How do you know if your food is genetically modified!
- Thread starter Christina
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Harpoon
Ummmm.... Sorry,. I have to take issue here....
Granted, "organic" foods may be better because of how they're produced, raised, prepared, etc, but "genetic engineering" has been around for CENTURIES and it's not all geeks in lab coats seperating DNA molocules in laboratory test tubes....
Gregor Mendel (1822-1884), an Augustinian monk from Europe was playing around with plant breeding long before there were giant bio tech firms and sheep named "Dolly."
His work pioneered the field. he was able to show that there were inherited traits in all living things, that you could manipulate those traits by cross-breeding similar species of plants to develope a hybrid with selected traits of both parent plants.
Now, he didn't know that there were specific genes, complex molocules that when planced in certain combinations created different effects in embrionic developement or traits within a given living organism. He DID show that the traits one saw in a particular plant were not influenced by environment. he placed similar plants next to each other in the same soil, with the same water, and under the same light and they didn't take on each others appearences. There was something else going on to make plants different from eachother and he was able to show that heredity, the lineage of a plant, was what caused it to be different from other plants, even prevous generations of the same plant.
His processes, selective pollenation and hybridization are the basis for genetic engineering. The techniques are more varied now, but the end results are about the same, only now we can manipulate specific genes rather than just randomly placing sets of genetic data (cross-pollenation) together to see what happens.
The only "truely" organic food sources now are plants and animals taken from the wild. Hunting wild turkey or pheasant, traveling down to South America for bananas in the jungle or picking wild strawberries that happened to appear along side your house, if you were lucky.
Come to think of it, Native American cultures were genetically manipulating varieties of corn and other plants for even longer than Mendel. They deliberately cross-pollenated certain corn species to create heartier crops, or crops that produced more edible corn.
Just be careful with what you label as genetically engineered and what isn't.
I agree that some things, like genetically engineering an insect pest to produce offspring that can't reproduce might be a little risky. We don't have a real good handle on the long term effects of altering some genetic codes to produce plant and animal species that are more beneficial (or at least less destructive) than their predecessors, modern genetic engineering, on a gene by gene basis, is still a new technology, however even the milk and orange juice that might be on your table in the morning has been "engineered" in some capacity to be "better."
Ok, done ranting, let the beatings begin. =)
Granted, "organic" foods may be better because of how they're produced, raised, prepared, etc, but "genetic engineering" has been around for CENTURIES and it's not all geeks in lab coats seperating DNA molocules in laboratory test tubes....
Gregor Mendel (1822-1884), an Augustinian monk from Europe was playing around with plant breeding long before there were giant bio tech firms and sheep named "Dolly."
His work pioneered the field. he was able to show that there were inherited traits in all living things, that you could manipulate those traits by cross-breeding similar species of plants to develope a hybrid with selected traits of both parent plants.
Now, he didn't know that there were specific genes, complex molocules that when planced in certain combinations created different effects in embrionic developement or traits within a given living organism. He DID show that the traits one saw in a particular plant were not influenced by environment. he placed similar plants next to each other in the same soil, with the same water, and under the same light and they didn't take on each others appearences. There was something else going on to make plants different from eachother and he was able to show that heredity, the lineage of a plant, was what caused it to be different from other plants, even prevous generations of the same plant.
His processes, selective pollenation and hybridization are the basis for genetic engineering. The techniques are more varied now, but the end results are about the same, only now we can manipulate specific genes rather than just randomly placing sets of genetic data (cross-pollenation) together to see what happens.
The only "truely" organic food sources now are plants and animals taken from the wild. Hunting wild turkey or pheasant, traveling down to South America for bananas in the jungle or picking wild strawberries that happened to appear along side your house, if you were lucky.
Come to think of it, Native American cultures were genetically manipulating varieties of corn and other plants for even longer than Mendel. They deliberately cross-pollenated certain corn species to create heartier crops, or crops that produced more edible corn.
Just be careful with what you label as genetically engineered and what isn't.
I agree that some things, like genetically engineering an insect pest to produce offspring that can't reproduce might be a little risky. We don't have a real good handle on the long term effects of altering some genetic codes to produce plant and animal species that are more beneficial (or at least less destructive) than their predecessors, modern genetic engineering, on a gene by gene basis, is still a new technology, however even the milk and orange juice that might be on your table in the morning has been "engineered" in some capacity to be "better."
Ok, done ranting, let the beatings begin. =)
Ross
Well-known member
50 lashes for you naughty one.
H
Harpoon
Ooooohhhh.... Kinky....
So am I the one with the whip or hanging from the chains?
So am I the one with the whip or hanging from the chains?
D
dwfreck
Harpoon,
You'll get no beating from me, 'cause I agree with you! Did you notice that the article didn't really offer a good definition of what "genetically engineered food" is? It just said, "read your labels."
Also, did you notice that Christina's signature talks about bacon bits? I have to wonder if the bits in question are of the store-bought, jar variety or the home-cooked from store-bought bacon variety, or the home-cooked from home-cured bacon from an organically-raised pig variety.
You'll get no beating from me, 'cause I agree with you! Did you notice that the article didn't really offer a good definition of what "genetically engineered food" is? It just said, "read your labels."
Also, did you notice that Christina's signature talks about bacon bits? I have to wonder if the bits in question are of the store-bought, jar variety or the home-cooked from store-bought bacon variety, or the home-cooked from home-cured bacon from an organically-raised pig variety.
