The first GE food product was approved in 1994. Nine years later, there are 35 FDA approved GE crops. Such crops and food may cause unintended side effects, such as allergic reactions or environmental consequences. That is my definition of a rush job, not ‘throwing some cells in a bathtub and mixing'. I believe that we should wait to see the effects of these products in the environment, especially considering there is already a history of genetic contamination, as referenced by Platypus on the following link: genetic contamination

This is an interesting site which answers a lot of the questions you address: questions

I have already indicated that there is no world wide food shortage with a previous link, as well as this one. If you are unconvinced perhaps this is a good time to bring up the fact that it takes 20 times the amount of land to produce enough food for a carnivore as it does to produce food for a vegan. If we all gave up half of our meat consumption, we would have significantly more land and food.
Since I don’t advocate the government rationing out our meat supply to keep us in line and feed the world, I certainly don’t advocate placing more questionable GE products and contaminating our food supply until we have more time to observe their potential, unintended, consequences.
So...Yes, we see both the benefits and risks differently I suppose.

Umm, genetics doesn't work that way. A plant which contains viral DNA will not attach itself to the membrane of another plant, inject RNA, and cause the plant to start synthesizing viral proteins.

What is a feasible risk is cross-contamination. If GM pollen can fertilize non-GM crops, those non-GM crops will now contain GM alleles, such as a terminator gene. That is not virus-like behavior.

What would prevent cross-contamination is to make the GM crops unable to fertilize normal plants. One common mechanism of reprodutive isolation (speciation) in plants is called autopolyploidy. This is when an organism experiences accidents in sex cell division which leaves its gamete with double the amount of chromosomes (i.e. instead of 2 copies it now has 4 copies so it has gone from diploid to tetraploid)




There is nothing that leads me to believe that we could not induce polyploidy in GM plants (don't ask me how exactly, I'm not a molecular biologist) to isolate them from normal plants.



I agree. How do you think Japan has supported its population for thousands of years? Less meat = less necessary space. Although personally, I don't have the strength of will to become a vegan I still try to limit the amount of meat I consume.

Strawman. I said virus-like behavior, i.e. like the virus from which genes were borrowed or using which they were inserted into the target cell, not that the plant would actually become a virus. You should know that genetic engineering isn't quite as precise as cutting and pasting text. Sometimes other little bits end up in the target organism, yielding unexpected results.



Is it OK to risk an entire ecosystem because someone thinks they can induce autopolyploidy or some similar mechanism? Or should we instead demand that they know they can, reliably, not only in the lab but in messy nature? Do we in fact have any scientific certainty of that, at this moment when genetically modified organisms are already on the market? Can you, perhaps, cite proof of it?

I like to think that the variables that are nature and or evolution has had the major hand in genetic history, how do we know for sure what will happen when man made types enter this "matrix" of nature. Not to mention that it probably will not be just one plant type, then when it comes time to reproduce, all of these things will be evident when the random part comes into play as the gene forms, the genes are random during the separation stage, how can we be sure on any sustained control or outcomes, and being we are working with the worlds food source, how can you feel safe with that. Cross-pollination is a real issue here, we will in turn not only be making the initial plant, but over time how many crossbreeds will come from that. You could end up with something like a soil draining, low food producing, hardy monster of a plant, or maybe you could get the best plant we can ask for, the point is we cannot control the possible outcome as of yet, so i think in respects to what it plains to work with, food, it should not be allowed yet.

Platypus,
I apologize, I didn't understand the extent of your analogy.

And here is an article about induced polyploidy.

Induced Polyploidy

In this case, it was used to allow cotton species which had separated by polyploidy to fertilize one another.

In the last paragraph it states : "From the results it appeared that chromosome doubling in Asiatic diploid species can be induced easily and used as a tool to overcome the cross incompatibility..." and then it goes on to list the genus and species of the cotton plants.

This same method could be used to intentionally isolate GM crops. And, if polyploidy can be induced in a lab, then the polyploid plant will stay a polyploid in "messy nature."

BTW this polypoidy solution is my own idea so there may not be a success story yet, but can someone back me up if they think it might be feasible?

(I had a devil of a time finding this thread. I guess "Poverty and the Homeless" isn't the first place I look for a thread about GM food.)

Anyway, here's a link from one of my daily news sources: Study links GE crops to environmental damage. Here are the highlights from the end of the article:



These tell us no more than what we already know: the combination of GM crops and intensely toxic chemicals that only the GM plants can survive presents a serious danger to the environment, particularly by depriving birds of food and/or killing off pollinating insects. There might also be an effect from birds taking up these toxins in their food, leading to another Silent Spring, but the study doesn't seem to have addressed that.

People might be inclined to blame these problems on the chemicals rather than the GM food, ignoring the fact that the two are inseparable. Plants are being specifically engineered to tolerate herbicides and insecticides that would otherwise be unusable because they'd kill the crop as well. If this particular form of genetic modification were banned or even scaled back, the associated chemicals would no longer be profitable, they wouldn't be produced, and therefore they would not be harming our environment. Unfortunately, this is the most significant kind of genetic modification commercially, representing a far greater dollar value and number of acres planted than any other kind. It's really nice that a penny gets spent on GM foods (e.g. golden rice) that alleviate hunger for every dollar that gets spent on herbicide/insecticide resistance, but that's like Exxon spending a few bucks on environmental protection in Prince William Sound - it doesn't really change the fact that overall the damage exceeds the benefit.

I don't really have an opinion. Except that I will wait a few years to see how many Chinese are still alive after they start eating the veggies exposed to radiation, in space.

I read several parts of the studies which you linked to a source which linked to the studies. It was like playing telephone finding the actual studies. I also seems to me that your conclusions might be suffering from this telephone effect.

Not one of the studies found that pollinating insects were all killed off. Some species of insects were up and some were down. One study suggested these changes can be attributed to many factors including traditional farming practices such as tilling and the planting of large tracts of single species plants.

This is rather a profound statement. Are you suggesting that there is no possible use of genetic modification other than to resist herbicides?

What GM damage are you speaking of? What damage has been done to Prince William Sound? I know of the Valdez disaster which short term was big. I believe the long term effects from that have proven to be nil. How can you separate increased food production via GM into part of it helping hunger but herbicide/insecticide resistance not helping to increase food production and hunger?

All farming on large scale has a profound effect on local insect and animal life. I picture the plains of the United States to have had a much more diverse insect and animal population before it was changed into massive agriculture fields. Irrigation has changed dry lands into completely different environments. The use of herbicides and insecticides can create big problems which are well documented, such as the decrease in Bald Eagles due to softening of their shells.

These studies are very worthy. There was nothing in the studies which indicated the 'damaging' effects were exclusive to GM agriculture practices. The studies did not use the word 'damage' as it is nonspecific. They described the effects as changes in population representation. The conclusions did suggest that a longer term repeated use of their crops and a wider use of them would have a greater effect.

We will need to increase agriculture production as the human population increases. Humans are pushing out diversity in this process. These studies show that GM agriculture has the potential to do this (just like traditional agriculture has).

Perhaps there needs to be a requirement to have set aside lands where agriculture exists to mitigate the effects. Also, rotation of farming techniques seems to be supported by these studies as different GM crops had different effects on the weed and insect populations.