This is the same "reasoning" that ultimately led to ban on most GMO foods like actual long-term tasty tomatos.
For some reason we demand significantly stricter controls over anything "lab-grown" than on anything "natural".
Note: I'm not calling for lax controls. I'm callling for controls that are not more stringent than those on "natural" products.
Because honestly there's literally nothing natural about any food we consumr.
Most of the hybrids you're consuming are nowhere to be found in nature. But since they are "natural" somehow they are absolved of most sins. And then boom and E. coli outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Germany_E._coli_O104:H4_o... or listeriosis outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_States_listeriosis...
> The real concern with GMOs is not about something like a genetic collapse but the fact that the technology is only really capable of enabling the use of more exotic pesticides and herbicides in food stocks.
That is not nearly the main concern. If anything, GMOs would allow us to forego most exotic pesticides and herbicides.
> I really don’t see the need to engage in a widespread experiment on pesticide use when targeted smaller scale studies would suffice.
What I "love" about discussions like this is that they immediately veer off territory that is only tenuously adjacent, at best.
As for GMO’s letting us forgo pesticides? When is that going to happen? Currently that is their main application in ag (synth bio for chemical precursors is more interesting but totally different). The more fanciful dreams of geneticists have not yielded a panacea of new options.
And this is a purely political issue over agricultural policy. Farm subsidies are directly related to this discussion. If it were just a science project it would not concern me in the slightest. The fact that there are a large number of unwitting subjects has clear ethical implications and pretending that this is not a political issue is just obtuse.
Of course it doesn't. There's a reason I picked corn specifically. Because it's such a mutant, scientists still struggle to unravel all the mixed stff that eneded up there.
And, of course, none of the stuff you eat would ever evolve naturally in nature.
> As for GMO’s letting us forgo pesticides? When is that going to happen?
I didn't said forego entirely.
Some studies suggest that even with the very few crops that are allowed to be modified, farmers already use less pesticides: https://allianceforscience.org/blog/2020/07/new-study-gmo-cr...
Long-term tasty tomatos are a good thing but what about impossibility to breed my own tomato seeds if GMO will win 100% of the market?
That is a great question and a very valid concern.
Because there are two things at odds with each other:
- We don't really want GMO plants (or even animals and fish) to interbreed with non-GMP plants/animals because wide-spread effects on the ecosystem could be disastrous. We've lived through a few of those with natural plants and animals as invasive species, and boy do we not want a pest-and-herbicide-resistant strain of tomatoes to take over the planet [1]
- And yet we do want to let people (both hobbyists and farmers) to raise their own plants and animals. At the very least to preserve local varieties.
I don't have a good solution for that. I think what may work if implemented correctly is for governments to maintain a stock of non-GMO seeds or even mandate that X% of the market must be given over to non-GMO products.
[1] We already have the giant hogweed to deal with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracleum_mantegazzianum. Imagine that but even more resistant to everything * shudder *
1. Any invasive specie known today is about transporting an organism, evolutionally willing to live from one place to another. GMO organism aren't evolutionally willing to live, they just genetically willing to give us better tomatoes.
2. Absence of non-GMO is not a problem at all if I still have an access to bleeding-edge reproductionable seeds as it happens today. The problem is in patent system, what if the cost of bleeding-edge seeds will be costing so much that small farmers with expensive and not yummy non-GMO will be out of market? Have you seen any vegetable before selection? Nobody needs the corn with few grains while we use to have a corn with few hundrends of grains. Even the most green-headed crackpot on the planet will not grow that in 21th century.
3. I do not believe that all plants harvested from GMO are _really_ sterile. Since they use to have a reproductive system so all kinds of mutations are possible if something with CRISPR/Cas9 goes wrong. And there are some experiments with attempt to spread some modified genes to something like all the malary mosquitoes [1] . There are some GMO even among humans, and that humans are not sterile [2]
Evolution doesn't have a concept of will. It does have the concept of survival. Survival of the fittest (yes, I know it's a simplification).
Nearly every species is invasive given lack of external controls. For example, Sweden needs to kill 100 000 (yes, one hundred thousand) of moose every year because their natural predator, the wolf, has been exterminated, and moose have become invasive.
If your pest-resistant, herbicide-resistant tomato that is also more adaptable to varying soil conditions is able to reproduce and hybridize, it will "willingly" take over any local plants not because it has the "will", but because it has the capacity.
It will just as "willingly" take over, say, wheat, if the field is contaminated with its seeds.
We use herbicides in our fields not because our plants have "no will to live", but because other plants will just take over given half the chance.
> I do not believe that all plants harvested from GMO are _really_ sterile. Since they use to have a reproductive system so all kinds of mutations are possible if something with CRISPR/Cas9 goes wrong
All GMO products (both plants and animals) are required to be sterile because impact on ecosystem is very hard to estimate if they aren't. And yes, it's not 100% fool-proof, and quite a concern
You are writing correct things but the experience which is in my hands tells me that you are not right about properties of invasive specie vs properties of typical crop.
I think any market segment without at least 10 comparably sized companies AND the option to just not transact with ANY of them is not competitive and will not benefit from any "free market" supposed benefits.
We could argue whether it's too long, but it's a complex topic I don't know nearly enough.
It's the same reason we worry about (artificial) nuclear weapons - despite "natural" reactors also existing.
The reason is simple. We haven't co-evolved with lab-grown food for several billion years, or had transmitted cultural experience with it for tens of thousands of years. The recent discovery that artificial sweeteners have unforeseen health effects (hyper-clotting / glucose intolerance) should point out the necessity of caution.
The human organism has been in a very complex dance with its environment for millennia. We have no idea what subtle chemical traces it is grown to depend upon. We pay for our arrogance and never seem to learn.
Trust me, you haven't co-evolved with a single plant you pick up at the supermarket today.
None of the hybrids you eat evolved naturally.
Because we overall know the natural products, how they are to handle and how they interact with each other. And yet we still have many problems from poor handling and still unknown interactions and also new "optimizations" coming from the business-side. And GMO&lab-grown is this, just worst, it's unknown territory, coming from a mindset which quite often has not the benefit of consumers and mankind on its focus. Basically, we have learned to not trust big business, and these are cases where they can shine with all their evil ignorance, so many trust them even less than normally.
In the ongoing debate surrounding breast milk and baby formula, the majority continues to favor breast milk as the optimal choice for infant nutrition.
Ultra processed foods are clearly garbage. There is no nuance to this. There is no need for a deep study needed on unclear aspects of nutrition. They are plainly bad nutrition wise.
Breast milk is not an active debate. It’s not determined by “the majority” either. It is pretty clear that breast milk is better for a baby developmentally.
None of this actually supports your earlier assertion that lab grown food would have fundamentally different nutrition rules than other foods.
Due to antagonistic pleiotropy and short term reproductive selection you could even argue that novel foods have an advantage over the foods we've "adapted to" since our bodies never learned to make short term trade-offs with those foods.
Those skeptics should also be skeptical of the naturalistic fallacy.
The difference is we are feeding them grass seeds vs grass leaves.
Basically all foods are cells so they contain all the normal cellular machinery like DNA. As long as lab grown meat is just normal animal cells nothing new is going on.
Where you need to care about each individual molecule is if we where creating food one molecule at a time via a replicator or something so we could have wildly unusual ratios of these individual components. In that context sugar is actually less “natural” than lab grown meat because it’s so concentrated.
Modern nutritional ingredients no longer contain only natural substances, and most additives are untested.
"The European Commission is banning titanium dioxide (E171) as a food additive in the EU, starting with a six-month phasing out period as of February 7, 2022, until August 7, 2022, after which a full ban applies. Following the publication of Commission Regulation (EU) 2022/63 in the EU’s Official Journal (OJ) on January 18, 2022, Annex II and III to Regulation (EC) No 1333/2008 on food additives will be amended accordingly. The Regulation also includes a commitment to review the necessity to maintain or delete titanium dioxide (E171) from the EU list of food additives for exclusive use as a color in medicinal products. On November 30, 2021, the Commission had already published Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2021/2090 in the OJ, denying the authorization of titanium dioxide (E171) as a feed additive for all animal species."
https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/european-union-titanium-dioxid...
in 2000, E171 was considered safe, but now it is not. Generally, it can be concluded that the half-life of food additives' safety is quite short.
"Although the evidence for general toxic effects was not conclusive, on the basis of the new data and strengthened methods we could not rule out a concern for genotoxicity and consequently we could not establish a safe level for daily intake of the food additive."
So EU took the "better safe than sorry" approach which actually is sensible.
Just because a little dirt ends up on an apple doesn’t make that dirt food, it’s a contaminant. Similarly people have been adding preservatives, poison, dyes, pesticides, etc to food for ages that doesn’t make that stuff food.
I would be very concerned about the artificial meats growth medium ending up in the end product.
75% of people in the US are overweight or obese, do you really believe that we are doing a good job with what we are putting in our bodies?
Now, I am not saying nutrition is ignorable you need to do more than say it was alive and now it’s in my tummy so everything is fine. However, you can pick a safe organism, stick it in a growth medium, let it sit for a while, and then eat it. That’s how we get cheese, beer, bread, soy sauce etc.
Calling it lab grown meat evokes an image that’s different from what’s being proposed. They aren’t synthesizing every individual molecule they are simply feeding cells.
That's a very simplified and misleading stance. We already have problem with normal grown foods for various reasons, including unexpected and harmful outcomes of breeding. Food is complex, and handling of food is even more complex. And research is limited in what it can find, and if there are financial interests, it will limit itself even more in what it communicates.
We managed to fuck this up without going that far for vegetables and there's no considering additives or lab grown differences there. It's definitely all cells and dna.
https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment-and-conserv...
Yeast requires a huge range of chemicals to grow, but we mostly ignore all the details when we mix flower, water, and starter because flower is already a really complicated thing.
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I am scared of living in a society that doesn't find it obvious that things perfected by nature over millions of years are scientifically speaking, safer than things made by some "scientists" in a lab.
Statistically, the "large n" of nature makes it > scientific.
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This is the "natural corn" you consume vs. the actual natural corn: https://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/670657
Same goes for all "natural things" you eat.
"Our analysis makes clear that the PP is essential for a limited set of contexts and can be used to justify only a limited set of actions. We discuss the implications for nuclear energy and GMOs. GMOs represent a public risk of global harm, while harm from nuclear energy is comparatively limited and better characterized. PP should be used to prescribe severe limits on GMOs."
Also, I can't get past random graphs with random numbers with zero explanation of the axes.
There are valid concerns expressed, but they are buried underneath an avalanche of demagoguery.
> it's important to ensure that lab-grown meat adequately replicates the complex array of nutrients and other beneficial compounds found in conventionally produced meat
Why?
We need to fully understand its safety, nutritional content, and long-term health effects.
Our understanding of the full biochemical spectrum of our diets is still limited. Therefore, it's important to ensure that lab-grown meat adequately replicates the complex array of nutrients and other beneficial compounds found in conventionally produced meat.
Long-term effects: Since lab-grown meat is a relatively new technology, the long-term health effects of consuming it are not yet known. Rigorous safety testing and research are needed to establish its safety over time.
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Modern nutrition is largely unexplored territory
"The unmapped chemical complexity of our diet" December 2019 Nature Food
DOI:10.1038/s43016-019-0005-1
"Our understanding of how diet affects health is limited to 150 key nutritional components that are tracked and catalogued by the United States Department of Agriculture and other national databases. Although this knowledge has been transformative for health sciences, helping unveil the role of calories, sugar, fat, vitamins and other nutritional factors in the emergence of common diseases, these nutritional components represent only a small fraction of the more than 26,000 distinct, definable biochemicals present in our food—many of which have documented effects on health but remain unquantified in any systematic fashion across different individual foods. Using new advances such as machine learning, a high-resolution library of these biochemicals could enable the systematic study of the full biochemical spectrum of our diets, opening new avenues for understanding the composition of what we eat, and how it affects health and disease."
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337846288_The_unmap...