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Or sweet, orange carrots: they were originally purple and bitter and had a woody core, but were selectively bred to reduce bitterness in Persia.

Centuries later, they were selectively bred to be orange by Dutch royalists (in support of the royal House of Orange).

Does selective breeding count as GMO?

No. Neither does gene editing using CRISPR: http://www.nature.com/news/gene-edited-crispr-mushroom-escap...

Since in this case you're not adding new functionality, only disabling certain "features".

[Edit] I'm not saying I agree with this definition, only that it's the one being used by the regulator in the US.

Some "fun" facts on that: - applying massive radiation (on plants) to increase the mutation rate does not count as GMO - modern Gene Editing like TALEN (and probably CRISPR soon) are currently being interpreted as non-GMO by the regulators

I believe you are correct here, however, I do not think there is much of a difference in the end result. The popular phrase is that past techniques (radiation, selective breeding) are like taking a hammer to a genome, whereas new techniques are like taking a scalpel to a genome.

I mean, it's often much worse.

http://www.petpugdog.com/pug-breathing-problems http://thesharpeivet.co.uk/services/skin-problems/ http://web-dvm.net/what-has-happened-to-the-german-shepherd-... http://www.lsu.edu/deafness/incidenc.htm http://news.discovery.com/animals/pets/toy-dog-breeding-caus...

There are undoubtedly issues with GMO if it is abused - but the fact that it is capable of sharp distinctions between right and wrong and can be legally controlled is good, and should be embraced. Happy to see GMO companies take steps in this direction. You can't reliably control whether someone breeds dogs to suffer hip dysplasia or constant headaches due to their brain being too large for their skull. Less emotively, you can't reliably control whether apple breeders end up with over-sweet mush that no-one wants or banana breeders end up with infertile crops. We can and (I believe) should control whether or not Monsanto engineers defective crops designed to maximise their profits at the expense of farmers (note: Monsanto has not actually marketed or sold the famous 'sterile' or 'terminator' seeds at time of writing, although they own the patent). We can and should control whether or not a GMO dog is created that suffers from hip dysplasia or injurious brain problems.

Suicide plants with the sole purpose of completely controlling the seed supply should be illegal. No loopholes, no bullshit. Illegal.

Funnily enough, one of the reasons the terminator gene was created was because anti-gmo activist wanted assurances that artificially created genes wouldn't escape into the wild.

In addition, farmers who rotate crops also want terminator seeds because it reduces the number of volunteer plants in subsequent harvests.

Most of the anti terminator stuff I've read betrays a deep lack of understanding about how the underlying technology actually works.

Can very much understand that perspective but it isn't being used for that. And it has escaped into the wild anyway.

I agree. I also think that dog breeding should be illegal, though, which is a much less popular stance.

At least it's sufficiently similar to muddy the debate with UD.

What is UD here? Uncertainty and doubt? Do you mean that the comparison using selective breeding is some kind of false argument or a straw man?

I feel like selective breeding is sufficiently similar to warrant comparison. You could easily do both short-term and long-term harm or good with both if you can get people to eat what you breed.

Yes, I mean that pointing to selective breeding as if it's "all the justification for gene splicing you'll ever need" is a false equivalence. Sure, you can compare them, but you can not point to a few similarities and then wave any differences away. As one example: with selective breeding, you can at least be confident that the resulting strain is viable within its ecosystem since it is itself the product of numerous generations. Gene splicing does not come with that same viability guarantee.

And I do mean that it is harmful to both sides of the debate. I have no clue whether the characterization above is even remotely valid. But most of the rhetoric is so content-free that it does not help me alter my view around GMO, in either direction.

And lastly: US (and many other international) corporations do not have a good track record when it comes to acknowledging and respecting human health. The backlash against GMO is, I feel, at least partly attributable to the tobacco, food and oil industry, and the "sciences" that were complicit.

> As one example: with selective breeding, you can at least be confident that the resulting strain is viable within its ecosystem since it is itself the product of numerous generations.

Like hell you can. Genetic diseases and deformities have been present as long as life itself, and human selective breeding has certainly brought out traits in cultivated plants and animals that would not be present without human intervention into their ecosystem.

I feel like they're different shades of the same colour, at least.

Selective breeding is not the same as injecting the genome sequences of deep sea fish species into your plats to produce new chemical elements we have no fucking idea of what they do to consumers during 60+ years of consumption.

> injecting the genome of deep sea fish species

You inject genes, not genomes. Injecting genomes is how breeding works, not how genetic engineering works.

> to produce new chemical elements

New elements are exclusively the domain of stars, nuclear physics, and particle accelerators. They have nothing to do with biology. I'll continue on the assumption that you meant "molecules."

> no fucking idea of what they do

It's the other way around: in selective breeding you're trying random genomes until you get literally anything that works. It would take tons of additional study to figure out why it worked, how it worked, and what the side effects are. Contrast to genetic engineering where you start with a very specific biological goal in mind, often the production of a single molecule or small set of molecules whose structure and characteristics have been extensively studied.

Suppose you set out to produce more Bt protein in the plant's leaves so that it's toxic to insects while the competition breeds a plant that seems to be similarly resistant to insects. Which plant is safer? In both cases you have to do a study to find out, but in the case of the GMO you can use ultra high sensitivity studies because you can purify Bt and test its effects on mice and humans. In contrast, the plant produced by breeding would have to have an absurdly huge sample size to achieve the same sensitivity. Historically, plant breeders don't bother.

Both approaches are almost always good enough, but of the two genetic engineering allows for much more precise risk prediction and characterization. That's one of genetic engineering's strong points, not weak points.

That comment confirms almost all stereotypes I have about anti-GMO people.

GMO doesn't involve "injecting the genome of deep sea fish species into your plants" either.

Hehe, exactly, and even then, companies will mutate the crap out of yeast (for beer for example, or bacteria for Yoghurt) to make them more efficient. When they reach a satisfactory level of increased efficient they don't use said yeast/bacterial strain. Instead, they will put a wild-type yeast in a UV oven and screen for exactly the same mutations as artificially induced in the first strain. Only in the second case the process is called: Classical strain enhancement.

This is a terrible idea because crops are commodity. Imagine if when writing software, you had to label the brand of every proccesser used in all development machines. Not to mention the huge advantage this would give to larger farms.

>Once people realize most of their food has had GMO's in it for years and to eat all non-GMO will cost them double or triple, they will all simmer down.

I don't think most of the food consumed globally has GMO in it, even so for countries with significantly smaller GDP than the US. Agree though, give as much transparency as you can, put on as many information as possible and let the customers decide what they want.

Well almost all corn, rice, grapefruit and peanuts produced worldwide are GM depending on your definition.

In the case of GMO foods it's the extra pesticides slathered on them that actually worries me.

I'd prefer explicit pesticide labeling but GMO labeling is a close enough approximation. GMO usually means an extra dollop of roundup.

I thought it was the other way around: GMO gives you better selectivity, meaning you can use less pesticide to get a given yield?

I can't speak for glyphosate, but for Bt I seem to remember that you need 10x or 100x the concentration if you spray it on account of not being able to distribute it perfectly evenly.

The problem is that historically the US and now global companies have a bad record of consumer protection and low regulation, specially when it comes to new technology, and you can't trust companies to act on the best interests of consumers.

(lead poisoning, fracking, tobacco industry, pharma testing, environmental disasters by oil companies, agent orange and many, many more)

But how is concentration related to toxicity or environmental impact? I know it is sensationalist, but videos like this make it very hard to take the word of the GMO lobby for granted https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovKw6YjqSfM

Glyphosate itself is likely non-toxic to mammals. But the carriers (detergents, adjuvants, etc.) that it is in are decidedly not. I wouldn't drink it either. At best it'd be like drinking a cup of dishwasher soap.

The other ingredients are not nearly as heavily regulated as the pesticide itself. There is some concern that damage to amphibians, aquatic organisms etc. could be a result of the detergents and stickers added to the sprays rather than the spray themselves.

Glyphosate use is way _up_ because it's a non-selective herbicide so you never used it the way they use it now. Back then you'd use it at certain times of the year when the field was barren, or maybe along a hedgerow here and there. You had to be careful because it would just as easily destroy your crop as the weeds. Now they blast the whole field with it (and it drifts next door into my field, where I am growing grape vines that are hyper-sensitive to the stuff.)

The end result is a huge loss in biodiversity.

I don't care about GMO for its health effects in the food chain. I care about its environmental effects.

> Now they blast the whole field with it (and it drifts next door into my field, where I am growing grape vines that are hyper-sensitive to the stuff.)

You can't blame genetic modification for shitty farmers. That's like blaming NSA surveillance on the Internet.

I don't actually blame genetic modification. I think we will see some interesting uses of it to come.

The shitty farming though is definitely a result of the Roundup Ready product line. It's the recommended and most optimal way to use it.

How Much Glyphosate Do Farmers Use?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkRSV_mF7hw)

Yes, I spent a day in a grower's pesticide training course and have a certificate here in Ontario to buy and spray pesticides.

RoundUp like most pesticides is shipped and stored in a highly concentrated state. The farmer will then tank mix that with a whole lot of water to produce the actual usable pesticide.

The video you posted is highly misleading.

This terrible argument seems to crop up again and again. Selective Breeding IS NOT Genetic Engineering.

Suppose I told you that I wanted a good-looking dog. There are two ways to get that. On one hand, I could get a great male dog and mate it with a great female dog and produce a good-looking dog for you. On the other hand, I could take any dog and perform plastic surgery to make it into the dog you want. Although the final product may be similar, does anyone believe those two processes are the same? It's absolutely a nonsensical assertion.

To put this in terms of logic, you're arguing that because Process X and Process Y both lead to Outcome Z, Process X and Process Y are equivalent. We know that the general case of this argument is false (e.g. bribing a police officer or not committing crime both keep you out of jail, but they are not the same processes). If you want to argue that this argument holds in the special case of GMOs, you have to argue for it! You cannot just state it and expect us to believe it because it is false in the general case.

Its targeted gene mutation versus random gene mutation - not very different if you ask me.

There's a difference between marker assisted selection ('traditional' breeding aided by the use of genetic analysis to look for desired traits early) and physically editing the genome.

I suspect you'd find most GMO critics are fine with the former.

Most worrisome there have been several cases where funding for breeding programs has been cut because the 'new hotness' of genetic engineering pulls in more industry funding.

An example is the 'Arctic' non-browning GMO apple here in Canada. It's a sad stupid story. Non-browning already exists as a potential trait in the natural Malus genome. Selective breeding had already produced apples here and there that had this trait. Despite this federal funding and regulatory approval was extended to the GMO program and cut from traditional breeding. And an existing non-GMO non-browning apple was ordered destroyed from a research centre.

Meanwhile the Arctic apple even after approval for sale has only generated controversy, and now consumers who are suspicious about GMO will be suspicious about _any_ apple that demonstrates non-browning, GMO or not.

"I suspect you'd find most GMO critics are fine with the former"

Most GMO critics that I have spoken to don't have a clue about how it actually works. "A fish gene in a plant?!?" being the sort of quote they will come out with, not realizing that we share a huge portion of our genomes with fish.

If you want to be taken seriously, take on the best of the GMO skeptics rather than the worst. Going for easy pickings like these is a waste of everyone's time.

I have yet to meet one that knows the basics of biology.

You just replied to one. I'm trained in horticulture own a small hobby farm, I breed plants, and have a license to spray pesticides.

But sure, go on beating up your straw man.

I haven't met you you just replied to a comment on this forum. Plus horticulture doesn't imply an understanding of what is going on during cell replication at a molecular level (OK, I said did say biology, can we change that to molecular biology).