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DONKEY SALAMI
Jun 28, 2008

donkey? donkey?

You just want an excuse for those bitch titties

Gotta go lift bro

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WAR CRIME GIGOLO
Oct 3, 2012

The Hague
tryna get me
for these glutes

GMOs aren't really that bad for you

basement jihadist
Oct 3, 2002

toggle posted:

gmo hurt bee

what the gently caress they better fuckignkg not


that would bee awful gently caress

Darkman Fanpage
Jul 4, 2012

Maldoror posted:

Just about every food you eat is not in a "genetically natural" state; it's been changed at the very least by selective breeding to make genes change or switch on and off.

Broccoli, Cauliflower, Kale, Brussel Sprout, are all freak forms of brassica wild cabbage.

Sweet corn is modified so that the sugar doesn't turn into starch.

Apples are modified to be large with a lot of sugar, original non modified forms of all eating apples would be crab apples.

Tomatoes in natural wild form are blueberry to cherry sized.

List goes on, where do you draw the line on what is "OK" or "God intended" or not. If it's good for you? So if you can manipulate genes more directly and make the food healthier or more nutritious then how is that different or wrong? Like, aren't apples bad because they are "modified" to have much higher sugar?

The answer is easy, GMO is a buzz term and you get social justice points for picking up the bullet points whatever they are and just repeating and doing them without thinking about it for yourself.

WAR CRIME GIGOLO
Oct 3, 2012

The Hague
tryna get me
for these glutes

gmo hurt bee

make me go qq

A Stupid Baby
Dec 31, 2002

lip up fatty
Theres probably ups and downs to all forms of pest control. But I just want to eat a really really big carrot because im into phalluses but zucchini and cucumber are gross.

WAR CRIME GIGOLO
Oct 3, 2012

The Hague
tryna get me
for these glutes

What if we GM'd Cannabis to make gigantic loving kush trees

Moridin920
Nov 15, 2007

by FactsAreUseless
gmo is black majick and if you support it you are a heretic and a terrorist

basement jihadist
Oct 3, 2002

LeoMarr posted:

gmo hurt bee

make me go qq

i know wtf im rage

WAR CRIME GIGOLO
Oct 3, 2012

The Hague
tryna get me
for these glutes

basement jihadist posted:

i know wtf im rage

qq

my kinda ape
Sep 15, 2008

Everything's gonna be A-OK
Oven Wrangler

Adventure Pigeon posted:

Corporate agriculture is another thing people are often uncomfortable with. The idea of big farms pushing out the small ones is discomforting. GMOs are actually a solution to this. Not corporate GMOs, but public availability of GMO resources. Making a new crop breed to meet a specific farmer's needs is unlikely due to the extremely high cost and long wait period required by breeding. Making a GMO is relatively inexpensive. Imagine if smallholder farmers could provide information on the conditions they live under and a year later, receive germplasm that has been custom designed to thrive in them as effectively as the best commercial breeds. It's something that would be nice, but it's unlikely. One of the consequences of anti-GMO activism is that public domain GMOs are a fantasy due to lack of support from both funding agencies and non-profit organizations, due to their sensitivity to negative publicity.

The vast majority of farms in the US are family owned so it's always funny when people say things about how corporations are running all the farms and such. As far as GM being cheap from what I've been told it's like 50-100 million dollars in total to bring a GM product to market. It's probably fairly cheap without the regulatory framework but when you have to go through all of the safety hoops then it brings costs way up. And then the anti-GM morons still claim that there's no safeguards in place protecting us from these HORRIBLE FRANKENFOODS!

Here's a video I stole from one of my classes taught by a professor that sounds like Dean Norris about the process of bringing a GM plant to market if y'all are interested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASCs--ATqdY

my kinda ape
Sep 15, 2008

Everything's gonna be A-OK
Oven Wrangler

logical fallacy posted:

We know that crop rotation (basically, controlled diversity) is essential to healthy soil. But we try to fix it with a petroleum dependent product (nitrogen fertilizer is petroleum derived).
We know that living organisms are essential to healthy soil, but the broad stroke pesticides we use kill off most of them.
We know that planting solely one type of anything is a recipe for disaster, and that people prefer diversity in their produce.

all of these things(crop rotation, no-till, etc) are modern best practices lol, you have no idea what you're talking about



the cool thing about most of the people criticizing agricultural practices is that they're simultaneously stuck like 60 years in the past and also think all farmers are totally retarded and that scientists are not constantly researching improvements production practices

my kinda ape fucked around with this message at 08:46 on Jun 12, 2015

ANIME IS BLOOD
Sep 4, 2008

by zen death robot

LeoMarr posted:

GMOs aren't really that bad for you

the OP is right

GMO my org rear end

ANIME IS BLOOD
Sep 4, 2008

by zen death robot
that said crucify anyone trying to copyright a genome

not an endorsement
Mar 14, 2008


Personally, I think it's problematic that a sitting Senator has a racial slur for a last name.



nothing wrong with patenting genetic constructs not like they last forever anyway (the patents, not the genes)

Ocean Book
Sep 27, 2010

:yum: - hi
wood is made of cellulose fibers and lignin (+ others). paper is made of cellulose fibers. to make the pulp for paper you have to dissolve the lignin in a hot pressurized basic environment with sodium sulfide, and then do a lot of washing on the residual fibers to make them clean.

my idea was to make a GMO that just makes cellulose fibers without any lignin so you can skip the pulping and bleaching and cleaning stuff. im going into a different feild and am not actually gonna do it though so someone else can if they read this.

spud
Aug 27, 2003

by LITERALLY AN ADMIN
I'm gonna turn into the Hulk by eating poo poo loads of GMO broccoli.

Applewhite
Aug 16, 2014

by vyelkin
Nap Ghost
As a mother, I

thathonkey
Jul 17, 2012
Letting someone impregnate you actually endows you with the knowledge of everything ab GMOs so therefore it is actually a mother's duty to inform the rest of us via lots of facebook shares

Phobic Nest
Oct 2, 2013

You Are My Sunshine
combo that with being a schoolteacher and you get wizard powers to create powerful elixirs

Drunkboxer
Jun 30, 2007

Beef Turret posted:

Yeah let's compare selective breeding with direct intervention into the genome as if one necessarily leads to the other. What's a science cheerleading thread without teleologues

Genetic modification of plants is typically done with a bacterial vector, and that bacteria does it willy nilly in the wild anyway except it doesn't care what genes it dumps into it and where. The plants genome isn't some field of undriven virgin snow, and neither is yours.

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

Adventure Pigeon posted:

I don't really like arguing about GMO stuff because I do plant genetics for a living. It ends up feeling repetitive and tedious. But I try to do it anyways because I think it's important to make people aware of the issues. I'm not employed by industry, nor is my research dependent on GMOs. In fact, most of what I do is to accelerate traditional breeding.

People who are against GMOs often really aren't arguing against GMOs in many cases. They're arguing against modern, resource intensive agriculture, or they dislike that big corporations control most of it, or they don't like the amount of chemicals that are involved, or they just worry about the monoculture issues. I don't see a lot of people that can focus specifically on the concept of moving beneficial genes from one species into another as being intrinsically bad, and I've never seen a really coherent argument against it. There's no increased risk of allergies. There's minimal risk of the gene escaping into the environment. Most domesticated crops are like expensive showdogs. They thrive under the right environment, but they do very poorly outside of it. There's a reason why you don't see GMO corn growing all over the place like a weed.

Many people are even right, to a degree, about what they're upset with. What they usually fail to understand is the nuance behind the problem.

Monoculture is a problem. It is a consequence of modern agriculture. Efforts to move diversity back into crops is extremely difficult because diverse germplasm makes for a poor commercial product. There are, however, efforts to create reserves of diversity. When new pests or diseases emerge, they can be tested against these reserves and new germplasm can be developed. This process would still take years and the products would likely be inferior to existing plants. Introducing GMO resistance genes into commercial germplasm is a much faster, more viable approach, and yields would be unlikely to decline (as they would be with traditionally bred germplasm).

I can understand why people dislike modern agriculture. Relying on petroleum products, commercial fertilizers, and pesticides probably isn't a good long term solution. But what alternative is there? Going purely organic would probably require that we clear two land masses the size of South America to maintain production. Further, food prices would skyrocket, availability in the third world would decline further, and we'd still end up using tons of chemicals - just organic ones - that are still hazardous. The gains from traditional breeding have pretty much reached a plateau, yet the population is still increasing while arable land is decreasing. GMOs are a valuable tool for continuing the green revolution, and maybe even getting rid of our dependency on chemical fertilizers and pesticides by making plants more resource efficient and disease resistant.

Corporate agriculture is another thing people are often uncomfortable with. The idea of big farms pushing out the small ones is discomforting. GMOs are actually a solution to this. Not corporate GMOs, but public availability of GMO resources. Making a new crop breed to meet a specific farmer's needs is unlikely due to the extremely high cost and long wait period required by breeding. Making a GMO is relatively inexpensive. Imagine if smallholder farmers could provide information on the conditions they live under and a year later, receive germplasm that has been custom designed to thrive in them as effectively as the best commercial breeds. It's something that would be nice, but it's unlikely. One of the consequences of anti-GMO activism is that public domain GMOs are a fantasy due to lack of support from both funding agencies and non-profit organizations, due to their sensitivity to negative publicity.

you forgot to mention the ecology thing about land sparing (leaving large areas untouched and farming the rest for high yield) increasingly turning out to be better than land sharing (capital o Organic farms) for biodiversity

Drunkboxer posted:

Genetic modification of plants is typically done with a bacterial vector, and that bacteria does it willy nilly in the wild anyway except it doesn't care what genes it dumps into it and where. The plants genome isn't some field of undriven virgin snow, and neither is yours.

the greatest thing is that e.g. ~*~traditional~*~ ~*~natural~*~ sweet potatoes are natural gmos made exactly the same way as most manmade gmos (agrobacterium poops dna into the plant to eat it better and occasionally ends up pooping it into a plant egg cell)

suck my woke dick fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Jun 12, 2015

Boinks
Nov 24, 2003



I lump the anti-GMO people in with the anti-vaccination people.

That is all.

suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

Boinks posted:

I lump the anti-GMO people in with the anti-vaccination people.

That is all.

:agreed:

Drunkboxer
Jun 30, 2007

blowfish posted:



the greatest thing is that e.g. ~*~traditional~*~ ~*~natural~*~ sweet potatoes are natural gmos made exactly the same way as most manmade gmos (agrobacterium poops dna into the plant to eat it better and occasionally ends up pooping it into a plant egg cell)

There really is a fundamental misunderstanding among people as to how genetic material moves around. Sometimes you'll see a popular science article somewhere that'll be about how much of our genome is of viral or bacterial origin, but it never seems to stick and no one seems to realize how important it is. For instance, there's a gene in sheep that's of viral origin, and if you knock it down pregnant sheep won't be able to carry the baby to term.

Nuclearmonkee
Jun 10, 2009


LeoMarr posted:

GMOs aren't really that bad for you

They aren't bad. Every crop we make has been modified to better suit our purposes. We are just better at it now.

Mr. Pumroy
May 20, 2001

i hope to gain superpowers through gmos

the ol pump-n-bump
Jul 27, 2004

by Smythe
Something awful was agasint GMO when everyone else was pro GMO, but now everyone is anti GMO so you nerds have to disagree just to have a differing opinion, just like the goons saying you dont need to floss to have healthy teeth. youre all stupid fat shut in fucks no one cares about

the ol pump-n-bump fucked around with this message at 16:12 on Jun 12, 2015

Drunkboxer
Jun 30, 2007

PBRstreetgang posted:

Something awful was agasint GMO when everyone else was pro GMO, but now everyone is anti GMO so you nerds have to disagree just to have a differing opinion, just like the goons saying you dont need to floss to have healthy teeth. youre all stupid fat shut in fucks no one cares about

Nah it's always been pro, maybe there was a few people in GBS 1.0 that were making GBS threads their pants because they watched Food Inc or some other "eye opening" piece of poo poo.

And the only people against GMOs are morons and Europeans (morons)

Drunkboxer
Jun 30, 2007
I kid, some of the agricultural stuff is p bad

Moridin920
Nov 15, 2007

by FactsAreUseless
I feel like who cares about GMOs we should look at how farm animals get treated.

WAR CRIME GIGOLO
Oct 3, 2012

The Hague
tryna get me
for these glutes

Moridin920 posted:

I feel like who cares about GMOs we should look at how farm animals get treated.

that activist cause is so last decade

fuck the ROW
Aug 29, 2008

by zen death robot
i don't give a poo poo about farm animals u fool

Boinks
Nov 24, 2003



I think we need to find better ways to GMO our farm animals. Maybe make some chickens with the 11 secret herbs and spices already built in.

sugar free jazz
Mar 5, 2008

gmos prevent me from seeing my doctor because he's out of network....

5er
Jun 1, 2000

Qapla' to a true warrior! :patriot:

One really big thing that hasn't been mentioned yet that is a big driver for the anti-GMO sentiment, is that Monsanto sues the everliving gently caress out of any farmer that has their crops growing unlicensed on their property.

Sometimes when seeds are being dispersed during planting season, they can be carried by wind and propagated into neighboring farmers' fields. GMO veggies don't look different from non-GMO ones in most circumstances, so farmers affected by this won't know the difference since they're not in the habit of having DNA testers on their payroll to ensure they're not growing licensed crops by accident. Monsanto does, and vigorously sues anybody with crops with unlicensed genetic markers they've patented, on their properties.

I'm sure some farmers have knowingly pilfered GMO seeds and have been justifiably sued, but legend has it they are absolutely unscrupled and merciless and don't listen to any mitigating circumstances in their lawsuits. There's also a somewhat foil-hat level theory that they are knowingly benefitting from suing smaller farmers into foreclosure so they can snap up the properties to sell to farmers that buy their licensed crops.

Adventure Pigeon
Nov 8, 2005

I am a master storyteller.

ghetto wormhole posted:

The vast majority of farms in the US are family owned so it's always funny when people say things about how corporations are running all the farms and such. As far as GM being cheap from what I've been told it's like 50-100 million dollars in total to bring a GM product to market. It's probably fairly cheap without the regulatory framework but when you have to go through all of the safety hoops then it brings costs way up. And then the anti-GM morons still claim that there's no safeguards in place protecting us from these HORRIBLE FRANKENFOODS!

Here's a video I stole from one of my classes taught by a professor that sounds like Dean Norris about the process of bringing a GM plant to market if y'all are interested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASCs--ATqdY

There's a difference in cost between bringing a GMO to market and developing a GMO. The cost of development depends heavily on the plant. Some are very easy to transform and grow quickly. Some are very difficult to grow and transform slowly. I wouldn't expect costs to go over a million for the hard stuff, and less for most plants. It's worth noting that economy of scale applies here, so even the hardest to transform plants would probably end up costing around 100k for a new variety. On the other hand, to develop a new conventional breed can take ten years and cost millions. Breeders will often work on multiple projects over the course of years, and if even a single one works out it's considered a success.

blowfish posted:

you forgot to mention the ecology thing about land sparing (leaving large areas untouched and farming the rest for high yield) increasingly turning out to be better than land sharing (capital o Organic farms) for biodiversity


the greatest thing is that e.g. ~*~traditional~*~ ~*~natural~*~ sweet potatoes are natural gmos made exactly the same way as most manmade gmos (agrobacterium poops dna into the plant to eat it better and occasionally ends up pooping it into a plant egg cell)

These are interesting points as well. I'm involved in the research side of things, but not the farming side. I didn't know that about sweet potatoes, either.


5er posted:

One really big thing that hasn't been mentioned yet that is a big driver for the anti-GMO sentiment, is that Monsanto sues the everliving gently caress out of any farmer that has their crops growing unlicensed on their property.

Sometimes when seeds are being dispersed during planting season, they can be carried by wind and propagated into neighboring farmers' fields. GMO veggies don't look different from non-GMO ones in most circumstances, so farmers affected by this won't know the difference since they're not in the habit of having DNA testers on their payroll to ensure they're not growing licensed crops by accident. Monsanto does, and vigorously sues anybody with crops with unlicensed genetic markers they've patented, on their properties.

I'm sure some farmers have knowingly pilfered GMO seeds and have been justifiably sued, but legend has it they are absolutely unscrupled and merciless and don't listen to any mitigating circumstances in their lawsuits. There's also a somewhat foil-hat level theory that they are knowingly benefitting from suing smaller farmers into foreclosure so they can snap up the properties to sell to farmers that buy their licensed crops.

This is a common myth. The event that lead to the most famous case of Monsanto suing a farmer did start with GMO seeds being dispersed into his field. After the farmer realized this had happened, though, he proceeded to spray the part of his field that had the GMO plants with Roundup, killed all the plants that weren't GMO, then propagated the GMO seeds. His field basically went from being 2-3% GMO one year to 97-98% GMO the next.

http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/pages/saved-seed-farmer-lawsuits.aspx

This (obviously) presents a skewed viewpoint, but it does give exact numbers on how many farmers they've sued, how many went to court, and provides specific links to some of the cases.

Moridin920
Nov 15, 2007

by FactsAreUseless
or maybe we could talk about cutting down the rainforests to feed the US' stupid beef addiction

I just feel like GMO foods is such a first world problem retard issue. put some regulation on there so scientists aren't making killer tomatos (which I'm pretty sure exists already) and let's move on. there's more important stuff to talk about even under the 'agriculture' umbrella

WAR CRIME GIGOLO
Oct 3, 2012

The Hague
tryna get me
for these glutes

Moridin920 posted:

or maybe we could talk about cutting down the rainforests to feed the US' stupid beef addiction

I just feel like GMO foods is such a first world problem retard issue. put some regulation on there so scientists aren't making killer tomatos (which I'm pretty sure exists already) and let's move on. there's more important stuff to talk about even under the 'agriculture' umbrella

Texas isn't droubting anymore so we won't need to do that

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suck my woke dick
Oct 10, 2012

:siren:I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!:siren:

Put this cum-loving slave on ignore immediately!

Moridin920 posted:

I just feel like GMO foods is such a first world problem retard issue. put some regulation on there so scientists aren't making killer tomatos (which I'm pretty sure exists already) and let's move on. there's more important stuff to talk about even under the 'agriculture' umbrella

Yes, mostly environmental issues (since there won't be any farms left in which to mistreat animals after the planet is completely hosed :v:). Which tie into intensive vs low intensity farming and land use, energy use, and fertiliser runoff/use efficiency. Which then often ties into applications of GMOs. At which point people who aren't just skeptical of GMOs but have dedicated their life to the purity of plant genomes and go out of their way to protest/block/burn down GMOs get seriously annoying.

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