Gene-edited food now legal in England

Sankari said:
Bloody hell, it's about time. Amazing that there's still so much resistance to it.
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I’m actually not surprised - the caution is because of a lot of idiotic ‘rush it out’ attempts at this sort of thing. The most famous is probably the mess up in the 90s with the Flavr Savr tomato.

They edited some genes into tomato’s that made them ripen slower. Same food, longer shelf life, makes it cheaper. Win win win.

Unfortunately, in one of the most boneheaded examples of buffoonery in the history of buffoons, they forgot to take out the kanamycin (like penicillin) out of the edited genes - they used kanamycin for selecting bacteria on agar plates. The end result being a bunch of tomatos everywhere that had theoretical potential to create a ‘super bacteria’ like MRSA. Derp derp derp. Basically no going back from that.

Overseas, we have companies like Monsanto historically selling perfect golf lawn grass. It’s immune to everything, just dump down herbicide and it’s the only thing that will survive! What could go wrong…

… well, everything, because now you can’t kill it. Totally wrecks local wildlife and grows in all farming fields, can’t be removed - two thumbs up!

So that’s why there is so much scepticism. If they are finally allowing this sort of thing in the UK only now then I have confidence it’s been reviewed to the Nth degree (and will be going forwards).
 
Well, I'm no expert in this, although I am on Social media, which kind of makes me an expert, but for the normal's, isn't this just in a finer detail of what we've spent 10's of thousands of years doing anyway?
 
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Chuk_Chuk said:
My biggest concern is companies patenting these seeds and then not permitting farmers to replant seeds they get from their crops. You can end up in a situation where your entire crop production is tied to paying royalties to a company.
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Farmers don't replant seeds they get from their crops anyway - it's far more effective and efficient to get targetted seeds each year from companies that specialise in it - and seed companies have long had methods to make it impractical (hybrid breeding being the most common).
 
aVdub said:
Well, I'm no expert in this, although I am on Social media, which kind of makes me an expert, but for the normal's, isn't this just in a finer detail of what we've spent 10's of thousands of years doing anyway?
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Quite. I doubt you've ever eaten a meal which didn't primarily consist of immensely genetically modified food; we just don't call it that. Thousands of years of deliberate or accidental selective breeding has changed most food crops and animals to the degree that they're basically unrecognisable compared to the original species. More recently, the green revolution saved the world from a Malthusian disaster by pumping radiation through seeds to produce random mutants and then selecting desired traits out of that soup of random destruction.
 
aVdub said:
Well, I'm no expert in this, although I am on Social media, which kind of makes me an expert, but for the normal's, isn't this just in a finer detail of what we've spent 10's of thousands of years doing anyway?
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Yes. This is what stuff looked like before we improved it through selective breeding:

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aVdub said:
Well, I'm no expert in this, although I am on Social media, which kind of makes me an expert, but for the normal's, isn't this just in a finer detail of what we've spent 10's of thousands of years doing anyway?
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Absolutely. We have been messing with them ever since we invented farming. Modern crops are completely different to what was around a few thousand years ago.
 
Nitefly said:
I’m actually not surprised - the caution is because of a lot of idiotic ‘rush it out’ attempts at this sort of thing. The most famous is probably the mess up in the 90s with the Flavr Savr tomato.

They edited some genes into tomato’s that made them ripen slower. Same food, longer shelf life, makes it cheaper. Win win win.

Unfortunately, in one of the most boneheaded examples of buffoonery in the history of buffoons, they forgot to take out the kanamycin (like penicillin) out of the edited genes - they used kanamycin for selecting bacteria on agar plates. The end result being a bunch of tomatos everywhere that had theoretical potential to create a ‘super bacteria’ like MRSA. Derp derp derp. Basically no going back from that.

Overseas, we have companies like Monsanto historically selling perfect golf lawn grass. It’s immune to everything, just dump down herbicide and it’s the only thing that will survive! What could go wrong…

… well, everything, because now you can’t kill it. Totally wrecks local wildlife and grows in all farming fields, can’t be removed - two thumbs up!

So that’s why there is so much scepticism. If they are finally allowing this sort of thing in the UK only now then I have confidence it’s been reviewed to the Nth degree (and will be going forwards).
Click to expand...

It is true that mistakes will be made. Houses collapse but we moved out of caves. Planes fall out of the sky, but we still use them. There is a risk with any science, but that doesn't mean we should ban it. We just need to be aware of the risks.
 
Nitefly said:
I’m actually not surprised - the caution is because of a lot of idiotic ‘rush it out’ attempts at this sort of thing. The most famous is probably the mess up in the 90s with the Flavr Savr tomato.

They edited some genes into tomato’s that made them ripen slower. Same food, longer shelf life, makes it cheaper. Win win win.

Unfortunately, in one of the most boneheaded examples of buffoonery in the history of buffoons, they forgot to take out the kanamycin (like penicillin) out of the edited genes - they used kanamycin for selecting bacteria on agar plates. The end result being a bunch of tomatos everywhere that had theoretical potential to create a ‘super bacteria’ like MRSA. Derp derp derp. Basically no going back from that.

Overseas, we have companies like Monsanto historically selling perfect golf lawn grass. It’s immune to everything, just dump down herbicide and it’s the only thing that will survive! What could go wrong…

… well, everything, because now you can’t kill it. Totally wrecks local wildlife and grows in all farming fields, can’t be removed - two thumbs up!

So that’s why there is so much scepticism. If they are finally allowing this sort of thing in the UK only now then I have confidence it’s been reviewed to the Nth degree (and will be going forwards).
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One of the main reasons is the profit motive (now just plain money, in days gone by prestige and privilege).

If things were properly overseen, and done for proper reasons (and that would rule out Monsanto's perfect lawn) then there would be far less objections.

But even if done properly (properly tested, all side effects controlled) that it is all patented is still a major concern. The research for certain food staples should only be done at the UN level. And some of it is, but Monsanto controlling all the maize on the planet would be a scary things - it is no wonder things like that have often been a dystopian fiction staple.
SpellowHouse said:
It is true that mistakes will be made. Houses collapse but we moved out of caves. Planes fall out of the sky, but we still use them. There is a risk with any science, but that doesn't mean we should ban it. We just need to be aware of the risks.
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The for-profit motive will mean more mistakes will be made. Things will get rushed through to get a quicker ROI, lobbying will take place, and so on.

Imagine a promising new crop vastly inflate share prices, but at trial a major flaw is found. That's where lobbying, hiding test results etc. will happen and this is the main danger.

Yes, there are some almost religious fundamentalists who go on about playing god, but that does mean there aren't plenty of good value objections too.
 
Nitefly said:
Overseas, we have companies like Monsanto historically selling perfect golf lawn grass. It’s immune to everything, just dump down herbicide and it’s the only thing that will survive!
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None of that is true. Monsanto does sell GM grass, but it's not 'perfect golf lawn grass', it's not immune to everything, and you don't need to dump herbicide on it at all.

Monsanto's Roundup Ready grass is resistant to Roundup, but nothing else. The beauty of Roundup is that it's extremely efficient, so you hardly need to use any of it (a typical spray rate is 360 mL per acre). Nobody is 'dumping herbicides' on Roundup Ready grass.
 
If your objections to it is centred around capitalism exploiting a human right/need then you have already missed the boat on that I'm afraid. That's happened well before this.
 
Sankari said:
None of that is true. Monsanto does sell GM grass, but it's not 'perfect golf lawn grass', it's not immune to everything, and you don't need to dump herbicide on it at all.

Monsanto's Roundup Ready grass is resistant to Roundup, but nothing else. The beauty of Roundup is that it's extremely efficient, so you hardly need to use any of it (a typical spray rate is 360 mL per acre). Nobody is 'dumping herbicides' on Roundup Ready grass.
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I can’t recall much other than it being a case study (in agricultural biotechnology) at university of how to ‘not do it’. My language was loose in respect of dumping herbicides, but there is definitely something there.

I imagine the emphasis (at the time - in class) was on it creating an issue for farmers and adjoining ecosystems, who can’t get rid of it without killing off their crop / local wildlife.

Hence it being deemed a case study in GM recklessness.
 
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MikeTheNative said:
If your objections to it is centred around capitalism exploiting a human right/need then you have already missed the boat on that I'm afraid. That's happened well before this.
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It could equally provide solutions to world hunger (using exaggerated language as you have). Also in its place there is nothing wrong with capitalism.
 
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