GMOs: Good or Bad for health?

[Whitney]

There has been increasing hype over GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) and our food supply.  Many countries have banned the sale of GMO foods.

How GMO works for plants is they insert desired genes into the plant in the lab and end up with plants that produce seeds which are immune to disease, herbicide resistant, and even can kill invading insects.  In many cases this requires inserting a toxic gene.  

There doesn't seem to be much research on how these GMO foods affect humans but I've read that it has caused damage in rats.

I have been able to determine that the farming practices used to produce GMO foods are not environmentally friendly; but not necessarily any worse than other factory farming methods.

Apparently GMOs are in pretty much all processed foods and in the vegetables fed to livestock; so there isn't an easy way to avoid them without buying all organic foods (which is expensive in most cases).

As far as food safety and health is concerned; does anyone know of any evidence which points definitively one way or the other?

[KDbeads]

I remember reading one study about a type of soy bean that had to be pulled before it reached mass production due to some sort of adverse effect but I can't seem to locate it.  But the thing is........ if you are eating corn/corn products out of a grocery store you have about a 90% chance it has some form of GMO (stats courtesy of the history channel).

I'm on the fence about it.  In some cases I don't like that we are playing god with our food to the point of mixing animal and non-animal 'DNA', in others cases we've raped our agricultural lands to the point that we can't maintain the current level of production for long so we need something.

[hackenslash]

We've been eating genetically modified food for thousands of years. The only difference now is the method of modification. Like in all areas of endeavour, there will be instances in which there are issues, and areas where there are not, but to dismiss it all as dangerous is probably a bit hasty, especially given the very real impact this has on our ability to coontinue to feed the population.

I don't know if you can tell, but I'm fairy pragmatic about it, as with all things.

[The Magic Pudding]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie-Monique_Robin
Le monde selon Monsanto (The World According to Monsanto)

In March 2008, her documentary about the Monsanto Company (English title, The World According to Monsanto) was aired on the Arte network in France and Germany.[14] It was a co-production between Arte and the National Film Board of Canada.[15][16]

The movie tells the story of the St. Louis firm: located in 46 countries, Monsanto has become the world leader in GMO (more than 90% of the market share), the firm also produces PCBs (pyralene), herbicides (such as the Agent Orange during the Vietnam war), and the bovine artificial growth hormones, used for milk production, prohibited in Europe. The documentary explains that since its creation in 1901 the firm accumulated lawsuits for poisoning and polluting, while presenting itself today as a company of "life sciences", converted to the virtues of sustainable development. In her investigation the journalist discovers that to impose its GMOs on the world, Monsanto first infiltrated the sciences and regulatory spheres.[17] Translated into 15 languages, the movie and book are a huge hit internationally. In France the documentary was released when the debate about GMOs divided the political class and the researchers while the majority of the population was opposed to their use.

This film obtained the following prizes: the Rachel Carson Prize (Norway), the Umwelt-Medienpreis prize (Germany), the Ekofilm Festival of Cesky Kumlov (Czech Republic, 2009).

http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/ ... 9_1106.mp3
This is an interview with Marie-Monique Robin, so it's mostly the case against GM

A response from Monsanto
http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/ ... 9_1129.mp3

[OldGit]

Seems to me you can't generalise; you'd have to consider each different modification to each organism.  A blanket panic is illogical.

As hackenslash says, the world is running short of food.  I've heard many experts say we can choose between GM crops, population reduction or famine.

(Perhaps this was covered in the Monsanto link above - I can't make it work.)

[LARA]

Old Git wrote:  Seems to me you can't generalise; you'd have to consider each different modification to each organism. A blanket panic is illogical.

I definitely second this.  Genetic modification being the transfer of a genetic sequence from one organism to another, it can encompass so many different variables.  Upping the expression growth hormone in pigs is not going to be harmful to human health, adding herbicide resistance to sugar beets so that they can be treated with Round-up is not going to be harmful to human health, adding a gene that produces a pesticide from bacillus thuringiensis in corn may be of questionable safety to butterflies and maybe people, but creating a mutant poodle that excretes tetrodotoxin in it's saliva is definitely dangerous to anything within licking distance.

In the real example of the sugar beets above, Monsanto actually lost approval after gaining it due to political pressure and fear the sugar beets would be supermutants that would ecologically damage the environment.  Odd fear since these beets advantage requires the application of Round-up herbicide, which isn't going to happen in nature.  There weren't any fears associated with human health risks in the sugar beet case.  The Bt corn has been under scrutiny in the past because of questions of whether the pesticide produced is damaging to non-target insects and how much of this naturally occurring pesticide ends up in organisms that eat the corn.

As far as my health is concerned, I'm a lot more worried about companies that produce massive tons of salmonella infected peanut butter because the factory was leaking water that had coursed through tons of pigeon offal from the roof than I am if my bacon has an extra promoter region so the pig can get fatter faster or if my car runs on ethanol produced by Round-up Ready GMO sugar beets. But I do think we should pay attention when any type of gene is added to an organism that allows it to produce a toxin.  This is where I think it gets a little sticky for human health, but the reality is, most food we eat is treated with some pretty toxic stuff at some point in it's growth or production, so it isn't really the fact that it's a GMO that's the problem.

[Davin]

I think the fear comes from the 50's mutant vegetable movies like this beet monster flick:


But I also agree that in general GMOs have been beneficial for human survival.

[Will]

I'm a big believer in breeding, the kinds of careful genetic manipulation that's been going on since the agricultural revolution thousands of years ago. What I'm not a big believer in is unregulated tampering in ways that are not just breeding. Monsanto has tailored crops which only work with Monsanto fertilizers and Monsanto pesticides, don't seed, and are quite effective at fertilizing crops many miles away, thus being incredibly monopolistic. The consequences of allowing Monsanto to do this mean that they have a virtual monopoly, and have bankrupted or extorted thousands, perhaps millions of farmers around the world.

GMO crops need to be regulated by independent governmental organizations worldwide to ensure that they are both safe and are fair in business practices.