WHAT IS YOUR OPINION ON GMO (Genetically Modified Foods)

[RAINRA]

Why is our government allowing these foods... besides the obvious

I've known that it is in our food for a while now just feel like not much has been done to stop it.

 

After watching these documentaries

 

http://freedocumentaries.org/film.php?id=211

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tjw4TYU3nvw

I got a better picture of what is going on.

 

It shed a good point on the future of our food supply.

What can we do what are you doing to fight it.

 

Stop all

Franken Foods

 

write to your government people to show your anger.

[Im Your Man]

I wanted to post something on GMO since a long time. I'm gonna share more infos later but to answer your question about why our governements are doing this, simply because of $$$. Companies like Monsanto (yes, the same company that created Agent Orange for the Vietnam war) now rule the world because they rule the food market, almost all food products in all grocery stores contain their patented corn, soy and wheat. The worst, GMO grains contaminates all organic grains kilometres around. If a farmer is found with just one Monsanto gmo grain on his field, the whole field is now property of Monsanto Inc. Crazy...

[medman]

Here is my opinion. The technology behind GMOs is one of the greatest advents of our society. It is not GMOs in general that are bad...it's the hideously evil companies like Monsanto that are using that technology in harmful ways, like how their engineered their "roundup-ready" soybeans to be the only plant on earth that can survive being sprayed with their incredibly toxic Roundup herbicide.

 

The idea behind GMOs is actually pretty much what farmers have always done - they crossed 6 different strains of grains, for example, to give the high-yield wheat that we grow commercially today. GMOs are just plants that have specific genes added. Instead of blending two plants 50/50, you can just take the one or two desirable genes from plant A and put them into plant B. Furthermore, you can cross plants that don't have the same number of alleles and therefore could not normally be crossed.

 

Examples of how wonderful GMO technology can be (in the right hands): they've recently been working on developing rice that contains the enzymes to produce vitamin A/beta carotene and other vitamins that rice normally does not contain, in order to prevent childhood blindness in poor countries that depend on rice for food. In this case, all they did was take the genes for vitamin-producing enzymes from plants such as sweet potatoes, and put them into rice. This has the potential to improve nutrition and health for hundreds of millions, possibly billions, of people.

 

Of course, companies like Monsanto are pure seething evil, engineering plants that produce sterile seeds so that you have to buy more seed from them every year, engineering plants to survive increasingly toxic herbicides, etc, etc. So I'm not going to pretend that the current application of GMOs is good overall...but, like so many things we have designed, it can be good in the right hands and harmful in the wrong hands.

[Im Your Man]

I just got my hands on the book on GMO by Marie-Monique Robin, same woman who did the film documentary afterwards. I think we should be worry about the dangers of playing with nature. When Man starts to act like God, only bad things can happen, because it's simply against Nature. If you don't believe me ask Noe or all the people who died during the Flood. Lol, just joking. But seriously, I don't agree with Medman when he says that " it can be good in the right hands and harmful in the wrong hands" because no right hands want to deal with GMO, only the evil ones are crazy enough to play with this so things can only go wrong. Like with the atomic bomb and then the H-bomb. If you say nothing is going wrong yet, first of all it's not true, it's already causing diseases to animals and humans, only it's top secret classified informations and Monsanto is paying ex-CIA agents to take care of people who dare to speak in public; and second, the worst is yet to come. Medman said : "The technology behind GMOs is one of the greatest advents of our society" and "how wonderful GMO technology" . It doesn't matter if it can save lives with gmo rice with added vitamin A in it. We don't need GMO, nature has been doing fine for over 2000 millions of years without GMO, and now Monsanto claims it's the end to all our problems. Saying that using GMO is great to end hunger in the world is the biggest joke : agrobusiness IS what causes hunger. Growing astronomical quantities of transgenic corn and soy to feed cattle for the rich countries at the expense of the poors . Trying to solve the problem with what causes it is quite ridiculous.

[RAINRA]

I don't see how gmo's are good at all. Even if you were to ad vitamine A it would not be a complete nutrient because their are still micronutrients that work together naturally with the particular food. This does not to me solve malnutrition. We should spend that money figuring out how they can be self sustainable so they can feed themselves.

 

Anyway in Europe they are suppose to have labels on all GMO foods. I have not seen it first hand but I will check next time I am over there.

[cubby2112]

I am with Medman on this one. I never really talk about it, because it is basically blasphemy to be a vegan and have this view. I think there is incredible potential in it, but there is incredible risk also.

[veginator]

Here is my opinion. The technology behind GMOs is one of the greatest advents of our society.

 

The claim--usually made by the US government or by companies such as Monsanto that are producing the stuff--that GMOs represent some great advance or hope for humanity reminds me a lot of claims about what a great idea nuclear power is for alleviating dependence on foreign oil, global warming, etc. Proponents of nuclear power pretend that there aren't lots of alternatives that are cheaper, safer, and generally more environmentally friendly, and constantly downplay how unsafe and environmentally unfriendly it is, just how much of a role nuclear power at one or another point in the fuel cycle has played in cancer, birth defects, and other health problems.

 

Much the same scenario seems to be unfolding with GMOs. They are one of the greatest advances in our society according to Monsanto or DuPont or the US government, maybe, but geneticists and others knowledgeable about the technology who don't have some vested interest in GMOs are generally quite alarmed by them and, based on the research that has been done so far, consider claims about their benefits quite overblown. Dangerous side effects of GMO technology have already been observed. There's a good brief overview of the hazards or potential hazards of GMOs, and research challenging the claims made about their benefits, in John Robbins' book The Food Revolution.

 

And what need is there that can't already potentially be met in other ways besides GMO foods, even assuming that GMO foods could meet some important unmet need? Reducing/eliminating hunger and malnutrition is the most commonly claimed benefit of GMO technology.

 

But hunger and malnutrition certainly are not a result of the fact that humans hadn't until recently invented GMOs! People usually starve or are malnourished because they are really poor, and either don't have enough access to land, seeds, etc. to adequately meet their nutritional needs, or don't make enough money doing something other than living off the land to make ends meet. In most poorer countries the majority of arable land is owned/controlled by a small number of really rich people and by foreign companies. (There's the same unequal distribution of land ownership in rich countries like the US, but of course as long as the vast majority of people at least have enough money to buy food there isn't much malnutrition resulting from it.)

 

Just as important in creating food shortages for the billions of hungry or malnourished people on the planet, as several people have already mentioned, is the fact that most of the world's arable land is used to grow food for livestock, not for people. The problems of hunger and malnutrition could easily be solved if their root causes were addressed, but most of the world's governments and essentially all of the world's major corporations have no interest in doing that.

 

The idea behind GMOs is actually pretty much what farmers have always done - they crossed 6 different strains of grains, for example, to give the high-yield wheat that we grow commercially today. GMOs are just plants that have specific genes added. Instead of blending two plants 50/50, you can just take the one or two desirable genes from plant A and put them into plant B.

 

Um, well, except that what's usually done is inserting genes into plants from utterly different species such as fish. Injecting genetic material from highly unrelated species into plants is not at all the same thing as cross-breeding different strains of plants. It's a dangerous, unnecessary, stupid idea, which as you have pointed out yourself is in practice just a way for companies like Monsanto to make lots of money while providing no tangible benefits and instead creating lots of problems (such as foods doused with extraordinarily high doses of Roundup).

 

Examples of how wonderful GMO technology can be (in the right hands): they've recently been working on developing rice that contains the enzymes to produce vitamin A/beta carotene and other vitamins that rice normally does not contain, in order to prevent childhood blindness in poor countries that depend on rice for food. In this case, all they did was take the genes for vitamin-producing enzymes from plants such as sweet potatoes, and put them into rice.

 

Actually the genes are from daffodils and bacteria! And what's wrong with just growing and eating, say, sweet potatoes? As noted above, malnutrition issues such as vitamin A deficiency have nothing whatsoever to do with people suffering from it being unable to grow anything but rice or some other single food. People suffering from hunger and malnutrition simply need the financial means/resources to meet their nutritional needs; there is no need for golden rice or any other Frankenfood.

[Im Your Man]

good post Veginator. People who think that genetic modifications can have some good things should open a book like Aldous Huxley's masterpiece Brave New World, written in 1932. This book was ahead on its time and still is today, even if Monsanto is kind of worse than fiction and science-fiction. ==============================

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=======What's good about GMO for the future ? Nothing. Our future is in danger. The future is dark: GMO's are spreading with the wind, bees, water, soil, pollen, trucks, airplanes. Soon we won't have the choice between organic or GMO. We can't find anything 100% natural, it doesn't exist anymore -- everything is at least 0,5% contaminated by mutant genes. There's maybe the deep sea that is still untouched, but for how long? Once modified genes are spread into nature, we can't go back, so it's already too late, the infection has begun. Nature ain't nature anymore, it became a creation of humans. Nature was perfect. All creatures of nature, including humans, are perfect, at least from a biological point of view; the human brain is a masterpiece. But creations of humans, such as GMOs, are not perfect. It makes everything unperfect, touched by humans, touched by evil : Monsanto. And now it's too late to stop it. ==============================

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=======Helicoverpa Zea, some butterfly is now resistant to the pesticide built-in soy, the genetically modified soy by Monsanto that is designed to resist the Roundup pesticide from Monsanto also. So that mutant butterfly is eating GMO and developped a resistant gene, and then mates with the other butterflies, other mutants are born. Next step: we need to make pesticides even more powerful, more harmful to our health. We're doing the same mistake than with vaccines : the viruses adapt, are getting stronger, and in the future we may have to face an invincible virus that will decimate mankind, and no vaccine or antidote will save us. What's sad is that GMO are worse, they will remain and proliferate even if mankind disappears.

[cubby2112]

Some good points have been brought up against GMOs, but I have one gripe about the perfection of nature:

 

humans, are perfect, at least from a biological point of view; the human brain is a masterpiece.

 

In nature, things kill each other to survive. Doesn't sound perfect to me.

 

Neil DeGrasse Tyson has a nice presentation on this. To see the part on the human body (though the rest is important also), fast forward to three minutes in:

 

 

Just ignore the atheist aspect of the video if that bothers you; the information applies even without it.

 

The way I view it is that there is potential in them to make farming more efficient. I know veganism helps this tremendously, but to be able to increase the efficiency even further could still be beneficial. However, all the experimentation should be closed off inside labs until incredible amounts of research has been done on the effects of the genetically modified foods. The way it is being done now is obviously horrendous. There is probably no way to ever get companies and governments to confine something like this to labs, so any advantage of GMOs is probably a moot point, since it is almost inevitable that someone will get greedy and mess with the process.

[Fallen_Horse]

GMO = good

GMO companies = bad

 

 

Also,

nuclear power = good

[Im Your Man]

GMO = good

GMO companies = bad

 

 

Also,

nuclear power = good

I would add: Monsanto = MonSatan. Thing is Monsanto owns 90% of the genetically modified foods world market, so GMO = bad, really bad. And it will never change, eventhough one day Monsanto is declared guilty of criminal acts against humanity (which I doubt will happen soon) it will just be replaced by other companies. Samething goes with nuclear power; governments have the power to do whatever they want with it, and there's some nasty governments. I personally don't care if nuclear technology can be useful for modern medical procedures to save lives, mankind is already overpopulated imho so it's bad.

 

GMO in food have absolutely nothing good to offer to us, consumers, so Monsanto invented a good reason for GMO, the end of hunger in the world. It's doing the complete opposite, watch the documentary "The World According to Monsanto" where we see the farmers in Mexico, India and Africa and they don't agree at all with Monsanto. This is in the last parts I think. Hunger is not about helping producing more - we're already producing too much grains - it's about a better sharing of the stock available. But the rich countries keep everything and even steal from poor countries. Watch the tacticts made by U.S. government with GMO's to remove corn independancy from Mexico.

 

There's 8 parts and I highly recommend watching this documentary to everybody, because food concerns everybody. I'm reading the book these days and find it a billion x better than the movie. There's details about the victims of Agent Orange in Vietnam : some malformed feotuses like : no brain, minuscule brain, giant brain, penis where the nose should be, a body with 2 heads, etc.

 

Now they're doing the samething in Colombia Venezuela to eradicate cocaine fields by spraying Roundup Ultra. I'm collecting notes about GMOs and Monsanto and will amalgam all this on my blog soon.

[RAINRA]

yea that is why I posted this gmo question. I think it so horrible that all of us should voice our opinion for it to stop completely and be outlawed. This is destroying our future.

[Im Your Man]

yea that is why I posted this gmo question. I think it so horrible that all of us should voice our opinion for it to stop completely and be outlawed. This is destroying our future.

Exactly ! Our future will literally become genetically modified because GMO's spread on the whole planet even just with nature's spread (wind, pollenisation, etc). So the planet will become genetically engineered by Man-- who makes himself the New Creator, New God. The worst is that people can't choose (especially true in America, less in Europe) because labelling GMO on food products is prohibited. Monsanto is now trying to own the rights over water and to patent the gene of pig, so all farmers will pay them royalties for each pig. What's next after owning all food in the world, they will own the earth, and the air we breath? Then they will patent the gene of humans so we'll be Monsanto's property ?

[liftandcode]

I think that it is incredibly naive to think that all GMOs are bad. Yes, yes, Monsanto is evil and their GMOs are next to useful, but the science behind them is exciting and revolutionary. But I'm with Cubby in believing that these things shouldn't see the outside of a lab for many many years to come.

[Im Your Man]

What's next after owning all food in the world, they will own the earth, and the air we breath? Then they will patent the gene of humans so we'll be Monsanto's property ?

First time I quote myself but there's a first time for everything. I talked about human gene patent as if it was sci-fi... but no! I just saw a documentary (that I saw many years ago but forgot about it since) about genes patent. There's some pharma companies that travel around the world, stealing blood from nations, saying it's for studies to help research on finding cures, they find the gens they want in the blood then patent it. It's often approved, without any consent from the owner of the blood. In fact, the laboratories don't say anything about the use of the blood to the owner otherwise this one would refuse to cooperate. All those human genes can therefore be cloned ad libitum and be sold around the world.

 

You can actually buy and sell genes on Internet, browsing by specie, gender, etc http://ccr.coriell.org/Sections/BrowseCatalog/?SId=3 For instance, the gene of an Amerindian is 75$. The full DNA of a woman whose genes are resistant to leucemia have been patented; the company pretends being the creator of this woman. USA tried to steal the genes of an entire nation, the Guaymis, and make profits on it, with the . Fortunately, someone heard about this newly aproved patent and denounced it so the patent have been canceled. http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=07-P13-00017&segmentID=3

 

Many research on diseases have been cancelled because the genes they were studying suddenly became property of a company and those companies will pursue anyone who uses this gene illegally. After the control over genes of foods, now it's control of human genes, dictating who can be cured and who not. With the seeds modified with the Terminator technology, the planet will become infertile, like in the movie :Children of Men". Those "suicide seeds" are good from preventing GMO from spreading to organic fields, but companies like Monsanto want to kill organic fams. When it will be done, all fields will be genetically engineered and infertile, and then Monsanto will rule over the world. http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/terminatorRafi.cfm

 

http://www.globalissues.org/article/194/terminator-technology

" A half-century after the Bengal famine [where, during British colonial rule, most of the food grown was exported for trade and for UK, instead of feeding hungry local people], a new and clever system has been put in place which is once again making the theft of the harvest a right and the keeping of harvest a crime. Hidden behind complex free-trade treaties are innovative ways to steal nature's harvest, the harvest of the seed, and the harvest of nutrition."

 

— Vandana Shiva, Stolen Harvest (South End Press, 2000), p.6

[Im Your Man]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080813/sc_afp/britainenvironmentfoodroyals;_ylt=AlzCBadTzOWkRH4bcgrhugOJhMgF

Prince Charles sees red over GM crops.

 

Wed Aug 13. LONDON (AFP) - Prince Charles drew criticism with an outspoken attack on industrial farming Wednesday, warning genetically modified food could be the "biggest disaster environmentally of all time."

[CollegeB]

I'm fine with GMO's however I know of cases where GMO seeds have blown over to other people's land which 1) ruins their resources and 2) the GMO company...I've heard of it being Monsanto...is then legally given the land their seed blew on. Govt is stealing land for Monsanto, when Monsanto is in the wrong. The GMO companies need to contain their work.

[Im Your Man]

What I wrote on my blog, but I've read this from a scientist (who has been fired of course) quoted in the book I'm reading ("the world according to Monsanto") : biotechnologies are not even technologies, because for something to be a technology, the procedure must reproduce the same results under identic conditions, which is not possible when making genetic modifications to organisms, because the gene gun shoots randomly, the target being so small, the ratio of modified genes varies up to 20% from a GMO to another. It's a very aleatory, rudimentary and very unprecise procedure, far from being mastered.

 

Also, something else, pretty scary, said by an employee of Monsanto : it is not true that a GMO is similar to a conventional soy bean. Not only the modified protein containing the integrated pesticide is different, but there's also other proteins in it that changed. Another employee commented about this, making a link between mad cows and human variations of this disease (Creutzfeldt-Jakob), reminding that this disease is caused by prions (altered proteins)... cattle being fed with GM soybeans -- and humans. The employee said that the company don't want to waste time and money to verify if the genetically modified proteins in soybeans are prions, and claims that health and security of humans doesn't concern Monsanto, "it's the job of the FDA".

Some analysis also showed that GM soybeans are deficient, losing up to 40% of the protein content.

[RAINRA]

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=soy+&hl=en&emb=0&aq=f#q=soy%20health&hl=en&emb=0