I have a good idea what a GMO is.  I've done genetic work myself (non-agricultural).  When it comes to our food, when people are talking about GMOs, what is the actual definition?  What types of genetic manipulations can be done without it being considered to be an 'official' GMO?

Are GMOs something you want to avoid?  Or do you just care about certain GMOs?  Or are you not concerned at all?

I'll be waiting too, for other posts since I'm interested in learning more. Proponents say gmo crops will save humanity & are designed to grow in difficult or challenging conditions. I saw a doc called "King Corn" which showed the staggering monoculture - bazillions of hectares in Iowa, of gmo corn used in the food processing industry. It has no resemblance to corn in taste - just starch. That corn product would be extremely hard to avoid. It's in everything - read the label.
What bothers me the most though, are frankencorporations like Monsanto which lobby the gov't for the right to patent seeds & restrict other crops around them.
I envision a time soon when it will be illegal to grow a vegetable garden using heritage varieties if seeds.

I think gmo tomatoes have fish DNA

Based on these definitions, wouldn't almost all foods be considered GMOs? 

Is there a huge difference between leaving breeding up to nature or selecting for certain traits ourselves?

If it weren't for conventional breeding, canola would not exist.  Are people who are completely against all GMOs against having canola?  What's so bad about canola?

http://www.ec.gc.ca/inre-nwri/default.asp?lang=En&n=E8A9C49D-1

Hi chemgal,

There is genetic modification and then there is genetic modification.

(Hmmmmm.  That completely fails in text based print)

At any rate genetic modification pulls in a lot of living organisms from those which have naturally evolved, to those which are the result of selective breeding to those which have been wildly manipulated.

I think the real issue with GMO's is basically how are corporations using them to eliminate or reduce corporate competition more so than how the GMO is a benefit or liability in particular contexts.

Monsanto's terminator seeds, for example, is a concern not because the Monsanto product is in and of itself harmful but rather because the terminator seeds force crop growers into an increasing dependance upon Monsanto as the seed provider.

While terminator seed technology is "good" for Monsanto (in that it allows them to keep control of their product) it is not "good" for the farmer because they cannot hold seed over for planting a new crop, they must buy new seed from Monsanto or another supplier.

Other issues with respect to GMOs is the long-term safety of the end product though I believe that is minor, by comparison, to the enforced reliance that seed corporations are attempting to engineer.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Thanks Gecko.  I have to question a piece of information in the second video a bit though.  Does Monsanto (own/produce, forget which word) 90% of GM seeds, or is it just GE seeds?

John, with the knowledge I do have, I with you.  The primary issue with GMOs is political/economic and not if they are safe to eat.  Yet I have seen people who passionately argue how harmful GMOs are to our health and food should all be labelled as to whether or not it contains GMOs.  When I suggested that having a simple GMO label wasn't really enough information, but rather what the genetic modification actually is, I was shot down.

Most genetic modifications are an attempt to either i) incorporate pesticide into the very cells of the resulting plant - Bt, for instance, so as to kill any insect that tries to eat the plant or ii) render the resulting plant immune to the soil/plant poison glysophate, aka Roundup, so that fields can be sprayed intensely with Roundup to kill all other vegetation. Said Roundup, also made by Monsanto, who first brought us Agent Orange, but needed a facelift following the end of the Vietnam War.  This absolutely anti-natural 'mofidication' is done by rather crudely shooting the DNA of a lifeform, like a bacteria custom-designed with the desired pesticide or pesticide-resistance, into the nucleus of another life-form, like corn/maize or cotton, etc.

So basically, any way you look at it, we're being fed pesticide at a microscopic level. Even if you argue that Bt Maize is largely livestock feed, who is eating that livestock? And if it's "just cotton", against whose skin rests that pesticide-laden cotton? Intuitively, this seems like a bad idea. What limited studies have been conducted (after the USFDA rendered them unnecessary by the unscientific "equivalent" label) have pointed to disturbing signs of major organ damage, the sort of stuff that tends to be more evident in later life, when it can be easily dismissed as age-related deterioration. For more direct results, much of the uproar in India over Bt cotton has been its result on cattle, actually. Before Bt cotton, cows used to be allowed to graze in the fields of picked cotton. This tilled the soil for the next year's crop and fertilized it at the same time. Bt Cotton plants kill cows that do this. If this stuff isn't worrying you, it should be at least on your radar at some level. The EU has been trying  very hard to keep GMOs out of their food chain, the desire for which has been expressed at the grassroots of the European population.

This is a time when an ethical culture would back off and demand many more studies before walking any farther in this direction. Unfortunately, our policies are driven so much by our neighbours to the south, and if you just look at the Boards/Administration/Legal Departments of Monsanto, Dupont and the USFDA, you will discover a revolving door of the same characters. It's such transparent corporate control of (at least) the food system, that it should be quite frightening to more people than it is. The system thats got the keys to all of the locked-up food (and all of the food is locked up), completely controls its citizens. If Christianity can contribute to the shaming and destruction of this Corporate Greed God to allow for more sustainable, ethics-based economic/social system(s), it may keep its place as a force in the 21st century.

Another problem with the bt maize modification is that the pesticide is too reliably present in the ecosystem now.  Pests must evolve to combat it, and evolve they will.  Ceasing to use one pesticide and instead using another throws that evolutionary pressure off, preventing (or at least inhibiting) the pests' ability to adapt to any particular one.  But when one is *always* present - as is the case with bt maize - the pressure is consistent, and we'll get superbugs that will withstand that pesticide consistently.  Rinse and repeat for each pesticide we try in this fashion.

Think antibiotic resistant bacteria, only for crops instead of humans.

GMO technology continues to be an emotional issue for many. Words like "frankencompany" and "frankenfood" are freely thrown around but mean nothing and add nothing to the conversation. I think we need to separate the debate. Anti Monsanto should not automatically equal anti GMO. If someone doesn't like the way Monsanto does business, then address that issue.

There is also a lot of mis-information being kicked around here. For starters, the gene that was spliced into the first Roundup Ready canola variety came from a single canola plant that was found to have a natural resistance to glyphosate (such resistance is common to all herbicides necessitating rotation, but that's a whole 'nother lecture. Start an agronomy thread and I'd be happy to help).

The Terminator gene doesn't really exist. Monsanto's canola just has really crappy re-germination and they decided to say "we meant to do that". It's a load of..um..fertilizer. If you plant RR canola this year, count on having to control volunteer canola next year.

RR technology allows producers to use glyphosate LESS intensively, not more. For a particularly nasty weed problem, we use 1/3 litre per acre, twice. That's a bit more than a bottle of pop spread over 43,560 sq feet. Usually we get good results with half that amount.

GMO technology is often seen as "evil". It's science. It can neither be good or evil. I beleive it to be very irresponsible to try to ban GMO technology as a means to punish Monsanto.

Hope this helps.

Agreed, Alta.  The problem we see with growing GMO canola seed crops is that you use the roundup ready one year and then you have to use a modified seed the next year that is resistant to a different herbicide. This is because the seed has to be absolutely only ONE breed, for the high cash crop.  I won't go into the low return in farming, but let's just say the seed companies have us...

 All fine and good if you don't spill any seed in the yard while cleaning the combine or no seed blows from field to field.  I can tell you that it is possible that you will not be able to irradicate these GMO canola seeds at some point. 

Thanks alta, your post made a lot of sense to me.  Maybe I do need to look into Monsanto a bit more.  I knew they were a big player in GMOs, but they may be much bigger than I knew about.

AB Penny, I realize that's not what you are referring to when you are talking about canola, but isn't canola (as in Canadian Oil, Low Acid) considered to be a GMO itself?  Not in the engineering sense of the word, but just due to breeding to differentiate it from rapeseed?  Or am I stretching the definition of conventional breeding?  The roundup stuff is just further genetically modified (via genetic engineering).

In that sense, poodles are genetically modified.

Below are just some of the food products popularly identified to be genetically modified:

1. Corn - Corn has been modified to create its own insecticide. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has declared that tons of genetically modified corn has been introduced for human consumption. Monsanto has revealed that half of the US's sweet corn farms are planted with genetically modified seed. Mice fed with GM corn were discovered to have smaller offspring and fertility problems.

2. Soy - Soy has also been genetically modified to resist herbicides. Soy products include soy flour, tofu, soy beverages, soybean oil and other products that may include pastries, baked products and edible oil. Hamsters fed with GM soy were unable to have offspring and suffered a high mortality rate.

3. Cotton - Like corn and soy, cotton has been designed to resist pesticides. It is considered food because its oil can be consumed. Its introduction in Chinese agriculture has produced a chemical that kills cotton bollworm, reducing the incidences of pests not only in cotton crops but also in neighboring fields of soybeans and corn. Incidentally, thousands of Indian farmers suffered severe rashes upon exposure to BT cotton.

4. Papaya - The virus-resistant variety of papaya was commercially introduced in Hawaii in 1999. Transgenic papayas comprised three-fourths of the total Hawaiian papaya crop. Monsanto bestowed upon Tamil Nadu Agricultural University in Coimbatore technology for developing papaya resistant to the ringspot virus in India.

5. Rice - This staple food from South East Asia has now been genetically modified to contain a high amount of vitamin A. Allegedly, there are reports of rice varieties containing human genes to be grown in the US. The rice will create human proteins useful for dealing with infant diarrhea in the 3rd world. China Daily, an online journal, reported potential serious public health and environment problems with genetically modified rice considering its tendency to cause allergic reactions with the concurrent possibility of gene transfers.

6. Tomatoes - Tomatoes have now been genetically engineered for longer shelf life, preventing them from easily rotting and degrading. In a test conducted to determine the safety of GM tomatoes, some animal subjects died within a few weeks after consuming GM tomatoes.

7. Rapeseed - In Canada, this crop was renamed canola to differentiate it from non-edible rapeseed. Food stuff produced from rapeseed includes rapeseed oi (canola oil) l used to process cooking oil and margarine. Honey can also be produced from GM rapeseed. German food surveillance authorities discovered as much as a third of the total pollen present in Canadian honey may be from GM pollen. In fact, some honey products from Canada were also discovered to have pollen from GM rapeseed.

8. Dairy products - It has been discovered that 22 percent of cows in the U.S. were injected with recombinant (genetically modified) bovine growth hormone (rbGH). This Monsanto created hormone artificially forces cows to increase their milk production by 15 percent. Milk from cows treated with this milk inducing hormone contains increased levels of IGF-1 (insulin growth factors-1). Humans also have IGF-1 in their system. Scientists have expressed concerns that increased levels of IGF-1 in humans have been associated with colon and breast cancer.

9. Potatoes - Mice fed with potatoes engineered with Bacillus thuringiensis var. Kurstaki Cry 1 were found to have toxins in their system. Despite claims to the contrary, this shows that Cry1 toxin was stable in the mouse gut. When the health risks were revealed, it sparked a debate.

10. Peas - Peas that have been genetically modified have been found to cause immune responses in mice and possibly even in humans. A gene from kidney beans was inserted into the peas creating a protein that functions as a pesticide.

That's some of the issue I have with labelling things as GMO, without more information.  It's much too broad, and would be a waste of money as no useful information would actually be provided.

I would think if a female dog can't deliver pups without a c section due to selective breeding, the breed is definitely gmo.

I feel it's worth mentioning that canola and rapeseed are different crops and the names should not be used interchangeably. Rapeseed is the older crop, and has a high content of euricic acid (over 45%). Canola, on the other hand, has a euricic acid content of less than 5%. Yes, canola has similar parentage to rapeseed, but it is different. They don't even look the same (if you know what to look for).
Rapeseed acres in Canada are dwindling. There is not very much grown at all anymore. Canola is a very popular crop for a variety of reasons, and last year there was a little over 20 million acres planted in Canada.
Is there anything else anyone would like to know about canola? Fertilizer requirements? Growing degree days? Disease pressure? Swathing VS straight cutting? I could go on for days.

<reply to ninjafairy>

Even if not, all selectively bred animals have genomes that are deliberately modified from those found in nature.  All farm animals are GMOs.  Almost all pets are GMOs.  Many familiar garden flowers are GMOs.

Hence the "genetically engineered" vs "genetically modified" distinction.

I had heard there were problems with GMO corn -- thanks for the information.

Most concern relates to genetic material from one organism being inserted into the chromosomes of another organism.  While there is a yuck factor for some people, the other is the uncertainty about the effect of tag along DNA in that transfer process.

The other common concern is that breeding geared to increasing the profitability of a crop may also inadvertently reduce some of the food value, particularlly in regards to micronutrients such as some anti-oxidants or vitamins

http://www.marklynas.org/2013/01/lecture-to-oxford-farming-conference-3-january-2013/

I just heard an interview on CBC Radio where the father of the anti GMO movement has completely recanted his views.

http://www.cbc.ca/asithappens/features/2013/01/09/environmentalist-mark-lynas-on-the-need-for-gm-foods/

Interesting......

Regards

Rita

Thanks for sharing that Rita!  That's very different from much of the other stuff out there.

I am always bothered by blanket back and white positions which work to the advantage of the two sides but often are not helpful in determining what is best on a case by case basis.  Lets both sides escape the necessity of providing factual information.  I also heard part of that interview with Mark Lynas.  I knew 20 to 30 years about the use of radiation by seed growers to deliberately grow mutations.  I failed to link my knowledge to the certainty that many other mutations were likely along with the observable ones.

ah yes, maker subculture -- we are all co-creators

i heard that as well -- CBC radio one is brimming with fun

i've paid attention to a few recantings in the recent past -- like James "Gaia Hypothesis" Lovelock has recanted his "WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE" idears...Patrick Moore's recanting of Greenpeace...the Vatican's acceptance of evolution...