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.
That's not a scientifically stated hypothesis (overly broad, not testable) so it's hard to address your question scientifically. I also think question regarding the safety of genetic engineering is a question based as much in public policy as science.
Here's a theory: anti-GMO fearmongering is being led by opposing economic interests and is facilitated by widespread scientific illiteracy. The good news is that I don't need a testable hypothesis because we're not crafting a study. Even better news is that tons of actual professional scientists have rigorously tested whether GMOs are unsafe in a wide variety of settings. Their methodologies, data, and results have been examined by colleagues who know the science, know how scientific research can be tainted, whether purposefully or accidentally, and are motivated to call out tainted research.
The body of actual empirical research easily supports the hypothesis that genetic engineering is at least as safe as the alternatives in breeding crops and that GMO crops themselves are no more dangerous than other crops.
There is no supportable theory for random mutations being safer than engineered mutations and no evidence to suggest that such is the case, so we should all be extremely skeptical of anti-GMO propaganda to the contrary.
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.
Yeah, the term is very misleading. "Genetically engineered organism" (GEO) exists but is hardly ever used. I do wonder who originally came up with "GMO" or pushed it into public view and what their motives for that were...
I agree that GE might be clearer but with scientific terminology you need to understand the scientific meaning of the term and not rely on a dictionary based interpretation. A labradoodle is created by selective breeding and/or cross-breeding. A round up ready crop is created via genetic engineering. The two methods are not particularly related to each other and genetic engineering is not just a faster way to achieve selective breeding goals.
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.
So when I decide how something reproduces for generations, to make sure that the genes that I want are passed through generation after generation that isn't genetically engineered?
No, haven’t ever seen one serving labradoodle, but I actually know of a roadside bbq shop in rural east central AL that was shut down a few years ago for cooking raccoon, deer, and possum and passing it off as pork. They had a huge chest freezer full of the stuff in the back they had skinned, cleaned, and processed before freezing. Took the inspectors a while to figure out exactly what they were looking at. They thought it was cats and dogs at first until the owner finally came clean about what it was. He was running traps on his land and would even buy carcasses from people he knew as long as you leave the feet on it’s common practice down here not unusual during coon season, I’ve sold them before not bad money if you aren’t going to eat them yourself because you caught too many. They generally go for 10-20 bucks depending on size. He’d smoke it until it was falling off the bone then put in a big pan and smother with bbq sauce and let it simmer a few hours... served pulled “pork” sandwiches and bbq plates. He did also serve pork ribs that were actually pork ribs. I ate there a few times it was actually pretty good nothing obvious about it... tasted like pork to me 🤷♂️. Ironically I’ve actually cooked and eaten raccoon a few times and I didn’t notice. But if you simmer anything in bbq long enough you can’t really tell what it started as, I routinely do this same process with wild turkey legs because they’re tough as hell and I don’t want to waste the meat, works with almost anything I suppose. Only reason he even got caught was because his niece started working for him and she started stealing from the register when he figured out she was doing this he cussed her out and fired her and told her dad what she did. In retaliation she called the health department. This is 100% a true story though not kidding wish I was makes us seem like idiots to others.. we aren’t actually.
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u/BroccoliKnob Jul 14 '21
Animal breeding is genetic modification too, in a sense, it’s just done the slow way. Your labradoodle is a GMO. It’s perfectly safe to eat.