GM Crops: Should We Be Scared?

[ysabella]

I tend to hang out on a nutrition forum or two, and I find that there is a lot of fearmongering about genetically modified crops, especially food crops. I have found people assuming that their allergy problems or other ailments were due to GM wheat "secretly in the food supply for years without our consent" and pro-organic people complaining that GM and organic cannot coexist, for example claiming that all Canadian canola plants are now "contaminated" with pollen from GM canola so there can be no more organic canola (organic certifications do not allow GM).
One person is adamant that we don't know what the crops that have bacilllus genes can do, because there have never been crops with non-plant genes in them, therefore she opposes them. The main ones are the Bt crops (mostly cotton, actually), but Bt (a certified organic bacillus-based pesticide) has been dusted on crops for decades, so we've all been exposed to it by now (here's an overview of Bt). She also claims that the only reason the crops are regulated at all is due to protesting by people like herself who oppose the bacillus-gene crops, which I feel I have disproved - GM for plants was invented in 1983 and I have a big regulatory statement from 1986. The bacillus-gene crops didn't come along until the 90s, I think, although I can't find definitive info online about that.

And we are seeing negative consumer reaction to GM. Consumers seem to want to make sure they can choose, GM or non-GM, and keep them strictly segregated. There was a news story a few years ago about StarLink corn - GM corn meant for animal feed and not humans - getting into consumer foods (taco shells); when it aired on TV lots of consumer complaints came in to the FDA, and the FDA and CDC jumped into testing, which was completely inconclusive. The FDA had samples from 10 different complaining consumers - presumably the taco shells left in the box - and testing showed no StarLink corn was in them.

I don't know much about GM, just the Penn&Teller "Eat This!" episode. So I started digging around for data on this stuff - for one thing, there is no GM wheat, so allergenic claims about that are balderdash. There are some GM wheats coming up for approval soon, but there never was one before now, certainly nothing in consumer foods (although the people I'm discussing with are saying "Well, they have to grow test crops somewhere, and that can contaminate crops 20 miles away!). As far as allergens go, it's not as though nobody ever thought of that; lots of specific allergy tests have been done (in one case, soybeans were purposely given a brazil nut gene known to create allergenic proteins and then allergy testing was done - the soybeans did cause allergic reactions, so all the soybeans were destroyed and the useful data remains). New crops have always brought new allergens, so there's no reason to assume GM crops won't (I'm basically paraphrasing from Norman Borlaug there). Most of what is grown now are things like soybeans and canola, used to make oil mostly; oil is usually well filtered, so unless it's pressed a certain way and not filtered, the oil shouldn't have a lot of proteins and such that would cause an allergic reaction.

Overall, I'm not sure much of the fear is based on real information. I saw on the P&T episode that Greenpeace and other activists spread a lot of disinformation, claiming there are animal genes in GM food crops (rat genes in tomatoes, jellyfish genes in potatoes) and claiming there is no testing and no regulation on these crops. Both claims are totally untrue. There were some lab experiments with animal genes but nothing outside the lab.
I can feel some sympathy to someone who is afraid of plant genes crossed with bacillus genes, since that is really being done, and most of us don't understand genes well enough to have a clue for whether that matters. I can feel some sympathy for fears of new allergens in food crops to some extent, as food allergies are pretty scary (like peanut allergies).

However, it is a struggle to try to feed the starving, and GM crops hold great promise in this area. I feel that has to be weighed into the equation as well. I also feel that one has to consider the other methods for creating plant mutations - as that Economist article on wheat pointed out:

In 1956, a sample of a barley variety called Maythorpe was irradiated at Britain's Atomic Energy Research Establishment . The result was a strain with stiffer, shorter straw but the same early harvest and malting qualities, which would eventually reach the market as “Golden Promise”.
Still Pictures

Today scientists use thermal neutrons, X-rays, or ethyl methane sulphonate, a harsh carcinogenic chemical—anything that will damage DNA—to generate mutant cereals. Virtually every variety of wheat and barley you see growing in the field was produced by this kind of “mutation breeding”. No safety tests are done; nobody protests. The irony is that genetic modification (GM) was invented in 1983 as a gentler, safer, more rational and more predictable alternative to mutation breeding—an organic technology, in fact. Instead of random mutations, scientists could now add the traits they wanted.

Naturally I welcome any info on this topic, but I also welcome opinions. Do you find GM foods/crops scary? And how much do you really know about them?
I wouldn't be afraid to eat something with GM food in it, personally. Should I be?

 

[Nick Bogaerts]

I'm of two minds on this topic.

On one hand, I'm quite satisfied that none of the current crops of GMOs planted pose any significant health risk. Furthermore, I acknowledge that GMOs have an important economic value which should not be overlooked. And yes, there is a lot of misinformation being spread by their detractors.

Nonetheless, I am against allowing them to be planted for the time being, and I will continue to oppose it until the agrobuisnesses display the maturity required to deal with problems which might surface.

Genetic manipulation should be regulated in the same fashion drugs are. And unlike their pharmaceutical branches (these are often the same buisnesses), agrobuisness has shown time and again that it will do all it can to subvert safety precautions. These are the people who today, as BASF with Régent TS or Bayer with Gaucho, work as hard as tobbacco majors to hide the ill effects of their prize pesticides.

I believe we have enough safeguards to prevent another Thalidomide. But do we have the safeguards to prevent another Mad Cow disease?

 

[phildonnia]

I was puzzled by the idea of adding bt genes to a plant.
I didn't think BT conferred any immunity to pests upon the plant itself, but rather it infected those pests directly. How would putting BT genes in a plant help?

(anecdote)I used BT one year on a pear tree that was particularly troubled by codling moths. It didn't seem to help much; the whole tree was devastated. The following year I used liberal doses of malathion, and had a nice crop.

 

[Melendwyr]

No more scared than we should be of previously-existing breeding methods.

How scared should we be of previously-existing breeding methods? Very. It's to them that we owe our disease-prone monocultural stocks, which require more fertilizers and pesticides to remain healthy. Also, native plant populations can become contaminated by massive crop farming. AND the original stocks of many of our crops are being driven out of existence by the competition, and plant scientists desparate to maintain biodiversity are having to track down scarser and scarser native plantings of indigenous people.

In short: DOOM.

 

[hodgy]

No more scared than we should be of previously-existing breeding methods.

How scared should we be of previously-existing breeding methods? Very. It's to them that we owe our disease-prone monocultural stocks, which require more fertilizers and pesticides to remain healthy. Also, native plant populations can become contaminated by massive crop farming. AND the original stocks of many of our crops are being driven out of existence by the competition, and plant scientists desparate to maintain biodiversity are having to track down scarser and scarser native plantings of indigenous people.

In short: DOOM.

I agree that there are some respects in which industrialisation of agriculture might be seen to be a bad thing but on the other hand you couldn't feed the world without it. In this sense DOOM is a matter of perspective.

I am selfishly in favour of (and personally promote) organic livestock (I love to roast a well reared piece of pork and I hate the cruelty of factory farming). However - organic oats vs GM oats in my porridge? Its not got the same compelling arguments for me. Furthermore, if I was starving I reckon I'd prefer the higher yield crop.

 

[CurtC]

Like Melendwyr said, GM is less risky that the methods that we had been using to come up with new breeds. I posted a thread about this article in The Economist a few days ago, which makes the point:

Today scientists use thermal neutrons, X-rays, or ethyl methane sulphonate, a harsh carcinogenic chemical—anything that will damage DNA—to generate mutant cereals. Virtually every variety of wheat and barley you see growing in the field was produced by this kind of “mutation breeding”. No safety tests are done; nobody protests. The irony is that genetic modification (GM) was invented in 1983 as a gentler, safer, more rational and more predictable alternative to mutation breeding—an organic technology, in fact. Instead of random mutations, scientists could now add the traits they wanted.

So the people who are anti-GM are being irrational if they eat crops at all that have been developed in the last 75 years.

 

[CplFerro]

GM-anything is not a good idea, simply because it's corporate controlled and largely unregulated. These are the same people who are patenting seeds to prevent farmers from growing new ones, so that they must re-buy seeds each year. How is that "feeding the world"?

GM is not about improving anything. It is about making loads of money for ruthless corporations, as part of the general "free trade" swindle that's been foisted onto the world by the Anglo-American empire and its hangers-on and imitators.

In principle, there's nothing wrong with GM - it's just technology taken to the next level of human ingenuity. But given the current political-economic order, no one should fool themselves that GM is about "feeding the world." Peoples don't starve for lack of food, they starve for lack of proper government to allow wealth (such as food) to be generated and justly distributed.

Anyone genuinely concerned about the hazards of GM should worry more about the political economy, and less about fleeting boycotts and scares.

Cpl Ferro

 

[Jorghnassen]

Should we be scared? No. But I don't think we should be overly excited either... It's not the solution to world hunger (not that GM crops can't help alleviate the problem, and it would be better if more crops were developped in hunger-stricken countries to address location-specific needs, but that's usually not very economically profitable, as developing crops is pricy), because world hunger is not caused simply by a lack of food or lack of the latest developped crop, and it is a complex issue that cannot be solved purely by agricultural means.

For example, the Zambia rejected GM corn issue was much different than what Penn & Teller presented. The corn would not have been used to feed the populace and the decision was not based on fear caused by Greenpeace pressure but by the fact that the European Union would not have bought (as much) poultry or dairy products from animals who had been fed that corn (though I remember reading that if the kernels had been milled prior to donation then there wouldn't have been technical contentions from the EU, go figure).

That being said, if it's tasty and the government says it's fit for consumption, eat as much as you want (and that goes for "organic" produce too).

 

[ysabella]

Actually, most GM crops so far are not about increasing yields. They are about increased resistance to pests, herbicides, or I think drought in some cases, or needing less fertilizer. There are a lot of reasons why these features would help out in, say, Africa.

Cpl Ferro, GM crops are incredibly tested and very, very regulated. In the US they are regulated by the USDA, EPA, and FDA.

To me, GM is kind of like nuclear energy. It has great potential to solve existing problems, but people are afraid of the new problems that could occur.

 

[Euromutt]

GM-anything is not a good idea, simply because it's corporate controlled and largely unregulated.

If that's your argument, you probably shouldn't be using a computer.

 

[CplFerro]

Actually, most GM crops so far are not about increasing yields. They are about increased resistance to pests, herbicides, or I think drought in some cases, or needing less fertilizer. There are a lot of reasons why these features would help out in, say, Africa.

Cpl Ferro, GM crops are incredibly tested and very, very regulated. In the US they are regulated by the USDA, EPA, and FDA.

To me, GM is kind of like nuclear energy. It has great potential to solve existing problems, but people are afraid of the new problems that could occur.

Is that why GM plants are spreading into the wild and into other farmer's fields, so that the corporations can turn around and sue those people? These are people patenting genes in /my/ body, so they can suck me dry for some patented medical treatment? It's all about money, and the government is in bed with these clowns.

Nuclear energy is another case where government mismanagement is used as an excuse to dump what is an invaluable set of technologies. The very mindset that hates the government so much in principle, and hates Western civilisation and the people who built it, helps create a self-fulfilling prophecy of incompetence.

 

[CplFerro]

If that's your argument, you probably shouldn't be using a computer.

And how will unregulated computing poison my food or patent my genes?

 

[hodgy]

GM-anything is not a good idea, simply because it's corporate controlled and largely unregulated. These are the same people who are patenting seeds to prevent farmers from growing new ones, so that they must re-buy seeds each year. How is that "feeding the world"?

Penniless starving people are no market for greedy corporations.

GM is not about improving anything. It is about making loads of money for ruthless corporations,

Altruistic intent does not result in global plenty - capitalistic endeavour does - and provides food to the many. Your ruthless corporations pay the wages that donate to 3rd world charity. If you want to see the alternative take a look at where Russia is today.

as part of the general "free trade" swindle

Can you explain why you think its a 'swindle'?

that's been foisted onto the world by the Anglo-American empire and its hangers-on and imitators.

As far as the Anglo goes we disposed of the vast majority of our Empire over the past 20-50 years. Unfortunately for the residents of some former colonies (Zimbabwe springs to mind) Eurpoean domination turns out to offer a better chance for the survival of your children than does domination by your African tribal neighbours. Ironically, racism is only perceived by the liberal elite as a function of skin colour.

In principle, there's nothing wrong with GM - it's just technology taken to the next level of human ingenuity.

We have some common gound here

But given the current political-economic order, no one should fool themselves that GM is about "feeding the world." Peoples don't starve for lack of food, they starve for lack of proper government to allow wealth (such as food) to be generated and justly distributed.

I sort-of agree but given your previous analysis I worry about your political conclusions.

 

[Soapy Sam]

If that's your argument, you probably shouldn't be using a computer.- Euromutt.

Invalid analogy, EM. Computers don't actually reproduce.

I'm intrigued by the science of GM, but concerned by the politics and economics. This seems very common across a surprisingly broad range of politoical / ecological points of view.

 

[Melendwyr]

Invalid analogy, EM. Computers don't actually reproduce.

Sure they do. Humans are just a computer's way of making more computers.

 

[Manny]

Yes. We should be scared. As we're learing in this thread, GM crops is woo for liberals. The science of it is well established, the benefits clear, the alleged risks overstated or made up from whole cloth. But many people who side with science and common sense on most issues hate GM crops because it is corporations doing it for money instead of university scientists doing it for, well, money and fame. We should be scared that millions or tens of millions or even hundreds of millions will die and billions left needlessly in poverty because of fear of GM crops.

 

[delphi_ote]

I believe both sides of this issue were summed up nicely in this book review:

Denial worked fine for 10,000 years, but will not cut it in the era of
GM, globalization and rapidly expanding human populations.
Breeders, agronomists and agribusiness need to stop thinking as
though the impacts of gene flow in agriculture are restricted to seed
production fields. Activists need to start being honest with the public;
genetic pollution is not new, nor unique to GM crops. Much as
Rachel Carson did for pesticides four decades earlier, Ellstrand’s
book serves notice that society will need to come to terms with the
genetic promiscuity of agriculture. We may someday look back and
find that it was GM that shined light on the gene flow problem such
that we could no longer ignore it, but that it also gave us the knowledge
and tools to manage it.

http://zircote.forestry.oregonstate...ook-review-Nat-Biotech-Jan2004-nbt0104-29.pdf

I worked very closely with Dr. DiFazio for a year and know Dr. Strauss. Both are dead honest and very intelligent scientists and are expert in this area. There is reason for concern, but not paranoia. GM is not evil. It is not unregulated. It is a science with the potential to improve the standard of living of the entire world. As with nuclear technology, we just have to be careful with it.

 

[delphi_ote]

And how will unregulated computing poison my food or patent my genes?

Personally, I don't feel you should be using a computer, because a wealth of information is available to you which you have chosen to ignore. GM crops are poisoning your food? GM Crops are unregulated? Your computer would be better off used as a door stop than for spouting such hysteria.

You need to get a grip on reality. It's exactly that type of knee jerk reaction that's put the green movement so far behind. People will only listen to "the sky is falling" for so long. There are plenty of safe and legitimate uses for genetic modification. It just has to be regulated intelligently. Let's listen to the science to find out how to do that.

By the way,

http://www.whybiotech.com/index.asp?id=3947

It says something when you're slower to adopt new technology than the Amish.

 

[Nick Bogaerts]

We should be scared that millions or tens of millions or even hundreds of millions will die and billions left needlessly in poverty because of fear of GM crops.

Increased crop yields will not reduce starvation. Only contraception will do that. Don't forget Malthus.

 

[Mongrel]

Is that why GM plants are spreading into the wild and into other farmer's fields, so that the corporations can turn around and sue those people?

This case?