Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food • Hacker News Board

Re: Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

#231

Post by mmjaa » Fri, May 11, 2018, 7:44 AM UTC

azernik wrote: post #209

petre wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure Monsanto and the GMO lobby's objective was saving lives in developing countries, not profits. When they pushed GMOs bundled with pesticides and herbicides they did so aided by the corruption in these countries, where the farmers were doing quite fine replanting seeds. Now they're abusing a BASF product to ripen tomatoes overnight.

Who gives a shit about motivation? Do you care if your take-out food was made in the expectation of a financial return, or does it need to be made out of the restaurant owner's sincere love of feeding strangers?

That's some cult-level doublethink going on here. Of course you need to understand motivation. "Who cares what the motives of ISIS are, they're rebuilding towns and cities destroyed by imperialist aggression.." <= try that experiment in thought.

Re: Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

#232

Post by jopsen » Fri, May 11, 2018, 7:52 AM UTC

alexandercrohde wrote: post #63

jopsen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the world runs of on good faith and best intentions, without it everything would break down. This goes for taxes, healthcare, insurance, checks, postal mail, traffic code, currency, etc. This also holds for an alarming number of electronic systems such as the phone network, and many ISP network configurations. While it's tempting to say no trust should be required, that's very expensive, like bitcoin. For sys…

I feel like that is an unreasonable generalization. It's not remotely hard at all for the FDA to buy products off the shelf and test them for glyphosate. They need not and should not trust samples obtained any other way.

Fair point, it does put some management on to the FDA, but that seems reasonable.. and cost seem small.

Still the FDA can't test all shops, and there is a risk they just test the same shipment. Trusting samples from companies is easy, and fake those samples is a very deliberate crime. It's easy to fake currency, that doesn't mean people do it.

Re: Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

#233

Post by kokey » Fri, May 11, 2018, 7:53 AM UTC

I bet you they also detect dihydrogen monoxide at near lethal dose levels in food samples, due to farmers spraying it on the crops. Some of that stuff even makes it into the rivers and flows into the ocean and can be detected in the fish in the sea.

Re: Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

#234

Post by pluma » Fri, May 11, 2018, 7:55 AM UTC

pilsetnieks wrote: post #88

random4369 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time the jury is out on a topic where one side has a vested interest and a billion dollar budget to protect it, you can be reasonably sure what the outcome will be. See: pesticides and bees, fossil fuels and climate change, food packaging plastics and cancer, pain treatment meds and addiction. The answer in all those cases is the harmful effects eventually became known, but the jury was out long enough for the…

> pesticides and bees The EU is implementing a total ban on neonicotinoid pesticides by the end of 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/27/eu-agree...

Only for outside use. They are still legal for use in greenhouses. I'm not disagreeing that this means they acknowledge the potential harm for bees, but it's not a "total ban".

Re: Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

#235

Post by kokey » Fri, May 11, 2018, 7:55 AM UTC

soziawa wrote: post #197

swiley wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I helped get a device through part15 testing during an internship and was shocked to find that you don’t need the same firmware (like at all. You can run totally different oses and everything, they don’t have to share a single line of code.) As long as you say “this is pretty much the same as what we’re shipping to users” you’re fine. They don’t really have anyway to double check it and to be honest I wouldn’t be tot…

Huawei does this with their phones during rf emissions testing don't they? And the same is said about cars during crash tests.

I know Huawei did exactly this when their phone network equipment was being tested for approval and adoption by mobile phone networks.

Re: Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

#236

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Fri, May 11, 2018, 7:58 AM UTC

colah3 wrote: post #151

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Blind opposition to industrial progress -- which is what you are suggesting -- carried by the rising tide of public opinion will cause a ton of damage in the century to come, and the damage will never be repaid. What damage will be caused by people using their phones less for fear of getting cancer? What about GMOs? What is the harm in not using them? The EU has mostly banned them and it doesn't look to be sufferi…

With regards to GMOs, the green revolution (as I understand it[1], partly using GMOs to increase food production, especially in developing countries) is often described as saving a billion lives. On a brief glance, I can't find a detailed estimate of the Humanitarian effects, but Borlaug received a Nobel peace prize for it and that scale of impact does seem plausible. [1] See discussion below about relative importanc…

Like others have commented below GMOs (well, GMO crops specifically) were not the main driver of the Green Revolution. So the question remains- what are the harms that can come about by not using GMOs?

My understanding is that, at this point in time, the harms are primarily financial. For instance, when the EU imposed a moratorium on GMO crops, the reaction was primarily for countries that, until then, sold GMO crops to EU countries, to complain to the WTO about trade agreement violations- in other words, their financial interests were damaged.

As to issues of food security and feeding the people of developed nations, as I understand it, there is an ongoing debate on whether GMO crops are really needed to achieve this, or whether better management of existing agricultural resources, or better distribution of current food production, can do the job. In other words- GMOs may be beneficial, so not necessary, therefore not using them would not lead to harm.

Re: Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

#237

Post by jopsen » Fri, May 11, 2018, 7:59 AM UTC

exp1orer wrote: post #81

jopsen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the world runs of on good faith and best intentions, without it everything would break down. This goes for taxes, healthcare, insurance, checks, postal mail, traffic code, currency, etc. This also holds for an alarming number of electronic systems such as the phone network, and many ISP network configurations. While it's tempting to say no trust should be required, that's very expensive, like bitcoin. For sys…

I don't think "higher morals" is a realistic solution within our current market economy - these are multi-billion dollar corporations which operate on a separate set of motivations from any of their employees. I also don't think our only alternatives are "trust these companies to self-monitor", or blockchain. I'm thinking about 2 kinds of solutions: 1) technical solutions which would improve the current chain-of-cust…

Okay, I guess my point was to say control without trust is expensive. Some level of trust in companies and institutions is necessary. And when balancing this we should consider cost.

Re: Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

#238

Post by petre » Fri, May 11, 2018, 7:59 AM UTC

azernik wrote: post #209

petre wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure Monsanto and the GMO lobby's objective was saving lives in developing countries, not profits. When they pushed GMOs bundled with pesticides and herbicides they did so aided by the corruption in these countries, where the farmers were doing quite fine replanting seeds. Now they're abusing a BASF product to ripen tomatoes overnight.

Who gives a shit about motivation? Do you care if your take-out food was made in the expectation of a financial return, or does it need to be made out of the restaurant owner's sincere love of feeding strangers?

I do care because it makes farmers dependent on Monsanto seeds + chemical packages, for they cannot compete with the ones that are using these products and go out of business otherwise. This reduces food diversity, aids big agricultural conglomerates while harming small producers and leads to creation of food deserts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

Re: Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

#239

Post by buvanshak » Fri, May 11, 2018, 8:00 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #223

buvanshak wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not always possible. For example, take the claim that a certain thing X in some eatables is harmful/not harmful for human beings. Such a thing might not be possible without long term study. Or the claim that smoking will kill you, but what if you want to know if smoking moderately is as bad as exposing to automobile pollution every day? Or living in an area with polluted air. Mainstream narrative today emphas…

Those cases have another interesting feature - you're wasting time worrying about them. When scientists have problems figuring out whether or how much something is harmful, it's because it's so harmless it's hard to measure. If e.g. artificial sweeteners caused cancers the way many believe, you'd see people dropping dead left and right, with cancers clearly linkable to the use of sweeteners. Those studies are obvious…

>If e.g. artificial sweeteners caused cancers the way many believe, you'd see people dropping dead left and right, with cancers clearly linkable to the use of sweeteners.

Wait a min. I don't remember smokers dropping dead left and right in all those times when almost everyone smoked..

Another one is the effects on lead in automobile fuels. Again people were not dropping dead. Despite the issues about it that we have since discovered...

I think these kinds of apologetic behavior is vastly more dangerous than any hindrance to "progress" that might be caused by being more cautious...

>For individuals, obsessing about those things too much puts you in more danger to your health than those things could ever cause...

Not sure. How does producing vegetables myself, or making sure the vegitables I buy are free of residue, or limiting my exposure to air pollution put in me more danger than those things could ever cause...

If you think pesticide residue cannot do much damage, take a look at Endosulfan tragedy in India.

[1] http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Thiruvananthapuram/No-en...

Re: Emails Show FDA Chemists Have Been Finding Glyphosate in Food

#240

Post by toofy » Fri, May 11, 2018, 8:04 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #221

toofy wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering what motivates someone can often be useful. People can behave and make drastically different choices based solely on motivation. People will often pick and choose what information they choose to share or choose to hide based largely on the motivations that are driving their project. Motivation can drastically alter the way an idea is presented to the audience in which it is being presented. Obviously we w…

Motivations here as are complex as the players involved. It's entirely reasonable to expect that researchers who invented e.g. golden rice were thinking about the lives it'll save. It's also entirely reasonable to expect companies to support development and deployment of it because it's profitable for them. On a less extreme end, companies sure want crops with improved resistance to pathogens and insects for profit r…

> It’s entirely reasonable to expect that researchers who invented e.g. golden rice we’re thinking about the lives it’ll save.

Absolutely. I was simply responding to the above poster’s implication that we should never consider motives when someone is selling the entire world a product.

And I agree with you completely that it’s reasonable to expect there was some altruism in producing golden rice. It’s also reasonable to expect companies who have billions of dollars tied up in their patents on the world’s food supply might selectivity choose which information they share in order to make their product appear in the best light possible. In some ways it would be unreasonable to assume they would share their negative info with us, they have an incredible amount to lose if we don’t buy into their products.

And look, I’m certainly not suggesting that GMOs are evil, I am incredibly excited by some of the advancements we’re seeing. I’m just saying there is nothing wrong with considering motives when different data streams seems to be in tension with one another. Simply considering motives as one small piece in the puzzle is rational.

I believe to make informed decisions, we need as much information as possible. And understanding motivations is just more information to help us parse. Again, I’m incredibly pro-gmo, but I’m also willing to consider there may be consequences to some products and some policies - particularly when these policies are mixing intellectual property and patents on something as important as the worlds food supply.