Can I have your thoughts...

... on GMO?

Genetically Modified Organisms. It can also be shortened to GM or in some foods GMI; I standing for ingredients.

Do you know what GMO is all about and how they are made?

What are your feelings about it?


I'm honestly just curious about how you guys and gals feel about such an odd topic. I've debated and discussed about GM foods with friends and family before, but I'd like to hear from you what your ideas and feelings are. Some find it dangerous while others feel it'll feed the world's starving population. Some countries have left GM food rot on the docks for how they feel about it while other's will happily scarf it up without a second thought, aide wise mind you.

If you're for GMO, why is that?

If you're against GMO, why is that?

Do you believe in organic? What are your thoughts about the words and new culture based around organic?

GMO is just like selectively breeding or cross-pollinating, except it's taking shortcuts and there's not much opportunity for mistakes to breed out. My issue is not the gene-splicing, but the rushing to market before ramifications get figured out. There was an SF story about how the GM grain produced proteins that eventually got dumped in the ocean with the rest of our wastes, and led to basically destroying dolphin nervous systems, and the protagonist was a woman with celiac's disease who was a dolphin researcher, and saw the dolphins react when they were told of their species demise.

It's a story, naturally, but the point is that kind of accidental, unplanned, unpredicted interaction is not only possible, but probable with the more esoteric modifications you do (like fish genes in tomatoes to keep the bugs off them, etc.). It's not the existence of the modification, it's the lack of tracking the ramifications, but you can't expect big business to go slow when there's profit to be made (which is why the only brakes on the system is government regulation, and a) that's so bought-out by business during the "fox watching the henhouse" Bush years, it might as well be nonexistent, and b) the general populace doesn't realize government is actually good for a damn thing, anyway).

So that's my mood on GM.

I appreciate organic in that it doesn't have pesticides and generally isn't grown on factory farms by Big Agra. I do think it tends to taste better, but I'm not a foodie, so I don't detect MUCH difference, and the price is a problem for a poor man like me.

I hear people, now and again, talk about the Green Revolution back in the 60s and 70s; there were projections that billions of people would starve to death in the developing world because they couldn't feed themselves. And these were not insensible. Then Norman Borlaug & friends introduced new crops; they introduced new pesticides, they introduced new engineered crops that weren't native to the countries they were sown and harvested in, and magically, heroically, suddenly these countries became self-sustaining. Billions of people are alive because of the introduction of modern agriculture - to say nothing of whatever wars and civil unrest would have resulted from mass starvation on every continent. The Holocaust of a few million looks pathetic by comparison.

So, yeah yeah yeah, bitch about ConAgra and ADM and farm subsidies, but I honestly want to spit in the faces of everyone who says that we should live like neolithic hunter-gatherers on "organic" food because on top of such technologies the world could only sustain one-tenth of the population it now does. Other than a luxury, it's fucking murder. Genocide at that.

Now we can quibble about the minutiae of how the FDA should or should not approve of food products, but there are no grounds to speak of genetically modified foods en bloc simply because there is no bloc; some of them are good, some of them are bad, and the particulars are up to agronomists, nutritionists, and biologists to ferret out. But for my part I think there's been a panic fostered by the media about these products which grossly and absurdly magnifies the cost.

As MM pointed out, we've been genetically modifying food for a very long time.

The only problem I have is with time periods and the amount of gene modification at any one time. I'm always concerned about unintended consequences of new things.

Mmm, my organic apples taste like genocide.

But do they taste better? :mrgreen:

Hells yes.

I actually prefer organic food anyways, it tastes better to me and I'm picky. I can only drink organic milk because the non-organic stuff tastes awful to me.

GENOCIDEILICIOUS.

Conventional milk tastes like milk falvored water to me.

Organic milk tastes close to cream.

My grandparents say that Horizon's organic whole milk tastes close to the milk they drank as kids. That speaks volumes to me since grandpa's dad was a dairy farmer and they drank raw milk.

That's exactly what I thought!

Milk flavored water. I could only tolerate it in cereal. My friends always drink up my milk at my house because they're like "THIS MILK IS SO AWESOME."

D: jerks.

Oooooo! THEY ARE JERKS!

The half gallons are like $3.99-$4.19! I'd be pissed! :-o

And full gallons, when you can find them, are like $7! Blargh. When we have it, I suck it down so fast. I can't get enough of it. It really makes me want to consider some miniature dairy cows once we move.

Yeah, exactly. D: It's so delicious and awesome, it's not fair! I need to make everyone pay a milk fee. That'd solve my problem.

Keep a jar near the milk or fridge labled "MILK FUND".

It solved my problems when I had room mates. When there was money for food in the "FOOD FUND" jar, I bought groceries. When it was empty, fend for your fucking selves.