GMOs = The Smart Future of Food

Thanks for the info. I can't really find anything to disagree with.Regarding that meme you linked to, you can right-click in Chrome to get the direct image url (either copied or opened in a new tab)

Okay, I think we are making some progress here. I have agreed that the industry has been heavy handed, although I do think that this is an issue with how the laws we currently have did not anticipate this technology as far as patents were concerned. I think that patent reform for living organisms can reduce the ability of the company to use its heavy handed responses in similar ways.Voluntary labeling is the only reasonable solution that can be found between the two, but I do understand some of the apprehension that the industry has in allowing it to occur also. With the consistent tactics of individuals to discredit GMOs not based on science, but on emotion, it is likely that people would turn toward labels saying Non-GMO not based on logic and good science, but based on fear of the unknown. Whether this is a reason to completely fight the voluntary process is not as clear cut to me, but I can see the issue they have with the current media attack on the products.I will agree that it was the refusal to allow the voluntary GMO-Free or All-Natural labels that has forced the organic crowd to demand that GMOs be labeled instead. Again, I get Monsanto and Co.'s reasoning (not that I agree with it completely), but they perhaps fought too long and have brought this new issue onto the scene. Voluntary would not force the enormous infrastructure overhaul that a mandatory would entail, so could actually be implemented on a company by company basis.

Let me know when you decide to favor the first amendment We aren't yelling "movie" in a crowded firehouse here. Promoting GMO using public speech is exactly the way you are supposed to counter people promoting their own no-GMO food. I get it too. And their reasoning is all in Monsanto and Co.s interests as it should be. Maybe it will be in yours to, by some lucky accident.

The point to regulating is to verify that the claim is true. The FDA is not going to allow unverified claims of being GMO-free. What you are willing to allow is not compatible with our current food labeling scheme.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Yeah, I think I can agree that sucrose is sucrose. I don't see any nutritional issue with not labeling sucrose as GMO although my guess is that some might.On the other hand, blood diamonds are just as shiny as any other diamonds too.

I am for the voluntary labeling myself, and suprisingly I thought people being banned from labeling foods GMO Free sounded fishy, but even more surprisingly I was correct. Both the FDA and USDA have guidelines for voluntary labeling of genetically modified foods. The USDA was the last of the two to add it in 2013. The FDA had voluntary regulations involved in their process in 1992. So, Monsanto is a terrible puppet master, we have learned that... Source: FDA GMO Voluntary labeling guidelinesSource: USDA Appproves GMO Free labeling from third partyI think I have begun to hear more about it because of the fervor that is going against it. Personally, I cannot go one day on my facebook feed without witnessing someone posting something about oil pulling (which any abrasive force on teeth prior to brushing would benefit the brushing process), anti-vaccination(fucking idiots), anti-GMO, or some other new scientific cover-up. If I trusted American opinions on science I would think that scientists are all a bunch of shady, back alley deal makers who are only trying to get rich. The increase in pseudoscience I believe has made the scientists want to use social media to come forward and defend their work. And I believe that this will continue to grow and start to counter some of the misinformation. I have had the pleasure of discussing some of this stuff with researchers that work for Monsanto, with farmers who plant organic and/or conventional, and other biotech researchers(I was lucky to come across a group online, similar to how I found this place). And they are happy to share what they know about it, which I think is a first step in the right direction. Monsanto has obviously lost its lobby to stop the USDA from allowing GMO Free labels, so that is no longer an issue. Now, people can know what they are eating and the labeling issue should stop there. But as we see in Vermont, it is not stopping there....Vermont just passed mandatory labeling laws requiring products to have a label if they have GMOs. Are some companies going to altogether stop shipping to Vermont because the increase in overhead will outstrip any profit gains from Vermont? Voluntary label to your heart's content, but as we see it has not been about voluntary since 2013. Now, it has become about forced labels for no health or nutritional reason. So, we are in agreement that a corporation is going to corporate.....or something like that. I do think that it is in my best interest, and most of ours, by accident when one of their products makes it to market. The ability of these products to increase yield is wonderful and they can reduce the use of chemicals, water, and gasoline. I would be a fool to think that the entire corporation of Monsanto or DuPont or Syngenta were only working on one type of product at a time. From reading the literature a lot of this stuff does not work out. Flavr-Savr, Tobaccy, Peas, Wheat (Has not made it through yet), I think what we have ended up getting, I believe 40 approved patents worldwide could definitely be seen as a lucky accident.ABE - I just checked, there are 27 approved crops worldwide and wheat has made it through as an approved crop...so another lucky accident! Edited by Tempe 12ft Chicken, : No reason given.

Before I got engaged (let's not talk about the details), I joked with her about that. I was like, "How would you like a Blood Diamond Ring?" She replied, "that would be awesome!" Good sense of humor that one. Lol. I got her the Black Death virus stuffed animals as part of Christmas gifts one year. Back to the topic!

I believe that voluntary measures would cause the problems Monsanto wants to avoid. Every truthful way of indicating that some product does not contain GMOs produces the competition that costs Monsanto money.

I agree with both of these statements. There is an overzealous side to the Pro-GMO side as the saviors of humankind, but I guess I find overzealousness, checked by regulation, better than manipulation through fear of the unknown. The word gene is scary, all the more so because of the incomprehensible size we are talking about for most people. You get individuals like Mercola who prey on these individuals...Whole Foods is a bad example, they are just Monsanto to me...a business doing what is best for that business. They do admit that science says GMOs are safe if you read their page about it. So, it is more the Food Babes and Mercolas of the world I am discussing, I would say...they are the manipulators. It still is best, in my mind, to go with the bigger bulk of the evidence and in GMOs case, that lies with GMOs at this time and has been that way since these began. There are a majority of the studies, in the cases of products that are released, that show the safety and efficacy and they are included on that GENERA page. I went through just the first 25 studies on the independent studies section of GENERA and I found each one applied to products that were approved either within the United States or abroad. Well, the money trail is what it is...but I also have to trust that all these scientists don't want their funding shut off and have chosen to misrepresent themselves on a wide scale. As we saw in Cosmos, it is possible that it is a wide array of a couple of top actors with others who don't want to rock the boat until one comes along. This is, as you will mention next quote, a cost-prohibitive industry. I cannot set up my own experiments to test these out. I must trust in what the consensus of scientists say through peer-reviewed literature, which does speak to the safety and efficacy. I trust an engineer to build me a bridge and a plant microbiologist to do his or her best to grow me a damn good plant. But, for me and the laymen, the best I can do is to educate myself and those I care about on the topic. Well, as I see it just because someone is Pro-GMO or anti-GMO it doesn't mean they do bad science. Rather, it just takes someone doing bad science, which can be seen in the lack of replicatability and prediction power. So, take away their politics and we can look to the papers that they have authored or coauthored. If the scientist is Pro-GMO because the results he or she has seen point to positive results and the research he or she has done does similarly, should we fault them for that? The European Union set extremely high thresholds for GMOs in their countries and now they are considering loosening them because of lack of evidence coming forth. So, perhaps the reasons the regulations were set as is (which these are just the regulations for Bt crops, correct?) were based on good science. While I want to blame government incompetence, sometimes couldn't it just be good science that led the way? This is a very true statement and I agree. Corporation wise, I am not Pro-Monsanto (although I think they have done everything legally in their favor, can't argue with that), but I think some changes could be made for the better to rein these groups in. However, I don't see these high costs going down anytime soon, so wouldn't the best plan be to not let fear and ignorance control but to educate ourselves. If someone has learned the facts and still prefers organic, more power to them, but don't let it be based on lies and manufactured controversy. All major health organizations in the World agree with GMOs...this is either a major conspiracy from a group of companies that couldn't even stop voluntary labeling or they honestly believe what they say based on the evidence. I have heard opposite of this. Just recently a Farmer in Arizona wrote something for the Pro-GMO side about how much Bt Cotton has helped to make Arizona Cotton farms more sustainable. I will see if I can find it again and add it by edit when I do.

Bridge Away. I bolded the important part in your quote. The Proponents I am speaking of are fighting to have mandatory labeling of all GMO products, not voluntary labeling of Non-GMO products. The FDA and USDA do not require this because there are not health or nutrition benefits to going organic. Vermont has already fallen to the fear and has instituted this mandatory process. One state will not force massive infrastructure changes but from farmer's perspectives a federal mandatory labeling law would force difficult and expensive proposals for changeFoodie Farmer: Costs of GMO LabelingI do feel that the preponderance of the evidence is in favor of GMO foods and to that end we should use them and not force a major overhaul in infrastructure. Implementing voluntary labeling of non-GMO products is perfectly okay, and allowed by both the FDA and the USDA, see my earlier message to NoNukes. I feel people, such as Mercola and Food Babe, who use this fear to draw up support for items that do not agree with the science is science denialism. I have not been given much evidence to change my opinion of where the majority of support lies in journals. That is why I am making that comparison. I have admitted Whole Foods was a bad choice as my initial example, although I belive they are apt as an organic equivalent of Monsanto, willing to do what it legally can to increase its market share. Corporations gon'a corporate. They do want it though, they want to force all GMO products to have a label that has GMO Inside or some such. Why not leave it as a voluntary system, which the FDA does allow (They will just verify that it is actually GMO free, so a few extra regulations come along with the voluntary choice). The zealot to me is the anti-GMO crowd forcing everyone to see what most people do not give two rat's behinds about. Their mandatory push is a statement that, "Everyone must know whether or not they are eating GMOs, whether they give a crap about it or not." That is zealotry and pushing your beliefs onto everyone. Monsanto and Co. did not block Federal Voluntary labeling because its been on the books since 1992. Source: FDA Labeling guidelinesThe FDA offers guidelines for how to label foods as Non-GMO and will inspect to ensure that no GMO products are in the final product as well, according to their website. USDA added voluntary GMO-Free labeling from GMO Free Nation in 2013. I am against any mandatory labeling, which is where the Anti-GMO crowd has brought the debate to at this point. There are reasons to make that choice beyond scientific, but the individuals I am talking about, the Greenpeaces (Stopping Golden Rice from helping vitamin A deficiency), the Mercolas (shilling his all-natural products after telling you everything GMO gives you cancer), the Food Babes (Everything scary sounding gives you cancer, buy only what I tell you to). These are the people that are forcing people to live in fear and I believe irrational, science-hating, granola-headed liar is an apt term for these three individuals. The problem is that Americans aren't listening to the science, these are the people they are listening to for information. The show, "The Doctors", had Food Babe on giving her credibility. The View hired Jenny McCarthy, giving her a platform from which to speak...sadly, those who don't want to research will listen to these people who are not experts, similar to the creation movement (I promise last comparison) And I do not care what doubters of GMOs believe, just don't force an entire industry to restructure without evidence. I will gladly join the anti-side if I can get enough evidence to change my mind, but until then I will continue to argue that mandatory labeling is based on emotion, fear, and misinformation.

Hi, Tempe.So, this is actually the exact topic of the post-doctorate I’m doing right now. I’m just a newcomer to this field, so I’m still learning and forming my opinions. There’s a lot of anger and bad feelings in this field, and I’m highly uncomfortable in it. I try to remain objective about it, but I may be too close to it for that to be realistic. I’m not sure I want to keep participating in this thread, in fact.I don’t consider myself anti-GMO (I’m sort of a closet transhumanist, in fact), but I’m definitely developing some highly negative feelings about this entire field. I don’t see how we can ever divorce transgenic crops from the messy politics of industry oligopolies. So, I have a hard time building up and maintaining good feelings about GMO’s. I don’t know a lot about Bt cotton. But, I do know that farmers spray the shit out of cotton, for a variety of different pests. I’m sure Bt reduces insecticide sprays in cotton by a substantial amount.But, sustainability is more than just reducing insecticides. Insecticides, in and of themselves, are not necessarily bad: it's the way they're being used that's bad. We should never have let it get to the point where we're spraying insecticides on a field 12 times a year. But, seventy years ago, farmers were so eager for a solution to a problem that most of them didn’t actually have, that they ignored the dangers and weaponized chemistry against insect pests. And now, we can’t stop, because we’ve done such a number on our ecosystems that they can no longer provide the services they used to provide, like pollination, pest suppression, etc.Sustainability is about finding a strategy that’s viable in the long-term: maintaining soil health, facilitating stable ecosystem dynamics that are resistant to pest outbreaks, etc. Insecticides and transgenics can’t do that: what they do is make things easier for farmers, so they don’t have to put as much effort into farming. Basically, it means farmers no longer have an economic incentive to responsibly manage their natural resources to mitigate pest problems. It also means the chemical companies can profit substantially from the farmers’ irresponsibility, and all the while deflect the blame away from themselves because it’s the farmers’ poor compliance with best practices. Then, they turn around and refuse to offer anything accept their transgenic seed, and recommend that the farmers spray the shit out of everything.Einstein is quoted as saying, No problem can be solved by the same kind of thinking that created it. Yet, that’s kind of what's happening in agriculture.Sorry for the rant: it has nothing to do with Golden Rice or health effects of GMO’s, but I think it’s still relevant. Anyway, I should probably be done contributing to this thread now.

I'm sure that "emotion, fear, and misinformation" exist among those who advocate mandatory GMO labels, just as they (and greed) exist among those who oppose them.Much of what you have written in this thread attempts a special pleading to our experience here with creationists to demonize those who disagree with you about GMO regulation. That does not inspire confidence. Those tactics were used to promote lead and tobacco.GMO advocates over-reached, creating de facto mandatory consumption; now they inherit the whirlwind of public push-back and find that unfair. So, true, now industrial agricultural interests tout voluntary compliance on GMO labels; the FDA has toughened its industry-cozy positions. But that's not how we got here, and, of course, there is legislation in the House to neuter any meaningful regulation.Blue Jay did a much better job than I have expressing his (and my) discomfort with industrial agricultural practices and Monsanto's role in them.

Unfortunately, not caring is no longer a reasonable approach. At one time, perhaps this issue did not have to be political, but it appears that a good portion of the blame for the current state of affairs can be traced to industries tactics. It can be really hard for people to sort out the science, but sorting out villains and good guys based on their methods is not so hard.Okay voluntary no-GMO labeling is allowed now. But that change is very recent (last year). Even more recently, the food industry is bending on labeling their own stuff using some standards they work out with the FDA. But some people just don't trust that group to be independent anymore, and almost certainly there won't be any serious anti involvement in the solution. Perhaps Monsanto and co. have simply sown the wind.You've convinced me that labeling sucrose is silly, but the issues with corn syrup, soybeans and beets themselves is not going to be a simple matter of looking at identical molecules. Some people might call such campaigns misleading because they don't address the real objections.

NoNukes excerpted here: Again, Michael Taylor working in the FDA is BY DEFINITION a conflict of interest. Clarence Thomas not recusing himself from every case involving Monsanto is BY DEFINITION a conflict of interest...but, meanwhile....more of NoNukes's post: Indeed - it isn't the sugar molecule at all - it's the Bt pesticide sitting next to it that you ingest with Corn Bt. Now - don't get me wrong, but on this level Cotton Bt is fine, because, except for the fictional character in Catch-22, Milo Minderbender, no one is trying to get people to eat cotton. Perhaps they can come up with GMO cotton garments that repel mosquitoes.[satire]
Now on to a whole other issue here with GMOs "solving" the world's food problems as the population continues to lumber on towards 20 billions:Maybe making more food is not a good idea?? Do we really want to live on a planet of 20+ billions?How about a GMO that reduces family size - ooo, let's have it affect sperm count and testosterone levels in the male population this time and leave experimenting with the female population alone for once. Maybe put it in beer.Sort of a "modest proposal"....instead of increasing food crop yields, we ought to be decreasing human crop yields.
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Yikes.