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Comment by outworlder | Hacker News Reader

Great.

I just wish people would stop labeling "GMO == bad" so we can continue tailoring food to our needs - like we have been doing for millennia. Except now we can be more precise about it.

Anyone who's ever tried to grow tomatoes will attest that the damn things shouldn't exist. They are just as yummy to pests are they are to us. Even the grocery store ones that are selected for production and looking good are very finnicky.

Tomatoes were the size of blueberries originally. People will rave about "heirloom" tomatoes (and some are delicious, currently trying to grow my own) but they are just as mutant as the bland supermarket ones.

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I despise this anti GMO fad that has been passing around. With the requirement that everything be labeled in the US soon (now?) I worry that advancements like this will just disappear (or never show up) from the market.

I will fight back on anyone claiming GMO's are bad when the science is clear that they are not. Now you can argue that the ethics of certain companies like Monsanto is a problem. But GMO's themselves are not and are perfectly safe. They are how we are going to feed our growing population (and maybe even grow them more environmentally friendly).

I hate myself every time I buy something that proudly claims it is "Non GMO" as if that's a good thing. It is almost as bad as the organic craze (but at least Organic has at least some science behind it).

The problem with GMO is that it's intertwined with intellectual property shenanigans favouring corporations over traditional farmers, and upsetting traditional methods of farming.

> Are you infringing a patent by selling your soybeans that contain a minor amount of contaminating Roundup tolerant seeds from your neighbor’s land? Are you infringing a patent by replanting those seeds? While you don’t intend to use or sell Monsanto’s crops, intention is not material to patent infringement. All that matters is the mere existence of Monsanto’s crops in your harvest.

https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2015/the-patent-landscape...

Granted, GMO is not the only type of crop affected, but it has a greater overlap with those practices than non-GMO crops.

> Farmers worldwide increasingly find themselves unable to legally save, share, sell, or breed with their own seeds.

https://www.opensourceseeds.org/en/about-us

I don't discount that, I even mentioned Monsanto in my original comment.

But the vast majority of the time (even in these comments) that people talk about GMO's being bad they are claiming the science is wrong, its bad for your health, etc etc etc.

Almost no one talks about the issues with the corporations. Which is a very real issue, but that issue should not be used to paint GMO's as bad on their own.

But labeling or banning them is not the solution. Considering the major health benefits (and environmental, costs, etc) that these improvements can have. Better laws about what these corporations can and cannot do is the answer.

Frankly, the public has been lied too to think that GMO's are bad for them.

Yes, this. The real problems with GMOs are not the changes themselves but the use of them as an excuse to use more herbicides and locking down the seeds. If you want to affect change you need to tackle the actual problems. When people wave their hands and demonize all GMOs without exception, that just obscures the real problems and makes it harder to address them. I know that this technique of muddying the waters is used by a lot of people with vested interprets to deflect criticism and defuse action.

Generally farmers don't save their seeds even for non GMO crops. It's simply much less hassle to buy from a seed farm, and produces a more consistent crop

Modifying crops to be pesticide resistant is a problem because it makes use of those pesticides less discriminate. We should be trying to move towards not spraying as much as possible to avoid runoff and increase biodiversity. GMOs can help with that too. We can't group all modifications together in the good vs bad buckets.

I could be incorrect, but I think I remember reading something about pest-resistant crops and how they are often implemented incorrectly when I was in university taking ecology classes.

Basically, if you take crop like corn as an example. Say our example corn has been genetically modified to resist various pests. However, you cannot just go and plant an entire field of said corn and expect it to be pest-resistant forever.

What farmers are supposed to do is plant non-pest-resistant corn crops for every n number of GMO corn corps in the same field. So, any given row of corn would have something like a non-pest-resistant corn plant after every 4 GMO corn plants.

This causes the said modified corn to retain its pest resistance for longer amounts of time, and the non-pest-resistant crops serve as honeypots for the pests. (You know path of least resistance and all).

However, doing this technically hurts the yields of a farmer's crops and more yield = more profit, thus many farmers forgo this practice. Even if done correctly, I still do not think it works forever, but it does slow down the microevolution of said pests -- at least hypothetically.

Not sure if that is correct, but I would love to know either way.

You and the person you were replying to are confusing two kinds of GMO crop:

Pest-resistant (kills bugs) and Herbicide-resistant( makes the plant robust to chemicals which kills weeds)

You're right about refuges, they only slow things down. To truly prevent resistance genes in pests from appearing, you need multiple modes of action. This was used effectively in HIV treatment. The virus was developing resistance to AZT treatment alone, eventually new drugs came along and patients were treated with 3 or more drugs at once. Multiple modes of action makes it too hard for the virus (or pest) to adapt in time. We don't really have multiple modes of action in plants yet, but one day, maybe?

The person you were replying to was describing herbicide resistant crops, which are sprayed (sometimes oversprayed). This isn't so cut and dry as they describe though. Things like glyphosate are much milder compared to older herbicides and GMO crops encourage things like 'no til' agriculture which greatly improves soil quality. So we're still spraying, but it's better, and has ecological benefits.

I cannot confirm, but that sounds plausible. This is the same logic for using antibiotics sparingly and in manners that will maximize their effect, to reduce the rate at which resistant strains of organisms dangerous to us can mutate.

> (but at least Organic has at least some science behind it)

Not very much: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_food

From the perspective of science and consumers, there is insufficient evidence in the scientific and medical literature to support claims that organic food is either substantially safer or healthier to eat than conventional food.[7]

But it sure is more expensive.

> I will fight back on anyone claiming GMO's are bad when the science is clear that they are not.

Well, don't overcorrect. Being a GMO does not make an O inherently bad, but that doesn't mean all GMOs are inherently good. Labeling something a GMO is just a descriptor which doesn't say anything about the particular modification that was done on said organism. It would be like saying you'll fight back on anyone claiming homemade clothing is bad when science is clear that it is not. Well, kinda depends on the creator and the quality of the result, right?

Eh, I'll happily support GMO food but I'm not particularly eager to encourage arbitrary "healthy" traits that will make the produce aisle and the vitamin aisle converge. Genes spread beyond their intended target and even to other species. Such things should be done with caution.

Naw, let's play God and fuck with billions of years of evolution! /s

We already do and have been doing that with selective breeding since at least 10kya. If you look at Norman Borlaug's shuttle breeding program, it moved really quickly and in a way there was nothing natural about it.

Selective breeding is far from playing God, quite the apples to oranges comparison; you're not altering the code, you're putting two different naturally evolved genetic codes together and if the pregnancy is successful then it naturally occurred and fits within the existing natural framework of evolution.

Keep in mind that man's God-intended natural state is "... nasty, brutish, and short".

I think we have different understandings or belief between God vs. nature. I think God exists within and/or from nature, a result of life and energy and consciousness evolving. Nature therefore may be "nasty, brutish, and short" however arguably God reaching the top of the competency hierarchy is an organization structure and would work towards order and efficiency, among other qualities or highest ideals.

This may come as a surprise to you but many other aisles of the grocery store have already converged with the vitamin aisle.[0]

Many foods that you've spent your entire life eating are already fortified with vitamins like Vitamin D. This isn't a bad thing at all, and in fact you and the people around you are probably far healthier for it.

https://inspection.canada.ca/food-label-requirements/labelli...

The introduction of iodine to table salt is arguably one of the biggest public health policy wins of the 20th century, only overshadowed by the near total bans on tetraethyl lead and CFCs.

Few people (in global terms) had flush toilets in the early 20th century. While iodine was huge for the west, toilets are still probably the most effective public health measure you can apply today as billions of people still lack them.

Manufactured foods, sure.

Nobody is going and injecting apples with vitamins though.

Now is that because they don't want to or is it because it isn't feasible to?

Milk comes to mind, but yes.

And what if we accomplish the same end result through selective breeding, as is common today?

It seems highly unlikely that selective breeding would result in tomatoes that have significant levels of useful vitamin D.

I don’t find that unlikely at all. Tomatoes are very susceptible to improvement through selective breeding. Test for vitamin D each generation, plant seeds from the highest.

Tomatoes have 0.00 micrograms of vitamin D though.

And as the article pointed out that's not actually vitamin D, but a precursor to vitamin D and most of that small amount is in the leaves not the fruit.

> so we can continue tailoring food to our needs

But that's the problem, isn't it? It's not "we" tailoring food, it's 1-2 multinational corporations, intent on making your food supply dependent on them. It's not "our" needs they serve, but theirs. While their PR focuses on making food healthier, what they've done is make it more resistant to pesticide so more can be sprayed [1]. Going by what happens when they are fully free to engineer food however they like, we can expect them to turn the vegetable aisle into the health and taste equivalent of the candy/snack aisle.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundup_Ready

I don't know if I have an issue with GMO persay, but it seems the general science in nutrition is so poor it would be nice if we had some evidence before we started changing things. It seems like at best the current science suggests this may do nothing, at worst it gives people a false sense of security.

Also, I'm not so worried about the method of GMO as I am who is doing the GM and for what reason, and no I don't think selective breeding is better if Nestle is the one sponsoring the breeding.

Eh, I don't care to have more vitamin D. How would I test my crops for these higher levels if my neighbors start growing these? There's no visual signs that my prior year's seed is contaminated.

I wonder how hard it would be to engineer a logo or trademark pattern onto the skin of the fruit. Probably pretty hard given that SOTA is engineering a pathway to synthesize just one vitamin.

How can you tell today that your neighbor's crop hasn't cross bred with yours? And if it has, how can you tell what genes you got?

Remember - mutations happen all the time in nature. There's no difference between a seed that mutated 'naturally' and one that we modified, except for intent.

Well, and that wild mutations are generally single gene or two at a time, right? CRISPER can swap out whatever anyone wants.

It's probabilistic, so it could be any number of genes being changed. Assuming nothing environmental that would increase replication errors. There's nothing preventing multiple mutations, except that the resulting organism should still be viable.

Note that even if the number of mutations is small between two cell generations, they carry over to offspring. The neighbor's "naturally grown" seed may have hundreds or thousands of mutations compared to your seed, without any human intervention required.

CRISPR can theoretically change large sections. But we have just as much trouble as nature has trying to mutate while not killing the organism, or otherwise stunting its development or causing other issues. It's safe to assume most changes will be small in that context too.

You can generally tell because of physical manifestations like changes to shape, color, etc. This is not a big deal for regular crops. It becomes more of a big deal for crops that have "unnatural" enhancements, or patented genes.

I also don't mind GMO products as such, and think this is good progress in general, no worse than selective breeding. But what I've read recently indicates that falling food quality is linked to poor soil quality. Vitamin D is great, but if the produce is missing essential micro-nutrients and minerals that's bad. We need sustainable farming practices not tweaks to the biology that masks a more serious underlying systemic problem.

To be fair, the reduction in micronutrients/minerals is a drop in the bucket compared to our yield increases. Besides, the reduction is more closely linked to our choice in cultivar as opposed to soil health. The Rothamsted institute has studied this extensively if you are curious to read more.

I agree, though. We should not only have more sustainable farming but also a more sustained food system entirely.

Thanks for the Rothamsted reference Matt, I am interested, like so much today this is obviously a complex can-o-worms.

It certainly is, and even as an ag researcher I'm still learning and tweaking my mental model for how our food systems should work. I believe we're headed into another green revolution where our success isn't just measured by yield. It'll also be measured by efficiency, restoration of damaged land, carbon sequestration, and innovative downstream products.

Here's an interesting article from McKinsey & Co. about how agriculture is one of the least digitized industries and the benefits it could gain from innovation.

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/agriculture/our-insights...

> People will rave about "heirloom" tomatoes (and some are delicious, currently trying to grow my own) but they are just as mutant as the bland supermarket ones.

I don't know about them being mutants but they definitely look monstrous! They're a thing on the Mediterranean seaside (both in Spain and France for sure). I only buy these, they're yummy...

EDIT: BTW people don't despise genetically modified food for fun... They puke on it because the attempt at creating killer seeds that'd make sure to kill non-genetically modified ones while also making sure that everybody would have to buy the seeds from Monsanto and the like. I'll push for genetically modified ones if that's accompanied with very strong guarantees that people/companies attempting to corner the market like that will end up rotting in jail.

Genetically modifying a food via DNA manipulation is not the same as selective breeding, and should not be conflated.

"But it's the same outcome!!!" most people who say this would not be so flippant about genetically modifying humans, even though it's "the same" as evolution.

Alright fine I'll bite and be the contrarian here. I am against GMOs. And everyone who promotes them like you do. Now come downvote me.

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