Comment by smelendez | Hacker News Reader

Comment by smelendez | Hacker News Reader

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I'm not an expert, but one criticism I've seen is that a lot of genetic modification is used to either get plants to produce pesticides or be immune to commonly used weed-killers, like Roundup. Some critics worry that lets farmers basically saturate their fields in herbicides to eliminate weeds, and that some of them are toxic to humans, other animals and plants near to the farm.

Another issue is that most genetic modification work is done by massive companies, which then patent their results. If they develop cheaper-to-grow crops, farmers may essentially have no choice but to license their IP to stay competitive. That gives those big companies a lot of clout over farmers and probably advantages giant farming operations, who can negotiate to buy GMO seeds cheaper than small farmers can.

Some people also worry that there will be "bugs" in the genetic code introduced into plants that will have unforeseen consequences. On some level, plant genetics always been a software problem, but now we're potentially deploying updates in the (literal) field much faster. If new corn seeds distributed en masse accidentally produce toxins, or are unusually conducive to harmful bacteria, or just don't grow properly in some areas, what does it mean for farmers and consumers?

I think it's a lot of the usual technology-upends-formerly-slow-moving-industry issues, but that's especially frightening for a lot of people when it comes to things we're putting in our bodies.

In this case, the problem is that there's a huge difference between public perception and reality. For instance, you talk about herbicides: A modern GMO actually lets you use LESS herbicides and insecticides, and often far less dangerous ones than many that are OK for labeled organic crops, and happen to be far more toxic.

As far as updates on the field producing toxins, GMOs are actually more controlled, genetically speaking, than something that doesn't come from big agribusiness. I can irradiate my seeds to create mutations to use then on traditional breeding, and call myself organic afterwards!

As far as growing well in an area or not, that's why there is testing. Selling a seed that yields poorly to a region would lead to a major economic damage to whichever company is selling those seeds, so everything we can find at a seed store from a major manufacturer, whether GMO or not, will have more than enough agronomic information to make a farmer's decision easy. And besides, I don't know how many farmers you've talked to, but they tend to be a pretty conservative bunch, as far as making sure that they don't bet a lot of hectares on tech that they haven't tested first in a smaller part of their fields, and only plant everywhere if they expect a significant profit. When yields are already very good, and grain is cheap, expensive seeds just sell less across the board.

You don't get much opposition to GMOs among farmers: they just go with what is more profitable for them. Same thing for industrial companies that use the GMOs products to feed cattle or make biodiesel. It all comes down to people that are afraid of what they don't understand, and just choose to be afraid in ways that work well with their political affiliations.

If we were REALLY afraid of food being dangerous, and with untested genetics, we'd actually ban the organics, because there's a lot more genetic variation that is unaccounted for in traditional farming products than in something that comes from agribusiness.

Producing higher yields is not analogous to producing healthier food.

The interests of farmers (ie produce more yield/mass that is impacted less by weeds/pests) do not match the interests of consumers (ie purchase healthy/tasty food with no unforseen side-effects).

Considering the turnaround time between the time a seed is purchased and when the resulting food is consumed, the 'testing period' of newly introduced GMO breeds is very long compared to software iterations.

At the very least, consumers should be able to trace what GMO breed they're consuming and where it was produced. That way, if there are any unforseen side effects, it'll be easier to trace the source.

Just look at the fallout caused by pistachio yields that have been contaminated with E Coli and Salmonella. The long shelf life of nuts means that contaminated foods could still be sitting on store shelves years later.

I'm all for GMO foods if it improves farming effectiveness but the process needs something similar to version control to track quality and a way to clearly indicate GMO foods so people can opt out of beta testing new breeds.

> A modern GMO actually lets you use LESS herbicides and insecticides, and often far less dangerous ones than many that are OK for labeled organic crops, and happen to be far more toxic.

Citation needed.

herbicides: http://www.agbioforum.org/v15n3/v15n3a01-fernandez-cornejo.h...

pesticides: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

Again, neither of these articles, nor anything in here (http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/1282246/err162.pdf), supports the preposterous claim that organic farming is leads to the use of more herbicides and insecticides, which are more toxic (which ones?) than the use of glyphosate et. al. In fact, in the USDA report I just cited, in the first abstract there is even the claim:

> However, overreliance on glyphosate and a reduction in the diversity of weed management practices have contributed to the evolution of glyphosate resistance in some weed species.

It is indeed true that traditional, non-organic means of farming likely requires the use of more (non-organic-certified) herbicides and pesticides, of which some may be more toxic than glyphosate.

Nuance! The allusion that farming with GMO+glyphosate is "far less dangerous" than standard organic farming practices is not supported by research.

"It is indeed true that traditional, non-organic means of farming likely requires the use of more (non-organic-certified) herbicides and pesticides, of which some may be more toxic than glyphosate."

Idk about "far less dangerous". I didn't make that claim. Im only showing that indeed gmo's use less poison, a point that we both seem to accept, but I hear the "far less dangerous" claim used by the anti-gmo crowd after stating the falsehood that gmo's require more herbicides and pesticides over and over again. I would even say that that seems to be the central claim of the anti-gmo movement. In fact, I see people saying that all up and down this thread... so.. go argue with them, lol.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/natural-vs-sy...

Did you even read the blog? (also note, it's a blog)

None of that blog actually supports the claim:

> A modern GMO actually lets you use LESS herbicides and insecticides, and often far less dangerous ones than many that are OK for labeled organic crops, and happen to be far more toxic.

Nor does it ever mention herbicides, only pesticides. Nor does it mention that you may actually be harming yourself by consuming organic produce vs GMO produce, which is what the claim was alluding too.

Roundup wasn't a bad herbicide to choose, and still isn't. Given your choice of compounds, it has quite low environmental persistence and toxicity relative.

Just thinking about it, you'd want it to affect a metabolic pathway that's not present in other taxa, or at least animals, so the Shikimic Acid pathway fits the bill.

You also want something that degrades rapidly so that it doesn't accumulate in the environment. Now, there are a lot of people arguing that glyphosate doesn't degrade quickly enough, and that's fair, but it's still pretty good as far as these things go.

Finally, you need to have a resistance gene to use in the first place, which glyphosate had.

So, assuming an input-intensive monoculture, glyphosate is easily a lesser of evils. The argument then becomes that it enables a broken system of monoculture, which is a quite a different issue than what most argue.

As for the other arguments, the IP issue is a longstanding one, nothing new to GMOs. Plant patents are one of only 4 types issued in the US; it goes way back. Since the advent of hybrid crops, everyone farming has been at the mercy of the companies with the best inbreds. The 'bug' issue isn't that compelling, either; we've been testing and vetting new hybrids for decades, and the risks are very similar. Biology is often 'fuzzy', but when it gets down to it, you can see what pathways are effected, look at metabolites, etc. It's quite easy to look at two similar things and see exactly how they differ.

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