Genetically Modified Organisms: A Blessing or A Curse?

DawnGurl: Many plants have been genetically manipulated into becoming pest resistant, herbicide resistant, disease resistant, have a greater tolerance for cold and drought. They are manipulated into being more nutritious. There is also pollution control as when trees are modified so that they clean up heavy metal pollution in the soil. On the other hand, there may be unintended harm to other species as their pollen spreads to other species. Pests will eventually become resistant to the new strain. Gene transfer from one species to another would have unforeseen consequences, and human health concerns abound since this area is one vast unknown. Europe has solidly rejected GMO.

What do YOU think?

Geoff: Europe hasn't solidly rejected GMO, it's just that the most vocal (and misguided) members of society - and therefore the most vocal (and misguided) members of the various legislatures around Europe are against GMO.

Without genetically modifying our foodstuffs we're all going to starve or we're going to have to start culling people, because there is only so much you can grow in traditional ways. There is only so much pesticide you can put on the soil before it won't grow any more crops.

Personally, I have no problem with GMO, I would happily eat foods made with genetically modified cereals, vegetables or fruits. I do think that there is the potential for the "law of unintended consequences" to come and bite us on the ass about this one, so a good level of oversight on what is being done to the food is a good idea.

Also, because bananas are sterile (thanks to human intervention), and the only way to get new banana plants is to take a cutting from an existing plant, they are all becoming very susceptible to disease. Without genetic engineering bananas will go extinct by the end of the century.

DawnGurl: I agree with you 100% Geoff and have read reports stating similar claims. There simply will not be enough food to go around using traditional methods and for what its worth, Scientific American magazine also came to the same conclusion.

lori100: Monsanto is a ruthless, evil company. Europe is always far ahead of America in good sense and awareness.

Geoff: I restate my "a good level of oversight on what is being done to the food is a good idea" comment.

lori100: The Texas fertilizer plant that was destroyed early this yr by a huge explosion was in a lawsuit with Monsanto......------------------Protesters around the world march against Monsanto - USA Today-
www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/...protests-monsanto/2361007/‎

May 26, 2013 - LOS ANGELES (AP) — Organizers say two million people marched in protest against seed giant Monsanto in hundreds of rallies across the ...-----------------------------Media Coverage Blackout Over Anti-Monsanto Protests Alex Jones ...

www.infowars.com/media-coverage-blackout-over-anti-monsanto-protests/‎

May 28, 2013 - The decision by the mainstream media to ignore the thousands of individuals marching down the busiest streets of major cities worldwide may ...-------------------------5 Million Farmers Locked In Lawsuit Against Monsanto : Freedom ...

freedomoutpost.com/.../5-million-farmers-locked-in-lawsuit-against-mon...‎

Jun 22, 2013 - The US-based biotech giant Monsanto is locked in a lawsuit with five million Brazilian farmers, suing for as much as 7.7 billion US dollars (6.2 ...----------------------------Monsanto Protection Act - Huffington Post
www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/monsanto-protection-act‎

WASHINGTON -- Senate Republicans objected to an attempt Thursday to repeal a controversial provision, informally dubbed the "Monsanto Protection Act,".-------shows you who the govt works for......

DawnGurl: http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/food-safety.aspx

lori100: ^^^ Monsanto saying how safe their products are is like mass murderers saying they're nice guys and just misunderstood....

LiptonCambell: So lori- lets say Monsanto was taken out the picture- the big bad corporation is gone, and a friendlier company takes their place to produce GMO's.

Would you eat them?

Is this an issue of corporations, and the actions of one corporation in particular, or is this an issue of the food itself?

Also, I think something needs to be done about the spreading of bullshit on this issue. It's all fine and well if GMO's disappear from our tables, because food in the west in vast- but in the other third world countries out there that need these kinds of foods, or else their people will starve, GMO's are a NECESSITY- and the outright lies and misinformation being spread on this issue- from both Monsanto and GMO detractors- makes it impossible for people to make an informed decision. If your website makes a claim that GMO's harm people, for example, they should be accountable for those claims, or face criminal action.

These are human lives we are talking about here- suggesting we slow down these kinds of research, or that GMO's cause disease, or any number of lies and misinformation- these kinds of things only act to kill millions.




-------Also, Lori can you edit out those massive hyphens? They're force the page to be larger unnecessarily.

lori100: No, I wouldn't eat the products if I could help it. No, can't edit out the hyphens....they separate the articles...and my page is fine....

LiptonCambell: So lets talk about the products than, rather than Monsanto- why wouldn't you eat them?

Zanjan: Because monsanto owns them. Yes, monstanto claims copyright to all seed it sells; it forbids farmers from collecting the seeds from the crop to re-plant. To doubly ensure they wont steal the seeds from the seed farmers were forced to purchase from them in the first place (monopoly), monsanto has ensured, through genetic modification, that the produce's seed wont grow.

Monsanto believes it is God. It doesn't credit the real God with any involvement or consider there's such a thing as the balance of nature. It hates two phrases: "organic produce" and "wild foods". One can only imagine what would happen when GMOs 'escape' into the wild.

Thanks to GMO, certain crops can now endure a super big dose of glycosphate (better known as roundup) so they can live while everything else dies. Ask me - they burned and killed my fruit trees, potatoes, my ornamentals, junipers, berry bushes, aspens, poplars and shade trees. This is so the contracted farmer can have a huge and pricey yield of canola. Yes, the thistles, foxtail, grasses, and dandelions are dead but I had to breathe that air when they sprayed.

I cannot begin to list the deadly insecticides they've produced which were later banned. Consider that company, which made Agent Orange - do you think it cares about life? Would you naively believe anything they say and put your trust in anything they come up with?????

You may not have thought that people have homes around these fields and pets, including yard animals, and flowers. You can have canola (if you dare to eat it after being drenched in poison which it does absorb) but you can't have honey because those pumped up chemicals have destroyed all the bees.

So when economic times are bad and people are so hungry they try to grow their own backyard food........well, forget it. Those seeds wont grow. The dominoes have tipped.

LiptonCambell: Again, Zanjan, it seems to me there isn't much there in complains about GMO;s, but Monsanto...

So, with that in mind, I'm gunna ask you the same thing I asked Lori earlier;

Lets say Monsanto was taken out the picture- the big bad corporation is gone, and a friendlier company takes their place to produce GMO's.

Would you eat them?

Zanjan: The better question is: would I purchase them? That's what this is all about - money.

Look at it this way, if we don't have enough food to feed the world, then we should stop wasting what we have. We like convenience, we like easy, and we take too many things for granted.

I've been growing my own food since I was 11 years old - people used to do that in those days because produce was too expensive to buy. Since the price of sugar was out of this world, we used honey - much cheaper and lots of it. (that was before the disastrous bee colony collapse)

But people today can't be bothered to grow their own food (so our country can export more to poorer countries).

Every year, I have a bountiful crop with more than I could eat in a year. I don't sell the extra because people wont buy it - tried that many times in both city and country. Why not? I mean, my produce is organically grown, fresh, beautiful tasting, lovely to look at...I've won many prizes with them. No, people like store-bought. How strange. Look closer.

So, I give the extra away to friends and needy people. If I tell them, hey, you can have all the free veggies and fruit you want, just come and dig or pick them. NO way! They want ME to do it. Now if I do all the digging & picking & bagging and offer it to them, they don't want it because they have to clean it. They want ME to clean it. It's friggin free but that's not good enough!

This is what the biggest problem is - freakin' laziness!

People use chemicals because they don't like the effort of weeding. They use them because they've forgotten how to companion plant, practice sanitation, soil treatment, creating compost, fallow, practice water conservation, foster insect predators, and use natural preparations to destroy specific pests - not the pollinators.

Producers wont settle for 100 pounds of yeild - they want 400 pounds. Farmers cant find a market for their produce without a contract from a buyer - the buyers decide if a crop is getting the best price this year - if not, then no contracts.

Stock market and all. Doesn't matter if the world needs rye or barley - its what's the most lucrative crop this year. You get what they decide you should eat. The people who don't do the labour are setting the prices.

I will say some farmers are responsible for this, keeping up with demands by purchasing hugely expensive machinery, reducing the amount of manpower needed to harvest (fewer jobs). See the combines with air-conditioned cab, disk player, gps and a mini beer fridge.........machinery that can take on a huge expanse of field in a day. You pay for this people....and you will pay more for GMOs with a 12 month shelf life at room temperature.

Also, few want to farm for a living - the city is the place to be upwardly mobile, making the biggest bucks.

God made the earth capable of sustaining all life but humans have crapped on it so bad, the more they try to adjust their mess, the worse it gets. And you think this abuse is going to stop??? We don't need man playing God - we need to observe nature and follow the way God set it up. He's much smarter.

So, Lipton - No, even when I'm too old and sick to garden, I will not support GMO products by purchasing them in any form!!! CURSED is GMO!

LiptonCambell: >>>The better question is:

So.... you're not interested in answering the very simple question of "Would you eat GMO's if they were made by a more ethical company?"

Why did you side-step the question?

>>> if we don't have enough food to feed the world, then we should stop wasting what we have.

But that doesn't solve the problem. According the United Nations Environmental Programme, 1/3 of all food produced is wasted- but we need to produce more food than that to feed the starving people of the world. And with the world population rising, simply claiming that we shoud do more with less will only ensure more and more people will die.

According to The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, nearly 870 million people, or one in eight people in the world, were suffering from chronic undernourishment in 2010-2012. Should these people just go without while you restructure our system so McDonalds won't put burgers on the grill till someone orders it?

It's easy to say we can do with less when you're not the one starving.

But you clearly haven't done the research. The problem isn't people aren't eating all that they have on their plate, or that the grocery stores aren't selling all their bread before it goes bad- while these things certainly don't help, they aren't the overwhelming cause of starvation.

Poverty is the major cause of malnutrition, with the World Bank estimating 1,345 million poor people in developing countries who live on $1.25 a day or less. Also, the price of food hit an all time high in 2008, where the price of food tripled as the economy hit a slump Another factor is Conflict - that refugees, who lost their homes, are starving, and regions in conflict cannot receive the support they desperately need.

The solution to this problem isn't to simply refuse any new advancements in technology, relying entirely on re-purposing food scraps- the solution is to PRODUCE MORE FOOD- especially in the regions that NEED to be self-sufficient, such as Africa. We would see an astounding improvement on world malnutrition and world poverty if crops could have greater yields, or grow in harsher climates.

And that's where GMO's come in.

It's important to note, however, that progress IS being made. In 1990, 19% of the world was malnourished. As of the latest statistics, we're down to 12%- and GMO's played an important role in that.

http://www.unep.org/wed/quickfacts/

http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/07/01/this-unsettling-chart-shows-were-not-growing-enough-food-to-feed-the-world/

>>>I've been growing my own food since I was 11 years old

For a huge portion of the population, that simply isn't practical. What works for you may not work for a 15 year old orphan living in the streets of Johannesburg. There are large areas of this world where you simply cannot grow enough food to sustain yourself, even if you are fortunate enough to have a plot of land to grow something on.

>>>But people today can't be bothered to grow their own food (so our country can export more to poorer countries).

People also cannot be bothered to mine their own metals, or fix their own plumbing, or repair their own engines. Because our society is diverse, it is no longer REQUIRED that everyone grow their own garden- and for alot of people, it isn't a matter of laziness, but practicality.

>>>People use chemicals because they don't like the effort of weeding.

You want farmers to walk all over their field, picking the aphids off their plants?

I agree that, for you, it would be a simple matter- it's a small garden. But what you're suggesting is impractical for mass production.

>>>God made the earth capable of sustaining all life

Umm you KNOW that farming is unnatural, right? Such a statement defeats itself.




>>>No, even when I'm too old and sick to garden, I will not support GMO products by purchasing them in any form!!!

Ah- there's that answer.

So, what specifically is wrong with GMO's? Not whats wrong with corporations,or whats wrong with peoples attitudes towards farming, or how people in Africa should make their own gardens in their backyards- what is wrong with generically modifying foods so they produce more, or survive in harsher climates?

Geoff: Yeah - everyone changes from what they do now to growing their own food - what about people in cities with no gardens?

What about people in environments where they famously can't produce enough food to feed themselves whenever god's capricious whims means there is no rain?

LiptonCambell: What about people who, from malnutrition, simply don't have the strength to farm for themselves? Millions of people suffer from that all the time- your 'solution' ignores them, and leaves them to suffer and die.

Zanjan: Lipton, if I wouldn't purchase GMOs, it follows I wouldn't eat them.

About starving people - that's a local/regional issue. We can teach people how to grow their own food in the land God gave them. Then they trade some produce with partners for other types of food.

Mankind has been doing that for hundreds of thousands of years. Before the rise of international assistance, people usually didn't starve because they MOVED to where food was growing on its own or where they had the water etc to grow theirs. People don't like to move anymore - they'd rather die than be nomadic.

" What works for you may not work for a 15 year old orphan living in the streets of Johannesburg."

I lived on the city streets once too (same age, actually). Although I could only find enough scraps for one meal a day, I was still capable of giving others good growing advice, which I was pleased to do for free. Also, one doesn't stay 15 years old forever.

" it isn't a matter of laziness, but practicality."

So what's the excuse for a physically fit and healthy person not to grow green? He can plant herbs and dwarf citrus in his apartment, veggies on his balcony, bushes on the roof top, participate in a community garden. What's not practical?

Those who are too sick/crippled to grow can still contribute wisdom. Also, I've grown food most of my life, have done my part to give to others and back to the land - I'll happily take extra produce a grower deems to donate. Perhaps my grandchild or volunteer teen would be kind enough to dig, pick and transport; then I'll have my caretaker clean and cook them up.

By the way, I wasn't talking about wasteful consumption, but production - wasteful production. One has to put back into the earth what they take from it. I don't think you read all of my post, Lipton - picking aphids off plants? Only if you have two plants....actually, a hard spray of water is more effective. Why has one killed all their ladybugs?

Nobody said we had to make do with less food than we need to eat. There is no need for malnourishment.........there is only a need to end the wars in the area that destroy the growing fields and make it unsafe to actually be caught in one. There is need for governments to protect food transportation, and not to steal the money from the state. That's another topic.

So, you want to solve a problem? Start by learning which problem to solve first.

Zanjan: Here's a little story about respect for "LIFE"

Modern farming is NOT hands on. There's no communing with nature. They never touch the soil, like in commercials, they never touch the plant or speak to them. Everything goes through machinery, form purchasing to storage, planting, watering, harvest, seed-cleaning and travel.

It's the Ag Man who touches and speaks – every farmer has one. The farmer calls him out to the field to tell him what's going on and what he can do. That doesn’t mean the farmer will follow his advice.

Well, one day I was chatting to the neighbour's Ag man, who had driven into my yard for a visit. In the course of conversation, he noticed the quality of my lawn (mostly wild grass and dandelions), cut short to keep dandelion seed heads from forming & dispersing. He squatted and picked a blade of grass, showing it to me and said “THIS IS A MACHINE!”

He told me what it does, saying if I let it grow longer, it will contain more water and move in and destroy my dandelions. Inasmuch as we liked the neat look of short grass to frame the flowerbeds, if we wanted to safely solve the weed problem, just raise the mower by two inches.

You know what? It’s working……two years later, we now have some completely naturally produced dandelion free zones…and counting.

This is a lesson about priorities.

Corwin: I would like to point out that Humans have been genetically manipulating plants and animals for over 10,000 years... using selective breeding and hybridization. We just have a new way to do it now. Cows did not exist in nature... chickens did not exist in nature... the large corn cobs we enjoy did not exist in nature... almost every single crop or herd animal we have today was created by Man messing around with the genes.

And it's almost laughable how ignorant people point the finger at "big" corporations like Monsanto for having an evil agenda... trying to ensure that 7 billion people have enough to eat doesn't sound so evil to me. And it has to be a "big" corporation, because a "small" corporation wouldn't have the ability to undertake such a monumental task.

People are always slow to accept new things, and there is a deeply ingrained "Frankenstein" fear in the Human psyche that always sees the products of our own invention being the instruments of our destruction. Like how in movies, robots always go crazy and try to kill their makers, for instance.

But this is about the survival of the species... of course we should exercise caution with our genetic manipulation, and be careful not to open "Pandora's Box" of a runaway species, but if we don't do it, we will one day face the horror of wide-spread famine when some new fungus or insect wipes out some crop or other.
Remember the Irish potato famine? A new strain of fungus wiped out half the potato crop, their main staple, and millions died. If they had have had a Monsanto GMO potato back in those days, they could have averted that disaster.

LiptonCambell: >>> We can teach people how to grow their own food in the land God gave them. Then they trade some produce with partners for other types of food.

How is that any different from whats been going on for the last 100 years? If it's simply a matter of growing plants, than it would've been done by now- clearly the issue is more complex.

>>>Before the rise of international assistance, people usually didn't starve because they MOVED to where food was growing on its own or where they had the water etc to grow theirs. People don't like to move anymore - they'd rather die than be nomadic.

What the hell are you talking about? Nomadic is an obsolete word, replaced by a more apt word- refugee. What would really be happening, if people took your suggestion, is there would be million of refugees starving, rather than millions of Africans starving.

It is extremely arrogant to claim that people need to abandon their homes and their culture, and move to other countries, to resolve the starvation crisis(which the countries would, as they often do, stop them at the border, and tell them to turn around, and let them live in poverty and die in refugee camps just outside of the border), rather than develop new technologies to make it easier, more affordable, and more productive to grow their own food at their own home.

You would condemn millions to a pain and suffering, then death, because they don't act the way you would? Men, Women, Children, the sick and the elderly? And you call yourself a Christian?

>>>I lived on the city streets once too (same age, actually).

In Africa?

The mean streets of Windsor isn't quite as bad as the mean streets of Cairo. In our country, we have it differently- and to claim that because you managed here, that we shouldn't do EVERYTHING POSSIBLE to help these people, is utter bullshit. Until you suffer as they have, you shouldn't callously shrug off their suffering.

>>>So what's the excuse for a physically fit and healthy person not to grow green?

You think 870 million malnourished people are fit? What about this are you not understanding? 1 in 8 people in this world are in a condition that they cannot work a field and save their own lives.

By rejecting new technologies, and demanding they be condemned and abolished, you are condemning 1 in 8 people to death. 14 people are dying every minute- 20,864 will die by the end of the day- and you find their deaths okay, because they wouldn't do what you would've??

>>>Those who are too sick/crippled to grow can still contribute wisdom.

You have no concept of what malnutrition is, do you?

" Lower energy and impaired function of the brain also represent the downward spiral of malnutrition as victims are less able to perform the tasks they need to in order to acquire food, earn an income, or gain an education."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malnutrition#Effects

>>>there is only a need to end the wars in the area that destroy the growing fields and make it unsafe to actually be caught in one.

Finally- something we can agree on.

Sadly, you can't just clap your hands and say 'No more wars!'- so this is a factor we must accept to work around, not ignore and claim that the Africans who are suffering shouldn't be living there....

>>>So, you want to solve a problem? Start by learning which problem to solve first.

Why is GMO's a problem to begin with? This is something you never brought up. WHAT IS THE PROBLEM WITH GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS?

>>>There's no communing with nature.

Haha get real. You're saying Africans gotta starve because Americans don't commune with nature?

Zanjan: "How is that any different from whats been going on for the last 100 years?"

That's only been going on since international Socio-economic development groups appeared 60 years ago. They taught new and borrowed knowledge, which was unavailable to uneducated people.

Had farmers in North America been so smart, the dust bowls of the 1930s wouldn't have happened. All it took to solve the problem was being taught to till their fields differently.

Major disasters tend to teach quickly. Yet time erases the knowledge and people have to be re-taught. Just last year, I saw somebody's land pass by overhead. We thought it was funny. Undoubtedly, some thoughtful soul went out to inform them of the right thing to do.

An area in the next province over from me now has vineyards because someone back in the 80's taught the valley locals how to collect water from mountain fog. A friend of mine recently visited a tribal area in Africa and showed them how to build a moisture collector and conservator from materials on hand, cheap. The tribe is ancient but weather patterns have changed - they needed new knowledge.

Who said you had to abandon your country to move? There's a whole town 1 hour drive from me that should have moved many years ago. They knew it but did nothing to protect themselves. Finally, the town was wiped out in a massive flood. A few people lost their lives. The homes and businesses are gone. They cant re-build because it will happen again - the town refuses to splurge for a berm and a few irrigation canals.

Those people now live elsewhere, most of them, only 3 miles away.

Zanjan: "It is extremely arrogant to claim.............."

The epitome of arrogance is war.

"And you call yourself a Christian?"

No, because I'm not.

Africa? When I lived on the streets, summer was often + 30 C. Did you know that in summer, you can make jello in the dirt? Like Africa, nobody was giving me any handouts. I slept on the ground under the trees beside the river, just like Africans. When winter came, I made more sheltered arrangements. Most Africans have never seen snow - they don't know how to live in it or drive in it........not yet. I can teach them. Did you know that you can whip up a merange for your desert from clean snow?

As for malnutrition, I'm fully educated on dietary needs and practices. Food is medicine. When an outbreak of cholera hit India, many were dying from dehydration caused by the diarrhea. A health team flew in and cured them with a non-pharmaceutical treatment - do you know what it was? I bet you don't......I do.

"Communing with nature" - it speaks to you. Did you know that for every living thing that poisons a human or animal, there's an antidote growing within a thousand feet away from it. Animals can find it and will take it..........many humans are clueless and die from their ignorance.

I've been explaining how nature works to convey to you why GMOs cant - anything that isn't found in nature as a creation isnt there for a reason. Had it been useful, God would have been the first to employ it. He made living things to breed a certain way so they could be safe in and for the environment.

When humans try this, they always run into serious errors of their own making and will continue to do so. Since they screw up so badly working with the natural order, imagine the screwups working against it!

the real slim DEEPy: monsanto gmo ecoli (maizeRIP, miazePRO) create gmo veggies, which cause lab virus-like strains to thrive, as they can access the rhizomes, that normal ecoli, to which we have resistance, cannot, thus die off...

DawnGurl: Monsanto GMO potatoes for the Irish? Hey.... does Monsanto have any GMO Irish whiskey?