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[10ebbor10]

Watch out with that though. Oftimes, supermarkets dump chemical stuff on their waste to make it inedible.

[Sheb]

Hehe, there is actually a fancy supermarket near my place that doesn't give anything (Because they don't want to be responsible if we eat rotten food), but purposefully let unlocked bin out at a given time.

Also, a city around here (Belgium) passed an ardinance forcing supermarkets to give the stuff they don't sell to food banks. It's being considered at a antional level.

[GreatWyrmGold]

However, people conveniently forget this and go 'OMG! EVULZ!'
Then again, you got some people that don't give it a chance and do that anyways.

The story of the human race.

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

Barring the invention of magic, the effects of a GM food are based on the chemicals in it. If an unusual chemical is discovered, they test it; otherwise they assume the food obeys the laws of physics and decide if it's safe based on the known chemicals in it.

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.

Aye. The world sucks big-time.
((If it makes you feel better, the US is still a net food exporter. Citation: Jared Diamond, Collapse.))

Also, a city around here (Belgium) passed an ardinance forcing supermarkets to give the stuff they don't sell to food banks. It's being considered at a antional level.

And it should be! And passed in the EU and US. If they can't sell it, they should give it away.
...Of course, the theory probably sounds a LOT better than it turns out...

[Aseaheru]

im going to go away as it is shown that i will not convince anyone.
i think i am right, you think that you are right, etc.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I'd be interested to hear what the FDA doesn't test for that could hurt people...

[Sheb]

Aseaheru, you won't convince people by yelling at people shouting "I'm right motherfucker!". Give us facts, sources, rather than mere opinions. I've argued a lot with anti-GM people (Being a pro-GM member of a green party is harsh :p), and most of the time, they're facts are wrong. Deeply wrong. The sheer amount of disinformation spewed by green groups is enormous. (Mostly, they blame GM for faults of "standard" intensive agriculture)

A simple exemple: the facts that GM seeds cannot be planted again. While there is a GM technology to prevent GM plants from reproducing, it was never used commercially. What happen is that generally speaking, individuals with heterozygous genes are stronger. So seed companies sell what is called F1 hybrids, in both GM and non-GM varieties. Those plants are more productive than pure lines, but by the law of Mendelian genetics, those characters will only perdure in a fourth of the offspring, making replanting seeds less productive. It's not a GM thing.


Another exemple: the "suicide epidemics" in India. Apparently GM would push indian farmers to suicide because of the debts they incur buying the seeds. While this do happen, suicide rate where just as high before 1995, when the first GM plants were cleared for cultivation. The problem here is the same that for all the other capital-intensive agricultural technologies, like fertilizers: farmers only have access to credits at huge rate, so they indebt themselves to buy technology to boost yields (be it GM, fertilizers, pesticide, water pumps...) then if an harvest fail they go overboard. Again, it's a credit thing, not a GM thing.

Now, there is room for critics of GMOs. You can argue tests are too shorts, or that some GMOs ought to be banned (I'm thinking of Bt crops) because they'll breed resistances to toxins that organic farmers use, destroying a common. But the argument used in most anti-GM propaganda are between overly simplistics and denying reality. If you want to convince us, you'll have to use better things.

[PTTG??]

There is only one reason I dislike GM foods, and that is the patent. GM foods are just too useful to be controlled by one group, particularly one driven exclusively by profit.

Now, I'm also a bit concerned about the effects of monoculture farming, but that's not exclusive to GM, so let's leave that there.

[Starver]

I think we could make a whole thread (if there isn't already one) about the subject of encouraging the development and freeing up of IP...

e.g., why would a company develop some new genetic variation (or sequence an existing variation in order to improve it/better express it/bring it into a different organism) at great cost and then patent it (probably at a relatively minor cost, compared to the first, but still something) and then not control their monopoly.

Having worked close to the pharmaceutical industry (i.e. tangentially, the pharma bit not being my speciality) I know a little bit about the pressures in putting a whole host of possible novel drugs through the various processes that filter them down, down, down (so that even before the Phase I in Humans stage it's a small, small fraction, and few of these ever 'survive' the tests), so that whatever becomes 'saleable' has to make enough profit to pay for all the tried (and mostly failed) research in the remaining time before they become Generic-able and everyone else starts making their own version...   I also know that archetypal "cures for the common cold" that will end up being pennies-worth of revenue per once-only treatment are rarely considered worthwhile to expend on.  And as for things that the 3rd-world would vastly benefit from...  very little revenue there, too.

Or there's the classic of the "replacement for petroleum(/gasoline)" that gets bought up by Big Oil so that it never gets developed as a competitor (although I'm not sure how true that is, this being more the classic Conspiracy Nut theory, although with the above Big Pharama experience I could believe something like it happens).


For the record, the people who develop these things need an incentive to develop them.  (Also, tangentially, around the time I departed the scene there was going to be a journal devoted to Failed Trial Results, to counteract the tendency for only (significantly) positive-result trials ever being published and thus biasing the reporting to only the most positively conclusive results, leaving the so-so positive ones and the outright zero-result/negative result failures unreported.  If there needs to be an incentive for that too, then add that to the bill.)  And then anything that's useful (by common acclaim( yet a financial dead-end (as far as the developer itself is concerned) perhaps needs the involvement of remuneration to bring it into the public domain.

And that sounds like a lot of outlay, one way or another.  A needs a neutral organisation in charge of making (hopefully) the best decisions and with the power (if necessary) to force an IP-holder to release their stake to the world at what should be a mutually-reasonable exchange-rate for the rights.  And (as necessary, and again at appropriate proportion) able to subsidise whoever feels they can make use of this.

Which is a whole lot of potential responsibility and purse-strings-holding.  Almost makes you wish for a socialist world government to overturn all the capitalist pressures currently inherent in the system.  (All the systems, I'm talking everything, not just GM.  Not just marginal-profit/great-good pharma items.  Not just petroleum-replacement tech.  Heck, if some guy in a garage comes up with the magical formula for space-elevator construction I'd hope they'd get the opportunity to be spotted for what they are and then helped to bring it to fruition.)  Not that I'm left-wing myself, particularly, but right now I can't work out how that could possibly work, purely financially, without some big private philanthropic benefactor, and I don't really trust even the most overtly charitable billionaire[1] to take control of the process...

It's a big ask.  Which is why I can't see this problem being solved (or even agreed upon by the majority) within the confines of this thread.  Or even a thread of its own...  Basically, it's an insoluble.  Until it is solved, of course, but I'm not holding my breath for that actual miracle.


So, just move along now, nothing to see here...


[1] After all, you don't become a billionaire without some penny-pinching and developing a big personal self-interest in all that money you 'give away'.  Which is not to say that when one arrives at 'the top' you can't switch game-plan and start Buying Your Indulgences, big style, while happy to just life a millionaire's lifestyle...  But the rest of the world is always going to be entitled to have its doubts about your motives, right..?

[GreatWyrmGold]

There is only one reason I dislike GM foods, and that is the patent. GM foods are just too useful to be controlled by one group, particularly one driven exclusively by profit.

Which is a problem shared by much of biotechnology. I'm thinking of Michael Crichton's Next here--there's a few examples, and while the main ones are (hopefully) exaggerated, the issue's still there.

Now, I'm also a bit concerned about the effects of monoculture farming, but that's not exclusive to GM, so let's leave that there.

Agreed. Heck, from a certain definition GM might cause polyculture!

And how did we get onto a GM foods debate here, again?

[Sheb]

 Aseaheru brought it in for some reasons.

[PTTG??]

It'd be good to have when you're colonizing an alien planet.

[Morrigi]

Like Mars. Anyway, less derail please, I'm not dead.

[GreatWyrmGold]

SO!

How well do you think that plan to colonize Mars being discussed a couple threads over will go?

[Criptfeind]

Poorly. Something will go wrong and everyone will die.

[GreatWyrmGold]

How cheerful.