Kirk, you’re everywhere!

zed?

And that’s an organic Zed!

I seem to recall a lot of GM of crops such as tobacco to make it blight resistant and such. Now if they could just do things safely but instead we are continually treated to more examples of the Laws of Unintended Side Consequences.

HotFlash @ 3

And that’s an organic Zed!

Good on ‘ya, HotFlash!

For the record, no electrons were harmed in the writing of this post.

The only thing gotten rid of is US food security, by shrub. Let’s not forget that these are the same nice people that’ve cut inspections of imported foodstuffs by 50%, despite the fact that under int’l trade conventions it now falls to the importing country to police the quality of foreign goods (from countries like China). Ensuring food security apparently requires a government bigger than that which Grover can drown in his bathtub, and is, therefore, inconsistent with rethug policy.

dakine01 @ 4

I seem to recall a lot of GM of crops such as tobacco to make it blight resistant and such. Now if they could just do things safely but instead we are continually treated to more examples of the Laws of Unintended Side Consequences.

For our food crops, the wonky stuff up above about

Their genetic instability means that each successive generation can express new genes, and so each generation has unpredictable new proteins.

means that “safely” will never be possible with many GMOs. The unstable genome means every new crop may carry completely unknownand untested toxic proteins.

Hey - it’s only 85% of the US soy crop, right?

Hey - it’s only 85% of the US soy crap, right?

fixed your typo ;)

HotFlash @ 1

Kirk, you’re everywhere!

He travels light-speed when necessary…

Adie @ 9

HotFlash @ 1

Kirk, you’re everywhere!

He travels light-speed when necessary…

All credit to Scottie.

Following the pet food poison and bee colony collapse stories, I received several phone calls asking me who is a nurse what was safe to eat.

Asked someone in a grocery store if the meat was safe and the checker had no idea what I was talking about [Trader Joe’s].

What are the signs of a THIRD WORLD country?

Unsafe Food and Water…and living under a Junta… are we there yet?

and so what are the cows, pigs and sheep eating…….?

i wish this were only a Phillip K. Dick novel.

Apart from the genetic pollution let loose upon the world, the general drift of why these plants are modified is to make them resistant to the pesticides and herbicides these companies (they are chemical companies) make.

So when you make crops resistant to your own chemicals, the farmer can apply your chemicals with impugnity and not destroy the crop. In fact, your line of chemicals are part of the bundle. If the farmer buys your seeds, he’s also got to buy the chemicals they were designed for. Nevermind the consumer, who then eats this chemical-rich crop. And fuck the environment.

Great post, KJM.

I don’t understand why *ALL* GM food is being categorically branded as bad. DNA is DNA is DNA. A gene from one organism can function in most others as long as the regulatory elements are compatible. There is nothing that you can consider ‘foreign’ about a particular gene, except that you know it had evolved in another organism first. Now in some cases (especially the insecticide-producing GM plants), the proteins added may be expressly harmful, and that should be studied and guarded against. It is the particular generation of GM foods, which has the aforementioned characteristics, which makes them problematic.

Not only that, but here in Canada a canola (note 1) grower name of Percy Schmeiser is being sued by Monsanto for royalties. Their RoundupReady GMO canola cross-pollinated Percy’s heritage-seed grown crop, Monsanto’s goons came on Percy’s land and took samples and Percy is going to court in Jan 2008 b/c they say he owes them $15./acre.

That Monsanto would do this is terrifying, but depend on it: They will spend millions to set a precedent here. As Percy says, “In my case, I never had anything to do with Monsanto, outside of buying chemicals. I never signed a contract. If I would go to St. Louis and contaminate their plots–destroy what they have worked on for 40 years–I think I would be put in jail and the key thrown away,”

More about Percy’s situation here, and if you could drop him a couple of bucks for his legal fees it would help defend us all.

Note 1: Canola is rape, an oilseed crop. Looks like wild mustard or rapini gone to seed (which is more or less is). It produces a light unsaturated edible oil sold as-is(cooking oil)and in many, many prepared and processed foods such as shortenings and margarines, salad dressings, baked goods, fried foods and on and on. The Cdn Rapeseed Growers Assoc decided that they needed a name change and invented the work Canola. I agree, much nicer.

why is this not even covered by the msm?

sorry. dumb question.

Elliott @ 8

Hey - it’s only 85% of the US soy crop, right?

Hey - it’s only 85% of the US soy crap, right?

fixed your typo ;)

Thanks, Elliot. I’m still blown away that the baby-killing soy isn’t Oprah-headline news.

OK, baby rats - but still: first they’re cute, then they’re dead. Three weeks!

Knowing about the study makes me avoid any non-organic soy product.

Scary stuff.

PS - do the folks down stairs know of our chemical-free thread?

Blub @ 6

The only thing gotten rid of is US food security, by shrub. Let’s not forget that these are the same nice people that’ve cut inspections of imported foodstuffs by 50%, despite the fact that under int’l trade conventions it now falls to the importing country to police the quality of foreign goods (from countries like China). Ensuring food security apparently requires a government bigger than that which Grover can drown in his bathtub, and is, therefore, inconsistent with rethug policy.

you mean something like this?

I’m not sure it takes TWO med flies

“PS - do the folks down stairs know of our chemical-free thread?”

Yes, if they read down far enough :)

katymine @ 11

THIRD WORLD country

call it a Zeroth World Country…. a post-democratic society of media-overdosed zombies ruled by self-serving rulers utterly indifferent to the welfare of their subjects. Max Headroom anticipated all this back in the mid-eighties…

Elliott @ 18

you mean something like this?

I’m not sure it takes TWO med flies

Oh my gosh. That’s perfectly horrible.. and I bet those “orders” go up higher than just the immediate supervisor too… we SO need that Independent Counsel.

Thanks for the two posts on this KJM. The more information being spread on the threat to our food supply the better. The frightening thing is you cannot even be safe if you grow your own food anymore.

A month or two ago, I read a short blog post on the HuffPost blog, in which the poster highly recommended the book: The Way of Ignorance: and Other Essays by Wendell Berry. I read it and agree that it’s great “food for thought”. The author is what I’d call a philosopher-farmer; he’s been farming in KY for 40 years. He not only writes about food production and Big Agricultural companies and sustainability, but also touches on human nature and violence, among other themes.

The title of Barbara Kingsolver’s book pretty much encapsulates what agriculture has been and could be–Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. But corporate farming is not into vegetables animals or miracles. Monsanto, Farm Bureau, corporate hog factories, etc., etc. How to be a family farmer in this day and age? Organic was a hope for small farmers, but now that’s in jeopardy, too? Maybe this is what is meant in the old adage about bought the farm? Just die already.

Gotta love it.
At some point does not common sense enter the equation?
I mean, just because we can does not necessarily mean we have to does it?

And the one about the guy fighting Monsanto?
Oh yeah, I hope he sues the pants off of ‘em.
Trespassing just for starts.

BSE should have been a wake up call to BIG FOOD. The consequences of even relatively well understood ’standard’ farming practices can’t be predicted.

You said we have 7 days to comment. To Who or what entity do we call/ write/ email/ get pissed off at in order to protest Sec 123 of the Farm bill?

Even though I’ve studied various aspects of science for most of my life, about four years ago it took hearing a well informed talk by Jello Biafra, of all people, to get the scoop on Frankenfood.

The GMO soy (Monsanto’s Roundup-Ready soy) we grow and eat in the US is so toxic that more than half of baby rats fed with the stuff die in just three weeks.

from the linked article

Since Ermakova’s unique study was small and not yet peer-reviewed, we cannot fairly draw any conclusions as to if or how Roundup Ready soy influences offspring.

There is enough good science that questions the use of GM food that there is no need to resort to using un-reviewed, one-off studies. If we want to use science to support our stands on such things as GMOs and climate change then we must use good science and not fall into the trap of tossing around numbers that are not supported by the science.

Let’s not do the bad guys’ work for them. Only use good, peer-reviewed studies for bold faced comments so that they don’t get the opportunity to say “see they are just scaremongering”. Remember, we are the ones that believe in reality and as long as we stick with that we will do just fine

DakkonA @ 13

I don’t understand why *ALL* GM food is being categorically branded as bad. DNA is DNA is DNA. A gene from one organism can function in most others as long as the regulatory elements are compatible. There is nothing that you can consider ‘foreign’ about a particular gene, except that you know it had evolved in another organism first. Now in some cases (especially the insecticide-producing GM plants), the proteins added may be expressly harmful, and that should be studied and guarded against. It is the particular generation of GM foods, which has the aforementioned characteristics, which makes them problematic.

Well, DakkonA, many of them may be fine. But it doesn’t look that way. Here is an article from Le Monde, I have linked to an English translation at Truthout.org but the French is available through the link, too, if you’d prefer. Here are a couple of quotes:

They (several recent studies) don’t assert that GMOs generate health problems. But at the very least they suggest that GMOs provoke biological impacts that must be more widely studied.

And this is also disquieting:

Toxicological studies were effected by the companies promoting GMOs, the impartiality of which is debatable, and subsequently examined by commissions. But the latter never reproduced the experiments, which remain secret. Yet those studies sometimes also show notable biological impacts.

and finally, there are even questions about how to do research on food and whether the tests normally done can tell us if a food is safe or not:

Jean-Michel Wal, a member of the European Authority on Food Security’s GMO group. “In fact, 90 day toxicological studies on rats are very difficult to execute and interpret. We don’t know how to study a food overall, whether it’s a GMO or not; there’s no norm.”

DakkonA @ 14

I don’t understand why *ALL* GM food is being categorically branded as bad. DNA is DNA is DNA. A gene from one organism can function in most others as long as the regulatory elements are compatible. There is nothing that you can consider ‘foreign’ about a particular gene, except that you know it had evolved in another organism first. Now in some cases (especially the insecticide-producing GM plants), the proteins added may be expressly harmful, and that should be studied and guarded against. It is the particular generation of GM foods, which has the aforementioned characteristics, which makes them problematic.

this is a really good question that, imo, shouldn’t be ignored.

i suppose, it’s theoretically possible that there could be a gm food that wouldn’t be dangerous (either as a food or in the environment).

but who decides? and how to test? the risks are enormous - both to our food supply and to our environment.

in today’s political/regulatory environment, i strongly advocate a total ban on the release of gmos into the environment.

and frankly, in even the best poltical/regulatory case, i’m inclined to think there just aren’t sufficently robust ways to test gmos before they are released into the environment. and once released - there is NO recall process.

just fyi - i don’t have a moral objection to genetic engineering… heck, i genetically engineering a mouse strain as part of my phd thesis work…. but i want them to be kept caged in an SPF facility - and not released in field near you.

rob in toronto @ 29 says: There is enough good science that questions the use of GM food that there is no need to resort to using un-reviewed, one-off studies. If we want to use science to support our stands on such things as GMOs and climate change then we must use good science and not fall into the trap of tossing around numbers that are not supported by the science.

Let’s not do the bad guys’ work for them. Only use good, peer-reviewed studies for bold faced comments so that they don’t get the opportunity to say “see they are just scaremongering”. Remember, we are the ones that believe in reality and as long as we stick with that we will do just fine

you’re right, brotha…there is a LOT of good science about the dangers of GMOs, and just about all of it suggests that it’s not a good idea to standardize the genome.

but that’s hardly-but beside, too–the point, which is that there’s now 30 years (at least) of really GOOD science on the phenomena of anthropo-genetic climate change which is STILL being denied, and lied about, and camoflaged by the trillion-dollar-per-year public relations campaigns…

we didn’t scare enough people enough 30 years ago…and the consequence is the chaos we now confront…

the genome of corn can be eternally altered in three generations…

people aren’t smart or good or pure enough for that kind of power…
.

DakkonA @ 14

I don’t understand why *ALL* GM food is being categorically branded as bad. DNA is DNA is DNA. A gene from one organism can function in most others as long as the regulatory elements are compatible. There is nothing that you can consider ‘foreign’ about a particular gene, except that you know it had evolved in another organism first. Now in some cases (especially the insecticide-producing GM plants), the proteins added may be expressly harmful, and that should be studied and guarded against. It is the particular generation of GM foods, which has the aforementioned characteristics, which makes them problematic.

DakkonA, thanks for asking this important question.

The question brings up a few topics:

Who determines safe?

How do we know what “safe” is?

With respect to Frankenfoods, much of the “safety” testing done by Big Mutant Food used experimental designs intended to show nothing.

One obvious example was bovine growth hormone. Toxicity studies submitted by industry used milk held at pasteurization temps so long that the the biological activity of the proteins would be destroyed. The study was meaningless.

Where independent scientists have looked, they’ve found lots of toxicity.

What is currently wholly lacking in any GMO food is any long-term data demonstrating an absence of risk.

Industry does a great diversion with (tobacco; global warming) GM foods - lots of little invalid studies waved about. Even well-intentioned MSM covering science can think “objectivity” means covering PR releases in lab coats, so the non-sceintific “proofs” that the stuff really isn’t toxic get out in popular opinion.

At that point the science becomes almost irrelevant.

Trust Us, We’re Experts

and

Toxic Sludge Is Good For You Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry (both by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton) dissect the process in detail.

The sad fact is that pre-merket toxicity studies by industry and USDA did show toxic effects with multiple GMO foods, but the products were licensed for political resaons.

This regluatory Kabuki goes on wherevere Big _______ will make more money if their glop has customers. Big Glop almost always win, and their stuff comes to market.

The precautionary principle ends the whack-a-mole game. WItht e PP< new substnaces and technologies have to be demonstrated to be free of adverse effects before release.</p>

THe current sytem treats GMO products as if they are defendants with rights. The pp appropriately returns new technology nad chemicals to the role of supplicant: they have to be invited by society before they can come play on our planet or in our dinners.

THe pp is already the basis for environmental regualtion in the EU.

With it, almost all the GMOS in the US would not chave come to market.

The rush to GMO foods is about corporate profiteering, as is continued oil dependence. If our foods poison us, if our daily living warms the earth they don’t care. The costs in death and misery will be borne by us and the profits will go to them.

What a moronic post.

You show absolutely zero understanding of farming, agriculture or molecular genetics, just like most of the morons hooting and hollering about genetically modified foods.

There are issues with genetically modified foods, but safety issues aren’t one of them.

IF you had raised hell about mega-agricultural firms monopolizing seed production and decreasing genetic diversity of staple food crops, then you would have a point. Worrying about some Bacillus thuringiensis gene sequence that has been inserted into a crops DNA to kill a class of insects is moronic. Would you rather have the crops sprayed with insecticides to kill bugs instead?

Oooh, Kirk! Looks like a minder! You’ve hit a nerve.

HotFlash @ 34

The rush to GMO foods is about corporate profiteering, as is continued oil dependence. If our foods poison us, if our daily living warms the earth they don’t care. The costs in death and misery will be borne by us and the profits will go to them.

All it will take is for one mutation to go the wrong way in a mass consumed food crop that gets past any inspection and into our foodchain.
Can’t collect profits from a whole bunch of dead people that can’t buy your product anymore.

“GMO’s banned in part or all of sixteen states - almost a third of the US is protected from mutant food, right?”

btw.. maybe someone can try to explain how this works… Agricultural supply chains just don’t work this way, unless there’s customs checkpoints, walls and, yes, wind barriers, on the state lines.

I grew up thinking Wonder Bread was a wholesome food. Who knew? But how ironic that we’re flipping genes and making new (what?–I am not a scientist) species at the same time we are wiping out biodiversity, assaulting rainforests, and trying to patent indigenous plants. That’s what gets me. A tribe has used a medicinal plant for thousands of years and a multinational picks it and patents it.

Topanga-lib @ 27

You said we have 7 days to comment. To Who or what entity do we call/ write/ email/ get pissed off at in order to protest Sec 123 of the Farm bill?

Thanks Topanga-lib.

I need to edit.

The vote on 123 in the House “Chicken” Subcomm was last week. It passed.

The seven day deadline was a comment period on USDA defining chemical food as organic food. That window closed May 22.

WyldPirate @ 35 says: There are issues with genetically modified foods, but safety issues aren’t one of them.

wgg: tokin lib’rul @ 29 says: the genome of corn can be eternally altered in three generations…

people aren’t smart or good or pure enough for that kind of power…

WyldPirate @ 35

What a moronic post.

There are issues with genetically modified foods, but safety issues aren’t one of them.

I think a lot of Dr. Murphy’s concern, well addressed in his essay, is that this legislation would pre-empt existing laws or any new local laws designed to protect organic farmers from contamination by GMO pollen, etc.

Kirk James Murphy, M.D. @ 40

Topanga-lib @ 27

You said we have 7 days to comment. To Who or what entity do we call/ write/ email/ get pissed off at in order to protest Sec 123 of the Farm bill?

Thanks Topanga-lib.

I need to edit.

The vote on 123 in the House “Chicken” Subcomm was last week. It passed.

The seven day deadline was a comment period on USDA defining chemical food as organic food. That window closed May 22.

So is there no way to get a voice in this issue?

HotFlash–Wasn’t Percy Schmeiser in litigation with Monsanto some years ago? About the contamination of his crop? I fuzzily remember reading about him a while ago…

Okay, so the Agriculture minister in Japan commits suicide for cooking the books. Do you suppose any of the crooks in our government would be honorable enough to even be embarrassed?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....er-death/?

Thanks for another great read, Kirk.

WyldPirate @ 35

There are issues with genetically modified foods, but safety issues aren’t one of them.

I don’t disagree, from a very short term perspective, but over the longer term there are real food security issues that arise out of gengineered foods, with respect to i. the maintenance of crop resilience through the preservation of genetic diversity, ii. with respect to broader environmental sustainability issues and iii. with respect to possible (but as yet still controversial) nutritional/immunological concerns with having food that is “too perfect” or “too clean”. I for one do not believe we will so much be “poisoned” by uncontrolled application of GMO technology to foods as we will harm our agricultural industry and hence our food security and probably our health over the long-term. In the short term it is far more likely that food imports (both GMO and non-GMO) under shrub’s murderously negligent inspection policies will kill us first.

What’s the background on the current makeup of the U.S. House subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy and Poultry? Leonard Boswell, the chair, is only familiar to me as one of the first pilots in the Vietnam War to fly the Huey Cobra gunship. A friend served in his unit in 1969-70. Boswell appears to get a lot of campaign money from unions, and not a lot - considering he’s from Iowa - from corporate agriculture. Any info on how this language trumping local authority on GMO legislation actually got put into the bill?

WyldPirate @ 35

There are issues with genetically modified foods, but safety issues aren’t one of them.

how safe was it to put peanut genes into soybean? Not much forethought on that project. But hey, what’s a few less kids, eh?

WyldPirate, thankyou for your contribution to our discussion. As I look at scientific matters from an academic perspective, please forgive me if I decline to join the ad hominem track.

I find pie fights are a compelling distraction from relevant data.

An excellent book Seeds of Deception discusses the FDA scientists’ severe concerns before the political decision to approve GMOS:

According to public interest attorney Steven Druker, who has studied the FDA’s internal files, “During Mr. Taylor’s tenure as Deputy Commissioner, references to the unintended negative effects of bioengineering were progressively deleted from drafts of the policy statement (over the protests of agency scientists), and a final statement was issued claiming (a) that [GM] foods are no riskier than others and (b) that the agency has no information to the contrary.” [19] In 1994, Taylor became the administrator at the Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, where he was also involved in biotechnology issues. He later became Vice President for Public Policy at Monsanto.

When the FDA announced its policy, the public was not aware of any internal dissent. The policy boldly claimed that there was no information to indicate that GM foods were different or more risky than natural varieties. Since the American public generally trusts the FDA, people assumed that no such risks existed. But nearly a decade later, the agency’s internal documents—made public for the first time through a lawsuit—told a different story.

Linda Kahl, an FDA compliance officer, protested that by “trying to force an ultimate conclusion that there is no difference between foods modified by genetic engineering and foods modified by traditional breeding practices,” the agency was “trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.” She insisted, “the processes of genetic engineering and traditional breeding are different, and according to the technical experts in the agency, they lead to different risks.” [20]

One such expert was FDA microbiologist Louis Pribyl. “There is a profound difference between the types of unexpected effects from traditional breeding and genetic engineering,” wrote Pribyl in a letter to James Maryanski, the FDA’s biotech coordinator. Pribyl said that several aspects of gene splicing “may be more hazardous.” [21] According to the New York Times, “Dr. Pribyl knew from studies that toxins could be unintentionally created when new genes were introduced into a plant’s cells.” [22] Moreover, Pribyl wrote “there is no certainty that [the breeders of GM foods] will be able to pick up effects that might not be obvious.” He declared, “This is the industry’s pet idea, namely that there are no unintended effects that will raise the FDA’s level of concern. But time and time again, there is no data to back up their contention.” [23]

Pribyl was only one of many FDA scientists asked to provide input during the formulation of the FDA’s policy on genetically engineered food. According to Druker, records show that the majority of these scientists identified potential risks of GM foods. Druker was the main organizer of the lawsuit that forced the FDA documents into the public domain. His nonprofit organization, the Alliance for Bio-Integrity, was the lead plaintiff. Having sorted through tens of thousands of pages of FDA documents, he described the opinion of the agency’s scientists as follows: “The predominant view was that genetic engineering entails distinct risks and that its products cannot be regarded as safe unless they have been confirmed to be so through appropriate feeding studies.” Druker says several scientists “issued strong warnings.” [24]

The Toxicology Group, for example, warned that genetically modified plants could “contain unexpected high concentrations of plant toxicants,” and described the reasons why these might be very difficult to identify. [25] Their director wrote, “The possibility of unexpected, accidental changes in genetically engineered plants justifies a limited traditional toxicological study.” [26]

The Division of Food Chemistry and Technology outlined four potential dangers:

1. “Increased levels of known naturally occurring toxins”
2. “Appearance of new, not previously identified” toxins
3. Increased tendency to gather “toxic substances from the environment” such as “pesticides or heavy metals”
4. “Undesirable alterations in the levels of nutrients”

They warned, “unless genetically engineered plants are evaluated specifically for these changes,” these four “may escape breeders’ attention.” The division recommended testing every GM food “before it enters the marketplace.” [27]

Gerald Guest, the director of FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM) sent a letter to the FDA’s Biotech Coordinator, James Maryanski, saying that he and the other CVM scientists concluded that there is “ample scientific justification” to require testing and review of each GM food before it is eaten by the public. He stated, “CVM believes that animal feeds derived from genetically modified plants present unique animal and food safety concerns.” He pointed out that, “residues of plant constituents or toxicants in meat and milk products may pose human food safety concerns.” [28]

In spite of repeated internal memos outlining the potential for increased health risks posed by this new technology, subsequent drafts of the FDA’s policy statement, overseen by Taylor, deleted more and more of the scientist’s input. In a fiery memo to Maryanski, Pribyl challenged the direction the policy statement had taken: “What has happened to the scientific elements of this document? Without a sound scientific base to rest on, this becomes a broad, general, ‘What do I have to do to avoid trouble’-type document…. It will look like and probably be just a political document…. It reads very pro-industry, especially in the area of unintended effects.”

But while the FDA’s scientists were emphasizing caution and testing, its leaders were beholden to an altogether different lobbying effort. A March 1992 memo from FDA Commissioner David Kessler, confirmed the White House’s influence in the crafting of the agency’s policy. “The approach and provisions of the policy statement are consistent with the general biotechnology policy established by the Office of the President…. It also responds to White House interest in assuring the safe, speedy development of the U.S. biotechnology industry.” [29]

WyldPirate @ 35

What a moronic post.

You show absolutely zero understanding of farming, agriculture or molecular genetics, just like most of the morons hooting and hollering about genetically modified foods.

There are issues with genetically modified foods, but safety issues aren’t one of them.

IF you had raised hell about mega-agricultural firms monopolizing seed production and decreasing genetic diversity of staple food crops, then you would have a point. Worrying about some Bacillus thuringiensis gene sequence that has been inserted into a crops DNA to kill a class of insects is moronic. Would you rather have the crops sprayed with insecticides to kill bugs instead?

I just finished dinner here in Paris: haricot vert with organic butter, a tomato from Provence, and an omelet with potato, Jambon d’Auvergne, a very fresh goat cheese, and fresh basil. Total cost: about 5 Euros for two people (I didn’t count the Bordeaux, which I opened yesterday). It was so good! I’d move to Europe for the food alone. Why can’t I eat like this in the US?

masaccio @ 50

I just finished dinner here in Paris: haricot vert with organic butter, a tomato from Provence, and an omelet with potato, Jambon d’Auvergne, a very fresh goat cheese, and fresh basil. Total cost: about 5 Euros for two people (I didn’t count the Bordeaux, which I opened yesterday). It was so good! I’d move to Europe for the food alone. Why can’t I eat like this in the US?

’cause the great American diary oligopoly (and their lobbyists’ stranglehold on Congress) still won’t let us import the really good non-pasteurized cheesy stuff

For the French- food (and sex) are more of a religion than a daily habit. They can make a festival out of an egg.

hey pups - still responding to comments here - slow toobz here this AM - sorry for delay…

Hi Busted,

Yup, screwing with staple crops seems like a disaster waiting to happen. Like ignoring human caused of global climate change. In ordinary risk analysis, a .001% chance of causing 50% global anihilation should be treated as gravely as a 50% chance of killing .001% of the earth’s 6 billion people. Practically speaking, it should be unthinkable.

But they always believe it can’t happen to them, and you can be pretty sure they can spend the extra bucks for organic. Except it won’t really be.

It’d be nice to think that the govt. who is charged with the safety of foods would take care of this so that americans wouldn’t have to worry about it. Guess not.

rwcole @ 55

It’d be nice to think that the govt. who is charged with the safety of foods would take care of this so that americans wouldn’t have to worry about it. Guess not.

kinda like they’ve become the Enemy. We need to get the foxes out of our henhouse.

rwcole @ 55

It’d be nice to think that the govt. who is charged with the safety of foods would take care of this so that americans wouldn’t have to worry about it. Guess not.

I’m from the government, trust me.
Right?
Sure.

masaccio @ 49

I just finished dinner here in Paris: haricot vert with organic butter, a tomato from Provence, and an omelet with potato, Jambon d’Auvergne, a very fresh goat cheese, and fresh basil. Total cost: about 5 Euros for two people (I didn’t count the Bordeaux, which I opened yesterday). It was so good! I’d move to Europe for the food alone. Why can’t I eat like this in the US?

Great question, masaccio. Much of the answer lies in our current Farm Bill and Corps of Engineers budgets. The US spends billions each year tosubsidize the growth, harvest, and transport of commodity crops (with great use of fossil fuels). The funds spent bypass the vast majority of familty farms, but do help Bi AG and BIg Commodity.

Unfortunately, almost none of the funds are spent to produce anything you’d directly want to eat. IIRC organics fights for 50 million - total net US farm subsidies (as seen by WTO types) amount to 12 billion per annum.

Bon appetit!

rwcole @ 55

It’d be nice to think that the govt. who is charged with the safety of foods would take care of this so that americans wouldn’t have to worry about it. Guess not.

Hehe. Nah. Shrub lets ConAgra, Cargill, Phillip Morris, Monsanto, Tyson etc etc worry about our food safety… It’s called outsourcing :P

Look, “Dr” Murphy. I’m not saying that the modified DNA sequences inserted into food crops are the best thing since sliced bread. Nor am I saying that the effects of toxins or gene sequences which modify chemicals such as Roundup and render the plant immune to its effects shouldn’t be tested.

What I am complaining about is the hysteria hyped by people who should know better.

NAturally grown organic foods are great, but many food stuffs have carcinogens and mutagens in them naturally and, if eaten in large enough quantities by test animals, even organically grown foods can show deleterious effects.

The facts are that sufficient organic foodstuffs cannot likely be grown to feed the planet’s population. Furthermore, if it were not for advances in agriculture in the 20th century, we would likely have difficulty feeding folks now. And mind you, those advances were in large part due to agribusiness folks like you love to pound on.

You should also tell your dear readers that the little rat study you presented isn’t peer reviewed and was very small. OF course that would take away the dramatic effect, now wouldn’t it?

HotFlash @ 54

Hi Busted,

Yup, screwing with staple crops seems like a disaster waiting to happen. Like ignoring human caused of global climate change. In ordinary risk analysis, a .001% chance of causing 50% global anihilation should be treated as gravely as a 50% chance of killing .001% of the earth’s 6 billion people. Practically speaking, it should be unthinkable.

But they always believe it can’t happen to them, and you can be pretty sure they can spend the extra bucks for organic. Except it won’t really be.

where’s Cheney’s 1% doctrine when it really matters?:

…
Suskind describes the Cheney doctrine as follows: “Even if there’s just a 1 percent chance of the unimaginable coming due, act as if it is a certainty.
…’

suskind

Ed*ard Teller @ 46

What’s the background on the current makeup of the U.S. House subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy and Poultry? Leonard Boswell, the chair, is only familiar to me as one of the first pilots in the Vietnam War to fly the Huey Cobra gunship. A friend served in his unit in 1969-70. Boswell appears to get a lot of campaign money from unions, and not a lot - considering he’s from Iowa - from corporate agriculture. Any info on how this language trumping local authority on GMO legislation actually got put into the bill?

Great questions, ET!

I hope someone here can shed light on the first (and is the Bosworth you mention related to the cotton magnate in CA?)

For the second question: Yes - our dear pals in industry want to eliminate local regulations.

Costs too much, ya see.

The biotechnology industry has sponsored language akin to the text approved this morning in the House subcommittee in dozens of state-level attempts to pre-empt state regulations on GE crops. They also joined the food and agribusiness industries last year in pushing for a federal “Food Uniformity” law, which would have gutted numerous state-level food safety laws.

[h/t OCA]

DakkonA @ 14

I don’t understand why *ALL* GM food is being categorically branded as bad. DNA is DNA is DNA.

Obviously, not all GM food is bad as such. The real issue is what is an acceptable risk? Everything, and particularly everything mankind does, carries the risk of some kind of bad thing.

The problem with GM crops is that the risk is way too high. In the first place, the crops are not isolated from the environment during testing, so GM pollen contaminates the outside world. Then, when deployed, the same risk presents itself. Even if we could be certain of the long-term effects of the modifications (which we can’t), that the modifications are unstable and highly variant means that any such certainty is temporary.

This means that the risk is very high, in the sense that if one of the crops proved disastrous, the disaster will spread and affect the whole ecosphere. Even if that chance is small, the effects would be so large that extreme caution is called for, and extreme caution is not being applied. Even moderate caution isn’t.

And look at what kinds of modifications have already been deployed: plants that create their own pesticides (poisons), plants that only create sterile seed, etc. A little imagination brings to mind all kinds of bad possibilities.

My main objection is that the whole world, and people specifically, are being used as guinea pigs on a scale that is unprecedented. We’re seeing a complete disregard for risk management in a context that could, to be only a little hyperbolic, threaten the existence of mankind itself.

So the main issue isn’t, for me, near-term health effects of eating GM foods. It’s the potential for ecological disaster in developing and growing them.

We drove here through the French countryside from Provence, including several long stretches on back roads. We often saw cattle, pigs and sheep in pastures, rarely more than 25 in any one field, all eating the local grasses. The meat here just tastes better than what I get at my local Kroger store. The week before we left, I cooked a Smithfield pork loin, which weighed about two pounds, and which I hoped would last for three meals for two. It was about 10% of some kind of solution, and tasted only of those chemicals, with a texture like firm oatmeal. In Strasburg, I had choucroute garnie, with a cut of pork that tasted like some other species of animal than whatever that thing was from Krogers.

Our food just isn’t as good as the food here.

masaccio @ 50

I just finished dinner here in Paris: haricot vert with organic butter, a tomato from Provence, and an omelet with potato, Jambon d’Auvergne, a very fresh goat cheese, and fresh basil. Total cost: about 5 Euros for two people (I didn’t count the Bordeaux, which I opened yesterday). It was so good! I’d move to Europe for the food alone. Why can’t I eat like this in the US?

Because you didn’t eat at our place. Today we’re having smoked trout on morel tagliatelli, and arugula-lemon basil salad with Windsong Farm organic mozarella, and homemade rhubarb-strawberry sorbet.

masaccio @ 50

I just finished dinner here in Paris: haricot vert with organic butter, a tomato from Provence, and an omelet with potato, Jambon d’Auvergne, a very fresh goat cheese, and fresh basil. Total cost: about 5 Euros for two people (I didn’t count the Bordeaux, which I opened yesterday). It was so good! I’d move to Europe for the food alone. Why can’t I eat like this in the US?

i gotta pal camping out in paris in the 6th arr, who’d love to know the name of that cafe?

Elliott @ 61

where’s Cheney’s 1% doctrine when it really matters?:

Nah. You’re ignoring the role of the rethug gods in all this. If there is just a 1% chance of the unimaginable coming due act as if it is a certainly if and only if such action results in a diminishment of constitutionally protected rights and advancement of the rethug agenda. Otherwise, the rethug gods will provide and we must have faith.

The operative phrase should be ‘go slow’. I trust Mother Nature above all else. deliberately modifying functional genes in a system that is dynamic and delicate is introducing an unpredictable kind of change. It’s not that genetic change isn’t constantly happening. Through random mutation it IS always occurring but the success or harm of mutations occurs in concert with Nature’s plan.

Modifying genes can be helpful or harmful but with every action there is a reaction. It’s a gamble that, when associated with deliberate human meddling, must occur with built in mechanisms to track long term safety not to just people but first to the environment, and second with mechanisms to assure accountability when harm does occur.

The scale of effects can be difficult to assess in the relative short term which doesn’t match well with the life span of a self centered adult CEO. Correcting a harmful outcome is all the more difficult when you didn’t understand how one might cause a problem in the first place.

60WyldPirate says

You have valid points but a lousy bedside manner.

Even taking into account the boons of modern agriculture there are still legitimate concerns about side effects from things such as antibiotic resistance from livestock, growth hormone accelerating puberty in our children and myriad other concerns.

with gmo, just as with gfreenhouse gasses, by the time the harm is visible enough to convince those with an investment in being blind to the problem, it’s too late to do anything about it…

the precautionary principle, people…think 7 generations out,, ya know? those folks were onto sumpin…

hijole, chuy!

Insulting the front page poster by putting his earned credential in quotes simply is not done here, madam or sir at 60.

So what should we do about this?

seepeesate @ 63

acceptable risk

Actually, I would argue that the real issue here is the dependability and integrity of the regulatory structure. GMO foods would be far less of a concern if we were assured of stringent testing and ongoing oversight and due diligence by regulators with teeth — good regulation over time diminishes the risk. However, we have already established that the regulatory structure is awful, shrub has effectively defanged them and made the industry self-regulating (or non-regulating). Under such an environment of regulatory forbearance we can only assume that the largely un/under-regulated producers will eventually make something dangerous or muderous that slips through the ever-widening cracks in the shrub regulatory net.

Unfortunatey, this problem does not just apply to GMO food, but also to foreign imports and domestic production of non-GMO food.

Did the rat study use genetically engineered rats?

TeddySanFran @ 71

Insulting the front page poster by putting his earned credential in quotes simply is not done here, madam or sir at 60.

well said. thank you.

TeddySanFran @ 71

Insulting the front page poster by putting his earned credential in quotes simply is not done here, madam or sir at 60.

beat me to it. Lighten up, “WyldPirate.”

rwcole @ 72

So what should we do about this?

one thing is not to consume gmo products…

boycott ‘em, spread the word…

their big selling point is ‘feeding the poor’…
but of course ‘we’ could feed the poor now, and would, if it were i n our immediate, selfish interest to do so…

famine is almost never a problem os supply, but of allocation and distribution…
.

rwcole @ 72

So what should we do about this?

Break the regulatory parts of the USDA & FDA off into separate departments.

rwcole @ 72

So what should we do about this?

Here here. Late to the thread. So great to see Kirk working through this with all of us. What can we do?

rwcole @ 72

So what should we do about this?

Fix the regulatory structure, to assure decent oversight.. not further relaxation of restrictions and requirements as contemplated under the current legislaton mentioned in the post and in other shrubbish/rethugish measures.

An interesting aspect of GM crops is their suspected role in killing of bees.

Bees are a primary mechanism for pollination and are critical for agriculture. Without bees crop yields drop significantly. The past few years bee populations have been dying off en masse with little explanation. Scientific research suggests that the bees are dying from otherwise common organisms that healthy bees used to be able to survive with. The findings suggest that the deaths are being caused by significantly lowered immune systems - the cause of which is unknown. Some have hypothesized that genetically-modified crops which contain genes purposefully toxic to insects may be the environmental factor to blame for such catastrophic collapse of bee colonies across the globe.

Here’s a link to a report from Germany:
Are GM Crops Killing Bees?

WyldPirate @ 60

Look, “Dr” Murphy. I’m not saying that the modified DNA sequences inserted into food crops are the best thing since sliced bread. Nor am I saying that the effects of toxins or gene sequences which modify chemicals such as Roundup and render the plant immune to its effects shouldn’t be tested.

What I am complaining about is the hysteria hyped by people who should know better.

NAturally grown organic foods are great, but many food stuffs have carcinogens and mutagens in them naturally and, if eaten in large enough quantities by test animals, even organically grown foods can show deleterious effects.

The facts are that sufficient organic foodstuffs cannot likely be grown to feed the planet’s population. Furthermore, if it were not for advances in agriculture in the 20th century, we would likely have difficulty feeding folks now. And mind you, those advances were in large part due to agribusiness folks like you love to pound on.

You should also tell your dear readers that the little rat study you presented isn’t peer reviewed and was very small. OF course that would take away the dramatic effect, now wouldn’t it?

What have you been eating to make yourself sound sort of sarcastic and a bit mean in that last paragraph? Maybe you are wrong. Maybe you are right, but you sure are not very polite.

wgg: tokin lib’rul @ 66

I made it myself in the apartment we rented in the 18th Arr. (for a whole lot less than the cost of a decent hotel, we have a lovely kitchen, a living room and a bedroom, I recommend www.vrbo.com).

The food came from Monoprix, a chain store, because this is a holiday here, one of several this month alone. Tomorrow the regular stores and markets will be open, and I will be going to a local butcher shop and cheese store.

I just bought 25 pounds of rice. Is it gmo? How would I know?

It’s clear that there are a lot of people and milions of dollars lobbying in support of GM foods. There are ALSO a lot of people who are makin money out of organic farming. So who the hell do ya trust here? There’s money at risk on both sides- and both sides have propoganda machines- and “studies” they have paid for.

Blub @ 79

rwcole @ 72

So what should we do about this?

Fix the regulatory structure, to assure decent oversight.. not further relaxation of restrictions and requirements as contemplated under the current legislaton mentioned in the post and in other shrubbish/rethugish measures.

Right aft