The Non-GMO Project is a lie. The whole anti-GMO movement is a luddite scheme co-opted as a marketing ploy for the so-called "natural" foods industry.
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2017/12/23/non-gmo-is-a-marketing-scam-nothing-more/ https://octodon.social/media/35jQB6U-d_L0_9s0Y7E
@pzmyers I happen to be reading Silent Spring at the moment, which admittedly isn't about GMOs, but is the same genus of environmental concerns.
It's unfortunate because I do think GMOs should be studied, regulated, etc. But it's gone over into anti-science craziness.
When I lived in Vermont and heard this talk about GMOs being universally bad, I had to discover that I didn't agree with the left on 100% of things after all (merely 99.9999% of things).
@pzmyers I have been saying this for years, and it’s like screaming at a wall. You can see folks eyes glaze over as they nod patiently. Like, I’m the one who worked 7 years in a non-corporate greenhouse, and I have a bio degree, but please, tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Tl:Dr; Thank you for this
The alternative is Monsanto and why should anyone trust them? The problem is Big AG. I agree with natural foods opportunistic aspect but big ag can ostensibly be blamed for a lot of what is wrong with the US right now. Michael Pollan is someone I trust on the subject and he is not anti-science.
http://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/vote-for-the-dinner-party/
There needs to be a third choice of being in favor of continuing to work on GMO but also putting the smack down on big AG.
@pzmyers Non-GMO is such a misnomer that I don't know where to start. But you know that already. 😁
@pzmyers Eh, I mean, I think you're about 80% right. There's no proven health risks from GMOs, and no serious reason to expect there to be. And the certification is scammy, and there are the same IP issues with hybrid seeds. 1/?
@pzmyers
But! GMO technology is something that could be used for reasonable purposes in a better society than ours. Under capitalism, it is used to benefit capitalists, not customers, or society in general. It's used to make things like Round-Up-Ready crops (capital-intensive and maybe environmentally harmful), or BT corn (harmful to wild, harmless lepidopterans).
So, it's a "neutral" technology, but technology under capitalism is never neutral. 2/2
@gcupc I agree with that. In general we need a deeper understanding of the changes people make to the world than "will it make me money?"
@Laurelai @pzmyers @gcupc related to this discussion: I am quite sick of people stubbornly not being open to discussing the potential positives of genetic engineering. Exhibit A: https://sustainability.stackexchange.com/questions/6271/is-there-a-sustainable-agriculture-certification-that-sees-gmos-as-potentially-b
@bstacey @jk @gcupc @pzmyers alternately:
GENE MODS #knuckletats
@pzmyers the whole GMO movement is a farce because the definition of GMO is so narrow and the differences are meaningless. Selective breeding and mutagenesis have been practised for centuries and are also genetic modification that can be good OR bad despite being excluded from the GMO definition.
It is the same as "organic" or "natural" products or herbal remedies. Some are wonderful and some are harmful just like the manufactured alternatives...
@pzmyers ...for example kava and comfrey are herbs that have side effects and interactions just as serious as any conventional drug, and the notion of an organic banana being somehow more "natural" is ridiculous.
The use of these marketing tools to inflate margins is not ethical...it guilts people out of their money and makes poorer people feel resigned to eating worse diets than they have to. Using food as a status symbol to enforce exclusivity is evil.
@pzmyers personally I seek out GMO-labeled products because my assumption is that they are making more efficient use of land and resources, with a more robust crop yield and less water and pesticide use.
@DrNathaniel @fluffy That is inaccurate. RoundUp-Ready crops could use smaller amounts of herbicide for more effective results -- they actually reduced the amount of herbicide used.
I understand, though, that herbicide use has been steadily rising since…as more resistance emerges in weeds?
@pzmyers my hometown supermarket at one point in the mid-2000s put up a sign in their produce section saying "GENE FREE ZONE"
@theoutrider @pzmyers they could sell sugar and baking soda there at least.
@pzmyers its so similar to the pernicious way the sugar industry paid for research that fingered fat as the patsy in the diet game, when they knew their own role in the growing diabetes epidemic. X http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2012/10/sugar-industry-lies-campaign/ This kind of campaign is straight from “Evil Foods PR Playbook”, so when I saw your post it was “oh, of course they are, sigh.”
@bob @maiyannah But…that's also the case with non-GMO seed! Corporate seed has been single-generation since the 1920s.
So if you object to the business models (rightly) doing so by complaining about GMOs is a colossal miss.
@maiyannah @bob Exactly. We've just found new ways to accelerate new crop production.
@craigmaloney @bob @pzmyers
There should be more distinction by the type of modification. Modifications for drought resistance are good, but modifications allowing for use of stronger pesticides are bad. However our whole agriculture system needs rethinking always. We can't go on sustainably by annually tilling soil and harvesting massive swaths of monoculture cropland instead of a mixup of no-till perennial crops instead. https://landinstitute.org/our-work/perennial-crops/
@thufir @craigmaloney @bob Perennials would be great. But what about modifications for using fewer herbicides, like round-up ready plants? The bad thing about those isn't the modification, but that the modification is tied to selling a specific herbicide.
@pzmyers @craigmaloney @bob
I've always thought that a good short-term goal from a pragmatic anarchist standpoint would be to fight against intellectual property specifically in areas which are crucial to survival of mankind and a continued struggle. (1/2)
@bob @craigmaloney @pzmyers
So trying to get IP laws loosened or removed in agriculture where it ultimately harms the planet and humanity itself and in technology where it often stifles the ability of activists to organize securely and independently. Genetic Modifications scare me as much as machine learning does in the hands of the wrong people (NSA, Facebook, Police) under the wrong licenses. Unfortunately technology, and the rights to it, has become intertwined with power politics.
@thufir @bob @craigmaloney This is also a net neutrality argument: food & information are essentials that the powers-that-be are trying lock up and control.
GMOs, food Show more
@pzmyers Technically, nothing is "non-GMO" because everything we grow/raise today has already been modified from what it was 100 years ago.
@pzmyers "Anti-GMO" is such a loaded concept, though. The corn we eat is a GMO. The cows we eat are GMOs. Breeding is a form of "genetic modification." All the modern version is doing is speeding up that process. The problem is, how do you brand stuff like "breeding plants that don't spawn seeds to lock farmers into dependency on Monsanto" in a snappy way that gets people's attention without hitting folks making rice more nutritious and mold-resistant?
@pzmyers I'm anti-GMO, but that's mainly because...well what's the main application for GMOs in crops? either modifying plants to produce pesticides (which makes pesticide usage harder to monitor) or to make crops herbicide resistance (thus increasing the use of herbicides).
@pzmyers that's not including the fact that it increases the possibility of one crop variant becoming dominating, thus meaning that one disease could seriously damage the food supply.
@pzmyers A bunch of the food I eat has claims like this on the label. I don't get it because it isn't GMO, it's often about all there is. What do.
@pzmyers Biological patents controlled by corporations are bad, open science (including genetic engineering) is good. The corporate PR machinery tends to conflate anti-science and anti-capitalist criticism, for obvious reasons.
I got involved in a chat/rant about GMOs a while back, before I jumped to this Mastodon instance.
I think that the way we tend to do (and sometimes think about) agriculture is all tied up in a very industrialized conception where humans are seen as somewhat divorced from the ecosystems of which they are actually an interdependent part.
The development of GMOs under this mental framework is very worrying
See some of my thinking here -
https://social.weho.st/@dazinism/99123221606319675
I'm curious to see if I get more pushback on this from the more liberal Mastodon community than I do from the more conservative birdsite.
But then maybe people here are just plain smarter & better informed.