Highly Controversial Are GMOs good or bad?

[Kryten]

I'm seeing some common myths in this thread, and I feel the need to respond.

GMO crops are sterile

This arises because of Monsanto's 'terminator' system, which was indeed designed to do this; development was voluntarily stopped and it has never been used outside of trials. Of course nothing ever dies in propaganda or the internet, so it still pops up ten years later.

GMO allows for patents

New plant varieties can be patented without GMO, and this has been standard for decades. It's a red herring.

Farmers can be sued because of natural cross-pollination

This is extremely dubious legally, but has actually not been tested in the US. The case that is typically bought up involved a farmer deliberately, by his own admission, selecting for plants pollinated with the modification, gathering seeds from those plants, and planting a near monoculture (95%) GMO. This involved willful violation of copyright, and this would apply with any patented strain GMO or not.

[-Velocity-]

Don't worry, Monsanto can engineer a Roundup resistant bee, and after all other species die, they can become a hybrid government entity and institute a "pollination tax."

Monsanto can go screw themselves.

Literally.... they could probably find a way to make it work.

[StrandedonEarth]

And people here are getting all nervous about "Arctic Apples"

But yeah, the CCD affecting honeybees is a cause for serious concern, but since worrying about it would affect the profits of megacorporations, they prefer to conduct business as usual. *sigh*

[Woopert]

Research shows that GMO's aren't actually bad for you. I do think the implications of their impact on the environment might be dangerous, though, but as long as it's moderated and planned out it should be fine.

[cantab]

Like many topics, Squad's no-politics rule prevents a complete dicscussion of the topic.

[GreenWolf]

I'm seeing some common myths in this thread, and I feel the need to respond.

GMO crops are sterile

This arises because of Monsanto's 'terminator' system, which was indeed designed to do this; development was voluntarily stopped and it has never been used outside of trials. Of course nothing ever dies in propaganda or the internet, so it still pops up ten years later.

GMO allows for patents

New plant varieties can be patented without GMO, and this has been standard for decades. It's a red herring.

Farmers can be sued because of natural cross-pollination

This is extremely dubious legally, but has actually not been tested in the US. The case that is typically bought up involved a farmer deliberately, by his own admission, selecting for plants pollinated with the modification, gathering seeds from those plants, and planting a near monoculture (95%) GMO. This involved willful violation of copyright, and this would apply with any patented strain GMO or not.

I always found it interesting how people would claim that GMO's were sterile, and then in the exact same post/speech/whatever, talk about how Monsanto could sue farmers for cross pollination. Last time I checked, sterile plants can't engage in any pollination.

[Leszek]

Wrong. The people who claim that "humans are part of nature!!" fail to even grasp what the word nature means. Nature has multiple meanings, and the most common of which is the natural world with the exception of humans.

So "unnatural" things are things that are caused or created by humans, in this context.

And you don't have to believe me, just query dictionary.com-

You are correct that natural has many meanings. Perhaps I should have been more careful in my wording. It doesn't change the fact that the word is abused all over the place, and it is still fair to ask exactly what they mean by natural. There is a good chance that they never completed the thought beyond it "isn't natural." In their head unnatural is synonymous with bad or unhealthy.

My over reaction in regards to the previous post is meant to not just point this out, but impale it with a 5 meter spear.

I have the same sort of overreaction to "keep an open mind." Keeping an open mind is a good thing but very often those that say the phrase really mean "You have a hopelessly closed mind if you don't agree with me in the end and no I will not have an open mind regarding your counter opinion!"

[lajoswinkler]

Not good or bad just like gravity isn't good or bad. There is nothing in particular such organisms have in common except the fact they are transgenic. They don't have a "GM gene" as I've heard dumb people say.

You can alter an organism in such fashion so that it produces something nasty or to be a high yield agricultural plant. The technique is the key to our survival.

Like many topics, Squad's no-politics rule prevents a complete dicscussion of the topic.

This is not a matter of politics. It's agriculture and nutrition.

Edited March 27, 2015 by lajoswinkler

[Voyager55]

Good, when most people think of GMO's, they think of scientists in lab coats injecting green chemicals into their favorite fruits and vegetables.

When it really is mostly just human guided natural selection. Choosing the version of the fruit that does what you want it to do the best, and continue breeding it until you have a genetically modified improvement.

[Tommygun]

I don't have any issues with eating GMO foods.

I know some may develop allergies to some of them, but that is also true of natural foods as well.

There is need for concern with unintentional cross pollination with non GMO crops that we need to pay more attention to.

If we can't find ways to stop cross pollination, then I wouldn't have any issues with banning the GMO crops that are causing it.

Edit: My issue with unintentional cross pollination is that a new GMO strain might develop or have unwanted issues like being more vulnerable to a disease or pest.

Then that weakness gets pass onto other crops.

Edited March 27, 2015 by Tommygun

[RainDreamer]

GMO itself is neither good or bad. It is just another variety of organism going through artificial selection just as how we have select all the organisms around us for our use, like different breed of animals and plants for many purposes, and we simply speed it up by cut and paste instead of waiting till the trait becomes dominant.

The problem though, is when people use one type of GMO only on a massive scale, simply because how profitable and useful those GMO are - economically, it is stupid not using them. If the type that everyone is using somehow has a weakness over a certain disease or pest that kill them all, we are vulnerable with food shortage. It is like putting all our eggs in the same basket. However, this is also true with "organic" food if people all grow the same breed, although there are more natural mutation there, because the next generation can be saved (although seed saving is not profitable for farmer - they have to process and store it with no guarantee that seed will grow, while bought seeds will have that guarantee, or the seed company compensate the farmer).

[Tommygun]

I personally have some worry over the "newness" of GMO modifications and how stable they will be over the long term.

Old style selective breading has been in use for thousands of years and it has a known history we understand.

GMO is a very new field by comparison. It doesn't have that long known history, so will these modifications be stable over many multiple generations?

If I had to bet on it, I'd say it will probably be OK, science gets it right far more often than it gets it wrong.

But we do need to be very careful about how we go about it.

[architeuthis]

Well, we keep loosing honey bees to colony collapse disorder, and every year, the threat to them and all flowering plants keeps increasing. Isn't there ever-accumulating evidence that is at least partially linking colony collapse disorder to GMO, "round-up ready" crops? We're drowning massive amounts of acreage in various pesticides and herbicides... how would it be surprising that this would be bad for bees? Whatever is going on with them sure does seem unnatural. I'm noticing that I'm even seeing fewer and fewer of them myself. Used to be you couldn't walk across a patch of clover without hearing the buzzing of busy little bees at work. Now those same patches seem pretty silent, at least around here.

Hi Velocity,

I like bees too, my wife and I are hobby aparists. I'm also worried about colony collapse but I don't think we should jump straight to the conclusion that GMOs are the culprit. There hasn't been much research yet linking colony collapse to glyphosate pesticides (such as Roundup). As someone who studied biology in college I generally appreciate the increasing popularity of glyphosate pesticides. Because, while glyphosates are not perfectly non-toxic the are relatively benign compared to other common pesticides, it beaks down easily and doesn't move around in the soil or water much. Since the 1990's when certain roundup tolerant GMO plant varieties (e.g. soy and corn) hit the scene glyphosates use surged displacing some of the truly nasty and environmentally persistent pesticides that had been in wide use up till then (organophosphates, synthetic auxins, 2,4-D etc.) This means that while pesticide use has increase over the last 20 years, the relative environmental impact has likely decreased. There are also a number of naturally derived pesticides such as rotenone-pyrethrin, and nicotine which are widely used in USDA certified organic agriculture, and which are known to be toxic to bees (also fish and amphibians).

Thus I think the pesticide problem is a bit more general than GMOs. Also only a handful of GMO crops are pesticide tolerant ones. Some of the leading GMO varieties were engineered with soil salinity, disease tolerance or nutrition in mind. Pesticides and GMO are intrinsically separate issues.

- - - Updated - - -

Generally good, but I can understand the concern when genes from completely different species are inserted.

Try reading this: Horizontal gene transfer

Gene transfer between species is common in nature and is an important mechanism in evolution. Some of the genes in your 'junk DNA' were transferred to your ancestors from other organisms via virus mediation. I'm not sure this makes transgenic breeding any intrinsically less safe than chemical or radiological mutagenesis that is commonly used in conventional breeding.

Edited March 27, 2015 by architeuthis

[InterCity]

Hard to tell, but I'm generally going for the "good". Simplifies breeding, makes crops more durable and bigger, and contrary to popular belief, genetic modifications usually don't make plants walk around and eat people. For me, it's just helping hand for the evolution.

[architeuthis]

These GMO seed contracts replace the traditional fertile crops that farmers have been using for centuries, especially in developing countries. Once the farmers have switched to GMOs, they are hooked and become dependant on the system with no turning back, because they can't switch back to the naturally fertile seeds from the previous year's harvest because they don't have them any more.

Western farmers largely stopped saving seed in the 1920's with the development of modern F1 hybrids, well before the advent of transgenic breeding. The seconds cross Hybrid seeds don't come true or are sterile which means you have to buy new ones each year. That said F1 plants are not 'less fertile'; they usually are super vigorous and are less likely to depend on fertilization etc.

[CG_Kerbin]

I'd say good becuase they can stop starvation all around the world but they need to be test in case of somthing unexpected

[magnemoe]

Anybody who moans about unnatural food should have to live off natural grass seeds and wild onions. Most of our crops are already practically unrecognisable as part of their parent species, and many have particularly freaky genetics already. Common wheat contains three otherwise compete genomes, one not even from the same genus, and you want to worry about a few genes?

This, wild corn is thumb sized, wild strawberries are common and they are less than an cm. And as you say some other changes are pretty freaky like fruit not having seeds.

- - - Updated - - -

"GMO" is too open-ended of a generic term to make a positive or negative judgement call.

It's a bit like saying "is water dangerous" well, that would depend. Drinking it is healthy, but breathing it isn't. Rivers are necessary for life... but a temporary river running where one normally doesn't is called a flood, and that's not so good for life.

There are some people who complain about GMO's for utterly ridiculous luddite reasons, akin to the stupidity of people using the word "chemical" as a generic scare word ("OMG this has chemicals in it!") forgetting that ANY molecular structure is a chemical, including water. They're wrong. But there are others who raise concerns over the legal issues surrounding trying to make self-replicating life organisms fall under intellectual property law, and some of those legal concerns are quite valid.

One legal concern is how some weed killers work in conjunction with GMO crops. The hard thing about a weed killer is that you want it to kill everything that is NOT the crop plant, but leave the crop untouched. One solution is to make GMO crops that are resistant to the specific brand of weed killer, and then sell that weed killer and that crop seed together. The problem comes from the fact that the weed killer can spread to neighbors' farms, thus forcing them to also be customers of the same company, buying the same seed, to keep their own crops from getting killed.

Being forced to use the same product that your neighbor is using is a monopoly problem.

To summarize - there is no scientific problem with GMO food. There is, however, a lot of legal concerns. It centralizes control in the hands of a few.

The weed killer damage to neighbors would be an issue anyway. Plenty of weed killers who would damage other plants others grow, its your problem.

[KSK]

Yup, another thing the media has hyped beyond reason..

I even saw an article that said GMOs contained DNA and that certain people where disgusted by that..

GMOs have the possibility of solving world hunger that makes them 'good' in my book.

Reminds me of an article where the author was getting all bent out of shape because he/she bought a jar of pickled onions, was horrified to find it contained acetic acid and wondered why all this 'artificial preservative' was needed for a simple jar of pickled onions.

GMOs - depends what they're used for. I can understand the 'ick factor' associated with some GM crops, whether or not the 'ick' is rational or not. I also wonder if too many agricultural problems have become a nail to pound on with the high-tech GM hammer, when other approaches might work equally well. On the other hand I don't care in the slightest if the potato genes in a new variety of drought resistant potato (for example) have been put there by years of patient cross-breeding or by genetic manipulation.

[Bill Phil]

There is a point where using scientific terms makes something seem entirely different... Vinegar and acetic acid, for example.

So many things are shoved into food products these days, mostly normal things, sure. But other things, weirder things, are put in there as well. GMOs are just putting those changes into the food at a different time...

[Darnok]

GMOs have the possibility of solving world hunger that makes them 'good' in my book.

What world hunger? Have you seen hunger in USA or in Europe?

I don't know how it works in USA, but in Europe goverments are paying farmers money from taxes (gathered from other branches), so they wouldn't announced bankruptcy.

If you wonder why? Answer is simple, farmers in Europe are producing much more food than Europe needs and even more than Europe can sell, so food price from farmers perspective is so little they almost went bankrupt. But they found way, force goverment to pay them money from taxes other people paid

If in Europe we would have too little food then farmers would be richests group in society, because food prices would be at levels they would have huge revenue and you can say I won't buy new smarphone, but you can't say I won't buy meal

You can't solve Africa hunger problems by increasing food production in USA or Europe, simply because nobody is going to make money from that and if there is no money from that bussiness nobody for free is going to rent ships and send food to Africa.

Well even if Europe food overproduction is going to be decreased trading food with Africa still won't work. In Africa people are poor, all they can offer is their work, but what job offer you can give to profesional gatherer or hunter?

If you have company even with many ships and you own even lots of farms in Europe what would you need from hunter from Africa?

Only thing that can help with this problem is technology, but not GMO that is making things even worse. If Europe or USA would share their current farming technology and spend lots of money on education in Africa then people in there would learn how to make food on farms on their own.

But nobody is going to share technology for free so they are telling in TV "they are fighting world hunger", but that is a lie.

Also nobody is so stupid he wants his opponents to go stronger, so Africans are going to die from hunger, because both Europe and USA politicians are afraid what would world look like if Africa would develop at level of China.

Anybody who moans about unnatural food should have to live off natural grass seeds and wild onions. Most of our crops are already practically unrecognisable as part of their parent species, and many have particularly freaky genetics already. Common wheat contains three otherwise compete genomes, one not even from the same genus, and you want to worry about a few genes?

If you are growing plants in a natural way that you get a better harvest, but the rate at evolution works, which is rather slowly.

However, at the same time you are sure that the next harvest will not be harmful or poisonous, because natural evolution does not work like that.

In the natural evolution the changes between generations are small, but of course if you grow a few hundreds generations of plants, you will get plants different than the original, and there is nothing wrong with this, this mechanism that works and it is called evolution

While GMO works differently, making changes in plants in labolatory you are skipping hundreds and maybe even thousands generations evolution would need.

You are unsure of what you receive and what impact this will have on your body or environment. You won't see plants that have no seeds in nature, because natural evolution wouldn't go in that direction.

Monsanto is greedy, so they want their patents to be used all over the World, right now there are patents on different plants but they are scattered between different countries and different companies. If single company gets all the food production patents then food price is going to be dependent on the will of that single company, you should be aware of how wrong and dangerous is that.

Also Monsanto is not sure how their products are going to evolve if they would go wild and evolve in natural environment, so they are trying to reduce the spread of the plant outside controlled areas.

[lajoswinkler]

Good, when most people think of GMO's, they think of scientists in lab coats injecting green chemicals into their favorite fruits and vegetables.

When it really is mostly just human guided natural selection. Choosing the version of the fruit that does what you want it to do the best, and continue breeding it until you have a genetically modified improvement.

It's not that simple. Genetically modified means that you take gene(s) from one organism and insert them into the genome of your experimental organism, or you shut down or activate the genes present in the organism's genome. It is a shortcut. What you're describing is a long cycle of breeding and selecting which is slow, tedious and has a pretty decent capacity of going wrong or into a dead end.

By gene manipulation the whole process can be incredibly shortened and it is highly controllable. You know exactly what you've done and where, so if any problems arise, you know what to fix. That's probably the best thing about this technique.

I personally have some worry over the "newness" of GMO modifications and how stable they will be over the long term.

Old style selective breading has been in use for thousands of years and it has a known history we understand.

GMO is a very new field by comparison. It doesn't have that long known history, so will these modifications be stable over many multiple generations?

If I had to bet on it, I'd say it will probably be OK, science gets it right far more often than it gets it wrong.

But we do need to be very careful about how we go about it.

Old selective breeding has accounted for the hybrids humanity used up until 20th century. Nowdays we use mutants made by sped up evolution in gamma ray gardens, neutron fluxes and cytostatic and mutagen chemicals. You take lots of seeds and you wreck havoc with their genome like that, then you plant them and select the plants with the traits you want, if there are any in the batch. Then you breed them, select, breed, select. Then some cross pollination. Breed, select, breed, select. Then some gamma rays or cytostatics. Wash and rinse, repeat until you get what you want.

The product's genome is disfigured, full of hidden mutations (possibly exprimed as dangerous compounds in the long run, contributing to some types of cancer), but the phenotype is plump, full of nutrients and yummy. And nobody cares because hippies don't know how it's been done for at least 60 years and greenies think it's made in "grandma's garden, therefore it's yummy".

But change one or two pinpointed genes so you know exactly what you did and all the sudden everyone loses their minds! It's "unnatural"!

Such is the human stupidity.

Hard to tell, but I'm generally going for the "good". Simplifies breeding, makes crops more durable and bigger, and contrary to popular belief, genetic modifications usually don't make plants walk around and eat people. For me, it's just helping hand for the evolution.

Will you excuse me, I'm off to my lab to steal your idea.

Edited March 27, 2015 by lajoswinkler

[Jon144]

It really depends if on what you classify as genetically modified and how.

[magnemoe]

What world hunger? Have you seen hunger in USA or in Europe?

I don't know how it works in USA, but in Europe goverments are paying farmers money from taxes (gathered from other branches), so they wouldn't announced bankruptcy.

If you wonder why? Answer is simple, farmers in Europe are producing much more food than Europe needs and even more than Europe can sell, so food price from farmers perspective is so little they almost went bankrupt. But they found way, force goverment to pay them money from taxes other people paid

If in Europe we would have too little food then farmers would be richests group in society, because food prices would be at levels they would have huge revenue and you can say I won't buy new smarphone, but you can't say I won't buy meal

You can't solve Africa hunger problems by increasing food production in USA or Europe, simply because nobody is going to make money from that and if there is no money from that bussiness nobody for free is going to rent ships and send food to Africa.

Well even if Europe food overproduction is going to be decreased trading food with Africa still won't work. In Africa people are poor, all they can offer is their work, but what job offer you can give to profesional gatherer or hunter?

If you have company even with many ships and you own even lots of farms in Europe what would you need from hunter from Africa?

Only thing that can help with this problem is technology, but not GMO that is making things even worse. If Europe or USA would share their current farming technology and spend lots of money on education in Africa then people in there would learn how to make food on farms on their own.

But nobody is going to share technology for free so they are telling in TV "they are fighting world hunger", but that is a lie.

Also nobody is so stupid he wants his opponents to go stronger, so Africans are going to die from hunger, because both Europe and USA politicians are afraid what would world look like if Africa would develop at level of China.

Yes its overproduction of food most of the time, the exec are sold cheap, you want overproduction over to little food. This is one reason for subsides as an minimum price in bumper years.

Farming in lots of Europe is also subsidized to keep the numbers of farmers up. Had it not been subsides you would had larger production units, as you would need larger units to produce to keep income up if price go down, downside is that much of Europe is not suited for giant farms.

Lots of poor countries if not most import food and would benefit of lower prices.

The previous round of crop improvements basically solved the hunger problems, heard about the green revolution? Only way to have continues hunger today is governmental mending like North Korea or if country is dirt poor and in an war zone.

Spreading farming technology works, everybody can buy everything, now most equipment and also crops might not do well in areas with lack of food, its designed for other climates and large units. Even if given away free it does not work well as the place will probably lack infrastructure to support it.

Note that places with lack of food is also dirt poor or they would buy food. Lots of modern larger scale farming in Africa that areas also have enough food.

If you are growing plants in a natural way that you get a better harvest, but the rate at evolution works, which is rather slowly.

However, at the same time you are sure that the next harvest will not be harmful or poisonous, because natural evolution does not work like that.

In the natural evolution the changes between generations are small, but of course if you grow a few hundreds generations of plants, you will get plants different than the original, and there is nothing wrong with this, this mechanism that works and it is called evolution

While GMO works differently, making changes in plants in labolatory you are skipping hundreds and maybe even thousands generations evolution would need.

You are unsure of what you receive and what impact this will have on your body or environment. You won't see plants that have no seeds in nature, because natural evolution wouldn't go in that direction.

Monsanto is greedy, so they want their patents to be used all over the World, right now there are patents on different plants but they are scattered between different countries and different companies. If single company gets all the food production patents then food price is going to be dependent on the will of that single company, you should be aware of how wrong and dangerous is that.

Also Monsanto is not sure how their products are going to evolve if they would go wild and evolve in natural environment, so they are trying to reduce the spread of the plant outside controlled areas.

lajoswinkler answered this well, you have more control with GM, you would anyway have to breed the plants after GM to weed out the ones who was not affected or has other effects.

And even conventional breed plants are not stable, they are selected for large crops larger than the plant itself need, other added effects like resistances would be nice if the plant grew wild, other traits again like short plants would not be an benefit in the wild but works very nice in an field with just one plant.

[vger]

What world hunger? Have you seen hunger in USA or in Europe?

I don't know how it works in USA, but in Europe goverments are paying farmers money from taxes (gathered from other branches), so they wouldn't announced bankruptcy.

In America we have corporations paying farmers to NOT grow food, to raise food prices. The end result is increased poverty, but businesses don't give a darn. And these are the same kind of businesses who are gene-splicing what we eat. What could possibly go wrong?

[lajoswinkler]

In America we have corporations paying farmers to NOT grow food, to raise food prices. The end result is increased poverty, but businesses don't give a darn. And these are the same kind of businesses who are gene-splicing what we eat. What could possibly go wrong?

I don't think anyone feels easy with regards to the economic issues around some instances where GMOs are used. There are examples where it gets ugly. But that's never an argument to trash the technology.