The GM foods sprayed with glyphosate and those that get spray drift do retain an amount of the product.
and a republished report on it’s toxicity (original was retracted until errors were fixed)
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An for those who want to know what glyphosate residues in food/environment mean…
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For those re-reading this thread, I’d like to publicly and officially state that my mind has been changed. I have since reviewed the evidence and can understand that the healthy and sustainable technology of genetic modification is much needed technology. It improves the lives of people and improves the health of the environment, compared to it’s non-GM counterpart.
As for the original post, GMO labelling is about as unneccessary as compulsory labelling for food that was transported in a red truck or blue truck. It makes absolutely no difference to the food (apart from those modified for superior nutrition). 
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The loss of genetic diversity doesn’t concern you? Nor the massive use of Glyphosate on “Roundup ready” crops for human consumption? Then there’s the transference of that resistance to similar “weed” plants (for example Canola → Wild turnip), so that their control now requires much stronger and more environmentally damaging herbicides.
How about large chemical companies gaining control of food production? Or Monsanto suing farmers whose crops have been contaminated by GM pollen?
Growing GM crops that produce good yields under ideal circumstances is not a good solution IMO, crops than can produce reliable yields under a wide variety of conditions is much more useful to the world’s poor… particularly as we are clearly entering a period of much more variable weather in many areas of the Earth, due to climate change. Genetic diversity in our food crops is all-important.
Don’t be sucked in by the GM marketing machine!
Recently, Food Standards of Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ) approved an application (A1138) to permit products containing GM golden rice to be sold in Australia and New Zealand.
Golden rice is a genetically engineered line of rice that produces pro-vitamin A (beta-carotene). It was developed by International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) as a technocratic, quick fix for vitamin A deficiency (VAD) occurring in some countries of the ‘global south’.
A single carrot contains more vitamin A than nearly 4kg of cooked GM golden rice. Vitamin A degrades in storage, which means a person would need to eat 31 kg of golden rice within 75 days after harvest to get the same amount as in a handful of fresh parsley.
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I don’t think that GM will necessarily result in loss in genetic diversity any more than that which has existed from centuries of selected and cross breeding. In some respects, one could argue that GMO has the possibly to enhance genetic diversity as genes which may not have readily/reliably been able to be inserted into a DNA chain can now potentially be inserted.
It is about risks.
If there was sufficient evidence that glyphosate cause short, medium or long term health effects, then yes, there would be a need for concern. Some possibly believe that the precautionary principle should be adopted as there is insufficient evidence about long term exposure, say like tobacco for example. I am possibly a believer that until there is an independent, peer reviewed evidence or research showing likely health impacts, I think that the risks are minor and worth taking to increase the quality of the crop grown.
It is also worth noting that there are risks of not using glyphosate such as weed species present in cropped areas which are known to naturally produce seed toxins. These weed seeds would contaminate the existing food chain but their dilution is unlikely to pose any significant health impacts. These risks along with others, need to be considered when assessing the potential risks of using glyphosate,
I disagree about the patenting of naturally occurring genes. I expect that over time, regulations will be produced to protect farmers from spurious claims from GMO companies.
I also an optimist and believe that a few large companies won’t control all agricultural production in the world. There are current anti-competition laws in Australia and around the world which will prevent this occurring.
Some of the work being done is to improve the efficient of plant production. Planting needing less inputs for the same level or outputs (yield). Other than improving food quality or for chemical resistances, this may also include to improve water efficiency, improved saline soil sensitivity or better growth under non-traditional climatic conditions (less cold sensitive for example). Such has been done traditionally with selective/cross breeding over centuries, but can be accelerated using GM technologies.
One flip side is that there may be greater pressure to crop marginal soils with plants modified to grow better in these marginal soil. Exploitation of marginal soils can result in accelerated soil degradation.
This is irrelevant and comes from the anti-GMO camp as claims to the failure of the ‘Golden Rice’ technology. The volume of food eaten is irrelevant but the amount of β-Carotene to overcome vitamin A deficiencies. This is where ‘Golden Rice’ can potentially play a part.
What is also important is where vitamin A deficiency occurs within a significant proportion of the population, what are the options to rectify this vitamin A deficiency?
Option include supplement/medication, but this may be the most expensive form of supplementation and not effective in developing countries.
An option may be for a government in a developing country to enforce the eating of carrots, parsley or other high β-Carotene foods, when such foods culturally have not been part of the diet of the population. Should we force western diets/foods on other cultures to overcome their dietary deficiencies?
An option could be to do nothing. Why worry about vitamin A deficiency as it doesn’t affect most developed countries…and is not really my problem. Is this a good option to take or should we look at how we can improve the health and lives of our fellow global citizens?
An another option could be to reinforce rice with β-Carotene using GM technologies.
It is also worth noting that only about 40 gms of ‘Golden Rice’ needs to be eaten to gain the necessary level of β-Carotene to overcome known deficiencies. If a person eats a carrot, then they are consuming more β-Carotene than needed by the body.
There will also be failures when researching and trialling GM technologies. Such failures will not be new and have existed when trying to breed undesirable traits out of a crop or when trying to introduce desirable traits by cross breeding.
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I agree with the caveat, the results of the technology must be prove to be safe and also provide a distinguishable benefit to that which currently exists or can be effectively and readily achieved by other means.
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Why is something a human does ‘not natural’? The human brain evolved naturally over millions of years.
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Precisely right, @Leptobrama! @duncanreilly is using ‘appeal to nature’, a logical fallacy in which they assume that something ‘natural’ is inherently superior to something synthetic. This is flat-out wrong, to put it simply.
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Often GMO foods result in less herbicide use, but that’s never acknowledged by conspiracy theorists.
There are many benefits of GMO foods, resistant to pests, for example & higher yields for farmers. Farmers won’t grow crops that damage their farms as this will lead to loss of value of their land.
Another issue, rarely, if ever, brought up. Is when foods are tested for residue of herbicides the tests are only for the conventional type. Organically approved herbicides, for example Copper Sulphate, are not measured in these tests & are much more harmful.
I’m sure I’ll be accused of working for Monsanto, as last time I commented on this sort of topic every reply assumed I had to be. Whilst my role has now changed, I used to work with applying medical journal research into treatment via software, so I know my way around scientific journals & there is no serious work showing an issue despite 50 plus yrs of what we now class as GMO, where mutations for,Ed in other ways aren’t treated as such, & we’ve been modifying organisms for as long as we’ve been farming. We’d get very little food from “natural” bananas or corn, for example.
I support eating locally, where I can, but organic farming has never shown to have the benefits claimed, & GMOs aren’t they bogeyman either.
If we could limit the world population we might achieve more, but population isn’t likely to flatten out for 50 yrs (until much of the 3rd world achieves more development)
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Slightly off topic but I feel like there’s very little understanding of what even is genetically modified. I once assisted a customer who wanted to know if some wheat was GMO free. A quick search of GMO approvals revealed there are no GMO wheat products approved for growing in Australia. All that time she was paying extra for GMO free wheat she was being conned.
Then of course there is this classic
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Actually, small farms are more efficient than industrial farming, “producing 30-34% of food supply on 24% of gross agricultural area” as well as promoting biodiversity and reducing waste. See https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325405959_How_much_of_the_world’s_food_do_smallholders_produce
Organic farming methods produce only 10-20% less than conventional farming [https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2014.1396] but have much better environmental outcomes. In fact a UN report says that “Industrial agriculture grabs 80% of subsidies and 90% of research funds” , but it’s actually small farms that are best placed to feed the world. See https://www.tni.org/en/article/un-only-small-farmers-and-agroecology-can-feed-world
Companies that profit from GMO’s regularly claim that GM is necessary to feed the world, but the evidence doesn’t support their spin. Imagine the food systems we could create if subsidies and research funds were spent on small organic farms rather than large monocultures and mega corporations!
