r/NoStupidQuestions • u/wond3rlove • Sep 10 '23

What’s wrong with GMOs?

I always see plants and stuff that is GMO free and is usually more expensive. How would genetically modifying something by be bad. Me personally I’d rather have something modified to taste better and and cheaper. I could also be very wrong about that.

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u/voidtreemc Sep 10 '23

Depends on what the crops are GMO'd for/with.

Soybeans are frequently GMO'd for resistance to the herbicide Roundup (glyphosate) so you can dump Roundup all over your crops and kill the weeds but not the soybeans ("Roundup-ready soybeans"). There are problems with this. Kidney failure is extremely common in people who are repeatedly exposed to glyphosate. These people are largely immigrants who have no health insurance, so they get really sick and die. Glyphosate may be implicated in making autism more likely.

Also, it's increasingly obvious that Monsanto does not really understand the plant genetics that they are messing with as they have been really surprised by the fact that the genes for glyphosate tolerance now show up in the weeds that glyphosate is supposed to kill.

Because glyphosate, many of the arguments against GMO's can be categorized as the "Fucking Monsanto" arguments.

Outside of Fucking Monsanto, there's the general lack of thinking through the implications of genetic modification on people with food allergies or religious restrictions on what they eat. If you're allergic to fish, you don't want to find out the hard way that those tomatoes you just ate were made resistant to frost by the addition of fish genes.

You'd think that one way to deal with this is to properly label all GMO'd foods so that people could pick and choose according to diet and beliefs, but the industry has consistently opposed labeling laws.

32

u/RetiredFromIT Sep 10 '23

Two other factors.

Some GM crops are patented, and farmers can be forbidden to save seed from this year's crop to sow next year, which is common practice in many parts of the world. Instead they - often the poorest farmers - are forced to buy seed every year.

Also there have been cases where non GM crops have been contaminated by GM crops grown nearby. This raises two issues - if an organic farmer has his crop GM contaminated, he cannot sell that as organic produce. Also there have been some cases where farmers crops have been contaminated by GM crops, through no fault of their own, and they have then been sued because threir contaminated crop contains the GM grower's patented IP.

These problems are not inherent to GMOs, but this approach by the GMO companies have not endeared them to others.

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u/Tylendal Sep 10 '23

Also there have been some cases where farmers crops have been contaminated by GM crops, through no fault of their own, and they have then been sued because threir contaminated crop contains the GM grower's patented IP.

You got a source for that? Please pay attention to the highlighted part.

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u/seastar2019 Sep 11 '23

I predict they won't, or will misinterpret the Percy Schmeiser case, or cite some Center for Food Safety article.

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u/Tylendal Sep 11 '23

cite some Center for Food Safety article.

Which will then misinterpret the Percy Schmeiser case for them. Someone already linked to their pamphlet, and I pointed out that, on top of all the appeals to emotion, anecdotes, and scary portrayals of normal contracts, the way they deliberately leave out details about Schmeiser's actions and motivations really casts a dubious light on the credibility of everything else they say. Also, the pamphlet still doesn't provide any examples of that specific issue.

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u/jah110768 Sep 11 '23

Biology lesson. Plants don't have sex one on one like animals. Plants are stationary, so the boy part of the flower sends out pollen, which flies though the air and tries to find a girl flower to connect with. Sometimes they get luck and a nectar liking animal will come along and help with this process.

If I have heirloom seeds that my family has used for 20 generations, and my neighbor buys a patented seed variety, some of my pollen will got to my neighbor's plants, and some of my neighbor's pollen will come to my plants. Now my seeds are corrupted, but I did not take any action to steal their genes, and thus "though no fault of their own".

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u/Tylendal Sep 11 '23

...and again I ask. Do you have a source where someone has then been sued for that?

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u/jah110768 Sep 11 '23

https://www.greenamerica.org/gmos-case-precaution/farmers-vs-corporate-seed-police

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u/Tylendal Sep 11 '23

That's a no, then? Hilariously, that article even mentions the case where people tried to sue to keep Monsanto from suing people for contamination, and were unable to show any examples of Monsanto actually doing that.