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[MetalSlimeHunt]

Nothing wrong with genetically modifying food. Monsanto's evil is from their activities with the food, not the food itself.

[GreatWyrmGold]

As for He3, as soon as the first few tons of it would land from the moon, the price will crash.

...Good point.

[Aseaheru]

No, there is nothing wrong with modifying it.
IF you know it is not dangerous. and since the current tech results in really weird (and thats a understatement) offspring, i think that it is not a good idea right now.

IF they tested it, then i am fine. however, whenever someone has started they have been shutdown or they have really screwed it up.

[PanH]

Actually, there is a lot of GM foods in America, but very few in Europe. I think most europeans never ate GM food.
And saying there is nothing wrong with it would be really overestimating the studies on it.

[Aseaheru]

Europe requires it to be labeled.

and im with that, its just that i dont really see a problem with it if it is handled correctly.

[Starver]

IF they tested it, then i am fine. however, whenever someone has started they have been shutdown or they have really screwed it up.

Most[1] GM trials that have been terminated have been because of anti-GM activists either raising the hackles of normal people against the trials or actually going out there and destroying the trial crops themselves.

A few years ago (late '80s, I think), I was privileged enough to receive a sample of tomato seeds that had been brought back down from a satellite.  The idea was to see if the exposure to space did anything to this notoriously hardy plant seed.  While there were obviously official trials as well, there was an attempt to get people interested in Space Science by letting some try it out themselves.

I donated my own pack to someone who ran a community farm who had the facilities to grow them isolated from other tomatoes, etc.  And then some rumour (and this was pre-Internet, so relatively 'quiet' compared with modern manias of this kind) started that was basically "Oh my godzz!  It'll be a Day Of The Triffids!" which made this guy (who should have known better) burn the crop without even thinking about it.

I have no love for Big Bioengineering (Monsanto, etc[2]) and I know there are risks, but all I see is knee-jerk reactions totally out of proportion.  And preventing carefully controlled studies from actually legitimately reassuring people or giving hard evidence that supports their own POV.  Just like the furore against irradiated food that tried to convince everyone that it was radioactive food[3]...

(edit: And labels saying "Warning, this is not 'natural' food" scares people out of all proportion.  Which is not to say I think it shouldn't be labelled, but we need people to realise what this actually means.)


Anyway, that's a diversion from Space Elevator talk.  Unless you want to develop a GM beanstalk, or something out of a Brian Aldiss novel.


[1] Well, most I've heard of, I haven't got quantitative figures at all...  But blame the nay-sayers for causing the publicity bias if I'm wrong.  Really, they're shooting themselves in the foot.

[2] Where the big problem is pretty much that their GM crops have in-built self-destruct/no-reseed qualities, thus making farmers that take up the GM seeds unable to do anything but buy their next GM seed from the same source, not do as farmers have done for millennia and aim to be self-sufficient for future years of crops.  But that's the business model, talking, not anti-'contamination' precautions...

[3] The biggest problem with irradiated food was the tendency to consider putting NSFH foods through the process to kill the marginal amounts of bad organisms that might be contaminating them, but forgetting that this did nothing to deal with the toxins already produced by them...  The food doesn't get significantly 'rottener', but is still not as healthy if you relaxed other safety controls.

[Aseaheru]

Before GMed crops were allowed in the UK they had a study started. initial results (with a potato with a snowdrop gene) were negative.
then it was ended with no warning.

[Aseaheru]

ah, but they dont test the effects of them on animals.
or really at all...

[Starver]

What!?!?! You would support Animal testing???  How unethical of you...

I think you can take two things home to consider:

a) It's not like that at all...

b) There's always a special-interest group who will disagree with something, no matter what.  Just don't get automatically suckered into their propaganda.

[10ebbor10]

ah, but they dont test the effects of them on animals.
or really at all...

Believe me, GM crop testing, or any food crop testing is rather secure, at least in Europe (Unless those bloody activist burn the tests. Again).link* The risk of mutation is fairly small and even if it should happen it's mostly harmless. Often as harmless as it would be in other crops.

Oh, and about the animal tests. Most tests that came up with a positive have turned out to have been wrongly executed.

Example: Test result said: GM corn causes tumor
WHat really happened: GM corn was given as the only feed to a strain of lab rats which has a very large chance of getting tumours, especially when not put on a special diet, whitout a control group .

*Really, it needs to be labelled even if there's no trace left in the final product.

Edit: Besides, it's not like we get a choice. It's pretty much GM or starvation.

[Sheb]

While I agree with you on pretty much everything 10ebbor10, "GM or starvation" is a huge overstatement. GM are not significantly better than traditional crop, and I doubt we'll see a "super-GM" that'll double the yield any time soon.

The fact is that we pushed yield so high in the developed world already that little can be done to improve it further. The big battle is raising yield in third-world countries. And for that, GM are sadly not the solution. Not because your tomatoes will mutate to eat you or anything, but because GM (like mechanisation or large-scale use of herbicide) require a lot of capital small farmers don't have. That's when stuff like agroforestry come in. They're doubling yield while diversifying farm income and increasing resilience.

Also Aseaheru, you can't lump all GMs together. Some GMs are toxic, like some plants are. Luckily for us they're all tested before getting on the market (you can argue if the testing is sufficient or not, but they are tested), so we can weed out the bad ones.

[10ebbor10]

Yeah, GM is not the only solution, but it's a fairly good one to maintain yields in first world countries. Point is, our food supply for the near future is in such a large trouble that option will need to be used.

[MonkeyHead]

The rich west already produces far more food than it needs, yet most of it goes to waste. Heck, starving populations in the third world could easily survive off our waste and surplus, its just we do a really bad job of giving it to them. EU food surplus mountains anyone? For a depressing laugh, I suggest going to look at a supermarket bin some time.

[sneakey pete]

A lot of research going into crops is getting more out of crappy conditions, eg salty soils, aswell. Not exactly useful for what your going on about in here probably

[Sheb]

MonkeyHead, those surplus kinda went away. World grain reserves are down to 70-odds day from over 100.

Also, why we spoil a tons of food (I regularly grab food from supermarket's bin, and could probably get all my food from there without problems), there is another huge waste that may be easier to solve. Across the developing world, 1/3 of food is wasted due to inadequate ifnrastrucutres (stull like refrigeration or grain silos).