GMO foods a good thing or bad?

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by river, Nov 27, 2012.

  1. river

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    17,307
    Genetically modified organisms. , GMO

    Thoughts

    Myself. , it looks like a bad thing
     
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  3. river

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    GMO's, cause sterility, tumors, and organ damage
     
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  5. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    That's an EXTREMELY bold statement! Got anything to back it up with? I certainly doubt it.

    And by the way, don't even bother providing links to obvious crank sites - try and find at least ONE that has some degree of integrity.
     
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  7. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    So does "regular" food.

    We all eat genetically modified food crops. Not a single vegetable you eat, for example, is the "natural" form of the vegetable. Their genomes are all modified. For a long time the only tools we had were selective breeding, radiation induced mutation and hybridization; nowadays we can use more specific genetic engineering mechanisms to modify the organism's genomes in specific ways.

    Any food so modified must be tested (goes for hybridized food as well.) Years ago this testing consisted of "grow a new crop, sell it and see if they get sick." Broccolini is an example; no genetic engineering tricks, just hybridization. Other examples are grapefruit, boysenberries, lemons, oranges, pineapples and cantaloupes. This hybridization doesn't always work out so well; a while back a hybrid form of Bermuda grass started killing cattle when it started producing cyanide.

    Nowadays we are a lot more careful about testing our food, especially GMO's. So I wouldn't worry too much about it, provided the testing is done.
     
  8. kwhilborn Banned Banned

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    2,088
    I myself would shy away from anything engineered to grow faster. I would try items that are simply different, such as seedless watermelons.

    I am not even going to guess about medical possibilities.

    I do wish they would put as much work into saving dna from vanishing species as they do into creating new species, just in case we eventually stop the trend of killing off our surroundings.
     
  9. river

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    17,307
    "provided the testing is done "

    who though is providing " the testing " ?
     
  10. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Depends on the food, the modification, and the marketing.

    The testing is not being done, and the GMOs currently marketed have not been carefully tested - we know this because 1) in such a complex situation there hasn't been enough time (consider the economic structures alone - generations to work out) 2) the situation is pioneering, scientifically, full of unknowns we don't even know how to test 3) we keep getting surprised by stuff that testing would have had to have checked to be "careful", and didn't.

    This Fox News claim is deceptive enough to be called dishonest. Genetically engineered modifications - which include wholesale insertions of large tracts of code brand new to the organism, the phylum, even the planet, and tricked out to abet horizontal mobility - have no track record of experience, no parallel in normal breeding procedures or results, no well-understood parallels in evolutionary history. This is brand new stuff, and not to be dressed up in the costumes of familiar events and procedures.
     
  11. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    10,296
    You're not off the hook. Where is your proof I asked for of the outrageous claims you made???
     
    Last edited: Nov 28, 2012
  12. KilljoyKlown Whatever Valued Senior Member

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    6,493
    I could care less what FOX news claims, but I do know that all wheat and corn have been genetically modified and I eat that stuff every day. Also, it's not that brand new, because it's very big money to produce crops that are disease resistant and more nutritious and can grow in more areas of the world in a broader climate range. It's the way of the world, we need to support ever larger populations and we won't be able to do it with the ordinary crops we started with. If some problems crop up, they can be fixed the same as when problems with original food stuffs happen.
     
  13. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    It's brand new - no one posting here has been eating GMOs for even their whole life, let alone the two or three generations it would take to merely vet the stuff for human consumption, let alone check it out for various ecological and economic effects.

    The Irish potato famine was 20 or 30 years after the vulnerable crop had taken over Irish food acreage and become the staple of the diet of the poor. It very often takes generations for an agricultural shoe to drop. That's why after thousands of years farming, and farmers, have come to be by heritage conservative and cautious.

    Meanwhile: The GMOs you have been eating were not developed to be more nutritious, more disease resistant, or able to grow in more areas of the world, or able to handle a broader climate range - those benefits are still in the future. (Higher yields, which you did not mention, are also prospective only. The current common GMOs are somewhat lower yielding per acre). You have been eating GMOs designed to resist even heavy applications of herbicides, produce their own insecticides within the plant, handle mechanical picking and industrial harvest circumstances, adapt well to heavy applications of fertilizer and irrigation water, be securely patentable and create dependency on agribusiness supply, etc. These are factors which affect corporate profits, and they have come first. The wonders and benefits will come later, some day, maybe.

    As the recent drought in the US showed, for example, the GMOs actually in the fields and farms are less rather than more capable of handling wide variation in climate, growing in a wider variety of circumstances, etc.
     
  14. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

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    3,798
    There is some testing and data that demonstrates that GMO drought resistant corn is not superior to the new hybrids that have been developed by conventional agriculture.

    http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/05/corn-monsanto-idUSL1E8H4JMW20120605

    Enough reading about the unfulfilled promises of genetically modified crops at this link to keep one busy for a while, a long while...

    http://www.nlpwessex.org/docs/gmagric.htm

    New report challenges GM industry myths

    http://www.farming.co.uk/news/article/6711
     
    Last edited: Dec 19, 2012
  15. scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

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    3,798
    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=do-seed-companies-control-gm-crop-research
     
  16. river

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  17. river

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    17,307
  18. river

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    The thing is as well the gut of cattle aren't made to digest corn and/or meal products, hence sickness, hence antibiotics to keep them well because of the ramifications of eating grain

    Their gut is made to digest grass
     
  19. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    Once again your lack of a good education allows you to shoot yourself in the foot.

    In the process of eating grass, cattle often ingest fairly large amounts of grass seed. And guess what? Grass seed is GRAIN!

    And it's not only in the fall because practically all grasses produce seed frequently during their growing season.

    Perhaps you have another of your favorite WOO-WOO sites (the only kind you will believe) that disputes these facts???
     
  20. river

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    17,307
    Oh... What a powerful argument against feeding cattle corn, which they can't digest naturally and hence have to be injected with antibiotics because

    So are so uninformed about the subject its shameful

    And what's worse you believe what you think upon the subject
     
  21. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    10,296
    Nope, it's just that your logic is SO flawed that it's actually STUPID!

    I ran a cow/calf operation as a sideline to my main career for many years. Not ONCE was my heard "injected with antibiotics" and they ate hay AND corn every single winter.

    All you done here is parrot more stupid information that you found on one of your favorite wacky websites.

    What I meant in the prior post is that if YOU were BETTER educated you would would not fall for so much of this garbage and misinformation.
     
  22. river

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    17,307
    So are you saying that corn is a natural feed for cattle to digest? Corn is a crop, and a veg. not a grain
     
  23. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    10,296
    WOW! Just how dense can an individual be???????????? Corn is not a grain!!!!!!!! Sheesh!!! No wonder you fall for all the nonsense you've read!!
     

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