Not sure how I feel about this anymore:
The Food and Drug Administration is seriously considering whether to approve the first genetically engineered animal that people would eat — salmon that can grow at twice the normal rate.
The developer of the salmon has been trying to get approval for a decade. But the company now seems to have submitted most or all of the data the F.D.A. needs to analyze whether the salmon are safe to eat, nutritionally equivalent to other salmon and safe for the environment, according to government and biotechnology industry officials. A public meeting to discuss the salmon may be held as early as this fall.
Some consumer and environmental groups are likely to raise objections to approval. Even within the F.D.A., there has been a debate about whether the salmon should be labeled as genetically engineered (genetically engineered crops are not labeled).
I used to think that the debate of GM foods was pretty silly, especially when you consider that all through history we have been genetically modifying our livestock and vegetables through selective breeding. But anymore, I am just very wary about anything like this. I guess the one area where I am truly getting more conservative is in regards to food. Having discovered the difference between organic vegetables, locally raised beef and lamb and goat, tasted the difference between wild caught salmon from a fishing trip and the crap you get at a store, it is clear that how we raise our food really matters, and this sort of thing really bothers me.
At the very least, I don’t see why it would be an issue to label these things (as well as crops) as genetically altered. Again- let the free market decide.
Personally, as far as game fish go, I eat only wild caught fish and I just eat them sparingly because of the high levels of mercury, but that is still better than all the PCBS and other substances in farm raised fish. Not to mention the taste and texture, and probably both of them are all shot up with dye.
We’ve gotten to the point in society where it is as difficult for the average person to make informed decisions about their food as it is for people to make a dollar as an individual on the stock market- there is so much you need to know, so much labeling nonsense, and so many gimmicks that you never really know if you are doing the right thing.
Having said that, I’m going to go eat some locally raised bacon and some free range eggs.
Booger
Selective breeding is one thing–genetic engineering is another. No equivalence there, as nature weeds the monsters out in selective breeding.
Not a luddite, just a skeptic. Who is eating locally grown as much as possible. Also, First, too?
manshapedturd
There’s a Syfy channel movie in here somewhere. “Psychosockeye vs. Killer Cedar Plank”
Hunter Gathers
Getting rid of ALL farm subsidies would level the playing field. I would love nothing more than to buy locally, and purchase nothing but organically produced vegetables. But the organic stuff runs almost twice as much as the rest of the products on the shelf, and the farmer’s market on the square in town is only open for one day, for 2 hours. And that’s mostly just corn, some tomatoes, and a few other odds and ends. No local beef, pork, chicken, eggs, milk, and the fish caught around here tastes like Bender’s ass.
We only have 2 grocery stores in town, Kroger and Wal-Mart, and as a former (as of 10 days ago) employee of Kroger, there’s no fucking difference between the two, except Wally World is cheaper. They sell the same shit. They both sell the ammonia treated beef, Tyson chicken, the milk comes from the same place, the pork tastes like shit, and the fish is inedible.
There’s pretty much nothing I can do about it, except not eat, but the body needs things like vitamins, minerals, carbs and protein.
Farm subsidies need to end. Unless you think it’s a good idea for soda to be cheaper than water.
SteveinSC
It looks like we’re heading towards the world of Bruce Dearn (sp?) in “Silent Running.” Nothing real anymore. Perhaps in the future we will have credit cards with cell phone links imbedded in our bodies, integrated with our work and pay to create a giant organism that is fed artificial food and just flows money around in bionic veins to keep the Corporate mega body alive.
P.S. It’s been a riot over at HuffPo with hundreds of people trying to get through the moderators with “well wishes” for Cheney. The watchers must be worn out.
PurpleGirl
Labeling: Yeah, it shouldn’t matter to the free market types if it’s labeled as GM,… except that then people who don’t want GM food would know what not to buy and the GM food would fail (or take longer to show a profit). I guess those investor types just couldn’t stand a possible loss of their money and then they’d cry. (And we really, really can’t have a true experience of their free markets, can we?)
ETA: It’s Bruce Dern.
abo gato
John, make your own bacon! It’s not hard at all and the difference in taste is just amazing. I’ve been curing and smoking my own bacon for about 6 or 7 months now. There’s a local butcher that I buy green pork bellies from. He cuts them into three pieces, about 12 inches square for me. I freeze two and cure one. The cure takes a week and the smoking takes a couple of hours. The result, wow. You can add any flavor you like. One of our current favorites is garlic and crushed red pepper.
Oh, and the last belly I got came from the local rodeo/stock show in February. Raised by a kid to show. We named the bacon Larry. Larry’s been great to us. I have the last slab ready to smoke tomorrow.
beltane
I have no problem with this stuff being sold as long as it is clearly labeled. Our oceans may soon be so depleted that fake, genetically modified fishiesque creatures may be the only option for people without a lot of money to spend. But the product must be clearly identified, as consumers should have the right to chose what they’re buying.
Even without genetic modification, the chicken that everyone buys, even the 100% pasture-raised, organic ones that cost $5 a pound, have been so transformed by selective breeding that they are incapable of mating, cannot perch like other chickens, can barely walk, and if left un-slaughtered would die of heart failure by the ripe old age of six months.
Locally grown meat is a superior product, but it would absolutely blast a whole through the average family’s budget. We did pigs for several years until we realized it wasn’t very cost-effective unless we did out own butchering.
I love the eggs from my chickens, though.
Taylor
Pigs are intelligent. I heard of an anecdote of a pig farm where they were coming in in the morning and finding the lights on. Who was turning the lights on? They hid at night and found out. Yup, the pigs were turning the lights on when the humans left. True story.
Genetic engineering is not the same as what humans have been doing for years. Nature does not mix bug and vegetable genes.
Svensker
The hubster is Captain Soy but he just read some article saying the mice who were fed on genetically engineered soy died, so we’re throwing out the soy burgers today.
We try to do local and organic as much as possible and have almost completely cut out factory meat — going out to dinner is the exception.
Why DO the “free marketeers” have such a hard time allowing the free market to work? Isn’t it illegal for milk producers to advertise that their cows are not fed growth hormone because that would hurt the pro-growth hormone users’ fee fees? I seem to remember that.
Emma
I have been slowly turning towards a vegetable-based diet. Not vegetarian or vegan, I would miss pan con lechon too much, but just trying to eat the best I can without giving my wallet apoplexy. Thank goodness in Florida you can grow things year round and we have a big yard. We usually grow tomatoes but for the fall we’re planning a big herb garden and all sorts of onions, peppers, and lettuces as well as tomatoes and zucchini.
We also have an Amish family that comes down from Pennsylvania in the winter and opens a farm stand and you can pick tomatoes and strawberries and buy other produce and the most wonderful breads. Don’t know how long it will last as all the areas south of Miami are experiencing a building boom (during a time nobody can buy houses; go figure).
Ramiah Ariya
I thought the main issues with GM food was the monoculture and the fact that someone owns a patent for your food. In India the government tried to approve Bt Brinjal (Eggplant is called Brinjal in India). The above were the reasons cited by the groups against the GM crop.
They said that first the “better” brinjal would wipe out other brinjals from the environment. So you would have a monoculture which is more susceptible to an adaptive pest. That is, since every Bt Brinjal is genetically identical, natural selection cannot operate and when a pest arrives that can kill the Bt Brinjal, ALL brinjal is wiped out.
Second, (I am not sure about this), because a company OWNS the genetic signature of Bt Brinjal, you basically have to pay them whenever you cultivate it. That is a monoply, particularly when it is combined with the monoculture above.
I don’t know how much of this applies to salmon.
WereBear
@Ramiah Ariya: All of those are good points against letting Corporate World have a lock on our food. Because that just doesn’t work out so well.
I never thought the algae farms of the science fiction of my youth would actually look good to me now.
Just a fun science fact: the human body actually does not need carbs at all. There are babies born, missing an enzyme that doesn’t let their cells take up blood sugar, and must live without any carbs. And they do, and do fine.
We actually have two metabolic engines; the carb one, and the fat/protein one. Just because most civilizations defaults to the one doesn’t mean the other isn’t still there, waiting to be activated.
Redshirt
I just don’t see how anyone can confidently speak to the long term consequences of these genetic techniques, since we have not had the ability long enough to test. Who knows 5, 10, 20 years ago what the consqeunces of mixing, say, jellyfish genes with tomato genes? The answer is, no one.
I’m not opposed to this technique in principle; I just don’t think it’s been tested long enough.
malraux
Honestly, agriculture, food and cooking are one of the areas that a conservative view makes a lot of sense.
beltane
@Ramiah Ariya: Seed patents are the main threat posed by GM food. They place a huge financial burden on small farmers, and cause a homogeneous food supply that is extremely vulnerable to new pests and changing climatic conditions. Food as intellectual property will lead to massive famines down the line. None of this is as exciting, however, as fears that a bite of frankenfood will cause you to drop dead at the table.
People are right to be alarmed, but they are alarmed for the wrong reason.
beltane
@Redshirt: The testing is also not being carried out by responsible parties. It is the same situation with the drug companies; their “research” is worthless.
Dave Fud
@Hunter Gathers: This is it, right here. Subsidies for “small farmers” are just corporate welfare. Small farmers would be back in business making it for themselves (a great jobs program in itself) if we could get agribusiness out of Uncle Sam’s pockets.
Talk about where liberals and libertarians interest could intersect for the good of everyone. There are so many issues where this is the case, and yet glibertarians would rather wank instead.
mem from somerville
It’s funny, I’m seeing the foodies all worship Cuban agriculture as the post-peak oil organic food mecca. Despite the fact that they are using GMOs, and have even had a modified tilapia for more than a decade.
But it is impossible to get anyone to talk about the technology and safety without people screaming about bigAg all the time. The whole conversation is only slightly less futile than an Israel/Palestine discussion.
toujoursdan
I hate (again) to be the voice of doom, but as much as I hate developments like this and also turn to locally grown organic farming when I can, the ugly truth is that we live on a planet of 7 billion people, expected to grow to over 9.5 billion by 2050, all of whom aspire to live like Americans.
At the same time our fisheries are collapsing. Tuna and other big fish are about to go extinct (see this NY Times article). We’re overgrazing which is leading to desertification. We’re draining aquifers that are legacies from the last ice age for agricultural purposes. We’re poisoning the soil with overuse of artificial phosphate-based fertilizers (which were creating dead zones in places like the Gulf of Mexico even BEFORE the oil spill.) It takes 10 ounces of oil to make 1 ounce of food and get it to our table; the era of cheap, plentiful oil is coming to an end, which will ripple through the agricultural chain from planting/seeding, to cultivation/livestock feeding, to processing, to packing, to transport. And, at best, climate change is going to cause prime farming lands to shift to areas that have lower soil fertility rates.
It would be great to ban this and go back to all-organic farming, but that only feeds a planet of about 1 billion sustainably, not 7+ billion. As the population continues to grow and the environment we depend on continues to deteriorate, this may be all that is left to keep significant portions of the population from starving (and resorting to violence to stop starving.)
My view is that we need to keep testing to ensure that these methods are safe and ban companies (i.e., Monsanto) from using this to force farmers into a dependent relationship with them. But as we exhaust natural farming methods this is inevitable.
chopper
@beltane:
yeah, cornish rock crosses are a great example of how even regular breeding practices can create real frankenfoods. those birds eat so damn much you’ll lose 25% of your flock to heart failure even if you raise them cage-free. they often grow so fast they break bones from the stress.
it’s fucking insane.
Michael D.
I agree with everything in this post. Except the free-range chickens part.
FREE-RANGE CHICKENS – By Simon Rich
“Well, it’s another beautiful day in paradise.”
“How’d we get so lucky?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care.”
“I think I’ll go walk over there for a while. Then I’ll walk back over here.”
“That sounds like a good time. Maybe I’ll do the same.”
“Hey, someone refilled the grain bucket!”
“Is it the same stuff as yesterday?”
“I hope so.”
“Oh, man, it’s the same stuff, all right.”
“It’s so good.”
“I can’t stop eating it.”
“Hey, you know what would go perfectly with this grain? Water.”
“Dude. Look inside the other bucket.”
“This . . . is the greatest day of my life.”
“Drink up, pal.”
“Cheers!”
(Laughs.)
(Laughs.)
“Hey, look, the farmer’s coming.”
“Huh. Guess it’s my turn to go into the thing.”
“Cool. See you later, buddy.”
“See ya.””
fucen tarmal
i’m in the category of people who prefers not to think too much about food, my favorite meal is “ready”. it would be nice if they, or anyone, could work out this gm think for sure, but i am guessing that there profit is in the controversy, and the controversy will go on.
Peter
Besides the terrible risks of contaminating the non-GMO wild population, the larger issue to me is that farmed salmon are one of the very worst kinds of fish you can buy–not really at all different from feedlot cattle or battery-raised chickens. There are a few outfits doing a decent job, but most of it is an environmental disaster. Don’t buy farmed salmon.
frankdawg
The problem is we can not feed 6 Billion people (and growing) without industrial farming. That means food that often is tasteless, possibly harmful & a disaster for the environment.
One of the reasons you can’t get decent fish any more is that the oceans are being emptied by over-fishing. Farm raised shit is the only solution (temporary though it is as it will finish killing the oceans slightly ahead of killing its consumers).
One of the two remaining communities of Bluefin tuna in the world uses the GOM as its breeding grounds. It is assumed that they are finished now & it is just a matter of time for them even if we stopped fishing them – which we won’t.
We can not meet the increasing demand for beef using traditional breeds & grazing. Feed lots, the over use of antibiotics (which have the side-affect of increasing weight gain but are killing humans slowly) hormones (same comment) are what makes our food not only cheap but even possible at the current level of output.
It goes on & on like that and a tiny bit of organic or even sane farming will make you feel better but it won’t scale & it won’t stop the current madness.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Needs a Soylent Green is Tasty tag.
frankdawg
@toujoursdan:
I started typing but it took me so long you got there ahead of me!
fucen tarmal
hell in this here, richest country on earth, we have food deserts on the other end of the spectrum….in the cities the drug stores are bigger than the food stores.
and there are plenty of places where the neighborhood supermarket is a 2-3 mile walk. these are places that would kiss walmart’s big box ass to come there…maybe when they have finished drilling the easy to get to pockets of consumers, they will do some deep ghetto drilling.
frankdawg
@Ramiah Ariya:
Monsanto is already suing farmers for “using” its GM soy beans without paying them. The reason the farmers are using them is because cross-pollination contaminate the farmers seed stock. And, yes,they have won in US courts on this asinine claim.
beltane
@chopper: When people buy “pasture raised” chicken they imagine happy Rhode Island Reds or Barred Rocks walking around a barnyard doing normal chicken things. What they’re getting is a giant ball of living breast meat that has spent it’s life confined to a chicken tractor. These misbegotten creatures are not capable of foraging for their own food like older breeds of chicken.
The texture and flavor of the older breeds would be unpalatable to most Americans and would not be amenable to American cooking techniques.
D. Mason
And how would you expect this testing to take place?
Michael
Remember how the Reagan Administration teamed up with the Vatican and extremist Muslim countries to put the kibosh on global population control efforts that were centered around voluntary contraception?
Another part of the gift that keeps giving. I’d like to hope that the younger acolytes will be around to die in the upcoming famine.
beltane
@fucen tarmal: It’s like that in many rural areas, too. My town’s economy is based on agriculture (dairy and organic vegetable farms), yet the local store’s produce selection is mostly limited to iceberg lettuce and maybe some cottony tomatoes. There is a co-op that sells the organic stuff, but it is completely unaffordable to the majority of local residents being that our median household income is something like $32,000.
For most people, the choice is not between organic or conventional, it’s between finding something half-way healthy to eat or eating cheap junk food.
toujoursdan
@frankdawg:
Great minds.
We keep hearing that the population problem will be solved by greater development and affluence which causes fertility rates to fall, but the problem isn’t how many bodies there are on the planet but how much each body consumes.
An American consumes at a rate of 50 to 100 times greater than a rural African. So as those rural Africans become richer and develop lifestyles more like an American the strain on the planet will become worse, even if they have significantly fewer children. Contrary to what we are being told, rising affluence isn’t going save humanity from overpopulation pressure but make it worse.
The CBC had a story on the growing middle class in China and how they are becoming more and more American: buying homes in the suburbs and commuting by car, and, more importantly, how they are assuming an American style diet – with far more beef and pork, and processed foods, and fewer raw and cooked vegetables and rice. It takes far more resources to grow beef and pork than it does to grow wheat or rice for human consumption. So this development (which is being copied around the world) is going to cause a further strain on our agricultural resources which are already under strain.
beltane
@toujoursdan: Poverty is better for the environment. The earth’s wealthy, living in large air-conditioned/heated homes, driving cars, flying in airplanes, and playing with rare-metal laden electronic gadgets are guilty for most of the damage being done to the earth. Eating an organic hamburger now and then does nothing to change this reality, though it may ease some people’s consciences.
toujoursdan
@beltane:
Exactly and it’s a horrible thing to say because poverty is horrible to those who suffer from it.
But I think, in part, it’s a legacy of our recent colonialism that we distribute birth control to women in the 3rd world and strongly encourage them to have fewer kids to stop overpopulation, yet say nothing about the consumption patterns of the wealthy 1st world.
(At the same time I do support birth control because it empowers women to better themselves in other ways, so again. I feel stuck.)
Redshirt
@D. Mason: Controlled growths in highly regulated conditions lasting decades. It’s the time which is the most critical factor, since the key thing to determine is how these altered genes will evolve over time.
Redshirt
I’d like to say vegetarianism is a logical choice to make in combating many of our looming food issues; alas, if anything, vegetarianism is falling drastically across the world as Asian countries add meat into their regular diets.
D. Mason
@Redshirt:
That’s testing the effect on the genes and is all well and good. I was of the impression that the testing to be done was on the effects of the consumer and that requires consumption, unfortunately.
frankdawg
@toujoursdan:
I’d like to think that a simplified life style would solve the problem – particularly the incredible over-consumption of the United States. But if that were true then low-consumption, vegetarian societies like India have not hunger problems – right?
You can claim its a distribution problem but with that many billions of people you can’t avoid them. The problem still comes down to too many people. Its self correcting but its going to be an ugly correction.
Violet
The BBC did a fantastic expose on salmon farming about ten years ago. As a result of watching it, I will not eat farmed salmon. It’s incredibly scary and despite the assurances from the salmon farming industry, I know it’s not as safe as they claim.
The guy representing the salmon farming industry was German and seriously looked straight out of central casting for a German bad guy, down to the accent and little round classes. They couldn’t have found a less sympathetic representative if they’d tried. If I can find the video online, I’ll link it. Very worth watching.
Drew @ How To Cook Like Your Grandmother
Don’t worry so much about the mercury in game fish. The reports have been greatly exaggerated.
Redshirt
@D. Mason: Oh, you’d do tons of consumption studies over the decades of controlled growths. But on mice and rabbits and the like. That would be a critical part of the testing, of course – studying the change in genes within these animals.
WereBear
Yeah. There’s not enough rusty pitchforks in the world.
The helluvit is, almost all childbearing people would be pleased to have 1-3 children who were well taken care of. Then there’s plenty of people who are pleased to not have their own; they feel drawn to adoption, nieces and nephews, or mentoring programs. This is completely sustainable and of benefit to all parties.
But then religious nuts jump in with stuff like the Quiverfull movement, and the social conservatives get all misty eyed about the BIG happy family, and there’s enough nuts who want an overflow for disgruntlement and easy recruitment purposes, and you have the present mess, which no one is really addressing. At all.
gerry
How do you get mouse genes into a tomato by selective breeding?
AnnaN
It is a common misconception that the FDA and USDA are there to protect the common populace from food-related problems.
It’s not. The two entities work for the corporations and their goals are more about protecting the economy surrounding the food industry (at every level) in this country.
This is why decisions regarding labeling are never made with an toward a free-market, but toward what will damage the market share of large corporations.
This country is broken in so many ways and so fundamentally that I see little to no hope of it being repaired. Even when the average American rises up and makes their voice heard, it is ignored in favor of the dominant player in any market.
wonkie
I reaad someplace that illegal immmigration from Mexico is down in part because rural familoy planing cflincis have successfullyredued the Mexican pop growth rate to jusgt above replacement level. So good news if true.
ALso I don’t want to eat genetically engineered slamon because I’m a food snob and bet it wo’t tase good but my real cncern is the genetic engineering of creatures who have enough brain to worry, mourn and cry. Factory farms are evil already without adding genetic engineering for people-centric characgteristis that will increase the suffering.
Ming
@frankdawg: @toujoursdan:
I was interested to see a Univ. of Michigan study on this question — there’s a lot of talk about their global sample and yield ratios and nitrogen fixing, but here’s the money quote:
WereBear
@gerry: Practice.
Ming
Further, according to a new study by the Leopold Center, the Midwest could grow all the fruits and veggies it needs in the farm land equivalent to 1 Iowa county, at the same time creating 9300 jobs and $395mil in labor income. Conventional soy/corn farming on the same land: 2500 jobs/$59mil in labor income.
I’m not in a position to evaluate these studies, but I’m not in a position to evaluate the arguments that “organic can only feed the few and the wealthy” either. Wouldn’t it be great if we had an independent, impartial media that would sort this kind of thing out for us?
Ming
woops. looks like the first part of my two part comment is stuck in moderation but the second part got through. “Also, too…”
toujoursdan
@frankdawg:
You’re right. There are famines in the Bible when the world’s population was something like 180 million but they tended to be localized and based on climate fluctuations. I have read that famines were far less common in hunter gatherer societies than in established farming cultures, because they had more flexibility. They could more easily adapt their diets or pick up and move to more fertile areas.
And you’re absolutely right that this will be self correcting. We put a little too much faith into technology and human ingenuity solving all problems, but you can’t keep nature at bey forever. The worst aspect of it is the media bubble we live in that focuses far more on whether Obama put his hand on his heart during the National Anthem than the coming problems we face, but I believe that’s a feature in the software, not a bug.
beltane
@Ming: Organic could feed everyone but it would require that agriculture employ a much larger share of the population. It would also require that everyone spend a much larger percentage of their income on food. For the rich, life would go on much as before. For everyone else, it would require a major lifestyle transformation.
tesslibrarian
Wow. What a depressing Saturday morning. Some things to consider:
This Scientific American story:
“But more than 60 countries—containing approaching half of the world’s population—already have fertility rates at or below the rate needed to maintain their populations long-term.”
Also, if you live near a Publix, let them know you want more locally grown foods. They’ve started to do that in areas where there is a demand. (this story is about Florida, but I know they are doing the same with beef in Georgia.)
Even Wal-Mart is buying more from local farmers; it saves on shipping costs and their customers like it.
If you have a farmer’s market that is small and only open a couple hours per week, find out why. Find out if there are other farmers in the area, and why they aren’t participating (willing to bet the farmers at the market know other farmers in the area).
Find out if it would be possible to have the market open twice per week, or if there are local businesses willing or interested in helping the local agricultural scene, the way our Farmer’s market has. If you’re in a semi-rural area with a lot small farmers, find out what the feasibility of a Locally Grown model would be.
Just a few years ago, there were only a handful of farmers in our area and we didn’t have a regular farmer’s market. Locally Grown, the Farmer’s Market, and the effort of local restaurant owners have made it possible for a lot of people to become small farmers. One of my favorite farms is run by a former school teacher and his wife. Demand for meat has meant that we’ve gone from having beef, most of the time, to regular options for goat, lamb, chicken, and pork. (And Thanksgiving turkeys that go on sale in February, but in the past have sold out by May–we have more than one farm offering this year, though.)
I know these are not whole solutions to fix the whole world tomorrow, but one does what one can where one is. It’s fruitless (no pun intended) for me to write my congress critters (Paul Broun, Saxby Chambliss, Johnny Isakson) about any of this; it has made a difference to buy some green beans and tomatoes and corn every week, and ask the waiter when I go out to lunch where and how the meat and vegetables got to the menu.
Violet
@beltane:
Hasn’t the percentage of income that Americans pay for food diminished dramatically in the last, say, fifty years or so? I thought I’d read that.
Et Tu Brutus?
A great line from a crappy movie: ” Eat recycled food- it’s good for the environment, and OK for you”, reworded for todays consumer: ” eat GMO food, it’s good for our profit margin, and probably OK for you”. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I’m sure everyone heard about the high levels of heavy metals found in whales…
beltane
@Violet: It has, freeing up money for TVs, cars, iphones, etc. In the developing world, the bulk of a family’s income goes for food; Andrew Sullivan linked to a great site explaining this a few years ago.
What sometimes bothers me about the organic/localvore movement is that it really does come across as elitist. I have friends who are organic seed producers who buy conventionally grown food for themselves (other than what they grow) because they have children and do not have the kind of income that allows them to go all-organic. To grow a crop like apples completely organically would turn them into a luxury item off limits to all but a lucky few.
Royce
Cole: “…the one area where I am truly getting more conservative is in regards to food.”
Except that it’s ‘Conservative’ ideology that is about allowing big-corporations do whatever the hell they want to our food supply … Might Makes Right is their view. It is the liberal progressives and hippies who advocate natural food and are against playing with Mother Nature through genetic modification.
You know this I’m sure. I wonder if one cause for our political woes is that people have a hard time understanding that conservative in its routine meaning as a word has NOTHING to do with “Conservative” as a political manifestation.
CynDee
I for one don’t want to be eating corn that has been engineered to grow in spite of being sprayed with Roundup.
Your body evolved on Nature’s pattern of genes all up the food chain. Do you really want to eat products that can change YOUR DNA at the gene level?
At the very least, every person has a right to know the source and makeup of their food. It should be legal to label a food as “NON GMO” and all GMO foods should be so labeled.
Monsanto and companies of its ilk are stealing our right to a natural life and healthy future. The key words are “cheating” and “stealing” and “contaminating for profit.” We must stop this now, unless you want to start giving birth to frankenchildren at worst, or children who can’t survive or will be handicapped.
Man can’t second-guess nature. We should raise our food according to its natural state. GMO is all about profit, not healthy nourishment. Ask yourself just how YOU will profit from these demented GMO practices.
beltane
@toujoursdan: Brad DeLong posted an awesome article about paleolithic hunter-gatherers in Europe. They were as tall as modern Europeans, with good teeth and little evidence of malnutrition. This changed dramatically with the introduction of agriculture, when famine, malnutrition and stunted growth became the norm. It was only in the 20th century that average heights approached those of the paleolithic era.
Hunter-gatherers tend to live in egalitarian societies that value women, too. Our ancestors were not libertarians.
kabiddle
What bothers me most about this kind of “manufactured food” is that it adds to the argument that we don’t necessarily need healthy oceans, lakes, streams to still have “quality” foodstuffs. The Gulf becomes more irrelevant every day the further we pursue this kind of food production. I can hear the “drill, baby, drill” apologists now. . .
fucen tarmal
@Violet:
off hand i would assume it would have, given that we have redistributed wealth to the top 2-10 percent, while everyone else went backwards or stayed level….
that is more wealth in fewer hands, those few hands are only going to eat so much….
if you want to study based on your own experience google a newspaper from 10-40 years or so ago,google the news archives that allow you to peruse old papers, check out the food ads…
Fwiffo
Mercury worries are probably overblown. It’s probably a good idea to avoid certain high mercury fish like swordfish, and limit intake of tuna, but the amount of mercury in salmon is very, very, very small. If you ate it every meal of every day, you’d probably not get enough mercury to harm you. And fish is really good for you. Even in tuna, it’s arguable that getting the omega-3s does more good than the mercury does harm.
beltane
@fucen tarmal: I recently saw an ad from the early 20th century that had eggs for $.20 a dozen which would make them substantially more expensive than they are today. I have a book “Poverty in the Middle Ages” that showed an average day-laborers daily wages were enough to buy a two-pound loaf of bread and little else. Diets for the poor back then were relatively high in calories but dangerously low in protein, fat and vitamins. Until recently, rickets, pellagra, beri beri, ergot poisoning and other dietary conditions were ubiquitous. To be poor was to be stunted, toothless, and in pain.
Rick Taylor
I used to feel this way too, until I learned the issue is that this allows large corporations to patent various kinds of life, and to sue you if you use it, no matter how you get it.
__
This is just one example; large corporations are certainly not above using their ownership of genetic material to extort money from people, even after the material is introduced into the public environment. Get rid of the patents, and then we can talk.
Triassic Sands
Yeah, John, substituting bacon and eggs for salmon is a great health choice. As Fwiffo says, the amount of mercury in wild caught salmon is very small, while the health benefits are significant. Every reputable authority I’ve seen says the same thing — avoid certain fish species, limit others, and the benefits of salmon far outweigh the risks. (But never, never, never eat farm raised salmon.)
Given that most of our food is suspect (salmonella, e coli, pesticides, etc.) or simply bad for us (e.g., bacon), the risk/benefit analysis of wild caught salmon is overwhelmingly in favor of our eating not avoiding it.
On the other hand, because the planet is grotesquely overpopulated, there probably isn’t any natural, healthful food source (especially animal) that won’t be threatened should a significant percentage of the population decide to include it as a regular part of its diet. So, if you enjoy the taste of salmon, then eat wild caught salmon occasionally as an extremely healthful addition to your diet. If you don’t like the taste of salmon, then skip it altogether.
The problem with all nutritional recommendations is that they are based on what is good for an individual human being, not what is sustainable or good for the planet.
Lysana
And the argument we should all go vegetarian to save the Earth is nonsense anyway. I recall a study done that showed the smart approach is letting meat animals graze as they are meant to graze and then grow the veggies and fruits more organically. Of course, what this would mean for the US is a large-scale migration from cattle to bison as well, which isn’t going to happen. We imported the damn cows. They’re an invasive species when you get down to brass tacks.
Ella in New Mexico
@Fwiffo:
Good point, and there is some research out there that points to evidence that the mercury in fish may actually be chemically sequestered by other natural compounds in the flesh prevent/limiting your absorption of the metal (as long as you don’t overdose on species that have extremely high levels).
Stuff I’ve been reading about lately on research into the nutritional content comparison of commercially grown vs. organic/locally grown foods indicates that the new, fast growing species don’t have time “in the ground” to absorb and develop the same levels of vitamins, minerals and antioxidant levels of their healthier counterparts. They end up being big but dilute versions of their original selves, nutritionally. I read the other day that the calcium content in a serving of broccoli used to be considered to be about 140mg, whereas now it is actually around 40mg. Same goes for antioxidant levels–the very thing we are all trying to get more of. Something to keep in mind with the fast growing salmon.
The theory is that plants that are “babied” over time by heavy fertilization and use of pesticides are not as “stressed” as those grown organically. Same goes for overfed, under exercised animals. Therefore, the antioxidants and other compounds they would normally develop to adapt to their physical demands or to protect them from environmental and insect attack are not needed, and those genes don’t get pressured to express anymore in the population.
Couch potato-hood isn’t just for humans anymore.
chopper
@Lysana:
yes and no. obviously it’s good to keep pastureland as pasture rather than turn it into farmland to grow veggies for vegetarians. and it’s fine to take mother nature’s pasture mowers and eat them.
problem is, that’s a great model and all, but it doesn’t support 7 billion people.
fucen tarmal
@beltane:
sure, but don’t forget, many people kept their own chickens into and through the depression, even in places considered relatively urban, where that would be illegal today…i’m not saying food didn’t come down in price in the 20th century, but in the late portion of it, i would bet that for the average person, equivalent items would have gone up. also factoring in, cheap processed and prepared foods taking a large chunk of the market and competing with directly comparable items. the kicker is, based on people consuming more calories now than then, it takes more food per person.
if you look at the history of holiday feasts, german sausage was at one point a rare treat for many people who didn’t eat much meat, that was only 120 or so years ago, ham etc, a lot of this stuff became holiday food because it wasn’t always available or affordable. even oranges.
frankdawg
@Ming:
I would like to read the study & see who did it, where they started from etc. But, honestly I probably won’t. Part of the reason is that, even if they are correct there is a huge inertia in place that will maintain the current model until long after it has become obvious it won’t work & is actually harmful.
There is too much money to be made from the current system. It will be like the cigarette battle, or the current climate dispute. The people that profit the most from what is will lie, cheat, steal and excuse as long as they can protect themselves from the harm and continue to rake in the bucks. Many stupid, poor people will believe them until it is too late.
sherifffruitfly
Bourgeois food snobs should be prohibited from having any say in national food policies.
As should food corporations.
Brad Hanon
Just read Whole Earth Discipline by Stewart Brand, which put to rest my concerns about genetically-modified foods. The annotations for the relevant chapter are here, but if you’re in too much of a hurry to read it, the bottom line is that we’ve been field-testing these foods for decades and there just aren’t any weird health issues. The intellectual-property issues involved are potentially problematic, but unfortunately environmentalists have no input on those issues, because environmentalists flatly turned their back on the whole issue twenty years ago. The subsequent doubling-down on that bad call has resulted in organizations like Greenpeace having to oppose things that actually save the lives and health of millions of third-world kids.
I found this oddly comforting, ideologically. After a decade of me and my fellow liberals being right about absolutely everything, it’s nice to be able to point at something and say “Okay, there’s one issue where us hippies were objectively, scientifically wrong.”
Pastured Poultry
@chopper: Just want to make a point on all of this… there are some ideas out there that need to be said about the frankenfood cornish rock cross… we work with them personally every year… dont see the problems that people here are saying they have… had none die or fall over from heart attacks… none with leg problems…. we have raised them to longer time periods and found that if you give them calcium oyster shells in their diets their bones dont break or whatever people say is wrong with them… people need to test the myths that get put out there so easily on the internet…. we did and that is why we can say much of the anti talk is just talk… ANY chicken kept poorly WILL have health problems and issues… you reap what you sow is the principle…. support local sustainable agriculture in YOUR area… PLEASE!