(If it's a little poisonous to humans, well, what's it doing in a food crop to start with? And if it's not even a little poisonous to humans, why are there restrictions on how much of the toxin can be present in the plant if it's to be sold as food? Hmph.)
because people screamed "franken food" and insisted on it. cows eat sevaral of the varities that cant be sold to humans, building up concentrations well in excess of whats allowed, with no effects. when several tons of starlight bt corn accidently got turned into taco bell taco shells, no one got sick. I hate monsanto with the passion of a fiery sun, but lets focus on their ACTUAL sins, please. cooking makes bt totally harmless, and, mercury is poisonous, why do we allow MERCURY in our foods. they went for insect resistance because that was the path of most profit. and it was a book long before a movie, and the word soylent is latin. i am you, i believe it means On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 3:24 PM, Stephen A. Lawrence <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On 12/04/2009 02:29 PM, Rick Monteverde wrote: >> >> Sure it's propagated from a clean tested starter batch, etc. The problem >> is >> that what you don't know can kill you, and there's so much that is >> unknown, >> and so much that can kill you. >> >> Do you know how much of the human genome is of recent (and ancient) viral >> and bacterial origin? > > No but I bet it's a lot. > >> Are you aware of how much modification goes on from >> such sources, and would you even consider such a thing as a risk? The >> conventional answers would likely be "no", but you might want to take a >> look >> at some of the recent discoveries on horizontal gene transfer and the >> activation of dormant sequences. The same factors in less similar meat, or >> the GMO's that the food hippies are so terrified of, > > Speaking as a sort of "food hippie", I'd say there's actually something much > more significant wrong with current-day GMO food, which has nothing to do > with the GM operation itself nor any potential "contamination" by genes > which the manufacturers didn't intend to have get into the end product. > > The problem is the choices made by the seed companies when they went ahead > with GM seeds. They didn't go for extra-high-yield grain that can mature in > 2 weeks (for use on the Moon, of course), or tomatoes that taste like peanut > butter, or any of the things ignorant folks like me might have fantasized > about. Instead, they went straight for what seems to be the "gold standard" > in ideal grains: They went for insect resistance. > > And insect resistance seems to translate into plants which manufacture their > own pesticides. > > The most widely publicized one, which really made it obvious what was going > on, was BT corn, of course. Unlike corn which has been sprayed, and which > has toxins on the surface which can be washed off, BT corn manufactures a > toxin which is present in all parts of the plant. In other words, the whole > plant, corn kernels included, is poisonous, and no washing or post-harvest > treatment can change that. Of course the toxin is only supposed to affect > insects (corn borers, bees, Monarch butterflies, and other pests) and is not > supposed to affect humans, but equally "of course" that's only supposed to > be true at "low concentrations" and the most intense BT corn is not approved > for human consumption. (If it's a little poisonous to humans, well, what's > it doing in a food crop to start with? And if it's not even a little > poisonous to humans, why are there restrictions on how much of the toxin can > be present in the plant if it's to be sold as food? Hmph.) > > Now I haven't researched exactly what goes into GM potatoes or soy beans, to > name two, and maybe they're getting nothing more than roundup-resistance > (which is *presumably* harmless to humans, since it doesn't involve having > the plant manufacture poisons), but I'd bet a lot that insect resistance has > something to do with the popularity of those seeds, and insect resistance > suggests pretty strongly that GM soy and GM potatoes are also intrinsically > poisonous. > > And I find that very unappealing. > > Before you jump all over me for *assuming* rather than researching it, keep > in mind that GM foods are not labeled in any way, and there is in particular > no way to tell what *variety* of GM soy or potato (or horse or whatever) > went into its manufacture. And a lot of this stuff is proprietary. So, at > the very best, I might be able to determine that *some* varieties of *some* > GM seeds are really obviously harmless to humans, and safe to eat. But that > wouldn't tell me about *all* varieties on the market, nor about the > particular varieties which went into the bag of chips I'm about to buy. So, > ultimately, I could waste a lot of time researching particular known genes > used in GM foods, and I would no doubt just confirm what I already surmise: > Some are obviously safe, but maybe not all, and I can't tell what's in a GM > food, so I would still end up assuming the worst, and avoiding them all as > much as possible. > > In short, BT corn is the existence proof for "intentionally toxic" foods > created with genetic engineering. And given that the manufacturers aren't > tell us exactly what goes into a particular GM food, the existence of such > foods is justification for avoiding all GM food, IMHO. > > >> might not be as risky >> or familiar to human tissue as the stuff in 'close' meat. Familiarity >> breeds >> danger. So there's that and the damaged proteins and their coding, prions, >> unknown triggers for cancers and other diseases, mutations, etc. I could >> go >> on and on here but for the sake of brevity let's just say that the gods >> simply do not approve. Someday maybe when genetics is completely >> understood >> and can be properly engineered, I might take a bite of that sandwich. But >> certainly not now. Rent the movie Gattaca from 12 years ago if you haven't >> seen it, and think about how incredibly complex life's coding is, and how >> little we really know about its processes and interactions. >> >> And I apologize for previously misspelling soylent, if there is a correct >> way to spell a made-up movie word. >> >> R. >> >> > >
