Busting through the propaganda on both sides
Unless you've been living in a cave (or maybe even if you have), you've heard a lot of propaganda on both sides of the GMO debate. If you live on Maui, then you probably know there's an initiative coming up that would put a moratorium on growing GMO plants.My goal here is to educate you. Yes, my views are made clear, but whether you agree with me or not please base your decisions on facts, which I will do my best to present to you, and not on irrational fear or flawed logic. I'll start out by saying that I'm not a geneticist or an agricultural engineer, but I have a background in science (I worked for 8 years in the field of limnology, the study of water quality) and am strongly in favor of things that protect the environment and human health. I am not a shill for Monsanto and in fact I loathe their business practices.
If you've received the anti-initiative flyers in the mail, like any campaign flyer they are pretty much nonsense and reading them probably made you feel a bit nauseous. But make no mistake: The health food industry is a $35 Billion per year industry in the US alone. Don't think that they are a small local industry without resources for propaganda, they're just more skilled and subtle in their use of propaganda. The existence of propaganda, regardless of the skill of the propagandists, doesn't make them right or wrong.
Is the Initiative a Ban?
There has been a lot of discussion about whether or not the initiative is a "ban." The question I have is: who cares what label you put on it? But if for some reason you really do care whether or not it's a ban, the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a ban as "to prohibit especially by legal means." Well, this is a law prohibiting the cultivation of GMO crops, so at least by the dictionary definition then yes, it's a ban. Whether you want to call it a moratorium or a ban, it prohibits cultivation of GMO crops and doesn't have a specific expiration date. But that's a red herring. Instead of trying to figure out what label to put on it, how about understanding what it actually is? Proponents claim that it's a moratorium because it's temporary, and can be lifted once we know whether or not GMOs are safe. Well, guess what? It has already been proven independently using the scientific process that GMOs are safe (see the next section) so following their own claims, the moratorium should already be lifted before it even starts.
GMOs Are Scary
It is normal human nature to fear what we don't understand. But in this case, there is no reason to remain ignorant. Instead of just prohibiting what we don't understand, why not take a few minutes to understand it? Then maybe it won't be so scary and you'll at least be better informed.
Then there is Bt GMOs. Bt is naturally produced by a naturally occurring bacteria, Bacillus thuringiensis. Bt is effective at controlling caterpillars and worms such as corn borer. It does not affect other animals, including humans, mammals, or even other orders of insects such as beetles, flies, or bees. Bt is commonly used in Organic farming. That’s right, if you eat Organic foods you’ve consumed Bt. Bt is safe as long as you're not a caterpillar or worm, which is why it was selected both for Organic farming and for genetic modification. With Bt GMOs, the genetic sequence for Bt is added to the plants’ genetic sequence. Again, like Roundup Ready plants, we know exactly what changed in the plant’s DNA and what its function is.
Organic Genetic Manipulation: A Comparison
Want to know what type of genetic modification is used for Organic (and non-organic of course) crops, but is not considered "GMO?" Mutation breeding, aka Mutagenesis. Mutation breeding is when seeds are blasted with ionizing radiation (high energy radiation) that causes random changes in DNA. The seeds are then bred and the breeders decide if they like the resulting plant better than what they started with. The changes are random and the breeders don’t know what part of the DNA has changed. It’s a mystery, they just decide if the resulting plant has desired characteristics, even though it may have other unknown characteristics. The same thing is also commonly done with chemicals that randomly change the plants’ DNA. There are over 3200 plant varieties that have been modified using this method, they are common and can be considered Organic! That’s right, if you eat certified Organic non-GMO foods you’ve actually eaten foods that have been genetically modified using this method. So really, which is more scary, mutagenesis in Organic food or known, specific, targeted GMOs?
What About the Health Effects of GMOs?
The real meat of the "GMO debate" is whether or not they are safe for human consumption. How do we know what kind of effects these mystery frankenfoods will have on us? Well, if you read the previous sections then hopefully you understand them a bit and no longer see them as mystery frankenfoods, and see that inserting specific genes is much less of a mystery, and a much more known quantity, than traditional methods of genetic manipulation that aren't considered GMO and that you've been eating every day of your life (unless you're a hunter/gatherer who eats only native plants, and animals that eat only native plants).
Monsanto says they're safe, but Monsanto is a fundamentally evil corporation who only cares about profits, so doesn't that mean they're lying? No. While I have no doubt Monsanto and their ilk would happily lie to us if it increased their profits, it doesn't mean what they say is automatically a lie, it means we shouldn't trust them and instead look to independent sources. Luckily, there is a method of validating what those independent sources discover, and that method is called the scientific method.
The anti-GMO folks would have you believe that we don't know the health effects of GMOs yet, and that they haven't been well studied. That's a primary reason for the desire to prohibit GMOs. However, this is a misconception. GMO safety has been very well studied, and continues to be studied even more. Hundreds of independent researchers, conducting thousands of studies in many different countries, using the scientific method and verified as valid science by the peer review process have come to the same conclusion: GMOs are safe for human and animal consumption.
But you don't have to take my word for it, nor should you take any one person's word for it one way or the other. Here's a good starting point: An overview of the last 10 years of genetically engineered crop safety research. It's a review of about 1,700 peer-reviewed scientific research papers about the safety of GMOs. It has a lot of references that you can look up to read the original scientific research.
The link posted above:
http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Nicolia-20131.pdfHas references and analysis of 847 scientific, peer-reviewed studies done on the interaction of GMO crops with the environment, and I’ll summarize some of it here.
“Superweeds"/Roundup resistant weeds
People are concerned about gene flow to weeds, and that “super weeds” will be produced, and that this could happen through cross-pollination between weed and crop plants. As a review from high school biology, pollination is sexual reproduction. In order to reproduce sexually, two organisms must be of the same species, or so close that they genomes are nearly identical (such as a blackberry and raspberry resulting in the boysenberry, or a wolf and a domestic dog). Just as you can't breed a dog with a cat, you can’t breed a GMO corn or soy plant with an entirely different species. To the best of my knowledge, we do not have much wild soy or maize here, and if there is then it is not noxious and not of concern. It would be a different story if they were growing Roundup Ready plants that were the same species as wild noxious weeds, but that is not occurring nor would it be lucrative for an big evil corporation to do.
What about Roundup resistant weeds that we’ve heard about? Aren’t those from contamination from roundup ready crops? NO. Roundup resistant weeds are roundup resistant because they produce an excess of EPSPS. It is the same form EPSPS that glyphosate blocks, not the form of EPSPS that Roundup Ready crops have been modified to produce. The reason that they’re resistant to glyphosate is that they produce enough EPSPS so that even though much of it gets blocked, they still have enough to survive. Additionally, although they are resistant to glyphosate, they are at an evolutionary/competetive disadvantage to their non-resistant counterparts because the excess ESDS that is produced is a waste of energy.
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is another concern. Starting with biodiversity of non target species (other species in the environment that may interact with the crop but are not the target of the genetic modification), biodiversity is not decreased in GMO crops, and in fact in the case of Bt crops, biodiversity of non-target arthropods is actually increased. “Target” means the thing that they’re hoping to destroy…which with Roundup Ready crops means noxious weeds and in Bt crops means the specific pests that Bt kills, then it is reducing biodiversity of the targets, because that’s what it’s meant to do. Although reducing pests is considered a good thing, those studies have actually been misrepresented by anti-GMO folks to argue that GMOs are reducing environmental biodiversity, which is totally bogus.
Environmental Concerns
Note: I added this section after it was brought to my attention that I didn't address environmental concerns.The link posted above:
http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Nicolia-20131.pdfHas references and analysis of 847 scientific, peer-reviewed studies done on the interaction of GMO crops with the environment, and I’ll summarize some of it here.
“Superweeds"/Roundup resistant weeds
People are concerned about gene flow to weeds, and that “super weeds” will be produced, and that this could happen through cross-pollination between weed and crop plants. As a review from high school biology, pollination is sexual reproduction. In order to reproduce sexually, two organisms must be of the same species, or so close that they genomes are nearly identical (such as a blackberry and raspberry resulting in the boysenberry, or a wolf and a domestic dog). Just as you can't breed a dog with a cat, you can’t breed a GMO corn or soy plant with an entirely different species. To the best of my knowledge, we do not have much wild soy or maize here, and if there is then it is not noxious and not of concern. It would be a different story if they were growing Roundup Ready plants that were the same species as wild noxious weeds, but that is not occurring nor would it be lucrative for an big evil corporation to do.
What about Roundup resistant weeds that we’ve heard about? Aren’t those from contamination from roundup ready crops? NO. Roundup resistant weeds are roundup resistant because they produce an excess of EPSPS. It is the same form EPSPS that glyphosate blocks, not the form of EPSPS that Roundup Ready crops have been modified to produce. The reason that they’re resistant to glyphosate is that they produce enough EPSPS so that even though much of it gets blocked, they still have enough to survive. Additionally, although they are resistant to glyphosate, they are at an evolutionary/competetive disadvantage to their non-resistant counterparts because the excess ESDS that is produced is a waste of energy.
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is another concern. Starting with biodiversity of non target species (other species in the environment that may interact with the crop but are not the target of the genetic modification), biodiversity is not decreased in GMO crops, and in fact in the case of Bt crops, biodiversity of non-target arthropods is actually increased. “Target” means the thing that they’re hoping to destroy…which with Roundup Ready crops means noxious weeds and in Bt crops means the specific pests that Bt kills, then it is reducing biodiversity of the targets, because that’s what it’s meant to do. Although reducing pests is considered a good thing, those studies have actually been misrepresented by anti-GMO folks to argue that GMOs are reducing environmental biodiversity, which is totally bogus.
