Genetically modified foods at the Food Coop

greg wrote:
OK, then try these websites:

http://www.organicconsumers.org/gelink.html

http://www.gefoodalert.org/index.cfm

http://www.foe.org/camps/comm/safefood/gefood/index.html

I believe you'll find none of these websites represent "fringe" groups. All are established and have been around for years and years.

The days are long gone when we could rely on just reading one or two papers or just watch the network news to find out what's going on.

These sources are great for finding out what we're being told by the "man" but if that's your only source, well then, God help you.

Hehe, you're funny! Organicconsumers.org, friends of the earth.org, etc. These aren't politically motivated?? I'm not saying everything they promote is wrong, but it's hardly objective. If you're going to use politically motivated groups as your sources of information, at least draw on sources from each side. How about a nice balanced perspective between Seeds of Deception and the National Corn Growers Association? At least then you'd get rhetoric and propaganda from each side, and you could make up your own mind. I agree that you shouldn't get all your news from mainstream media, but if you just feed yourself a steady diet of propaganda that fits your predetermined worldview, then it's you who needs help.

And I already presented an example from an anti-GMO group that found no evidence of harm, which you completely ignored.

escap wrote: Yeah, that's obvious. But hey, there'd been a lull on these boards for a few days, so I don't mind the occasional troll to spice things up.

True, this has been fun. But Greg isn't a troll. He's an active participant on these boards, and has posted a lot of useful information about stuff in the neighborhood, especially Crown Heights. This time, I just disagree with him.

greg wrote: Food Coop politics are murky and wierd. In fact getting a vote of the membership is extremely hard to do. Even any polls must be approved by the General Coordinators. Similarly, no fora exist that I'm aware of the website or elsewhere.

Such is "democracy" at the Food Coop.

I'm a bit surprised to hear it, but even so they can't stop you or anyone from cranking up a board or a yahoo group or something along those lines.

metulj wrote: I think we should all stop eating all maize and return to eating teosinte. Any modification of teosinte is bad for our children. Please enact this plan by 13.0.8.8.1. K? Thx.

Nice one. So, did you read that book, too?

greg wrote:
Allow me to quote from Al Gore's new movie. He cites a study conducted of peer reviewed scientific articles on global warming. According to the study, not a single article out of over 100 reviewed seriously questioned the validity of global warming. He cites another study done of consumer publications. Of 100's of articles reviewed, almost half made reference to scientific studies questioning the basis for global warming. These two studies spanned roughly the same time periods.

So, what's "fair and balanced". You may recall that Fox News coined the term to promote their news programming. As we all now know, Fox has become the mouthpiece for the Bush agenda.

If by balanced you mean we have to cite studies from the other side, even if the other side has nothing to cite, then we've got a problem. Now consider that the other side in this discussion has a huge budget to "create" science, while my side has little in the way of financing.

Is there any question why the reality of global warming has taken so long to come out? Will we fall for the old "fair and balanced" razzle dazzle again?

Why are you changing the subject to global warming? On global warming too, there are differing opinions, but there is definitely a gathering consensus--an intelligent person should listen to all sides but most of all the unbiased conclusions of serious scientists and reporters. Like I already have said twice now, the British Medical Association failed to find any evidence that GMO's are dangerous, so you can't say there's no budget-backed research on "your" side.

For the record, I'm not saying that there's 100% conclusive evidence that GMO's are safe, either. I just think that your "anti-the man" rhetoric is foolish, and your self-professed cynicism towards "corporate" news sources is preposterous given your naive and unquestioning acceptance of highly agenda-driven NGO's.

I am not a scientist, and for all I know eating some hybrid corn will make me grow a third leg. But it's clear your opposition to GMO's is driven far more by ideology and far less by evidence.

greg wrote: [quote=Carnivore][quote=greg]Now we are all clear that global warming was obvious 10 years ago... But when The End of Nature by Bill McKibben came out in 1989, it caused a huge controversy and industry critics were quick to dismiss it as alarmist hogwash.

1989 was almost 20 years ago, and even then, it wasn't that controversial among scientists. In 1996, when Clinton was running for his second term, I think most people who didn't have an agenda were pretty clear on global warming.
Again, I think the anti-GM folks are more like the anti-global warming folks in this analogy than the other way around. It's not just industry critics who support GM crops, and many people who are against them are moved more by a religious-like fervor than by science.

In starting this thread, I was interested in finding out first hand how "normal" people, ie, not people committed to safe foods, viewed this topic.

It seems that over the course of the dialogue, the safe foods people kind of dropped out of the discussion and the pro GM people hung in.

I suppose this is a foretaste of things to come as we escalate the struggle to remove GM foods from the shelves of the Coop.

Ain't life fun!

By the way, there are considerably more consumers in the EU and Japan than in the US. They have supported mandatory labeling of GM foods. It's just that our media is so isolated that few here know this nor realize that we are in the minority.

majority doesnt mean they are right. they have a defunct economy!

But ultimately, you've got to pick sides.

Well, I guess that's a matter of opinion, which is your right. I personally think that all the people on the far right and far left are equally moronic.

greg wrote: But ultimately, you've got to pick sides. And there are sides. The side of intelligence and reason, and the side of cowardice and convenience.

Wow. :shock: I consider myself pretty liberal, but you're really managing to bring out the Republican in me. I don't care for neo-cons but I know some gun-loving libertarians and old-school conservatives who are smart and whom I respect a lot. Your original question was "Do folks favor their removal? If so, why. If not, why not." My answer was, I'm not a member of the Co-op so I don't care, and I also have other stuff to worry about.

Does failing to pick sides on this particular issue, which is obviously of deep visceral importance to you, suddenly make me a brain-dead Iran-nuker? Sorry, I'm not buying it.

You're talking about Al Gore. I'm not. I'm sure you could follow that from the above posts. Since you mentioned it, I think Al Gore is a pretty reasonable person. But on this issue, a very small amount of googling suggests that he isn't taking a hard line. http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/algore.cfm

I happen to accept the research on global warming, which suggests that it is a real phenomenon. You're trying to get me to believe that GM foods are dangerous because of a sinister dearth of research on the topic. I don't find that compelling. I think it's perfectly reasonable to wait to get worked up about something until you have evidence that it's a danger.

armchair_warrior wrote:
majority doesnt mean they are right. they have a defunct economy!

Who, Japan or the EU? Plusses and minusses. Their economies are in surplus, minimal foreign debt, rather than mortgaged and highly geared. They have no expensive wars to fight or large military-industrial complex to fund, their stock markets are mostly performing better than the US, most of them have universal health care, childcare, education. They're way ahead on greenhouse-friendly energy sources and mass transport. Their economies are recovering while the US is nearing the end of a cycle. They have higher social security payments but aren't paying to imprison ca. 1% of their population, or 20% of all world prisoners. On the whole they have weaker demographics, some deep divisions, a less flexible more protected workforce but more highly skilled, no tradition of immigration, which will mean different challenges from the US over the next 25 years. But not defunct.

doctorj wrote: Who, Japan or the EU? Plusses and minusses. Their economies are in surplus, minimal foreign debt, rather than mortgaged and highly geared. They have no expensive wars to fight or large military-industrial complex to fund, their stock markets are mostly performing better than the US, most of them have universal health care, childcare, education. They're way ahead on greenhouse-friendly energy sources and mass transport. Their economies are recovering while the US is nearing the end of a cycle. They have higher social security payments but aren't paying to imprison ca. 1% of their population, or 20% of all world prisoners. On the whole they have weaker demographics, some deep divisions, a less flexible more protected workforce but more highly skilled, no tradition of immigration, which will mean different challenges from the US over the next 25 years. But not defunct.

I'm sorry, this is not what the thread is about, but there are several utter inaccuracies in this post. Please make a passing attempt to check your facts before you start making claims. Japan has the world's largest national debt as a percentage of GDP among developed nations, and the major European economies are also running large budget deficits. Don't confuse trade deficits with budget deficits and the national debt. Also, you must not own a single stock if you think their stock markets have performed well in recent times. The Nikkei was at 40,000 in the late 80s and has scraped by in the 10,000s ever since. That's called a collapse. European GDP and stock market growth has been in the anemic 0% or 1% range since the 80's, while America's has coasted along at a ~3% clip. This difference may seem small but it's actually gigantic when you consider the trillions of dollars in scale and the compounding of the growth over time. The major European economies are falling further and further behind America in terms of GDP per capita, and unemployment has been around double America's rate for several decades, with no hope in sight.

Several of the other points you mentioned are exactly right, but I couldn't let those gross misstatements pass.

Subject: Re: Genetically modified foods at the Food Coop

greg wrote:
the risks are known and quantifiable health hazards for the types of concerns you cite: poisoning from old fashioned bugs and even heavy metals that bio-accumulate as neuro-toxins.
Organophophates are another problem in that their effects on humans and life forms in general are less known.

Right. Do you agree with me then, that as far as the known risks go, by far and away the greatest being biological contamination, that eating food from the coop is more dangerous than eating comparable calories from mainstream supermarkets? Not only are there fewer preservatives to protect us, but the food is handled more by amateur people and less by machines. Contamination from metals could be either way depending on the location, likely to be worse with local produce, but it's a smaller risk. Contaimination from organics, organophosphates, organohalides will be lower in organic produce, but it's a smaller risk again. I make a personal decision to shop there in spite of coop food being more dangerous, because I think the palatability vs. price and the choice of produce outweigh the higher risk of poisoning. And because I like the vibe (though not the crowds on Saturday).

greg wrote:
But least know of all are the genetically modified organisms. When you start getting into the real scary stuff, such as GM salmon and trees, all bets are off. Not only do they present potential health hazards for humans, but they can potentially disrupt entire eco-systems.

Don't be scared. Fear is the mind killer. Bear in mind that humans are notoriously poor when it comes to putting risks in perspective, and usually underestimate the impact on their lives of known risks while overestimating the impact of unknown risks.

We should separate the unknown risk to the environment from the unknown risk to human health from consuming GM foods. The former may actually be real, and presents the kind of moral and economic questions most human activity presents. If there were a case for eschewing GM products, it would be there. The latter I regard as close enough to zero for simple reasons related to biological chemistry and digestion, and certainly negligible compared with the known risks we've talked about.

greg wrote:
GM salmon can escape into the wild through holes in nets (salmon are farmed in fjords and in the ocean) and transfer their GM traits to wild salmon. Same for trees, not to mention GM soy and corn.

There's an unknown, finite but small risk that some of these genes will be disruptive to some ecosystems. However, the genes of all species are mutating constantly, and via virusses and bacteria being swapped from species to species. GM products involve humans deliberately transferring a few genes, but the same process has been going on naturally for 10**9 years. I don't think we need to be too concerned about this small risk of disruption when there are much greater and clearly understood risks to the planet afoot.

greg wrote:
No one knows much about these types of effects and no one seems to be studying them either.

If the risk to human life and to ecosystems were large, then it would be obvious and would no longer be unknown. Scientists are keeping an eye out for the effects. There is no conspiracy at work.

Now: how would you set up an experiment to study a risk of unknown impact (could be high) and probability (very low) that depends on large interconnected ecosystems to play out, and might not exist? You can't. What you do with any new technology of unknown but small risk is test it on a small scale, see that it's sufficiently safe when used as directed, release it on a larger scale, see if it's economically competitive and lives up to its promise, monitor the outcome, adjust behaviour accordingly. I'm glad our ancestors took risks with new technologies; harnessing the power of fire without setting the planet alight for example. Mostly this works well, occasionally we make mistakes and have to backtrack, but overall human history has been about reducing misery and increasing survival though the application of new technology.