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Scotland's rural affairs secretary has said that the country will ban the growing of genetically modified crops and opt out of allowing EU-approved GMOs such as MON 810 (corn with an added Bacillus thuringiensis gene):
Richard Lochhead said the Scottish government was not prepared to "gamble" with the future of the country's £14bn food and drink sector. He is to request that Scotland be excluded from any European consents for the cultivation of GM crops. But farming leaders said they were disappointed by the move. Under EU rules, GM crops must be formally authorised before they can be cultivated. An amendment came into force earlier this year which allows member states and devolved administrations to restrict or ban the cultivation of genetically modified organisms within their territory.
[...] Mr Lochhead added: "There is no evidence of significant demand for GM products by Scottish consumers and I am concerned that allowing GM crops to be grown in Scotland would damage our clean and green brand, thereby gambling with the future of our £14bn food and drink sector. Scottish food and drink is valued at home and abroad for its natural, high quality which often attracts a premium price, and I have heard directly from food and drink producers in other countries that are ditching GM because of a consumer backlash."
[...] The move has also been broadly welcomed by environment groups. But Scott Walker, chief executive of farming union NFU Scotland, said he was disappointed that the Scottish government had decided that no GM crops should ever be grown in Scotland. "Other countries are embracing biotechnology where appropriate and we should be open to doing the same here in Scotland," he said. "These crops could have a role in shaping sustainable agriculture at some point and at the same time protecting the environment which we all cherish in Scotland." Huw Jones, professor of molecular genetics at agricultural science group Rothamsted Research, said the announcement was a "sad day for science and a sad day for Scotland. He said that GM crops approved by the EU were "safe for humans, animals and the environment".
The European Parliament voted to give member states the ability to opt-out of allowing the cultivation of EU-approved GMOs in January.
(Score: 5, Informative) by TrumpetPower! on Monday August 10 2015, @08:37PM
...except amongst Luddites and other classes of ignorant people. We've been modifying food genes ever since the last hunter-gatherers started planting seeds and herding prey, and the whole point of agriculture is ever-better methods of modifying those genes.
The problems to be worried about are the business practices of the companies implementing the technology -- and, of course, that's not something unique to this particular technology. For example, indiscriminate use of glyphosate (RoundUp) can cause serious damage to the local and even regional ecosystem; the problem with RoundUp-Ready crops isn't that they've been genetically modified, but that they encourage even more indiscriminate use of glyphosate. BT Corn is similar, in that it represents a non-stop application of an insecticidal agent, something that would be horrific to consider were the application done by daily spraying.
The technology can certainly be put to good use, as evidenced by projects to engineer salt-resistant crops, for example. It's just that the uses it tends to be put to generally provide short-term profits to the megacorporations at the expense of long-term damage to our common environment.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @08:42PM
people know this and it is just simpler to ban all GMO until given a solid reason to allow it than it is to allow it and have under-researched GMO plants or animals contaminating their ecosystem.
I personally have no problem with GMO, but think it should stay in labs and sealed greenhouses where it can't contaminate people's crops with patented genes for the next 20 years.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 11 2015, @06:04PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @07:44PM
The first step is a moratorium (a ban will do - it can be rescinded) on GMOs. The second step is dismantling companies like Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midlands, separating them into smaller companies that cannot push the government around. This must also include tractable regulations to prevent such companies from reoccurring. The third step is to introduce well controlled GMO research that does not risk screwing up our lives.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday August 11 2015, @09:10PM
I wish you weren't being a hopeless dreamer.
FWIW, I *believe* that most current GMO plants are safe. But I don't trust either the vendors or the certifying authorities. GMOs are essentially new drugs, and should be treated as such. (Actually, they are often a collection of multiple new drugs, but that merely magnifies the problem.) Additionally, it's worse than a new drug in a way, as you don't only need to be concerned about the effect on people, but also on pollinators, etc. This makes a valid test of them quite difficult. (E.g.: "Who knew that trace amounts of genetic compound X in the water supply would cause all teleosts to be born male?" Nobody even thought to look for such a potential problem. It hasn't happened yet, but SOMETHING is killing off the amphibians by making their immune systems too weak to fight off a fungus. Probably it's a subcritical dose of multiple environmental pollutants that are each present in safe quantities, but which interact in a way that reinforces their destruction of amphibian immune systems.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @08:49PM
Here's what would make me feel a lot more comfortable with GM foods - require that all C-level officers of the company, and their immediate families - particularly their children, eat at least one regular serving of their own GM crops every day for five years before the crops are made widely available. Make sure the people with a monetary incentive to make bad decisions will have the kind of personal incentive to make good decisions that they can't buy their way out of. Expensive medical treatment can increase the chances of recovering from some weird disease, but it can't guarantee it.
Practically no one has the expertise to evaluate if a GMO testing process is a white-wash or stringent. So, like so much of our society, it comes down to trust. If they are willing to risk the health of their kids on their GM-food, then I will be much more likely to trust them when they tell me there is no risk to health of my kids from their GM-food.
That still ignores second order risks where the problem isn't with the GMO per se but with how the GMO interacts with the rest of the world, like unintended cross-breeding with other plants or, as you alluded to, chemicals like glyphosate used in conjunction with GMOs contaminating other ecological niches. But it is an approach that cuts through all the arguments about whether the GMO is safe or just hasn't been tested enough. In the end, the proof is in the (genetically modified) pudding.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by tftp on Monday August 10 2015, @08:50PM
I don't know too many people who are honestly afraid that GM corn will suddenly become sentient and hostile to non-plant life. As you point out, the real problems are in business practices of GMO megacorporations. They force farmers to buy their seeds; they attack farmers who do not use their GMO products; they promote aggressive use of poisons. Perhaps those 99.9% of "bad apples" spoil the remaining 0.1% of good, honest GMO companies that try to improve the food plants. Unfortunately, the GMO field is dominated by ruthless predators - and they already have the critical mass to keep rolling, flattening all the competition in their way.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Monday August 10 2015, @08:57PM
The technology can certainly be put to good use
Will that ever actually happen?
I agree with you that theoretically it could be useful, although in practice it curiously only seems to ship ripoff product tying overuse of poisons which probably are not overly healthy when used to excess.
Yeah blah blah genetically modified cows could turn into unicorns that poop skittles but in practice it seems to correlate extremely strongly with dodgy business practices.
The way to wedge in something kinda crooked is to start with something fairly harmless looking and THEN try to push the bad stuff. They shouldda started out pushing naturally haggis flavored rice or something. Then once that's in and considered "normal" start to do the product tying thing to sell overuse of pesticides and herbicides.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @09:18PM
The technology can certainly be put to good use
Will that ever actually happen?
Rainbow Papaya [hawaiitribune-herald.com] saved the papaya industry in Hawaii.
That is not to say the rainbow papaya is not without controversy, it seems to very easily cross-pollinate other species, so loss of control is one problem. And one thing we can't know is if we would have come up with a better fix if this species hadn't been created. Necessity is the mother of invention.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 10 2015, @09:02PM
The first hunter/gatherers didn't splice a gene into the plant which produces poisons.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @09:14PM
You are wrong about the BT Corn. The protein does not leach out of the plant. The only insects that are affected by it are those that eat the plant.
Also remember that the choice isn't between GMO and organic it is between GMO/GMO-assisted pesticides and regular pesticides. Similar to the situation with energy. The choice isn't between nuclear and nothing or a pipeline and nothing it is between nuclear and coal or a pipeline and trucks.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @10:49PM
If it is only insects that eat the corn, why bother growing it?
Or do people and farm animals also eat the insecticide?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @11:31PM
It is an insecticide that specifically kills insects. IIRC the mechanism is related to the high pH (as opposed to the low pH in animals) of the gastric juices that triggers crystallization of the BT protein which can damage the insect due to its small size. The protein is from a bacteria (Clatu Verati ... cough ... Bacillius thurengines = BT) that is commonly sprayed on organic crops.
Check the Wikipedia article for more accurate information as it has been a while since I've looked into this.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 10 2015, @09:15PM
For thousands of years we have been genetically modifying naturally occurring genetics slowly. Today we are splicing to make dramatic changes within years, not centuries. The traditional practice had generations of quality assurance. New GMO powered megacorporations have no transparent QA and all of us are the test subjects for long-term exposure.
Anyone that does QA on their own code should be rightly weary of GMO food that does not go through long-term testing.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Francis on Monday August 10 2015, @10:12PM
First off, hybridization does not GMO make. I'm not sure where you got that idea, but it's ridiculous and completely misses the point. Hybridization techniques can speed up evolution and help us to direct it a bit, but we can't do anything that might not have happened anyways. GMOs are what you get when you take specific genes out of one species or strain and put them into another. This can be done with species that can't reproduce with each other. Taking a gene from a jelly fish and putting it into a dog can only be achieved that way, you cannot mate a jellyfish with a dog.
Secondly, the big issue with GMOs comes down to the practices. They're being planted in the open with no controls in place to prevent them from spreading. The GMOs we have are largely harmless, but who knows what happens when they combine in unforeseen ways. By the time we know it was a bad idea, it's going to be too late to do anything about it. I've seen what happens when invasive species come in, and those are natural. Imagine something that's been given a broad immunity to most pesticides and the normal predators.
I'm sure there are some luddites out there, but the people opposed to GMOs are hardly restricted to people that don't understand the technology.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by TrumpetPower! on Monday August 10 2015, @10:53PM
Maybe you could help clarify your position by indicating which of these half-dozen means of modifying an organism's genome you object to, and on what basis you conclude that one technique is objectionable but another isn't.
http://www.biofortified.org/2015/07/crop-modification-techniques-infographic/ [biofortified.org]
Again, I'll state: the problem isn't the technology; it's the way the technology is being applied. "Nuclear science" has given us the atom bomb, yes, but it's also given us radiation therapy for cancer. And the differences between Chernobyl and the reactors that produce radioisotopes for medicine are much more bureaucratic than theoretical or technological.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Monday August 10 2015, @11:21PM
I agree that to a point it's how it's being applied. Applying it in a closed lab with controls to prevent its spread is completely different than applying it out in the open where it can spread unchecked.
Really, all of them are a problem to some extent, but with hybridization the problem is completely understood and there are strict natural limits on what can be accomplished. The worst case scenarios are ones that require a significant amount of effort on our part to cause. Such as growing entire regions of the same plant with very little genetic diversity. And even then it's not no diversity, it's little diversity.
As far as Chernobyl goes, even before it had it's disaster, it was well known that you can't do that to a nuclear reactor without dire consequences. The warnings and guidelines were ignored and people died as a result.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @04:45PM
Maybe you could help clarify your position by indicating which of these half-dozen means of modifying an organism's genome you object to, and on what basis you conclude that one technique is objectionable but another isn't.
Are you suggesting that things like thalidomide [wikipedia.org] never happened? And asbestos [wikipedia.org]? And let's not forget how long people have (and continue) to consume tobacco [wikipedia.org]... which is fine as it is an informed decision now, but how long was it thought to be a healthy thing? And there are probably at least dozens of other things which I could come up with if I spent more than 60 seconds thinking about it. They were all cutting edge new technology which only a luddite could be opposed to at their time.
If we could point out to the problems with splicing genes into foods it would have been done, and the whole project would be scuppered. We don't just don't know. This could be because it really is safe. Or it could be because we just don't know yet and come next generation brain sizes will be 50% smaller (or 50% bigger).
I'm sure if you look at the history of innovation with non-bias eyes you will see exactly how much was not known in advance, and you will also be able to see numerous terrible mistakes (as well as wonderful advances). With that knowledge, is it really so unreasonable to stop a bit and re-examine something as important as the world food supply?
As a side note, I'm amazed how much "yay, GM food is good, everybody against it is a luddite!" there is here. I'm not sure how much is true public opinion (be it general public or technology interested people), how much is group think, and how much is sock puppetry. It does feel like a decidedly more pro-GM stance than slashdot, though. Personally I'm really annoyed when the industry in the US said "don't make it illegal, we'll just label it so consumers can make informed decisions... oh, but don't make us label it because it's really the same thing, the consumers don't need to be informed." That's just me, though.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 11 2015, @06:21PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @09:27PM
You still haven't explained what the basis is for your objections.
I thought my basis of objections was fairly clear, but to make it explicit:
1) Don't automatically assume people objecting with GMO are idiotic luddites. There are legitimate questions and risks, and attacking the person is a literal ad hominem attack and very offensive. Ecology and biology are very complicated (see "Invasive Species"... and that's not even introducing gene splicing into the mix). This constant barrage on this site of "you are anti-GMO, you are a close-minded ignorant dummy" is the point which got me to respond to this thread.
2) Don't just assume "it will be safe." Lots of times "the science" (which is as much a thought-ending phrase as "think of the children") says something will be safe. See Thalidomide, Tobacco, Asbestos, and everything else. Frequently the plurality of scientists are right in that assertion. Frequently the plurality of scientists are wrong with that assertion. Sometimes those scientists are epically and tragically wrong.
3) When doing something which has global consequences, take more time and be more sure. If you want to try a new surgery technique, it affects a couple of people and you can be experimental. If you want to use nuclear power, worst case it goes meltdown and affects a continent. If you poison the entire world food supply through cross pollination and what have you, then you have poisoned the entire world. Is this likely? No. Could it happen? Are you willing to risk the entire world population on that risk? Why not wait a generation or two with more animal testing and localized trials?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 11 2015, @09:48PM
I see another reason to consider point 3):
3) When doing something which has global consequences, take more time and be more sure. If you want to try a new surgery technique, it affects a couple of people and you can be experimental. If you want to use nuclear power, worst case it goes meltdown and affects a continent. If you poison the entire world food supply through cross pollination and what have you, then you have poisoned the entire world. Is this likely? No. Could it happen? Are you willing to risk the entire world population on that risk? Why not wait a generation or two with more animal testing and localized trials?
It's worth noting here that there are substantial obstacles in the developed world to new surgery techniques and these obstacles are way out of proportion to the risks precisely because of the same risk ignorance that shows up with GMO bashing. The risks of a few people dying are visible to the policy makers. The risks of a few billion people dying prematurely due to bad medical regulation are not. Here, the risks of "poisoning" are visible to you because you would be affected by any such thing, but the risks of "starvation" or of having a huge number of people in your society trapped in subsistence farming are not.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday August 11 2015, @06:20PM
Maybe you could help clarify your position by indicating which of these half-dozen means of modifying an organism's genome you object to, and on what basis you conclude that one technique is objectionable but another isn't.
His position, as clearly stated, is that the claim that selective breeding and genetic engineering are the same thing is laughably false.
You are moving the goalposts. But to answer your disingenuous question: crossbreeding is fine because they are sexually compatible already. The rest don't have the million plus years of QA to back them up.
(Score: 3, Informative) by penguinoid on Tuesday August 11 2015, @08:58AM
Genetic engineering does nothing that couldn't have happened on its own, just like selective breeding does nothing that couldn't have happened on its own. In fact, the tools used for genetic engineering are mostly taken from the same sort of critter that would naturally cause lateral gene transfer. Of course, the odds (for the results of both genetic engineering and artificial selection) are on that border where "mathematically possible" meets "physically impossible".
For examples of naturally occurring "genetic engineering" look up "lateral gene transfer".
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @12:24AM
Genetic modification is a problem because the people who are in charge of developing GM crops cannot be trusted with what I put in my mouth.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mbo42 on Tuesday August 11 2015, @12:39AM
...except amongst Luddites and other classes of ignorant people. We've been modifying food genes ever since the last hunter-gatherers started planting seeds and herding prey, and the whole point of agriculture is ever-better methods of modifying those genes.
Oh Gawd I'm tired of hearing that argument. We have not been modifying food genes forever, we have been selecting the naturally occurring modifications that we found beneficial and then breeding from them to artificially increase their abundance. It's been guided natural selection , not artificial construction. Now that doesn't mean that GMO's are bad, but it does mean the potential for totally unforeseen outcomes is far greater, they need to be treated like new drugs, not cultivars of existing crops.
Things that could go wrong: Rampant invasiveness, toxic disruption of natural food chains, human toxicology/cancer/allergy. Think of past problems with introduced species, Thalidomide or dioxins. And obviously, don't place any faith in Monsanto et. al. , use public bodies with no vested interest to carefully test the stuff.
(Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Tuesday August 11 2015, @01:16AM
The only way that sentence could be true is if Evolution is false. But Evolution isn't false, which means that your understanding of biology, especially evolutionary genetics, is very far off the mark. May I suggest? Jerry Coyne wrote a superlative popular introduction to the topic. [amazon.com]
Those things all go worng all the time without any direct human intervention in the various species's genes, and the most spectacular and infamous instances weren't even tangentially related to agribusiness. Hell, for that matter, humans are the only invasive species that really present a serious danger to other species, and we're the most invasive species in the history of life on earth since the cyanobacteria.
No, I don't trust Monsanto to get this technology right -- but neither do I trust them to get less sophisticated technology right. That's right there in my original post, where I pointed out that overuse of glyphosate is the real problem, and RoundUp-Ready crops simply exacerbate the glyphosate excesses.
But, you know what?
I'm not going all hyperbolic with respect to all organic chemistry, even though organic chemistry is to glyphosate what genetic modification is to RoundUp-Ready crops.
TL/DR: the problem isn't the tool. It's with the fuckwits misusing the tool. Same as with anything else, really....
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @03:23AM
> May I suggest? Jerry Coyne wrote a superlative popular introduction to the topic.
You can suggest it. But after reading that 'rebuttal' I'm more inclined to believe mbo42 since the only proof you offered up that he was wrong was circular reasoning capped with a self-important reference to something nobody is going to pay attention to.
> TL/DR: the problem isn't the tool. It's with the fuckwits misusing the tool. Same as with anything else, really....
That is a vast oversimplification. Some tools make it much easier to fuck up than others. Like an AR-15 versus a steak-knife.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday August 11 2015, @06:25PM
When TrumpetPower humps, he gets in there and modifies those genes himself, LIKE A MAN.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday August 11 2015, @02:16AM
Things that could go wrong: Rampant invasiveness, toxic disruption of natural food chains, human toxicology/cancer/allergy. Think of past problems with introduced species, Thalidomide or dioxins. And obviously, don't place any faith in Monsanto et. al. , use public bodies with no vested interest to carefully test the stuff.
Just ask them one question, where are the monarchs?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Tuesday August 11 2015, @12:53AM
Don't forget the whole patent problem too. For example, if you are farming next to a farmer who uses GMO crops, you can't save seed for next year's planting because of cross pollination caused by the wind or insects, unless of course you want to face bankrupting litigation. Not being able to save seed can have a very negative impact on a farm's profitability.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday August 11 2015, @01:53AM
Which patents expire after a while.
It already happened [countryfolks.com] and led to "open source GMO generics" [biofortified.org] .
I'll admit that this may not happen in each and every case.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by hankwang on Tuesday August 11 2015, @07:14AM
"if you are farming next to a farmer who uses GMO crops, you can't save seed for next year's planting because of cross pollination caused by the wind or insects"
Monsanto actually denies this explicitly: "it has never been, nor will it be, Monsanto’s policy to exercise its patent rights where trace amounts of our patented seeds or traits are present in a farmer’s fields as a result of inadvertent means."
http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/pages/gm-seed-accidentally-in-farmers-fields.aspx [monsanto.com]
Avantslash: SoylentNews for mobile [avantslash.org]
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday August 11 2015, @03:02PM
Who decides what is trace amount? That would be Monsanto of course. There are of course the lawsuits: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto-sues-farmers-seed-patents [theguardian.com] But don't forget all of the settlements in the RIAA vein: http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15825 [corpwatch.org]
And let's say the farmer is an organic farmer and must abide by certain rules to get the higher rate of pay, including not using GMO seed. How do they save their contaminated seed? They don't. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/10/monsanto-wins-lawsuit_n_3417081.html [huffingtonpost.com]
Finally, it doesn't matter if the patent ends. All Monsanto needs to do is one tweak, like with a drug, and it gets a new patent, then deploy that next to a non-customers and the wind and bees start the process all over again.
As others have said, the problem isn't necessarily GMO itself, it is the legal (and poison) framework built around GMO.
(Score: 2) by hankwang on Thursday August 13 2015, @05:35PM
Your first link did not suggest in any way that it was about trace amounts. In the second one, the farmers were suing monsanto, rather than the other way around. Third link: "For eight years, Bowman planted the commodity-grade soybeans for his second harvest, sprayed Roundup on them, harvested the plants that grew and kept the seeds they produced to plant later." - that's a pretty clear case to me.
We can debate whether it's ethical to patent genes, but I haven't seen examples where M was suing a farmer because a few % of his crop contained the patented gene.
Avantslash: SoylentNews for mobile [avantslash.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @02:20AM
Call me a fan of Ned Ludd, but I want nothing to do with BT corn, BT potatoes, BT egg plant (aubergine), etc.
Yes, I know BT toxin is neutralized in acid, as in the human stomach, but there are a lot of mucus membranes that this poison is in contact with on the way down. I predict an increase in mouth and esophageal cancers in non-smokers. And, since the pro-GMO crowd is afraid no one will knowingly eat poison, they prevent labeling in the US, so people are feeding this crap to their babies.
I also wouldn't be surprised at an increase in GI cancers in folks with digestive problems.
This crap should never have been allowed to be put on the market.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 11 2015, @12:38PM
That's a nice prediction. How did you come up with it?
Do you have a potential mechanism in mind or did you just make it up?
Let me guess. You don't have any data on the topic, you haven't read any scientific literature on the topic, and you don't have much of an understanding of cancer neogenesis. If my guess is incorrect then please respond with some reasoning at least if you don't have any references.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2015, @04:04AM
The BT toxin "food" is registered with the FDA as a *poison*-- every last cell in it. I'm pretty sure the FDA found cause to do this, and that the companies behind these GMO products fought hard against this, yet the evidence was so clear that even the bought and paid for US government and regulatory agencies like the FDA still classified this "food" as a pesticide.
Your implied hypothesis that consuming poison, and holding poison in contact with mucus membranes will cause no harm is the hypothesis that requires deviation from expected behavior and consequences.
GI cancers are rising (especially in younger people) and the timing does correlate with GMO, but the cause is still unknown.
So, we have an increase in cancers with a plausible cause that correlates, and this probable cause is *poison* that is being consumed as food. While not certain, it, seems reasonable that my prediction has a chance to turn out correct.
What do you have? Just sticking your fingers in your ears and saying, "Nah nah nah nah!!! I'm not listening!" doesn't make you correct. IMO you are confusing science with industry funded propaganda. The point of science is to try to prove that your idea is incorrect, and after repeatedly failing at that, and only then, begin to have some confidence that your idea has merit. These industry studies repeatedly are shown to cherry pick, even repress negative results, etc. The fact is nobody knows if this stuff is safe, and common sense says eating poison probably isn't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2015, @04:07AM
tired...
s/repress/suppress
s/probable/plausible
maybe others
(Score: 1) by unzombied on Tuesday August 11 2015, @07:37PM
There's a rather big leap from gathering the best seeds in a location over generations to injecting vegetable cells with E. Coli-laced fish genes for testing on animals typically 90 days. Obviously they're both technically GM, but one is tested scientifically over centuries, the other is tested for profits. Those who want to fast track GMO "food" are the "ignorant people."