GM wheat crops in Australia, Greenpeace takes action

[Isard]

Originally Posted by Raiden

No.

Emitting a little bit of CO2 is fine, and most weedeaters today run on electricity anyways.

GMOs are very bad for the environment, and Australia has enough issues as it is with things like Cane Toads running around and eating everything in sight.

Genetically Modified Organisms are extremely hazardous, as they can pass along the genes that they have that infer pesticide/herbicide resistance, self-synthesized insecticides, and much more that we are only finding out about in recent times.

Monsanto, the company responsible for most of these agricultural nightmares, makes these plants without any regard to their effects on the people who grow natural produce or the environment.

GMOs are a good way to produce more food with lower losses, but the risks are really too much to consider the benefits; some more recent research has even shown that the proteins and other products that are produced by the artificially introduced genes can cause disorders in people and animals.

Originally Posted by Raiden

How creative. Still though, I'm disappointed. I expected magic ponies, considering your...eccentric tastes.

No, electricty has to come from somewhere too.

However, I was not arguing that electricty was much better. Even if it is being generated by a source that makes more CO2, it's servicing more people, and can be stored in batteries, making it a slightly better choice than gas, for a weedeater.

Burning gasoline in a motor is more efficient than burning coal hundreds of miles away then transporting it to an electric motor.


Also,

[Banefull]

Originally Posted by Tsyal Makto

But when that gene works in conjunction with the other genes in the plant, they can lead to adverse effects, especially when they cross-polinate with wild plants. Superweeds, anyone?

GM crops created superweed, say scientists | Environment | The Guardian
‘Superweed’ explosion threatens Monsanto heartlands - FRANCE 24

The emergence of superweeds is inevitable regardless of GMO use or not. The main cause of superweeds today is heavy use of herbicide which GMO crops have the potential to curtail. Although GMOs may be a directly responsible for the creation a few superweeds themselves, in the long term will slow down the creation of superweeds in the long run. Also, genetic engineering icnreasing the flexibility of farmers to employ crop rotation techniques which are a very effective means of controlling superweeds.

Additionally, increasing amounts of GMOs are produced to be sterile so that they cannot breed or produce offspring thereby eliminating any risk of cross-breeding.

Originally Posted by Tsyal Makto

The old "substantial equivalence" argument...

No, they are not the same. TBH I don't know why people do not see that. When the best of an organic crop is selected to be replanted, it is using genes that are native to the plant, not adding genes that are foreign to the plant. Selective plantation is simply accelerated evolution, GMO crops create whole new branches of evolution by introducing new traits into the plant strain. How are they in any way the same?

I find that to be a rather arbitrary distinction and purely based on semantics. Both methods feature the introduction of new traits. What makes genes arising from the same plant species any better?

Originally Posted by Tsyal Makto

The US is really the only 1st world industrialized country to really embrace GMO crops with open arms. IIRC they are banned in Europe. And TBH it hasn't really worked out well for us, either. Monsanto pretty much monopolized GMO crop production here in the US, and...well, for lack of a better term, they are thugs. They lobbied for the banning of GMO labelling, they falsify scientific studies, and they strong-arm farmers into following their strict rules. Europe made the right move, IMO.

‪FOOD, INC. - (Full)‬‏ - YouTube

This is FOOD, INC. Monsanto and GM are addressed about an hour in.

In the time that the US has been planting GMOs, there has never been a single death, complication, or allergy attributed to GMOs. Also we must consider the quantifiable economic benefits of GMOs



Link to study: http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/ful....050708.144203

Not all farmers are opposed to Monsanto either. For example, in 2009, in the United States, the National Association of Wheat Growers (NAWG) poll of 7000 of its members found that 76% supported a petition for Monsanto to resume and continue its development of GMO wheat

(I'll respond to the video later, still watching it)

[iron_jones]

Originally Posted by Raiden

How creative. Still though, I'm disappointed. I expected magic ponies, considering your...eccentric tastes.

Originally Posted by Isard

Easy, lads.

[Tsyal Makto]

Originally Posted by Banefull

The emergence of superweeds is inevitable regardless of GMO use or not. The main cause of superweeds today is heavy use of herbicide which GMO crops have the potential to curtail. Although GMOs may be a directly responsible for the creation a few superweeds themselves, in the long term will slow down the creation of superweeds in the long run. Also, genetic engineering icnreasing the flexibility of farmers to employ crop rotation techniques which are a very effective means of controlling superweeds. Additionally, increasing amounts of GMOs are produced to be sterile so that they cannot breed or produce offspring thereby eliminating any risk of cross-breeding.

GM crops really don't decrease the amount of herbicide used, all they do is make the crops resistant to ever-more volatile forms of herbicide. In conventional and GM farming, herbicide will always be used to keep weeds at bay in non-rotating farms. If they somehow develop a GM plant that can kill weeds, then that opens up a whole new can of worms if it gets loose.

In organic farming, crop rotation is already an elemental practice, so GM crops really don't have any advantage in that area.

Yes, the terminator technology in the end results in sterile seeds, but that only keeps the seeds from germinating. The terminator trait is usually activated late in seed development, meaning that the plants still produce pollen that can be cross-bred with wild plants. And for the terminator gene to activate requires chemical triggers, which will only increase the farmer's dependence on Big Ag corps.

And really, seed sterility isn't a form of environmental protection, it is only a way to prevent farmers from saving seeds. It's not the environment that is in mind, it is copyrights and profits.

I find that to be a rather arbitrary distinction and purely based on semantics. Both methods feature the introduction of new traits. What makes genes arising from the same plant species any better?

Because those are traits that will have emerged from the plant naturally on it's evolutionary path. It's accelerated natural selection, not the introduction of alien traits that would take the plant on an entirely different evolutionary path.

In the time that the US has been planting GMOs, there has never been a single death, complication, or allergy attributed to GMOs.

Only because no one has been actively studying it. GM foods are not labelled, so any ill effects caused by them would not be determinable, because they are simply integrated into the rest of the food supply. There was only ever one study on the effects of GM food on humans, and YES, it did find negative effects. The problem was that the study was never followed up on.

GM Health Risks

Also we must consider the quantifiable economic benefits of GMOs



Link to study: An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie

Read some of the links I posted previously. Organics can produce better yields than GM, and even conventional, and are more profitable than conventional and GM.

Bigger yields - Genetically modified crops - Organic Yields Are Better Than Conventional, Including GM Crops
Bigger profits - Report shows organic better than GM - The Ecologist

GM crops not needed to feed the world

If organics have the potential to provide what the world needs, why continue to risk security of the food system with GM?

Not all farmers are opposed to Monsanto either. For example, in 2009, in the United States, the National Association of Wheat Growers (NAWG) poll of 7000 of its members found that 76% supported a petition for Monsanto to resume and continue its development of GMO wheat/

Firstly, I'm a little weary anytime I hear the findings of PACs (Monsanto has already lied in the scientific field, I doubt it faires much better in the political field), and secondly, even if it is true, these farmers are probably going to end up the same way the soybean farmers ended up, as in the end of the farmer's soveirgn control over their farms. They'll probably end up changing their tunes in the end. FOOD INC gives a pretty good look at what being a Monsanto farmer is really like. It looks good now, but reality will set in when the Monsanto boot-thugs come knocking on the door.

(I'll respond to the video later, still watching it)

"The World According to Monsanto" is a good watch, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvGddgHRQyg

I'm also looking into a movie called "Fresh." Haven't seen it yet, I'll post it if it's any good.

[Human No More]

Actually, not true. they are engineered for specific resistances.

Claiming that without them then no plant would ever develop resistance shows a complete lack of understanding of natural selection. By your logic, MRSA is caused by genetic engineering of antibiotic resistance (it is not).

Actually, whenever there is any death or serious illness that could be at all attributed to food supply, it is ALWAYS thoroughly investigated (see: the recent salmonella infected foods in Germany).

Again you sate that organic food is > GM in undeveloped countries, where small patches of land are farmed using hand tools - that does not translate to modern agriculture in any way. Posting a link to a page about a chemical weapon has no bearing on a point about food production.

[Tsyal Makto]

Originally Posted by Human No More

Actually, not true. they are engineered for specific resistances.

Claiming that without them then no plant would ever develop resistance shows a complete lack of understanding of natural selection. By your logic, MRSA is caused by genetic engineering of antibiotic resistance (it is not).

And those resistances can come along with organic seed-saving and natural breeding within a species. That's what I mean by accelerated natural selection. If a crop shows traits that a farmer views as beneficial, that crop will go on to be used the next season. If a resistance is needed, it can be achieved by conventional breeding within a species. There is enough diversity within one given species to provide whatever is needed, without requiring splicing across species. There are enough beneficial traits already within a species' gene pool to provide whatever is needed. This follows the natural evolutionary path of a plant more effectively than GM. Two naturally-occuring plants of the same species with beneficial traits actually have a chance of emerging naturally over time. A tomato, spliced with certain bacterial traits, on the other hand, does not. It's also all about food security. If what is needed can be achieved with conventional breeding, why risk the system with GM?

Case Studies

Rice: floods and heatwaves – using varieties developed by farmers
•
Researchers at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) used a rice variety that was identified 50 years ago in the Indian state of Orissa as being able to withstand being submerged in water for long period without losing yield, and used marker assisted selection (not GM) to cross it with a popular variety grown on millions of hectares in India and Bangladesh.

•
Researchers at the African Rice Centre are using rice varieties that have deep roots, good water efficiency and that tend to flower in the early morning when temperatures are lower, and crossed them with higher yielding Asian rice to produce a variety that combines advantages from both continents.7

•
Navdanaya, a New Delhi-based NGO headed by Vandana Shiva, together with farmers from nine Indian states, has developed a register of over 2 000 indigenous rice varieties, among which are many that are reported to be effective in resisting environmental extremes, pests and disease.8




Maize: drought, pests and aflatoxins
•
In the Philippines university researchers have developed a variety of maize that withstood a drought of 29 days, while in Kenya researchers found a variety that was naturally resistant to the large grain borer.9

•
Cati Marielle, Director of the Sustainable Agricultural Systems division of the Environmental Study Group in Mexico city argues that drought tolerant maize varieties already exist, developed by farmers' careful seed selection over many cities, so as to be able to farm in the desert.10

•
In 2009, Nigerian and Kenyan scientists announced a major non-GM breakthrough that could dramatically reduce the cancer-causing, immuno-suppressant aflatoxins often present on maize, cassava and ground-nuts throughout Africa.11

Actually, whenever there is any death or serious illness that could be at all attributed to food supply, it is ALWAYS thoroughly investigated (see: the recent salmonella infected foods in Germany).

Firstly, GM is banned in most of Europe, so that's not the best example. Secondly, in countries that allow GM, they are not labelled, like here in the US. If we were to have a problem with the food supply, we would never know whether the cause was GM or not. Remember, Monsanto is using the best government money can buy, here. Impoverished countries using GM face the same laws, as well.

Again you sate that organic food is > GM in undeveloped countries, where small patches of land are farmed using hand tools - that does not translate to modern agriculture in any way. Posting a link to a page about a chemical weapon has no bearing on a point about food production.

And they still provide equivalent yields to other methods in developed countries, and still in many cases greater yields (the QDPI and wheat). The most important benefits to the developed world is that it leads to better soil (building up the soil with organic compounds vs eroding it with chemicals), as well as an earlier break-even point for the farms.

Even if it is about a chemical weapon, and not food production, the fact that Monsanto (a food producer), lied about it's chemical weaponry sets a very bad precedent for it's food policy. And Roundup is only one step away from Agent Orange. They talk about this in "The World According to Monsanto" about an hour in.

[Pa'li Makto]

GM is a big topic here in Australia right now. There's talks that the Prime Minister Julia Gillard is working to introduce GM wheat and other crops into the foodbowl of the country and soon we could be seeing GM bread on the shelves. To be honest, I don't know how the people will recieve this, given that organic food has had such a warm reception here.

Tsyal, you might find this article interesting.
Australia's GM wheat will only worsen world hunger - The Drum Opinion (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

http://thewall.com.au/topics/38659-f...m-wheat-trials
This article is pretty interesting as well. Our own farmers are urging the Government to end CSIRO's trial of growing GM wheat, urging independent analysis and fearing damage to our multi billion dollar what industry from cross contamination from the GM crops..If the farmers are worried, I think that that is a cause for concern in itself..If GM crops should be a blessing for farmers because they can grow more on less land then why would farmers consider that the quality of their own crops is more important then the quantity of the GM wheat crop?

[Banefull]

Alright, its going to take me a very long time to respond to all the points you listed Tsyal Makto (over a few days) but this is to address the most time consuming one first for now:

----------------------------------------------

Originally Posted by Tsyal Makto

Only because no one has been actively studying it. GM foods are not labelled, so any ill effects caused by them would not be determinable, because they are simply integrated into the rest of the food supply. There was only ever one study on the effects of GM food on humans, and YES, it did find negative effects. The problem was that the study was never followed up on
GM Health Risks.

I looked up the actual studies listed in that article and its a perfect example of how facts are often miscontrued and exaggerated for an agenda. Read the actual conclusion of the studies:

For the claims of human gut bacteria transfer:

Study: The transgene did not survive passafe through the intact gastrointestinal tract of human subjects fed GM soya. Three of seven ileostomists showed evidence of low-frequency gene transfer from GM soya to the microflora of the small bowel before their involvement in these experiments. As this low level of epsps in the intestinal microflora did not increase after of the meal containing GM soya, we conclude that gene transfer did not occur during the feeding experiement.

Link to actual study: http://www2.ups.edu/faculty/amadlung...Odigestion.pdf

In regards to the supposedly ill effects on sheep:

Study: This study shows that a diet including insect-resistant Bt176 maize, fed to 53 ewes and their progeny for 3 years, did not have adverse effects on their health or performance and that no horizontal gene transfer to ruminal microorganisms or animal tissues was detected.

Link to actual study: ScienceDirect - Livestock Science : A three-year longitudinal study on the effects of a diet containing genetically modified Bt176 maize on the health status and performance of sheep


I don't have time to look up every single study but I picked the first two whose claims turned to be outright lies and already now I seriously doubt the validity of that website you linked.

Originally Posted by Tsyal Makto

Read some of the links I posted previously. Organics can produce better yields than GM, and even conventional, and are more profitable than conventional and GM.
Bigger yields - Genetically modified crops - Organic Yields Are Better Than Conventional, Including GM Crops

That article does not list its sources and as such I am not able to verify the claims listed. When it does talk about GMO crops, it does not even back its claim that organics are better than GMO. It only vaguely lists a non-cited study claiming that yields from GMOs were variable at times (as with all crops) and construes that to imply that organics are therefore better than GMOs in terms of productivity.

Originally Posted by Tsyal Makto

Bigger profits - Report shows organic better than GM - The Ecologist

The report cited by that article is purposely deceptive about its facts. I checked the first report listed by that article under the section about productivity yields and the study itself suggested that the actual difference in yields were due to the fact that many high yield natural plant varieties had yet to be modified using biotechnology. Most of the GM modification of that particular crop (soybeans) was of low-yield varieties. The report itself is a bit old but in the referenced study, it already mentioned that high-yield varieties were already in production or on the drawing board.

Originally Posted by Tsyal Makto

GM crops not needed to feed the world?

That link doesn't provide any evidence for its claim about GMOs at all. It ignores factors such as distrubtion, regional differences, etc. All it does is say in one sentence that GMOs are uncessary.

If you're arguing that enough food already exists, consider that GMOs are already a part of that solution. The article does not distinguish whether GMOs are included in those figures as they already represent a sizable portion of worldwide food production:


Source: World Resources Institute: June 2008 Monthly Update: Genetically Modified Crops and the Future of World Agriculture | EarthTrends

Not to sound condenscending but please stay away from linking/reading environmentalist agenda articles that could miscontrue facts. Please go to the actual scholarly articles/journals themselves and verify the claims. The articles you have listed are rather dubious. There are a lot of environmentalists who are out there spreading misinformation.

Originally Posted by Tsyal Makto

If organics have the potential to provide what the world needs, why continue to risk security of the food system with GM?

Organics cannot provide all of the benefits that GMOs can. A lot of the problems facing the world food supply are not necessarily giving people enough to eat but giving them the right kinds of nutrition. For example, I find it doubtful that organic farmers could have produced a variant of rice that contains vitamin A. Golden rice as its called is a genetic variant of naturally occuring rice varieties containing vitamin A and other micronutrients. Natural rice contains little to no vitamin A whatsoever. As a result, millions of people across the world suffered from vitamin A deficiency (VAD). In India alone, 2 million lives were estimated to have been lost alone due to VAD in addition to many negative effects such as disabilities resulting from VAD. (Stein 5)

As a result of the introduction of golden rice, as of 2005, an estimated to save up to 1.4 million healthy life years (this includes preventing mortality, disabilities, work hours lost to VAD, etc). (Stein 12)

You can verify my claims in this study by Professor Alexander J. Stein of the University of Hohenheim: https://www.uni-hohenheim.de/uploads/media/GR-suppl.pdf
I listed the page numbers of my claims for your convenience.

One cannot simply just fill that nutritional gap using organics. Rice organic or not organic just lacks adequate amounts of certain vitamins. I will also briefly note that GMOs are not just limited to the food supply many have medical applications.

[Tsyal Makto]

Gotta keep this short, damn you iPhone. >.< This is just a quick response to your post, Baneful. I'll take a closer look at that study tomorrow. Everything here was written by a man with tired eyes and a pounding headache.

On GM health effects - The first two tests might not have led to long-term effects, but the others listed on the page appear to be quite on the money. There is quite a difference between tracing food material in the digestive system vs allergic effects, which are the bigger concern. I did a little bit more digging on the incident of Indian cotton workers developing allergies after exposure to bt cotton, and found this article which discusses other instances of possible negative health effects caused by GM. And yes, it has citations. He mentions the human transgene transfer study, but just look beyond it.

GEN | Magazine Articles: POINT OF VIEW: Genetically Modified Foods Unsafe? Evidence that Links GM Foods to Allergic Responses Mounts

I also ran across a study that did find liver and kidney dysfunction in mice and rats fed bt maize in in vivo studies.

Liver parameters

For one of the longest independent tests performed, a GM herbicide-tolerant soybean available on the market was used to feed mice. It caused the development of irregular hepatocyte nuclei, more nuclear pores, numerous small fibrillar centers, and abundant dense fibrillar components, indicating increased metabolic rates [17]. It was hypothesized that the herbicide residues could be responsible for that because this particular GM plant can absorb the chemicals to which it was rendered tolerant. Such chemicals may be involved in the above-mentioned pathological features. This became even clearer when Roundup residues provoked similar features in rat hepatic cells directly in vitro [18]. The reversibility observed in some instances for these parameters in vivo [19] might be explained by the heterogeneity of the herbicide residues in the feed [20]. Anyway, these are specific parameters of ultrastructural dysfunction, and the relevance is clear. The liver is reacting. The Roundup residues have been also shown to be toxic for human placental, embryonic, and umbilical cord cells [21-23]. This was also the case for hepatic human cell lines in a comparable manner, inducing nuclei and membrane changes, apoptosis and necrosis [24].

The other major GMO trait has to do with the mutated (mBt) insecticidal peptidic toxins produced by transgenes in plants. In this case, some studies with maize confirmed histopathological changes in the liver and the kidneys of rats after GM feed consumption. Such changes consist in congestion, cell nucleus border changes, and severe granular degeneration in the liver [16]. Similarly, in the MON810 studies, a significantly lower albumin/globulin ratio indicated a change in hepatic metabolism of 33% of GM-fed male rats (according to EFSA opinion on MON810 and [5]). Taken together, the results indicate potential adverse effects in hepatic metabolism. The insecticide produced by MON810 could also induce liver reactions, like many other pesticides. Of course, the mCry1Ab and other mBt (mutated Bt toxins derived from native Bacillus thuringiensis toxins) in GMOs are proteic toxins; however, these are modified at the level of their amino acid sequence by biotechnologies and introduced by artificial vectors, thus these could be considered as xenobiotics (i.e., a molecule foreign to life). The liver together with the kidneys are the major reactive organs in case of food chronic intoxication.

Kidney parameters

In the NK603 study, statistically significant strong urine ionic disturbances and kidney markers could be explained by renal leakage [5], which is well correlated with the effects of glyphosate-based herbicides (like Roundup) observed on embryonic kidney cells [23]. This does not exclude metabolic effects indirectly due to insertional mutagenesis linked to the plant transformation. Roundup adjuvants even stabilize glyphosate and allow its penetration into cells, which in turn inhibit estrogen synthesis as a side effect, cytochrome P450 aromatase inhibition [21]. This phenomenon changes the androgen/estrogen ratio and may at least, in part, explain differential impacts in both sexes.

Kidney dysfunctions are observed with mBt maize producing mutated insecticides such as in MON863. For instance, we quote the initial EFSA report: "Individual kidney weights of male rats fed with the 33% MON863 diet were statistically significantly lower compared to those of animals on control diets", "small increases in the incidences of focal inflammation and tubular regenerative changes in the kidneys of 33% MON863 males." This was confirmed by the company tests [25] and another counter analysis revealed disrupted biochemical markers typical of kidney filtration or function problems [2]. The first effects were not always but sometimes greater than the ones with non-isogenic maize (called reference lines), which contain different salts, lipids, or sugars. Moreover, both results described are different between males and females; this is quite usual in liver or kidney pesticide reactions. These facts do not exclude that such effects can be considered as treatment-related. Other studies also confirmed effects on kidneys. Tubular degeneration and not statistically significant enlargement in parietal layer of Bowman's capsules were also observed with GM maize fed rats [16].

Last but not least, a total of around 9% of parameters were disrupted in a meta-analysis (Table 2). This is twice as much as what could be obtained by chance only (generally considered as 5%). Surprisingly, 43.5% of significant different parameters were concentrated in male kidneys for all commercialized GMOs, even if only around 25% of the total parameters measured were kidney-related. If the differences had been distributed by chance in the organs, not significantly more than 25% differences would have been found in the kidney. Even if our own counter analysis is removed from the calculation, showing numerous kidney dysfunctions [2], around 32% of disturbances are still noticed in kidneys.

Study: http://www.enveurope.com/content/23/1/10

Explained in layman's terms by the IRT: http://www.responsibletechnology.org/blog/1340

And on the topic of misconstruing data, the GM industry can be equally as guilty of this, to advance their own agenda as well. Monsanto has already been caught doing this regarding dioxin (Agent Orange), which, as I said before, sets a nasty precedent for how they handle GMO food. Again, I ask you to watch "The World According to Monsanto" as a follow-up to Food Inc to get a better understanding of them as a company. The profit motive can lead people to do horrible things.

As put by the above study:

For instance in the latter case, it was observed that none of the industry-funded studies showed adverse effects of Bisphenol A, whereas 90% of government-funded studies showed hazards at various levels and various doses [8].

As for GM already being a large part of the food supply, the argument that there will be enough organic food to feed the world is simply the next logical extension of the idea of similar yields to conventional and GM crops. If organics perform just as well as GM and conventional in yields, then organics should be able to fill that GM sector in a world fed on organics.

And tbh I think I shot myself in the foot by linking regular articles rather than more studies (woopsie me). Here, I think I should have posted this much earlier. No, it's not from an environmentalism site, it's from UC Berkley. It's mostly about conventional vs organic, but it does a fair bit of touching on GM as well. Probably a better source, no?

Organic Farming can Feed The World!

As for Golden Rice, I'm in the boat that feels it is the wrong solution to the problem of VAD. Yes, rice is relatively low in provitamin A (what it does have is stored in the husk of the rice) but there are other non-GMO solutions, such as encouraging programs that grow supplementary foods that are naturally rich in vitamin A in these rice-based cultures, such as sweet potato, fruits, and leafy greens, all of which have had many non-GMO breakthroughs recently. In other words, following the Stein report, dietary diversification and behavioral changes.

Non-GM breakthroughs

(Yes, I know, it is a biased source, but this page is pretty much just an article index, pretty benign)

Btw, how was Food Inc?

[ahoragi]

I didn't read through the entire thread but I don't see how anyone can support genetically modified food. it's not natural. It's as simple as that. Who cares if it can do this or that, or improve this or that, it's simply not what mother nature provided for us to survive on. We have evolved into a species that has forgotten it's roots of survival, which means surviving off the land and what nature provides for us, not modifying nature to support us. We are supposed to one with nature, not nature be one of us.

[Isard]

Originally Posted by ahoragi

I didn't read through the entire thread but I don't see how anyone can support genetically modified food. it's not natural. It's as simple as that. Who cares if it can do this or that, or improve this or that, it's simply not what mother nature provided for us to survive on. We have evolved into a species that has forgotten it's roots of survival, which means surviving off the land and what nature provides for us, not modifying nature to support us. We are supposed to one with nature, not nature be one of us.

The internet isn't natural either, yet here you are.

[Moco Loco]

Originally Posted by Isard

The internet isn't natural either, yet here you are.

It's true, Monsanto are bullies, but I don't think that's enough of a reason to discount GM stuff alone. We can't really know if they are significantly harmful until they are labeled for sure. Even if only a test population was labeled, if it would be enough to experiment with, we could possibly know for sure. That is, unless thug Monsanto purposely did different things with the populations they were labeling to throw the results **** it.
Monsanto should be indicted for crimes against science, IMO. If only there were such a charge.

[Isard]

Originally Posted by Moco Loco

It's true, Monsanto are bullies, but I don't think that's enough of a reason to discount GM stuff alone. We can't really know if they are significantly harmful until they are labeled for sure. Even if only a test population was labeled, if it would be enough to experiment with, we could possibly know for sure. That is, unless thug Monsanto purposely did different things with the populations they were labeling to throw the results **** it.
Monsanto should be indicted for crimes against science, IMO. If only there were such a charge.

Exactly. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Just because somebody abuses it doesn't mean its inherently evil.

[Tsyal Makto]

Originally Posted by Moco Loco

It's true, Monsanto are bullies, but I don't think that's enough of a reason to discount GM stuff alone. We can't really know if they are significantly harmful until they are labeled for sure. Even if only a test population was labeled, if it would be enough to experiment with, we could possibly know for sure. That is, unless thug Monsanto purposely did different things with the populations they were labeling to throw the results **** it.
Monsanto should be indicted for crimes against science, IMO. If only there were such a charge.

Good luck. A snowball has a better chance in hell than Monsanto allowing GM labelling. Makes one wonder, though, doesn't it? What could they be hiding? If the industry is so sure of it's products, why does it not want them recognized by the consumer?

But then again, they're based in a country with the best government money can buy. Go figure.

[ahoragi]

Originally Posted by Isard

The internet isn't natural either, yet here you are.

You have a point there but we're speaking of stuff we put in our bodies. We are what we eat. We should be eating what's grown naturally. I have recently switched to 100% organic diet and the way I feel and function these days is amazing compared to when I was eating all this junk genetically modified foods. My weight even dropped from 193 to 180 without the assistance of exercise. It's amazing what eating natural food does.
It's a bit more $$ but the results are worth it.


I will never go back to that stuff.