#2 2011-01-29 12:15:17
The other side of the propaganda fight sez:
This was the final step in an extensive environmental review process undertaken by the USDA that took 46 months to complete...Some of the benefits of RRA include a more productive and profitable crop, with RRA users self reporting a $110 per-acre advantage over conventional alfalfa. For many growers RRA also requires less use of crop protection products, providing both financial and environmental benefits.
Please note: I make no claim that the source of the quote above is any less biased than the article linked by Aching Vagina.
I believe I have made this observation before: Unless you currently have wild-harvested seafood in your fridge, every fucking foodstuff in your kitchen is genetically modified. In some cases the tinkering has been going on for a hundred thousand years or more, and in other cases, only a few centuries or decades; but please don't kid yourselves on that score.
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#3 2011-01-29 13:04:52
George Orr wrote:
In some cases the tinkering has been going on for a hundred thousand years or more, and in other cases, only a few centuries or decades; but please don't kid yourselves on that score.
Plant breeding is one thing, genetic manipulation across species quite another. They can not know the consequences until it's too late and then it's, "Sorry but I still own the patent. The antidote will cost more."
We've ceded all control to corporate profit. Plant developers hire accomplished liars to paper over the disasters and are less than credible. Another true confession and more penance for my sins. Paid the rent for a while.
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#4 2011-01-29 13:24:24
Just two weeks ago Obama signed the food safety bill, so now the only people that can afford the new regulations are Monsanto, Conagra, and their ilk. These group's lobbyists, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Kraft Foods, General Mills, and the American Farm Bureau along with other corporate interests paid a lot of money to get these regulations.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php? … &aid=22236
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#5 2011-01-29 14:23:27
George Orr wrote:
The other side of the propaganda fight sez:
This was the final step in an extensive environmental review process undertaken by the USDA that took 46 months to complete...Some of the benefits of RRA include a more productive and profitable crop, with RRA users self reporting a $110 per-acre advantage over conventional alfalfa. For many growers RRA also requires less use of crop protection products, providing both financial and environmental benefits.
Please note: I make no claim that the source of the quote above is any less biased than the article linked by Aching Vagina.
I believe I have made this observation before: Unless you currently have wild-harvested seafood in your fridge, every fucking foodstuff in your kitchen is genetically modified. In some cases the tinkering has been going on for a hundred thousand years or more, and in other cases, only a few centuries or decades; but please don't kid yourselves on that score.
I have no opinion yet on either side of the issue, hence the question I asked at the end. I came across the article while stumbling around the net. I work in the food service industry so I could easily fall on either side of this argument. My business may depend on it. I was more than curious what others on here thought. I am sure I have some food items which are altered by humans, but genetically engineered? Not so much. I avoid both soy and corn for these reasons, just playing it safe. If people are going to start dropping from unknown GE consequences, I would rather watch than be a part of it. Until the science is in, I withhold my decision.
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#6 2011-01-29 16:13:19
The cart before the horse, again, blindly fucking plant pathology before encoding the existing gene pool. Save before compile, right?
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#7 2011-01-29 16:46:46
I would hope that somewhere there is a stock of originals being grown in a sterile environment so that if/when the inevitable occurs, we have something to fall back on. But then the damage is done anyway, so can it be undone by just killing off the new gene pool? As the alfalfa is pollinated by bees AND is a perennial, the answer could be no.
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#8 2011-01-29 18:26:57
Why do GM foods frighten even the most complacent non-activists? I don’t trust corporations as much as the next paranoid person, but synthetic chemicals are more dangerous. Besides, organic apples and pears can be sprayed with antibiotics and still be labeled organic, and a non-GM plant can be grafted to GM rootstock. Labels are just labels.
ALL food items have been altered by humans, and nature does mix genes between organisms, albeit at a slow rate. You have viral and bacterial genes in your genome.
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#9 2011-01-29 18:37:00
Auto-edited on 2020-08-02 to update URLs
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#10 2011-01-29 22:49:03
phoQ wrote:
Why do GM foods frighten even the most complacent non-activists? I don’t trust corporations as much as the next paranoid person, but synthetic chemicals are more dangerous. Besides, organic apples and pears can be sprayed with antibiotics and still be labeled organic, and a non-GM plant can be grafted to GM rootstock. Labels are just labels.
ALL food items have been altered by humans, and nature does mix genes between organisms, albeit at a slow rate. You have viral and bacterial genes in your genome.
Hell, it's mitochondria that allow you to live, and they're essentially symbiotic bacteria that were long ago incorporated in to the genome.
"Roundup-resistant" is a modification that's been around for decades, and it hasn't led to mass poisonings or any of that doom and gloom bullshit the article talks about.
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#11 2011-01-29 23:42:33
The fact would be that after a short time all beef, milk, etc. would have the chance to be contaminated. Not from GE but from the doses of Roundup sprayed over the animals feed. I know we already eat plenty of things which are tainted, but do we need to add more to that list? That is the true question. How many of the cancers today are caused by the chemicals we use to maximize yields? How many tumors become too many? Are growth hormones causing problems in our children as they grow older? I don't live in fear of these things but it never hurts to ask. I do avoid things I know have been sprayed with Roundup. That would be nearly all soy and corn produced. Besides, have you ever seen corn after.........Oh never mind.
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#12 2011-01-29 23:48:02
I like to think that I will still be able to adapt to the current food source.
I've done alright so far.
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#14 2011-01-30 08:22:38
dyph:
Without pesticides and modern farming techniques, we'd probably not be able to feed all the people on the planet, particularly the way they are arranged and distributed right now.
Soooo, without Roundup and GE, which few billiion people are you going to kick off the planet so we have more farm land (needed due to lower yields) and can feed the rest? How will you decide who stays and who goes? How will you implement it?
Humans should have done something about overpopulation and overurbanization a century ago, but they didn't and now we're in a corner.
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#15 2011-01-30 14:58:52
I do not have a hatred for anyone on this planet. It is not my place to choose. However, we have been doing fine without GE foods and I see no reason to change that now, except greed. Not a good reason in my opinion. Yes, we use all those things, and as I said, I understand that. However, I am thinking that lumping something unstoppable in with what has already been done, which can be reversed, may be a problem we are not ready to handle.
At first I didn't think I had an opinion about this, but it seems I do. Greed is not a good enough reason for possibly endangering the entire food chain. We currently pay farmers to NOT produce, so obviously we don't actually have the lack of food required to necessitate endangering everything. This is, once again, about those few who can never be happy with what they have, and nothing more. At some point the people have to wake up and realize our lives, our health, our world, are not in our hands anymore. We let others, namely corporations who's only point is profits, make decisions which affect us all. And we have to make enough noise that someone, somewhere realizes we do matter.
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#16 2011-01-30 15:08:03
Relevant:
It will be functional, natural, designed food. How do you want it to taste? You want a little bit of fat, you want pork, you want lamb? We design exactly what you want. We can design texture.
I believe we can do it without genes. But there is no evidence that if you add genes the quality of food will somehow suffer. Genetically modified food is already normal practice and nobody dies.
Last edited by choad (2011-01-31 08:17:22)
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#17 2011-01-30 15:39:03
The problem with genetically modified food animals and plants is that all kinds of genes are being shuffled around and mixing. That cow which was modified to produce an antibiotic in her milk, her son ended up at the slaughterhouse. Of course the unexplained deaths from anaphylactic shock that occurred at the local steakhouse couldn’t possibly have been from an antibiotic allergy. Nor could the shrimp genes in the farmed salmon have been responsible for the people who suddenly died after eating lox and bagels. Riiiiight!
Last edited by fnord (2011-01-30 19:53:59)
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#18 2011-01-30 18:19:41
It is not genetically modified foods per se. It is the fact that the modifications allow chemicals which would otherwise kill the plant to be used without the same results. Now the food is "edible" but how much poison does it contain? Can your body filter out said poisons? Do these poisons build up to intolerable levels in the kidneys and liver? If you look past what the modifications are actually for, of course you would think everything is just fine.
I am a chef. I cook for many thousands of people each year. If someone were to have a reaction to something I created, can I be held liable if it was actually caused by these chemicals? Do I now need to post notices that I use beef which was fed alfalfa sprayed repeatedly with Roundup?
It's not so simple when you look past the basics.
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#19 2011-01-30 18:22:50
Not to mention the insecticide producing food crops. My favorites are the Monsanto crops that don't produce seeds because poor farmers the world over will be forced to buy seed from Monsanto at inflated prices forever, a close second are the GM crops that do produce seeds so that poor farmers the world over can be sued for patent infringement.
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#20 2011-01-30 19:57:53
doesyourpussyhurt wrote:
I am a chef. I cook for many thousands of people each year.
Do you live in San Francisco? Do you know Taint? Is a love (or sex) connection possible? Stay tuned for answers to these and other burning questions!
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#21 2011-01-30 21:30:43
No. No. and coupled (as Partner seems to be trademarked around here)
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#23 2011-01-31 07:45:03
choad wrote:
Don't have time to search for a hat image. See my post above.
P.S. Why didn't my link embed work?
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#24 2011-01-31 08:16:41
George Orr wrote:
Don't have time to search for a hat image. See my post above.
P.S. Why didn't my link embed work?
Ahh, no. That exceeds the link length limit; a 128 characters, once upon a time but I'll check.
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