GMOs = The Smart Future of Food

Certainly, the anti-GMO crowd can be a very silly bunch, and they are often ruled more by fear of the unknown than by anything else. However, the pro-GMO crowd is prone to overstating their case about the safety and ecological soundness of their products.For example, the papers in the GENERA database deal with a wide variety of different GMO’s. Most of these papers report one test against one species of animals with one type of GMO. And, most of them don’t even deal with GMO’s that were eventually turned into commercial products. When you consider that labs around the world have been producing many thousands of GMO’s over the past few decades, the number of papers calling them safe doesn’t seem so big anymore.Additionally, there are a lot of behind-the-scenes problems with the regulatory apparatus. Independent studies often are not actually independent: while the specific project may not have been funded by industry, the lab’s other operations often are. The agrochemical companies are the leading donors to many of the regulatory agencies, like the EPA and FDA. Even the USDA, where much of the independent funding for this type of research comes from, depends on large donations from Monsanto. Monsanto is also the leading donor to the major scientific societies, such as the Entomological Society of America, and has a lot of influence over officer elections, journal editorships and things like that.It gets worse though. For transgenic crops that express insecticidal traits, EPA regulations were actually developed by researchers from the industry. Here is the original paper. Note that the disclaimer says the industry scientists participated as individuals, and not as employees of the comapnies, but I think we all know that that doesn’t mean anything. Furthermore, the public-sector and agency scientists were handpicked pro-GMO people, like Jorg Romeis, Robyn Rose and Tony Shelton. No one from the anti-GMO crowd was invited.Considering the high costs of developing a transgenic product and putting it through regulation, there will probably never be more than a handful of companies that can afford it. So, the field of transgenic crops is probably destined to always be dominated by a small group of corporate interests. That doesn’t seem like a desirable situation to me.I certainly don’t believe that GMO’s are evil, and I believe that they will have an important role to play in the future of agriculture, but the reality is that the game is rigged in favor of the companies.On top of that, insecticidal GMO's, combined with government subsidies for ethanol, are incentivizing farmers to abandon sustainable practices, like crop rotations, cover crops, and intercropping, and they're exacerbating the negative effects of intensified agriculture, which only makes us more dependent on transgenics and insecticides. There's got to be a better way than this.

Hi, Tempe.So, this is actually the exact topic of the post-doctorate I’m doing right now. I’m just a newcomer to this field, so I’m still learning and forming my opinions. There’s a lot of anger and bad feelings in this field, and I’m highly uncomfortable in it. I try to remain objective about it, but I may be too close to it for that to be realistic. I’m not sure I want to keep participating in this thread, in fact.I don’t consider myself anti-GMO (I’m sort of a closet transhumanist, in fact), but I’m definitely developing some highly negative feelings about this entire field. I don’t see how we can ever divorce transgenic crops from the messy politics of industry oligopolies. So, I have a hard time building up and maintaining good feelings about GMO’s. I don’t know a lot about Bt cotton. But, I do know that farmers spray the shit out of cotton, for a variety of different pests. I’m sure Bt reduces insecticide sprays in cotton by a substantial amount.But, sustainability is more than just reducing insecticides. Insecticides, in and of themselves, are not necessarily bad: it's the way they're being used that's bad. We should never have let it get to the point where we're spraying insecticides on a field 12 times a year. But, seventy years ago, farmers were so eager for a solution to a problem that most of them didn’t actually have, that they ignored the dangers and weaponized chemistry against insect pests. And now, we can’t stop, because we’ve done such a number on our ecosystems that they can no longer provide the services they used to provide, like pollination, pest suppression, etc.Sustainability is about finding a strategy that’s viable in the long-term: maintaining soil health, facilitating stable ecosystem dynamics that are resistant to pest outbreaks, etc. Insecticides and transgenics can’t do that: what they do is make things easier for farmers, so they don’t have to put as much effort into farming. Basically, it means farmers no longer have an economic incentive to responsibly manage their natural resources to mitigate pest problems. It also means the chemical companies can profit substantially from the farmers’ irresponsibility, and all the while deflect the blame away from themselves because it’s the farmers’ poor compliance with best practices. Then, they turn around and refuse to offer anything accept their transgenic seed, and recommend that the farmers spray the shit out of everything.Einstein is quoted as saying, No problem can be solved by the same kind of thinking that created it. Yet, that’s kind of what's happening in agriculture.Sorry for the rant: it has nothing to do with Golden Rice or health effects of GMO’s, but I think it’s still relevant. Anyway, I should probably be done contributing to this thread now.