I'm highly skeptical of anti-GMO claims. Usually they come from the same family of pseudoscience as anti-nuclear and anti-vaccine
GMOs aren’t inherently bad but many crops are genetically modified to be resistant to glyphosate and other herbicides so they can douse the fields with the stuff.
There are very valid arguments against GMOs even if they're safe from a strictly scientific point of view. Those mainly pertain to control over seeds by corporations that will allow them to exploit poor farmers. This is happening to a huge extent in India where many farmers have committed suicide because of these practices.
Yep, exactly. I'm against Monsanto suing farmers for cross-pollination when the wind blows.
Seed patents are dumb. Once something has been planted it belongs to the ground now, if it spreads that's too bad for giant corpo.
EDIT: the link above is the the wrong case. I found this link which breaks things down better.. I'm still of the opinion that seed patents are dumb, and that if farmers harvest seeds from crops on their fields they should be allowed to replant them.
There are very valid arguments against GMOs
All “valid arguments against GMOs” are ultimately arguments against capitalistic profit-at-all-costs practises.
When you take the profit margin out of the process, there end up being no valid arguments against GMOs, as all such profit-free GMOs that end up moving to production are there purely to benefit humanity as a whole, and not to restrict said benefit to a rarefied group of obscenely wealthy people. It’s the GMOs with capitalistic roots which are problematic for capitalistic, Parasite-Class-greed related reasons.
Yeah, that's basically what I said.
That's not an argument against GMOs, just a specific kind of GMOs.
It's an argument against commercial use of GMOs in agriculture by monopolistic megacorporations.
It's an argument against seed patents and capitalism.
Your 'argument against GMOs' is an argument against seed patents, not GMOs. That's the same as saying there's an 'argument against insulin' because big companies own the patents and charge lots of money. The product is absolutely irrelevant to the conversation.
The author didn't address it in the least, which is troubling, but how exactly did they prove to the court that the rice hadn't been shown to be safe? They seem to have made a convincing argument and I'd rather like to know what it was. Seems like an important part of the story to me.
According to the Greenpeace website:
But behind the hype, GE ‘Golden’ rice is environmentally irresponsible, poses risks to human health and could compromise food, nutrition and financial security.
My take from this: It may be that they targeted more than the safety, but also the possibility of gene flow (to other rice crops including wild rice), possible effects on biodiversity, and the ever-present patent issues that come up with GMO's.
Scanning down the page though, they don't specifically say why it poses risks to human health other than some hand-wavey stuff about how it would make people rely on rice instead of providing other sources of vitamin A in their diets.
They also brought up that at least one experiment with the rice on children in China wasn't done ethically, and also that this could be imposed against people's religious beliefs.
It mentions the cross-contamination gene flow stuff, but I thought because rice was self pollinating that that wasnt as big an issue with GM rice. (I'm not an expert by any means.)
Their general argument seems to be "new way bad, old way good" without any scientic evidence. They didn't have to convince scientists though.
I'd like to point out that Greenpeace or the local population doesn't have to prove that GM rice is bad. It's the other way around:
Big corps have to prove that GM rice is good and has no adversarial long-term effects, which is impossible to prove.
Which big corps would that be exactly?
It's perfectly possible to show that it's safe to any reasonable standard: https://www.irri.org/golden-rice-faqs
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jafc.9b01524
The only biologically meaningful difference between GR2E and control rice was in levels of β-carotene and other provitamin A carotenoids in the grain. Except for β-carotene and related carotenoids, the compositional parameters of GR2E rice were within the range of natural variability of those components in conventional rice varieties with a history of safe consumption.
How exactly do you propose that the genetic makeup of the rice is going to impact the person eating it, if chemical analysis shows it's not meaningfully different from any other rice?
You can't demand that people prove something beyond unreasonable doubt. At some point you have to be able to articulate a concern to justify further scrutiny.
That would be Syngenta, the big agricultural corp involved in the project.
- Syngenta retains commercial rights, although it has no plans to commercialize Golden Rice.
- "Humanitarian Use" means (and includes research leading to):
- Use in developing countries (low-income, food-deficit countries as defined by FAO)
- Resource-poor farmer use (earning less than US$10,000 per year from farming)
The key part to me is the under $10,000 USD per year from farming requirement. What happens when a larger farm gets accidental cross pollination?
What happens to farms with organic certification if their neighbours start growing golden rice and it cross pollinates?
There is a history of Western nations using “humanitarian” outreach to sabotage developing nations.
Assuming that Syngenta are entirely altruistic is a huge risk for developing nations.
What big corps? Golden rice is developed by scientists working for universities and distributing it via NGOs for free.
And they've produced dozens of studies over the past 24 years showcasing its effectiveness and safety.
Honestly, that's where my comment started... But everything I found showed that studies had proven that it was safe. So I changed tack and started focusing on the Greenpeace side.
If gene flow from golden rice managed to successfully hybridize the four gene complex providing the iron, zinc, and beta-carotene nutrients into other rice crops, that would be incredible. It's so unlikely to happen and the scientists involved have to work so incredibly hard to get it to happen, because it would be a tremendous good for the world if it did.
We could only hope that such gene flow would occur naturally from the golden rice.
I'm not generally a fan of GMO, mostly because we're just not very good at it. Food with pesticide throughout when natural variants would just have it in the skin? Maybe not. That said, this looks like the perfect candidate for GMO. I dont mind having beta carotene being throughout the whole food, and i dont care if it gets expressed in the rest of the plant (not that i know if it does). If I could buy this in the store, I would. Sometimes I don't feel like carrots. Also, saying they could get their Vitamin A elsewhere while completely ignoring widespread deficiencies in various regions is the stupidest argument I've heard in a while.
That's an argument to regulate GMO crops, not to stop doing it.
Furthermore, cross-contamination of traits like RoundUp resistance could spread under selection pressure. What's the selective pressure for beta-carotene production in wild rice?
This is especially rational to question when looking at the GMO's previous healthclaims like the safety of Roundup - Monsanto has had no qualms about lying to the public in the past.
Monsanto has nothing to do with this topic. You're just fearmongering.
My trust has been eroded by this industry as a whole - I'm not saying their shit is dangerous but I won't accept their claims on blind faith.
It's perfectly reasonable to demand a study in the name of public health.
They have been working on and testing this golden rice since 2000, with tons of studies done on its biochemistry, including from people eating it. In fact, several countries have already been using the rice for years What else are the scientists supposed to do to appear Greenpeace's purposefully vague demands?
But Roundup doesn't have anything to do with GMOs? They made genes that let some plants tolerate a pesticide. The effects of that pesticide have nothing to do with the gene.
Exactly. And those who suffer in the end is always the people, never the big corps. Never trust big corps to do the right thing in agriculture. They'll fuck you over and leave the environment destroyed. Build local species.
"Big corps" aren't involved here. It's a philanthropy project, and from what I can find it's not legally encumbered in any way like Monsanto stuff is. This is entirely Greenpeace doing something that gets headlines, instead of something actually good. Don't forget that that organization, too, has motives, first among which is going to be survival and advancement of the organization.
Big corps aren’t involved?
Heard of Syngenta?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngenta
As for their involvement in golden rice see: http://www.goldenrice.org/Content2-How/how9_IP.php
Way to go greenpiss. Anti-scietific fear mongering that will only hurt.
That tracks for Greenpeace. They've been fighting nuclear power since their inception.
I mean with nuclear power there are atleast some things objectively problematic like the high costs of the energy produced and the garbage that is left off. I would not have a beef with thrm protesting GMO's either, where they are used to essentially make the farmers dependent on the seller of the crops. It is this black and white aproach thats really got me grinding my gears because at this point its more of a well known cult than a group for the environment.
If we had gone nuclear 60 years ago climate change would be nothing more than an interesting theory. Greenpeace has as much share of the blame for the current state of the world as Exxon mobil does.
This is just obviously untrue. Not least because we did build lots of nuclear power plants. One significant reason why we didn't build more was their high price compared to ... coal and gas plants. But sure, it's Greenpeace's fault and not Exxon Mobil.
To add to this: The great majority of nuclear plant operators are companies with a majority stake in fossil fuels. Apparently fossil fuel is more profitable for them than nuclear. Additionally, it is much, much more cheaper (like a 1:3 cost ratio) to produce renewable energy via solar and wind than to do it via nuclear energy. Also, fissile material is non-renewable and mining sites are mostly situated in non-western regions, making us yet again dependent on energy imports. Further, nuclear energy is just not as quickly scalable as renewables, as the construction of nuclear plants usually takes around 10 years, at minimum, whilst wind and solar parks with the same output as nuclear reactors only require a couple if years. Every pro-nuclear advocate therefore effectively supports the centralized fossil fuel industry (as opposed to decentralized energy production of renewables) and fosters dependence on increasingly expensive fissle fuel imports. The cognitive dissonance by proponents towards nuclear energy simply is as deep as the money pockets of our fossil fuel overlords who are desperate to keep control of the narrative and ownership of the energy production.
My friend got her doctorate engineering rice to grow in high salinity areas. The goal was to aid farmers near brackish water and without access to good farmland. Greenpeace would definitely not like that.
Basically, the issue is that this Golden Rice is a foreign species in Philippines. That comes with a lot of complications.
Most importantly, local farmers don't have the knowledge how to deal with this new type of rice. They are worried that their native species are being replaced and could go extinct, which would be difficult to revert. It would lead to yet another platform lock-in.
It's important to save and continue to grow heirloom species, sure. But almost no cultivated species are native to where they're grown.
Patent bullshit aside.
This article is pretty close to pure clip bait and possible just media spin from Greenpeace, other more reputable articles don't even mention Greenpeace and highlight a lot of local support against the rice. https://www.isaaa.org/blog/entry/default.asp?BlogDate=5/8/2024
full take: this is a complex topic involving sociology, agricultural science, economics, culture, ethics, and more and deserves serious discourse
meme take: THAT RICE IS PRETTY I WANT IT
It has had serious discourse and research for 24 years. Greenpeace is just an anti-science hack group.
Right, right... and why does Indonesia need capitalist-parasite-friendly monocropping all of a sudden to properly feed it's people again?
The idea that more capitalist exploitation will (somehow) fix the problems caused by capitalist exploitation is something the liberal hive-mind here on lemmy seems rather eager to get behind.
Good on those local farmers.
Fuck the gmo-peddlers, fuck (so-called) "Golden Rice," and fuck liberals who turn pro-colonialist at the drop of a hat.
Golden rice was developed as part of a non profit grant. Seed is distributed free of charge to farmers with an annual profit of $10k or less, and they are permitted to keep and replant seed as much as they want. Nutritionally it is identical to normal rice except it contains high levels of vitamin A for which large portions of the population in the Philippines (and many other countries) have a critical deficiency. Vitamin A deficiency has a major impact on childhood mortality rates.
The only criticism they have is that it's a gmo crop and they don't trust its safety, which is really just a PR issue because it has been thoroughly tested for human consumption. Your response is a perfect example of making the problem worse through your ignorance.
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