Jeffery Smith is a fear-mongerer. He sells self-published books and gives talks profiting from this junk science. So far there is no evidcence that GMO foods are harmeful. The damage caused by the blind opposition to GMO foods such as Golden Rice by Greenpeace is disgusting.

As home gardeners, we are not exposed to GM vegetable seed. So have no fears about inadvertantly sowing GM crops. Heirloom seeds have become venerated as of late. William Woys Weaver's scholarly book may have contributed to an increased awareness of heirloom vegetables. I don't think that just because it's an heirloom it's better. It's just different.

Please read the critique of the book and video in the link.

Here is a link that might be useful: Genetic Roulette

Agreed that home gardeners don't get GMOs. Heirloom just means an old cultivar that is still available. It is non-hybrid so if you ensure they aren't cross-pollinated with other cultivars of the same species, you can save the seed year after year and it will come back the same, unlike hybrids. In some cases, some newer non-hyrid cultivars are sold as heirlooms, in which case the term just means non-hybrid.

I've started growing some heirloom vegetables as of late. They might lack the size, disease-resistance and productivity of modern hybrids, but for things like tomatoes you can find some interesting heirlooms that ripen early in northern climates, as opposed to hybrids that are produced for mass-markets, which generally mean tomato-growing regions far to the south.

I wish they would come out with GMOs for home gardeners. Putting cold-hardiness into something like sweet cherries or peaches would be wonderful!

I didn't watch the video but I agree you're unlikely to be buying GMO seeds for your garden. Stokes, for example, is GMO free. Right now most genetic modification is for herbicide resistance in cereal grains and oilseeds, which you're not planting anyway. Some crops such as potatoes and corn have bacterial DNA added to kill pests.

I know someone who brags about stealing Monsanto potatoes that kill potato beetles, but you're not going to have this by accident in your garden. What you could have by accident, however, is your corn pollinated with GMO pollen, as corn is pollinated by wind and it can travel a long way. I haven't grown corn for years because it doesn't agree with me.

The home garden is not where you will find GMOs but unless you eat organic, you eat them every day, almost guaranteed. Most soy and canola for example are GMO and those are in everything.

If they are completely safe then why the big fight against labeling. Big companies are out to make profits eg. Dow corning when they purposefully hid the leaky breast implant files and lost their class action suit years later after a whistle blower released documents. And if they were completely safe why would they need a hidden rider in a large US bill protecting their sales in the event they are proven harmful. Canola is a big crop around here and prolly gmo I wonder about cross pollination from that to home veggies.

I think it is funny that independant studies all point to problems but corporate funded studies say they are safe. Does the addage "Don't bite the hand that feeds you" play into the results??

I suppose if it was only one or 2 people who were touting the unsafe pracitces I might agree it was safe but look at the list of scientists that are fighting against it.

Here is a link that might be useful: debate on Golden Rice- didn't even work

I just realized I made some comments but didn't give my opinion - I also don't agree with genetic modification. I don't think there's any way to predict what the ripple effects of these crops will be. I am even more concerned about the long-term effects on the environment than on people eating genetically modified food.

GMO... think for the most part it's a good thing and has been around for a long time for the good of feeding our overpopulated earth.

Agreed with Konrad that GMO is mostly a good thing. Most land that can be cultivated is being cultivated, and if there is some where we haven't yet hacked down the forests and turned it into farmland, we should really just leave that alone. So how to feed a world that has grown from 3 billion people when I was born, to over 7 billion now, whereas the arable land has remained more or less constant, possibly even shrunk due to Desertification? GMO is the solution IMO (along with aquaculture). The alternative is to let more people starve.

CLBlakey, you asked why the fight against labelling? The answer is that it isn't needed. The anti-GMO crowd don't want to prevent themselves from eating GMO, they want to prevent EVERYONE from eating GMO. It seems to get all tied up in anti-corporation, anti-progress, anti-whatever.

The organic food industry has done wonders in getting food labelled as "certified organic" and charging a premium for those items where relevant, and getting them accepted in the marketplace. If the anti-GMO crowd really only cared about knowing what they ate, they could do the same for GMO-free food -- set up a certification for GMO-free, which would give them all the labelling information they needed to buy GMO-free products themselves. But they want to push their anti-GMO crusade onto everyone by forcing GMO labelling onto everything, thereby implying that GMO is bad because it has to be specified on the food label.

GMO is just the same thing that plant-breeding or animal breeding would accomplish, but much faster. If the anti-GMO crowd lived 10,000 years ago, I bet they would be fighting the move to agriculture and insisting that hunter-gathering is the only way to go.

There are a bodies regulating non-GMO actually, independent of agencies that certify organic foods. You can get a product certified non-GMO by nongmoproject.org. I often buy organic foods, and often they are right there at Walmart and not more expensive.

Food shortage is a myth. People are without food because of imbalance of power, politics, and to some degree food wastage. There is so much food that the governments are turning grain into gasoline and corn into sugar (which is then put into EVERYTHING) to keep prices up.

I think people have a right to know if they are going to ingest food that has been crossed genetically with pesticides. You can eat what you wish but personally I don't want to eat pesticides.

Plant polination is one thing but reaching in and splicing genes is a whole different ball game. Fish and strawberry's don't naturally reproduce (blue strawberry) Roundup and corn don't naturally reproduce but now you have corn with built in pesticides.

"Food shortage is a myth. People are without food because of imbalance of power, politics, and to some degree food wastage." Especially in third world countries I have seen this first hand.

Also higher yeilds from GMO's is also a myth. I think cross polinating to grow things in cooler climates is great tree to tree or fruit to fruit but if it is not a natural combination like stated above I want to know before they sneak it into my food.

corn link
http://www.hoaxorfact.com/Health/russia-suspends-american-genetically-modified-corn-over-cancer-fears.html
---- so long as the rats didn't eat the corn longer than 90 days (3 short months) they didn't get cancer but people in mexico eat corn every day.

Here is a link that might be useful: Blue Strawberry- I know test stage only

The Lab study on rats was a fraud, ..false information, the rats used were bred for cancer and tumors.

Most breads we eat,..if not all and cereals are GM grown. Not sure why Europeans are banning imports when they spray the same thing.

I'm sure more study is needed, ...If I had a Joice, then I buy none GM grown OAT meal for my break cereal, I don't think this will happen anytime soon.

About 70% we eat today is GM foods.
I can see some real benefit on GM foods in fruits when for instance a virus or disease wipes out all trees,. or putting in more nutrient, taste, or vitamins into fruits and vegetables.

Here a discussion from Queztal and Billy Meier in 1987

Looks like GM is here to stay but there will be some learning along the way...

Billy:
Then to something else. For now, I have, once again, heard of enough evil that the future will bring. �" How does it stand, then, with the progress relating to genetic engineering? You’ve already told me a few things, but now, in relation to this, the question arose in our group during a discussion: when will it have come so far that genetic science will merge plant and animal genes together, in order to cultivate plant-animals, respectively animal-plants? Do you have any knowledge about this and does such an action represent the natural scientific evolution of man?

Quetzal:
16. The science of genetic engineering is established in the laws of overall evolution; therefore, it also cannot be prevented, even though in the future, irrational ones, who will unite together in whole organizations, will want to destroy such progress by all unfair means, even with lies and with false test reports and impact reports on genetically altered plants, animals, and humans.

17. However, genetic progress can’t be stopped, in spite of all these irrational machinations of the genetic engineering enemies, because the laws of evolution will allow it that even this branch of progress will find its fulfillment through human genius.

18. Of course, genetic engineering will need its time before it can function flawlessly because every beginning requires efforts, researches, and mistakes that must be made, for only through these can qualified and real successes be obtained and can progress be created.

19. But exactly this means that all negating things that will be undertaken in the future by those who are irrational and fearful, in reference to genetic engineering and, thus, to genetic manipulations in plants, animals, and humans, will be wrong and impeding to progress, as well as absurd, unrealistic, stupid, and irresponsible, for such actions will inhibit the progress and the better well-being of the Earth person and, thus, will slow down many vitally necessary solutions for humans, animals, and plants and even make such solutions impossible.

20. Due to the irrationality and irresponsibility of the genetic opponents, it will be that a lot of genetic progress for all humans, animals, and plants, as well as waters and air, and even for all of nature, will be prevented for many years, even though life could be prolonged by centuries through genetic engineering and just through the genetic manipulation of the person, by what means his health could be so stabilized, namely in a few decades, that he would almost never get sick.

21. Also plants, fruits, and vegetables, as well as other food products, could already be so genetically altered in a short time for the welfare of humans that ample benefits would arise from it, but the irresponsible, irrational and, thus, the gene-negating ones will work against this with lies, deceit, and fear, by what means the actual successes of genetic engineering will also have to wait a long time for themselves, for when the first actual successes are achieved, from which the people will benefit �" often not even knowing that their food or medicines are genetically engineered and are only actually useful and healthy because of this.

22. But concerning your other question:

23. It will be the year 2002 before a genetic attempt will officially become known, with which plant and animal genes will be brought together.

24. About this, we have acquired probability calculations, which show that the whole thing will report itself in Japan, in the sense that the genes of spinach plants will be transferred into pigs

25. Nevertheless, this won’t be the first case, for the same and similar things will already happen prior to this in different countries of the Earth from their scientists, as a result of their research; it’s just that the world public will learn almost nothing about this, like also not about the cloning attempts regarding humans and animals.

26. Even in the current time, many series of experiments like these are already running in scientific laboratories around the world; it’s just that these are concealed, and to be sure, with the full authorization of the irrational and irresponsible genetic opponents; therefore, ways of inhibiting progress are thought of by those who, out of complete ignorance and often influenced by sectarianism, try to restrain the development themselves, and to them, all unfair means are right, and this will also remain so in the new millennium, at least in the first two decades.

Billy:
Idiotic, especially when one considers that the progress cannot be stopped, not even when lunatics rant against it. But so it has always been on the Earth, for there have always been pathological idiots, who didn’t want to allow the progress, who braced themselves against it, and with this, often caused much disaster, by what means often many people lost their lives, who may have been saved if the progressive had been allowed, especially with regard to medicine and food preparation, etc.

source link

Here is a link that might be useful: Contact Report 215

This post was edited by konrad___far_north on Sat, Nov 9, 13 at 21:43

DDT was once touted as a good thing too until science caught up. (from wikipedia)
The Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1948 "for his discovery of the high efficiency of DDT as a contact poison against several arthropods."[3] After the war, DDT was made available for use as an agricultural insecticide, and its production and use increased.[4]

finally banned in 1972

You would think we would learn the first time

PS- same company is pushing for GMO

This will be my last post on this I did my civic duty in passing on info do with it what you will.

Here is a link that might be useful: David Suzuki on GMO trees

I personally don't want to eat pesticides either. I believe our food shortage is our own doing. We throw enough food away to feed the planet.

I don't agree with GMO's at all. Simplied version - The human race has become so arrogant that most believe we can control everything on this planet. Nature was here long before us and will be here long after we've destroyed ourselves.

CLBlakey,
Roundup resistant crops have NOT been "crossed genetically with pesticides". They have had a gene for roundup resistance that existed naturally in a species of bacteria spliced into their genes, so the canola and soybeans now have that roundup resistance also. I can understand your questioning the use of roundup on such wide-scale use, but I think the issue then is really with the use of roundup, not with GMO per se, though you present it as being a GMO issue rather than a pesticide issue.

I think GMO is a wonderful advance, but like any science it's how you use it that matters. The discovery of radioactivity has been used to create atomic bombs that killed hundreds of thousands of people in an instant, but it has also been used to detect and destroy cancers, saving hundreds of million of lives.

As for DDT, yes it's widespread use as a pesticide was a disaster, but as an insect-barrier in the 3rd world to protect against malaria it has no equal.... from Wiki:

"The WHO's anti-malaria campaign, which consisted mostly of spraying DDT, was initially very successful. For example, in Sri Lanka, the program reduced cases from about 3 million per year before spraying to just 18 in 1963 and 29 in 1964. Thereafter the program was halted to save money and malaria rebounded to 600,000 cases in 1968."

The UN says the world needs to double food production over the next 20 years. I don't think we can even dream of doing that without agricultural advances like GMO, because the fertilizers, hybridization, and pesticides of the last "green revolution" have taken us about as far as they can.

Here's an informative post about the issue of labelling in the US.

Here is a link that might be useful: GMO Labelling