Sustainable Food

The benefits do not justify the costs. If you think they do , you are simply underestimating the true cost. If you don't realize the cost today, your children will realize it tomorrow. The purpose of GE is not to feed but to profit. Its that simple. The final outcome of any endeavor will be painted by the motives present at its origin.

Heres a farmers point of view on this.

http://www.truthabouttrade.org/news/editorials/board-commentary/15185-the-business-of-farming

The first line reads "Farming is a business." I read no further. The entire article proves MY point not yours. Farming IS a business. Life is NOT a business. Good business practices do not equal good life practices. If you want to make a lot of money, yes you definitely want GE crops. But if you want your species to survive you do not want GE anything. You must work with nature not against it.  You have to choose between good business and good life because they're not the same, and in fact one destroys the other. The evidence of business destroying life in pursuit of profit is everywhere. Ask the farmers in India how the like GE crops. Oh you can't, they killed themselves in shame  when their crops failed to produce and their families were starving. Ask your children how they like being infertile. Mice fed GE corn became infertile by the 3rd generation. GE is bad. Who's side are you on? The only evidence I really need to see is the motivation behind GE. It is a malevolent motivation.

Are you aware of the EIQ of glyphosate vs the compounds it replaced? 

Are you aware that glyphosate does not contaminate rivers because it binds tightly to soil on contact and that combined with zero-tillage the soil stays on the land and does not run off into rivers.  Further glyphosate degrades rapidly into completely non-toxic compounds.  Compare that to the compounds it replaced.

Are you aware of the patent expiration so no one company owns it?

When these are all considered it is clear the transition from X to glyphosate has been a tremendous benefit to the environment.

Yes its use has gone up exactly because it is so useful to farmers who are the true stuarts of the land.

What about all the people that Monsanto has poisoned to death? Do you see the whole picture or just the dollar signs. Organic Farmers feed thousands of people everyday with absolutely NO harm to the environment. None, zip, zero, nadda. Proper organic farming practices benefit the environment. You don't know what a life is worth but you know what your money is worth. That is why you value your money more.

If GE crops are nessessary....for humans to survive....then there is something fundamentally wrong. There is nothing that change the fact that there are more people on this planet than the planet can support. Using that as an excuse GE crops are here to make "them" rich while simultaneously culling the population through disease and infertility.

My point still stands: using a study that does not measure the most commonly used pesticide to make a point that pesticide use has not increased (and has in fact decreased) is not valid. His identification of that study as proof that the Organic Study center is wrong is not a fair argument.

Your comment about glyphosate being relatively better for the environment than other pesticides also misses the point. The study I wrote about is making the argument that using genetic engineered crops is _specifically_ causing more pesticide use. If wide use of GE crops causes rates of pesticide use to go up, then that is a concern. It's not a question of picking the lesser evil; it's a question of whether the system we are designing -- GE crops and the pesticides that allow them to thrive -- is an acceptable and effective system in its own right.

I guess that is where we differ Katherine.  Bt crops (most used in developing countries) greatly reduce insecticide use.  HT crops have farmers switch compounds or switch tillage practices.  Both help the environment.  Growing food has an impact regardless of what system is used.  The question that is hard to answer one way or the other is what proportion of each type of agriculture is best to feed the most with the least impact. In other words It is about picking the lesser evil.

News from China.

http://www.genengnews.com/news/bnitem.aspx?name=69131238

Remember China has over 1000 field tested GM crops just waiting on the shelf.

Ecological farms: the only real way to feed an Increasingly hungry world

A great article succinctly making the case that it is only ecological farming that can save us in a post fossil-fuel world.

It's not about picking the lesser evil, it's about picking the system that has no evil at all. Agroecological practices (a broad category that includes organic farming, but is much broader) not only produce an abundance of food equal to or greater than chemically-enhanced monoculture, but they do it in a way that provides a NET POSITIVE to the environment.

There is no technological quick fix for our climate and agricultural problems. Nature is a highly complex system and resilient, sustainable requires extremely savvy farmers with expertise in plant breeding and cultivation for their microclimate--not technicians with chemicals and machines that are wholly dependent on a laboratory to provide their inputs.

The UN Independent Science Panel agrees.

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/ISPtoFAO.php

Furthermore, GM pollen drift and crop contamination is a major problem causing loss of livelihood for farmers everywhere, as well as creating herbicide resistant weeds, which is why US farmers are protesting the introduction of GM sugar beets, wheat and rice, and Mexican farmers are protesting GM corn.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/08/david_suzuki.php

No such thing as seeds that will solve hunger:

http://www.grist.org/article/help-us-insert-techno-fix-here-youre-our-only-hope/

GMOs fail to yield:

http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/science_and_impacts/science/failure-to-yield.html

In fact, Monsanto just had to fork out major money to S. African farmers because their GM corn failed miserably.

And they were just found guilty of lying about the safety of Round Up in France

WHY GM CROPS WILL NOT FEED THE WORLD

Ms. Dawn, I just read UN 21 Agenda. Right now, I want to feed to every Progressive GM food, and make them eat the poison that comes along with this agenda. (No need to defend Mr. Wager, this isn't directed at your research.)

I have read/watched your research. You said, "it gives you hope." Hope for what? No more freedom? choice? country?  

-I'd rather die fighting for my freedom, than see my children grow-up with none.

Seldom discussed is the GMO debate is the ethics of the technology.

Many prominent scientists have warned against the dangers of genetic engineering. George Wald, Nobel Prize-winning biologist and Harvard professor, wrote:

"Recombinant DNA technology [genetic engineering] faces our society with problems unprecedented not only in the history of science, but of life on the Earth. It places in human hands the capacity to redesign living organisms, the products of some three billion years of evolution.

Such intervention must not be confused with previous intrusions upon the natural order of living organisms; animal and plant breeding, for example; or the artificial induction of mutations, as with X-rays. All such earlier procedures worked within single or closely related species. The nub of the new technology is to move genes back and forth, not only across species lines, but across any boundaries that now divide living organisms… The results will be essentially new organisms. Self-perpetuating and hence permanent. Once created, they cannot be recalled…

Up to now living organisms have evolved very slowly, and new forms have had plenty of time to settle in…. Now whole proteins will be transposed overnight into wholly new associations, with consequences no one can foretell, either for the host organism or their neighbors.

It is all too big and is happening too fast. So this, the central problem, remains almost unconsidered. It presents probably the largest ethical problem that science has ever had to face. Our morality up to now has been to go ahead without restriction to learn all that we can about nature. Restructuring nature was not part of the bargain… For going ahead in this direction may be not only unwise but dangerous. Potentially, it could breed new animal and plant diseases, new sources of cancer, novel epidemics."10

Erwin Chargoff, an eminent geneticist who is sometimes called the father of modern microbiology, commented:

…The principle question to be answered is whether we have the right to put an additional fearful load on generations not yet born. I use the adjective 'additional' in view of the unresolved and equally fearful problem of the disposal of nuclear waste. Our time is cursed with the necessity for feeble men, masquerading as experts, to make enormously far-reaching decisions. Is there anything more far-reaching than the creation of forms of life?… You can stop splitting the atom; you can stop visiting the moon; you can stop using aerosals; you may even decide not to kill entire populations by the use of a few bombs. But you cannot recall a new form of life. Once you have constructed a viable E. coli cell carry a plasmid DNA into which a piece of eukaryotic DNA has been spliced, it will survive you and your children and your children's children. An irreversible attack on the biosphere is something so unheard-of, so unthinkable to previous generations, that I could only wish that mine had not been guilty of it.11

It appears that the recombination experiments in which a piece of animal DNA is incorporated into the DNA of a microbial plasmid are being performed without a full appreciation of what is going on. Is the position of one gene with respect to its neighbors on the DNA chain accidental or do they control and regulate each other? … Are we wise in getting ready to mix up what nature has kept apart, namely the genomes of eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells.

The worst is that we shall never know. Bacteria and viruses have always formed a most effective biological underground. The guerrilla warfare through which they act on higher forms of life is only imperfectly understood. By adding to this arsenal freakish forms of life-prokyarotes propagating eukaryotic genes-we shall be throwing a veil of uncertainties over the life of coming generations. Have we the right to counteract, irreversibly, the evolutionary wisdom of millions of years, in order to satisfy the ambition and curiosity of a few scientists?

This world is given to us on loan. We come and we go; and after a time we leave earth and air and water to others who come after us. My generation, or perhaps the one preceding mine, has been the first to engage, under the leadership of the exact sciences, in a destructive colonial warfare against nature. The future will curse us for it."12

With GMO, we are all guinea pigs. The precautionary principle should apply.

GM crops will not counter the effects of climate change

Climate change brings sudden and extreme changes in weather. Our crop base needs to be flexible and diverse in order to adapt. GM technology offers just the opposite — a narrowing of crop diversity and an inflexible technology that requires years and millions of dollars in investment for each new variety.

GM companies have patented plant genes involved in tolerance to drought, heat, flooding, and salinity — but have not produced a single new crop with these properties. This is because these functions are highly complex and involve many different genes working together in a precise way. It is beyond existing GM technology to engineer crops with these sophisticated gene networks for improved tolerance traits.

Conventional natural cross-breeding, which works holistically, is much better adapted to achieving this aim, using the many varieties of virtually every common crop that tolerate drought, heat, flooding, and salinity

There are better alternatives to GM

Many authoritative sources, including the IAASTD report on the future of agriculture, have concluded that GM crops have little to offer global agriculture and the challenges of poverty, hunger and climate change, because better alternatives are available. These go by many names, including integrated pest management (IPM), organic, sustainable, low-input, non-chemical pest management (NPM), permaculture, and agroecological farming, but extend beyond the boundaries of any particular category. Projects employing these sustainable strategies in the developing world have produced dramatic increases in yields and food security.

Strategies employed include:

- Sustainable, low-input, energy-saving practices that conserve and build soil, conserve water, and enhance natural pest resistance and resilience in crops

- Innovative farming methods that minimise or eliminate costly chemical pesticides and fertilizers

- Use of thousands of traditional varieties of each major food crop, which are naturally adapted to stresses such as drought, heat, harsh weather conditions, flooding, salinity, poor soil, and pests and diseases

- Use of existing crops and their wild relatives in traditional breeding programmes to develop varieties with useful traits

- Programs that enable farmers to cooperatively preserve and improve traditional seeds

-Use of beneficial and holistic aspects of modern biotechnology, such as Marker Assisted Selection (MAS), which uses the latest genetic knowledge to speed up traditional breeding. Unlike GM technology, MAS can safely produce new varieties of crops with valuable, genetically complex properties such as enhanced nutrition, taste, yield potential, resistance to pests and diseases, and tolerance to drought, heat, salinity, and flooding.

GM seeks to apply an expensive bandaid to a hemorrhage. Any farmer worth her salt knows that the best way to prevent pests and disease and to reduce crop loss due to weather is to build the soil, maintain high brix, plant hyperlocally-adapted seed varieties, companion plant, rotate crops, cover crop and most importantly, AVOID MONOCULTURES. The problems of modern industrial agriculture cannot be solved with a seed. We need a paradigm shift, not an expensive top-down quick-fix.

Why should we wait x years and spend x billions of dollars for a dubious technology with unknown risks and well-documented harm (dependence on inputs, cross contamination), when we can solve our problems of climate change, self-sufficiency, hunger and poverty NOW, for relatively little money?

"Furthermore, GM is a highly imprecise science. We know so little about the extreme complexity of the genome. You can't just tamper with one gene without affecting the expression of the whole."

I can supply you with research that clearly shows the least genetic disturbances occur with GM technology vs, conventional breeding.

People are free to do whatever type of ag research they like including holistic(whatever that is).  Are you aware of how Canola was created in the first place?  There is no such thing as natural canola. 

So the bottom line is thirty years of reseach and 12years of commercial growing GM crops and there is not a single case of harm documented anywhere in the world from consuming food containing GM ingredients.  The world experts including the highly sceptical europeans all agree the technology is as safe or safer than conventional bred crops.

If you do not want to eat this very safe food, don't.  You can choose to eat organic food to avoid GM content.

If you would like to read the opinion of the worlds National Academies of Science go to my website and follow the International Council for Science-ICSU link that looked at 50 scientific reviews to come to the statement no evidence of harm has been demonstrated anywhere in the world. This after two trillion meals containing GM ingedients.

Cheers

Here is the link to the ICSU

http://www.icsu.org/Gestion/img/ICSU_DOC_DOWNLOAD/91_DD_FILE_GMO_Exec%20Summary.pdf?PHPSESSID=1317b52a8b4892c2579b2f454bd05608

http://www.bangmfood.org/publications/4-short-leaflets/1-genetically-modified-gm-foods-renewed-threat-to-europe

Studies show harmful effects of GM foods on animals

Farm animals have been raised on GM feed for many years. Does this mean that GM feed is safe for animals and humans? Certainly it means that ill effects may not show up immediately. But laboratory studies designed to assess longer-term and more subtle health effects of GM feed on animals do show harmful health effects.

Mouse and rat feeding studies:

-Rats fed GM tomatoes developed stomach ulcerations [12]

-Offspring of rats fed GM soya had 4 times the death rate of rats fed non-GM soya [13]

-Liver, pancreas and testes function was disturbed in mice fed GM soya [14, 15, 16]

-GM peas caused allergic reactions in mice [17]

-Rats fed GM oilseed rape developed enlarged livers, often a sign of toxicity [18]

-GM potatoes fed to rats caused excessive growth of the lining of the gut similar to a pre-cancerous condition [8, 19]

-Rats fed insecticide-producing GM maize grew more slowly, suffered problems with liver and kidney function, and showed higher levels of certain fats in their blood [20]

-Rats fed GM insecticide-producing maize over three generations suffered damage to liver and kidneys and showed alterations in blood biochemistry [21]

-Old and young mice fed with GM insecticide-producing maize showed a marked disturbance in immune system cell populations and in biochemical activity [22]

-Mice fed GM insecticide-producing maize over four generations showed a buildup of abnormal structural changes in various organs (liver, spleen, pancreas), major changes in the pattern of gene function in the gut, reflecting disturbances in the chemistry of this organ system (e.g. in cholesterol production, protein production and breakdown) and, most significantly, reduced fertility [23]

-Mice fed GM soya over their entire lifetime (24 months) showed more acute signs of ageing in their liver [24]

-Rabbits fed GM soya showed enzyme function disturbances in kidney and heart [25].

Feeding studies with farm animals:

There are very few studies of this type that have looked directly at the long-term effects on farm animals. However, even these have shown problems:

-GM DNA can survive processing and is detectable in the digestive tract of sheep. This raises the possibility that antibiotic resistance and Bt insecticide genes can move into gut bacteria [26], a process known as horizontal gene transfer.

-Horizontal gene transfer can lead to antibiotic resistant disease-causing bacteria (“superbugs”) and may lead to Bt insecticide being produced in the gut with potentially harmful consequences. For years, regulators and the biotech industry claimed that horizontal gene transfer would not occur with GM DNA, but this research challenges this claim

-Sheep fed Bt insecticide-producing GM maize over three generations showed disturbances in the functioning of the digestive system of ewes and in the liver and pancreas of their lambs [27].

Do these animal feeding studies highlight potential health problems for people who eat GM foods?

Yes. Before food additives and new medicines can be tested on human subjects, they have to be tested on mice or rats. This is the scientifically established and generally accepted standard for safety testing. If toxic effects are found in these initial animal experiments, then the drug would most likely be disqualified for human use. Only if animal studies revealed no harmful effects, would the drug be further tested on human volunteers.

If animal tests with a drug were to yield results similar to those seen in the GM feeding studies, the drug would most likely be disqualified for further development. But these GM crops were approved as safe for human consumption. Clearly, the government is using far less rigorous standards for GM crops than for new medicines.

Based on the existing evidence, approvals of GM products for human and animal consumption should be revoked and their status re-evaluated.

GM foods are not more nutritious but can be toxic or allergenic

There are no commercially available GM foods with improved nutritional value. Currently available GM foods are no better and in some cases are less nutritious than natural foods. Examples include:

-GM soya had 12—14% lower amounts of cancer-fighting isoflavones than non-GM soya [28]

-Oilseed rape engineered to have vitamin A in its oil had highly reduced vitamin E and altered oil-fat composition [29]

-Human volunteers fed a single GM soya bean meal showed that GM DNA can survive processing and is detectable in the digestive tract. There was evidence of horizontal gene transfer to gut bacteria [9, 30]. Horizontal gene transfer of antibiotic resistance and Bt insecticide genes from GM foods into gut bacteria is an extremely serious issue. This is because the modified gut bacteria could become resistant to antibiotics or become factories for Bt insecticide.

-While Bt in its natural form has been safely used for years as an insecticide in farming, Bt toxin genetically engineered into plant crops has been found to have potential ill health effects on laboratory animals [31, 32, 33]

-In the late 1980s, a food supplement produced using GM bacteria was toxic [34], initially killing 37 Americans and making more than 5,000 others seriously ill.

-Several experimental GM food products (not commercialised) were found to be harmful:People allergic to Brazil nuts had allergic reactions to soya beans modified with a Brazil nut gene [35]

-The GM process itself can cause harmful effects. GM potatoes caused toxic reactions in multiple organ systems [8, 19].

-GM peas caused a 2-fold allergic reaction — the GM protein was allergenic and stimulated an allergic reaction to other food components [17]. This raises the question of whether GM foods cause an increase in allergies to other substances.

Footnotes for the above peer-reviewed studies here:

http://www.bangmfood.org/publications/4-short-leaflets/1-genetically-modified-gm-foods-renewed-threat-to-europe

Furthermore, because of pollen drift, I barely have a choice to avoid GMOs. More and more certified organic foods are turning up with GM contamination.

Even more concerning than the potential health risks, genetic contamination from GM crops is a very serious threat to biodiversity.

The answer is no pesticides, no GM food and let the herd thin out by attrition until the population reaches a naturally sustainable level.

Wow Dawn once again you have put forward virtually every pseudo-science fear story out there.  Once again I will conter with the European Food Safety Agency (very sceptical those europeans are) report on the safety of feeding trials of GM food.

Many feeding trials have been reported testing GM

maize, potatoes, rice, soybeans and tomatoes on rats

or mice for prolonged periods, and parameters such as

body weight, feed consumption, blood chemistry, organ

weights, histopathology etc have been measured. The

food and feed under investigation were derived from

GM plants with improved agronomic characteristics like

herbicide tolerance and/or insect resistance. The majority

of these experiments did not indicate clinical effects

or histopathological abnormalities in organs or tissues

of exposed animals. These studies can be used to assist

the safety evaluation of GM plant derived food and feed

and to reach conclusions on whether they can be considered

as safe as their conventional counterpart.

And here is the quote for your references.

In some

cases adverse effects were noted, which are difficult to

interpret due to shortcomings in the studies. S-20

jk

To quote a very famous man who did more for the worlds poor than anyone in history. "I don't see two billion volunteers(to disappear)."  

And a couple more quotes fromn the EFSA report on my website.

Many subchronic feeding studies in rodents have been

conducted over the past 15 years on food and feed

derived from GM plants developed so far. Those studies

which were well designed and followed internationally

accepted protocols did not reveal indications of adverse

effects. The results obtained from the testing of GM

food and feed in rodents indicate that large safety margins

can be established between the levels of animal

exposure and the estimated human daily intakes without

adverse effects. S-59

Results indicate that animals fed with feed derived from

GM plants do not differ with respect to uptake of nutrients,

health and performance, hatchability, milk yield,

milk quality, etc., compared to animals fed with conventional

comparable feed. S-59

http://web.viu.ca/wager

cheers

What about all the people that Monsanto has poisoned to death? Do you see the whole picture or just the dollar signs. Organic Farmers feed thousands of people everyday with absolutely NO harm to the environment. None, zip, zero, nadda. Proper organic farming practices benefit the environment. You don't know what a life is worth but you know what your money is worth. That is why you value your money more.

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A thorough, informative article on the shortcomings of GMOs by a genetic engineering expert at Ethicurean.com:

Can biotechnology ‘feed the world’? Not likely, says genetic engineering expert Doug Gurian-Sherman

Part 1 - http://www.ethicurean.com/2009/07/08/gurian-sherman/

Part 2 - http://www.ethicurean.com/2009/07/10/gurian-sherman-2/

There's only one person in this conversation who is being PAID to be in this conversation. Can anyone guess who that is and whose side Mr Wagner is on? Its laughable how anyone could believe what someone who is getting paid to speak says.