The Genetically Modified Food You Eat | Hacker News Reader

The Genetically Modified Food You Eat

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10 pointskkleiner19 comments

Unless you’re technophobic by nature (in which case, reading this blog amounts to masochism), it’s hard to deny the benefits of GM foods.

As a libertarian who's anything but technophobic and who knows something about gene splicing let me disagree:

GM foods resistant to insect attack actually require fewer pesticides than their natural counterparts

For now. Until pests become resistant to Bt toxin. Then organic farmers who use Bacillus thuringiensis might be adversely affected. This is an uncounted for externality.

But this externality may be worth it, if for example it gets us cheaper food. But the best way to get A LOT cheaper food is to simply stop ag. subsidies.

Now I happen to think the long term consumption of plants with Bt genes has a probability of being bad for you that's arbitrarily close to zero. BUT I am also a software engineer and so I know NOTHING is certain, shit happens.

As a libertarian I know the basics of how free markets work, and information is a key part of a working free market. Which is why I wish GM crops would be labeled as such.

If pests do become immune to Bt, splicing something else in is going to be harder. Because we didn't invent Bt toxin, we took it from bacteria. When happens we run out of naturally occurring toxins? If we could design molecules that would be awesome, but we're not there yet.

Keep in mind you can also splice pesticide resistance into crops and the way they work is by enabling yyou to go nuts with the pesticides, bathe your fields in them.

Stress-resistant GM crops can survive droughts and disease,

Drought resistant crops are still in the works. This not nearly as easy as Bt toxin was. It's a major change in plant physiology and we can't do that yet.

But Israel can profitably grow crops with desalinated water and computer controlled irrigation.

The "this will help poor farmers" line is a red herring. Poor farmers in developing countries are poor because their countries are a mess. If your country isn't a mess you can even grow crops in the Israeli desert.

warding off famine in developing countries across

Read up on how famines happen, The Economist had a great study. In short it's about the government response, not about any one or two crop failures.

Frankly, it’s amazing that we can remix our food to be more nutritious

Not yet. Well for simple things, like rice and vitamin A, but not in general.

We know that fruits and vegetables are not as nutritious today as they used to be. This is because they've been careful selected for looks and shipability. The most popular variety of tomato isn't called "Bulletproof" because it's so super tasty and nutritious.

Simply put, the mass market wants big unbruised fruits and vegetables. Why would this change just because we can now gene splice more nutrition into our vegetables? We can have more nutritious today, there's just no real demand for them.

And the tiny market segment that does demand it, is ironically least likely to buy GM foods.

faster-growing

See drought hardy.

longer-lasting

Not a problem for me. This is about shipping and storing crops for resale. How does that interest me? Lower prices - see ag. subsidies.

and tastier

See more nutritious.

The fact is, the genetic engineering that's going on today is not about more taste or more nutrients or really anything that affects the end consumer. It's about higher profit margins for the produces and middle men.

Ah you say, but surely those fat profits will shrink over time and we'll get cheaper food, but again: subsidies.

Or maybe those profits/prices will help developing countries? Again it's not the climate or the soil is the government.

make us healthier

No that's other kinds of gene splicing, crops don't do that yet, and I doubt they will ever be the best vector for medicine or what ever.

improve ag production

Depends on your definition of improve, see roundup resistant crops. Also see ag. subsidies. Many people live on $1 a day. Pretty much all European cows are subsidized to the tune of $2 a day.

make pharmaceuticals

Maybe, but almost certainly there's better vectors.

and survive hell and high water. Maybe future crops could recycle more nutrients back into dirt and help avert the looming topsoil crisis.

Now you're getting into utopian fantasy and running into some fundamental limits of, you know, physics and stuff.

So that’s what all the fuss is about.

It's about free markets and information, it's about not letting private companies have undue influence on our system of government. Or on other companies, through a very imperfect legal system, i.e. Monsanto suing companies who market their milk as rBGH free.

As a libertarian who works in biotech let me say: Seriously fuck Monsanto!

Stewart Brand said it well in his TED Talk (http://www.ted.com/talks/stewart_brand_proclaims_4_environme...): "We are gods, and we better get good at it." (or something very close to that). Also in his talk was the importance of genetically modified foods for the future of our environment, and the well-being of many people.

The issue of genetically modified food is not binary, it is not that genetic modification is good, or that it is bad, and when our primary terms of discussion are how much genetic modification is around and whether or not we like genetic modification - well, it’s here, and we’ve been doing it thousands of years slowly, and now we can do it quickly.

On one hand you have the kind of work that went on in Mexico and is now making its way into Africa; the works of people like Normal Borlaug (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug) .

On the other hand we have Monsanto as the iconic forerunner of delusional-antisocial-take-over-the world-food-supply companies.

The binary discussion, is GM good or bad, is misdirection. The valuable discussion is in what is good engineering, and what is bad engineering and what are we going to do about that distinction? This article is taking it in the right direction (even if it has some errors like mentioned in the other comment).

I think that saying that genetically engineered organisms are bad is kind of like saying "chemicals" are bad. "Chemicals" is an incredible broad category as is/will be GMO.

Why should I care?

The article presents the fact that most of our food supply contains some genetically modified plants. The article mentions that some people "feel" this is a bad thing.

I appear to have missed the point. Was there a point?

1. Ubquity of GM food is not widely known / apparent to consumers. 2. Most GM strains are produced by a company of questionable ethics. 3. Some countries have outright banned GM foods (though for reasons / motives not given -- elaboration would have been nice here). 4. "Critics claim there haven’t been any long-term studies done (GM food has only been around for 20 years), that supportive research was biased or inadequate, and that the FDA rushed the approval."

> 2. Most GM strains are produced by a company of questionable ethics.

It turns out that the "questionable ethics" charge is essentially circular. It's basically yelling that someone is bad and then refering to the yelling as evidence of bad.

> Critics claim there haven’t been any long-term studies done (GM food has only been around for 20 years), that supportive research was biased or inadequate, and that the FDA rushed the approval."

Said critics don't have any objection to genetic alteration by other means, of which there has been no testing.

I agree with you - the article just implies that GM foods raise questions, but appears almost afraid to take a stand on those questions.

Why do they need to take a stand one way or the other? The Singularity Hub informs about advancements and progression toward the Singularity; their mission doesn't involve taking sides on controversial topics.

They raised the questions -- you can decide for yourself, right?

Help me understand the business model of GM crops: Does Monsanto create GM crops that are seedless? I think this is evil since it gives too much power to one corporation and removes the farmer's prerogative. On the other hand, how will Monsanto make money after the first crop cycle?

When you buy seeds, they require you to agree not to use seeds from the resultant plants in the next crop cycle. So if you want to use the seeds again in the next cycle, you have to buy more. They have people who go to farms and test plants to ensure compliance.

Vanity Fair ran a good piece on this last year: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto...

also, if you inadvertently obtain seeds (like, if your neighbor has Monsanto wheat and his grains blow into your fields) you have to kill your crop or pay Monsanto. reminds me of the RIAA's business model.

They do a couple things (that I know of).

1. Sell seeds that will produce plants that don't reproduce, thus requiring the farmers to buy new seeds each year.

2. Sell stock that is resistant to their herbicide, so they make money on the seed and the herbicide (Roundup).

> I think this is evil since it gives too much power to one corporation and removes the farmer's prerogative.

The farmer can't reuse diesel that he burned this year - is that evil?

The farmer is free to buy seed elsewhere.

I don't think the diesel analogy is appropriate, since setting aside a portion of the crop as next year's seed-crop has been an integral part of farming for about 10,000 years.

I'd say it's more akin to buying a book that renders itself illegible after you've read it once. I'm not going to call it "evil", bit it would certainly be outside of the normal expectations of most consumers.

> I don't think the diesel analogy is appropriate, since setting aside a portion of the crop as next year's seed-crop has been an integral part of farming for about 10,000 years.

I hate to break it to you, but this practice has not been an integral part of farming in this country for the past 50 years or so. Farmers do not set aside seeds for planting unless they intend on breeding these seeds themselves to create a new variant, which they can then patent and sell to other farmers. If you were to ever drive through farm country you would see the fields near the road plastered with little signs on metal posts advertising the company whose seeds are planted in that field or row (DeKalb, Pioneer, etc.) For starters, the hybridized seeds which are the most popular due to their high yield and resistance to disease will generally not "breed true" and so the resulting seed will lose the genetic benefits of its parent.

Farmers buy seeds from specialists, just like you buy your food from specialists at growing and distributing it.

> I'd say it's more akin to buying a book that renders itself illegible after you've read it once.

As somone else pointed out, modern seed hasn't "bred true" since hybrids came out, which happened decades ago.

So, I'll point out that the seed containers have LABELS that say "seeds that you collect won't germinate".

In other words, the whole "this is bad" argument depends on significantly misunderstanding farming and the assumption that farmers can't read or don't understand what they read simple statements about seed viability.

Note that viability is one of the considerations that goes into seed choice, so that assumption requires significant gymnastics.

> setting aside a portion of the crop as next year's seed-crop has been an integral part of farming for about 10,000 years

If it's so integral, why are they buying seed?

The Monsanto issue makes me think - might there be a place in the world for "open-source seeds"? :)

Note that radiation-modified food is not considered genetically modified. (Yup - folks put seeds near radiation and see what happens.)

Selective breeding is also considered okay.

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