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The GMO issue should really be broken apart in to different parts.

-GMO because tons of Roundup® has been dumped on it ~Is Roundup® safe?

-GMO for marketing or other purposes but which could have features harmful to humans. ~How much, if any, scientific & statistically valid tests have been done?

-GMO for any reason but could have features which disrupt the current flora & fauna of their environment. ~Can a problem be observed before it is too late to correct for it?

-GMO which results in expansion and/or defense of monoculture. ~Are consumers ok with low quality food with minimal variety?

Don't forget

-GMO which is almost certainly owned by Monsanto ~Are we prepared to cede most of the benefits (and control; cf terminator seeds) of GMOs to a ruthless, aloof megacorp?

You can never prove that any food is safe beyond a doubt. You can only say whether it riskier or not than other types of food or breeding. In the case of GMOs, it has been shown to be no less risky than conventional or mutagenic breeding.

"we modify genes without really understanding what they really do with detail"

Except that with genetic engineering, we know precisely what they do. Ironically previous ways of changing genes are a lot more random.

Except that with genetic engineering, we know precisely what they do

No, we don't. At best, we know a few of the reliable consequences of that gene locus. We know nothing of the proliferation that gene may have in a wild population, or how our modification will help or hamper the organism to adapt to a changing environment.

what I meant is that we know what proteins the genes at that location will do.

"We know nothing of the proliferation that gene may have in a wild population, or how our modification will help or hamper the organism to adapt to a changing environment."

We don't know exactly, but we do know a lot more than nothing.

>You can never prove that any food is safe beyond a doubt.

Ultimately, this. You can test for very, very small numbers, but you can't test for zero. This is why, for example, even though lead has no biological function, extremely small "acceptable levels" are specified in regulations rather than simply saying zero lead. You can prove that, for example, lead levels in the air are less than 0.15 µg/m^3, or that they are not. You cannot do that for zero (nonzero is easy to verify, but zero is not).

There is also, of course, the fact that no food is safe in all scenarios. Even pure water is toxic at high enough doses. For that reason, it makes no sense to hold GMO food to even higher standards than non-GMO food: equal standards certainly make sense, but not higher.

> For that reason, it makes no sense to hold GMO food to even higher standards than non-GMO food

Normal food has the advantage that we already know it has no disastrous ecological consequences, by virtue of the fact that is has coexisted in its environmental niche for a while. The more food is altered, the less sure we become about that.

As Taleb has pointed out, our standards for danger should match the risk/reward involved. (E.g., we're ok with fast-tracking unproven cancer treatments because the alternative is death. Likewise, we have high standards for a common cold treatment because the alternative is inconvenience.) Unfortunately, we have no backup plan for the planet, so we must be extra careful with what we introduce to it.

To me, saying we don't need more stringent standards for GMOs is like saying we can definitely burn $X billion more oil reserves and not worry about global warming.

"The more food is altered, the less sure we become about that."

Except with genetic engineering, by being precise as to how and where the new genes are inserted, we are actually altering it less than with traditional breeding or mutagenics. Those types of breeding have far less testing than transgenics. We can potentially create new genes with those older methods that have never existed before and never know about it.

This is something that taleb was criticised for by biologists and geneticists (and basically his reply was "that they are idiots", yup, great argument).

"Normal food has the advantage that we already know it has no disastrous ecological consequences".

There is no such thing as normal food: Take the sweet potato. It has been altered transgenically using the agrobacterium twice in its history without human intervention. The agrobacterium is the same bacteria used when doing transgenic GMO. Basically nature beat us to it a long time ago when it comes to transgenics.

You can breed a potato the old fashion way to contain high level of solanine (which can be poisonous). Its not how the genes are altered, its what they do that is key.

Well put, but there is more to GMO than health issues. How does it affect workers? How does it affect agriculture? How does it affect biodiversity? All of it interesting and worth studying in detail.

It is also a way to enact intellectual property regimes over the world's biggest industrial sector. It is worth looking at how this has affected other parts of the economy.