GM cheese from cow clones

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Originally posted by Azazel
DISASTER! DISASTER!

didn't you learn anything from the thread?


I am glad that we agree.


OMFG. any GM product takes a lot of time to devise, plan, produce, and test. They don't just churn out new GM products by the thousands. "severity" of oversight? damaged manufactured goods come out wrong not in the planning stage but in the manufacturing stage. Some equipment doesn't fit the specs, etc.
This is not the case in genetic engineering. If a plant is ill, it will die, or show deformation. The biological process of production is much more precise and efficient.


YES! the GM-crops are planned in a lab. If the new product will be a "false" the specimen will be destroyed.
Do you thing that some will start to behave differently? they're clone, for crying out loud. their biochemistry is the same.

It seems that you nothing whatsoever about genetic engineering. I am not a fully-fledged pro (yet), but you don't know even the basics of the process it seems.

What I am saying is "does not Intel produce a product in a lab with thousands of engineers working around the clock and test their products thoroughly? "

Of course they do.

Didn't they release a PIII 1.13 ghz that had to be recalled after a few weeks due to a failure in design? Don't the proffesional car designers like Mercedes sometimes have to recall a product to install additional devices or repair them (*free of charge in Mercedeses case) as they were not good enough when initially sold.

What I am not contesting is that there are the routines and that every measure possible is being taken that the product sold will be OK in a Biotech lab. I am sure there are, but under competitive pressure, even an Intel lab can make a mistake, and that was not only once - the above, but there were more high profile mistakes over the companys 30-40 year very very successfull carreer. Don't you think that the similar mistakes can happen in Biotech?

Now with a processor it is a simple recall, but how do you recall a plant that has been in nature for x amount of time? That is what I am talking about. I hope you get me now. Not everything is mechanical in this world. That is why biotech can be dangerous. As humans make the mistakes, but not everytime the mistakes can be rectified on time (and in this case maybe at all).

[Provost Harrison]

Oooh, good topic for discussion. I don't see any intrinsic problem with genetic modification. I do object to the way it is being 'misimplemented'. Now what happens is that a resistance gene is introduced, and introduced at a high level and marketed as thus. Best examples of which are Bt toxin and glyphosate resistance (hello Monsanto ). Any biologist worth their salt will tell you that placing a selection pressure this strong will result in resistant strains taking over, and low and behold, that is what happens. By the greed to increase yields by this kind of 'throw huge amounts of resistance genes in now and worry later' is so shortsighted.

GM is a powerful tool if used correctly...

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
Oooh, good topic for discussion. I don't see any intrinsic problem with genetic modification. I do object to the way it is being 'misimplemented'. Now what happens is that a resistance gene is introduced, and introduced at a high level and marketed as thus. Best examples of which are Bt toxin and glyphosate resistance (hello Monsanto ). Any biologist worth their salt will tell you that placing a selection pressure this strong will result in resistant strains taking over, and low and behold, that is what happens. By the greed to increase yields by this kind of 'throw huge amounts of resistance genes in now and worry later' is so shortsighted.

GM is a powerful tool if used correctly...

"Shortsighted"
And so very typical of an organisatioin driven by profit.

[Az]

Richard, I've already said that I oppose placing bacterial resistance as a GM.

OFITG:you're protesting about cheese.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Originally posted by Azazel
Richard, I've already said that I oppose placing bacterial resistance as a GM.

OFITG:you're protesting about cheese.

sure, what if one day all cheeze in supermarkets is made by those" 20% more cheeze cloned cows" and I am sure they will try to enhance them even more, the normal cheeze will move upmarket and be less acessible.
So if I want to eat it I will have to pay more... well screw cheeze but..

Now most likely the enhanced cow produces good cheeze, but this is a door for many more enhanced animals, and than we might open a door that we migh not be able to close, as described above. You know livestock genes and our food chain under direct control of company accountants is not a good thing, trust me on that one . I'd rather eat my "normal" cow cheeze, and have Nestle dairy products division make 20% less of profit.

[Skanky Burns]

The food you eat is already under direct control of company accountants.

Besides, GM food will most likely have to be labelled as such, and "normal" food will most likely advertise that it isn't GM food to make up for the fact that it will cost more comparatively. If you want "normal" cheese, it will still be available as demand for it iss guaranteed to remain.

[Dinner]

OneFoot: You and I are rich compared to the third world so we can afford to be arrogant and choicie. For the third world the choice is between having enough food to eat or going hungry, having proper nutrion or being malnurished, for their farmers it means staying in business or going belly up.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Originally posted by Oerdin
OneFoot: You and I are rich compared to the third world so we can afford to be arrogant and choicie. For the third world the choice is between having enough food to eat or going hungry, having proper nutrion or being malnurished, for their farmers it means staying in business or going belly up.

That is true, if it is GM or hunger - of course GM, but still the consequences might be more than we bargained for. It wouldn't be the first time for mistakes, just these could be much more costly than the ones before.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Still I think it is more of a increase in production and efficiency for already rich food corporations of the west as opposed to the "helping of the poor". Biotech companies and most of the research is privatley funded now I don't think they are going to give their patents out for free use what would be the point?

Anyway I have to go now... time to log off

[Dinner]

Supply and demand says prices will fall if supply increase faster then demand. So if food becomes more affordable then fewer people in the world will go hungry or be malnurished. Also improving the vitamins and/or desease resistance of plants will also help the poor much more then the rich.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Foot: Knowing that the human population world wide is exploding

Actually it's not. In this month's Discover magazine they printed a study showing a world wide drop in birth-rates. The world population is expected to peak around 9-10 billion people . . . and then start dropping!

and the amount of farmland world wide is decreasing due to urbanization;

This is indeed a problem, but not for very long due to the previous.

what would you do to prevent mass stavation and/or malnurishment amoung the worlds poor? GM has proven itself to boost the quantity and quality of food per acre. Are you suggesting we ignore that fact because some ignorant people are scared of it?

GM food is not about helping the poor. It is about controlling the market. GM foods are patented, which means the corporations owning them can control their use. Normally famers hold back part of their crop to use as seed for next year, but this is actionable against farmers who use GM foods. So now farmers have another cost, while at the same time increasing productivity lowers the prices they get for their products.

In both the First World and the Third World, this means ever more people lose their farms. Since most people in the Third World are farmers, it means an increase in the number of poor and indigent (there was an explosion of poverty in the Third World following the Green Revolution).

[chequita guevara]

There are two other problems with GM foods (other than the main one which I already mentioned, which is that it will actually hurt the world's poor).

Issue one is that GM reduces biodiversity and increases the chance that a famine could result. We just had the thread about how banana's are going to disappear. Imagine that on an industrial scale.

The other problem is that plants tend to cross pollinate, and that even organic plants will aquire GM genes if they are anywhere near a GM crop. (Of course, then the organic farmer could sue for damages.) GM crops are heavily tested, but modified genes have already escaped into the wild (both corn and rape seed). While I don't expected them to destroy the world, they may cause the plants to either outcompete other plants in the wild, for example.

[KrazyHorse]

a) GM plants don't generally outcompete plants developed through selected breeding or wild plants. Because they're generally designed to give higher yields or otherwise be more productive for human consumption, they don't give as much to the ordinary business of surviving. There have been a few examples of this happening.

b) That's why lifeforms should not be subject to patent law.

c) Genetic diversity is certainly an issue with GM food, just as drug-resistant bacteria are with antibiotics. The lesson is not to get lazy and figure that once you've solved a problem you can turn your back on it.

d) This being said, most opposition to GM foods is antiscientific paranoia-based thinking. We've been messing with the food we eat for 10 000 years. Whether you do it in a lab or not makes very little difference as far as allergenic reactions/safety issues are concerned. One thing that should be vigorously enforced is that potential allergenic GM products should never be approved, even for animal consumption. It's way too easy to mix up a grain shipment with another apparently identical grain shipment.

[chequita guevara]

All prior modifications of crop and animal genes was done within the same species or with species very closesly related. Now we have the ability to cross wheat with an halibut, so that the antifreeze-like qualities can produce a true winter-wheat.

That's fine, but I ought to have the option not to buy GM foods. They should be labeled as such so consumers can make their choice.

[KrazyHorse]

I don't see why that matters, che. I'm no biochemist thank God, but it seems that splicing in a gene from halibut into wheat seed is less likely to cause the formation of allergenic proteins etc. than wholesale mixing of millions of base pairs. Besides which, all GM foods must be tested for potential health hazards prior to marketing, unlike regular interbred foods.

There's a perfectly reasonable way to provide a non-GM alternative that shortcircuits any need for government regulation in honest to goodness private enterprise ( ) and "organic farmers" have already found it. Let non-GM foods be labelled as such on a voluntary basis...