Earlier quoted context omitted.
In this case, the problem is that there's a huge difference between public perception and reality. For instance, you talk about herbicides: A modern GMO actually lets you use LESS herbicides and insecticides, and often far less dangerous ones than many that are OK for labeled organic crops, and happen to be far more toxic. As far as updates on the field producing toxins, GMOs are actually more controlled, genetically…
> A modern GMO actually lets you use LESS herbicides and insecticides, and often far less dangerous ones than many that are OK for labeled organic crops, and happen to be far more toxic. Citation needed.
At Tampa Bay farm-to-table restaurants, you’re being fed fiction
91–100 of 109 posts
Re: At Tampa Bay farm-to-table restaurants, you’re being fed fiction
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a lot of ground between definitive proof and "personal observation of many cues". Put it this way: are there any scientific reasons, however nebulous or merely suggestive, to suspect that this is the case?
How about looking at it from the flip side. Things you put in your body can have a pretty massive effect on you. I would rather err on the side of paying $.05 too much for the corn that people have been eating for 50 years over the newest GMO strain. You only get one body. I do not want to beta test things in my body if I don't have to.
This might be right, but it's irrelevant to the thread you're in, which is about whether the claim about subtle toxicity is something we should believe.
Re: At Tampa Bay farm-to-table restaurants, you’re being fed fiction
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A modern GMO actually lets you use LESS herbicides and insecticides, and often far less dangerous ones than many that are OK for labeled organic crops, and happen to be far more toxic. Citation needed.
herbicides: http://www.agbioforum.org/v15n3/v15n3a01-fernandez-cornejo.h... pesticides: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
Again, neither of these articles, nor anything in here (http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/1282246/err162.pdf), supports the preposterous claim that organic farming is leads to the use of more herbicides and insecticides, which are more toxic (which ones?) than the use of glyphosate et. al. In fact, in the USDA report I just cited, in the first abstract there is even the claim:
> However, overreliance on glyphosate and a reduction in the diversity of weed management practices have contributed to the evolution of glyphosate resistance in some weed species.
It is indeed true that traditional, non-organic means of farming likely requires the use of more (non-organic-certified) herbicides and pesticides, of which some may be more toxic than glyphosate.
Nuance! The allusion that farming with GMO+glyphosate is "far less dangerous" than standard organic farming practices is not supported by research.
Re: At Tampa Bay farm-to-table restaurants, you’re being fed fiction
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
herbicides: http://www.agbioforum.org/v15n3/v15n3a01-fernandez-cornejo.h... pesticides: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
Again, neither of these articles, nor anything in here ( http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/1282246/err162.pdf ), supports the preposterous claim that organic farming is leads to the use of more herbicides and insecticides, which are more toxic (which ones?) than the use of glyphosate et. al. In fact, in the USDA report I just cited, in the first abstract there is even the claim: > However, overreliance on glyphosate and…
"It is indeed true that traditional, non-organic means of farming likely requires the use of more (non-organic-certified) herbicides and pesticides, of which some may be more toxic than glyphosate."
Idk about "far less dangerous". I didn't make that claim. Im only showing that indeed gmo's use less poison, a point that we both seem to accept, but I hear the "far less dangerous" claim used by the anti-gmo crowd after stating the falsehood that gmo's require more herbicides and pesticides over and over again. I would even say that that seems to be the central claim of the anti-gmo movement. In fact, I see people saying that all up and down this thread... so.. go argue with them, lol.
Re: At Tampa Bay farm-to-table restaurants, you’re being fed fiction
#95> “It’s really hard to find non-GMO produce,” Moran said. Aside from the IP problems of patent-infringement-via-unintended-germination, I don't understand what's not to like about GMO. GMO seems like a great idea -- modern human medicine seems to include techniques that are similar to or just-short-of "GMO." Are there any HNers who can articulate what they don't like about GMO?
I wouldn't say "dislike" but "distrust" a little, for these reasons: Modern industrial agriculture is both a triumph and a tragedy of optimization. It is now possible to buy a cheap, beautiful looking, round, red tomato any day of the year in most supermarkets near me - and they all taste like crap. At the same time it is getting more and more difficult to buy a good tomato when they are in seasonal around here. Many…
Transgenics enable some solutions to what you're talking about, though. You can breed in disease resistance to your gourmet line of choice over a decade or two at considerable expense, or pop in an R gene for pennies, relatively speaking.
There's absolutely nothing about transgene technology that implies monoculture; if anything, it dramatically lowers the barriers for breeding and developing new and interesting crops. Traditional breeding, driven by huge and colossally expensive GWAS studies, only benefits the biggest, most economically productive crops.
The issue we have right now is that stigma prevents all but the most 'serious' transgenics to come to market. Fortunately, what we have so far are good transgenics, albeit ones that propagate monoculture. The future could look really good, quite disappointing, or even scary, depending on how we approach transgenics, both for regulation and as a culture.
Re: At Tampa Bay farm-to-table restaurants, you’re being fed fiction
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It costs £15/$21 for a single t-bone, but man is it worth it. I've had plenty of local meat, and I'm in a rural setting known for its farming. I'm skeptical. I'd love to see this actually tested, because I think this is an alternate view of the article; the "hipster" crowd is so keen on getting locally sourced food because it just tastes oh-so-much better (and they're more than happy to tell you). Half the time the…
You're asking why Joe Schmoe's cows from a local field taste better than those of a factory feedlot standing shoulder-to-shoulder in their own muck?
>You're asking why Joe Schmoe's cows from a local field taste better than those of a factory feedlot standing shoulder-to-shoulder in their own muck?
I'm not really asking. Where do you live, might I ask?
I'm looking out my window at Joe Schmoe's local field with the cows standing shoulder to shoulder in their own muck. Do you think all "non-local" meat is from a factory feedlot? That's a strawman.
Do you have any evidence, or just like the idea of Joe Schmoe's meat tasting better?
Re: At Tampa Bay farm-to-table restaurants, you’re being fed fiction
#97> “It’s really hard to find non-GMO produce,” Moran said. Aside from the IP problems of patent-infringement-via-unintended-germination, I don't understand what's not to like about GMO. GMO seems like a great idea -- modern human medicine seems to include techniques that are similar to or just-short-of "GMO." Are there any HNers who can articulate what they don't like about GMO?
I'm not an expert, but one criticism I've seen is that a lot of genetic modification is used to either get plants to produce pesticides or be immune to commonly used weed-killers, like Roundup. Some critics worry that lets farmers basically saturate their fields in herbicides to eliminate weeds, and that some of them are toxic to humans, other animals and plants near to the farm. Another issue is that most genetic mo…
Roundup wasn't a bad herbicide to choose, and still isn't. Given your choice of compounds, it has quite low environmental persistence and toxicity relative.
Just thinking about it, you'd want it to affect a metabolic pathway that's not present in other taxa, or at least animals, so the Shikimic Acid pathway fits the bill.
You also want something that degrades rapidly so that it doesn't accumulate in the environment. Now, there are a lot of people arguing that glyphosate doesn't degrade quickly enough, and that's fair, but it's still pretty good as far as these things go.
Finally, you need to have a resistance gene to use in the first place, which glyphosate had.
So, assuming an input-intensive monoculture, glyphosate is easily a lesser of evils. The argument then becomes that it enables a broken system of monoculture, which is a quite a different issue than what most argue.
As for the other arguments, the IP issue is a longstanding one, nothing new to GMOs. Plant patents are one of only 4 types issued in the US; it goes way back. Since the advent of hybrid crops, everyone farming has been at the mercy of the companies with the best inbreds. The 'bug' issue isn't that compelling, either; we've been testing and vetting new hybrids for decades, and the risks are very similar. Biology is often 'fuzzy', but when it gets down to it, you can see what pathways are effected, look at metabolites, etc. It's quite easy to look at two similar things and see exactly how they differ.
Re: At Tampa Bay farm-to-table restaurants, you’re being fed fiction
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It costs £15/$21 for a single t-bone, but man is it worth it. I've had plenty of local meat, and I'm in a rural setting known for its farming. I'm skeptical. I'd love to see this actually tested, because I think this is an alternate view of the article; the "hipster" crowd is so keen on getting locally sourced food because it just tastes oh-so-much better (and they're more than happy to tell you). Half the time the…
'global food supply chain' is off-shoring; think of it in the same way as the mis-use of H1B visas and transferring I.T. work to low-wage economies, leaving 'local' I.T. workers out of a job. Much of the unstated benefit of locally produced food is in a shorter time between harvest and plate (fresher), less handling (bruising), less transportation (ecological), less packaging (resources + cost), shorter supply chain…
>leaving 'local' I.T. workers out of a job.
Well, I'm not really sure that the local guy deserves a job any more than the guy in India does.
I do agree with your post, generally, though I remain skeptical about certain things, like "more pride and care", for example. Remember, this argument is about "buy local", as in radius. It isn't about factory vs small-farm. As a Canadian, I can buy Alberta beef in my grocery store. When I'm in Alberta, that's top quality local. When I'm elsewhere, it's suddenly...bad?
Re: At Tampa Bay farm-to-table restaurants, you’re being fed fiction
#99> “It’s really hard to find non-GMO produce,” Moran said. Aside from the IP problems of patent-infringement-via-unintended-germination, I don't understand what's not to like about GMO. GMO seems like a great idea -- modern human medicine seems to include techniques that are similar to or just-short-of "GMO." Are there any HNers who can articulate what they don't like about GMO?
Born-n-bred and live on a farm. GMOs are a form of proprietary lock-in backed by legal restrictions. The underlying problem with almost all GMOs is that they are tied to a particular chemical combination, and the seed must be re-purchased every year (the harvested seed is sterile and/or you cannot (legally) re-seed). Those chemical/GMO businesses then have a strangle-hold on the farmers. Farmers are enticed by low pr…
Ask your folks about the hybrid seed they've been buying since before you were born. GMOs didn't change a thing about the economics of seed because hybrid crops have been around for a lot longer.
It's only when you recognize this that the decline of seed co-ops makes sense. It didn't just start to happen recently, it's been going on for decades.
As long as GMOs are so expensive to take to market (and they're dirt cheap to develop), then they're only available to the big companies. Open up the market, and you can have GMOs that serve other interests.
Re: At Tampa Bay farm-to-table restaurants, you’re being fed fiction
#100If we are really serious about local food then we need a much more significant set of changes. I have integrated some ideas into this site: http://tinyvillages.org