This Idea We Have to Spend Billions of Dollars

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coming up with inorganic concepts and products only to reach the conclusion organic is healthier, better and should've been the only choice all along is preposterous. Anyone else feel short changed by this? Think of all the money that's been thrown into researching inorganic solutions to crops and now thousands each month decide their Great Grandpappies had the right idea when growing crops the old fashioned way, without GMOs, pesticides, chemicals or hormones. Why is it people are so wasteful with resources?
Every year the demand for organic foods grows by leaps and bounds. All that money wasted. One day the consumer will demand nothing but organics and they will say it should have always been that all along but these dangblasted chemical companies and peddlers of the hydrogenated always want to be paid for their product so they finagle their way into food. They will always be trying this, even when everything is back to organic, they will always want to nose into the food, injecting it with poison, coating it with carcinogens.

"Organic" is nothing more than a label used by grocers to sell deformed and spotted vegetables for twice the price of ordinary veggies. It is a myth that the "Organic" labels are put on food that is any better than food without the "Organic" label - a myth that has been perpetrated by the anti-GMO crowd.

I'll not waste money on "Organic" food when I can get healthier food for half the price.

I know for a fact organic is better because I have been buying stuff from an organic supermarket and there's a big difference in quality. Plus, they are grown under USDA guidelines for organic produce, meat, or milk. It really is a lot better.

It is used that way sometimes, its supposed to mean non GMO food that hasn't been saturated in potentially harmful pesticides. Basically 'organic' on a label does not always mean the product is actually organic...but that is not always the case.

Not in nutritional content.

I think all GMO food should be labelled as such, people have the right to know what they're buying and putting into their bodies. Monsanto cannot be trusted, they're a state sanctioned monstrosity protected by the courts, media, politicians, big business. The agricultural industrial complex in this country is just as serious as the military one, regulatory capture is in effect so don't look towards the government for help because big business owns big government and they writes their own regulations to their benefit. Monsanto can sue you for using their copyrighted seeds that floated down wind and the government can imprison you for just collecting rainwater.

The USDA, FDA, and CDC should all be abolished

That's nonsense, GMO food is perfectly safe and can be grown organically. True, some are designed to withstand certain pesticides, and thus promote non-organic farming, but that's just one example. GMO crops can combat climate change. There is a species of GMO rice that reduces the emissions of methane from rice fields, a significant source of greenhouse gasses. We have been genetically modifying crops for millennia.

What nonsense? Where did I say specifically say GMO food wasn't safe? Do you think the idea that consumers have the right to be informed to be nonsense? I'm not even saying ban it but the government protections, the subsidies, and the corrupt institutions that manage it all should go. People can make their own decisions, if they want to eat GMO food then eat it but don't force it everyone because I don't trust these multinational conglomerates whose only is more profits and more control over their competition/consumers. They don't need our help, they are not your friend.

Perfectly safe according to who? And if it is perfectly safe what would forcing it to be labeled as GMO hurt...that shouldn't hurt sales if it is in fact perfectly safe. Also it concerns me they develop plants that can withstand their pesticides...imagine what those pesticides do to the surrounding plants and environment if they have to genetically modify their seeds/plants to withstand them. Also apparently pesticides might be part of the reason the bees are declining so that there is enough to disturb me and turn me away from GMO food by itself. Also there are ways aside from genetic modification to help plants combat climate change...such as plants evolving themselves, being slowly introduced to a somewhat different environment...I mean the vegetation seemed to do just fine the past millions of years with all the climate change that has happened over that period. Of course people have modified crops/plants for a long time....but modifying them to withstand toxic pesticides you want to put out into the environment to make it hard for people to grow crops from seeds that aren't yours and potentially cause other environmental damage like Monsanto is just wrong on so many levels.

Perfectly safe according to pretty much every government agriculture and/or food agency in the world.

Roundup-ready soy is the most studied crop in the world.

For the record, Roundup is an herbicide, not a pesticide.

Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, is essentially non-toxic to humans, particularly in the doses that most humans are ever exposed to it.

What it does is interfere with the shikimic acid pathway, which is a 7-step metabolic route used by plants and some fungi, bacteria, algae, and some other microbes to synthesize tyrosine, tryptophan, and phenylalanine. In plants, tyrosine is required for photosynthesis.

Animals, as a family, do not use this metabolic route.

If you're an animal, and you are, the surfactant (soap) that is mixed into roundup to allow it to better coat leaf surfaces is actually more toxic than the glyphosate. By a lot. And the surfactant isn't very toxic. No more toxic than Dawn(tm).

Some plants and microorganisms that use the shikimic acid pathway are already somewhat resistant to glyphosate. Most of those plants aren't what most would consider to be weeds. At any rate, they all share a common trait: they have an additional pathway for enzyme 5-enolpyruvylshikimate 3-phosphate (EPSP) synthase.

So to develop roundup ready crops, they isolated a gene from a bacterium that has a very good EPSP synthase, and inserted that gene into the genetic makeup of the crop.

About 1 gallon of glyphosate is used in the production of something around 20 tons of soy beans. There's actually more soap than glyphosate in roundup, and it's almost all water. And again, the soap is worse for you than the glyphosate, and is no worse for you than what you're hand-washing dishes with.

There is no nutritional difference between a roundup-ready soybean and a similar non-gmo soybean cultivar.

There is no difference at all between soy sauce made with roundup-ready soybeans and the same soy sauce made with non-gmo soybeans. Though my preference right now is Pearl River Bridge, which is much better than Kikoman, and far better than most of what you get at less-than-expensive asian restaurants.

There are non-GMO crops that are tolerant of herbicides other than glyphosate. Sunflowers are a good example. The majority of commercially grown sunflower is non-gmo and tolerant of sulfonylurea or imidazolinone or other ALS inhibitors. These are actually far more toxic for animals than glyphosate, and sunflower seeds and sunflower oil produced with at least the sulfonylurea herbicides are legally marketed as "organic".

fwiw, the sulfonylurea tolerant sunflower seeds (and corresponding herbicide) are marketed by DuPont.

What I'm trying to get at here is that "what's good to eat" and "what's good to grow" are questions that are more complex than "organic" "gmo" etc.

Right on!

All food is "GMO." That's why we have corn cobs bigger than your pinky, that's why we have chickens bigger than a pigeon, that's why we have cows bigger than dogs, that's why we have seedless grapes and watermelon and oranges, and why we have apples bigger than a cherry.
Humans have been developing agriculture for 10,000 years. It's ALL modified.

As for labeling, the reason why food derived from genetically modified organisms should not be labeled is because mandated food labels are used to inform consumers on subjects relating to either a known health risk or relating to the nutritional content of the food.

As soon as we put a "Contains GMO" label on something, the people who are now saying "if it's not a concern why not put it on the label?" will start saying "Why would they put it on the label if there is no concern?"

The reason we know that there are no known health risks in GMO foods is because the FDA and USDA are actually very, very careful about it.

The primary concern is that new allergens may be introduced by GMOs. We actually know a lot about what causes allergic reactions. We know that allergic reactions are always a reaction to a protein, and we know what characteristics in a protein strand cause the reaction.

So GMO crops are analyzed to determine that there are no novel proteins in the GMO strain which may even vaguely resemble an allergen. And we really can do this today. We have the technology.

Furthermore, human studies are required to demonstrate that there is no allergic reaction.

As for the nutritive content, producers of GMO crops are also required to prove that their crop has no meaningful difference compared to non-GMO cultivars.

It actually takes a total of about 10 years to get a genetically modified crop to market. The current state of the art really does involve sequencing the genome of every modified plant to determine which of them have only the intended genetic alterations, and the destruction (usually by incineration) of all defective plants, until they have a plant that has only the desired changes, and which they can breed normally like any other plant.

I actually support the federal GMO labeling bill in congress, because it will only mandate a label when the genetic modification alters the makeup of the food to an extent that it really is different, for example if it can't be cooked the same way as traditional cultivars.

It isn't currently legal to sell GMOs that are modified that much, btw.

This kind of thinking makes me depressed for the human race. Sorry but that's unadulterated fearmongering conspiracy-theory paranoia.
Yes, outright paranoia. Get Help.

Its not congress's responsibility to make consumers like GMO product, it's not their problem if labels make people think twice because they have the right to know. The profits of Monsanto should not be a priority for our so called representatives. You guys see GMOs as some form of social engineering, which is fine if you want to make that argument but do it honestly and guess what would happen if they had to label GMO product? They wouldn't be able to charge the some price for it, they'd have to sacrifice profits to the little small time farmer! Oh the humanity!

This is corporatism straight up, educate yourselves.

Last edited by Jacoby on 13 Aug 2015, 8:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Ignorance is bliss my friend, don't let the autocratic details get in the way of your experiment in social engineering. A superior product does not need protections, it would sell itself. Freedom of information, freedom of choice, not a fan?