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GMO (genetically modified organism) solution to world hunger or end of natural food as we know it

Discussion in 'General political debates' started by IamMe, Feb 1, 2013.

  1. Annie

    Annie Experienced Member Experienced member


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    Jun 22, 2013
     
    could you give a link or source about possible long term effects on human DNA? I never heard of it and with my knowledge about the DNA-complex I have no idea how GMO' s could be harmful of it.
    two simple facts:
    GMO is just the ultra-turbo-speed version of selective plant and animal breeding. some 6000 or 7000 years ago our ancestors started to domesticate and sometimes even to crossbreed wild plants and animals to enhance their beneficial features and erade their "bad" ones.
    almost everything we eat is a product of this long tradition - have you ever heard of a danger to our DNA coming from it?

    advanced human genetic science experiments with gene-therapy, very basic: the replacement of destructive or destroyed genes and the cure of diseases resulting from inborn missing gene structures.
    it's very difficult to infiltrate or plant "strange/alien" genes into the DNA, the necessary technical methods are expensive, ultra-complex and still unreliable. even the use of retro-viruses as a kind of trojan horse isn't very successful - so how could eating alien-DNA from GMO be harmful?

    If you eat it, the gastric acid will destroy all the "soft" structures, our guts draw out certain nutrients already dissolved in bodyfluids - but alien-DNA? and even if that would be possible, there is still our immune system lurking around like a gang of thugs for everything that isn't compatible with the DNA-code of the body.

    yes, I agree, adapting/ becoming immune of crop pests is a risk impossible to calculate, genetic mutation is always happening and gained random or provocated evolutionary advantages might spread faster than we even dream of.
    driven by the pursuit of profit the industry gives a shit about that and the risk of an unintentionally creation of plant-hybrids with new and uncalculated features too. there is no guarantee that the gmo-plants set free on the fields are as steril as the industry claims. insects try to use them as a food base, gather pollen and distribute the seed to other plants - if the gmo-pollen is still able to fertilize, the artificial varied DNA is set free and combined with a natural fertile DNA - ready to spread a hybrid plant...
    omg - killertomatoes in my garden! (just kidding!)
     
  2. Annie

    Annie Experienced Member Experienced member


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    Jun 22, 2013
     
    tired to death I almost forgot:
    I plan to do some research about the economic issues of the gmo-industry in some days, but I started to skip my anti-globalism lessons some two years ago and so have to admit, that im almost out of date with information and useful sources - so each and every tip, link and issue listing is apprechiated!
     
  3. Spike one of many

    Spike one of many Experienced Member Uploader Experienced member Forum Member


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    Aug 14, 2012
    Banana Republic  South Africa
  4. Annie

    Annie Experienced Member Experienced member


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    Jun 22, 2013
     
    thanks, I will read it after work in our library these days, my english isn't good enough to read it without a dictionary and med-lexica. maybe it's avaliable in german or french too, just to make sure I get it the way it is meant.
     
  5. Donnie

    Donnie New Member New Member


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    Jul 3, 2013
     
    The Solution to world hunger has been found! It is not GMO- mutant foods. It's all natural organic food (10x more organic than grocery store organics).

    It's called Aquaponics. It's a method of growing food FAST. Think of it as a mini eco-system.

    Here's a related link to introduce all you farmers...

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JFs5V4YaTY


    And you could grow year-round. So why GMO?
     
  6. Danarchy

    Danarchy Experienced Member Experienced member Forum Member


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    I absolutely guarantee that your English is far superior to my French or German but try searching for GMO health impacts, in German or French and I am sure that some information will be available. The problem with independent third party research into GMO's is the current patent system. Anytime a scientist has tried to study or has released a study that isn't in favour of GMO crops they has been sued by Monsanto et al for patent infringement. The threat of a large financial suit has beaten down most researchers. The seed/ chemical companies have been using the same/ similar methods as the tobacco industry to misinform and redirect attention away from the very real health problems and implications of their crops. Monsanto is VERY experienced in these tactic as they have employed them previously to defend wonderful products like DDT.

    One very strong indication of the overall health impacts in the increase in rare and common allergies in the human population since the proliferation of chemical agricultural methods and GMO's. In addition there have now been a few lawsuits brought against Monsanto by ranchers/ feed lot owners for animal deaths related to stomach problems after animals were fed GMO, specifically, round up ready corn. The lawsuits have been suppressed.

    The environment is not a factory and can not be treated as such. It is a complex structure of interrelated parts. What effects one part will effect other parts in unpredictable ways.

    Bee colony collapse is a good example; the factors that lead to colony collapse are incredibly diverse but there are statistically anomalies that can't ignored to indicate the combinations leading to collapse. First, colony collapse began in countries where chemical agriculture was first introduced and is now the predominant form of farming, second, the introduction of GMO crops in those areas has lead to an increase in reports of colony collapse, third, in industries such as the California Almond industries where large numbers of bees are moved for a very short term (many being brought out of winter hibernation), there has been an increase and finally, in those countries/ areas that have already seen some of the greatest impacts of global climate change (Australia, Southern US, others) there has also been a greater impact. Comparatively, Cuba, that missed the boat on chemical agriculture due to the US embargo, has banned GMO crops and which is now a haven of Organic farming and biological controls the incidence of bee colony collapse is minimal, if even evident. Each factor that has been linked to bee colony collapse is one step that human beings have made to treat nature like a 'factory' and each step has had unpredictable consequences. Just to put bee colony collapse into perspective, if the honey bee were to disappear we, as a species, would face apocalyptic starvation in six to ten months; if all bee species were eliminated we, along with all other species that require pollinated fruit for existence, would face extinction in two years.
     
  7. Danarchy

    Danarchy Experienced Member Experienced member Forum Member


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    Jan 16, 2012
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    Why spend the time, resources to create aquaculture when I have perfectly good soil to grow in? Really, it is no different than greenhouse growing and is being developed as an alternative economy for areas like Detriot. It is supported and understood by many farmers and can grow a specific line of crops but is not the end all be all of food security as it requires synthetic fertilizers, energy intensive heated greenhouses, lights etc to grow year round. There is no panacea for global food supply to believe such is nonsense. There is also no global food scarcity and in the history of modern agriculture there has never been. It has always been a distribution issue. Even during the Irish famine, English landholders were EXPORTING a record volume of food out of Ireland. During the famine in Ethiopia American farmers also produced a record volume of grain. The problem is the capitalist market system that maximizes profits through perceived scarcity and distribution.
     
  8. Bakica

    Bakica Experienced Member Experienced member Forum Member


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    Feb 21, 2010
     
    World hunger is fiction. There's enough food for everyone, we just don't devide it equally.
     
  9. Annie

    Annie Experienced Member Experienced member


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    Jun 22, 2013
     
    quoting Danarchy:
    thanks for the flowers, I'm working on my language skills and my possible information deficits too - but:
    a d i r e c t impact of artificially varied DNA on human DNA isn't mentioned in any of the serious sources dealing with the health issues of GMOs I know of. of course there might be more, there is no absolute truth, thats why I asked for sources mentioning a direct impact on our DNA.

    so I know that GMOs is a more than serious health-,biological, enviromental, political and economical issue. thats why I felt the need to make a stand for the focusing / concentration on the struggle against issues we know about for sure.

    I honestly admit I completey forgot to mention the important points allergy and digestion disorders, food intolerances and hypersensitivity - some of them can kill individual people in extreme cases of inborn or later acquired insufficience to digest certain food components or inherited predisposition to allergy.
    a severe anaphylaxis & anaphylactic shock are "no fun" but murderous, I've witnessed it myself.

    these health problems are often escalated by the affinity of chemical substances with biochemical fission products too, but the health issues of GMOs are of course not less important because of this.
    BUT: these health problems are not triggered by the varied DNA, the triggers are the biochemical characteristics transfered from the give-partner of the gene-manipulation to the take-partner:
    the plant that will be used in GMO-crops. the (health)problem is biochemical but not genetical.

    in the area I live GMOs are illegal - so it was just too easy to miss them out, sorry for that.
    it's less dramatical but quite clear to me that it's dangerous too if one is suffering from wheat allergy and tries to acquire corn products to evade wheat, is simply endangered by unmarked GMO-products mixing the DNA of wheat and corn.
    again, I completely forgot about it and I thank the heavens that not many of us have to suffer such problems to their health, our responsibility to secure their safety means that we have to fight against GMOs, I never promoted to tolerate GMOs.
    (only as a side note: the rise of allergies and immunsystem problems is also a result of our slipping out of bare evolutionary selection, without modern medicine less people would survive their illness to pass on their "little extra" to their descendants - trying to "cure" this side effect of medicine would only end up in general eugenics & we know how that ended...)
    but a factory can and will be an natural enviroment if annie gets her way some fine day, we must protect our enviroment and also turn work and working conditions again into a human system of adaptive and all aspects relating parts. even city-babylon will become a living host...
    (going off topic again...no, I'll start a thread about that in the futures)

    yes, you are absolutely right, up to this very day we hardly know anything but a very little fraction of the unknown multiverse of relations and dependences between living and unanimated matter we call nature.
    I wrote a bit about the insect-sideeffect and the impossible claim of "safety" against crossbreeding and spreading artificial DNS into the flora - I guess we agree about that.
    the historical intentional infiltration of "alien" (neozoon) species into ecosystems not adapted to them shows the danger to bio-diversity and natural balance - we cannot risk do the same mistakes again, using GMOs and thus risking plant hybrids to spread and suppress or destroy the established network of plant populations.

    "the bee mystery" is hard to assess, maybe it's a multitude of triggers endangering our little busy friends. in germany GMOs are illegal, even scientific test-crops are subject to approval by more than one state authority.
    the respective administratorial process is public and thus waking up the almost legendary secretly hibernating "harvesters" as soon as the word is out. so I can proudly say:
    these mysterious creatures are incredibly fast and accurate, they harvest GMO-crops at night even before they really had time to grow... :ecouteurs:
    so there aren't many successful tests around here, many GMO-firms already gave up and monsanto is caught in legal shit fights into all eternity, I spend three euros per month into a fonds making sure they'll have a very busy future at german courts.

    but nevertheless, our "german" bees are vanishing too - you mention cuba and I wonder how "dense" the electromagnetic pollution via mobil radio communication is in cuba... I don't know if EM-smog is part of the drama we witness, but I can live quite well without cell-phone and wireless stuff and I hope it helps our little helpers at least a little bit.

    quoting donnie:
    sorry my dear, but your (commercial?) alternative to GMOs is only the latest version of the decorative "hydroculture" used to bring some green into buildings and rooms, still depending exclusively on artificial fertilizer and plant protection against mycotic infection or the invasion of the little creepy crawlies I actually can't name in english.
    yes, aqua-/hydroculture used for food is energy-consuming and technically complex - efficency?

    finally:
    world hunger is the result of world market prices and capitalist speculation, we have more than enough food, the european EU spends million of euros to destroy food just to stabilize market prices.
    this money would do wonderful things if used in development assistance for under-developed areas of the world, making cultivation methods more effective and logistic distribution networks denser.
     
  10. DownwithBigbrother666

    DownwithBigbrother666 Active Member Forum Member


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    Jun 12, 2013
     
    I was thinking....

    I would love to see Anarcho-Punk.net on a support site for Prop 37

    Like:
    Yes on Prop 37

    and other health food sites (etc,...)


    I know voting on bills for this are pointless..But i believe we can push things into another direction Without a need for: government, religion, the state,etc,...
     
  11. Annie

    Annie Experienced Member Experienced member


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    Jun 22, 2013
     
    I know participation at establishment politics is a big anarchist issue constantly discussed & I really love don't-vote-fetishists, but voting on bills is at least good propaganda even if it turns out to be pointless again.
    the public should see how many have an issue with the standard food on offer, the higher numbers make the undecided think about if there is an issue, when so many... the more the better.
    I think we should not give up grounds to our opponents (bogeymen and enemy-concepts are definitely pointless, so I try to keep levels low), we simply have no time for that when we want to push things further.
     
  12. Bakica

    Bakica Experienced Member Experienced member Forum Member


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    Feb 21, 2010
     
    Can you provide a link for that ? I'm really interested in reading more about this topic.
     
  13. Annie

    Annie Experienced Member Experienced member


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    Jun 22, 2013
     
    quite difficult, the only confirmed source I have is this book:
    Ulrich Brasche, Europäische Integration, 2008, (Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag) - It's "heavy" stuff and take ages to read if you aren't into business economics or other economy sciences.
    the complex is like a astronomical "black hole", it's practically invisible, and only in-directly to prove.
    the very basics:
    to keep the farmers within the EU alive and to allow them modernisation and make their work more effective, the EU protects and subsidises them in times of falling world food prices. cheaper imports kill the local farmers and the market for food is already a battlefield where only the strong would survive, if there wasn't some regulation of capitalisms jungle-laws. (and note: I don't promote these things, I'm an @-commie and solve these problems abolishing capitalism)

    the disadvantage of this protection/development aid is a high over-production of grain, milk, meat and so on - and the prices would fall again because of the possible surplus/oversupply of the market with food products.
    the EU has to counter the selfproduced threat to the farmers, so the GAP/CAP enters the stage, buying the overproduction to relieve the market and thus stabilizing the market prices.
    the famous "buttermountains" and "milk seas" in the media are part of this "stock", but there is also a enormous amount of grain, vegetables and meat - stored somewhere at the expense of the EU.

    there are three methods to get rid of the expensive stockholdings:
    1. to return of these stocks to the market in times of undersupply and high prices - but there is overproduction.... :o
    2. export of the stock out of the EU into the world market - difficult because of protective import duties everywhere. to sell the production under these condition would result in an enormous financial loss - the EU couldn't afford that.
    jungle law - Ghana in the early nineties was forced by the IWF, WTF and the world bank to forgo on import duties completely, the result:
    the EU invaded the national market with monstrous imports of food products held in stock. this almost destroyed the farming structures in Ghana, because the farmers couldn't competete and had to sell out for nothing & were subjected to bankruptcy. this was so bad, that a appreciable number of ghanean farmer families committed suicide or left Ghana bound for europe to seek shelter there. (Ghana had to import food again afterwards, because of the inforced braindrain).
    at the same time the republic of cameroon was flooded with cheap meat from europe, 120 000 workplaces were lost and the local food industry laid in shambles.
    only on international pressure the EU limited their export to Ghana and Cameroon, but the stockpiles were as big as ever, the overproduction "couldn't" be stopped or limited (see above protective regulation in the EU).

    3.0 destroying stockpiles - holding them is expensive and bound for all eternety because of the market conditions.
    and it's like a black hole: no concrete/specific up-to-date numbers about the existing stocks and their fate, only extreme measurments like the "bse-crisis" around 2001 went public - 400 000(!!!) cattle were killed and burned in no-time, because of the outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in england and the possible threat of infected cows imported from there. many cattle farmers protested against this almost dictatoric measurment - and despite the claimed protection, germany had around 20 known cases of infections and deaths - specialists couldn't understand the haste and obvious uselessness of such a brutal operation.
    3.1 there are some media reports about grain and vegetables used as "energy crops" to be burned in thermal power plants, the sources for these "bio-combustibles" are rarely named, but noone raises grain to be burned? so where do they come from in times where european food exports are far from the ghanean & cameroonean bonanza?
    despite the market prices a large part of the food on offer in supermarkets is thrown away, the wholesale trade companies refuse to give any numbers - and the EU does nothing to prevent this enormous waste of food or the recklessness of consumers throwing away food and food products, because this speeds up the general consumption and has at least a little impact on the surplus production still going on.

    by now, the GAP/CAP promotes and administrates new regulative measurments:
    - farmers have to respect intensified environmental, food safety, phytosanitary and animal welfare standards, limiting their produciton capabilities
    - increased support for sideline income in tourism, local speciality food, animal pension and popular sports like riding, walking, jogging and so on.
    - intervention mechanisms have diminished significantly & a number of measures are invented to help the farmers to "respond better to signals from the markets" and to face new challenges...
    - milk quotas will expire by April 2015, there are measures to have a "soft landing" for diary farmers prepared
    - reshaping of the rural economy, farmers become nature conservators, plant trees, work in the preservation of the water resources

    I hope noone uses this information for a bleak "EU-critisism/euroscepticism" - the coin has two sides and it's like riding between antique/ancient Scylla & Charibthys:
    will our farmers survive capitalism & who would most likely replace them...?
    right now there is no real alternative to the EU, montsanto would love to see brussels going down in flames I guess.
     
  14. bcpunk

    bcpunk Active Member Forum Member


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    Jul 2, 2013
     
    That surprises me not. Diamant mining companies in South Africa burn excess mining output to stabilize the prices too.

    To the topic. GMO's are just an other expression of the system, that wants to maximize the profit doesn't matter what. I don't thinkt there's an evil plot behind them. The best way to protect yourself from them so far is to produce your own vegetables and never ever buy vegetables/or anything in supermarkets. They might look nice and tasty, but nothing is better than your own produced (killer)tomatoes :D - growed with care and love.
     
  15. Annie

    Annie Experienced Member Experienced member


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    Jun 22, 2013
     
    bad thing in my area: there are hardly any small businesses or street traders left, thanks to the outcome of the price war that started some 35 years ago. we have close contact with farming communes exchanging their surplus production with our technical or financial support, but they aren't able to supply us with enough vegetables and fruits. our city-gardening too is lacking the efficiency to provide the need, so we started to "work" the management of supermarkets in the area, demanding the offering of fair-trade products and better quality instead of the nice-and-tasty-stuff. we were surprisingly successful with that, the disadvantage: the prices went up a bit because the retail(?)-purchasing from small- and middle companies keeping ecological standards is more expensive. fucking capitalism, eh?!
     
  16. Annie

    Annie Experienced Member Experienced member


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    Jun 22, 2013
     
    according AFP the US and the EU start their free trade negotiations in washington dc.
    the projected free trade zone would include more than 800 000 000 people, the trade agreement should be adopted by the end of 2014.
    the export of GMO from the US to the EU-states is one of the controversial issues of the negotiations, according to estimates the agreement will bring 120 000 000 000 euro per annum/year to the EU economy and increase the US-economic performance by 95 000 000 000 euro.
    "we are convinced, that this trade agreement will ensure more work places and more economic growth - and will help us to emerge from the economic crisis", EU trade representative karel de gucht said.
    :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o
     
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