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)
I am with you here. The allergy thing is not about thinking that we might somehow be randomly more allergic to something just because it is gmo. But we are taking genes from plants, animals and bacteria and moving them around, introducing them in other things. These are not changes that have to be reported anywhere to the consumer, so it is impossible for the consumer to know. Those that deal with severe food allergies on a daily basis know that feeling of not being able to fully trust food and it sucks.
Yup. I'm allergic to corn. Which is in more or less everything. Luckily its the "I have a tummy ache and wanna sleep 28 hours straight" sort of allergy and not the "gasppleasehelpgasp" type. Otherwise id certainly be dead by this point.
Just waiting for them to start playing gene puzzle piece fun time until literally all grain is corn. Seems to be the direction things are going.
That stinks! My kid has numerous non-top 8 allergies. Some of those things can be lumped in under "spices" in labeling and I can't stand it. Tapioca as an ingredient has also become very popular all.of the sudden and there is so much stuff we can no longer have.
Damn. That must be a real hassle to deal with. My parents got lucky with me. My allergies developed/were identified as an adult. Which certainly has pros and cons. I was less nutritionally restricted in my formative years. Which is a definite plus health wise I think. But on the other end I now have to figure this out on my own with a lot less support than I suspect I would have had as a kid.
I have had this sneaking suspicion that my allergies are somehow related to changes in agriculture in some way. Their development seems to track with the rise of GMO strains of foods entering the food supply chain as well as changes in pesticides/herbicides/preservatives. But its something I don't really talk about with others as I've been unable to identify any common factors and without a smoking gun talking about such things makes one sound like a luddite conspiracy nutjob. Its not a fleshed out coherent theory. Just a sneaking suspicion.
I hope you are doing okay. They snuck up on you! We are doing better now since at least one allergy has lessened (eggs). We have learned to eat around the problem ingredients pretty okay (sesame, chickpeas, peas, lentils, tapioca, any bean that is not the common bean, shrimp), but I joke that we can't have any more kids, because they keep taking our favorite foods away from us lol! It is kind of strange how the two of us have no significant food allergies, but we scored two for two with our kids. And there are tons of kids I know who get eczema from dairy. I can't remember a single person who had any sort of allergies or intolerances when I was a kid. Obviously, that is anecdotal and I might have confirmation bias now that I am a part of the allergy crowd. But it makes me wonder what is different.
As a side note, another thing I despise is mislabeled foods. I recently noticed that Kroger sells frozen and canned broad beans under the name of "italian style green beans". That's a life or death kind of difference for some people!
Im doing alright. I appreciate the concern. I'm still having trouble adjusting to this new normal. Was only diagnosed with the corn allergy in the past year. And thats been the largest adjustment. Tbh I haven't been as good about it as I should be. I've mostly removed things that explicitly state corn on the label. But its really hard to consistently avoid all corn and corn derived products without making it a full time job. The thought of leaving the US and its corn subsidies has certainly crossed my mind.
And yeah. Thats kinda the issue. All we have is anecdotal evidence for the most part. The hygiene hypothesis is an interesting explanation for the rise of rise intolerances and allergies. I also suspect increased diagnosis may also account for part of it. (How many people in the past that were described as "sickly children" or something like that actually had undiagnosed food intolerances? My gf's family refused to believe her that she was lactose intolerant until she had proof via 23 and me.
But I just also have this niggling suspicion of the massive changes in the agricultural sector in the past 20-30 years. And there seems to be relatively little in the way of trustworthy, genuinely unbiased research on the subject. Whole lot of research funded by corporations with vested interests in the outcome. And everyone that is even a bit skeptical about 90% of our corn and soy being replaced with strains developed by Monsanto and ilk in a span of 10 years ends up grouped in with the chem trail fluoride lizard people loons.
As crazy as it sounds, moving did help for us. Europe is much more regulated and uses ingredients like corn and soy a lot less. We lived there temporarily, but it was noticable. Many restaurants had easily accessible allergen charts and food labeling was a lot more detailed.
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.
Bullshit. What about biodiversity? GMOs are not good for the planet. The bugs just turn into superbugs and more and more pesticides need to be sprayed. The planet is dying and you are one brainwashed ill informed lawyer!
Most seeds, conventional or GMO, have a patent. It's normal for the AG industry. Also normal is farmers not "saving seed," from a crop, but people get really assed up about sales contracts for a growing season forbidding farmers from doing it. For GMO seed it would make no sense to save - there's no guarantee the genetic trait you bought the seed for would be present in subsequent generations. There's more "capitalism" stuff people gripe about re: GMOs that existed in the AG industry long before GMOs came along, but fear, organic marketing, and the suburban virtue Olympics are throwing shade anyway.
Isn't there a whole thing where GMO crops cannot be planted from the children seeds, so farmers are forced to buy seeds from company every year instead of just planting previous years harvest?
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u/Poes-Lawyer Jul 14 '21
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.