California Propositions 2012

[hey]

That would be incredibly stupid, considering GMOs can be organic.

[Ksandra]

That would be incredibly stupid, considering GMOs can be organic.

I am not scientifically knowledgeable enough about this, but I don't think those that want organic foods would say the same. Can you give some detail that's not going to go over my head with moonspeak?

[hey]

Organic farming is where you don't use synthetic pesticides, hormones, or other such methods to grow crops or animals. It has nothing to do with what you grow, and is only concerned with how you grow it.

Then again, it's also been shown that there's no significant benefit to organic foods either.

[Ksandra]

I would say GMO falls extremely close to that bubble, considering their fucking with the DNA. I don't think people would flip if it did get included.

[Blubbartron]

Labeling foods as GMO will only cause people to avoid those foods. It's not like labeling something as kosher which will cause jews to buy it, and no one else gives a shit. Basically, people are afraid of progress, and want progress labeled so they don't have to support it. That's bad for everybody. If I could genetically engineer a pig to be made of a higher percentage of bacon, you bet your fucking ass I'd do it. Engineering crops to grow bigger, faster, or pest resistant isn't doing anything harmful to humans, and the FDA has pretty strict testing to ensure it's safe for human consumption.

[zoobernut]

Organic farming is where you don't use synthetic pesticides, hormones, or other such methods to grow crops or animals. It has nothing to do with what you grow, and is only concerned with how you grow it.

Then again, it's also been shown that there's no significant benefit to organic foods either.

Care to elaborate? How is avoiding dangerous pesticides and other chemicals used in farming and processing food have no significant benefit?

Edit:

Labeling foods as GMO will only cause people to avoid those foods. It's not like labeling something as kosher which will cause jews to buy it, and no one else gives a shit. Basically, people are afraid of progress, and want progress labeled so they don't have to support it. That's bad for everybody. If I could genetically engineer a pig to be made of a higher percentage of bacon, you bet your fucking ass I'd do it. Engineering crops to grow bigger, faster, or pest resistant isn't doing anything harmful to humans, and the FDA has pretty strict testing to ensure it's safe for human consumption.

What lol.... of course people have a right to know information that will aid them in avoiding consuming shit they don't want to. Yeah the FDA totally has a 100% perfect track record of only approving things safe for humans and has never gone back on a ruling to make something illegal or need to be labeled after they had approved it. (Hello Phen Phen)

[Blubbartron]

What lol.... of course people have a right to know information that will aid them in avoiding consuming shit they don't want to. Yeah the FDA totally has a 100% perfect track record of only approving things safe for humans and has never gone back on a ruling to make something illegal or need to be labeled after they had approved it. (Hello Phen Phen)

If there was any evidence whatsoever that genetically engineered foods were even remotely harmful to humans, I would agree with you 100%, but there isn't. The only reason people want it labeled is to avoid it, and the only reason they want to avoid it is for bullshit paranoia and ignorance. Fuck them. They don't have a right to screw with science just because they enjoy their dark ages. This is just as retarded as "teach the controversy!"

[hey]

I would say GMO falls extremely close to that bubble

That is not true, at all.

Care to elaborate? How is avoiding dangerous pesticides and other chemicals used in farming and processing food have no significant benefit?

Because they aren't dangerous in the quantities that make it to your table. Also, you're not really avoiding them anyway.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/249848.php
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/201...lthier-for-you
http://www.thewellnesschick.net/2012...ot-better.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...-nutrition-fsa
http://www.independent.co.uk/environ...rd-818585.html

Lots of info out there if you look for it.

[Tweek]

I love the episode of "bullshit" about organic

[zoobernut]

If there was any evidence whatsoever that genetically engineered foods were even remotely harmful to humans, I would agree with you 100%, but there isn't. The only reason people want it labeled is to avoid it, and the only reason they want to avoid it is for bullshit paranoia and ignorance. Fuck them. They don't have a right to screw with science just because they enjoy their dark ages. This is just as retarded as "teach the controversy!"

It really is a moot point though. Just because people want to choose what they eat doesn't mean they are paranoid or ignorant they can choose to not want to eat something for whatever reason they fucking want. The fact remains that people have a right to choose and for every other kind of food additive or method of production food is labeled and they do have a choice. GMO's should not be treated any differently than anything else.

What if a vegan doesn't want to eat GMO corn because it has fish DNA in it? What if a Jewish person doesn't want to eat a vegetable with pig DNA in it? Who fucking cares it is their right to choose to not eat those things. It doesn't matter if their reasoning seems retarded to you personally. Your argument really doesn't make any sense at all. Go ahead and eat whatever companies tell you to eat. Enjoy your cancer when they lobbied and pushed to have some new chemical food additive legalized without thorough testing and they find out it has long term effects 10 or 20 years later. I don't understand how you think the FDA is so infallible with their testing methods when they have been so wrong so many times in the past. Legalizing and releasing food additives or drugs that once released in large numbers were realized to have serious side effects that were not foreseen. We are not talking about making GMO's illegal we are talking about labeling foods that use them so people can make a choice. WTF is wrong with you that you don't think people deserve to have a choice. Choosing not to eat GMO's doesn't hurt anyone or cause any health issues, it doesn't endanger anyone or the environment or anything else. There is no reason why people shouldn't be able to choose to not eat something they don't want to eat. Each persons reasoning for not wanting to eat that is completely irrelevant.

[Ksandra]

I don't want to eat food harvested by mexicans. They need to label it.

[Plow]

What are food companies so afraid of to label GMO foods?

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's probably because utter morons will go ranting about corn with fish dna and veggies with pig dna trying to demonize safe scientific advancement.

And, of course, the other fucktards that will see "contains GMO" and think "OMG CORN WITH FISH DNA" and refuse to buy it having absolutely no clue whatsoever what the fuck it's talking about.


Just a guess.

I don't want to eat food harvested by mexicans. They need to label it.

gonna have to move out of the U.S. on that one

and avoid any and all american fruits/vegetables wherever you decide to go

[Plow]

And no, I'm not telling you Andy Dick and Terri Schiavo are stalking you.


But they might be

[hey]

What if a vegan doesn't want to eat GMO corn because it has fish DNA in it? What if a Jewish person doesn't want to eat a vegetable with pig DNA in it? Who fucking cares it is their right to choose to not eat those things. It doesn't matter if their reasoning seems retarded to you personally. Your argument really doesn't make any sense at all. Go ahead and eat whatever companies tell you to eat. Enjoy your cancer when they lobbied and pushed to have some new chemical food additive legalized without thorough testing and they find out it has long term effects 10 or 20 years later. I don't understand how you think the FDA is so infallible with their testing methods when they have been so wrong so many times in the past. Legalizing and releasing food additives or drugs that once released in large numbers were realized to have serious side effects that were not foreseen. We are not talking about making GMO's illegal we are talking about labeling foods that use them so people can make a choice. WTF is wrong with you that you don't think people deserve to have a choice. Choosing not to eat GMO's doesn't hurt anyone or cause any health issues, it doesn't endanger anyone or the environment or anything else. There is no reason why people shouldn't be able to choose to not eat something they don't want to eat. Each persons reasoning for not wanting to eat that is completely irrelevant.

Please don't ever talk about this subject again. You clearly have no fucking idea what you're talking about. They aren't adding fish dna to corn. Genetic engineering is really not even much different from artificial selection anyway, which has been going strong for pretty much the entire history of ever. It's just more direct, and much more effective. You can breed 2 of x together to get a desired gene or you can modify the gene directly to get the desired gene; either way, the result is exactly the same, the method doesn't matter at all. This is also not a food additive; nothing is added to the food. It simply comes from a source that is slightly different than what most others of that species are (or perhaps a new species entirely).

The idea that GMOs as a category can possibly be dangerous shows an incredible ignorance of what they even are.

[Blubbartron]

Please don't ever talk about this subject again. You clearly have no fucking idea what you're talking about. They aren't adding fish dna to corn. Genetic engineering is really not even much different from artificial selection anyway, which has been going strong for pretty much the entire history of ever. It's just more direct, and much more effective. You can breed 2 of x together to get a desired gene or you can modify the gene directly to get the desired gene; either way, the result is exactly the same, the method doesn't matter at all. This is also not a food additive; nothing is added to the food. It simply comes from a source that is slightly different than what most others of that species are (or perhaps a new species entirely).

The idea that GMOs as a category can possibly be dangerous shows an incredible ignorance of what they even are.

Technically speaking they do some weird shit using vector DNA or something (it's been a while since I bothered reading about it to determine if anti-GMO people were retarded), so it's not quite equivalent to selective breeding. Some of the DNA used to inject the new gene apparently hangs around, but it's supposed to be inert or something. Regardless, the idea that people would care about the "kind" of DNA that was added to a food is so hilariously stupid I don't know how you managed to reply to his asinine rant. That motherfucker doesn't even realize that *all* life shares an obscenely high percentage of DNA in common (I wanna say in the 70's, but I'm not sure).

[kuronosan]

It's done using vector transmission. Bacteria have the ability to de-evolve to a previous state, or gene switch, which fumbles the DNA. It's a widely held belief that depending on the species used to duplicate the strands some of the bad DNA could get duplicated and subsequently integrated into the plant DNA as it grows. This may not be bad for genes that control things like serra or size but it could be real bad if it starts producing toxins.

Edit: I also want to add that the chances of this happening are fairly low.

[zoobernut]

Please don't ever talk about this subject again. You clearly have no fucking idea what you're talking about. They aren't adding fish dna to corn. Genetic engineering is really not even much different from artificial selection anyway, which has been going strong for pretty much the entire history of ever. It's just more direct, and much more effective. You can breed 2 of x together to get a desired gene or you can modify the gene directly to get the desired gene; either way, the result is exactly the same, the method doesn't matter at all. This is also not a food additive; nothing is added to the food. It simply comes from a source that is slightly different than what most others of that species are (or perhaps a new species entirely).

The idea that GMOs as a category can possibly be dangerous shows an incredible ignorance of what they even are.

Please don't talk about this subject anymore you clearly have no idea what you are talking about. Wow that felt good even if it was an unnecessary personal attack. It is a little sad that you resort to saying that while in the same post say something as ignorant as you did. There is a huge difference between selective breeding and GMO foods. They use bacteria to splice genes into plants from other plants and organisms to achieve certain traits. Using this method they have spliced in genes from insects into plants which makes the plants more cold resistant by producing an antifreeze chemical like the insects do. That is just one example. Even at its most basic level they splice genes from one plant species into another plant species that is far different from cross breeding and selective breeding. They are mixing plant genes from two completely incompatible plants together.

Edit: I realize that all life shares DNA Blubber but either you didn't really comprehend what I wrote or I wrote it in a way that did not convey my idea well that you don't even realize that I wasn't making that argument and I wasn't saying that I believe that. I couldn't care less if corn has fish genes in it but someone else might for whatever their personal retarded reasons are but I do believe that even if their reasoning is stupid in my mind they still have a right to know. I also think kosher food is fucking retarded but that doesn't mean that those people deserve to have their kosher food to make them happy.

A couple more non-food related extreme examples are glow in the dark plants and differently colored plants.

[hey]

There is a huge difference between selective breeding and GMO foods. They use bacteria to splice genes into plants from other plants and organisms to achieve certain traits. Using this method they have spliced in genes from insects into plants which makes the plants more cold resistant by producing an antifreeze chemical like the insects do. That is just one example. Even at its most basic level they splice genes from one plant species into another plant species that is far different from cross breeding and selective breeding. They are mixing plant genes from two completely incompatible plants together.

Not that huge. I mean, sure, it's a bit different, but they still have exactly the same goal, one is just much more effective, and faster.

[zoobernut]

Not that huge. I mean, sure, it's a bit different, but they still have exactly the same goal, one is just much more effective, and faster.

Now you are just arguing semantics. I will take that to mean that you now understand that gene splicing and selective breeding are indeed different.

[hey]

Now you are just arguing semantics. I will take that to mean that you now understand that gene splicing and selective breeding are indeed different.

Yes, i have always understood that. The argument was about how different they are to begin with.