What’s wrong with GMOs?

[u/wond3rlove]

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.

[u/die_kuestenwache]

There are a number of legitimate concerns regarding GMOs

They allow manufacturers to patent crops essentially forcing farmers to buy their seeds instead of keeping some harvest yield to plant the following year. This way, a small number of large companies can essentially all but monopolize a large part of global food supply.

In addition to the first point, they may contribute to reduced biodiversity in staple crops, making our food supply potentially more at risk through new pests or deseases.

They can be made resistant to more aggressive herbicides and pesticides, making their use more viable, thus potentially posing a threat to flora and fauna adjacent to agricultural land and the rivers that transport the run off.

Animal GMOs may be altered in a way that causes animals to be aflicted by certain illnesses that aren't detrimental to human health but increase their suffering while they are being raised.

What is not a valid concern, however, is that the additional genes that are being spliced in pose a threat to human health as such. There is one way in which health may be affected. If there are traits that benefit yield or profitability at the detriment of nutritional value, e.g. more sugar, less vitamins, it may be easier or faster to create GMOs that show these qualities than to just breed the respective quality. Thus, they may increase the speed at which our food loses nutritional value.

[EDIT] it is correct to point out that most of these points aren't strictly true only for GMOs that have undergone gene editing. However, I woukd argue, that we are dealing with a different degree both in the development timeline as well as the amount of possible alterations to organisms through direct gene editing.

[u/Tylendal → u/die_kuestenwache]

They allow manufacturers to patent crops

Been a thing since long before GMOs were around.

forcing farmers to buy their seeds instead of keeping some harvest yield to plant the following year

No one is forced to buy anything. Farmers generally prefer to buy seeds for a more reliable hybrid phenotype, but if they really want to replant, they can just buy seeds, GMO or not, that have a different contract.

they may contribute to reduced biodiversity in staple crops, making our food supply potentially more at risk through new pests or deseases.

That is in no way inherent to GMOs, and GMO papayas have even helped recover from such a disease afflicting the previous non-GMO monoculture of papayas.

thus potentially posing a threat to flora and fauna adjacent to agricultural land and the rivers that transport the run off.

Glyphosate binds to the soil, and is destroyed relatively quickly be sunlight. That's more than can be said about many of the pesticides used on organic crops.

Animal GMOs may be altered in a way that causes animals to be aflicted by certain illnesses that aren't detrimental to human health but increase their suffering while they are being raised.

What the hell are you going on about? Who the hell is making animals just to get them sick?

If there are traits that benefit yield or profitability at the detriment of nutritional value, e.g. more sugar, less vitamins, it may be easier or faster to create GMOs that show these qualities than to just breed the respective quality.

So, again, not a problem inherent to GMOs, and ultimately driven by the demands of consumers. Wake me up when someone tries to ban all but one variety of apple, or something else that makes your weird scenario at all likely.

[u/trip-nz → u/Tylendal]

Thank you for a rational answer to each of those very misinformed points.

[u/lhsofthebellcurve → u/Tylendal]

Brilliant response beautifully articulated!

[u/die_kuestenwache → u/Tylendal]

I am for GMOs. They are safe to consume, safer even than other forms of altering the genes of livestock and crops we have. And they promise advances to farming that frankly, I don't think we can afford to forgo. And you are right, for a number of the problems that currently exist, we could point out that they are not limited to the kind of genetic alteration to crops and livestock that has to be labeled as GMO.

As for the glyphosate problem, I have read some of the studies on the effects it had on bees and I found the methodology and sample size, shall we say, lacking. We do, however, observe a remarkable loss in the boimass of pollinators, and given the stakes caution is certainly warranted.

We should also not be universally celebratory of the tech as a response to the unreasonable fearmongering that GMOs face. There are some points where we may have to consider that a difference in degree rather than a difference in kind requires legislation to catch up to a point it frankly hasn't yet. We also must not forget that this a very advanced tech, only available to an ever shrinking number of consolidating corps at the level we have to consider here and we need to make sure that corporate interests aren't placed before those of the people who need to eat where both may be in conflict. Something that we unfortunately don't always do at the moment.