In general, GM is just another tool for the organism designer. It gives the designer more flexibility and speed than traditional techniques, but whether its use is safe or dangerous, good or evil is not a science question. It's a business question.

This is why I have no inherent objection to GM, but I do want such foods labeled so that I can avoid such foods from companies whose balancing between their business needs and my health and nutrition needs I do not trust with the increased power that GM gives them.

That only makes sense if we label foods with every step of their production and the labels would become large documents. There is nothing special about GM which warrants a special label.

GM is probably much safer than mutation via massive radiation - but nobody is asking to label that.

Why is "whether its use is safe or dangerous" not a science question?

I think GP's view is this: science is about expanding the space of possible choices. Business is about making the choices. "Safe" and "dangerous" are adjectives referring to concrete choices in context of their application, therefore a business question.

I believe this view is correct, and I share it, but with a caveat that labels are flexible and context-dependent. People believing GM is itself dangerous and bad are just victims of ideology. But other people saying GM is dangerous actually mean concrete instances of applying GM methods - i.e. they're really criticizing a bunch of business decisions, but doing it in an ambiguous way. Therefore, for the cases where you actually care about other person's opinions, it's worth to dig deeper into what they actually mean and why.

This raises an important issue. The megadeath weed killer that you are likely referring to is in most cases round-up, also called glyphosate. Glyphosate is considerably less toxic [0] than other pesticides used in the past, such as paraquat. In general, I agree with your statement, but I believe that it needs some fleshing out Food Evolution [1] touches on the topic of pesticide use and relative safety issues. I find the idea of BT crops more compelling than round-up ready crops as well, however my reasoning here is more on a feel good basis and the desire to avoid breeding resistance. The topic of resistance I have not fully explored and am not sure where the field stands on since it rather distant from my expertise.

[0] https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/does-glyphosat... (popsci with links) [1] https://www.foodevolutionmovie.com/

Another understated problem is the intellectual property issue. Saving seeds is usually prohibited (and those seeds might not be viable anyway), farmers have been successfully sued.

More and more staple crops are being hybridized (hyrbids whose offspring are sterile/nonviable), we're losing biodiversity in our crops, and large corporations are providing 'seeds as service' instead of agriculture being self sustaining.

That's more an issue with Monsanto though than GMO's as a concept. It's like being against fairytale cartoons because Disney occupies most of the market and is shitty with their copyright.

This. It also lets other hugely abusive agrocompanies off the hook because people fixate on Monsanto.

No, it's not an issue with any one particular company. If there are patent protections on genomes (such as seeds) whether GMO or otherwise, that is unethical IMO.

This is a perfect example of the original article's conclusion: you simply don't know what you're talking about.

You might be vaguely aware of hybrid vigor, which is of crucial importance for many crops, especially cereal crops, and is a major part of the 'green revolution'. Hybrid crops have driven much of the yield increases we've seen over the past several decades. This is due to a very specific phenomenon called heterosis, and is still fairly poorly understood but is known to be mediated by epigenetic mechanisms. That is, it's not a magic combination of traits or more heterozygous loci, but a genome-wide phenomenon that affects gene expression in ways that are generally favorable to growth.

But! You're confusing this with sterile or semi-sterile inter-species hybrids like mules, or perhaps sterile triploids like banana. These are completely different phenomena that have nothing to do with 'hybrid corn'.

Corn of all kinds that see significant cultivation is perfectly fertile, Monsanto products included. What you don't get is any hybrid vigor in the F2 generation, only the F1. There's nothing about the IP or companies that make this the case, it's fucking biology. You can seed-save all you like, you won't run a farm like that because you won't make any money. Even if you aren't using transgenes (i.e. 'GMOs'), you'll still use seed made from directed crosses from parental lines known to produce hybrid vigor when crossed. Seed saving ended because of this, not some loony conspiracy about 'evil' seed companies.

One confounder: Terminator seed. This is a technology that does make F1 seed sterile. Oddly enough, this was done for reasons of environmental responsibility; if you make your transgene products terminate, the transgenes can't spread into the environment. Unfortunately this technology was never commercialized because of reactionaries like yourself.

As for genetic diversity, your impression has no basis in reality. Breeders have only become more zealous about gathering wild accessions to use in breeding programs, namely for disease resistance traits. These programs would be wildly more effective if, instead of back-crossing for many generations over many years, you could simply pop in the relevant loci in a transgene. But that's another foolish pipe dream due to the reactionaries.

Final point; you're aware traditional crops have just as much IP protection as transgene crops, right? Plant variety protections last in the 15-20 year range, are respected by most international treaties, and are ubiquitous in crop breeding, ornamental flower breeding, etc. Utility patents provide slightly different protections for transgene crops, but it's not much different. Those trendy apples or 'Sunshine raspberries' at the grocery store? 100% patented. Why is your trendy beer so expensive? Patented hops. It fucking boogles the mind that anyone thinks transgenes have a thing to do with this.

> What you don't get is any hybrid vigor in the F2 generation, only the F1. There's nothing about the IP or companies that make this the case, it's fucking biology.

While that's true, it also happens to be economically convenient for the companies producing hybrid seeds, because they get recurring sales. So there's a lot of incentive to focus on finding new combinations to hybridize, while neglecting research on other options. After all, there's no guarantee that "hybrid vigor" actually improves the metrics humans care about (such as yield), rather than causing some other traits (such as leaf size) to be expressed stronger. So hybridization is just a different way to generate variants for selective breeding and a lot of its popularity is just due to the built-in DRM.

> After all, there's no guarantee that "hybrid vigor" actually improves the metrics humans care about (such as yield), rather than causing some other traits (such as leaf size) to be expressed stronger.

I can assure you in strongest terms that, yes, hybrid vigor is unique in this regard. 'Solving' hybrid vigor in a way that you can capture the benefits in a stable inbred is a multi-billion dollar innovation.

The most innovation in breeding is happening in maize. It's responsible for the most high-throughput sequencing, the most automated greenhouse metrology, the most funding in general (esp. in China). About 10-15 years ago any plant biologist was basically guaranteed funding if they put the words 'epigenetics' and 'heterosis' in their grants. Everyone figured that the recent understanding in DICER, the plant RNA Pols, DNA methylation and histone modifications, etc. would lead to a solid working model of heterosis.

It didn't happen.

Every conceivable growth and yield trait in maize has been analyzed. The qTLS have been found, the regulatory elements mapped, the chromatin environment understood, etc. It's very difficult to explain how well maize has been studied; in many ways the field is vastly ahead of any other model despite the absurd difficulty of doing genomics in such a repetitive and large genome.

The notion that leaf width/area hasn't been analyzed to death with regard to yield is laughable. Sidenote: the plant breeders have been wiping the floor with animal breeders because they naturally perform group selection in crop rows. Things like broad leaves are bad bad bad because they cost a lot and just end up shaded by their neighbors and higher leaves on the same plant. Animal breeders fail here and have been selecting for hyper-aggressive animals that fight and stress everything to all hell, much to their detriment.

The fact is that heterosis matters, and any high-performance inbred will be beat by even a moderate-performing hybrid by any reasonable metric.

Thanks for the details, but you're kind of being a dick.

> This is a perfect example of the original article's conclusion: you simply don't know what you're talking about.

I do know what I'm talking about. If you think you can talk a hybrid seed and plant a viable crop for the next year, you are mistaken.

> But! You're confusing this with sterile or semi-sterile inter-species hybrids like mules, or perhaps sterile triploids like banana. These are completely different phenomena that have nothing to do with 'hybrid corn'.

Have you ever purchased a seedless watermelon? How are you going to replant that?

> if you make your transgene products terminate, the transgenes can't spread into the environment. Unfortunately this technology was never commercialized because of reactionaries like yourself.

You use the term 'reactionary' obviously to denigrate me. Should there be genes that contaminate other's crops that would potentially lead to nonviable seeds? Of course not, that's got to be even worse for the planet.

> Final point; you're aware traditional crops have just as much IP protection as transgene crops, right? Plant variety protections last in the 15-20 year range, are respected by most international treaties, and are ubiquitous in crop breeding, ornamental flower breeding, etc. Utility patents provide slightly different protections for transgene crops, but it's not much different. Those trendy apples or 'Sunshine raspberries' at the grocery store? 100% patented. Why is your trendy beer so expensive? Patented hops. It fucking boogles the mind that anyone thinks transgenes have a thing to do with this.

Just because other aspects of agriculture fall under patent law doesn't take away from my argument against GMOs being patentable. In fact, GMOs are even worse a specific gene might be easily identified and used as a patent enforcement tool. Current law allows patent holders to come after end users. EG, if you receive seed from your supplier, and it was at some point (even unknowingly) contaminated with a specific gene through cross contamination, you could be held liable. Especially if you are a farmer and you are considered 'producing' and 'distributing' their patented works (such as selling seed stock or the actual produce).

You fail to see the other side of the issue because you are an apparent GMO zealot.

> Another understated problem is the intellectual property issue. Saving seeds is usually prohibited (and those seeds might not be viable anyway), farmers have been successfully sued.

Those lawsuits are heavily misunderstood.

Monsanto was not suing farmers for saving seeds from their own crops and planting. They were suing for farmers selling the seeds from their crops grown from Monsanto seeds. It's like agricultural version of software piracy.

What you're saying is entirely untrue [1]

1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/farmers-use-of-genet...

What he is saying is not that far off. When Monsanto sells those seeds, they include a contractual obligation not to resell the offspring seeds for planting. Whatever you feel about the validity of this contract, that's the current state of affairs. Monsanto also has patents on those seeds of the classical variety. That is, irrespective of their being genetically engineered.

The work around was to sell those seeds as animal feed, purchase the feed in bulk, which is a mixture of seeds and then spray a large amount of herbicide on the crop until only the Monsanto seeds are left effectively creating copies. The offspring seeds of that crop are then sold as feed and the process is repeated.

Monsanto argues that this is in effect making illegal copies of their patented seed even though the letter of the contract was not violated and that the feed sellers were infringing on their patents by selling the seed to be reused in plantings. It says all of this in the article you linked as well.

That does not refute what I claimed, even in the loosest of interpretations.

Could you explain why you feel that genetically modifying crops to be pesticide resistant is a problem?

I'm not going to comment on the article for reasons, but one issue is that it encourages heavier use of pesticides which then do things like mix with nitrogen runoff and have major macro-effects on the ecosystem, but many of these residual, long term side effects are downplayed by the industry because the players have interest in selling not just the gmo but the fertilizers and pesticides.

Source; worked at a bigag company doing gmo and selling fertilizer and pesticides and later worked at a genetics company. I quit the bigag company the minute I realized they were essentially a Monsanto front.

I think dang and hn should watch threads on this subject carefully, it's one of the most astroturfed subjects on the Internet, and it saddens me how many people here immediately agree with such easily identified strawman arguments.

(see poster conflating racists and creationists with conspiracy theorists and by association anyone who dislikes GMOs)

"If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is."

- John von Neumann

Because humans haven't been engineered to be pesticide resistant. I don't think we should increase our intake of pesticides.

Excellent point - a disclosure of the why of GMO would be really useful. Agreed re: weedkiller.

Why is that a problem?

That's the big lie about GMO. I always heard that they would use less(!) pesticides because the plant was more resistant but when you look at Roundup it's exactly the opposite.

An even bigger lie is "we need them to feed the poor" -- when it's merely to control IP and increase profit margins.

Um. No one would farm GM plants if the returns on cost weren't there. Clearly, for the farmer, and therefore the consumer, they are net less expensive, even with that fat profit margin for Roundup. So-called organic farming is more expensive and it shows in consumer prices. The people who are impacted most by higher grocery store prices are the poor.

It's easy to do, just follow the Walmart (or other large corporation) business model: Maintain artificially low prices long enough to destroy the rest of the local market, create captive customers, raise prices.

In the case of a seed supply company, this could be done either via buying up competing farms and selling the end product for much less than your competitors; alternatively, supplying your seeds so cheaply that farmers would be stupid to use the alternative. Once the traditional seed supplies are gone, enjoy your monopoly.

The process you've just described is illegal in general:

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...

Walmart's case is complicated.

They don't account for the pollution Roundup causes.

That's sort of a handwavy dismissal ins't it? What exactly is the pollution Roundup causes and is it worse than, say, petroleum based mulch, potassium chloride, and copper sulfate?

Yeah. I don't have any real numbers on pollution metrics either way, but it is a fact that so-called organic farming requires more land than traditional ag to produce the same output, and thus more tractor fuel burned per food, a direct source of pollution. As far as I know, (atmospheric) pollution isn't a slam dunk argument against roundup.

There are quite a few studies claiming that glyphosate is toxic. I bet this will turn out like cigarettes. Companies will fight to death until the evidence is absolutely overwhelming.