[JoeAltmaier]

All modern foods are 'GMO' in that they are genetically modified by humans for palatability. The whole 'GMO' thang is a scary story used to manufacture outrage or something.

No requirement to use the language of fear to describe your own products.

[LatteLazy]

We can argue over terms, but if there was no differences between selective breeding and modern techniques, we would not both with modern techniques...

[JoeAltmaier]

Faster. More accurate. Better selectivity.

The old technique was 'let somebody fool around in their back yard and hope they don't make poison or kill the plant or create a superweed'. Today it's 'make the flavor better without doing something random as well'

After all kudzu and bermudagrass were 'naturally genetically modified'. That worked out great.

[LatteLazy]

And all these things are sort of the point: ancient, modern and crispr etc techniques are fundamentally different and have different outcomes. Hence it is not unreasonable to ask which was used to create what someone is selling...

Also more range: you cannot move whole genes from vastly different organisms using selective breeding (good luck selectively breeding arctic fish with strawberries to get that anti-freeze gene).

Personally I don't particularly care what technique was used. But I very much doubt the motives: are they making the flavour better by just adding more sugar? And to allow for that, and faster harvest reducing the vitamin content? Is the "apple" I am eating actually closer to a chocolate bar nutritionally than the Apple I ate 20 years ago? Maybe I just want to keep the same old fashioned one, even if it is different to the original wild apples from 27000 BC?

I think the same logic applies to "organic" produce. It is not a matter of whether X is safe. Is it a matter of if I can be bothered to track 1000 Xs and assess all of their safety and understand them all and cope with every new X etc. Or just get this other thing...

[JoeAltmaier]

Genes jump around a lot. You have virus genes in you. Genes move between plants and animals all the time.

This GMO-is-different-and-evil stuff is shallow unexamined nonsense. That's what I was getting at.

Back to my point: better to know a new species is carefully crafted and not random-backyard-meddling. For obvious reasons. Apricot pits have cyanide. Beans, parsnips have toxins that hurt us. We've been seeking better versions of these things for centuries. Now we can have them for the asking.

Let me off the Luddite bus, please.

[LatteLazy]

I think you're over-estimating how many species suddenly gain new genes from other genuses. But that is sort of beside my point: you say carefully crafted and I agree. But carefully crafted to be healthy and ecologically sound or to be profitable? We don't need more profitable unhealthy food.

So what am I meant to do, personally review every piece of GMO at a genetic level for changes that I do not want? or just decline the lot?

And who should have the right to tell me I don't get to know what I am eating?

I am sure there are at least some luddites who just fear the new. But that does not address the actual points raised here and you can't dismiss the real questions because the people asking them are standing next to hippies...

[JoeAltmaier]

Not a single thing ever been done to make backyard crossbreeding be 'ecologically sound' or healthy.

You don't know what you are eating now. It's not substantially different. That's my point, and one that folks are resistant to accepting. No surprise: they're resistant to any change in their notions.

[benj111]

>The old technique was 'let somebody fool around in their back yard and hope they don't make poison or kill the plant or create a superweed

How is GM less likely to do this?

I'm not against GMO per se. But we don't have the controls in place if something completely novel has unintended consequences. Selective breeding is slower and more limited, which at present is a feature.

[JoeAltmaier]

Well, so far the 'natural' foods have a monopoly on invasiveness and superweed generation. So I'll just bat that ball back at you: doesn't doing it carefully and deliberately (instead of randomly and blindly) have a better chance at a better outcome? Yes, it does.

[benj111]

Any examples of superweeds that have been bred by humans to be that way?

The other way to view it, is as a genetic novelty in the ecosystem, a genetic novelty more akin to GM than selective breeding.

My issue is one of food safety primarily. Sure you can put fish DNA in a plant and it may well do what you want, but what are the side effects of that? Is there a novel compound that causes cancer?

Of course you could do tests and long term studies to confirm this isn't the case. But that isn't being done.

Of course the same risk is there with non GM, but A it moves slower, B you are limited to the species barrier. I if accidentally breed a carcinogenic tomato, at least it's only a tomato. If I genetically modify all staple crops and then discover it's carcinogenic, that's a harder problem to avoid if you actually want to not starve.

[JoeAltmaier]

Bermuda grass. Kudzu.