What do you think of genetically modified (GM) crops?

[CraigMac]

Would you eat GM foods?

Do you think organic tastes better? More healthy, etc?

So, what do you think about the idea of GM food?

[Rota]

I actually prefer the taste of non-organic foods.

I have no problem with genetic modifications. Farmers have been doing that for centuries, since before we knew what "gene" was. By selectively controlling the pollination of various plants, we have gained the agriculture of today.

Agri-scientists are not stupid, they know that trying to create one "perfect" strain of a given crop is not the goal. You need to have some variety. If every corn field was the exact same breed, then one bacteria might adapt to feed on that ONE breed of corn, and create a blight. We know the danger. Genetic diversity amongst crops helps defend against that. Even with genetic modification, scientists these days, are smart enough to know to also create a little variety.

I also don't buy the argument that GM food is "unhealthy." Yes, you need to have some food that hasn't been over-processed. You need some natural foods that have active cultures in order to replenish enzymes and digestive bacteria in your gastrointestinal tract. But, you should also eat some processed foods. Some of our processes actually help. Almost ALL salt has iodine added, and that is the primary way we get iodine into our diet. If we hadn't created iodized salt, then half the populace would have giant goiters from iodine deficiency. We put fluoride in public drinking water. It has helped oral health tremendously.

"Natural organic" is good.
That does not mean "GM/processed foods" are bad.

[CraigMac]

What has processed foods got to really do with GM?

[Rota]

What has processed foods got to really do with GM?

I was talking about GM, too. They are part in parcel of the mass production of foods. The transition from the rural farmer, to the corporate mega-farm. That is really the difference between organic and GM. It's historic agriculture vs modern technology.

I said I was all for GM foods. Genetic manipulation creates more robust, more efficient crops. It produces plants resistant to more diseases (though, as I said above, more vulnerable to one big hit disease). GM helps us grow more food on less land. With a booming global population, those technologies will be necessary.

I support GM foods.

[Rodri]

There seems to be some confusion about what GM means as compared to Organic as the two are not mutually exclusive. Genetically Modified crops are crops that have had their DNA modified in some way to enhance or introduce a desired trait. That does not mean that they are not organic. The crops that do not use GM technologies are refered to as heritage or hybrid varieties. Many of these crops (all hybrids) have been modified using cross-breeding techniques to gain wanted traits and reduce or remove unwanted traits. In the end, cross bred plant varieties are genetically modified organisms as well, as Rota stated, but for the purposes of this discussion we will use the terms GM and genetically modified to refer to those varieties that have been created using gene splicing rather than cross-breeding.

Organic, in reference to food production means grown without using chemicals or artificial fertilizers. That is not strictly true either as organic growers will still use a range of different products (and strategies) to minimise pests and diseases and enhance crop production but the products that they use tend to be mainly plant based and are known not to leave a chemical residue in the soil. The active agents in organic sprays such as nicotine spray or pyretherum spray are still chemicals but are sourced from organic sources such as tobbaco or the pyretherum daisy. Mostly, organic tends to mean no artificial fertilizers are used to grow crops and natural fertilizers such as manures and compost are used instead.

The reason why I have described both these terms is that they are not mutually exclusive. That is to say that a genetically modified crop may still be grown using organic growing methods and open pollinated or normal varieties can and are grown using chemical sprays and fertilizers.

Would I eat GM foods?
Yes I would and probably already do.

Does organic food taste better?
I don't know. The main thing that affects taste is when the crop is harvested and how soon after harvest that you eat it. The longer it takes between harvest and the table, the more the sugars in fruits and vegetables will break down and the more nutrients will be lost. I do know that food picked and eaten at it's peak of ripeness and eaten as soon as possible after harvest is far tastier than the same food that has been in storage for 6 months.

What do I think of GM foods?
I think the technology is neutral. How that technology is applied in each and every case could be either of great benefit to food production or could cause problems that we don't fully understand yet. In other words, I think the technology is neutral and it is the application that is either good or bad. I do not believe that GM foods are harmful to human health just because they are GM foods. In some cases, GM foods can actually have more nutritional value built into them than normal varieties. In other cases, GM crops can actually reduce the need to spray with chemicals or promote the use of safer chemicals in agriculture. GM crops can also be produced to grow on less rainfall or better utilise soil nutrients, reducing the dependance on irrigation or fertilizers.

There are some things happening with GM crops that I do not agree with, such as the introduction of a so-called suicide gene, which means that any seed collected from the crop is sterile, so the farmer has to buy new seed each year from the producer instead of saving enough seed to grow the next crop. I am also undecided about some varieties that have been modified to be tollerant of a specific chemical herbicide as this seems to be a method used by chemical companies to force growers to use their product specifically, rather than a competitor's product.

[abracax]

I have no problems with Genetically altered food. They are altered to resist disease and to repel certain pests. They are also engineered to be a bit healthier and even to resist drought. What I do have a problem with is two things:

To genetically alter food these days they use genetic materials from viruses. In controlled lab tests the viruses do not mutate and pose no harm, however we all know that nature itself is not a controlled lab test. So there is the possibility of these viruses mutating, a very small possibility, still a possibility. No one knows how those viruses would mutate if they did.

The second problem I have is the labs that engineer the seeds themselves for GM crops hold the license to them. If any of the crop reseeds into another farmers fields that does not use GM crops, they are smacked with a huge fine for growing the crops without a license from the company that created it. Some farmers have resisted the fine and went to court and lost. These fines are in the thousands and hurt farmers, as people do not farm to become wealthy. It does not matter if they wanted the GM plants to grow in their fields or not, they still get fined.

If there was a safer way to GM crops without using deadly viruses and we farmers weren't fined for those crops growing on land they weren't planted on, I would have no problems whatsoever with them. These two things do constantly stick in my mind though as we eat cereal and other products made with GM crops.

[japanpimp]

Would you eat GM foods?

Do you think organic tastes better? More healthy, etc?

So, what do you think about the idea of GM food?

What I worry about is our lack of foresight. We simply cannot look into the future and know all of the ramifications which will be caused by what we do.
Next thing we know, 50 years down the road, the super plants that we genetically modified are now a favorite of a species of insect. That insect in turn flourishes and starts to throw the balance of nature off. Or genetically altered plants are introduced into regions where they could have never survived before. Now those plants, trees, etc... begin to change the ecosystems. Etc...
What's next? We engineer some new type of spider to eat the insects that love the genetically altered veggies? Now that spider turns out to be able to produce a deadly toxin that can kill humans? I dunno. But I think it is a dangerous game because we are at the infant stages of understanding DNA.

[Rodri]

The science of gene technologies is complex and can be confusing.
If, for example, a virus is used as a source for genetic material, the material that is actually used may be only a small sequence of DNA from the source material which has been selected for a specific trait. Half the work involved in genetic research involves identifying and isolating the desired traits from the gene sequences of the source material. So in the end, the material that is used from the source (virus) cannot be described as a virus any more as it is only a short gene sequence that is only a portion of the entire gene sequence that describes the original virus. Without the rest of the original virus DNA sequence, it is no longer a virus but simply a sequence of chemicals in a chain which cannot replicate the original virus any more but only a specific trait that was in the source material.

The basic chemical composition of DNA is the same for all species. DNA consists of two long chains of nucleotides twisted into a double helix and joined by hydrogen bonds between the complementary bases adenine and thymine or cytosine and guanine. The sequence of nucleotides determines individual hereditary characteristics. So it is the sequence of these nucleotides that differentiates species rather than the actual chemicals in the DNA.

Having said that, there are some serious issues that still need to be adressed concerning GM crops as the science is far ahead of general understanding and law-making. I do not believe that companies should be allowed to patent specific genes. They probably should be allowed to patent the Genetically Modified organism that they have developed but because the genetic material is sourced from nature, that should not be capable of being patented. It would be like putting a patent on air, because no-one else has, and then claiming that everyone who breathes the air should have to pay you because you own the patent. Ridiculous.

As I already said, I don't like the idea of using 'suicide genes' to force farmers to keep buying new seed every year. I also don't like the idea of farmers being charged because of accidental escapes from GM crops into a non-GM crop causing cross pollination or self seeding. For one thing, there was no intent on the part of the farmer to steal the GM organism and it may actually cause a devaluing of that crop because it is no longer 'GM free'. Governments need to step up and make laws about these types of issues rather than allow the large seed and chemical companies that are producing GM crops to set the agenda.

There has been a fair amount of fear mongering in regard to GM crops that generally has no basis in reallity. A lot of this came from a fear that GM crops would replace all heritage and hybrid varieties that we are used to and we could become reliant upon GM crops and the companies that produce them for most of our food. Personally I believe there is a place for GM crops in the mix of food production but I still think it is important to maintain as much genetic diversity in our food crops as possible. That means keeping heritage and open pollinated varieties in production as they contain enough genetic diversity to help us avoid total crop failures that can occur in monoculture crops.

[abracax]

The US has a law that no one is allowed to patent genes, yet these companies claim sole proprietorship over the gene they use to modify the crops with. In essence they have put the same ownership to it as if they owned the patent and in recent years they actually have been able to place a patent on several of the genes.

[abracax]

Double post, I know lol

Judge Bans Future Plantings of Genetically Modified Sugar Beets, Throwing Nation's Sugar Supply into Doubt
95 percent of the existing crop is genetically modified
By Rebecca Boyle

Readers with a sweet tooth had better start stockpiling candy -- first Choc Finger started hoarding all the world's chocolate, and now it seems the U.S. sugar supply may be in jeopardy. Farmers cannot plant new genetically modified sugar beets until the U.S. Department of Agriculture finishes a study about their environmental impact, a federal judge said Friday. That could take a couple years, which means sugar beet farmers and sugar processors might have trouble meeting demand after this year's harvest.

Genetically modified sugar beets make up about 95 percent of the American sugar beet crop, according to Monsanto, which manufactures the seeds to resist their proprietary weed-killer, Roundup.

The engineered beets were approved for sale in 2005 and took hold quickly, comprising 95 percent of the crop by the 2008-2009 growing season.

In January 2008, public interest groups sued to challenge the USDA's deregulation of the crop. The Center for Food Safety (CFS), Organic Seed Alliance, Sierra Club and High Mowing Organic Seeds said new seeds should not be planted until the government completes a full environmental assessment, which is required by the National Environmental Policy Act.


Friday's ruling, by Judge Jeffrey S. White of Federal District Court in San Francisco, answers that lawsuit and appears to effectively ban new planting of the genetically modified sugar beets.

This year's crop is not included, however, meaning beets in the ground will still be milled into sugar. The problems could start next year, because the sugar industry has said there are not enough non-genetically modified seeds to make up for the loss of GM ones, according to the New York Times.

The Sugar Industry Biotech Council, an industry group, says sugar beets are planted across 1.2 million acres in 11 states every year. Half the nation's sugar supply comes from beets, which are sliced and boiled into a thick syrup that is then dried. The other half comes from sugar cane.

Next time you bake a pie, savor that sugary crust, because it might be a lot more expensive to make next year. Don't say we didn't warn you.

After Years of Herbicide Use, Roundup-Resistant Superweeds Are Evolving to Invade U.S. Fields
By Clay Dillow

U.S. farmers are dealing with a superweed epidemic, and it's not as groovy as it sounds on first read. Ubiquitous use of the weed killer Roundup over time has spawned herbicide-resistant superweeds , much as heavy use of antibiotics over past decades has bred drug-resistant germs and bacteria.

Roundup -- which was created by Monsanto but is now sold generically under the common name glyphosate -- has been a boon for agriculture over the last 20 years. Genetically modified crops are immune to its poison, meaning farmers can spray down their entire fields with the stuff, killing off invasive weeds while leaving their harvests in perfect order. It degrades quickly, and cuts down on erosion, agricultural fuel cost, and carbon emissions because farmers don't have to plow their fields under each season.

At least, they didn't have to until now. The first glyphosate-resistant species was identified a decade ago, but that resistance is now shared by at least 10 species in 22 states, affecting between 7 million and 10 million acres of land predominantly hosting soybeans, cotton and corn. Farmers battling with resistant strains of horseweed, pigweed and ragweed are having to turn to stronger herbicides, plowing and pulling weeds by hand, methods that could lead to increased environmental harm, lower yields, and rising prices. Andrew Wargo III, president of the Arkansas Association of Conservation Districts, told the Times, "It is the single largest threat to production agriculture that we have ever seen."

The situation closely mirrors the overuse of anti-malarial drugs in the middle of the last century; such overuse caused the strongest, drug-resistant strains to proliferate through a sped-up version of natural selection, rendering the drugs ineffective. A similar case is the epidemic of wheat stem rust that researchers around the world are battling to contain now that the genetic safeguards crop engineers embedded in the wheat genome decades ago are failing against a newer, hardier strain of the devastating disease.

Roundup Ready crops account for some 90 percent of soybeans in the U.S., as well as 70 percent of the corn and cotton. Such overwhelming use of a single safeguard creates a ripe situation for evolution to get the upper hand, and that appears to be exactly what's happening.

In the long run, Roundup resistance could lead to reduced interest in genetically modified crops; if the weed killer no longer kills the weeds, there's little point in paying a premium for poison-resistant crops. But hopefully we'll also learn something from it as well: Life on this planet is predisposed toward diversity, and when we institute widespread uniformity on diverse systems we tend to find that nature wins out in the end.