What do you think of GMO's?

[The Grand Nudger]

I meant that the benefits gained from the technology are seemingly all going to the producers of that technology, not the producers of the actual food. Sorry for any confusion.

Ah..yeah, well, I mean they get profit from it, but the benefits of the tech still get to you. They sell the seed -to producers- on the basis of it's yield(generally), who imagine they'll make more money (though this is hardly the case) - that increase in yield does mean a reduction in the cost of business to processors and retailers, who then take that wiggle room and compete with each other for your business. Animals are fed on GMO, for example - and that's reflected in the price of beef (the cost of beef would approach princely sums if it weren't for gmo feed - take a look at the price of "organic, gmo free pasture raised etc etc etc"). Cotton is another big GMO crop (though you don't hear about it much) and that's reflected in the price of T-shirts, undies, sucks and such. It may be pennies, it may be dimes, and it may just barely nullify what would otherwise be inflation - but it's there - and while you may not notice that benefit as an individual consumer if you tallied up the pennies saved (assuming it's just pennies) across the economy as a whole you'd see a massive increase in purchasing power. This again benefits you directly (and I've only considered the direct economic effect....there are many other ways to quantify the benefit, to you, of GMO). You're probably "going with" GMOs without even knowing it.

The biggest GMO crops in the US are Corn, Soy, Cotton, Canola, and Sugarbeet -so....pretty much all of our major crops...lol..and a massive percentage in each category is GMO. You're benefiting from one or all of these either directly or in derivatives.
(I'm not a large enough producer to justify buying the seed myself - though I trialed GMO strawberries a few years back for UF's ag extension, afaik, they still don't have approval. Besides, my customers would string me up from the fucking rafters if I fed them GMO...lol. Right now GMO is an institutional ag racket, mainly. The tomatoes and watermelons you buy aren't likely to be GMO....yet......but that's miniscule compared to the above, eh?)

Maybe I'm wrong or simplistic in that statement, too. You apparently know a lot more about the industry than I do. Whoever's getting the benefit, my point is that it's not going to the consumers. As a consumer, I don't really know if there's any danger to these products. IMO no one really knows, as we'll need to see people eating them for a lifetime to really be sure.

GMO wasn't invented yesterday (1983), and it gets tested, whereas few-to-no such tests have been done on traditional crops...which might explain why we didn't realize putting corn in everything was a bad idea until recently.....despite having eaten it for thousands of years.

So, if I don't know if there's danger, and there's no benefit for me in choosing these products, I'm going to stick with the known product.

You don't really need to make any choice. It's already been made for you. The products you "know" are most likely already GMO (and have been for some time). -If- you wanted to remove GMOs from your life, you'd have to put everything you buy under the microscope (which is what the anti-GMO crowd advocates for, that's the point of the labeling campaigns). That's how dangerous this stuff is, it's in everything...has been for some time now.....and you wouldn't even know it. There was really no reason to imagine that GMO's would be any more dangerous than a hybrid crop in the first place - though I'm glad the testing procedures and approval exist (I think they should have existed for hybrids as well). It's difficult to express how absurd the entire debate is regarding some danger posed to you by GMO.

Mind you, if that's your position on GMO, and you'd like to go with non-GMO...by all means have at it. I certainly appreciate those who have made a similar choice and that's a niche I market explicitly to (I couldn't break into the big leagues even if I wanted to...I'm far too poor, relative to them. People making a decision like that leaves me room to operate, and it's room that the big boys either don't give a shit about, haven't found a way to exploit, or simply cannot exploit due to the restrictions imposed by their model...yet). I wish you luck...you're going to need it.

[John V]

I don't buy much processed food. We already buy the gras-fed etc. etc. ground beef. It's not that much of a price difference anymore.

I mostly eat boiled grains - oats (steel-cut...yum), basmati rice, and split mung beans. I don't know if these are gmo or not. I buy the oats at Aldi's as they're significantly lower in price (if this is because they're GMO, that's fine - again, I just want some of the benefit if I'm going to eat it). I buy the rice at Costco, again based on price. There's only one brand of split mung beans sold around here, so that's that.

[The Grand Nudger]

I don't buy much processed food. We already buy the gras-fed etc. etc. ground beef. It's not that much of a price difference anymore.

Yeah, because those folks used to be crooks, flat out. Gotta remember that food production is a game where the win is measured in fractions of a penny - so a difference of "not much" might actually be massive. How many fractions of a penny is the difference? Now multiply that by the number of pounds of beef bought and sold in this country. There's the benefit, to consumer, of GMOs - from just that one angle. Keep in mind that the GMO modified price of beef also modifies the price -you pay- for non GMO Beef. They can only rake you over the coals for so much, relative to the beef sitting right next to it on the shelf before theirs doesn't sell anymore - and they know that.

I mostly eat boiled grains - oats (steel-cut...yum), basmati rice, and split mung beans. I don't know if these are gmo or not.

Not likely - the grains maybe....but only maybe. Most products sold directly for human consumption aren't GMO. In some cases it;s beyond what the law allows for reasons to do with GMO's...sometimes for reasons unrelated to GMOs - and other times because retailers might see it as a risky proposition (and all of this reduces, somewhat, the potential economic benefit of GMO this or that. It could get you an even cheaper price, but the environment isn't friendly yet, and so theres that "cost" to pay).

I buy the oats at Aldi's as they're significantly lower in price (if this is because they're GMO, that's fine - again, I just want some of the benefit if I'm going to eat it). I buy the rice at Costco, again based on price. There's only one brand of split mung beans sold around here, so that's that.

The reduction in price in all goods with our major crops at the base of our economic ladder touches every aspect of retail business, yes. Aldi can afford to give you a better price on a whole range of goods because of the great price they source those goods at, but also because of their savings in other areas. They don't necessarily have to charge the same markup on everything, because any loss on one product can be absorbed by the gains in another. Think of it like a massive loss leader marketing campaign. If I can get a whole range of processed goods at a lower price I can continue to charge the old price to consumer on that range of goods (maybe a modest markdown) and then use that revenue to absorb a loss on a marque product that will bring people into the doors (like tomatos, or grass fed beef). The overall effect is that I make more money even If I sell one item at a loss, or a broad range of items at a slightly lower markup.

Ultimately, that's not something you have any control over, so I would say that it's beyond the remit of what you can do to minimize the amount of GMO that goes into whatever it is you buy, at whatever price you get it. It's worth considering, nevertheless. Thinking that you've managed to out GMO's from your life is to take a tunnel vision approach to your purchases. If you're comfortable ignoring the effects outside of that tunnel, and of course you're comfortable with the benefit to you- as a consumer...I'd wonder why you wouldn't just buy the GMO this or that directly, when it was available. Of course....I doubt that the shortlist you gave is the entirety of your diet - more like things you figured probably didn't have any relationship to GMO (they do, of course). I'm not criticizing your purchases (buy whatever you like, Murica!) - just trying to give you an idea of how pervasive GMOs are. It's a bit like sunlight. If you wanted to avoid it, you could, at least in so much as that you could tell yourself - reasonably, that you have done all you can - but it's effect would still be all around you and in everything you do. That's how big GMO is...and there's a reason that it got so big so fast - even in the face of Anti-GMO opposition and their clearly successful campaign of disinformation.

[Simon Moon]

I am not going to read the entire thread, so I apologize if this has been said or not.

My thought is there probably is nothing wrong with them, health wise. I will tend to choose non-GMO if there isn't much difference in price.

But my main problem is, that the primary reason for GMOs is so companies like Monsanto (an evil company for other reasons), can create plants that will be more resistant to their herbicides and insecticides, which are known to be toxic to humans and other animals, and the environment.

So, they create a vertical monopoly, where farmers buy their seeds, then have to buy their herbicides and insecticides in order to grow the plants.

While not GMO related, they also: create terminator seeds (seed that do not propagate from season to season), patent genetic material, still create chemicals that were banned in the US due to known health and environmental problems and export them to other countries. None of these is ethical behavior, IMO.

Dupont is not much better.

[The Grand Nudger]

They don't -have- to buy them. Monsantos big thing is roundup ready crops (and that's good for them...because their patent on roundup is either up or about to be up). So you can plant their corn and not use roundup - if you like...but if you do, their corn doesn't die when it;s hit with glyphosate. The weeds die, the corn doesn't, yield goes up (and your cost of production goes down because you don;t have to manage the weeds mechanically or with "wasteful" undercropping). If you don't use roundup ready corn and you spray your field with glyphosate - the corn dies along with the weeds. GMO's absolutely will grow the same as any hybrid - you don't have to buy anything else, but you get the most bang for your buck if you buy the full system (when applicable). You'd think that terminator seed would be good, if people were worried about roundup corn escaping the fields and becoming a problem ala kudzu, btw.

[HopOnPop]

Yeesh, I hadn't heard of that one, is the debating still going on today or is it kind of a dead issue?

No its very much an on-going struggle. There has recently (i.e. 2014) been a big "local" push in the US to get media here to actively support and report postively on the issue in an attempt to generate more positive media coverage and perhaps interest deeper pockets in this humanitarian project -- but, as one might expect given the weird American attitude over GMOs, local media (beyond, say PBS) refuses to throw in with the supporters of Golden Rice in any way, not because they disagree with the effort, but merely because they fear losing market share by appearing too pro-GMO. Its rather predictable, given the general chicken-shit attitude of US media outlets in the past, but also rather disgusting and depressing too. IMO, its as unethical as ignoring, say, vaccination efforts to stop a treatable disease in fear of pissing off anti-vax nutters.

[HopOnPop]

If it doesn't affect the price, the poor will still starve.
You're only considering technology, while ignoring economics and human greed.

You also have to consider that global seed prices aren't based on one fixed global price. Rather seed producers, like Monsanto, sells seeds at whatever price the local market can handle. A farmer in the US will pay far more for the same seed than a farmer in India. Monsanto would rather make a tiny profit in the third world than none at all. Seed sourcing is far more about market share, than profit per pound.

As for the starving poor of the third world, GMO foods are, in fact, a huge benefit to them, and likely will be their only chance at avoiding wide-spread famine going into the future. Third world food production and starvation doesn't really have to do with a lack of sufficient finances. They can afford to produce the food, but they often lack the proper soils, amendments, irrigation, weather conditions, ability to produce enough variety of food to keep malnutrition at-bay, etc. to adequately do the job right. This is where GMO is particularly useful. Despite the fact that seed will have to sell for so much less per ton in the third world than in the West, the market for GMO is actually far stronger in the third world due to the existence of this far larger variety of "market demands" that GMO can address. Moreover, when the market demands are driven more by life-and-death rather than mere consumer appeal, any GMO solution for these kinds of endemic life-threatening problems is often a guaranteed monopoly on seed sales for that product for millions of customers. This makes GMO development for third world problems a win-win for both the third world people at risk of starvation, and the rotten greedy coin-counters at the big GMO developing seed sourcing firms.

[c172]

Really, my only serious worry about GMO's comes down to potential for infection. We're reducing the genetic diversity which, in turn, means that if one plant gets infected with a virus or a bacteria, more than likely the entire crop will quickly be infected. It has the potential to devistate entire crops and that's kinda scary. I mean, remember what happened to the Irish when they lost their potato crop?

Huitlacoche tacos, anyone?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_smut

[Creed of Heresy]

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/no-h...anic-food/

The article says all that needs to be said.

GMOs are not only perfectly fine, they're superior to previous methods of crop-growing. There is no reason to believe GMOs are harmful; they don't alter the nutrients provided, we don't absorb the altered DNA into our own, and anyone who is against them is a paranoid fool.

[The Grand Nudger]

A discerning paranoid fool, and if they have the money, more power to them.
(casually drops brochure)