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posted by zizban on Sunday June 29 2014, @05:01AM   Printer-friendly
from the the-future-of-food-or-not dept.

Food is cultural, social and deeply personal, so it's no surprise that modifications to the way food is produced, distributed and consumed can often lead to ethical debates. Developments in the genetic modification of foods and crops has resulted in a lot of debate.

Ethics can help here. While science determines whether we can safely modify the genetic makeup of certain organisms, ethics asks whether we should. Ethics tries to move beyond factual statements about what is, to evaluative statements about the way we should act towards ourselves, each other and the environment we inhabit. But things are not always so clear-cut. Three areas of ethics can help frame some of the concerns with GM food and crops: virtue, moral status and consequences.

What are your feelings on this highly controversial topic?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 29 2014, @05:14AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 29 2014, @05:14AM (#61519)

    Who cares about ethics? Ethical people? They are weak and easily killed! Fuck the World. Fuck it Harder and Deeper.

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday June 29 2014, @05:19AM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Sunday June 29 2014, @05:19AM (#61520) Journal
      Poe's law [wikipedia.org]
      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday June 29 2014, @07:14AM

        by anubi (2828) on Sunday June 29 2014, @07:14AM (#61538) Journal

        Thanks for that, c0lo... that comment struck me as an illustration of something I know as "the tragedy of the commons". [princeton.edu]

        I see this happen all too often.

        --
        "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
    • (Score: 2) by davester666 on Sunday June 29 2014, @08:33AM

      by davester666 (155) on Sunday June 29 2014, @08:33AM (#61555)

      ...and don't forget to take their fillings...

  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday June 29 2014, @05:27AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Sunday June 29 2014, @05:27AM (#61526) Journal

    Evaluate consequences first and with utmost priority.

    Virtue and moral status are cultural constructs (same as the various political -isms): if we don't physically survive - either because we just poisoned ourselves or died because of food shortage - the cultural constructs are moot.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 29 2014, @05:56AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 29 2014, @05:56AM (#61529)

      There is no food shortage.

      The point of GM crops is $$$$, not food shortages. Built-in pesticides is what they want. Now that systemic pesticides are killing off the bees, well, more is always better ... right?

      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Sunday June 29 2014, @07:27AM

        by anubi (2828) on Sunday June 29 2014, @07:27AM (#61542) Journal
        I got the idea too a lot of it was about seeds that are no longer viable, thereby forcing an absolute dependence on the provider of seed.

        However I am much of mixed feelings on this whole genetically modified stuff. I have messed in stuff without a full understanding of what I was dealing with and often had unintended consequences... consequences that were often delayed by quite some time after I did the deed that set that chain of events in motion.

        But then, I do not like the idea of shivering in the cold when I could light a fire.

        I have lived my whole life working in technology, as it is the one thing I believe in for advancing the human cause. Between our art and technology, that's all we leave. Everything else is meaningless and rots.

        Not a minute goes by that I do not benefit from and enjoy the technical and artistic efforts of my predecessors, and I thank them for their efforts.

        Technology, like fire, can keep you warm... or it can burn your house down.

        All in all, I believe in us. We have to do the right thing. And keep those in check which would use this for the wrong purpose.
        --
        "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
        • (Score: 4, Informative) by AnonTechie on Sunday June 29 2014, @08:01AM

          by AnonTechie (2275) on Sunday June 29 2014, @08:01AM (#61546) Journal

          " And keep those in check which would use this for the wrong purpose. "

          While I agree with most of you say, I am not sure whether it is practical or feasible for the general public to keep check if used for the wrong purpose. Also, I am worried about unintended consequences (see The Cobra Effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect [wikipedia.org] ).

          --
          Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
          • (Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday June 29 2014, @08:14AM

            by anubi (2828) on Sunday June 29 2014, @08:14AM (#61549) Journal

            Thanks for that link, Anon!

            That was an interesting little tidbit of info - and quite aptly describes many situations I have encountered.

            I never knew what to call it.

            Now I do. Thanks!

            --
            "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
            • (Score: 2) by AnonTechie on Sunday June 29 2014, @08:46AM

              by AnonTechie (2275) on Sunday June 29 2014, @08:46AM (#61561) Journal

              You are welcome !

              --
              Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
        • (Score: 3, Informative) by caseih on Sunday June 29 2014, @11:25PM

          by caseih (2744) on Sunday June 29 2014, @11:25PM (#61740)

          As far as I know (and I am living on a farm and we do use some GMO seed), there is no kill-gene in any of the crops on the market today. In fact there doesn't need to be. Farmers grow some of these hybrid crops because of the traits they exist, whether or not they are GMO. They often are shorter, more vigorous, higher-yielding, and resistant to certain herbicides (mainly RoundUp, Clearfield, and Liberty). I'm not a biologist or botanist, but I'm told that the way that plant genetics work is that often when you cross two different varieties of plant you get a particular hybrid, but subsequent generations revert to one of the parents on certain traits. Thus while I could replant the seed from a hybrid crop, I wouldn't get all those traits I wanted the second year. So replanting hybrid crops just doesn't provide the return. Some traits, like resistance to roundup or other herbicides, often do persist from generation to generation (they are usually present in *both* parents), and are often the gene patented traits that companies seem to try hard to control.

          So you can argue over GMO and hybrid crops (many hybrids are GMO, but not all), but there's no kill-gene in plants. Monsanto once talked about a kill gene for wheat, but farmers and nations firmly said, no, and they backed off. Further to that, I know of *no* GMO varieties of wheat being grown anywhere in the world commercially at this time. Even "clearfield" wheat is not GMO, though it is herbicide resistant.

          As for the talk about food shortage, while it's true that our current food problems in the world are largely political--food is the US number one weapon and regularly wielded--if the current population growth rate continues, we'll need to more than double food production in the next 20 years. I can tell right now that's going to be a very difficult task. Yields in most crops have not gone up in years, and climate change is already reducing yields. Combine this with with pressures on land and water resources (the best farm land is going into suburbs these days), and things are going to be more difficult in the future. I expect more global unrest.

          Also, for good or ill, the current method of intensive, high-input, high-yield farming has, in fact, saved millions from starvation. In the 1960s many economists and other people felt that we'd have to just let India and Pakistan starve to death because there was no way to feed them. The so-called green revolution literally saved them from dying. Definitely there's a cost we paid, and there are significant doubts to the sustainability of this style of farming.

      • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Sunday June 29 2014, @09:16AM

        by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Sunday June 29 2014, @09:16AM (#61572) Homepage
        Built in *resistance* to pesticides is what Monsanto are after. They're a pesticide company, they want to sell more pesticides.
        --
        Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday June 29 2014, @01:07PM

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Sunday June 29 2014, @01:07PM (#61612) Journal

        There is no food shortage.

        For now... Wait until the only source of seeds are the GMO corporations and we'll have another look on the problem.

        The point of GM crops is $$$$, not food shortages. Built-in pesticides is what they want. Now that systemic pesticides are killing off the bees, well, more is always better ...

        Exactly. Is it incorrect to characterize their focus as eliminating the competition of mother nature?

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by tibman on Sunday June 29 2014, @07:15AM

    by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Sunday June 29 2014, @07:15AM (#61539)

    There are ethical problems with GMO foods but it isn't really the food itself. It's the laws and lack of research about each GMO. Which ones are slowly killing us? Ethics like the article was talking about seems mostly for religious people. Is there pig DNA in my tomatoes? The only place i could see it really becoming an ethical problem is when modifying animals, not plants. Is it "right" to make chickens featherless and beakless? If so, is it because they are stupid and can't defend themselves? You'd better hope we aren't visited by aliens who look down on us the same way. You'll end up without sexual organs because human livestock is cloned, not birthed : )

    --
    SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday June 29 2014, @09:13AM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Sunday June 29 2014, @09:13AM (#61571) Journal

      Which ones are slowly killing us?

      All of them, including the non-artificially GMO-es.
      In case you didn't know it until now: life is a terminal disease. This is as sure as taxes.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 29 2014, @02:34PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 29 2014, @02:34PM (#61635)

      Is it "right" to make chickens featherless and beakless?

      Does it matter whether your featherless chicken comes about by selective breeding or by specifically knocking out a gene essential for feather-genesis? I ask because we've already made hairless cats and dogs: are they "wrong"?

      I think the real ethical issue is not whether a tomato with pig DNA is kosher, but whether the undiscovered consequences of a modification might be worse for society/environment/ecology than the intended consequence is good. Or whether the GM is worse for the resulting species than it is good for humans/ecology.

      You can ask the same of selective breeding or any other agricultural technology - are seedless bananas "good" or "bad"? DDT? GM is different from selective breeding because it's sudden and because it can introduce genetic traits you couldn't get by selection. GM is different than a chemical treatment because it's self-sustaining. If you discover DDT is bad, you can stop using it and it eventually goes away. If you discover your roundup-ready crop is bad, it's going to be very hard to exterminate the whole species.

      The ethical concern you raise is whether creating a GMO might be cruel to the organism itself. eg: a human, engineered to have muscular dystrophy, would clearly be cruel and unethical, but mice are regularly engineered to have disease-like phenotypes. Does making a plant roundup ready alter its interaction with the world in a way we could call "cruel?" Since plants don't have any consciousness, it's hard to imagine cruelty to plants, but I've seen some pretty tortured analogies.

      • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday June 29 2014, @04:29PM

        by Reziac (2489) on Sunday June 29 2014, @04:29PM (#61661) Homepage

        We didn't "make" hairless dogs and cats; they occurred naturally (there are at least two distinct hairless genes in dogs, one of which appears to have no deleterious effect on the dog whatsoever). What we did is prevent the trait from experiencing natural selection... tho one might argue that having domesticated humans to care for them is a form of natural selection which preserves such traits.

        --
        And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday June 29 2014, @07:55AM

    by kaszz (4211) on Sunday June 29 2014, @07:55AM (#61545) Journal

    What could go wrong with large corporations with profit motive ..?

    In a research area that had less than 50 years to mature with our survival at stake.

    But at least some people will starve being rich.

    • (Score: 2) by redneckmother on Sunday June 29 2014, @06:07PM

      by redneckmother (3597) on Sunday June 29 2014, @06:07PM (#61683)

      But at least some people will starve being rich.

      One can only hope.

      --
      Mas cerveza por favor.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by elgrantrolo on Sunday June 29 2014, @08:42AM

    by elgrantrolo (1903) on Sunday June 29 2014, @08:42AM (#61558) Journal

    My take on it is that the benefits look great and on the other side of that coin there is a risk that GMO are the basis for adding intellectual property and its rent-seeking business model to the production of food. I am not comfortable at all with that prospect.
    At the moment I feel that the campaigns for and against GMO labelling are the visible face of GMO makers wanting their product to spread out to replace "non-compliant" seeds until everyone has to pay them rent. Here are two examples, from the USA:

    http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/06/12/lawsuit-challenges-vermonts-gmo-labeling-law/10402301/ [usatoday.com]
    http://rt.com/usa/monsanto-sue-gmo-vermont-478/ [rt.com]

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by legont on Sunday June 29 2014, @10:27AM

    by legont (4179) on Sunday June 29 2014, @10:27AM (#61580)

    The moral issue is that we privatize profits while socializing risks.

    --
    "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
  • (Score: 2) by Subsentient on Sunday June 29 2014, @12:04PM

    by Subsentient (1111) on Sunday June 29 2014, @12:04PM (#61601) Homepage Journal

    Humans are too stupid a species to be trusted not to fuck it up by accident and/or destroy stuff with it for profit.

    --
    "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 29 2014, @01:18PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 29 2014, @01:18PM (#61618)

    cow that can eat it's own shit because it has mushroom and bacteria gens in it's teeth that then goes to a transparent stomach with chlorophyll which digests to feed the ear made from wheat gens and tomatoe gens in the tail.
    extra points if you can incorporate the caterpillar gen so the "cow" can walk over anything and if the utter has a nipple for mustard gens and maybe some extrusion that taste like onions ...
    -
    GM is bullshit and not edible.

  • (Score: 2) by lubricus on Sunday June 29 2014, @01:41PM

    by lubricus (232) on Sunday June 29 2014, @01:41PM (#61626)

    I don't understand the relevance of the first link. "ethical debates" links to a journal article about using legos to create micro-habitats for plant study.

    Returning to the issue:

    The problem with GMO arguments is that they confuse different issues.

    We have to separate the mega-corp IP issues from the human health and ethics issues... etc.

    I have many friends who work on crop genetics, and too often their work is attacked (by rhetorically and physically) by people who think they represent monsanto, when in fact most would say that Monsanto is their biggest competitor and biggest threat.

    Also, it will be extraordinarily difficult to use traditional breeding techniques to prepare out crops to handle the variable temperatures and water regimes that they will encounter under climate change. Although GMOs do not provide a complete solution, no plan exists which does not assume some increases in plant environmental tolerance from GMO engineering.

    Although the last article linked is interesting in its breadth of ideas, it's a little hard to take it seriously, knowing the real stakes involved, while the author fafs on about: "GM foods and crops erode virtues while producing vices" and "genetic makeup represent a wrong to the dignity or integrity to the organism".

    --
    ... sorry about the typos
    • (Score: 1) by zizban on Sunday June 29 2014, @02:17PM

      by zizban (3765) on Sunday June 29 2014, @02:17PM (#61632)

      Thanks for pointing out the bad link. I have no idea how the LEGO one got there.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 29 2014, @02:27PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 29 2014, @02:27PM (#61634)

      This is my very first post on soylent so please forgive me if I post as anonymous. Also my first language is not English so my grammar might not be 100% correct.

      Now to the topic:

      If our agricultural system and all the food industry wouldn't rely on monoculture and mass-production we wouldn't need GMO in the first place!
      Because of monoculture we need pesticides and chemical fertilizer. Because of mass-breeding animals need to be fed with antibiotics and mutilated... and so on.
      For instance if we would make use of crop-rotations we wouldn't need chemical fertilizers; then if we would plant different species of grain we wouldn't have the risk of an insect killing all our plants since different species of grain have different strengths and weaknesses.
      An interesting article about the dwindling of food variety caused by the modern agricultural system can be found on the international version of National Geographic (July 2011). A short version also on http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/07/food-ark/siebert-text [nationalgeographic.com].

      --
      Everybody telling that we need GMO has either no experience with farming or is just in for profit!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 29 2014, @09:18PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 29 2014, @09:18PM (#61716)

      You are watching the end of SoylentNews as a credible alternative to Slashdot.

      This site has steered towards the AboveTopSecret / InfoWars conspiracy theorist crowd.

      In fact, I'm surprised we're not getting "pink slime," "Monsanto," or "9/11 inside job" articles just yet.

      The number of replies per article is a fraction of what we had at the beginning.

      Meanwhile, Slashdot stopped development of its "BETA" website and continues on...

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by chromas on Sunday June 29 2014, @11:01PM

        by chromas (34) Subscriber Badge on Sunday June 29 2014, @11:01PM (#61734) Journal

        I'm surprised we're not getting "pink slime," "Monsanto," or "0.818182 inside job" articles just yet.

        Hold on, let me find some links...

        Meanwhile, Slashdot stopped development of its "BETA" website and continues on

        We already knew they stopped development; that was the 'last straw', remember? They showed it to us broken, then put it away for awhile and months later started pushing it again without having touched a line of code in the meantime.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by babywombat on Sunday June 29 2014, @11:00PM

    by babywombat (2880) on Sunday June 29 2014, @11:00PM (#61733)

    Indeed, all domestic animals and all crops have been heavily gene-modified for centuries, usually this has called breeding. I do not really understand the current hypocrisy with GMO. Did anyone ask wolves if they want to be friends and pets for humans? The only thing which is different that nowadays the GMO cycle has become hundreds of times smaller and the sama has happened with the safety testing phase times, so the risk of introducing a potentially harmful organism is much higher. But this is the problem with the testing, not the problem with GMO methodology itself. Maybe we should focus in making the testing also hundreds of times more effective?

    ph

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 30 2014, @07:38AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 30 2014, @07:38AM (#61844)

    No it's not good but truly horrible. GMOs are patented which leads first to oligopoly and then to monopoly. And we will get to the oligopoly state very quickly because the global seed market is completely dominated by a handful of corporations and that's already bad enough.

    If you though that software patents are bad, check out patents of living organisms...

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 01 2014, @10:37AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 01 2014, @10:37AM (#62391)

      The use of GMOs isn't inherently restricted by patents. Patent holders can waive the right to royalties for patents for particular GMOs, essentially removing this issue for that product, like has been done for "golden rice". This doesn't mean that patents on GMOs aren't an issue, but it is an issue that can be separated from the ethics of actually genetically modifying our food products.