Great talk, addresses many myths and thoroughly explains them. Unfortunately there are many people who are not educated in the diverse sciences to make the conclusion that GMOs are not harmful for human consumption.
William Powell frankly I was disappointed. Is this really the best a professor can do to explain gmo risk, honestly ? comparing gmo eating with driving is such a cheap shot. just unworthy of a rational thinking audience. Where is the data? show me studies of prolonged exposure of rats to gmo food with healthy results. cause i've seen the studies that show health complications. He might as well have said that using human genes in rice is just fine since cannibalism was practised by some tribes and therefore it is natural.
Meoli55 Hi Meoli55, Sorry this disappointed you. Here are some articles where you can read the safety data you requested. First, "An overview of the last 10 years of genetically engineered crop safety research": informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/07388551.2013.823595 Then, here is a list of a few hundred articles on the safety of feeding animals GMOs: www.fass.org/page.asp?pageID=52&autotry=true&ULnotkn=true For little extra interesting reading, see how Horizontal Gene Transfer is natural: www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21646197-human-beings-ancestors-have-routinely-stolen-genes-other-species-genetically Enjoy!
William Powell What about terminator seeds that are genetically engineered so that the resulting plant has dead seeds? is that not threatening to bio-diversitiy?
Ignoring the fact that, as Charles Rader pointed out, there are no tomatoes expressing fish proteins on the market (in fact, currently, there are no transgenic tomatoes on the market at all--although there used to be), one could make a valid point that, in a sense, there's no such thing as "fish DNA". The DNA is the same for all living creatures on earth. What is significant is the sequences of nucleotides found and we can match certain sequences to the organism in which they've been found.
hahah love your logic. human genes are just genes. chemically they aren't any different from bacterial genes. And one gene would not make rice a human. we have a lot of viral genes in our DNA; would you say we're viruses and not human?
Ok, the strawberry thing might be a bit off. Only because the wild strawberry will grow on the mountains of eastern Europe, very very tiny but you can smell it yards away.
The strawberry that we buy from the supermarket (Fragaria ananassa) is indeed a cross between Fragaria virginiana and Fragaria chiloensis. And that cross happened indeed in France in the the 18th (XVIII) century. So it is true that both parents came from North and South America.
Some of the companies involved in this have a shocking track record of getting things wrong and causing harm eg. Introducing many of the chemicals that are now considered a problem into the food supply in the first place.
I love the title - Mr Botella didn't think that through. The problem is that there are genes in your soup. And if your soup contains GMO then your soup has anti-biotic resistance genes in it. These genes are used as marker genes when biotechs create these patented contaminated mimics of healthy food. It's an easy way to tell if a gene package has randomly inserted "successfully" - Yes "randomly inserted"... no splicing goes on in GMO currently being commercially grown and marketed in the USA and Canada. A random insertion has inherent unknown consequences for the plant genome, nutrients it may absorb, growth patterns, photosynthesis processes... if the plant's genes do it, then this random insertion of a package of genes (including anti-biotic resistance) can affect it. Mr Botella should emphasize that in his video. When hundreds or thousands of seedlings sprout from the altered cells, they are doused with a specific anti-biotic. If they survive they are assumed to have been successfully altered. Different biotech companies use different anti-biotic marker genes - so they don't have to pay another biotech company licensing fees for using their marker genes. The big problem for Mr Botella is that the genes in our soup can be assimilated and utilized by bacteria in our guts. Eating a variety of GM foods will end up creating bacteria that are resistant to a wide variety of antibiotics, specific ones and the families of anti-biotics they belong to. Mr Jimmy should change the title of his biotech-propaganda video. Watch him carefully folks. Watch his technique, his body language, listen to how he carefully crafts his tale. As Always, For the protection of children and our food supply, In the interests of truth and science, Michael Polidori
Your statement that peer-reviewed proof is necessary to determine that anything is true is nonsense. Everything in my post is factual. Do I need peer-reviewed proof that the sky is blue? Of course not. The facts I have posted are accepted as fundamental truths in the biotech debate. If you have a problem with anything in my post please post the evidence that refutes it.
Michael Polidori how about the 1,700 articles on pubmed that show the safety of GM foods, in order for a theory to be accepted it needs to be tested, the results then need to be reviewed in order to ascertain whether they results can be replicated, in response to whether you need a peer reviewed article to prove the sky is blue, no, but it goes to explain WHY it is blue
Michael Polidori intelligent conversation with someone that believes that genes can integrate with the body in the gut yet believes empirical evidence is not required to back up the statement, you are pseudo intellectual at best.
by the way wild strawberries are natural, they existed before breeding experiments took place in france. And the breeding in a french botanical garden WAS natural since all they did was plant one type of strawberry from Chile I think, next to another type and the result of NATURAL pollination was a new type. No engineering in labs and no sterile infertile seeds here...
Meoli55, I don't want to argue with you about strawberries, or what is natural and what isn't. Some of these things are a matter of opinion. But could you please refrain from alluding to the stuff that's just false, by any standard at all? I'm reacting to "sterile infertile seeds". There is this story circulating so widely that it almost never fails to come up in any online discussion about GMO food, the sterile seeds story. There are no GMO crops with sterile seeds. The closest you can come to that is a US patent on how they could be produced, but nobody has used the patent. On the other hand if you have anything against foods that you can't reproduce by saving seeds, the non-GMO world is full of them. Seedless grapes, seedless oranges, bananas, etc. Then there are all the crops that DO produce seeds but nobody uses them. Take apples (or plums or cherries or peaches or ...). Take a named variety, like Granny Smith, or Red Delicious. If you slice open the apple, you will find seeds. If you plant those seeds a new tree will grow. But don't plan to sell the apples that the resulting tree finally produces. The fruit won't be anything like you expected. It might be sour, or the wrong color, or mushy or woody, etc. and almost surely deficient in some important way. New apple varieties are created by breeders who do selective breeding, but the farmers who grow apples to sell to the public always use cloning. Not only that, but they are all grafted which means that the fruit tree is a chimera - it has a totally different genome in the roots and in the branches. Another thing about strawberries and natural breeding. Wild strawberries, just like you and me, have two of each chromosome. The strawberries you buy have eight of each chromosome. That didn't come about by normal selective breeding. It came about by three rounds of shocking a young strawberry plant with electricity or chemicals so that it didn't reproduce normally. And this was done - get this - in a laboratory. Three times!
Sorry, but that is where you are wrong. Agrobacterium rhizogenes (and many other species) routinely (and in nature!) puts its own genes into plants to feed itself and THIS is the technology that we piggy back on in the lab.
OK, so sometimes Agrobacterium tumefaciens is used to deliver a plasmid payload. There's nothing wrong with that. The speaker's point is not that it's the same genetic engineering (the equivalent of which happens in nature all the time) is the same as other forms of breeding. His point is that there are no unique risks introduced & that there are fewer risks. Google "More Frankenfood Paradox" & tell me where the excess risk can bt found on that table.
"poor soil" can relate to soil with more salt, higher or lower pH than normal - all things that people are working on making plants more resistant too. Now yes, "poor soil" can also mean less nutrients. Legume plants can take nitrogen from the atmosphere, rather than the soil. If all plants could do this then nitrogen fertiliser would be a thing of the past.
That should have read "The speaker's point is not that genetic engineering (the equivalent of which happens in nature all the time) is the same as other forms of breeding."
I don't know what you mean by "viral DNA modification". In principle, you certainly could use a modified virus as a genetic engineering tool but that's not how genetic engineering is done in crops (not that there would necessarily be anything wrong with it). What does the use of transgenic technologies have to do with "destroying our food supply"? They are a safe tool set & no more "destroying our food" supply than screwdrivers. Maybe you need to watch this video again (carefully, this time).
Hi dudu Bobby, I believe that what you are seeing with Glen (not Brendan) is the result of playing enough iterations of a game of telephone by uninformed people that it is currently impossible to know exactly what the original piece of misinformation that Glen Orchard is referring to actually was.
Google "More Frankenfood Paradox" and the first hit should be a blog post by Kevin Folta. There's a table there illustrating the methods used to improve plants by manipulating their genes which complements this talk quite nicely.
There's nothing linking such sequences in some sort of a real, sacred way to that organism. If I were a computer coder & had made an accounting application & a database access application I might find I have a sorting function in the database application which I can use on my accounting application and I might choose to reuse that code in the accounting application. This wouldn't constitute an unwholesome & unnatural mixing of databaseness with accountingness. It'd be reuse of a sort function.
Research aquaponic systems, because with those you do not need any soil. This systems grows fish and food all organically and could be powered by a small solar panel. They use them in earthship houses a lot to grow food all year long.
You might be intrigued to learn that some organic seed companies have brought a lawsuit to prevent anyone from calling hydroponically grown food organic.
Of course there's a difference. There's also a difference between onions and garlic. The question really is "Does the difference matter?" You can't wash phytoncide out of garlic any more then you can wash Bt out of corn. Neither is actually harmful, but that's for you to decide. As to natural mutations, you don't seem to know about the thousands of crop varieties mutated by exposure to gamma rays or chemicals. I thought Botella explained that not much is actually natural.
First of all, don't change the subject (crop breeding) by bringing up rBGH (though, you happen to be wrong on that one too). While, I understand you don't like Monsanto, that is orthogonal to transgenics which is just a tool. If I told you I saw a Monsanto scientist use a screwdriver you wouldn't start panicking about screwdrivers, would you?
glen, you do want to eat pesticides. You just don't know it. Since plants can't run away, most plants have evolved a set of chemical defenses, e.g. pesticides. You even choose some of your foods specifically because they contain pesticides. For example onions and garlic would taste like library paste if it weren't for the substances they create to kill or repel insects. But some pesticides harm some species and not others. You can pig out on chocolate, but it could kill your dog.
+BrumelyKris Agreed. I was all in for that talk until a bit before the end. Equating a tomato with a sentient being was ignorant and uncalled for. And what does *that* have to do with his point? "A cow can kick and run"? Go spend a day in a modern slaughterhouse smartass.
Chris Schall When there are many veggie and vegan people who are anti-GMO and he wants to persuade them against pseudoscience then why is he bashing them for their ethics. It is counterproductive. He really has helped nobody.
What if it is just a joke to conclude his exposé on a lighter note? Nobody would compare killing sentient beings to chopping veggies except to joke but as always the internet is full of very touchy people. Oh and he wants to persuade people in general, not just vegan and veggies, and if those can't take a joke that is absolutely ridiculous when you analyze it, why bother with the rest of the presentation?
Chris Schall I was saying that a lot of pseudoscience people are vegan, so if he wants to persuade people he isn't helping. And I don't think it was a joke. Me complaining about this one thing isn't being touching, I watch South Park and enjoy that sort of humour, but done well. He was fighting against pseudoscience and then makes an unnecessary jibe. Just because he said something ridiculous doesn't mean he meant it as a joke.
Glen, just as a matter curiosity, of the food you grow, do you know the way it was developed? Many important plants were developed by crossing and selecting, but many more that we eat were developed by very unnatural techniques and contain genes never seen before in any species. I admire your patience if you've actually researched this. One comment though - when you use the word "contaminant" you are biasing the result. Not every new thing can be considered a contaminant.
That's a trash propaganda video from organic industry stooges. Not worth your time watching unless you want a good laugh at their complete scientific ignorance.
+Geo Galamb Seriously, put up more scientific arguments than what amounts to "nuh-uh!" because that only works with people on the same education level as you.
+Janne Aalto Are you working for one of those chemical companies that you're trying to protect? It sure looks like it. More scientific argument you want? I am not going to waste my time with scientific arguments. I just write about my personal opinions, based on my observations. You are trying to tell me that all those bio-tech companies are creating all those chemicals to have a better life for everyone on this planet? Or, are they creating them because they are in that awful business to make as much money as they can? Think about it.
+Geo Galamb "I am not going to waste my time with scientific arguments." 1. that's good, because reading what you would consider a scientific argument would probably hurt. 2. not that you really have any scientific arguments. 3. if you consider scientific arguments a waste of time, you lose all credibility. I'm sure you will spew a lot more 'personal opinions' which you will nevertheless imply to be better than any science. Actually, I'm part of the local green party, but here we try to base our decisions on science instead of feelings. Produces a lot better results when you base your actions on what's real instead of what you feel should be real.
It all comes down to the individual's definition of "natural". If you want to say that natural means without any human intervention whatsoever (as pro gmo activists do) then yes strawberries, kiwis and bananas are not "natural" in that sense of the word. Using this very base definition of "natural" would mean that anything cooked is unnatural because chemically the natural food is altered via human intervention. For most anti GMO activists, anything done in a lab would be unnatural whereas if a human breeds two organisms for years and years and end up with a new organism this would still be "natural" because the selection is in the end still left up to nature... it's not done by force in a lab. Last time I checked we were all free to make our own decisions and if people think that eating GMO is a risk they're not willing to take it's their right to do so. For me images of Dolly the sheep come to mind when I think about DNA tampering so I'm skeptical of GMO at this stage. Thank goodness lots of people are warming up to GMO so I can observe from a distance.
I don't know. Is forcing genetic changes through viral DNA modification the same as cross-breeding? This was one of the most disturbing TED talks I have ever viewed. He seems more concerned about CO2 emissions than he does about destroying our food supply.
William Powell Thank you for the links to scholarly articles, I am now researching them. There is more in depth reading for me to do before I probably come up with new questions, although already in a few of these I've come upon some weird statements, for example an article refers to safety of long-term gmo feed after 16 weeks of feeding chicken... 16 weeks does not determine long-term for me. And another study actually doesn't quite prove much as in benefits... By the way are there any independent studies done without the financial input of the gmo industry?
William Powell reading the article with opening sentence: "OPPONENTS of genetically modified crops often complain that moving genes between species is unnatural. Leaving aside the fact that the whole of agriculture is unnatural, this is still an odd worry." What a statement, how how, please, how is putting a (non-genetically modified, and therefore still naturally POTENT) seed into the soil and seeing it germinate and grow to bear fruit - hou is that which i see in my bank yard happening in the garden UNNATURAL FACT (yes I take issue with the use of the word fact here, come on...)? I mean is this religious dogma or what. Ok, am going to read on now... ;)
Meoli55 So this is the hard evidence here in this article (did not convince me of interspecies gene transfer that would make human gene in rice ok) with the use of words like these: LOOKS bacterial, SEEMS to come from algae:"The ABO antigen system, which defines basic blood groups for transfusion purposes, looks bacterial. The fat-mass and obesity-associated gene, the effect of which is encapsulated in its rather long-winded name, seems to come from marine algae. And a group of genes involved in the synthesis of hyaluronic acid originates from fungi. Hyaluronic acid is a chemical that is an important part of the glue which holds cells together. (It is also a frequent ingredient of skin creams.)
Haha, funny! Bananas ! This is the "natural" banana... Actually bananas come in approximately 1000 different types of banana plants in the world . This guy only shows two and the one on the right is the Cavendish banana which is a clone banana designed for the commercial western food market.
Hoffmansk, of those 1000 different banana plants, all the ones that people eat are seedless. All are reproduced by cloning. Do you think he could have made the point he was making any more accurately by showing more kinds of bananas in the picture? In fact, the Cavendish banana constitutes more than 90% of what people eat as bananas and plantains.
What was with the lame jab at vegetarians? If we all ate less meat, there would be far more farmland to devote to growing food to feed HUMANS, instead of livestock, to which a vast majority of American crops are dedicated. With more free space, farming could be done with sustainable, "low yield" organic methods, with no synthetic chemicals at all. There are so many reasons to promote more plants and less meat, for instance, the World Preservation Foundation says "veganism offers the single most effective path to reducing global climate change", and here we are at TED bashing vegetarianism. Good work.
It's true, but not always. Many soils are good for cattle but aren't for cereals, it's more a matter of HOW we use the soil, lake Chad being a perfect example of how growing cotton at the wrong place can be catastrophic, while grazing cattle would have been perfectly fine. But you're right, it's usually the other way around.
That's a completely asinine thing to say. It's as he said, right now we have no problems feeding the people of today. Organic methods don't last long, we develop pesticides and pest resistant crops but you're forgetting that it's an evolutionary arms race. We're developing defenses whilst the pests, be it viruses, plants, bacteria are developing weaponry. A good understanding of basic biology is essential in understanding these arguments. Also, I'm pretty sure he was just joking around. He was making an example of a type of argument not of vegetarians in general. I think you might've taken offense when you really didn't need to. "World Preservation Foundation says "veganism offers the single most effective path to reducing global climate change" - That's an argument from authority almost. And It's not as clear cut as that. If we were all to go vegan even more time, man-hours, and money would have to go into plant biotechnology. Do you think that's possible with the current organic movement? No.
Well now, it's clearly a joke not meant to be taken seriously, he's using irony to end the talk in a lighter way. He's being facetious, he's not actually arguing, in any serious way, that vegetarians are morally worse, plus he knows (and we all know) that tomatoes who can't run and who are eaten alive don't really fit into what we understand about the concept of suffering.
Also if you read the replies on Mark's video on Vimeo you can get enough there that can satisfy anyone that is willing to learn. btw I am not anonamous and you are.
By the way, the very way you formulate the question shows your bias as it poses a contrast between forcing (genetic changes) and an implied not forcing.. In reality (and very much the point of this video), anytime that you do anything other than clone plants you are "forcing genetic changes". Certainly, if you're selecting parents for a cross you are forcing something to happen to change genetics (and those changes will be almost completely uncharacterized both before and after the fact).
As for your documentaries, it would have to be English or Spanish. However, the likelihood that there's anything new in them that I have not seen before is about as high as that of finding an argument I have not seen before at a young earth creationist website: rather low. I doubt that they are likely to have much that someone like Jeffrey Smith hasn't said already. I've found that when you dig the claims tend to be extremely disappointing in how poorly backed by reality they are.
Which means he is one of the most authentic persons to talk about the topic, right? By the way, did you expect him to work as a taxi driver or a jet pilot with this profession?
And if you want to hear a real environmentalist you should listen to this talk form Mark Lynas at the Oxford Farming Conference: Just google Mark Lynas and oxford Farming Conference.
Would Sweet n’ Low or Equal be considered a GMO food or is it in a different category all together? My Mom died of a brain disease seven years ago and some doctors link it to artificial chemicals and sweeteners in foods. I’m trying to read and understand all I can about GM food, but there’s a lot of information. Jimmy Botella can be very convincing, but so can a used car salesman.
Jon Robert I am glad that you are taking the time to understand this. It is indeed a complicated topic, and the bad news is that the internet is flooded with propaganda-type documentaries against GMOs and people protesting against them when they don't understand how it works. Good unbiased sources can be difficult to find. But I think I have found just that...I would really recommend going through some of these articles: grist.org/series/panic-free-gmos/
Robert Lucas He claims we'll run out of food. Two things: food waste in America is at embarrassing levels, secondly traditional style farming is not impressively productive.
+Robert Lucas "He talks endlessly about how we've used nature's tools to alter food and then compares that to biotech food... not very helpful." I wouldn't call mutagenesis tool from nature nor that the banana was made sterile for our needs, because seedless bananas are yummy but not natural.
Wait a sec, seedless bananas were first discovered growing naturally. To Jared, we absolutely should continue with food technology, but so far it's been a disaster going mainstream in the food supply with chemical pesticides and GMO's. Like it or not GMO's and most pesticides are terrible on the gut.
@@lucasimagery Two points. First, you are strictly right about the first seedless banana being growing naturally. But it is misleading. Of all the numerous bananas and plantains people eat, they are all made seedless by an artificial process, which I will describe. The breeder starts with seedy bananas and selectively crosses them to get a seeded variety with other good quality. Then he takes one set of seeds from that variety and used a chemical to make them grow a quadriploid banana tree, that's four of each chromosome. That still has seeds. It is then crossed with seeds from the original diploid banana and the resulting banana plant is triploid, three of each chromosome, and therefore it cannot make seeds. From there on, it is reproduced in large numbers by cloning. So you see Mr. Botella is quite right to use the banana as an example of a common food which is very unnatural. Second, you are putting together GMOs and use of pesticides. Again, you are oversimplifying to give the wrong idea. Of all the traits transferred by genetic engineering, only one, herbicide tolerance, leads to increased use of any pesticide, which is, of course, a herbicide. But before there was any genetically modified food, the herbicide used most in the world was atrazine, and that is because corn is naturally tolerant to atrazine. Corn farmers used to use atrazine for weed control in exactly the same way they now use gryphosate. So at least in the case of corn, a trait of tolerance to another herbicide leads to a switch from one herbicide to another. (As you must be aware, there is now a campaign against glyphosate based on a possible danger, but before there were any GMOs, many environmentalists were praising glyphosate as a far less toxic herbicide than atrazine. ) None of the other GMO traits lead to or require increased use of any pesticide and many of them lead to a large decreased use of insecticides and more recently fungicides. I am not qualified to comment on the effects of GMOs and/or pesticides on our guts, but that at least needs some reference to some scientific paper.
is this really the best a professor can do to explain gmo risk, honestly, ? comparing gmo eating with driving is such a cheap shot. just unworthy of a rational thinking audience
Argument: we eat more food because we don’t eat nourishing food. Our food is empty and our bodies are not satisfied. Also the counter arguments are weak and wouldn’t stand in an academic writing. They were all a build up to the weakest one being the vegetarian argument. There is no factual substance about how the body processes these GMO foods rather jabs at arguments against. I don’t mind listening to differing opinions but they must be substantial
what do you mean our foods being empty? i know there's a lot of talk about it but i just don't see what people are getting at. A paper on this would be nice. And the vegetarian thing was not an argument, but a funny way (at least in his mind) to end the talk. And the body isn't "processing GM foods" - it doesn't see a difference. Usually the GM foods are producing one or a few extra proteins - which we can obviously break down, because it is just that - a protein. and GM foods have to go through thorough testing for many years to prove they're "safe" to eat (what really is safe to eat?) before they can be put on shelves.
In my experience, "educate yourself" in an anti-GMO comment seems to mean "Read the same anti-GMO propaganda that I have." The other one I see a lot is "Do your own research." Again, it means the same thing. But in that case, it's even worse because some of the anti-GMO propaganda claims claims could be demolished by anyone doing actual and trivially simple research.
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Fantastic TED Talk!! HE certainly gets you to think about GMOs from whole new perspective. It was such a great presentation!
Excellent presentation. GE food was a great invention. So many science illiterate people commenting here really concerns me.
Great talk, addresses many myths and thoroughly explains them. Unfortunately there are many people who are not educated in the diverse sciences to make the conclusion that GMOs are not harmful for human consumption.
Excellent TED talk. Addresses many of the anti-GMO myths. Unfortunately people with closed minds will not listen to what he has to say.
William Powell frankly I was disappointed. Is this really the best a professor can do to explain gmo risk, honestly ? comparing gmo eating with driving is such a cheap shot. just unworthy of a rational thinking audience. Where is the data? show me studies of prolonged exposure of rats to gmo food with healthy results. cause i've seen the studies that show health complications. He might as well have said that using human genes in rice is just fine since cannibalism was practised by some tribes and therefore it is natural.
Meoli55 Hi Meoli55,
Sorry this disappointed you. Here are some articles where you can read the safety data you requested.
First, "An overview of the last 10 years of genetically engineered crop safety research":
informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/07388551.2013.823595
Then, here is a list of a few hundred articles on the safety of feeding animals GMOs:
www.fass.org/page.asp?pageID=52&autotry=true&ULnotkn=true
For little extra interesting reading, see how Horizontal Gene Transfer is natural:
www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21646197-human-beings-ancestors-have-routinely-stolen-genes-other-species-genetically
Enjoy!
William Powell and thank you for the horizontal gene stuff, will look into it.
William Powell What about terminator seeds that are genetically engineered so that the resulting plant has dead seeds? is that not threatening to bio-diversitiy?
Meoli55 in what way exactly?
Every single American should watch this talk.
Ignoring the fact that, as Charles Rader pointed out, there are no tomatoes expressing fish proteins on the market (in fact, currently, there are no transgenic tomatoes on the market at all--although there used to be), one could make a valid point that, in a sense, there's no such thing as "fish DNA". The DNA is the same for all living creatures on earth. What is significant is the sequences of nucleotides found and we can match certain sequences to the organism in which they've been found.
he might as well have said that using human genes in rice is just fine since cannibalism was practised by some tribes and therefore it is natural.
hahah love your logic. human genes are just genes. chemically they aren't any different from bacterial genes. And one gene would not make rice a human. we have a lot of viral genes in our DNA; would you say we're viruses and not human?
Ok, the strawberry thing might be a bit off. Only because the wild strawberry will grow on the mountains of eastern Europe, very very tiny but you can smell it yards away.
The strawberry that we buy from the supermarket (Fragaria ananassa) is indeed a cross between Fragaria virginiana and Fragaria chiloensis. And that cross happened indeed in France in the the 18th (XVIII) century. So it is true that both parents came from North and South America.
Some of the companies involved in this have a shocking track record of getting things wrong and causing harm eg. Introducing many of the chemicals that are now considered a problem into the food supply in the first place.
I love the title - Mr Botella didn't think that through.
The problem is that there are genes in your soup. And if your soup contains GMO then your soup has anti-biotic resistance genes in it.
These genes are used as marker genes when biotechs create these patented contaminated mimics of healthy food.
It's an easy way to tell if a gene package has randomly inserted "successfully" -
Yes "randomly inserted"... no splicing goes on in GMO currently being commercially grown and marketed in the USA and Canada.
A random insertion has inherent unknown consequences for the plant genome, nutrients it may absorb, growth patterns, photosynthesis processes... if the plant's genes do it, then this random insertion of a package of genes (including anti-biotic resistance) can affect it. Mr Botella should emphasize that in his video.
When hundreds or thousands of seedlings sprout from the altered cells, they are doused with a specific anti-biotic. If they survive they are assumed to have been successfully altered.
Different biotech companies use different anti-biotic marker genes - so they don't have to pay another biotech company licensing fees for using their marker genes.
The big problem for Mr Botella is that the genes in our soup can be assimilated and utilized by bacteria in our guts. Eating a variety of GM foods will end up creating bacteria that are resistant to a wide variety of antibiotics, specific ones and the families of anti-biotics they belong to.
Mr Jimmy should change the title of his biotech-propaganda video.
Watch him carefully folks. Watch his technique, his body language, listen to how he carefully crafts his tale.
As Always,
For the protection of children and our food supply,
In the interests of truth and science,
Michael Polidori
Michael Polidori peer reviewed proof or it isn't true
Your statement that peer-reviewed proof is necessary to determine that anything is true is nonsense.
Everything in my post is factual.
Do I need peer-reviewed proof that the sky is blue? Of course not.
The facts I have posted are accepted as fundamental truths in the biotech debate.
If you have a problem with anything in my post please post the evidence that refutes it.
Michael Polidori how about the 1,700 articles on pubmed that show the safety of GM foods, in order for a theory to be accepted it needs to be tested, the results then need to be reviewed in order to ascertain whether they results can be replicated, in response to whether you need a peer reviewed article to prove the sky is blue, no, but it goes to explain WHY it is blue
I see you can't prove anything in my post is wrong.
Thanks for your support, and once again refusing to have an intelligent conversation.
Michael Polidori intelligent conversation with someone that believes that genes can integrate with the body in the gut yet believes empirical evidence is not required to back up the statement, you are pseudo intellectual at best.
Love this speech! So inspiring
by the way wild strawberries are natural, they existed before breeding experiments took place in france. And the breeding in a french botanical garden WAS natural since all they did was plant one type of strawberry from Chile I think, next to another type and the result of NATURAL pollination was a new type. No engineering in labs and no sterile infertile seeds here...
Meoli55, I don't want to argue with you about strawberries, or what is natural and what isn't. Some of these things are a matter of opinion. But could you please refrain from alluding to the stuff that's just false, by any standard at all?
I'm reacting to "sterile infertile seeds". There is this story circulating so widely that it almost never fails to come up in any online discussion about GMO food, the sterile seeds story. There are no GMO crops with sterile seeds. The closest you can come to that is a US patent on how they could be produced, but nobody has used the patent. On the other hand if you have anything against foods that you can't reproduce by saving seeds, the non-GMO world is full of them. Seedless grapes, seedless oranges, bananas, etc. Then there are all the crops that DO produce seeds but nobody uses them.
Take apples (or plums or cherries or peaches or ...). Take a named variety, like Granny Smith, or Red Delicious. If you slice open the apple, you will find seeds. If you plant those seeds a new tree will grow. But don't plan to sell the apples that the resulting tree finally produces. The fruit won't be anything like you expected. It might be sour, or the wrong color, or mushy or woody, etc. and almost surely deficient in some important way. New apple varieties are created by breeders who do selective breeding, but the farmers who grow apples to sell to the public always use cloning. Not only that, but they are all grafted which means that the fruit tree is a chimera - it has a totally different genome in the roots and in the branches.
Another thing about strawberries and natural breeding. Wild strawberries, just like you and me, have two of each chromosome. The strawberries you buy have eight of each chromosome. That didn't come about by normal selective breeding. It came about by three rounds of shocking a young strawberry plant with electricity or chemicals so that it didn't reproduce normally. And this was done - get this - in a laboratory. Three times!
Sorry, but that is where you are wrong. Agrobacterium rhizogenes (and many other species) routinely (and in nature!) puts its own genes into plants to feed itself and THIS is the technology that we piggy back on in the lab.
this man speaks the truth, so I think people need to listen to what he has to say.
OK, so sometimes Agrobacterium tumefaciens is used to deliver a plasmid payload. There's nothing wrong with that. The speaker's point is not that it's the same genetic engineering (the equivalent of which happens in nature all the time) is the same as other forms of breeding. His point is that there are no unique risks introduced & that there are fewer risks. Google "More Frankenfood Paradox" & tell me where the excess risk can bt found on that table.
"poor soil" can relate to soil with more salt, higher or lower pH than normal - all things that people are working on making plants more resistant too. Now yes, "poor soil" can also mean less nutrients. Legume plants can take nitrogen from the atmosphere, rather than the soil. If all plants could do this then nitrogen fertiliser would be a thing of the past.
That should have read "The speaker's point is not that genetic engineering (the equivalent of which happens in nature all the time) is the same as other forms of breeding."
I don't know what you mean by "viral DNA modification". In principle, you certainly could use a modified virus as a genetic engineering tool but that's not how genetic engineering is done in crops (not that there would necessarily be anything wrong with it).
What does the use of transgenic technologies have to do with "destroying our food supply"? They are a safe tool set & no more "destroying our food" supply than screwdrivers.
Maybe you need to watch this video again (carefully, this time).
Hi dudu Bobby, I believe that what you are seeing with Glen (not Brendan) is the result of playing enough iterations of a game of telephone by uninformed people that it is currently impossible to know exactly what the original piece of misinformation that Glen Orchard is referring to actually was.
Google "More Frankenfood Paradox" and the first hit should be a blog post by Kevin Folta. There's a table there illustrating the methods used to improve plants by manipulating their genes which complements this talk quite nicely.
There's nothing linking such sequences in some sort of a real, sacred way to that organism.
If I were a computer coder & had made an accounting application & a database access application I might find I have a sorting function in the database application which I can use on my accounting application and I might choose to reuse that code in the accounting application.
This wouldn't constitute an unwholesome & unnatural mixing of databaseness with accountingness. It'd be reuse of a sort function.
Research aquaponic systems, because with those you do not need any soil. This systems grows fish and food all organically and could be powered by a small solar panel. They use them in earthship houses a lot to grow food all year long.
You might be intrigued to learn that some organic seed companies have brought a lawsuit to prevent anyone from calling hydroponically grown food organic.
Absolutely brilliant!
Glen, "genes never seen before in any species" happens every time you have a mutation (that is to say, all the time).
Of course there's a difference. There's also a difference between onions and garlic. The question really is "Does the difference matter?" You can't wash phytoncide out of garlic any more then you can wash Bt out of corn. Neither is actually harmful, but that's for you to decide.
As to natural mutations, you don't seem to know about the thousands of crop varieties mutated by exposure to gamma rays or chemicals. I thought Botella explained that not much is actually natural.
First of all, don't change the subject (crop breeding) by bringing up rBGH (though, you happen to be wrong on that one too). While, I understand you don't like Monsanto, that is orthogonal to transgenics which is just a tool. If I told you I saw a Monsanto scientist use a screwdriver you wouldn't start panicking about screwdrivers, would you?
glen, you do want to eat pesticides. You just don't know it. Since plants can't run away, most plants have evolved a set of chemical defenses, e.g. pesticides.
You even choose some of your foods specifically because they contain pesticides. For example onions and garlic would taste like library paste if it weren't for the substances they create to kill or repel insects.
But some pesticides harm some species and not others. You can pig out on chocolate, but it could kill your dog.
very good point of view...
The attack on vegetarians was fallacious and irrelevant.
+BrumelyKris Agreed. I was all in for that talk until a bit before the end. Equating a tomato with a sentient being was ignorant and uncalled for. And what does *that* have to do with his point? "A cow can kick and run"? Go spend a day in a modern slaughterhouse smartass.
Lighten up people!
Chris Schall When there are many veggie and vegan people who are anti-GMO and he wants to persuade them against pseudoscience then why is he bashing them for their ethics. It is counterproductive. He really has helped nobody.
What if it is just a joke to conclude his exposé on a lighter note? Nobody would compare killing sentient beings to chopping veggies except to joke but as always the internet is full of very touchy people. Oh and he wants to persuade people in general, not just vegan and veggies, and if those can't take a joke that is absolutely ridiculous when you analyze it, why bother with the rest of the presentation?
Chris Schall I was saying that a lot of pseudoscience people are vegan, so if he wants to persuade people he isn't helping. And I don't think it was a joke. Me complaining about this one thing isn't being touching, I watch South Park and enjoy that sort of humour, but done well. He was fighting against pseudoscience and then makes an unnecessary jibe. Just because he said something ridiculous doesn't mean he meant it as a joke.
Hi Brendan, Can you please explain to me how do you cross a virus with a banana? Do you get pollen from the virus and put it in the banana flowers?
Glen, just as a matter curiosity, of the food you grow, do you know the way it was developed? Many important plants were developed by crossing and selecting, but many more that we eat were developed by very unnatural techniques and contain genes never seen before in any species. I admire your patience if you've actually researched this.
One comment though - when you use the word "contaminant" you are biasing the result. Not every new thing can be considered a contaminant.
"The celery was so carcinogenic that the workers got rashes"???? Ummmmmm.... that doesn't tell me much about the carcinogenicity.
Look up "The world according to Monsanto" This is not about feeding the people - it's about patenting life forms. $$$$
That's a trash propaganda video from organic industry stooges. Not worth your time watching unless you want a good laugh at their complete scientific ignorance.
SayNOtoGreens So how long have you been working for the bio-tech industry? Are they paying you well?
+Geo Galamb Seriously, put up more scientific arguments than what amounts to "nuh-uh!" because that only works with people on the same education level as you.
+Janne Aalto Are you working for one of those chemical companies that you're trying to protect? It sure looks like it. More scientific argument you want? I am not going to waste my time with scientific arguments. I just write about my personal opinions, based on my observations. You are trying to tell me that all those bio-tech companies are creating all those chemicals to have a better life for everyone on this planet? Or, are they creating them because they are in that awful business to make as much money as they can? Think about it.
+Geo Galamb "I am not going to waste my time with scientific arguments."
1. that's good, because reading what you would consider a scientific argument would probably hurt.
2. not that you really have any scientific arguments.
3. if you consider scientific arguments a waste of time, you lose all credibility.
I'm sure you will spew a lot more 'personal opinions' which you will nevertheless imply to be better than any science.
Actually, I'm part of the local green party, but here we try to base our decisions on science instead of feelings.
Produces a lot better results when you base your actions on what's real instead of what you feel should be real.
It all comes down to the individual's definition of "natural". If you want to say that natural means without any human intervention whatsoever (as pro gmo activists do) then yes strawberries, kiwis and bananas are not "natural" in that sense of the word. Using this very base definition of "natural" would mean that anything cooked is unnatural because chemically the natural food is altered via human intervention.
For most anti GMO activists, anything done in a lab would be unnatural whereas if a human breeds two organisms for years and years and end up with a new organism this would still be "natural" because the selection is in the end still left up to nature... it's not done by force in a lab.
Last time I checked we were all free to make our own decisions and if people think that eating GMO is a risk they're not willing to take it's their right to do so. For me images of Dolly the sheep come to mind when I think about DNA tampering so I'm skeptical of GMO at this stage. Thank goodness lots of people are warming up to GMO so I can observe from a distance.
Awesome !!!!
I don't know. Is forcing genetic changes through viral DNA modification the same as cross-breeding? This was one of the most disturbing TED talks I have ever viewed. He seems more concerned about CO2 emissions than he does about destroying our food supply.
show me studies of prolonged exposure of rats to gmo food with healthy results. cause i've seen the studies that show health complications.
Meoli55 Here is a list of a few hundred articles on the safety of feeding animals GMOs:
www.fass.org/page.asp?pageID=52&autotry=true&ULnotkn=true
William Powell Thank you for the links to scholarly articles, I am now researching them. There is more in depth reading for me to do before I probably come up with new questions, although already in a few of these I've come upon some weird statements, for example an article refers to safety of long-term gmo feed after 16 weeks of feeding chicken... 16 weeks does not determine long-term for me. And another study actually doesn't quite prove much as in benefits... By the way are there any independent studies done without the financial input of the gmo industry?
William Powell reading the article with opening sentence: "OPPONENTS of genetically modified crops often complain that moving genes
between species is unnatural. Leaving aside the fact that the whole of
agriculture is unnatural, this is still an odd worry."
What a statement, how how, please, how is putting a (non-genetically modified, and therefore still naturally POTENT) seed into the soil and seeing it germinate and grow to bear fruit - hou is that which i see in my bank yard happening in the garden UNNATURAL FACT (yes I take issue with the use of the word fact here, come on...)? I mean is this religious dogma or what.
Ok, am going to read on now... ;)
Meoli55 So this is the hard evidence here in this article (did not convince me of interspecies gene transfer that would make human gene in rice ok) with the use of words like these: LOOKS bacterial, SEEMS to come from algae:"The ABO antigen system, which defines basic blood groups for transfusion
purposes, looks bacterial. The fat-mass and obesity-associated gene,
the effect of which is encapsulated in its rather long-winded name,
seems to come from marine algae. And a group of genes involved in the
synthesis of hyaluronic acid originates from fungi. Hyaluronic acid is a
chemical that is an important part of the glue which holds cells
together. (It is also a frequent ingredient of skin creams.)
William Powell www.globalresearch.ca/gmo-biotech-companies-and-compliant-politicians-india-does-not-need-gmo-food/5426733
Haha, funny! Bananas !
This is the "natural" banana... Actually bananas come in approximately 1000 different types of banana plants in the world . This guy only shows two and the one on the right is the Cavendish banana which is a clone banana designed for the commercial western food market.
Hoffmansk, of those 1000 different banana plants, all the ones that people eat are seedless. All are reproduced by cloning. Do you think he could have made the point he was making any more accurately by showing more kinds of bananas in the picture? In fact, the Cavendish banana constitutes more than 90% of what people eat as bananas and plantains.
transposons
What was with the lame jab at vegetarians? If we all ate less meat, there would be far more farmland to devote to growing food to feed HUMANS, instead of livestock, to which a vast majority of American crops are dedicated. With more free space, farming could be done with sustainable, "low yield" organic methods, with no synthetic chemicals at all. There are so many reasons to promote more plants and less meat, for instance, the World Preservation Foundation says "veganism offers the single most effective path to reducing global climate change", and here we are at TED bashing vegetarianism. Good work.
It's true, but not always. Many soils are good for cattle but aren't for cereals, it's more a matter of HOW we use the soil, lake Chad being a perfect example of how growing cotton at the wrong place can be catastrophic, while grazing cattle would have been perfectly fine. But you're right, it's usually the other way around.
I talked about lake Chad but I was way off, I was talking about the Aral Sea. Sorry about that.
That's a completely asinine thing to say. It's as he said, right now we have no problems feeding the people of today. Organic methods don't last long, we develop pesticides and pest resistant crops but you're forgetting that it's an evolutionary arms race. We're developing defenses whilst the pests, be it viruses, plants, bacteria are developing weaponry. A good understanding of basic biology is essential in understanding these arguments.
Also, I'm pretty sure he was just joking around. He was making an example of a type of argument not of vegetarians in general. I think you might've taken offense when you really didn't need to.
"World Preservation Foundation says "veganism offers the single most effective path to reducing global climate change" - That's an argument from authority almost. And It's not as clear cut as that. If we were all to go vegan even more time, man-hours, and money would have to go into plant biotechnology. Do you think that's possible with the current organic movement? No.
Well now, it's clearly a joke not meant to be taken seriously, he's using irony to end the talk in a lighter way. He's being facetious, he's not actually arguing, in any serious way, that vegetarians are morally worse, plus he knows (and we all know) that tomatoes who can't run and who are eaten alive don't really fit into what we understand about the concept of suffering.
2 million pounds of Roundup is dropped on the earth every year.
Also if you read the replies on Mark's video on Vimeo you can get enough there that can satisfy anyone that is willing to learn. btw I am not anonamous and you are.
That's not how it works though.
By the way, the very way you formulate the question shows your bias as it poses a contrast between forcing (genetic changes) and an implied not forcing..
In reality (and very much the point of this video), anytime that you do anything other than clone plants you are "forcing genetic changes". Certainly, if you're selecting parents for a cross you are forcing something to happen to change genetics (and those changes will be almost completely uncharacterized both before and after the fact).
Give me FOOD not PHOOD. Aquaponics beyond organic
As for your documentaries, it would have to be English or Spanish. However, the likelihood that there's anything new in them that I have not seen before is about as high as that of finding an argument I have not seen before at a young earth creationist website: rather low. I doubt that they are likely to have much that someone like Jeffrey Smith hasn't said already. I've found that when you dig the claims tend to be extremely disappointing in how poorly backed by reality they are.
Background
Jimmy Botella, BSc., Ph.D. serves as the Chief Scientific Advisor at Origo Biotech Pty Ltd.
Which means he is one of the most authentic persons to talk about the topic, right? By the way, did you expect him to work as a taxi driver or a jet pilot with this profession?
And if you want to hear a real environmentalist you should listen to this talk form Mark Lynas at the Oxford Farming Conference: Just google Mark Lynas and oxford Farming Conference.
facepalm
Would Sweet n’ Low or Equal be considered a GMO food or is it in a different category all together? My Mom died of a brain disease seven years ago and some doctors link it to artificial chemicals and sweeteners in foods. I’m trying to read and understand all I can about GM food, but there’s a lot of information. Jimmy Botella can be very convincing, but so can a used car salesman.
That depends. Most in the USA would consider it a GMO, but in Europe it is not. Neither is cheese, vitamins, etc.
Jon Robert I am glad that you are taking the time to understand this. It is indeed a complicated topic, and the bad news is that the internet is flooded with propaganda-type documentaries against GMOs and people protesting against them when they don't understand how it works. Good unbiased sources can be difficult to find. But I think I have found just that...I would really recommend going through some of these articles: grist.org/series/panic-free-gmos/
He talks endlessly about how we've used nature's tools to alter food and then compares that to biotech food... not very helpful.
Robert Lucas He claims we'll run out of food. Two things: food waste in America is at embarrassing levels, secondly traditional style farming is not impressively productive.
+Robert Lucas Why is that a reason to not pursue other available technologies?
+Robert Lucas "He talks endlessly about how we've used nature's tools to alter food and then compares that to biotech food... not very helpful."
I wouldn't call mutagenesis tool from nature nor that the banana was made sterile for our needs, because seedless bananas are yummy but not natural.
Wait a sec, seedless bananas were first discovered growing naturally. To Jared, we absolutely should continue with food technology, but so far it's been a disaster going mainstream in the food supply with chemical pesticides and GMO's. Like it or not GMO's and most pesticides are terrible on the gut.
@@lucasimagery Two points.
First, you are strictly right about the first seedless banana being growing naturally. But it is misleading. Of all the numerous bananas and plantains people eat, they are all made seedless by an artificial process, which I will describe. The breeder starts with seedy bananas and selectively crosses them to get a seeded variety with other good quality. Then he takes one set of seeds from that variety and used a chemical to make them grow a quadriploid banana tree, that's four of each chromosome. That still has seeds. It is then crossed with seeds from the original diploid banana and the resulting banana plant is triploid, three of each chromosome, and therefore it cannot make seeds. From there on, it is reproduced in large numbers by cloning. So you see Mr. Botella is quite right to use the banana as an example of a common food which is very unnatural.
Second, you are putting together GMOs and use of pesticides. Again, you are oversimplifying to give the wrong idea. Of all the traits transferred by genetic engineering, only one, herbicide tolerance, leads to increased use of any pesticide, which is, of course, a herbicide. But before there was any genetically modified food, the herbicide used most in the world was atrazine, and that is because corn is naturally tolerant to atrazine. Corn farmers used to use atrazine for weed control in exactly the same way they now use gryphosate. So at least in the case of corn, a trait of tolerance to another herbicide leads to a switch from one herbicide to another. (As you must be aware, there is now a campaign against glyphosate based on a possible danger, but before there were any GMOs, many environmentalists were praising glyphosate as a far less toxic herbicide than atrazine. )
None of the other GMO traits lead to or require increased use of any pesticide and many of them lead to a large decreased use of insecticides and more recently fungicides.
I am not qualified to comment on the effects of GMOs and/or pesticides on our guts, but that at least needs some reference to some scientific paper.
is this really the best a professor can do to explain gmo risk, honestly, ? comparing gmo eating with driving is such a cheap shot. just unworthy of a rational thinking audience
So instead of spraying the active ingredient (pesticides) the pesticides are inside the plants. mmmmmm....
Yikes
Argument: we eat more food because we don’t eat nourishing food. Our food is empty and our bodies are not satisfied. Also the counter arguments are weak and wouldn’t stand in an academic writing. They were all a build up to the weakest one being the vegetarian argument. There is no factual substance about how the body processes these GMO foods rather jabs at arguments against. I don’t mind listening to differing opinions but they must be substantial
what do you mean our foods being empty? i know there's a lot of talk about it but i just don't see what people are getting at. A paper on this would be nice. And the vegetarian thing was not an argument, but a funny way (at least in his mind) to end the talk. And the body isn't "processing GM foods" - it doesn't see a difference. Usually the GM foods are producing one or a few extra proteins - which we can obviously break down, because it is just that - a protein. and GM foods have to go through thorough testing for many years to prove they're "safe" to eat (what really is safe to eat?) before they can be put on shelves.
oh my god!!!! How much does monsanto pays this guy...even university professor misdirect the public...where is this world going ffs
Too bad it's only a comedy and not science - and not even funny, but really boring!
oh please, educate yourself.
In my experience, "educate yourself" in an anti-GMO comment seems to mean "Read the same anti-GMO propaganda that I have."
The other one I see a lot is "Do your own research." Again, it means the same thing. But in that case, it's even worse because some of the anti-GMO propaganda claims claims could be demolished by anyone doing actual and trivially simple research.