But he was born on a bayern, which while some think was supposed to be a bayou ala CCR, was actually meant to be a barn (per @tomásbernal, the thread title originator). Note: If this off topic discussion and thread title confusion helps prevent poor pun titles, then I'll be happy.
My bad puns are local sourced, hand-picked, GMO free and sustainably-farmed. And if there was an "ugly fruit" of language, that would be my puns!
I can't believe anyone remembers that! Yes, my suggestion for thread title (which was very popular I might add) was actually "Born in a Bayern", as in "born in a barn" not "born on a bayou". Someone either misunderstood and adjusted it or just plain didn't like it my way (or is a big CCR fan).
The critiques in GMO are faith-based, a liberal religion, as there is zero scientific evidence that GMOs harm people. To the contrary, GMO food can save lives around the world, particularly in third-world countries where there are widespread nutrition deficiencies. And of course food goods are cheaper in third-world countries with devalued currencies, but you better check your colon afterwards.
And little to no evidence that they don't (from reputable sources). Like most profit-driven scientific discovery it's tinker now, check consequences later.
There is plenty of evidence that they are safe. Namely, they are under extreme scrutiny, yet there is not a single example of illness resulting from eating the literal billions of meals that have been served. If you claim something is harmful, but I have billions of occurrences of that incident where no harm occurs, by definition, that is evidence of safety. Here is just one study by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine concluding they are safe: https://www.nap.edu/read/23395/chapter/1 This is a reputable source. Remember, essentially all the foods we ate are genetically modified and are unnatural. Neither wheat nor cows exist in the wild. And essentially ALL scientific discovery is profits driven. Trade (along with job specialization) has long been the incremental driver of prosperity and increases in human quality of life. Do you have problems with HIV medication, the car, the telephone, the integrated circuit? Those are profit-driven inventions, as are the vast majority of inventions that have increased the survival rates and quality of life for humans to untold high levels in 2016.
What they actually say is, and I quote: "[The committee] concluded that sweeping statements about GE crops are problematic because issues related to them are multidimensional." (p. xvii). Which goes against your sweeping statement "they are safe."
You know, I can probably buy lots of food for 20 bucks in India, which translates into 1,333 rupees. But that doesn't really say much about the comparative food markets in the US vs. India. It's just that in India, hundreds of millions of people live on less than a dollar a day, so my 20 dollar bill is suddenly a month's salary for some people, and stretches really far! And, as far as taste is concerned, there's likely an expectation bias at work. Admittedly, some foods from different countries may look better or worse, or may have different ingredients (e.g perhaps the KFC's in the US use significantly more salt), but considering the fact that GMO foods could be heavily modified or merely tweaked for things such as bug, or pesticide resistance, there's likely very little difference as far as taste/nutritional value goes. And I'm not trying to shill for Monsanto et. al, I'm just speaking as a person who grew up and lives in the Bay Area, the epicenter of Whole Foods, vegan, organic, and farm-to-table culture. It gets tiring to hear the same old raging against US agri-business, when I know people who will only shop organic, yet stay away from those "gross" heirloom tomatoes because they're greenish...
Come on, very simple distinction here. "They are safe" clearly refers to the fact that people aren't suffering from the consumption of GMO's. The problems associated with GMO's such as tweaks that prohibit seed production (so that farmers have to keep buying new seeds every year from guys like Monsanto), patents on strains of GMO products, and the persistent problem of invasive franken-foods/insects with resistances to pesticides, are still there. The promises of superior water management, less pesticide usage, superior nutritional value, greater yields, and greater durability, are all still there as well.
Not "can", already does and has been doing so for a long time now. New title for this thread: The Julian Green Revolution?
The spike over the last two decades in obesity, autism, mental illness, heart disease, cancer, etc, are directly connected to our spike in use of GMO's, pesticides, hormones, additives, artificial sweeteners, etc. I'm not commenting on taste. Simply compare the nutrition labels of foods sold here to food sold abroad by American companies. Lots of the crap in our food here is outright banned elsewhere.
I'm happy for this discussion to move elsewhere--the Bobby Wood thread about the confederate flag seems like a fine catchall. Lets focus on one issue at a time--GMO's first. What evidence do you have that GMO's cause cancer, aside from feeling and superstition? (although on a side note, GMOs actually reduce the use of pesticide due to the breeding of insect-resistant plants) I mean, when SLATE is saying that a liberal cause is baseless, you know the evidence for it is bad. http://www.slate.com/articles/healt...st_them_is_full_of_fraud_lies_and_errors.html "The World Health Organization, the American Medical Association, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have all declared that there’s no good evidence GMOs are unsafe. Hundreds of studies back up that conclusion."
You do realize that all foods include chemicals? This post reminds of the story that "80% of americans support mandatory labeling of foods containing DNA" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...t-mandatory-labeling-of-foods-containing-dna/
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/business/gmo-promise-falls-short.html There is no apparent increased yield with gmos, and pesticide use increases. There is also the disastrous effects monocropping singular varieties of a plant has on biodiversity, among many other problems. Cuba increased their yields massively after the fall of the USSR because, due to lack of pesticides and farm machinery, they were forced back to organic methods, which they improved on. I don't think it's likely that gmos will cause cancer (though the pesticides will), but we're ********ing up our planet.
Just cause - you know GMO is kinda a broad net. I mean, Thomas Jefferson spent a lot of time GMOing his plants, you know, with grafts and cuttings and all kinds of crazy stuff. But once you're "into the weeds..." in this, it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff! Man, I even impressed myself.
Referring back to the start of this thread derail, I can think of some eggcelent punishments for this post. (Groan)
I said the "promise" is there. "Golden rice", for example, is an example of a GMO product that failed. If you recall, there was an effort to introduce a strain of rice that was rich in Vitamin A, lack of which can cause vision problems, into Asia, where a lot of people subsist on rice-based diets. When it comes to fruits and vegetables, for example, bruising is a major problem for farmers. Stores won't buy bruised or discolored produce. So, in addition to changing picking and transportation practices, farmers often turn to GMO crops that have tougher-skinned fruits and vegetables. It's why the tomatoes at Safeway look and feel like giant red bouncy balls, and the strawberries are unerringly bright and large.* *Of course, we get into food waste here, because stores also throw away huge amounts of food because they have to overstock (people won't buy from shelves that look barren), but that's another issue entirely. Hell, I could argue that Gregor Mendel's pea plant experiments created the first GMO's. Breeding plants in order to produce desired genetic traits, is the most basic building block of genetic engineering. Changing the genes within plants is simply another step along, with significant potential for gains. We already genetically modify bacteria to produce human insulin for diabetics, we genetically modified mosquitoes to die before reaching maturity, and we've modified fish to grow and mature faster (for fish farms ofc). Plenty of useful possibilities already, and we're just scratching the surface now that the science of genetic modification isn't quite as reviled as it once was.