http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2013/09/06/scientific-american-comes-out-in-favor-of-gmos/ "In the September 6 issue of Scientific American, the magazine’s editors pen a piece explicitly supporting GMOs and opposing GMO labeling. I applaud the editors for taking an official position on a topic that still sparks intense debate. Both the wording and content of the editorial reflect an adherence to what is called “good scientific practice”; trusting the scientific evidence as far as it takes us, leaving room for uncertainty and making a judgement call based on imperfect but still sound evidence. The editors start by reminding us that we have been consuming genetically modified foods for 20 years without much trouble, a point worth belaboring only because it keeps getting conveniently ignored in many debates on the topic...." I might rethink my opposition to GMO's. :read2:
Its highly debateable Hank. For them to say theres been GMO for 20years "without much trouble" is misleading. Cancer rates,obesity rates,heart disease has all risen and its suspected to be due to the amount of GMO in our foods thats contributed to this. The fact science is telling people to TRUST this shit without actually doing intensive and thorough tests is astounding. You trust science too much,almost in a quasi religious way. In that article their saying theres not evidence FOR GMO causing harm...but theres also not evidence to say it doesnt cause harm. I thought science was meant to properly and stringently test,test and test again before they conclude their findings? To tell someone something based on hunches and probability doesnt seem right to me.When a big pharm company needs to sell toothpaste what do they do?They get the British Medical Association or whoever to endorse them in some fashion. Thats all thats being done here with the GMO guys using science to endorse them. The fact science will endorse these guys without stringent tests to authenticate what their "advice" beggars belief. Its almost like "hey man,if science says its ok then it MUST be ok". Imagine if the pope came out tomorrow and said "hey,God told me the GMOs are ok and that they dont cause "much trouble". You'd be up in arms man,but if science says its ok your down for whatever. Personally speaking i dont trust GMOs and i certainly dont like the way they can insert markers and shit in our food chain nowadays either.The fact they are advocating NOT labelling GMOs also astounds me,we have a LEGAL right to know whats in our food,they say it creates panic but WHY would it create panic if its been rigorously tested and is all above board? I smell a rat here. Something tells me these guys get LOTS of funding from the GMO dudes:!!! Science is cool,but how can science advocate something without the scientific research to back it up?? Doesnt make sense and they dont have research to back up their claims.They have barely scratched the surface. Your a "science botherer Hank".:icon_biggrin:
And thats why all food needs labelled properly. Tescos were selling us horse meat instead of pork for God knows how long and it only came to light via independant DNA testing. Horse wasnt all they found. GMOs i dont trust. You look at mad cow disease and all this shit. Its mostly always caused by shit in the food chain. Your not telling me that Obesity has went through the roof in past 20 years along with tumors,cancer,heart disease and all the rest... and that its got NOTHING to do with GMO in the foodchain? Cos i could dig up a shit load of data that says otherwise... if i could be arsed I want my food fresh and natural the same as my weed. Dont want GMO nuthing. Want my food fresh and natural the way God intended it,not altered and marked with genes and unlabelled the way science is advocating it:bduh: If religion came out tomorrow and said its God approved then id be looking behind religions back to see what paymasters are pulling their strings:bongin:
Seriously though, I see it like this. I do not like GMO's. I disagree professionally with the opinion suggested in the article that selective breeding is the same as a GMO Selective breeding is not the same as introducing genes, or splicing genes to get a desired effect. Selectively breed plants have desirable genes in them already and thus are used as parents. GMO's introduce outside genes to get a desired effect. My biggest complaint about GMO's is the fact that no one is sure what genes are turned off or on during this process. You may get a desired trait, but at what cost? I am well versed in GMOs and understand for the need, but at the same time (rice is a great example) selective breeding can achieve the desired effect without messing with nature and introducing animal genes into plants, etc....GMO's can produce results in a fraction of the time and a fraction of the cost. Given the amount of people in the world today, selective breeding alone cannot support the population. Nor can introductions of new farming techs. There is a market and also a need for GMO's but I strongly...STRONGLY feel that they should be labeled as such so an informed consumer can make his/her own choice. We already have labeling laws in effect for produce (sku code tells you how it was grown), and feel that this law should apply to all foods, across the board. The Devil is in the detail though as legal standards haven't been agreed upon. Even with Organic products, trust me when I say, you have never eaten an organic product unless you have grown it yourself. Labeling laws apply to organics but are so easyily circumvented they might as well not even exist. But given that I am an American, I do believe in market driving pricing (to some extent) and think that the consumer should be allowed to make an informed decision on what they are introducing to their families at the dinner table. In all reality though, they are prob no more dangerous than conventionally (chemically grown) foods, but given they haven't had generations of testing, I would prefer to keep it out of my children's bodies
Makes me nervous too. I prefer to grow my own food. When you look at your dinner plate in most Americans' homes the food has traveled on average 1500 miles to get there, and the cost of transport exceeds the value of the food. I don't know much about the OP topic at all and i didnt read the article but I can't believe anyone could argue with a strait face that ingredients shouldn't include GMO. Anyone who argues for less disclosure is highly suspect. Because it will cause panic? He'll if three was anything good for us about GMO you know it would be the next marketing craze, like "organic" is now.
Yeah exactly. If GMOs have been in our food for 20 years then i dont want to hear from science how they aint caused "much harm". I want to know exactly what harm they CAN cause and what harm they MIGHT cause in the coming years. Its like Ecstasy tablets,theirs schools of thoughts on both sides for and against but until the long term effects are properly examined then how can you advocate either way? Best to stick to your own gut instincts. Im not saying ALL GMOs are bad.But how do you seperate the bad from good without stringent testing and much labelling. I'll be really surprised Hank after you have done more research if you actually stick to the same conclusion about them. Man science sure does hold a lot of power nowadays.:5eek:
Labeling laws are tricky, what you have to declare is pretty straight forward. But without saying to much, people are paid to circumvent those requirements. Say you have to declare all process aides to make a food (which is true), but you do not have to declare flavoring aides that are used in process. What's to stop you from introducing a processing aide into the flavor and not declare it? You see where I am going? But i have read up a lot more lately on GMO's. I do not like them and think they are FrankenFoods, but I do see a need for them, or at least research into them as with in a few generations conventional farming will not be able to support the population. Once that happens....well we are all fucked
The whole food industry is unecessarily wasteful and inefficient. Aside from the cost of transporting food from farm to table, most supermarket food is not fresh, inhumanely produced and processed into nutritionally hollow but tasty and variously textured styrofoam, perfect for washing down with soda pop. Food should not be an industry because it ties a fundamental necessity for human existence to money. Just like air or water or land or any other scarce commodities, when it stops being free it becomes a chain to control and exploit, like water rights in southern South America. American corporations are fighting for rights to sell water to municipalities while at the same time governments are writing laws and creating a market and a need where one doesn't actually exist. All to make money. And where does that money come from? The citizens who now have to buy it! Similarly we have created a food system where there really is no need for it because of the abundance of food on the planet. We have the ability and capacity to grow more food more local. Food should be free and shipping done only by necessity not profit to reach urban markets.
:2c:You know what bothers me about the food industry and supermarkets? I buy fruits.LOTS of fruit and LOTS of varieties. For health reasons aswell as my palette . If i wanna buy a punnet of strawberries,some blood red oranges and a few pink lady apples then its costing me over £10 easily. Last friday im walking past a huge trailer with a butcher selling meat on a microphone. Hes trying to sell me TEN SIRLOIN STEAKS FOR A TENNER!!!! How can it be that the cost of growing a fruit is so much more expensive than rearing cattle with all the food and expenditure that entails,then killing the catle and getting cattle to market. How can THAT be so much more cheaper than the cost of fruit. Theres something unbelieveably wrong with the food industry.I watched Food Inc ,Farmageddon and ALL the documentaries on this type of shit. Its just wrong that people trust food,they think "our govt hasnt made it illegal so it must be ok" and they blindly buy and consume this shit thats killing them,literally killing them. Is it ok cos its their fault they havent researched this shit like we have?No,our Govt has MORE of a duty to monitor this situation more closely. :2c:Take a TINY bit of the military budget (1% will do nicely!) and that could create a whole new independent food regulation industry. Its gotta happen cos the recent horse thing in the U let me know,we REALLY dont know shit thats in our food. And in the UK you NEED to label your shit but as nippie said theres so many ways to misrepresent things. I buy some crisps over here,the label tells me how unhealthy they are every 100grams or some shit...why not just tell me how unhealthy the whole bag is cos im eating that whole bag! They say shit is nly got so much sugar but then theres another ingrdiant that chemically turns shit to sugar anyways,its a joke. Fat content...then in small print SATURATED FAT content. Its all misleading as fuck. Frozen foods the worst. How can you buy frozen chicken in breadcrumbs and its gonna have 20 something % chicken? Whats the rest of it? No one knows or no ones telling except in their label jargon. I gotta say only recently have i started paying attention to what the lables on my food say.I follow some food watchdog sites and kep my eye on shit. I remember the days few years back when PEOPLE in the UK were catching MAD COW DISEASE!!! Food is money and we know what money is. Food Industry is ugly just lie banking industry. Artificially over inflated and all. I saw this shit where cows and chickens are caged up on steroids daily,it was like chicken prison or some shit,we EAT this?. People are getting more types of cancer and its "suspected" a lot of this shit is causing it. Iv seen way too many cases to believe its all co-incidental. GMOs is just another example of the food industry but theres a LOT more wrong with it than only GMO's. ..... Kinda got into that a bit more than i expected:tvlaugh: ....but it pisses me off!:bongin:
Seems like according to that article extensive testing has been done. Not 100% conclusive, but the evidence is leaning overwhelmingly towards GMOs being safe. "quasi religious" is some seriously retarded shit to say, btw. :good job:
Yeah,im capable of saying shit like that..:bongin: Hank,if thats the basis for conclusive evidence and rigorously tested then i'll be surprised. If they want people to accept their findings then they NEED to answer specific questions and not just "eh we know its only done a wee bit of harm,not much". "How much?" "Ehh,not much":cya: I wanna see them answer specific questions iv seen raised in some of the documentaries iv been watching. I could point you in the direction of these findings of a different kind. But its kinda "retarded" if you dont look for yourself:icon_biggrin:
What is retarded is comparing religion to science or religious belief to trust in the scientific process. Why would you be surprised? What do you think the basis for conclusive evidence should be? What would satisfy you in that regard? The article said, and I repeated, that it's not 100% conclusive, but the article listed a high number of studies over a long period of time, plus several medical/health organizations have signed off on them. Just out of curiosity, what questions are you talking about that haven't been answered? "Personally speaking i dont trust GMOs" You are just arguing from emotion here, which I think is what most people are doing around this issue. I'm starting to get the feeling that GMOs are just a bogeyman, something that scares people because it is an unknown entity. "If GMOs have been in our food for 20 years then i dont want to hear from science how they aint caused "much harm". I want to know exactly what harm they CAN cause and what harm they MIGHT cause in the coming years." Well, what you want is impossible to provide. How on earth could anyone show what they might do in the future? If they aren't harming anyone now that is called evidence to support the idea that they are harmless. You simply want evidence that supports your feelings. As far as labeling, I think they should be labeled GMO. If non-GMO food costs more and you want to pay that extra bit for your piece of mind, that's up to you.
All im saying is... i hope you check out some of the eye opening documentaries out there on this kinda thing before you chow down wit your family on the recommendation of a little science. Lets be honest man,science makes mistakes all the time but its a self correcting process by its very nature so inevitably they eventually get it right. But at the moment Hank my firm opinion is its way to early for anyone to say "they've got it right,lets give them our ,trust,dollar and health of us and our families". You want that from me then yeah,im gonna be THAT guy that wants a little more reassurance than it dont do harm "Not much". Im not condemning every bit of GMO out there cos change happens and i try not to resist it but not all change is for the good and sometimes it takes YEARS for science to find the data that things are harmful. Look at tobacco and shit like that. We now know its deadly but that shits still legal,still advertised,still profited from. You can scientifically manipulate anything to look good from a certain perspective. Have them answer all the questions from the oter perspective and then they have got a good case. Like you said,its not comparible to religion.The GMO's are there,the health data is there so why cant science rigorously test GMOs properly
TA, you know whats sad....you are bitching about the UK food chain. UK food is the GLOBAL standard. The US is much much much much lax about the shit. You know if a company is half way decent because they use BRC (British Retail Consortium) standards instead of US standards. Even the Fod Mod act passed a couple years is a joke. Until then it was up to the individual company to decide what is safe....serisouly "how big a piece of glass is safe to eat"..."what chemical level is safe to sell in food" etc. But even BRC is a joke, people have no clue how bad the food chain really is. Don't get me started about frozen foods....that shit is just plain nasty
It's the cost of the fuel to get your favorite fruits to you. The meat may travel only a few dozen to a few hundred miles from the field to your plate. The fruit, depending on the type, could travel thousands of miles getting to you. And, mmmmmm blood oranges. Peace....
