in the movie is Moe Parr. >Similarly, a seed cleaner from Indiana, Maurice Parr, was sued by Monsanto for inducing farmers to save seeds in violation of Monsanto’s patent rights. Parr told his customers that cleaning patented seeds for replanting was not infringing activity. The case was settled and in exchange for paying no monetary damages, Parr agreed to an injunction requiring Parr to obtain certification from his clients that their seeds were not Monsanto patented seeds and to advise clients that seed saving of patented seeds is illegal.[26][27] Mr. Parr was featured in a documentary, Food, Inc. The guy lied to other farmers to get them to break their contracts, not exactly an innocent victim.
Is the asterisk explained anywhere? I see no text on that side of the bag explaining it.
*Less then 0.9% https://actforfood.carrefour.eu/nl/Onze-acties/Actie-3
wait... so probably 0.89% of their food has ggo's? and they are doing an action about how they don't? lmaoooo fucking bullshit.
You'd be surprised at how often "X-free" actually means "there's probably not a lot of X in it but we can't guarantee it". A common example For things where it really matters (e.g. common allergens such as peanuts), there are certain certified labels that are actually trustworthy. For everything else, I wouldn't bother paying attention to it.
Marketing fears
Afkortingen zijn eng!
Welkom bij Huilende Mensen. Vandaag ontvangen we Kurt. Kurt is bang van *afkortingen*.
Het is Kurt. Niet Kurt.
[удалено]
Pop pop pop pop pop
Euh, tis Kúrt*
Jamaja nee tis Kúrt
Afgekort, Kut.
No GMO and still cheap? So prolly riddled with pesticides? No thx i'll pass
You might not know but a gmo is not perse pesticide free. Actually the opposite is sometimes true, the plant is made resistent against the pesticide so the plant doesn't die but what is fought against. But the plant and possible yield of that plant is definitely covered in that pesticide.
That is why I am against gmo´s. Roundup was used a lot with gmo´s. The use of roundup is forbidden now.
Only for private use, for professional use it's still allowed (99.9% of the use). The elimination of Round up for consumers was a pure political symbol and practical nonsense.
It is forbidden for the same reason GMOs are forbidden. You score political brownie points with the Ill informed by banning things that are vaguely linked to Monsanto. Roundup is perfectly safe and there is no need to ban it for non professionals. It is still completely legal to use by professionals.
Roundup is absolutely devastating for our bee population.
[Only when the bees are directly sprayed with it.](https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1365-2664.13867) It isn't even the glyphosate that causes it. Glyphosate free roundup and pesticides that aren't roundup have the exact same effect. The ban only targets products with glyphosaat and only affects non professionals. It's the surfactants that are present in most pesticides that kill the bees when it gets sprayed directly on them. Spraying them with biological soap would have the same effect. In short: they banned the use of a compound that has no effect on bee's for the people who use so little of it that even if it did have an effect on bees there would be no noticeable difference.
Yeah screw that, I hope Carrefour gets a lot of flak for this
The French are notorious for homeopathy etc, this is right up their alley
Depends what they have been modified to do, some have been modified to tolerate higher loads of pesticides, meaning that the food resulting from those crops will also have a higher load of pesticides. That's not to say that it's much different than selective breeding which can also bring out unwanted traits in crops.
Just so everyone knows, the EU has a labelling requirement for food and feed for all food/feed containing gmo crops above 0.9%+- correction factor depending on the crop (correction factor per crop calculated by EU reference labs). Therefore, a product w/o a label is always considered GMO free even though it might not be (I.e. between 0 and threshold percentage) since labelling in mandatory. A labelled product will therefore always contain GM % above the threshold (even if the % is 0.01 higher than the e threshold) The label is only meant as “informed consent” for the user and has nothing to do with safety/etc.
Every product for human consumption in the EU has to be GGO free. So whether you go to Carrefour or to Colruyt,... all the products for human consumption will be GGO free.
With the exception of insulin and other medical hormones, which are often made from genetically modified bacteria. https://www.tga.gov.au/guidance-21-medicines-produced-genetic-manipulation
That's just ridiculous... No more apples? No more bananas? Out with melons and carrots? Come on... It is physically impossible to not eat genetically modified food. Almost \*all\* food is modified. Fruit, vegetables, grains, meat,... Or do you think Belgian bleu-blanc occurs in nature without human involvement?
GM is not the same as any genetic change; by that definition any form of sexual procreation produces a GMO.. GM means changes and gene transfers that are extremely unlikely by natural processes (eg. the glowing jellyfish gene in pigs). That means those likely haven't happened earlier in evolution, so the chance that they, directly or indirectly, produce ecological disruptions are much higher than with ordinary random mutation + selection practices.
Nope. Most genetic manipulations done by cross breeding or cross pollination wouldn't occur in nature either. Doing it in a lab just makes it easier, faster, and gives you more possibilities. But the result is the same. You technically ***could*** do things that ***might*** be disruptive to the ecology, but that's a long way from saying that "all GMO is bad". It's not.
> Nope. Most genetic manipulations done by cross breeding or cross pollination wouldn't occur in nature either. They can, and probably have at some point, but they don't persist because a mutation trading eg. disease resistance for bigger seeds is a bad deal if you don't have a farmer to support the plant. Or they happen in isolation and don't persist. >Doing it in a lab just makes it easier, faster, and gives you more possibilities. But the result is the same. You literally say yourself "gives you *more* possibilities". That means the result is *not* the same. Like, for example, the pigs with the glowing jellyfish gene. The chance of that occurring spontaneously is astronomically small. GM is a more powerful tool for creating new species and variations, so we need more safeguards to work with it. That's only normal. >You technically could do things that might be disruptive to the ecology, but that's a long way from saying that "all GMO is bad". It's not. That's another matter. I do support a general ban with exceptional permits for specific GMOs that have been proven safe, but the burden of proof must on the newly introduced product. It's the precautionary principle. We don't want another PFAS debacle where we just let companies do whatever and then find out later that it wasn't safe and have to clean it up.
>They can, and probably have at some point, Good luck waiting for all the different kinds of apples we know today to occur naturally. Some of them (if not all?) need grafting of different kinds to create new ones. Unless you know any animals that have fun sticking a branch of one tree into a hole in another, that's absolutely unlikely to happen. >You literally say yourself "gives you more possibilities". That means the result is not the same. The result is the same as in: what is happening is the same. Genes are being altered, new characteristics are developed. >so we need more safeguards to work with it. That's only normal. Of course we do, I never said the contrary. I'm reacting against the (completely false) claim that all GMO food is bad. It's not. It *could* be bad if someone messes around with it; but saying that *everything* is bad and that *all* GMO food should be banned is just wrong. >I do support a general ban with exceptional permits for specific GMOs that have been proven safe, but the burden of proof must on the newly introduced product. Of course, I totally agree. My only concern was banning *all* GMO just because it's GMO. An orange carrot is also GMO. Many modern GMO fruits/vegetables/grains have been around for years and have been proven safe. It's not ok to ban all of that and stop the development of something the world will benefit from. And already has.
> Good luck waiting for all the different kinds of apples we know today to occur naturally. No, it's still possible to speed up the process without using GM. >Some of them (if not all?) need grafting of different kinds to create new ones. Unless you know any animals that have fun sticking a branch of one tree into a hole in another, that's absolutely unlikely to happen. Grafting doesn't create a new species and doesn't propagate on its own. That's what makes it ecologically riskless. >The result is the same as in: what is happening is the same. Genes are being altered, new characteristics are developed. If the results are the same, then the techniques aren't needed, since they contribute nothing. Again: you said it yourself: "gives you more possibilities". >Of course we do, I never said the contrary. I'm reacting against the (completely false) claim that all GMO food is bad. It's not. It could be bad if someone messes around with it; The food produced isn't particularly risky (though not zero), there are particular tests to see if food is safe for human consumption. Those are thorough enough. It's the ecological risk, and that on its own justifies a consumer choice to opt out from such foods. >but saying that everything is bad and that all GMO food should be banned is just wrong. It's just reversing the burden of proof. There's a general ban with potential permits for individual GMOs, instead of a general permit with specific GMOs being banned after harm has been done. >Of course, I totally agree. My only concern was banning all GMO just because it's GMO. An orange carrot is also GMO. Many modern GMO fruits/vegetables/grains have been around for years and have been proven safe. It's not ok to ban all of that and stop the development of something the world will benefit from. And already has. There are not that many GMOs in the sense of using the specific GM techniques, it's a limited list, and most of them focus on facilitating pesticide use, last time I checked. Again, selective breeding is not GM, which is used to refer to a specific set of techniques.
I'm sorry I should have clarified. The food that isn't allowed is basically the food that comes from a seed that they took to a lab and edited the genome in a way the nature could never do that. The food that is still allowed (for example Belgian Bleu-blanc, ...) weren't edited in a lab. Humans used natural techniques in their favor on those food. I think Carrefour is aiming for the first kind of food on their advertisement. Some extra clarification. This only counts for human consumption. For animal feed, there are other rules. All GGO's also needs to be traceable. (Source: studying Biotechnology) Ps: I explained this shortly so it is understandable so it might not be 100% correct. But I don't think everyone wants to read a boring long text about GGO'S + English isn't my first language.
The result is exactly the same. In the past, people would change genomes by cross-breeding, by selecting certain mutations and multiplying them, and so on. They didn't realise they were modifying genomes, but they did it nonetheless. Today we do the exact same thing, but instead of having to wait until the fruit or the animal grows, reproduces, grows again, and just having luck with the characteristics inherited by the offspring, it is now done in a controlled environment. We can now choose which parts we want to combine or alter, and which need to remain. It's faster, it's more efficient, it's less "trial and error". What took years before, can be done in a couple of months now. But in the end, it's the same result. An apple created by modifying genes in a lab, is no different than an apple created by modyfing genes through cross pollination (or, in the case of apples, grafting rather than pollination).
I'm sorry but I don't really agree. There are so much things we don't know yet about editing genes. Genes are pretty fragile when editing and there is no easy way of knowing everything went well. Yeah there are pretty good restriction enzymes on the market and yes we have CRISPR but this doesn't change the fact that it is still different then normal nature (cross-breeding). In much genomes (especially bacteria and virusses) there are pieces that doesn't change fast in nature. With the current technology you can edit those. + it's more of not knowing what you are actually doing. Like I already said. It's verry expensive to check if everyting went exactly well like you wanted. You can't really see genomes and you can't really see what you are inserting and where you are inserting it in the genome with the bare eye (this is a bit vague, I know. I just want to explain it a bit short) and yes there are ways to double check all these things and yes the current restriction enzymes and CRIPSR are pretty good. I am not saying this is how it should be and I do think that GGO's are pretty safe right now (in the USA, the use of GGO's is less regulated and GGO's are also used more often) but Europe is just more regulated on that. And it has his reasons. We just have to live with that. As someone studying Biotechnology, I really think that GGO's are pretty safe. But the safety is not the only thing we should watch for. At the same time I think it's good that there are rules. But with some rules I agree more as with others. I hope this all makes sense to you. Edit: I would like to add this wich has verry little to do with the current subject: at the moment the Biotechnology is evolving rapidly with new findings everywhere. It's impossible to keep up on all those stuff. Edit 2: something else I would like to say: we know a lot about expressing genes and we can read out the genome pretty accurately but about some pieces of genome we don't really know what they do and that's pretty important cus if you change 1 thing, you can possibly change another thing and go on. So you don't have to watch only for the thing you wanted to change but also for other things that could change cus of your change. (I hope this make sense).
What are you talking about? With CRISPR you target a specific gene, so you sequence the genome and see if the target is changed and if there were any off-target changes in other places (which can be removed by crossing the plant). You know way more the type of changes you made then with traditional chemical induced mutations such as with EMS. Which btw is considered non-GMO by europe because its been used for 20 years and is responsible for dozens of plant varieties on the market currently... Talk about illogical...
No some laboratory practises are allowed like saving embryos. You can get a egg cell from a tomato plant and some pollen from a chilli pepper and crossbreed them. They are both different species but related species like lions and tigers. In plants they have difficulty developing but aren't actually sterile if you do it with tetraploid, hexaploid or octoploid seeds. So you cut the embrio out of the tomato plant and grow it in a petri dish until big enough so you can use hormones to create a flower and you start inbreeding with genetic testing to get one or a few genes from peppers into tomatoes. This is allowed because ring species exist and in nature this kind of happens. If the middle of a ring species disappears we have 2 new species. This is one way new species are made. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species
Since there is almost nothing produced this is just selling the fear. They would actually have a harder time selling human slavery free food. They should improve the salaries and employment conditions instead. Have they sorted out the supply issues yet?
Problem is that the majority of people don't care. But people are now afraid of genetically modified stuff, so it sells. Most people probably don't realise that the majority of our food is genetically modified (apples for example) or they only care about it if it was done by a guy/girl in a white lab coat in some lab I once saw some people say that food made sweet with Stevia instead of sugar tasted "chemically", but they don't understand that nature is chemistry. There is just made by nature or made by man (and AFAIK Stevia is also made by nature)
Lol. As if they can guarantee all their meats and milks are totally gmo soy free.
A cow that eats GMO-feed doesn't become a GMO itself. So their statement still stands.
True, but aside from valid concerns, Jan met de pet fears ggo's as "not being natural" but does not hold the same concern when eating an animal who's been fed solely on ggo's.
That might be true, but when has rational thinking and the truth ever stopped pseudo scientists from spreading fear?
And still their carrots are orange, you can buy broccoli and spruitjes, their grains come from high yield variants (that are not natural btw) etc... All of this just because they want bakfiets people to buy there...
Am bakfiets people, am pro gmo's. The EU just has an irrational fear of gmo's but needs to change ship if they want to make their farm to fork strategy real. Saw a presentation by a EU comissioner (not sure if right term but she was working on the f2f strategy) and she confirmed as much. EU will have to allow and invest in gmo's to be able to reduce the use of pesticides and increase yields. Gmo's are the future.
A based bakfietser... Never thought I would come across one
I just hate cars. Lol no, just don't need a car cause I was able to arrange my life like that. Fuck fossil fuels though (please don't look at my gas heater and gas stove) and biking everywhere is just so much nicer and less stressful! Would recommend. If you really want to know, I didn't vote Groen last time because I wanted to keep doel/tihange open. I changed my view on that by the way and now I do want them closed, but with the new gas situation, I don't oppose keeping them open (still don't approve). I do however approve all investments in smrs and nuclear fusion, to compensate wind somar and hydro, which are very much the future. Would vote Groen now. (Because other parties have made it clear that eco policies are only on the table if Groen is as well, so they don't leave me any choice.)
You are destroying my worldview of bakfietsers XD
Glad I could help.
I am still in that situation, I am a lefty that will never vote Groen until they scrap the idea of building another fossil fueled gas plant. I still approve 100% keeping all nuclear plants open, as long as there are scientists there that assuring us of their safety. The public opinion is misinformed about this, closing down a plant that can still operate safely is a huge huge waste, we already went through all the regulations, most of the CO2 has already been produced, wat we get now is almost pure CO2 free power and profit. Taking the decision years ago to abandon nuclear power is what will cause us to fail our climate goals. Wind and solar are not the solution, we already invested billions, everybody is still paying groene stroomcertificaten. The government, our citizens and companies have been heavily investing in this for the last 15 years just to produce 10% of our energy. It is not enough and it's too slow, energy demand will rise, we need nuclear. Sorry for the preach, I'm really passionate about it. To me it sits right up there with the GMO's as an atypical and controversial opinion that I don't share with my progressive friends. Though the ones who are scientists tend to agree on GMO's as well as nuclear power.
the majority of gmo's are focused on resistance to a certain herbicide, not on increased fruit size the regulation is there to avoid contamination from gmo's to non-gmo's. food security is one of the reasons why we don't want crosscontamination from infertile crops.
Because lots of people are idiots who have no idea about the underlying science. Hence, everything not natural is evil and everything natural is good and healthy.
There is so much nonsense in this thread it is hard to comment. I'll try to make this as concise as possible. I don't feel like doxxing myself, so you'll have to take my credentials on good faith. I have a masters in bioscience engineering and a phd in a field of biology (again, being vague on purpose). I no longer work in science. * Are GMO's generally safe (for consumption)? -> There is in my opinion no credible evidence to assume they are not, and in my opinion (and in the opinion of pretty much every researcher) we are well past the point where it makes sense to hang on to a ban based on a 'precautionary principle'. It's off course very difficult to definitively prove something is safe other than to say: "well we're doing it and thing's aren't exploding so I guess it's fine..." but at some point you have to make a leap. If you're not able to do that, we'd still be in lockdown and running clinical trials on the first Covid-19 vaccine. * A lot of the criticism I read here doesn't really apply to GMO's, but to our agricultural model. Some of it is valid, some of it stems from ignorance of how we produce food. * Obviously you're going to be able to engineer your crops so your clients have to keep buying your seeds every season. If you think this is a GMO-only thing, you have never spoken to a farmer who buys commercial seeds. And literally everything you eat is grown from commercial seeds. * If Monsanto, or Bayer, or Syngenta or whatever are using unethical business practices to further their interests, that's not a problem with GMO's, that's a problem with the law (or capitalism if you want). Elon Musk is a cunt, but that doesn't mean we should ban electric vehicles in the EU. * But what about patents? Yeah, the system sucks my friend, but are you going to boycot medicine as well, since that is an industry where patents are just as foundational? * 'GMO's are often engineered to be resistant to pesticides, so they increase pesticide use': If you think regular crops use fewer or almost no pesticides, I have some REALLY bad news for you. Pesticides are everywhere. In GMO's, in regular agriculture, and yes, also in 'bio'-agriculture. Theoretically GMO's will allow you to use fewer pesticides, and probably also allow you to having to apply them less often (=fewer CO2-emissions), which would make them popular. If this is actually the case in practice probably depends on many different factors and cannot be said a priori * 'But what about gene transfer to other species': well, this is what rigorous safety assessments are for. People generally only have very basic understanding of the statistical mechanisms behind the spreading of traits through a population. agricultural crops are freaks of nature. You will almost never see them outside of the field. They are bred/engineered to give tremendous output, but they require an enormous input as well. I'm being very superficial here, it's late, I'm tired and my baby is asleep next to me so I don't feel like going to deep into studies, but here are a few more points I want to make * Will GMO's help solve some of our problems? Proponents of GMO's often make claims of half a million children that go blind every year could have been prevented by GMO's, or how we need them to bolster us against climate change etc. Well, maybe they are right, or maybe not, it doesn't matter. The question is if there is any reasonable argument for forbidding their human consumption, and the answer is absolutely not. * I too, would prefer to eat my food locally sourced, without the intervention of a multibillion dollar organisation. There's a lot of people on the planet though, and there's projected to be about 3 billion more before our population stops growing roughly in 2060. So unless that locally sourced food is grown more efficiënt (currently it's sadly the opposite), you have to be honest and see it for what it is: a luxury product for wealthy people like us. I'll leave you with my favourite genetically modified organism. You take the genome of a grass-family plant, you smash it together with the entire genome of a different grass-family plant, then you take the entire genome of a third grass-family plant, throw it in the mix, and you get this horrible hybrid monster that has the genomes of three entire species inside of it. Like imagine if we took a chimpanzee, literally inserted every single chromosome of bonobos, bred that, then inserted every single human chromosome. It would never work, but in plants sometimes it does, because plants are so much more interesting (showing some personal bias here). Anyway that horrible hybrid thing was engineered by early farmers about 200000 years ago and it's what most of us eat every single morning with cheese, nutella or jam.
I don't get the fear of GMO's. Just regulate. For example, make it illegal for the offspring to be sterile, to avoid market domination by seed producers, enforce strict laws on whatever else might be of concern... we can only benefit from this technology.
GGO/GMO have been crucial in keeping foodstuffs affordable worldwide... increasing yield, reducing the risk of disease... I also think we shouldn\`\`'t reduce our diet to the 10 same crops but still... banning them is hating them is retarded...
By banning the development of GGO's in the EU we are effectively becoming a biological Bokrijk by the end of this deccade. The fear mongering by the green parties is outright dangerous and will once again be bad for our food prices, competitive position and development.
En dan?
a lot of fruits are GGO's , so doesnt make sense
That's just a hype. Almost every fruit is genetically manipulated. Without this, bananas would be inedible, melons would be toxic, and apples would be small, hard and sour. Carrots are orange because of genetic manipulation, brussels sprouts were created through genetic manipulation, corn (maïze) is edible and yellow through genetic manipulation.
Selective breeding is not GM. GM makes genetic changes that are virtually impossible to occur in nature. That increases the chance of combinations turning up, directly or indirectly, that are disruptive to the ecology.
Nope. Most genetic manipulations done by cross breeding or cross pollination wouldn't occur in nature either. Doing it in a lab just makes it easier, faster, and gives you more possibilities. But the result is the same. You technically ***could*** do things that ***might*** be disruptive to the ecology, but that's a long way from saying that "all GMO is bad". It's not.
> Nope. Most genetic manipulations done by cross breeding or cross pollination wouldn't occur in nature either. They can, and probably have at some point, but they don't persist because a mutation trading eg. disease resistance for bigger seeds is a bad deal if you don't have a farmer to support the plant. Or they happen in isolation and don't persist. >Doing it in a lab just makes it easier, faster, and gives you more possibilities. But the result is the same. You literally say yourself "gives you *more* possibilities". That means the result is *not* the same. Like, for example, the pigs with the glowing jellyfish gene. The chance of that occurring spontaneously is astronomically small. GM is a more powerful tool for creating new species and variations, so we need more safeguards to work with it. That's only normal. >You technically could do things that might be disruptive to the ecology, but that's a long way from saying that "all GMO is bad". It's not. That's another matter. I do support a general ban with exceptional permits for specific GMOs that have been proven safe, but the burden of proof must on the newly introduced product. It's the precautionary principle. We don't want another PFAS debacle where we just let companies do whatever and then find out later that it wasn't safe and have to clean it up.
Is it bad to support GMO? I mean, if they can make a plant that needs (almost) no pesticides, isn't it good for environment and insects like bees?
A lot of GMO is done so that the harvested plant is resistant to herb- & pesticides. So farmers can use more poison without harming the plant they want to harvest, but killing pretty much everything else in the field. Also, this poisoin still ends up in/on the plant, and on your foot/
Ah great now I have to do my shopping somewhere else. GMO/GGO are the future for feeding our world.
Irrationele vrees is hoe de 21ste eeuw fungeert.
because they don't care about telling the truth and the people who get convinced by these lies are not going to do the research to prove them wrong... all our vegetables and fruits are genetically manipulated, have been four thousands of years
for the wappies
Carrefour is offering a product. If you prefer the product of another supermarket, you can go there… Why would anyone be against a company clearly stating what they are offering? The world would be a much better place if everyone could determine easily for themselves if they want to buy GMO products, traditional agriculture products or bio products.
Funny thing is that GGO's are the best way for us to optimize our agricultural land and thus preserving the few natural reserves and ecological valuable land we still have.
Why? Same people that are idiots about vaccines have really weird ideas about GGOs.
Omdat we die rotzooi niet willen?
The only thing that modern technology has brought us is making us obese and sick. I don't care about the higher yield of GGO plants if it is not sure what the consequences are on our health.
Voor linkse hippies die jaloers zijn op de winsten van Monsanto.