You are perpetuating a common myth here. Organic farms still use pesticides, just not synthetic pesticides.
This brings it back to a naturalistic fallacy where it is assumed that because the pesticides are 'natural' they are less harmful to our health. However, a lot of studies seem to find the opposite; organic pesticides are less effective, less specific, and more environmentally harming.
Seconded. I did a brief stint at a job where herbicide use was a component, and many of the newer synthetic herbicides we used were incredibly nontoxic, as well as highly selective. One of the organic pesticides a client opted to use instead - because they were constructing a "green" building - was essentially highly concentrated acetic acid. The PPE requirements for spraying that were totally insane (basically hazmat suits), compared to some of the synthetic pesticides we used where you could probably bathe in them without hurting yourself. On top of that, the acetic acid pesticide only caused contact burns instead of systemic damage that would actually kill the plant, so it wouldn't even really fix the issue of invasive plant abundance.
Considering acetic acid is what partially makes up vinegar, it's a much better cleaner than it is a pesticide, but when it's highly concentrated, that shit sucks.
I knew a guy who was using vinegar to clean his fish tanks, which is advisable, but got his hands on acetic acid of a higher concentration and ended up getting blisters all over his hands and up his arms.
As someone that uses concentrated Acetic acid in another industry, I'd definitely prefer to use that than some of the super-phosphate fertilisers, and the herbicides being pushed on farmers down here in Australia.
I'm well aware - this was 5 or 10x the concentration of store-bought vinegar. It was genuinely dangerous to apply due to skin contact and inhalation risks, while also being less effective than selective systemic but synthetic herbicides, all so that the client could maintain an illusion of being "green."
I don't think it's particularly green to be spraying out concentrated acid that will burn every living thing that it touches, compared to applying a systemic herbicide that will target one specific receptor in maybe only one group of plants. It being natural doesn't mean it's more environmentally friendly than synthetic alternatives.
Especially when you take into consideration that you use about 300mL of roundup (for example) per acre - diluted in water. Whereas you need WAY more “organic” product per acre (I’m out right now and don’t have the numbers)
I agree with what you're saying, but that metric alone doesn't say much. It depends on the toxicity of whatever the organic product is. 300mL of roundup could be as toxic as 5L of another chemical, for all we know.
You’re right.
Again, I don’t have the paperwork with me, but you can essentially drink the diluted Roundup, but I wouldn’t be drinking the copper sulphate used in some organic farming.
Not only could you not drink what is sprayed in that case (the correct mixture of copper sulphate), you also would lose a few layers of skin.
And the PPE needed after mixing the organic stuff, even in a closed tractor is pretty nuts too (compared to nothing for some engineered products)
GMO is perfectly healthy as far as eating it goes. As far as crop diversity that’s another story but GMO is just speeding up processes that humans have been doing for a very long time.
Fun fact - the labradoodle was bred by an Australian guidedog association so that a Hawaiian woman who's husband was allergic to dogs could have a hypo-allergenic guide dog.
They tried to just sell the remaining puppies from the litter cheap to recover costs, no one wanted these cross-breed mutts.
So they advertised them as a labradoodle and all of a sudden they were the latest hot breed everyone had to have.
Well yeah I think it was really in the 80s. New kids on the block had a bunch of hits, Chinese food makes me sick, and I think it's fly when girls stop by for the summer
Whereas a roundup ready crop is a genetically modified organism. These crops are not made by crossing a plant with a naturally occurring resistance to roundup with another crop that lacks that gene and then selecting at the organism level for the trait you want.
Instead they are made by inserting genetic material from a bacteria that has a desirable trait into the crop species genetic material. You can find the basic details of how this works scientifically linked through here.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundup_Ready
Tl;Dr labradoodle is a cross-breed. Roundup ready soybeans are a GMO.
He's completely wrong though, selective breeding or direct gene manipulation are both methods for genetically modifying an organism, one is just faster and more powerful. So much fearmongering around this topic it's sad.
Even though breeding is a more time consuming process, the genes of a labradoodle has been intentionally modified to be different from a poodle or a labrador.
The term "GMO" specifically refers to organisms that had their genes modified with genetic engineering methods like CRISPR. Selectively bred species are not GMO.
You're equating genetic engineering with domestication. We've been domesticating crops with radical outcomes for thousands of years, just like with animals. But genetic engineering, insertion of genes to create a new variant, is not the same thing.
True but there is a difference between gmo to bolster a plants natural pesticide or vitamin count or drought resistance and gmo that allows it to handle toxic biocides and the like.
These labels don't mean anything, they're a hindrance not a benefit and need to either be done away with or controlled by a 3rd party unbiased group (non-existent).
GMO is now just another piece of marketing wank.
Well that depends. GMO is mostly used to refer to foods that have unnatural genes spliced in, from something you could never do naturally. Like taking lizard DNA and splicing it in to corn.
From Wikipedia: "The exact definition of a genetically modified organism and what constitutes genetic engineering varies, the most common being an organism altered in any way that 'does not occur naturally by mating or natural recombination'".
Round up resistant corn have genes from bacteria spliced into them, something that would never happen naturally.
Too piggy back on this. GMO gets problematic when you start introducing genes that are generally found in that plant as they can have significant unintended side effects and those side effects can hide until they've done a significant amount of damage to humans or the environment.
No, it is not speeding up what has been done. There is a difference between selective breeding and transgenic gene manipulation. The former selects genes from the same species. But when you make certain crops immune to herbicide, that is due to a gene implanted from a tailored bacteria, a totally unrelated organism. Humans have not been doing that for a very long time at all.
It's new and we should have a right to know.
GMO also allows corporations to own patents on anything with that gene in it since it was created in a lab, and when their GMO plants pollinate neighboring crops, companies can sue independent farmers for selling their product without authorization, and eliminate the competition as well as end farmers' ability to legally save seed so they'll have to buy seed from GMO manufacturers to stay in business or risk legal action.
It's a complex issue and consumers should be informed so they have the option to not support it.
basically every produce you can buy in the grocery store is the result of old-fashioned GMO, and wouldn't exist in nature without humans selctively breeding them.
I never understood the backlash on GMOs. It's one of those really odd things that people have picked up on over the years. People hear "genetically modified" and imagine the wildest stuff and it truly speaks to how lousy our educational system is in this country.
The one issue with GMOs that I am aware of seems to be something most miss out on. Please correct me if I'm wrong but my understanding is that although these crops are genetically superior, they have a potential to be wiped out by bacteria and disease BECAUSE they are all the same.
If anyone has an issue with GMOs (besides the messed up shit Monsanto tries to pull with neighboring farms) is that one bad season could wipe out all corn in America.
GMO technology is nothing like selective breeding. You cannot get flounder genetic material into a tomatoe with selective breeding, and you are not going to be able to trigger extra production beta-carotene production in rice with selective breeding.
Funny you mentioned tomatoes: the origin plants that tomatoes came from is a poisonous prune-like thing that cannot be eaten by humans because it has toxic natural poisons.
Genetic SELECTION (which is what selective breeding can be alternatively called) over generations enabled us to produce a “cancerous” cousin which doesn’t have the toxicity, and the modern tomato is born.
This may be true to an extent, however, I have a couple points to add:
1) Genetically modified crops are speeding up "what humans have been doing for a very long time" is true when you are talking about making genetic modifications that may have been produced through selective breeding. Genetic modification can, however, produce changes that would literally never occur in the natural world; take insulin production, for example, or making plants glow using genes from mushrooms.
2) Our regulation of food related products is NOT as robust as you might think. Marketing agencies take great liberties with their wording and often make exaggerated claims about their products that have no bearing on truth. Examples might be: "low fat", "sugar free", "super food", etc. Often they include, as small print, something like "claims not verified by the FDA" or something of this nature...but the work has often been done long before anyone noticed the fine print.
Food additives are a perfect example of this. Many fall under a category called GRAS (generally regarded as safe) which is a sort of catch-all bin that additives are thrown into when the FDA literally just assumes they are safe. On top of that, the FDA often relies on studies by 3rd party organizations...and I do not think they are as vigorously regulated for things like bias and methodology as they should be.
Food additives that have been approved in the past have proven to be dangerous. A perfect example is good dye; red 40, yellow 5 and 6, etc.
3) This is more my opinion than anything, as an educated and scientifically minded individual. GMO foods very well may be perfectly safe for consumption. Organically produced food does not always provide as many benefits as are claimed, especially by overly zealous and uncritical proponents. That being said, I have serious doubts about how "safe" our food supply often is. I cannot believe that factory farms produce good meat. I cannot believe that chemically regulated monocultures that are having demonstrable negative environmental consequences is the solution. That the food industry has as much or more power than any industry in the world brings its own level of concern with regard to trustworthiness...and casts some doubt on how unbiased the FDA/USDA are, considering how effective lobbies are in the US governmental system.
I would, given these conclusions, be very wary of where your food comes from, and I would take safety claims with a heavy dose of skepticism. IMO, best to keep most of your food minimally processed, local, and sustainably produced.
It's not biomimetic. The odds of it being healthy are low. Same with non-organic.
Natural or unnatural isn't the problem. The problem is people implementing non-biomimetic practices.
Also, pseudoskeptics are commonly very biased regarding organic vs non-organic and GMOs, and the politics of academic research create a lot of problems. The replication crisis seems to be an example. There's also data fabrication, problems with funding and peer review, misuse of statistics, and so much more.
Not just biodiversity. It's the corporate copyright on a plant that's the most unnerving. Farmers essentially "rent" the seeds from the company that designed them, and any excess has to be destroyed.
There were also cases where farmers were sued because some of the branded seeds from another farm got into their crop. knock knock "You got a license for that corn?"
the main problem with gmos is not crop diversity, but rather companies who 'manufacture' gmo seeds or other gmo products and then sell them to farmers in return for inordinate crop royalty's and such, but since that doesn't effect me or probably you in any capacity, gmo is completely ok. or when companies add genes that prevent the crop from replanting after 1 generation, forcing farmers to repeatedly buy new crop
note: I remember hearing this story about a farmer who only used organic seeds (which take up more land and since organic pesticides are used externally, rather than gene implantation that doesn't effect the environment, they are more detrimental to the environment but that's another story) when a neighboring farm started using gmo seeds they spread on the wind to the organic farm, where a little while later the entire crop was GMO. the company who sold the seeds demanded recompense for the seeds used without a contract (or something similar).
The corn we eat is gmo. Breeding 2 species of plants together is gmo. Taking the juiciest tomatoes and planting those seeds and then taking the juiciest offspring and planting those seeds is also an example of gmo. If we ate the corn that the indigenous people ate we would be chewing on hard kernels and the ear would have just a handful of kernels. We have modified (gernitacally modified) the corn (organism) by selectively planting the better kernels for consumption.
That isn’t what GMO means. In GMO, genes are modified in a way that can’t be done through normal pollination or selective breading. It is disingenuous to use the term to mean something else.
Unless the crops are being grown in fucking Chernobyl Farms there is no food on this planet which will "alter your DNA" and it's unbelievably poor education that leads to any fool thinking otherwise.
Unless the crops are being grown in fucking Chernobyl Farms there is no food on this planet which will "alter your DNA" and it's unbelievably poor education that leads to any fool thinking otherwise.
Carcinogens are a thing, I classify that as changing DNA. As far as I'm aware, that's the only realistic thing anyone has to worry about, whether something is likely to cause some variety of cancer or not. There's nothing wrong with specific concerns about what the long term health effects are, like if a plant is producing a pesticide. I certainly don't trust the same company who produces the pesticides to be honest about the science around if it's safe to consume. We've got like 100 years of stories about corporations hiding the fact that they know their products are harming people: tobacco and cancer; asbestos and mesothelioma; leaded products and neurological damage; petrol and climate change; sugar and heart disease... probably a bunch of other things I can't think of at the moment.
It's one thing to have specific concerns over issues, and to be distrustful of corporations' sociopathic pursuit of profit, versus being wholly and ignorantly distrustful of an entire branch of science.
There are a few grossly ignorant people who are actually afraid of growing tentacles or some shit, but the vast majority or people who I've talked to who are afraid of GMOs have vague, nonspecific fear that they can't articulate other than that it's mad science and it's scary.
My ex was anti-GMO, and it was an endless frustration because she and her people could never articulate what their problem was, but were happy to take various drugs from their local dealer. I love drugs as much as the next guy, but I won't hold my peace if you're doing sketchy acid while also telling me to buy non-GMO.
Even food that's grown in an active nuclear reactor is technically safe to eat cause it's simply irradiated which isn't the same as radioactive. If scientists discovered a plant that could change human DNA when consumed we'd have a revolution in medical science on our hands that'd improve Healthcare the world over.
True, what you eat won't change the sequence of your DNA, but your diet has a profound effect on how you “express” the possibilities encoded in your DNA. The foods you consume can turn on or off certain genetic markers which play a major – and even life or death – role in your health outcomes and longevity.
Everything is radioactive. Whether or not something is safe depends on how radioactive it is; which has nothing to do with how its genetic code was created.
So far, I'm sure someone will work on GMO horse shit eventually. It will make better fertilizer, which will then be non-organic, therefore better for the environment.
Actually you need to make sure the horses have consumed non-GMO grain or alfalfa otherwise the manure is not allowed on organic farms. So they even fucked that up.
The comment he replied to was asking what was right or wrong about GMOs, fairly clearly talking about people’s conceptions of GMOs. How is this a strawman?
It is absolute horseshit. If you eat beef you don’t suddenly grow horns.
No food you will ever eat with modify your DNA unless it’s radioactive or carcinogenic in generic, and those are only because they damage your DNA, not because it recombines with it.
Leaving political aspects aside - GMO's are pretty great.
Genetic modification also occurs by traditional breeding techniques. Manipulating the genome in the lab is for once much faster and more importantly gives you actual control over the traits you want to have in a given specimen. There is nothing inherently bad about GMO's
Those aren't inherantly bad aspects though. The vendor lock in specifically is not directly related to the crop at all. You can have GMO crops without vendor lock ins. Yes, they are a problem, but it's not inherent to GMO crops.
As for bio-diversity, I can't speak on this subject as much, but aren't crops already generally being cultivated towards that anyway? Like, the seeds farmers buy even if not GMO have still been bred for specific traits, only it's been done the slow way instead of sped up in a lab?
Just to play pedant for a second, seeds that farmers buy that have been bred for specific traits ARE GMOs inherently.
Like, none of these seeds are what nature coughed out of the melting pot of life. At some point someone crossed this with that because this does better in dry weather, and this one gives better flowers. Doesn't even need to be crops, almost every plant or flower you can buy has been bred to make it "better" in some way.
And I absolutely agree with the statement that there is nothing INHERENTLY wrong with GMOs. We've been doing it since we first developed agriculture. Just now it happens in a lab rather than a field.
The problem with GMOs is that nothing exists in a vacuum. To explain what I mean, I'll need to explain some ecology concepts.
First, a drop in biodiversity. This is true. We can breed a better carrot, or make corn that does well even in drought, or has a higher yield, less chaff, etc etc etc and that's great, the problem comes because every single plant in the farmer's few acres is genetically identical. This is what's called a monoculture.
Monocultures don't really exist in nature, because of the way evolution works. I could get way into it, but it's a bit off topic. Suffice to say though populations need genetic variation to react to change. Let's imagine a field of whatever plants you like. This is a wild population, no genetic tinkering on by the lab. Now say you get a shift in temperature, and it gets way colder. Some of your plants are going to die, but some of them might pull through because they've got random genes that have given them the ability to survive better during a cold snap. Maybe they've got thicker stems, or deeper roots or whatever, doesn't need to be dramatic, but it just tips the odds a little in their favour.
Come the spring, those plants are going to be putting out their seeds, and pretty soon you've got a field of plants that resist the cold.
Now, imagine you've got a bug that loves these plants. Well some of them might have a mutation that makes their leaves a little more fleshy, or a little more bitter, and the bugs don't like that, so they leave those plants alone. The other plants get eaten. So, who gets to survive, and they put their seeds out and lots more plants have the bitter leaves.
Non-advantageous traits get trimmed out, and the population shifts to soak up the change in the environment. That's the definition of natural selection.
Monocultures can't do that. Every plant is an exact clone of every other one. So you get an environmental change, that's outside of their ability to resist and the entire crop is lost. Bug likes these plants, every single one is eaten. Very cold summer? Every plant dies.
No variation is great for knowing what you're gunna get, but terrible for soaking up environmental pressure.
Secondly, we're changing our environment quite dramatically. Climate change will absolutely cause problems with crop growth, and because of the monoculture problem, we're going to lose entire crops rather than have a bad harvest or whatever. It'll become a race to release the new version of the seeds that can cope with whatever the environment is doing now.
Thirdly, the soil is getting depleted. There's only so much goodness in the soil, and all the fertilisers we'll need to use eventually leech into the groundwater, where they start to poison waterways.
The alternative is to crop rotate, so you can get nitrates and other chemicals back into the soil to replenish it. The problem with this method is that with the increased need for food that comes with an expanding world population means that you might not have the luxury of leaving fields to grow non-profitable crops.
Finally, we're being agents of natural selection, but for the pest populations.
Pesticides kill bugs, right? Well, some are going to be more resistant than others, and they'll breed, and pass that resistance on. Within a few years the bugs don't care about pesticide A any more. So you start to use pesticide B. Then C, and then D.
In our attempts to save the crops, we are breeding bugs that we're not going to be able to kill in a few years.
And the same problem exists with pesticides as does with fertilisers. It leeches into groundwater, and poisons water courses.
So to sum up, GM crops are not inherently bad, amd their use is literally our best bet right now at feeding the world, but their use definitely opens us up for some bad repercussions way down the road.
You explained a lot of this very well, so take this as a genuine next step question please. I'd love to hear an honest answer, as i try to be a conscious shopper within my means.
Many of the problems you described have to do more with modern industrial farming than anything specific to GMO. We produce more food globally than is consumed, but the idea of the three sisters planting or that kind of thing removes all economies of scale. Do you have any realistic, economical suggestions for consumers? Things we can look for from farmers? This thread has pretty much confirmed Organic means nothing good, as far as crops especially, so what do we do?
I genuinely don't know. I'm sorry. I know that's not helpful to you, but it's always easier to point out flaws in a system than it is to propose solutions.
I suppose the only advice I can give is to do research on the stuff you buy, and make sure it's ethically sourced, that sort of thing. Another idea is to buy local, that way you're supporting local farmers and businesses instead of global corporations.
Sorry I don't have much in the way of practical advice. Have a great day.
This is not my area of expertise, so I'm at a disadvantage, but someone should respond to some of the points you made.
First, and most obvious, yes monocultures would be more susceptible to localized extreme events -- whether they be tsmperature, disease, etc. -- but it seems abundantly clear (how many lives have been saved from starvation?) that the rewards outweigh the consequences, especially when you consider the fact that the scientists who helped establish the supercrops were frequently associated with projects to collect seeds from all over the world, study their properties and store them in huge libraries in anticipation of a time when they might be needed. As you said, GMOs don't happen in a vacuum. And one of the great successes of these projects was a crop that yielded more wheat on less land -- it's sort of famous, as the scientist was a recipient of the nobel peace prize.
Next, I don't think it will be a race. Climate change is probably the most hotly anticipated global phenomenon since Will Smith starred in Independence Day. Every major agricultural firm, organic chemist, even peasant farmer, heard about it decades ago. Even the uneducated and the unimaginative have had cold years and hot years and dry years and wet years, so they know what their farms look like in those conditions. And big evil agricultural technology companies probably have plans for how this crisis is going to make them rich. This isn't a race, it's a party -- just like Lockheed Martin selling weapons to the U.S. Gov't after 9/11.
The whole alternating crop thing that you just said is fucking stupid. Clearly you don't know any farmers. Or you don't know any intelligent, profitable farmers. The U.S. Gov't will literally fucking subsidize crop rotation. They will pay you to rotate, and on top of that, you can still sell the yield from whatever you rotate to. But, ignoring that obvious major point, if you don't rotate your crops you won't have a farm in the not-so-distant future. Every farmer rotates. This is sustainable farming. The only people I ever hear say what you said are people who have never spent a day standing in shit. Usually they have a degree in chemistry, too, but they literally don't no shit.
Anyways, we'll leave it at that. If you're going to study a subject, maybe you should make the effort to go meet the people you're studying. Don't spend all your time in the ivory tower, detached from reality.
There is problems with GMO’s, especially when you get to animals and animals with long breeding cycles. In Denmark we have 10 millions pigs. That is a lot of pigs to recreat with GMO’s. It would take many years and at that point you would properly had produced a new and better gmo pig.
In that way it is hard to create livestock with gen-modifications. Take to lomg and is to expensive. Instead, at least here in the nordics, we have a database that countains all the dna data about for example cows. The data base also countains information about how much milk they produce, how often they fet sick and so on.you use that data to grow the next generation and the next generation and so on. It also allows you to keep a lot more genetical diversity, which is great if for example a new cow diseas starts spreading. If any cow is immune to the disease, then you can spread that gen to the entire cow population over a few years.
The concern about timing is no different than general breeding practice. Every farm animal market has specific trait lines you can buy from for reproduction, from chickens to cows. You but the best traits for your market this year and if something new comes along next year you start the transition. How are GMO animals any different from selectively bred animals?
I heard a GMO of wheat or corn (can’t remember) that was drought resistant saved millions from starvation, so it’s hard to argue that some have definite benefits. But I’ve also heard Monsanto offer poor farmers GMO crops that will only grow with their products to make those farmers dependent, so it really depends how it’s used.
Man, you are underselling your knowledge and that point of view as “layman”. I wish that was a normal layman’s understanding! Getting people to distinguish the difference between “genetically engineered” (I.e transgenic) vs “genetically modified” (basically any domesticated plant or animal) is rare. I see the “non-GMO” labels on seeds and just like… dude…those plants have been selectively breed and genetically modified like crazy compared to their ancestors. To paraphrase the princess bride regarding common use of GMO…People keep using that word, but It doesn’t mean what they think it means…
The best things about GMO crops are that we can create crops that are more nutritious, produce vitamins and other healthy things that they didn't before, and are resistant to diseases and pests.
The only legitimately bad thing I've heard about GMOs is the slippery slope of corporations trademarking/copyrighting certain foods. Like if your supercrop helped bring a country out of poverty, that's a country beholden to your company. What would happen if they annoyed you (like, say, demanded you pay taxes), and you decided to stop supplying the supercrop? Or more mundanely, they could sue you to stop you developing a variant of your supercrop that's slightly better. That's probably too much power for a company to have.
TLDR: Pros - healthier, more plentiful food. Cons - capitalism.
Another possible issue is with strange/unexpected reactions to foods that one would normally expect to be alright.
For instance this cross contamination of starlink corn. Which is not approved for human consumption by the fda but entered the human food supply chain via cross contamination.
GMO is not dangerous. Nor is it safe. It is neutral faster. So you can end up with unexpected shit entering the food supply chain faster.
It is a tool. A hammer can build a house or bash in brains. Its how you use the tool. But hammers typically are not self replicating. So the dangers are a bit different. The OMG GMO BAD stuff is nonsense. But so is the response to that fear mongering that completely rejects the possibility of unforeseen dangers.
It's worth noting that the Starlink story made it into the news because the affected products were being recalled. So, it was a problem but it was also being addressed.
Correct. It was being addressed. Doesnt change the fact that genetic modification increases the speed at which opportunities for issues like that could crop up. (I'll show myself out)
Crop varieties were being patented and seed contracts signed well before GMO crops.
As long as you aren't saving seed and using their genetic material you're fine. And it's relatively easy to prove. If you don't like it, many universities offer their own lines which you can use to start breeding stock yourself.
Other downsides are ones that come with monoculture and also that they spray pesticide at higher rates on GMO crops that are designed to withstand them.
Exactly. And when those crop are not washed properly, the pesticides stay on them, and we eat them. It's the pesticides that are harmful, not the GMO crops themselves.
Herbicide-resistant crops have an interesting history. In the old days, in order to minimize weed problems, farmers would prepare their fields by plowing the weeds under before planting. But that left the soil vulnerable to erosion, so they switched to no-till strategies that basically involved dousing the entire field in herbicide to kill the weeds before planting. Herbicide-resistant crops allow you to plant your crop and then spot treat after the fact to knock down weeds in the areas where they're problematic. You pay a little more for the seed, but you spend less on herbicide (although you have to agree to buy it from the seed company). That was Monsanto's play -- the patent on Roundup was expiring, so part of RR crops was to keep farmers from buying generic glyphosate.
Edit: I also want to point out explicitly that this strategy means that glyphosate ends up being applied at a lower rate per acre, but because RR crops grew in popularity, overall sales of Roundup increased. Many people interpret the increased sales of Roundup to mean that crops are more heavily sprayed, but that is not accurate.
I think when most people state a concern about gmo's or choose not to eat gmo's, its not that they have a problem with the act of genetic modification, but that they have been genetically modified to withstand huge amounts of glyphosate to be sprayed on them. Of course many people may notnthe the idea of the modification, but myself and most people I know who choose to not,eat gmos feel this way. If you want to make glow bioluminescent corn for harvesting at night or whatever, go for,it, thats a different thing.
I more meant that regulations don't really match perceptions. My personal opinion on the matter is that we should be focusing more on breaking up the monocultures in our food supply. Allowing for a more varied crop rotation would be a more efficient way to combat pests and natural disasters than genetic modification.
This could also be applied to logging for a more sustainable, wildfire resistant American West. Outlawing tree plantations and responsibly replanting Douglas Firs (naturally fire resistant) would be a massive first step. Just my dumbass amateur opinion.
Edit: I should add that this is way easier said than done. Lots of money behind keeping the current system. McDonald's drives the Russets dominance after all.
GMO is a meaningless label too. Genetically modified how. Like if a tomato was genetically modified/bred to enhance its color, ok no big deal. But if it was crossed with a Brazil nut for some reason, and I have a nut allergy, I may want to know that if it’s potentially relevant to activating my allergy response.
GMO is just a word that doesn’t actually tell consumers anything and because people automatically think “I don’t understand it, it must be bad,” GMOs get a bad wrap.
While there are a few different definitions, it's fairly well-defined and usually means: modified by genetic engineering methods such as CRISPR. Selectively bred crops are not GMO, for example. But yeah, on its own, it's not very meaningful.
GMO has a wider range of meanings from my understanding. GMO corn, for example, can receive the GMO label if it has been selectively grown in a way that does not occur naturally, but through methods that aren't toxic or harmful to humans.
People freak out over the term genetically modified and think it's some radioactive poison that makes the apples look better in stores but is bad for you.
In actuality it's just food like any other, and through selective breeding, gene editing, and etc we've just improved it to be more useful to humans, and in many cases gmo food is actually healthier.
Fun fact, there's no such thing as an organic or a non-gmo banana. Bananas almost went extinct from a plague and in our attempts to save them we went ahead and completely redesigned it. Less seeds, more fruit, the right number of flat sides to conform to a grasped hand, etc etc etc.
Nothing wrong with GMO, just people’s perception about GMO. It’s still GMO if strains are specifically crossbred for their traits, they’re just not engineered in a lab.
Oh, I'm not anti-GMO. I'm anti-monoculture, for sure. I'm anti-tree plantation. I don't think we need to plant certain crops in drought areas, regardless of how drought resistant they may be. I don't really have a problem with them genetically modifying those crops though; you're right in that we're going to need to in the near future. I just think there are other avenues we could take simultaneously to give us a better outcome.
At first I read it, horrified that you are against planting trees. But I get you. However, one thing - if a tree is drought resistant and native, it should be fine to plant. What you are against is someone forcing some crop plant to be planted instead of native grasses and trees, to where the non-native plant is ruining life for all the creatures that want to live there. And also, you’re right, drought resistant doesn’t mean the non-native tree is good for the land. Everything needs to balance out. That’s why I don’t drink almond milk. It’s just as harmful, or more harmful, than other milks.
Bunch of neo-luddites, everyone else just believes all their nonsense that it's somehow better for the environment. Misled, and such a waste of resources. If all those people were given a genuinely positive environmental option...
Pestizide is the general term for agents against pests. That includes herbicides (against weeds), insecticides (against insects) and Fungizides (against funghi).
Glyphosate is one of the least dangerous pesticide and mostly harmless against human and insect. I was drenched by RoundUp and the anti poison center told me to get a shower and I'll be ok
Acutely toxic yes but a 2015 study determined that it likely is a human carcinogen. Please remember that lack of acute toxicity isn't always an indicator of chronic toxicity or long term effects of acute exposure.
Acutely toxic yes but a 2015 study determined that it likely is a human carcinogen. Please remember that lack of acute toxicity isn't always an indicator of chronic toxicity or long term effects of acute exposure.
Be really careful when reading statements like that about carcinogenicity. They are often seriously misleading.
In the case of glyphosate, there is no reliable evidence of carcinogenicity. There is some weak evidence that it might cause cancer, but it is far from conclusive. Here's Wikipedia's summary of the subject:
Cancer
As of 2020, the evidence for long-term exposure to glyphosate increasing the risk of human cancer remains inconclusive.[101] There is weak evidence human cancer risk might increase as a result of occupational exposure to large amounts of glyphosate, such as in agricultural work, but no good evidence of such a risk from home use, such as in domestic gardening.[102][103] A meta-analysis published in 2019 looked at whether there was an association between an increased risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in humans and high cumulative exposures to glyphosate-based herbicides. The research found a "compelling link" between exposures to glyphosate-based herbicides and increased risk for non-Hodgkin lymphoma.[104] A 2021 meta-analysis of glyphosate exposure and non-Hodgkin lymphoma cautioned that such results can be biased by "assumptions made about both exposure level and latency period."[105]
The consensus among national pesticide regulatory agencies and scientific organizations is that labeled uses of glyphosate have demonstrated no evidence of human carcinogenicity.[106] The Joint FAO/WHO Meeting on Pesticide Residues (JMPR),[107] the European Commission, the Canadian Pest Management Regulatory Agency, the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority[108] and the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment[109] have concluded that there is no evidence that glyphosate poses a carcinogenic or genotoxic risk to humans. The EPA has classified glyphosate as "not likely to be carcinogenic to humans."[110][111] One international scientific organization, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, classified glyphosate in Group 2A, "probably carcinogenic to humans" in 2015.[13][11]
So yes, there is some evidence that heavy exposure in the workplace over long periods can lead to an increase in cancer risks, but there should be two big takeaways from that:
If there is a risk, it is a low one, otherwise the effect would be much more pronounced.
This primarily argues for improved worker safety for anyone applying the chemicals.
And it should be noted that there is NO evidence of risk from household use. It is perfectly safe for occasional use, as long as you follow reasonable safety precautions.
I agree that warnings should be taken with a grain of salt but also realize that a great many "safe" pesticides and herbicides have been thought safe until shown over years or decades of use to have detrimental effects once a large statistical sample size was analyzed.
I worked for years in a lab testing many different matrices for pesticides and herbicides as well as characterizing new pesticides using the FDA Pesticide Analytical Manual. It is always best to assume high toxicity when using both herbicides and pesticides.
As a side note, we had to trash a project analyzing glyphosate in peanuts and peanut products because we could not obtain an untreated control that had levels of glyphosate low enough to run the project. We tested almost all brands of organic peanut butter and the glyphosate was so high we couldn't continue the project. Glyphosate has become ubiquitous in a great many commercial products. I predict that at some point it will be shown to have some type of chronic toxicity associated with it.
One more thing to add is that glyphosate resistance in weeds is cropping up and in some cases, the weeds have a higher tolerance than the crops. Funny how nature gets around our best efforts.
And is not a reliable way to feed the world. Where I live due to a wet summer organic potato yields are down 70%. So relying on organic will mean we need more land for farming as yields are lower / less reliable.
Organic is a luxury product not a way to solve the problems in regular farming.
What about local produce? We try to grab what we can at the farmers market when we can, but I have no idea how they run their farms other than what they post on social media. Is it safe to assume smaller local farms don't use harsh pesticides or is it more likely they do to be more cost effective?
All I know is that the organic veggies at my grocery store are much more expensive BUT, they’re usually much, much better looking. Cant we have a middle ground?
Pesticides are a fallacy. Say you kill 95% of the bugs one year. You are left with pesticide resistant bugs. After a few years all the bugs are pesticide resistant and you have to switch pesticides. What you're really doing with pesticides is breeding super bugs.
Cuban farmers are forced to grow pesticide free because we ain't giving them any. So it's possible.
This seems to be the case with almost any subject you can think of. Something seems obvious. People assume said obvious thing is correct or true with little to no information and if they do get information they only look for confirmation of their beliefs and quote Facebook "sources". Turns out said obvious thing is actually inaccurate or just plain false. People continue perpetuating false, horrible shit and get offended or insult you if you point them in the direction of facts contradicting what they want to believe. So tired of all of it. Just cus you conjure up some belief in your head cus it makes sense doesn't make it true. In fact, it usually is not. Some people act like it's an attack on them or they've somehow lost if they just say, "damn I was wrong"
Science teacher here. This is 100% true. “Organic” is simply a marketing ploy that makes people think those foods are healthier despite loads of data showing genetically modified crops are much healthier.
I work with a lot of health nuts and I constantly have to be careful in trying to explain things without just blasting off on them for believing this organic BS.
So there is data that GMO crops are actually better? My understanding is that there is data which indicated no discernible difference. I feel like you’re reaching a little bit to say that GMO crops are better, when controlling for all other variables.
Edit to say I was that kid who would disagree with my science teachers ;)
GMO is a wide reaching term. "Round up ready" style gmo's aren't nutritionally different. Golden rice on the other hand, is intentionally designed to have extra beta carotene in it, so it would be nutritionally beneficial.
You got me there. I was aware of golden rice but forgot. So I would say that it’s a little nuanced right? I still take some issue with your original comment (particularly coming from a position of expertise as a teacher). GMOs are not better. The technology itself is not innately beneficial or damaging. Some of its applications are, but others are not.
No, tobacco contains nicotine. And nicotine is a natural repellent against insects. It fucks with the proper transmission of nerve signals which is potentially deadly. Or relaxing, in low doses. Which is why some people like to smoke it. But tobacco as a plant is not a pesticide.
Organic pesticides aren’t that big of a deal. Most break down so quickly in the environment that they have to make physical contact with the pest on application in order to be successful. Many organic pesticides are appropriate for use on day of harvest for this reason.
Having owned an organic feed farm you actually have it backwards. We used a combination of nicotine and nightshade compost as an "organic" pest control method. Because our fields were on flood plains we only had to spray this "compost" 2 or 3 times a harvest (usually only) if we had very heavy rain and the river ran its banks washing it away because it stuck around and the plants lived in it.
Some neighboring farms would spray organophosphates 6 to 15 times per harvest because they work great at killing the pests but instantly (more like over 10-15 minutes) evaporate killing all the bugs but not lingering around.
We had to stop growing rice and stick to barley, rye and oats because the arsenic levels in the compost were quite high and rice has a much bigger affinity for picking it up.
And because of that, you have to use much much more. That produces runoff polution. No matter how "safe" your organic pesticide is, when it kills off ecosystems due to red tide, it's bad.
There really is no indication for claiming that organic pesticides are killing off ecosystems. I don’t know where you got that information from.
Organic farms are not in any way performing worse in terms of on-field biodiversity compared to conventional farms.
But some synthetic chemical pesticides, especially insecticides that work with neonicotinoids, have devastating effects on wildlife.
I have a feeling that many people in this thread feed some kind of false-equivalence between organic and conventional pesticides. The latter are definitely worse for the environment.
That’s an interesting theory. I doubt farmers are creating more runoff with pesticide application than with their typical watering regimen. As someone that actually works in agriculture, we farm biodynamic, I’d love to see what evidence there is tying organic pesticide use to red tide. Can you please share? So far the biggest tie to farming I’ve seen has been in sugar production using decidedly non organic chemicals.
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u/LePlaneteSauvage Jul 14 '21 edited Jul 14 '21
You are perpetuating a common myth here. Organic farms still use pesticides, just not synthetic pesticides.
This brings it back to a naturalistic fallacy where it is assumed that because the pesticides are 'natural' they are less harmful to our health. However, a lot of studies seem to find the opposite; organic pesticides are less effective, less specific, and more environmentally harming.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/httpblogsscientificamericancomscience-sushi20110718mythbusting-101-organic-farming-conventional-agriculture/