Chipotle Says Adios to GMOs, as Food Industry Strips Away Ingredients

If the old methods were as bad as you suggest, that doesn't prove GMOs are good. It merely extends the anti-GMO argument to modern radiation breeding methods too.

The most compelling anti-GMO argument is that they could produce an interaction we wouldn't have been able to predict due to complexity, and the interaction could have negative effects that would never have been produced by random selection in nature. Once this is in the wild, it could be impossible to eliminate. Critics argue we are aiming at known, limited upside benefits, while facing unknown, potentially much larger risks. Does this apply equally to radiation mutation breeding?

There was a Forbes article[1] last year that linked to a number of studies. If you're looking for a less journalistic take and want to poke around with the data/studies yourself check out GENERA[2] (a database of peer reviewed GMO studies).

FiveThirtyEight did a good piece on the gap between "what the public thinks and what scientists know" and saw the widest margin in the subject of GMO safety[3]. A recent NYT op-ed explains some of the benefits of GMOs and what caused the author to change their stance[4].

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2014/09/17/the-debate-...

[2] http://genera.biofortified.org/

[3] http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/theres-a-gap-between-what...

[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/25/opinion/sunday/how-i-got-c...

If you were to genetically engineer products for everyone's good, it would make sense to enter such uncharted territories, but to do it solely for the good of one entity is simply horrific.

Humans have been genetically modifying food (and animals) long before DNA was known.

Then again, like every other product meant for human consumption it should be subject to scrutiny and monitoring, to ensure saftety.

And even then, most companies will tune food products to maximize profits, and this generally means favoring the looks, yield, consistency and shelf life of a product, as opposed to flavor and texture, with the result of food that looks and feels "artificial".

In general banning all GMO is a fairly stupid political and marketing move, that has little bearing on the final quality of the product: if anything they should guarantee thier customers the freshness and the quality of the ingredients, independently of their origin.

The most common GMO crops are: canola, corn, cotton, soy and sugar beets.

Canola, soy and sugar beet modification is for roundup readiness (glyphosate). Corn and cotton are modified to make them resistant to insects without using additional pesticides.

Newer studies have shown potential risks to mammals from excessive intake of roundup:

http://www.nature.com/news/widely-used-herbicide-linked-to-c...

But instead we have populist fear holding sway in all those countries instead.

Governments banning something doesn't mean it's either a) based on science or b) the right thing to do.

The fact is GMO food may be generally regarded as safe - according to... the studies funded by the companies that promote these GMOs [conflict of interest much?] but I've got thousands of years of human consumption with no recorded negative side effects on the side of non-GMOs and you've got a couple of scientific studies that cover a laughably small "cross section" (if you can call it that) of society with no ability to do any long term studies because you only started down this path in very recent human history. Add to this the fact that when you pump your crops full of herbicides and pesticides there appears to be an alarming degree of correlation between the uptick in food allergies and autism. This is huge cause for concern. Whether this is the actual cause, the jury is out, but there is anecdotal evidence from a number of places including celebrities which suggests that removal of those foods from the diets of their autistic children has brought them back.

If someone can do an actual independent study on GMOs that isn't funded by pharma or agribusiness, doesn't suffer from a conflict of interest and compares in scale to the thousands of years of human history, I'd say the studies don't compare. Even as valid as they may appear on the surface, those of us on the outside have little confidence in them. Especially with information being leaked from inside these studies to suggest corruption and cover-ups to promote the corporate agenda all the way to the highest level to increase profits at all costs - up to and including the collateral damage of a few thousand deaths per million. Deaths that can easily be swept under the rug using underhanded tactics such as smear campaigns, sewing tactical doubt, lied about, gagged by payouts or flat out covered up. There are a number of reports of the FDA aiding and abetting in this behaviour. The F.D.A! If you can't trust the very Government office that is funded with the goal of looking after your best interests as the consumer, then who can you trust?

Nature has nothing to prove. Agri-business and Big-Pharma are run by people. People are fallible and when bound to their responsibility to investor profits, corrupt. Who would you rather trust?

It's no wonder people don't want to eat GMO. It might be the safest thing on earth, but when you add human fallibility and corruption into the equation, which way do you turn?

This is in contrast to many op-eds, blog posts, and even news articles, which intentionally make it hard to find a summary, disperse shallow content between ads, just like to hear their own voice, or other such behaviours that are worth avoiding.

I think asking for a tldr here is mistaking the former for the latter (an honest mistake).

To be honest, I only read it because one of the authors is Nassim Taleb and I liked his books.

Anyway, the gist of it is that there are different kinds of risk. Some risks can be calculated with certain probabilities, and you can do cost-benefit analysis with them.

For example, you should only spend money on a security system for your home or business if the cost-of-being-attacked times the probability of attack exceeds the cost of the system, right?

However, there is another kind of risk for which you can't do that, because their cost is so high that nobody will live to tell the tale and collect the statistics (extinction events), or maybe they will but it will be too late (global financial crisis).

The paper argues that monocultures present that kind of risk. You can't calculate "probability of massive blight that kills all our genetically homogeneous food" for example because we don't have much of a sample size. And by the time we do have the sample size, it will be too late.

Then, the paper points out some other risks and explains why the risks of artificial selection are different from the risks of GMO. Long story short, it's because a bad mutation in a "natural" crop only kills a few people before they realize that they should plant something else.

It's not "the industry" doing the labeling, scientific consensus isn't so easily bought - if it were oil companies (who have far more money than Monsanto et al) would have made sure the science on climate change was on their side.

In another comment[1] I provided several links you may find useful in making a more informed opinion.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9451873

Chipotle aims for a fast casual ambiance (which can be a reason to prefer it), but to me the food quality seems to be between lower-end fast-food places like Taco Bell and better fast-food places like El Pollo Loco.