h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In the UK we've been told that the consumer should be able to choose foods which do not contain genetic modifications, and various retailers have taken "principled" positions in avoiding GM ingredients. Recent stories in the media, however, suggest that this choice is becoming increasingly impossible.

GM soya beans are mixed with the non-GM article (and soya goes into an incredible variety of foods), and you have to wonder whether the UK supermarkets are really powerful enough to dictate their policy to US corporations.

GM crops are grown in the same areas as "normal" crops and cross-fertilisation is happening.

In Canada, some shops find that they can no longer guarantee the "GM-free" status of certain foods.

What do people feel - is this choice real or illusory?

If you don't want to eat GM foods, don't buy anything with an ingredient that is 'modified'. For instance, modified starch is in a lot of things, it's GM.
I was horrified to find that the soya milk powder I was prescribed for my son by a GP was modified. I stopped using it immediatly, and was disgusted that milk for babies was allowed this way. Even though they stopped using GM soya, I never went back to it.

But surely modified starch has been around a lot longer than Genetic Modification? I don't think modified starch necessarily means GM.

well, my mum told me that, but she probably got it out of the Daily Mail. Remember Dolly from Dinner Ladies? Well, that's my mum...

I've always been concenred about the cross pollenation. i do not want to eat GM foods and being Vegan means eating soya drinking soya which when all this came out was really scarry as we've been eating GM products for who knows how long?
i think mainly we only find out when its to late and people were concerned about cross pollenation years ago and they reasured us in the media that its not going to be a problem how i laughed.
i just try to buy from small retail companys but i can never be really sure. The same goes for the supermarket organic veg it looks to perfect to be real.
Forever paranoid about GM, organic, what the papers say and life in general.

Well, the goverments of the world are really lousy at stopping cross-pollenation. So much of the food you eat will be partly GM. All you can do is vote for better politicians, and not just the ones that say they will lower the tax.

Is it really contrary to the vegan position to consume any GM substance?

It may not matter in the short term - knee-jerk reactions do seem to have won us a short period for reflection - but I wonder whether people really know why they object to genetic modification.

It's quite clear that many people have little idea what the science and technology involve.

The reason why GM and regular soya is mixed is because growers in the US successfully persuaded their government that no distinction should be drawn between the two.

The problem supermarkets over here have is that even those that want to use GM-free soya can't check whether the stuff they're getting is or isn't made from GM soya plants because the stuff they get their hands on doesn't contain enough DNA for them to test it. Other supermarkets have argued that if there's no DNA in the foodstuff then it's not GM. This seems like a pretty self-serving interpretation, but I guess it depends on which bit of the GM process you don't like. Is there anyone who won't eat GM food but will eat food that has no genetic matter in it yet came from a GM plant?

That's an even bigger subject than I thought I was opening up. A plant that we eat is formed by its genes. Even after cooking its chemical structure results from those genes. But the genes may not themselves be present. And if one of those genes came from a fish we can't tell.

I would have thought that you should be able to test for the protiens coded for by the artificial portion of the plants genome, they should be there in larger quantities, or there should be protiens that are not present in non-GM plants....
BCNU - Crescent

GM crop growing endangers insects and animals habitats and causes their death. A Vegan is opposed to the suffering of animals and consuming products that come from animals. Taking this further and there is the whole imbalance of our food chain to take in to account.

I also acknowledge that to date there is a fine balance of supporting evidence from both parties.

I brought up the vegan issue really as the soya bean modification is the most known about and also that this aspect effected me personally.
If i was not vegan i would still like to have a choice in what i eat and where, what i eats come from.

I feel deeply that as humans we have a responsibility to be careful of how we use the developments of our technolegies and scientific descoveries.
i hope this has answered your question mund hope i didn't take up to much time on my soap box!!!

GM food doesn´t necessarily endanger animal habitats. There are probably safe ways of doing this, there´s just none of the companies using any.

I wasn't trying to belittle the vegan position. It's just an example of the broadening of the subject which might lead to a weakening of the arguments. So far I've heard of one study which suggests that one species is badly affected by a particular GM planting, and I agree we should avoid that, but there is little evidence that "GM is dangerous". Perhaps because nobody's looking for it.

Genetic modification isn't a single technique or a single technology.

Most famously, a gene from one species is inserted in the genetic code of another, often not a close relative. The team which produced ANDi the fluorescent rhesus monkey admitted that they just stirred in genetic material from a jellyfish and hoped that it would stick (we didn't hear how many of ANDi's potential brothers and sisters died of a screwed-up genome).

Many of the GM crops we see nowadays will probably be safe, if they breed true or can be replicated in some other way. But you need to test every one of them in each of the environments into which it would be released.

And then you have to see what happens when one GM crop cross-pollinates with another...

Q - How can you tell when a politician is lying to you?
A - You can see his lips move.

GM in crops is an insanely dangerous set of technologies because of the potential to affect the whole of the planet's ecology

GM is heavily sponsored by a large number of multi-national corporations - none of whom actually want to destroy the planet and most of whom beleive that they are working for the common good

The consumer has no power

The supermarkets have limited power

The government is a ship of fools

There is bugger all any of us can do about any of this at any level - personal or political

Sorry

a frightened and depressed pessimist called Ben

I have a strong suspicion that most of the furore about GM is pure knee-jerk, along the lines of 'It's new science / technology that we don't know anything about, People are changing crops in a way nature never intended. Therefore it's probably bad.' The only people that I can see having real problems with GM foods are the people who only want to eat organic. I know of no evidence that GM foods kill insects or destroy animal habitats - most of the modifications that I've heard of are for disease resistance, not insect resistance. A GM plant in a given habitat should not affect an animal / insect in any different way from a non-GM plant.

I guess the problem is that, like global warming, by the time we know for sure that there's a problem it will be too late. (Yes, there are still scientists - probably mostly working for big, polluting, corporations - who dispute that global warming exists. I feel that it's better to err on the side of caution and assume that it does and then try to do something about it!)

Diverting from the matter of personal choice (or lack of it) in supermarket food, think about people in Third World countries. Some of the modifications are potential life-savers for these people - crops that can grow and produce decent yields in adverse conditions. Should these people be forced to work with subsistence levels of crops, just because some of us aren't happy about eating GM foods? That's what some people are trying to do by stopping *all* GM crops. I personally think that's wrong.

There has been some study to suggest that the GM food we have now is damaging, because it has destabilized the DNA structure or something. But that is something that could probably be changed. But it´s the same problem as with cell-phones. There´s no evidence to suggest it´s dangerous, because nobody´s ever done any tests to find out.

The consumer has all the power. If you stop bying GM-products the companies that manufacture them will either stop making them or go bankrupt. So it´s your choice. But you also need better safety, so get some proper politicians.

The scientists that say global warming isn´t happening aren´t employed by any big CO2 spewing companies. They simply think it is because the places that measure the heat has become closer to the city. But to me everything seems to indicate that global warming is happening. However nothing seems to indicate it is manmade. Read the book The Manic Sun for more on this.

GM foods may not kill insects but they don't feed them, either being bred to resist them or to survive herbicides sprayed to control other plants (weeds/potential insect and bird food). And if cross pollination occurs it could lead to non food crop plants providing less insect food. Fewer insects - fewer birds, fewer animals, fewer pollinated wild plants - fewer animals, fewer birds, again.
There was a report a few weeks ago of a specific food plant of the USA's monarch butterfly caterpillar having been affected by a nearby GM crop with the result that the caterpillars died. Whether of poisoning or starvation I'm sorry I don't know.

I want to be able to choose whether to buy GM food or not. I depend on supermarket labelling to do this. Except when I can buy organic - maybe buying organic will be the only way to avoid GM.

Regarding third world countries and the benefit of GM to them I don't trust the business motivation of those carrying out the GM research. The plan to make the crops sterile so that farmers couldn't save seed from this year's crop for next year was illuminating. I believe they have dropped this idea after public protest , but that it was considered is telling.

To add to the confusion, the scientists don't agree among themselves. A study on T25 GM maize showing it to be safe to give to chickens was said by another set of scientists to be "fundamentally flawed". Another test on the same maize, on safety for human consumption, was pronounced "unrealistic". Who do you belive ?

The complaint about Thirld World countries not being allowed GM crops came from Third World farmers, not companies producing GM foods. The inhabitants of these countries *need* crops that produce good yields in adverse conditions, and pretty much the only way to get such crops quickly is genetic modification. The farmers in these countries are worried that the backlash against GM foods in developed countries will prevent them getting the kind of crops they need. They don't want disease / herbicide / insect resistant crops, just crops that will give a good yield. By all means, lobby against GM crops in developed countries where it's doubtful that they are needed (surely there are other ways of achieving the same end). But allow their use in other countries where they *are* needed.

That's a fair point. The issue is always labelled 'GM food' or 'GM crops' with no distinction made as to the purpose of the GM.

Even where it is for higher yield there could still be environmental side effects couldn't there? If cross pollination occurs a plant which was formerly a food plant could become 'inedible'?

There's no distinction based on purpose because it's not the purpose that is the issue with GM.

There just isn't enough knowledge about any genome at the moment to predict how GM plants will act in the wild. I've no objection to research being undertaken as long as it stays in the laboratory, but field trials strike me as incredibly risky things to be undertaking with the meagre knowledge geneticists have right now because there's no way to guarantee unwanted consequences, and you can't recall a plant the way you can a badly designed car.

Careless cross-breeding and the introduction of non-indigenous species have already had enormously adverse consequences: the attempts at cross-breeding killer bees to pacify them led to bees which were just as aggressive but can survive in more temperate climes, and Australia's ecosystem has suffered enormously thanks to introductions such as the rabbit. If this sort of thing can happen with species that are already well studied, imagine what can happen with brand new ones which have unprecedented traits.