[TheForge] OT: GM foods OT:

[CGRAF]

On 5/26/2011 2:24 PM, peter fels wrote:
> Stop and think a sec Mike and Andy
> ...Food and Drug is under enormous public pressure.
> To get a GM food passed for general use, the testing is VERY extensive,
> subject to scientific and public scrutiny and the hard eyes of industry liability lawyers.
> The testing starts in vitro..then goes through animal testing..rats through monkeys...
> Then to slowly increasing numbers of people. It takes years and a whole lot of money.
> By the time a product gets to the public, it has been tested as extensively as they know how.
> Go look up the testing protocol before you say " continents at a time" .
>


I am not faulting the testing at all. The stuff is probably fine.
I am also aware of things like R22 that passed muster originally on 
safety specs, it was not poisonous like the ammonia  it replaced nor 
explosive like the propane it replaced. It only took 50 or so YEARS for 
us to figure out that just maybe it was screwing with the ozone.

How about thalidomide or my own personal favorite DES?
Aspirin was bad for you, or at least for kids and was replaced with 
acetaminophen, which supposedly now has problems.

They used to give pure O2 to "blue babies" until thirty and forty year 
old people started going blind from it.

It just takes a while to find out about this type of thing. Problems 
only show up after years, maybe decades and with a data set far 
exceeding anything the FDA can have in its testing phase.

  My gripe is with the extent that the GMO type food will replace a 
naturally diverse seed supply.
One fungus or other plant disease and the potato famine will look like a 
cake walk. Remember when cities planted forests of Dutch Elm trees along 
the streets.( Milwaukee lost thousands of them in about three years.) 
They don't any more. Here it is about five lots before a species repeats.

My feelings about homogenizing the food supply is governed by the same 
thing as my dislike of overlarge and powerful government.
One mistake or misfortune by or to either effects a lot more people a 
lot worse than 5 or 6 hundred million small but differing mistakes are 
likely to.

Diversity in almost all cases is a safer and probably more productive 
course in the long run.

Mike Graf