GMO's. (Genetically Modified Organism)
Around here it's been in the news that Vermont has passed a law that food containing GMO's must say so on the label. Now the big manufacturers are suing the state of Vermont because they say that it could make a 50 state patchwork of labeling laws. (Of course if they just disclosed it in all 50 states it would be no patchwork).
Whatever.
There's a new movie out about GMOs.
http://www.gmofilm.com/ (http://www.gmofilm.com/)
Here's an interview with the director. Very interesting.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQUm5Qg4-5I (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQUm5Qg4-5I)
Hope it becomes a world-wide thing. Fuck that GMO shit man. Read an article a while ago about a Danish farmer switching to GMO food for his pigs. Whithin a few months almost all of them got all kinds of nasties, diahrrea, sores, tumors. He switched back to normal food and they healed. Dangerous stuff.
i am glad people are finally catching onto this issue , i am pro to the idea of GMOs but not to the way that it is being done currently and ESPECIALLY of company's like monsnto those evil fucks.
Australia's CSIRO on the other hand has done some amazing work with GMOs like what they did with their canola so it certainly can be done properly they allso arent clandestine about it or doing anything that i wold say is dangerous they are monitored and heck even i have seen their greenhouses when i was a kid.
Nothing beats organic produce imo. Nature is perfect as it is. Man trying to make something that's perfect, better... Don't fuck with nature, it WILL fuck back.
Whenever someone resists disclosing info it sends up red flags for me.
And the fact that they resist because they say GMO's aren't harmful make zero sense whatsoever.
If they aren't harmful then why fight food labeling?
A lot of places in Europe already either ban them or require food labels. And the studies done there show health concerns while here in the US where the studies are done by the companies making the GMO's we are told there is no concern. The system has been sold.
For a farmer to label his product 'organic', he must certify, verify, fill out reams of paper work and pay hard earned dollars. Just to say it's natural. Why should chemical companies who produce food be given a free pass? Oh, yeah, political corruption. What's the going rate for a congressman these days?
But, that's just like, my opinion, dudes.
Always abiding,
Quote from: BikerDude on July 31, 2014, 09:17:31 AM
GMO's. (Genetically Modified Organism)
Around here it's been in the news that Vermont has passed a law that food containing GMO's must say so on the label. Now the big manufacturers are suing the state of Vermont because they say that it could make a 50 state patchwork of labeling laws. (Of course if they just disclosed it in all 50 states it would be no patchwork)...
In 2012 the issue of labeling foods as containing GMOs was on the ballot here in California. And yet, in this state filled with self-proclaimed health gurus, fitness addicts, and hypochondriacs, the final vote was "No" by a margin of 2.5% because Monsanto, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods, Nestle, General Mills, Kelloggs, and a number of other companies spent more than $45 million on a "Vote No" campaign that stated, "
It's a deceptive, deeply flawed food labeling scheme that would add more government bureaucracy and taxpayer costs, create new frivolous lawsuits, and increase food costs by billions--without providing any health or safety benefits," all of which was complete bullshit. ::)
Quote from: Reverend Al on August 03, 2014, 01:57:50 AM
Quote from: BikerDude on July 31, 2014, 09:17:31 AM
GMO's. (Genetically Modified Organism)
Around here it's been in the news that Vermont has passed a law that food containing GMO's must say so on the label. Now the big manufacturers are suing the state of Vermont because they say that it could make a 50 state patchwork of labeling laws. (Of course if they just disclosed it in all 50 states it would be no patchwork)...
In 2012 the issue of labeling foods as containing GMOs was on the ballot here in California. And yet, in this state filled with self-proclaimed health gurus, fitness addicts, and hypochondriacs, the final vote was "No" by a margin of 2.5% because Monsanto, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods, Nestle, General Mills, Kelloggs, and a number of other companies spent more than $45 million on a "Vote No" campaign that stated, "It's a deceptive, deeply flawed food labeling scheme that would add more government bureaucracy and taxpayer costs, create new frivolous lawsuits, and increase food costs by billions--without providing any health or safety benefits," all of which was complete bullshit. ::)
Yes the misinformation campaign is huge.
Same with natural gas fracking.
It's like Lennon said..... look at who benefits and...
I am with RBD Dude, GMOs are fucking awesome, but not the way corporations are using them currently.
Since the first cooking fire and stone tools, humanity has been modifying the environment with technology to better suit our needs. Do not think this will not apply to our food and even our own DNA. Want to know how humanity will evolve tomorrow? Look at what is in the laboratory today.
What pisses me off is the argument that humans are too stupid to handle labeled GMOs. What we don't like is the business model Monsanto uses, not the science.
Quote from: revgms on August 04, 2014, 12:02:31 PM
I am with RBD Dude, GMOs are fucking awesome, but not the way corporations are using them currently.
Since the first cooking fire and stone tools, humanity has been modifying the environment with technology to better suit our needs. Do not think this will not apply to our food and even our own DNA. Want to know how humanity will evolve tomorrow? Look at what is in the laboratory today.
What pisses me off is the argument that humans are too stupid to handle labeled GMOs. What we don't like is the business model Monsanto uses, not the science.
Well I have the belief that Humanities biggest weakness is Hubris.
We should take note of what nature prescribes. People often confuse this stuff with plain old plant breeding. It is very very different.
Combining DNA that could not ever be combined in nature is fraught with unknown perils.
And IMO it is foolish to think that we can foresee all the possible disasters.
Splicing the DNA of a virus into corn so that it has a built in insecticide and then feeding it to people without them even knowing is the height of arrogance.
How about the Tomato that was developed to be frost resistant by combining a flounder's anti freeze gene with the tomato's dna?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_tomato (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_tomato)
This is Frankenscience driven by a profit motive and the only people responsible for testing the outcome is the company making it.
Why is it one or the other? Can we not become a truly advanced species, and be cautious about it at the same time?
I am all for test tube bacon, GMOs, artificial intelligence, the singularity, augmentation and anything else they have on Star Trek. Humanity as we understand it has only reached .00000000001% of its potential evolutionary development. What we as a species will be in a hundred years is nothing we can even imagine now. The end game is to become god, complete control of matter and energy.
Any argument against that leaves our existence to the whim of chaos.
That said, proceed with caution, because yeah, we can fuck it up but good if we are not careful, but since when has that not been the case? Evolution demands progress, but it promises nothing.
Quote from: revgms on August 04, 2014, 12:43:28 PM
Why is it one or the other? Can we not become a truly advanced species, and be cautious about it at the same time?
I am all for test tube bacon, GMOs, artificial intelligence, the singularity, augmentation and anything else they have on Star Trek. Humanity as we understand it has only reached .00000000001% of its potential evolutionary development. What we as a species will be in a hundred years is nothing we can even imagine now. The end game is to become god, complete control of matter and energy.
Any argument against that leaves our existence to the whim of chaos.
That said, proceed with caution, because yeah, we can fuck it up but good if we are not careful, but since when has that not been the case? Evolution demands progress, but it promises nothing.
It demands progress but I'm more concerned what Evolution rewards.
The point is we aren't being careful and to be honest I don't think we can be careful enough.
We just don't understand the implications and I'm not entirely sure that anyone can know what is going to happen when you introduce something new into the ocean of DNA that constitutes the natural environment.
It rewards the adaptable. Clinging to old regimes is a ticket to extinction.
I am not saying to throw all in with GMOs, I am saying we need diversity of food production, and we should master all of its forms. Thus we will have a quiver full of arrows to use and be skillful in our march through evolution.
Quote from: revgms on August 04, 2014, 01:26:09 PM
It rewards the adaptable. Clinging to old regimes is a ticket to extinction.
I am not saying to throw all in with GMOs, I am saying we need diversity of food production, and we should master all of its forms. Thus we will have a quiver full of arrows to use and be skillful in our march through evolution.
I believe the Darwin awards reward "adventure" in a way.
And I actually am not entirely sure that diversity in food production is such a great thing.
I'd probably say that diversity in birth control might be a better option at this point.
Just like, my opinion, dudes.
Always abiding.
So, if you add fish or other animal DNA into a fruit or veg, can vegans still eat it? Do they have a case they should be told?
How about forbidden animals into other foods, several religions ban eating various animals.
This is one of the few market-limiting principles I abide - "Just tell me what the fuck you're selling. I can decide whether to buy it." If you're gonna sell me an apple that isn't really apple (in the sense it's been known for 20,000 years), well, you gotta let me know. Then it's up to me if I feel like rolling the dice.
If we do as Neil DeGrasse Tyson suggests, break the debate down to its constituents, then we'd can deal with it piece by piece.
For instance the labeling debate. The claim by industry is that we are too stupid to handle labels. They claim that there are too many superstitious people who would irrationally use that information to scare others, a-la anti-vax movement.
Me, I'd argue that that is an acceptable risk given that we as a species are able to move away from irrational fears. Better to let a few tin foil hatters complain than to not give consumers all the facts, as jgiffen stated.
Quote from: Ynot Dude on August 04, 2014, 06:26:50 PM
Just like, my opinion, dudes.
Always abiding.
I dig Bill's style.
Lot of strands. Lotta in's and out's with these things.
You might think you have a handle on it but when you look more closely it's a lot more ah you know...
Make corn with a "insecticide gene" built in. Bug eats corn. Bug dies. But some bugs get eaten by birds and bats.
Gut bacteria of birds bats effected by new gene. Bird's and Bats shit in the woods like the pope. Gut bacteria enter soil. And about a million other scenarios.
Etc etc etc. Rinse and repeat millions of times. With thousands of new types of shit.
Has it ever occurred to you that this all might not be ah so simple?
I mean given all the new shit?
Remember a lot of this is shit is being brought to us by the people who brought us DDT. Told us that was safe.
While that is essentially true, it is also true that nature does this all by itself, a-la Ebola right now. Mutation is nothing new, and not invented by man.
DNA is not magic and it is not labeled, it is simply a chain of amino acids, there is no "bat gene" per se, it is just some matter in a particular order. It would be like labeling all the origin sources of your DNA, most would be amoeba, reptilian, and fish. Your eyes are from a cave worm, do you call them worm eyes? The arguments that the DNA is from this or that creature, and thus "bad", are fundamentally flawed.
The argument that corporate control of GMOs by entities such as Monsanto are a completely different argument, one that has much more meat to it. And yes, they are hardly the ones I would chose to be providing humanity with this new technology.
Labeling? For it, the fundamental right of the consumer trumps industry concerns.
Profit driven research with little or no ethical foundation? Yeah not cool man!
GMOs are all bad? Blanket generalization, not good for anybody.
Should we be cautious and move with rational intent into the modern era? Yup, that would be reasonable.
To summarize:
GMOs as a concept- fucking awesome Star Trek shit right there man!
Monsanto being in the drivers seat of GMO development and production- Over the fucking line!!! Mark it zero!
There now everybody can both agree and disagree with me all at once.
You want to see most of the GMO stuff go away...cancel all patents on natural things like plants found in the wild.
Even Ebola is now patented so someone will make a profit off this.
Well said regms... Not sure though why you are so pro-GMO; maybe some background would help. I do understand that developing environmentally hardy strains of crops will help feed the world more efficiently, but I do side with BD that we indeed should proceed with caution. I think our growth as a species is getting dangerous, in that it's getting harder and harder to remain self-sustaining. In the end, it's actually more to do with politics and logistics, as we actually have more than enough food for everyone. So I think the whole GMO thing is a wash; it's a band aid solution for a much bigger problem.
(Letting Monsanto run their own tests is letting the fox guard the hen house. I don't know how they sleep at night frankly...)
Oh, and I read that the reason so many people are now becoming celiac is because they keep fucking around with the DNA of wheat, so we've become intolerant of that particular kind of protein. Grain was only introduced into our diet 10,000 years ago, and it took that long for our species to get used to it... It's why paleo dieting works so well for so many people.
Quote from: revgms on August 05, 2014, 02:41:34 PM
While that is essentially true, it is also true that nature does this all by itself, a-la Ebola right now. Mutation is nothing new, and not invented by man.
DNA is not magic and it is not labeled, it is simply a chain of amino acids, there is no "bat gene" per se, it is just some matter in a particular order. It would be like labeling all the origin sources of your DNA, most would be amoeba, reptilian, and fish. Your eyes are from a cave worm, do you call them worm eyes? The arguments that the DNA is from this or that creature, and thus "bad", are fundamentally flawed.
The argument that corporate control of GMOs by entities such as Monsanto are a completely different argument, one that has much more meat to it. And yes, they are hardly the ones I would chose to be providing humanity with this new technology.
Labeling? For it, the fundamental right of the consumer trumps industry concerns.
Profit driven research with little or no ethical foundation? Yeah not cool man!
GMOs are all bad? Blanket generalization, not good for anybody.
Should we be cautious and move with rational intent into the modern era? Yup, that would be reasonable.
To summarize:
GMOs as a concept- fucking awesome Star Trek shit right there man!
Monsanto being in the drivers seat of GMO development and production- Over the fucking line!!! Mark it zero!
There now everybody can both agree and disagree with me all at once.
Well all that is true. But it is a LOT of matter in particular order. Think of how long it took super computers to map the Human Gnome. And the point is that it started from the simplest and progressed through natural selection to become more and more and more complex. Nature selected out the "Bad" stuff.
By short cutting that and splicing together genes willy nilly we are cruising for a bruising.
The genetic modifications being made are NOT the same as mutation. A mutation is a much much smaller change. By several orders of magnitude. Mutation is a natural occurrence and that is the point. A mutation occurs. It is a very small change and nature acts upon it and it rolls into the organism or not. So things progress over millions of generations at a very very slow and deliberate rate. Small causes and effects being absorbed by the natural environment. Gene splicing is natural mutations at a million times the speed limit.
There simply is no way through natural mutation that one genome can simply manifest genes from a completely other genome. The change is much larger than anything that could happen through natural mutations.
A virus that kills 100% of the hosts that it infects is impossible through natural mutation.
If virus one kills zero hosts. And virus one plus mutations 1-100,000 kills 50% and onward to where virus with mutations 1-1,000,000,000 kills 100% of it's hosts. This defines a scale of success. As the percentage of it's hosts that die increases the success of the virus to reproduce goes down. And the prevalence of the mutations that led to it go down with it. It gets selected out.
But there is NOTHING to prevent engineering a virus on purpose or by accident that kills 100% of it's hosts.
It would have a very short run to it's own extinction where it would rock out with it's cock out. Once you subtract the power of natural selection from the equation it's possible to fuck up big time.