Posted on 05/28/2014 4:08:59 AM PDT by Kaslin
It's easy to scare people about what's in their food, but the danger is almost never real. And the fear itself kills.
Take the panic over genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Ninety percent of all corn grown in America is genetically modified now. That means it grew from a seed that scientists altered by playing with its genes. The new genes may make corn grow faster, or they may make it less appetizing to bugs so farmers can use fewer pesticides.
This upsets some people. GMOs are "unnatural," they say. A scene from the movie "Seeds of Death" warns that eating GMOs "causes holes in the GI tract" and "causes multiple organ system failure."
The restaurant chain Chipotle, which prides itself on using organic ingredients, produces videos suggesting that industrial agriculture is evil, including a comedic Web series called "Farmed and Dangerous" about an evil agricultural feed company that threatens to kill its opponents and whose products cause cows to explode.
Michael Hansen of Consumer Reports sounds almost as frightening when he talks about GMOs. On my show, he says, "It's called insertional mutagenesis ... you can't control where you're inserting that genetic information; it can have different effects depending on the location."
Jon Entine of the Genetic Literacy Project responds: "We've eaten about 7 trillion meals in the 18 years since GMOs first came on the market. There's not one documented instance of someone getting so much as a sniffle."
Given all the fear from media and activists, you might be surprised to learn that most serious scientists agree with him. "There have been about 2,000 studies," says Entine, and "there is no evidence of human harm in a major peer-reviewed journal."
That might be enough to reassure people if they knew how widespread and familiar GMOs really are -- but as long as they think of GMOs as something strange and new, they think more tests are needed, more warnings, more precaution.
Yet people don't panic over ruby red grapefruits, which were first created in laboratories by bombarding strains of grapefruit with radiation. People don't worry about corn and other crops bred in random varieties for centuries without farmers having any idea exactly what genetic changes occurred.
We didn't even know what genes were when we first created new strains of plants and animals. There's no reason to believe modern methods of altering genes are any more dangerous.
In fact, because they're far more precise, they're safer.
And since genetic modification can make crops more abundant and easier to grow, it makes food cheaper. That's especially good for the poor. Another life-changer is a new strain of vitamin A-enriched rice that has the potential to decrease the frequency of blindness that now afflicts about a half-million people a year, mostly children.
But activists -- who tend to be rich and well-fed -- are pressuring countries in Asia and Africa into rejecting GMO rice.
Crusades against food are endless. First Lady Michelle Obama urges students to eat organic, even though that term has no real meaning in science besides "partly composed of carbon."
My nonprofit for schoolteachers, Stossel in the Classroom, offers free videos that introduce students to economics. This year, we ran an essay contest inviting students to write on the topic "Food Nannies: Who Decides What You Eat?"
I was happy to see that many students understood that this debate is about more than safety. It's really about freedom. Sixteen-year-old Caroline Clausen won $1,000 for her essay, which contained this sarcastic passage: "Congress shall have the power to regulate the mixing, baking, serving, labeling, selling and consumption of food. Did James Madison's secretary forget to copy this provision into the Constitution?"
Rising generations will have more food options than ever before. They face less risk of starvation or disease than any humans who have ever lived. Let's give them science instead of scare stories
It would make sense if we were sure that GE food is harmless. But possible high medical expenses outweigh this.
Farmers haven't done that for more than 60 years for corn, lesser years for other crops. There are companies who specialize in providing the type of seed you want, but they are few and far between because no who is in business can make any money on 'free' seed.
The XL45 line from DeKalb Hybrids back in the 70s was a single cross hybrid and the seed from that crop was worthless as seed. That was true for 100% of the field production corn for at least a decade prior.
It may all become moot if more countries follow the lead of the EU and Russia and ban GMO’s from their food chain.
If you can’t sell it, farmers won’t grow it.
My main complaint about them is all this cloak-and-dagger they engage in to keep you from finding out if your food contains any GMO’s or not. Monsanto et. al. fight tooth and nail against any sort of consumer labeling law. That makes me very suspicious on the face of it.
The case you cite where monsanto sues farmers for incidental cross polination is one of the worst aspects of the gmo technology. It removes traditional farming practices of saving some of your crop for seed.
The supreme court set this up by allowing patents for gmos- and the courts serving the huge money interests in ruling a natural cross polination is patent infingement.
Another issue with gmos- labelling. If the science is settled, what is their problem with labels?
I generally like john stossel, but here he misses the mark.
Russian men are drunk, squat, arrogant and wear awful track suits and too-tight suits.
American men are tall and handsome, don’t drink to excess, work very hard and keep their dislike of “foreigners” under control when traveling abroad - unlike Russians who enjoy insulting Americans when seated near them at dinner parties in NYC.
I know of what I speak.
He’s dead, Jim.
(the REALLY, REALLY fat guy)
http://article.wn.com/view/2014/05/26/Manuel_Uribe_once_worlds_heaviest_man_dies_in_Mexico_at_age_/
The reason for the reluctance is simple, we are surrounded (using the words of Steve Forbes)Food Luddites. These Luddites are no different than the Luddites of the 1900s, they want to force everyone to walk in lockstep with them by throwing a wrench in the greatest Food Machine ever seen in the entire history of the world.
Think about that for a moment.
Never, ever, never before has the world seen such an efficient, fast moving, huge, huge, food producing machine.
The food Luddites want to wreck it, and, like the Homosexual Lobby, they have decided the best way to do that is to force everyone, you, me, all of our families, our children grandchildren, to believe and eat as they do.
They aren’t content to eat GMO free food which is readily available to anyone who wants it (think Organic), they insist that everyone accept their homosexual, er, GMO free lifestyle with the battering ram of our legal system.
Mexico currently exceeds the United States in the percentage of population considered obese. However, obesity levels have been increasing in most industrial countries over the last few decades, even in places like France. However, the obesity problem does not stem from GMOs but rather from the switch to the high carbohydrate, low fat diets popularized over the last 40 years. The worst carbohydrates came from processed foods, including white bread, pasta, and dessert products. These are the ones that are the cheapest to make and to sell. Vegetables and fruit are inexpensive but most vegetables require preparation, something people, especially single people and those families with both spouses employed, find difficult. The link of fat to heart disease, popularized in the Framingham study from the 1960s, proved to be inaccurate. However, the low fat mentality is still out there.
“We’ve eaten about 7 trillion meals in the 18 years since GMOs first came on the market. There’s not one documented instance of someone getting so much as a sniffle.”
Reminds me of my uncle who was driving drunk without incident for 30 years. No big deal until his luck ran out in one instant.
Yes, man has altered plants/animals throughout history but it was through simple breeding and selection that already exists in nature. We have never directly altered genes before.
I agree that GMOs are probably not too different once on your plate, give some incredible benefits and help feed starving people. However, man cannot test for all unintended future consequences in a lab. Releasing self-replicating artificial gene sequences into the wild is ignorantly playing with fire. Period
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