Selfsufficientish.com

I'm ambivalent about it all but for the most part swaying on anti but it seems often assumed that it is mainly using animal genes - sure it's doable but aren't most experiments using genes from other plants? And is that as detrimental?

green aura you have it spot on,
there is nothing wrong with giving nature a helping hand, we have developed all kinds of methods to ensure a good, tasty crop from cross pollinating various types of tomato using brushes to simply planting sweetcorn in a block rather than rows.

GM food alters the very foundations of the plant, its DNA ,the basics that make the plant what it is. by changing some of these basic building blocks to create a disease resistant plant can have all kinds of detrimental effects not only to our health but to the security of the food supply.

take for instance the new GM potato, it has been given the go ahead , it may have passed testing but what happens when its 'let loose' whos to say the changes made to its dna wont adversely affect other varieties of potato? im talking about cross pollination and mutations that occur naturally. nobody knows how GM crops will react in these circumstances and whos to say the intial changes arnt rejected and force future generations of the plant to become sterile?

big al pointed out about a tomato that had yet to rot! imagine that, food produced with such a long shelf life it would be almost impossible to compost

there are too many what ifs regarding GM crops, there is no way of knowing for sure and nature has been doing perfectly well adapting and evolving for millennia without our interference .

southeast-isher wrote:

Dave wrote:Small scale subsistance farming can mean the farmer produces a range of crops bred to their environment and therefore resistant to disease.

Okay call me a cretin, call me a moron, call me whatever - i don't know enough about it which is why i am on this forum to learn these sorts of things but if i a completely off the beaten track banish me forthwith but... isn't producing a range of crops bred to their environment in effect genetically engineering their crops?

i may be wrong here but isnt it a simple case of allowing a plant go to seed and using the seeds for the following year. by doing this year after year a plant will adapt to its environment through subtle natural mutations with each consecutive plant.

big al pointed out about a tomato that had yet to rot! imagine that, food produced with such a long shelf life it would be almost impossible to compost

there are too many what ifs regarding GM crops, there is no way of knowing for sure and nature has been doing perfectly well adapting and evolving for millennia without our interference .

Good points!

WARNING: Devils and advocacy may be operating in the following post.

Hmmm. I think we're getting this wrong. All of the "What if ... " objections can be answered quite simply by "What if ..." conjectures from the other side of the argument. As far as I'm concerned, if someone could develop a crop which would grow successfully in northern Ethiopia (and do note - after exhaustive testing and myriad trials and reasonable proof of no ill effects) and feed that population, I'm not going to object to it - and I wouldn't care if part of the constituent DNA came from Gordon Brown.

We seem to be in the sad situation of objecting on principle - we don't care what the benefits may be, we simply don't like (regardless of our knowledge) what we think we see.

Let me, please, invent the Myxyzptlk plant. It appeared in my garden last year. It has edible leaves which regenerate like billyo, it has numerous enormous fruits, and its roots make wonderful mashed potato. I, and the rest of the world, have no idea from whence it came, but there it is. Shall we, as a species, decide to either ignore or even do away with this apparent gift? I think, maybe, not. But I would guarantee that there would be a section of the world's population who would want to do just that.

GM, responsibly applied, could (I repeat COULD) offer a lifeline to an overpopulated world. No matter how anyone feels on (questionable???) moral grounds, feeding people is going to become more and more important. OK - at the moment, there are organisations who are muddying the waters by pushing commercial concerns ahead of anything else (whence comes the root of all my personal objections) but I think it would be grossly short-sighted to do away with a technology which, short of limiting family size on pain of death, could be the thing which enables human survival in a human-created cesspool.

So - can anyone REALLY tell me about realistic objections rather than giving me horror stories?

Mike (running for cover).

MKG wrote: So - can anyone REALLY tell me about realistic objections rather than giving me horror stories?

How about the environmental ones? You can't stop contamination once it's out in the environment.

No need to run for cover, Mike. you've just been advocating the wrong devil.

Where would your mysterious plant come from? If it's a gift of nature, totally unmutilated by the labs of man then the majority would greet it as such, albeit cautiously at first. If however it was a plant cobbled together from anything and everything, as long as it tasted good and kept well then I hope the answer would be different - even if it's roots tasted like bacon butties!

As for feeding the world's hungry. If the multi-nationals gave them back their land and they could go back to growing suitable crops for their domestic market, instead of green beans and roses for Europe and the US, I'm guessing that there would be a whole lot fewer.

That's the devil you should be listening to - vive la revolution

I know you may be playing devils advocate MKG but I'd like to make a few points -

1. The farmers are locked into a contract with the seed company and have to buy seeds from them year after year regardless as to whether the crop fails or succeeds.

2. Tests have shown they can cause stomach lesions, liver damage, sterility and death
see - http://www.organicworks.com.au/GMHealthrisks.htm

3. Non GM foods have been bred to solve many of the problems we face with our food. Also I think the food you are describing is almost like Taro or Oca they both have edible tubers and leaves. See this like for existing crops that have been conventionally bred to do what GM crops artificially do.
http://www.bangmfood.org/feed-the-world ... akthroughs

4. Okay I'm a bit hazy on the science on this one but as far as I understand - In order to place the gene into the organism a virus is used, for the virus to take antibiotic marker also have to be inserted. Overuse of antibiotics are already making marked problems in society - what do you think would happen if they were in ALL our food!

5. Only a small proportion of the genes take and rather than be an exact technology GM is rather sloppy and hundreds of plants are rejected before the few they are found in take. It is therefore far more energy hungry than conventional breeding.

6. GM crops require more herbicides than conventional crops - herbicides have shown damaging effects on both humans and the environment.

I could go on and on and on...

Green Aura wrote: As for feeding the world's hungry. If the multi-nationals gave them back their land and they could go back to growing suitable crops for their domestic market, instead of green beans and roses for Europe and the US, I'm guessing that there would be a whole lot fewer.

That's the devil you should be listening to - vive la revolution

I completely agree.

Look at the results of America's multinational seed companies previous attempts to 'cure' the world's hungry by dominating the seed market, first you give free food to the 'hungry' (bankrupting the local farmers), then you give out F1 seed to 'get them back on their feet' (losing their own seed varieties), then they are locked into buying the multinationals seed and fertiliser (which the new seed demands) together with getting mutlinational construction companies to build dams (because the crops need double the amount of water) - and you are left with a handful of rich farmers (mainly supplying the West), thousands of dispossed farmers, and a soil that is rapidly becoming salinated.
Read
The Violence of the Green Revolution: Ecological Degradation and Political Conflict by Vandana Shiva

Unfortunately all these technologies are controlled by big business, who's only business is making money now.

Well, I nearly agree with you all - but I think I'll carry on advocating for devils for a little while.

1. The appeal to "natural" being best is a non-starter. However you may feel, all genetic material is perfectly natural and "God-given".

2. There is precisely zero difference between genetic material from a scorpion and that from any other source (DNA is DNA is DNA ...). All the scorpion has done is provide material with certain genetic characteristics ie it has arranged its material in a certain (convenient) order.

3. Having read the report on the three GM maize strains, I discover that the author of the report actually said that the research results were "signs of toxicity, not proofs of toxicity". This is cause for concern, but it should not be a reason for people to claim that the maize strains ARE toxic in any way.

4. Further to that report - its results were obtained from experimentation on rats. I can't hear the animal rights lobby complaining too loudly (irrelevant, I know, but I thought I'd mention it).

5. Lastly, I can't really argue with anyone's points - except to say that it seems to be the commercial exploitation of GM material which is at the root of most complaints. I did say earlier that it was this, rather than GM in principle, which is the stumbling block.

OK - off the advocacy high horse. The point I think I'm making is that it is very difficult to have a discussion on this subject (and a host of others) without becoming emotive and jumping prematurely on anti-whatever bandwagons. That way lies confusion and error - which will, of course, be immediately seized upon by the commercial powers that be.

We will NEVER win such an argument unless we use accurate and scientific methods to stop irresponsible commercial exploitation. It is GROSSLY irresponsible to allow the use of a potato strain which has a marker gene which also selects for resistance to antibiotics. It is verging upon the criminal to claim that because that potato strain is not to be used directly in the human food chain (although it will be used in animal feeds, and growing GM strains "at a distance from other crops" has already been shown to be pointless) it is harmless. Of the validity of these points there is no doubt - and I'm sure people will realise that eventually without recourse to creative opposition.

Mike

MKG wrote:All the scorpion has done is provide material with certain genetic characteristics ie it has arranged its material in a certain (convenient) order.

That's precisely the point, Mike. If you laboured with your paintbrush 24/7 for ever you wouldn't produce plants that displayed those chacteristics, from genes in that formation. That's why they have to be inserted in a lab. And it's why the potential outcome of such interference is so worrying.

Have you not seen Little Shop of Horrors

Can I put my head over the parapet, and agree with Mike, because I think that with the continuing birth rate rising and the fact in the developed countries life expectancy is increasing, and the greed of of the developed nations it is going to become essential, for the benefit of the poor, that some way of increasing food yield be found. However I do not advocate the use of any product produced for sole purpose of profit. Unfortunately the fact of the matter is that we in the West are driven by greed/profit, and even today large company's are buying up huge areas of land in the under developed countries to grow food for the markets in the west.

Given these facts, if it is necessary to use generic engineering to provide for those who need it, then it should be done. But not as a way of generating more profit for large companies.

Just my pennys worth

Feed me. Feed me NOW!!!!!!!!

I agree, GA - it does seem odd to me. But the point is that just because genetic material is extracted from a scorpion/cow/ earwig/dandelion does not automatically imply horrific results, and appealing against it on that basis is doomed to failure without proof. Of course, it's another one of those situations - similar to global warming - where any proof discovered would mean that it's too late to do anything about it.

But the only way to take on huge commercial concerns is the rational, scientific way - it's the only method which stands any chance of success.

Mike

I prefer the SHOUTING VERY LOUD method

But the only way to take on huge commercial concerns is the rational, scientific way - it's the only method which stands any chance of success.

Mike I think I finally agree with something you've said in this thread! So many scientists do reject GM and they give good rational, scientific reasons for doing so. http://www.saynotogmos.org/scientists_speak.htm

I recently went to a talk by Vandana Shiva who was mentioned earlier in this thread by Graham Hobbs. She give very good reasons against their use from a rational scientific point of view. If you haven't before I would read what she has to say or watch her on Youtube then see what you say about GM.

Are any of your pro-GM arguments a result of an anti-GM article knocking your wine-making article off the front page ?
(They were great articles by the way, look forward to the next one)

Thankfully, some decision-makers are also saying no to GMO. The Indian government has just refused the introduction of India’s first GM crop – aubergines – citing lack of scientific evidence and safety concerns, and the US Patent Office has refused four patents, on the grounds that Monsanto is “using them to harass, intimidate, sue – and in some cases bankrupt – American farmers.”

The biotech industry and certain governments want to push the idea that GMOs are the only answer to a perceived food security issue, but there are, as mentioned, other non-vested interest scientists who provide a different view

The EU also commissioned a report that showed an increase in production in only one out of three sites – and went on to describe the results as “mixed.”