Monsanto - Bad Food, Good Capitalism

No, that would be a silly thing to believe; and is not something anyone would suggest. But if the reason in question is 'this would be popular with voters' that doesn't tell us much about the scientific merits of the case.And it's important to clarify what 'much of Europe has banned GMOs' means. The EFSA (the European Food Safety Authority) has approved GM crops as safe; however under pushback from some member states they have allowed individual countries to opt out and ban the cultivation of crops that are approved by EU standards. Several have done do - most notably France and Germany. GM crops are grown in large quantities elsewhere in Europe however, such as Spain and Czech Republic.Note the above only applies to the cultivation of GM crops. People eat food made from GM crops everywhere in Europe. If the real concern of those banning GM crop production is that consuming GM foods is bad for health, then they're idiots, since this is not being prevented. Yes, but it also correlates with a dazzling variety of changes to our diets, lifestyles, healthcare and industrial practices. There is no legitimate reason to single out one specific in the absence of any causal mechanism.

You were the one raising bans in France and Germany as evidence for the dangers of GMOs - my only point was that they are irrelevant to the argument. Governments do many things for bad reasons. Well this is odd for many reasons. Firstly - the quoted sentence is a bit sloppily worded for a technical paper. This made me a bit suspicious about what it is you're quoting; and a bit of digging reveals that the Open Nutroceuticals Journal was edited by Ram B Singh; and published a large number of his papers as well. Ram B Singh is strongly suspected of fraud; and the journal prided itself on rapid peer review while charging authors to publish their work.This seems like a roundabout way of saying they will publish any old shit if someone pays for it. The fact that another journal from the same publisher (Bentham) with the same publishing model accepted a completely nonsensical paper written by a computer program and attributed to a non-existent author tends to confirm this suspicion.But the quality of the paper aside - that doesn't answer your question about why a potato would be altered to produce a chemical toxic to mammals. Thankfully, Wikipedia can answer that - it's because the lectin in question is toxic to some agricultural pests.What is not clear to me (from the brief internet search I just did) is whether the lectin is known to be toxic to mammals. That's what the cited paper from the Lancet was looking into (that study is attributed to the wrong author's in the article you linked to, by the way). There's a second study in the same issue of the Lancet looking into the effects on human white blood cells. I can't find access anywhere, but the abstract simply recommends more study before incorporating this into the food supply. This doesn't sound like something *known* to be toxic.Important to take away from all of this - the potato in question has never been sold commercially, though I don't know whether that's because of fears over it's health impacts or not. Either way, it's not relevant to Roundup. Embarrassingly enough, I didn't even know we had GM labelling requirements; and can't find it on any packets in my kitchen. Either there's less GM wheat in the food supply than I thought, or the rules are not followed consistently. You are mistaken - you must be confusing me with another poster. I can make you a pretty analysis of price trends in the wheat market if you like, but that's the closest my professional expertise gets to biochemistry. I will try and find time to read that later.