Monsanto

[kellyb]

What I was really getting at, though, is that in the discussions here, I'm seeing frequent instances of an argument from authority in the form of what might be called the "appeal to FDA approval fallacy". It's proably worth at least mentioning that the current Deputy Commissioner for Foods at the FDA, Michael Taylor, was formerly Monsanto's Vice President for Public Policy.

I'm also not seeing a lot of differentiation between the economic imperatives of various countries and their economic geostrategic plans and economic unions and the differences in "safety" approvals by different regulatory authorities.

My gut feeling is that Monsanto's GMO crops are probably pretty safe. There's a lack of scientific evidence demonstrating this, but my "intuitive guess" is that some country somewhere would have been able to make a really stellar case against Monsanto's GMOs regarding safety if there were any big, negative effects out there. Especially for countries and trade unions, etc that have an economic interest in keeping Monsanto out or in the fringes.

If you look at BGHs instead of GMO crops, you can pretty easily find gov position papers from across the globe justifying (with compelling evidence) their non-approval outside of the US. I haven't been able to locate much beyond stuff like "might harm bees, maybe" to justify safety-related non-approvals for crops. Maybe that's because there is no significant harm, or maybe it's just harder to test for harm? I really don't know. (Or maybe there are safety issues being referenced out there and my google-fu just sucks?)

 

[Segnosaur]

I kinda get a chuckle out of this. You start by saying, "No, I never said [that the whole idea of labeling products "GMO-free" is a nonstarter because there is no practical way of containing GMO strains once they have been introduced or to differentiate between GMO and non-GMO] -- and then you proceed with arguments intended to show, once again, just how impractical it would be to try to do that.

You really don't seem to be too keen on the whole "understanding" thing, do you ...

There is a difference between "OMG! GM seeds will contaminate each and every farm in the world and there will be no place on the planet where GM contamination doesn't happen" (an alarmist view, which I assumed you were taking earlier), and "A farmer had GM seeds blown across the road to his neighbor's fields" (a situation that would actually need to be dealt with if you really wanted to label crops as "GMO-free".)

 

[Segnosaur]

...I'm seeing frequent instances of an argument from authority in the form of what might be called the "appeal to FDA approval fallacy".

First of all...."argument from authority" is only a problem if the person or organization you are referring to is not an expert in the field (E.g. listening to Steven Jones, who might have been an expert in fusion, on the collapse of the world trade center, an area outside his field of study), or if the person/organization holds views that differ from the consensus (e.g. listening to Wakefield on vaccines.)

And remember.... its not just the FDA which is involved in saying these foods are safe. The U.S. government is not the only group doing research into GMO foods... many companies and university scientists, in many countries in the world, are likewise doing research.

It's proably worth at least mentioning that the current Deputy Commissioner for Foods at the FDA, Michael Taylor, was formerly Monsanto's Vice President for Public Policy.

Errr... not really.

Has Taylor somehow gone and actually eliminated all research into GMO safety world wide? Has he ordered drone strikes on Canadian and European researchers?

The FDA isn't the only party involved. If there were widespread studies that showed harm with GMO in peer reviewed journals, and the government still allowed them to be used, then perhaps it would be relevant.

 

[kellyb]

And remember.... its not just the FDA which is involved in saying these foods are safe. The U.S. government is not the only group doing research into GMO foods... many companies and university scientists, in many countries in the world, are likewise doing research.

Right:


http://ec.europa.eu/food/food/biotechnology/gmo_ban_cultivation_en.htm

A number of Member States have invoked a so-called 'safeguard clause' (Art. 23 Dir. 2001/18/EC). According to this clause, Member States may provisionally restrict or prohibit the use and/or sale of the GM product on its territory. However, the Member State must have justifiable reasons to consider that the GMO in question poses a risk to human health or the environment.
Six Member States currently apply safeguard clauses on GMO events: Austria, France, Greece, Hungary, Germany and Luxembourg.

Maybe France and Germany are woo countries. I dunno.

Have you looked over their "justifiable reasons to consider that the GMO in question poses a risk to human health or the environment"?

 

[Dymanic]

You are joking right?

Mostly.

 

[Segnosaur]

Right:

http://ec.europa.eu/food/food/biotechnology/gmo_ban_cultivation_en.htm

Six Member States currently apply safeguard clauses on GMO events: Austria, France, Greece, Hungary, Germany and Luxembourg.

Maybe France and Germany are woo countries. I dunno.

Have you looked over their "justifiable reasons to consider that the GMO in question poses a risk to human health or the environment"?

Since I'm not from Europe, I'm not familiar with their arguments restricting GMO in those countries.

However, a quick search on Wikipedia found this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_genetically_modified_organisms_in_the_European_Union

...Senator Jean-François Le Grand, chairman of a committee set up to evaluate biotechnology, said there were "serious doubts" about the safety of the product.[11] Twelve scientists and two economists on the committee accused Le Grand of misrepresenting the report...

So, it sounds like a case of a politician quote-mining a report which states one thing and taking it to mean something else. It certainly wouldn't be the first time that a government made decisions based on an inaccurate analysis of existing data. (See Bush, G.W.)

Furthermore, French courts have ruled that the ban was illegal. From: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/28/us-france-gmo-idUSTRE7AR19H20111128
France's highest court on Monday overturned France's ban on growing a strain of genetically modified maize (corn) developed by U.S. biotech firm Monsanto, saying it was not sufficiently justified. The decision follows a ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in early September saying France had based its decision to impose a moratorium on the growing of Monsanto's insect-resistant MON810 maize on the wrong EU legislation.

I'm not sure of the other countries listed, but I suspect they follow the same pattern.

Now, I'm not sure whether that makes the government of France and the other banning countries 'woo' or not. Its possible they're just listening to a rather vocal segment of the population who hold anti-science views. Or perhaps their actions were based in part on nationalism (i.e. don't let the "evil" American company Monsanto profit from us.)

 

[ThunderChunky]

A point I believe I already mentioned is that goats are notorious escape artists -- and I think we've just decided that once a genetically modified organism is released into the environment, there is no way of guaranteeing... well, much of anything, really. But I mainly brought up the spider goats as a sort of touchstone; a benchmark for the "ick" factor.

So your proposal to to never genetically engineer any goat ever or only if it's "icky"?

 

[Dymanic]

My gut feeling is that Monsanto's GMO crops are probably pretty safe.

Mine too. A lot of what I'm exploring here has to do with the limitations of trying to apply our present system for evaluating and regulating "food safety" to the new phenomenon known as the "genetically modified organism". It seems to me that our ability to create these new organisms has outstripped our ability to calculate the possible effects. We never were all that good at calculating long term effects anyway.

 

[kellyb]

Well, that's a lot of assumption, Seg, and I noticed that you don't even consider it possible that the ban justifications were even potentially scientifically valid.

I also don't see you differentiating between strategic economic protectionism based motivations and animal instinct-type "nationalism."

 

[Dymanic]

So your proposal to to never genetically engineer any goat ever?

My proposal was to begin with taking a look at "spider goats", paying particular attention to how you feel about that; to ask yourself whether it crosses your personal "ick" threshold; and to proceed from there to considering whether that counts for anything.

 

[kellyb]

Mine too. A lot of what I'm exploring here has to do with the limitations of trying to apply our present system for evaluating and regulating "food safety" to the new phenomenon known as the "genetically modified organism". It seems to me that our ability to create these new organisms has outstripped our ability to calculate the possible effects. We never were all that good at calculating long term effects anyway.

Apparently more or less the entire rest of the world is also trying to figure out how to explore it, too.

I'm also personally intrigued by the various economic incentives at play from numerous sides and how that might influence the science coming from various sources, the interpretations of the evidence and lack of evidence, regulatory assumptions, media representations, political objectives, etc.

It's really a big, big issue, and can't really be boiled (with any factual integrity) down into digestible talking points, IMO.

 

[Segnosaur]

Well, that's a lot of assumption, Seg, and I noticed that you don't even consider it possible that the ban justifications were even potentially scientifically valid.

Ok, is it possible? Maybe. But unlikely for a number of reasons:

- The courts in those countries, plus the E.U. itself, didn't think there was significant evidence of problems. (Maybe the courts made a mistake... however, given the fact that scientists themselves claimed that their work was 'misused' in justifying the ban makes me fall on the side of the ban being unjustified.)

- If there were valid justifications of the ban, why have we not seen them? Given that there have been a few anti-Monsanto people on this forum, why have none of them pointed to studies to prove their point? Instead, we just get Muldur quoting Mercola and Childlike Emperess asking us to "watch an interview". (Granted, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but you'd figure the anti-GM folks would be all over a study which proves their point. We're not seeing that.)

Gotta go with Occam's razor on this.

I also don't see you differentiating between strategic economic protectionism based motivations and animal instinct-type "nationalism."

I used my 'nationalism' example (i.e. don't let an "american" company profit) as only one example of how a decision regarding GMO could be made for reasons other than scientific merit. I never claimed it was a correct explanation, or even the only alternative.

Your argument that perhaps its "strategic economic protectionism" doesn't really make much difference. Even if it was "protectionism", that still means that the decision was made for non-scientific reasons.

 

[Dymanic]

First of all...."argument from authority" is only a problem if [...bla bla bla]

Yes, I'm well aware of the reasons why not every instance of "argument from authority" is a logical fallacy. Look again and you may see how I pointed to a specific instance, and provided arguments to support my contention that treating FDA approval as THE definitive test for safety is a flawed approach.

The FDA isn't the only party involved.

Better. Please understand that I do not regard consumption of GMO foods as posing a healt risk to humans (and even if I did, I would be willing to weigh those risks against the risks of, say, starvation); nor am I opposed to the idea of genetic modification in general. What bothers me is... expressible in rather simple terms: There's some stuff going on that's just plain creepy, and I'm not sure who (if anybody) is running the show.

 

[kellyb]

- The courts in those countries, plus the E.U. itself, didn't think there was significant evidence of problems.

...in select cases. There are only 2 GM crops allowed to be grown in the EU, tho.

- If there were valid justifications of the ban, why have we not seen them? Given that there have been a few anti-Monsanto people on this forum, why have none of them pointed to studies to prove their point?

Maybe because we don't have any ag biotech scientists (or even "self-taught experts") on the forum, and even self-identified skeptics tend to want to boil complex issues down into simplistic "good vs evil" narratives and are affected by cognitive biases.

Your argument that perhaps its "strategic economic protectionism" doesn't really make much difference. Even if it was "protectionism", that still means that the decision was made for non-scientific reasons.

Not completely. Economic biases can influence assumptions about unknowns and how evidence is evaluated. Sometimes there is more than one legitimate way of looking at an unknown.

 

[kellyb]

What bothers me is... expressible in rather simple terms: There's some stuff going on that's just plain creepy, and I'm not sure who (if anybody) is running the show.

That's an interesting way of looking at it.

Another way of looking at it is...what are the chances of something going horribly, catastrophically, zombie-apocalypse-style wrong?

How much paranoia is justified if it's, say, a .001% probability?

 

[Childlike Empress]

Maybe France and Germany are woo countries. I dunno.

The best selling German beer brand just went ahead very recently, painted their crown caps green and put a EU-certificated "GMO-free" label on it. Read up here if you can.

Rest assured that the fraction of the German population which holds "anti-science" views is MUCH smaller than the fraction of the US population which does so. But maybe certain people will grant us the amusement to watch such an argument tried.

 

[pipelineaudio]

Susheel, we need you in Hawaii, BAD to counteract this vandana shiva nut running around here

 

[Susheel]

Susheel, we need you in Hawaii, BAD to counteract this vandana shiva nut running around here

Debate her, she just cant manage debates. In fact she tries her best to avoid it, essentially preaching to a choir. She usually has a lackey Mahender Sharma doing that for her or her adoring fans shout you down.

 

[Susheel]

The best selling German beer brand just went ahead very recently, painted their crown caps green and put a EU-certificated "GMO-free" label on it. Read up here if you can.

Rest assured that the fraction of the German population which holds "anti-science" views is MUCH smaller than the fraction of the US population which does so. But maybe certain people will grant us the amusement to watch such an argument tried.

So labeling a product as GMO free is an option. I dont see why beneficial GM crops cannot exist along with GM free crops. Let the public make the choice. Technologies that allow for lower pesticide/fungicide usage, drought resistance, salt resistance maybe bio-fortification are definitely a move in the right direction in this day and age.

 

[Ferguson]

Maybe France and Germany are woo countries. I dunno.

The US banned thimerosal. Luckily politicians always base laws on science .