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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

I don't think regular plants with all kinds of pesticides, or GMO plants with all kinds of non-long-term-tested gene modifications to improve sale-ability and profit margins, would be much better...

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Could you source information on this? This speculation on GMOs being bad just cause of gene modifications is by itself unsubstantiated. To compare the risk of the two, especially without taking into account the nutritional value of plants and vegetables is unreasonable.

My objection to GMOs is not the gene modifications; it is that in practice they're modified to allow an increased use of pesticides/herbicides such as glysophate. I'd rather not have glysophate in my food. However, this is difficult to quantify, and often disputed by industry groups.

Ideally, the use of pesticides/herbicides would be tracked throughout the entire supply chain, so that consumers could have an accurate accounting of the use of pesticides on the food they're consuming. Sadly, the odds of this happening are nil, so we're left with the choice of buying organic and hoping the pesticides/herbicides they used aren't too bad for us. Of course, we can also buy directly from farmers, but that is not practical for most of us, and certainly not for all of our foods.

I just want to be able to choose my poison ;)

See that is a measured opinion that I can agree with. :)

I do agree with the pesticide/herbicide use tracking and that lobbying is keeping the much needed regulations from being put in place.

OP's contention ("GMO plants with all kinds of non-long-term-tested gene modifications"), however, is just meaningless speculation.

What I pay attention to in that statement is "non-long-term-tested". Without multiple life-long studies that reach a consensus, people will fear GMOs are going to turn out like cigarettes.

We hardly put that level of scrutiny on any day to day use products. Multiple studies show that there are various carcinogens we live with on a regular basis. Thousands of new intermediary chemicals are created on an everyday basis without any sensible level of regulation.

Even cigarettes, in your analogy were created without any regulation, and continue till date. Overconsumption of calories from soda is a well known problem, but as a society we love them anyway.

Somehow when it comes to GMO, for some reason the burden of proof is so much higher. The chances that GMOs would be terribly bad for our health is much closer to sci-fi than reality, given how much leeway is provided for other consumer products we regularly use, apply, and consume in our lives.

>We hardly put that level of scrutiny on any day to day use products.

We really should.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/seriously-scary-radioactive-consumer...

> I'd rather not have glysophate in my food.

Glyphosate (you spelled it wrong) is widely used in non-GMO agriculture as well. Avoiding GMO doesn't do much in avoiding glyphosate. Glyphosate is also probably the most widely studied and the most harmless of the herbicides. Replacing glyphosate with some other chemicals is not necessarily a win.

Even going organic doesn't free you from all herbicides and pesticides, some of them are allowed to be used in organic farming. And if you really go pesticide free, you start to have more insect damage in crops, which provide entry points for molds to attack the crops. And some of the toxins produced by molds are really potent.

If you want to avoid residues of harmful chemicals, going 100% pesticide free is probably not the optimum.

>Avoiding GMO doesn't do much in avoiding glyphosate

Uh, being able to tolerate more glyphosate was the entire reason for genetically modifying a lot of the GMOs currently in widespread use.

In other words, glyphosate is used at many times the concentration it used to be used at precisely because of the introduction of GMOs (because that was the whole point of introducing those particular GMOs).

>insect damage in crops, which provide entry points for molds to attack the crops. And some of the toxins produced by molds are really potent.

Insect damage is easy to see (at least on whole produce, not counting processed foods); glyphosate residues on the other hand is hard to detect.

Glyphosate is also used as a "desiccant" to prepare the crop (talking about crops like grains, corn, beans, but also others) for harvest. You spray a desiccant to either kill or at least harm the crop plants, a little before harvest so that in the subsequent days the plants start to wilt and dry in the field. Then you can harvest a drier crop, need to spend less effort to dry it post-harvest, and a drier crop is less susceptible to spoilage.

Your very purpose is to "desiccate", that is to kill or harm, the plants before harvest. So you don't need to care about concentrations (expect from the point of view of regulations, how much glyphosate residue is allowed in the food products).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_desiccation#Glyphosate

Using glyphosate like this is banned in some countries (Switzerland, Nordic Countries come to mind), but it is widely used in most of the world. It has nothing to do with GMOs, it is widely used to desiccate wheat, for example, and there is no GMO wheat anywhere in commercial production.

I am no expert, but I'd guess this is the main source of glyphosate residues in food.

"We found that honeybees that had been fed with solution containing 10 mg l−1 GLY spent more time performing homeward flights than control bees or bees treated with lower concentrations. They also performed more indirect homing flights. Moreover, the proportion of direct homeward flights performed after a second release from the same site increased in control bees but not in treated bees. These results suggest that, in honeybees, exposure to levels of GLY commonly found in agricultural settings impairs the cognitive capacities needed to retrieve and integrate spatial information for a successful return to the hive. "

Glyphosate is also not allowed in organic produce. Because of allegedly inappropriate involvement of pesticide manufacturers in scientific reviews, glyphosate has also only been approved for five years in the EU (2017).

> And if you really go pesticide free, you start to have more insect damage in crops

There is an organic solution to insect damage and that is predators. I know some green houses that is run here uses sterile large insects that targets crop damaging insects, after which they are just washed off the plants. 100% toxin free and naturally you could balance that to get rid of molds as well. Costly but very effective.

> Avoiding GMO doesn't do much in avoiding glyphosate.

Here's some facts.

Monsanto's Roundup Ready soybean seeds are designed to be sprayed with glyphosate.

> Monsanto projects that acreage will double this year, accounting for about 44 percent of all planted acres. (1)

If you're not buying organic, it seems incredibly likely you're getting glyphosate in your soybeans, and by extension, many numerous products that the beans are processed into.

Of course, if you are buying organic, it doesn't mean your food wasn't treated with a natural chemical. As I said before, it would nice to know which ones/

1: https://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCAKBN1FD0G2-OC...

>Could you source information on this? This speculation on GMOs being bad just cause of gene modifications is by itself unsubstantiated.

Isn't the "we modified hundreds of thousands of years of evolution with cool tools with surgical gene altering power not had by farmers before", while science still doesn't have a clear picture of nutrition and human metabolism, and did so in a few decades, and with a profit motive that has been shown time and again to make companies to make hasty decisions and sacrifice quality control and even bypass safety regulations, side the one that should prove that it's safe?

I guess, someone warning merely inspired by basic precaution for the new and relatively unknown elements being passed over to consumer in the case of radioactive substances used in commercial products and sold all other the place, was also making an unsubstantiated claim. Until someone else substantiated them...

https://io9.gizmodo.com/seriously-scary-radioactive-consumer...

You make a valid point, and you can choose to keep the policy for yourself. Doesn't mean you can make policy against those products considering them guilty.

GMOs have nowhere close to catastrophic potential for human health. On the other hand, we still heavily consume excess fats and sugars on a regular basis, which are well known to cause health problems in the long run. If you are really concerned about your health, or that of other people, and would like to see this legislated, maybe we should be starting with the ones with substantiated evidence against them.

So buy organic. And I’m guessing any GMO plants will be much safer than antibiotic-laced alternatives.

Given the strong congressional lobby against labeling, organic doesn't mean much in and of itself. The problem with genetically engineered foodstuffs is not necessarily the foodstuff itself but that in practice it's mostly synonymous with herbicide resistance. And that herbicide is mostly synonymous with glyphosate which is looking to also be really screwing with our gut biome on top of being a probable carcinogen. On the topic of glyphosate there was an interesting submission here [1].

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17043629

Organic doesn't mean they're not using pesticides at all, and no fertilizer and singing kumbaya to their crops every night. The problem with the term "organic" is that it means different things to different agencies.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there a lack of proper regulation for organic food products? The USDA fine is "only" $11,000 -- that's nothing for major distributors. I've always heard that it's impossible for the Certified Organic label to be regulated properly due to sheer volume, and most people don't know the difference between that and just buying something labeled "organic" (which has absolutely no regulation).

>And I’m guessing any GMO plants will be much safer than antibiotic-laced alternatives.

Would they? For one, there's nothing about GMOs that says they can't also lace them with all kinds of crap.

And it's mostly profit-driven amateur magicians engineers driving them, not actual scientists interested in improving learning and testing them long term. So I'd trust their safety guarantees as much as I trust tobacco or drug companies...

Hmm.. wouldn't all those plants be fed to animals? GMO in EU is only allowed as animal feed. Those plants get treated with the same pesticides (if not stronger), but now a cow eats through tons of grains while you would never eat that much food in a lifetime. Then, the cow's body bioaccumulates the pesticides and then you keep dosing yourself with larger amounts than if you just ate the plants directly?

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