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Comment by ramphastidae | Hacker News Reader

Society loves to make fun of those who choose organic produce, but avoiding glysophate is the main reason I do so, and it works:

> Organic diet intervention significantly reduces urinary glyphosate levels in U.S. children and adults > https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001393512...

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I think organic is great. I just wish we didn’t put non-GMO in the same bucket. Give me GMO foods without pesticides.

Isn't part of the benefit of GMO foods that you can make them tolerant to various pesticides? There are other ways to use GMO to make more productive crops, but my understanding was that one of the big reasons is that you can make crops that ignore pesticides that wipe out existing pests.

There's a lot of reasons. That is one large one, but you can also integrate natural pesticides into the genome of the plant, ie. Bt corn.

Which could be equally dangerous as external pesticides like glyphosate.

Every single plant and fungi in the world contains natural pesticides to fend off pests and pathogens. E.g. caffeine, nicotine.

What's your source that's an outrageous claim

More self-evident than outrageous but alright.

You're right, but I think what they are saying is that they would like to see new GMO crops developed for consumer benefit instead of herbicide resistance.

Doesn’t sound too profitable

... to pesticide manufacturers, no. But say, a GM tomato[1] that had added nutrients seems like it could make someone rich? I'd be happy to throw a few in my salad.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_tomato#Im...

Focused on the wrong target.

> Isn't part of the benefit of GMO foods that you can make them tolerant to various pesticides?

and diseases and parasites and weather etc etc

um... how do you think plants become tolerant to diseases and parasites? pesticides

and altering their DNA

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5422515/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5488630/

I'm not sure the relevance of this fact to the GP's request?

I wish they would look at flavor, texture and other things that matter when doing GMOs...

That would be counterproductive. GMO crops have a lower yield than non-GMOs without the application of pesticides.

https://geneticliteracyproject.org/gmo-faq/can-genetic-engin...

The linked article says that GMO crops produce higher yields and use less pesticides than non-GMO crops.

the pesticides used in organic farming are about as bad for you as the pesticides used in non organic farming, and used in higher quantities, since they are worse at being pesticides.

This is just blatantly false on every account. Especially the part where things like non-organic wheat are sprayed with weed-killer in the days before it's harvested because it increases the yield and protein as the wheat goes into turbo-mode because it knows it's dying.

But what does it do to the levels of organic pesticides?

This is a valid point; just because something is naturally-derived, doesn't make it safe. For example, permethrin is approved for organic use but it's also a neurotoxin: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5598406/

Obviously the dosages are low in foods treated with it, but you're still ingesting a neurotoxin, yet the food can be legally labelled organic.

My solution is to list the pesticides on the packaging like they do the nutritional content.

Additional info here: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/httpblogs...

There’s no question it would be better if it were true but how sure can we be that it’s not just the same food with different labels?

Because the FDA exists?? Because that would be fraud to claim otherwise, and fruit/veg sources are easily traceable back to their source, particularly at quantity?

USDA regulates that, at least for products with its seal.

https://www.ams.usda.gov/rules-regulations/organic/organic-s...

Thank you for the correction

The FDA does not regulate the use of the term “organic” on food labels.

Further, if something isn’t 100% organic how do you know which part isn’t?

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