September 4, 2013 • 36 mins
What's the deal with transgenic crops? Are these crops inherently dangerous? What are the pros and cons?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, to
the podcast that looks at the future and says there's
a bright golden haze on the meadow. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
I'm Lauren Vocal, and I'm Joe McCormick. And I like food,
(00:23):
how about you, guys? Now? I hate it, against it,
none of it. Never never eat of Forward Thinking hosts
love food. Now I eat about every two hours. I've
got a weird preference about the food I eat. I
don't like it to be uh destroyed by fungus before
it gets to my table. Very odd. I like corn
(00:47):
fungus so or we a coach as we call it
in Mexico. Yeah, when't because when I have a nice,
yummy ear of corn, I hate. I don't like it
when like most of the little yummy fruity bit it's
are black and rotting. I can understand that. But they
taste like truffles. They're delicious. Well, I have an interesting question. Okay,
(01:11):
So imagine you're a corn farmer, all right, okay, and
you and you want corn. You're not You're not going
for this fungal infected corn. You know, you're you're a
weirdo like me, and you like your corn unblemished by
this mysterious fungal infection that's destroying crops everywhere. You've got
a few options, right, right, So you could use huge
amounts of chemicals and sides and stuff like kill off
(01:34):
anything that isn't corn essentially, or you could notice that
some other organisms have a natural resistance to exactly the
kind of fungus that's killing your crops. Well, but how
do how does that help you? Well, that's a good question.
Is there any way that could help you with your corn?
You take the corn and you take whatever organism it is,
(01:56):
just rub them together. Actually, no, you have to put
them into a room, put on some Verry White. I
was thinking in a particle accelerator with Verry White. You know,
I've been in a particle accelerator with very It was
it changed my life, he felt the love I did. Actually,
all right, So what we're talking about is genetically modified organisms. Here,
we're talking about being able to take traits that are
(02:18):
inherent in one type of organism and then try and
apply them to a different type in order to make
them more robust in some way, or more nutritional in
some way. Right, it can be any kind of change
you want. Really, but the idea is genetic material from
one organism to another, or actually a synthetic gene. Also,
that's true, that's true. It doesn't have to be You
(02:39):
can make it right. You can make a copy of
a gene that looks like it does a certain thing
and duplicated in some way. Right. The idea is changing
a an organism's genome to make it create the kind
of plant or animal you want. Right, And there's a
lot of controversy around this topic for multiple reasons. We'll
get into all of that in this podcast. We'll talk
(02:59):
about that, but before we get into that, I'm just
curious about how this actually works. Okay, Well, first of all, uh,
you know, a gene, in case you guys forgot, is
a sequence of nucleotides. It's part of a chromosome. This
is generally speaking, something that ends up triggering a particular
trait in an organism. Keeping in mind, this gets complicated,
so some traits are actually the product of multiple genes.
(03:22):
Some genes can produce multiple traits, but in general, that's
what we're talking about is this this basic amount, this
basic unit of heredity. You can think of it that way. Um,
and if we identify what a specific sequence of nucleotides does,
what how it expresses as a trait, then you could
isolate that and perhaps introduce it into a new organism.
(03:46):
So how do you introduce it? Well, in the old way,
we would do this by introducing it. When you're talking
about actual genetic modification, you would do this usually through
bacteria or a virus. You would actually create bacteria or
a virus has the material you want inside of it,
and it would technically infect or transfect the target cells
(04:08):
that you want to have this new trait. But we've
got a different way, a better way, a really fast way.
We shoot it with gene guns. I'm not joking. Gene
gun gene guns. Yeah, it's it's called it's it's called
bio ballistic transaction. That sounds or just ballistic. I am
(04:29):
totally making this is not being made up. I'm totally
telling the truth. Okay, So you you load up your
gun with d n A and use his app it
while you shoot it. It's actually it actually is a
kinetic reaction, not a not a PP gun. That's important.
That's an important distinction. Not p it's bang. Actually, actually,
really more frequently it's puff puff, because it tends to
(04:52):
be powered by air or some form of compressed gas.
So what's going on here is that you you take
the DNA that you want to insert into the cells
that are your target cells, and you coat tiny little
particles of metal. Often it's gold. We're talking like on
the micron scale, so really really small particles. You coate
(05:14):
that with the genetic material you want to introduce. You
put that into these essentially plastic cartridges. So in a way,
it almost becomes more like a shotgun than a bullet,
but I almost always hear it referred to as a
genetic bullet. Ah. Then you have these little air guns
and they actually look kind of like revolvers. They hold
multiple cartridges. You then pull the trigger. Compressed gas pushes
(05:38):
the little tiny pellets through that inject into the cells,
and that introduces the genetic material into the cells that
you want to to to transfact with this new genetic information. Yeah,
it's essentially holding up cells and saying you're gonna change
or else. Actually you don't even give them a choice.
You just shoot them. Kind of crazy. Huh, you didn't
(06:00):
know that. I did not. But of course that tiny
little infection with that gun create can create a big
change in the final organism. It all depends on exactly
which genetic material you're talking about. In some cases the
change may not be noticeable. In some cases the change fails.
That you introduce a new type of genetic information into
(06:21):
the cell in the hopes of getting this specific trait
transferred from one organism to another, and it doesn't work out.
We've seen this happen with uh, some some attempts to
make different fruits and vegetables resistant to frost. So super
cold fish tomato, right, well, there that was That was
an example. There was also one where it was a
(06:43):
fish strawberry, I think fish apples or something that I saw. Yeah,
so I think I read the fish tomato didn't work. Yeah, yeah.
And that's the problem is that they were finding these
genes that they were hoping would mean that fruits and
vegetables would have this resistant quality so that they would
not be harmed by things like frost, but it turned
out not to work. So it's not While it's very
(07:05):
precise in the sense that we can very precisely insert
genetic material into target cells. It's not precise in the
sense that it is always going to express the trait
we we are hoping for. So there are two different
types of precision. Precision we're talking about here, um, But
it's you know, the I've actually watched videos of how
(07:25):
the gene gun works and it's pretty straightforward. I mean it,
it's you. You point this thing at the Petrie dish
where you've got the cells, the culture of cells that
you want to affect, and put whom you hit it.
Actually it's poof you hit it. That's pretty crazy. It's
pretty cool stuff. So if it works when you're inserting
this genetic material, that means that your new version of
(07:48):
whatever organism you're working with. And for the most part
we're talking about plants, we're talking about fruits and vegetables. Uh,
then you're going to see that expressed in that generation
of plants, and depending upon how that gene has passed along,
it may end up creating more generations of that same
sort of strain of plant. So this is pretty cool.
(08:09):
What what what kind of things has this been used for?
Kind of traditionally over the past twenty years of tradition
that science has twenty years of tradition. Yes, well, we
mentioned the fish tomato and that the idea behind that
was it was an early sort of failed attempt, but
but they thought, hey, there's this northern flounder that can
live in really cold waters. Um what if we could
(08:32):
take genes from it and put them into a tomato
that would keep the tomato from from freezing in the cold,
which obviously damages its tissue and affects the quality of
the fruit. Um So, that didn't work so well, but
there were some early successes that did get people going
on the idea of GMOs. One of the first ones
was um so it really started in the nineteen eighties.
(08:54):
Um uh. In nineteen eighty three, scientists created a gin
metically modified tobacco plant. And what that was It was
resistant to the canamycin antibiotic and uh as I understand
that change has been important for later genetic modifications. Um so,
(09:17):
that was sort of a precursor to, for example, one
of the next big ones. The first one that was
to be widely commercialized was in and that was a
genetically modified food crop called the flavor saver tomato. Right,
I read about that one, yeah, spelled without oh s.
So it's like f l A v R s A
(09:38):
vr Okay, well, at least it wasn't spelled without rs
and be the Flavo Savo the flavor savor tomato. So
the idea went like this, you've got a problem with
tomatoes in that they're kind of delicate fruits. Right. Um,
they have a sort of peak ripeness where the flesh
is exactly how you on it. But it's really difficult
(10:01):
to time that to you know, pick them at the
right time and get them to the market at just
the right time so the consumer can get them at
their peak. Right though, the problem is that there's a
there's a particular protein that breaks down the pectin in
tomato cell walls. Right, it's called poly galacteronce. Polygalacteronce, I'm
(10:23):
pretty sure that was a herald of galactus. It's an
enzyme let's just say PG. Uh so uh yeah, the
the PG enzyme in the tomatoes was identified in the
nineteen eighties as what was probably responsible for breaking down
these cell walls and the fruit and which would cause
ripening and softening. Um, and so what the people behind
(10:46):
the Flavor Saver tomato thought, and that this was a
company called cal Jean. They were like, well, if we
can insert a gene into the tomato that produces a
sort of retroactive effect to do the opposite of this enzyme, UM,
we can slow the breakdown of pecton and we can
keep the tomato firm longer UM so that by the
(11:09):
time thereby reducing waste and improving sales and exactly. UM.
And so when this first came out, it was a
big deal. People were excited about it, and there was
there was a lot of demand UM it. Essentially it
did well in the beginning, but some people say that
it suffered from some sort of like media pr setbacks
(11:31):
after people started getting worried about what genetically modified organisms
might mean for the health and stuff like that. UM
and so ultimately it's sort of petered out. But UM
after the Flavor Saver tomato, we started getting a lot
more uh new GM crops, Like in we got roundup
(11:57):
ready crops and the roundup ready soybeans particularly, And what
that is is um so round up is a herbicide
UM that's used to eliminate weeds that get in the
way of crop development. Frequently. The way that this works
is that um, it will shut down a critical enzyme
in plants that they need in order to to grow.
(12:18):
And so um. But round up reready soybeans which first
showed up in they're resistant to the active ingredient and
round up which is called glyphosate. I think I'm saying
that right, um, And that that's the poison that would
kill these plants. But the roundup ready crops were resistant
to it, so you could you could spray them with
(12:39):
round up all day long and you'd kill all the weeds.
But the plants that be fine. Um. And of course
now we've got a ton of stuff on the market.
Sure yeah, I mean Lauren, didn't you know something about that? Yes, yes, Um,
there are many other crops that are using um that
that glyphosate tolerant sort of sort of um genetic kick.
(13:04):
But um. A lot of the corn that is sold
not fresh in the US. It's sold either for feed
or for processing into other products, many, many, many other products.
If you've ever read up a little bit about what
corn goes into, it is essentially everything um and uh
else right right sure, um. So a lot of the
(13:25):
corn in the US is engineered to create proteins produced
by m a particular bacteria, and that that bacteria um
will will kill insects when they ingest that protein, and
so by splicing it into this corn, the corn kills
insects when they ingest the corn. Pretty nifty for for farmers,
(13:46):
but again something that people tend to worry about. Um.
Most sugar beets that are raised for table sugar um
are also herbicide resistant. There are lots of new things
coming out as well. Um, well, mean, you know it's
it's you've also got h cotton Seed is normally inedible
to humans, but by fussing around with it just a
(14:07):
little bit, you can you can get rid of the
bit that makes it poisonous to us, which is also
what makes it poisonous to lots of critters. Same thing
with canola oil. Some of the new fun things that
are coming out, and by and by fun things, I
mean potentially a little bit terrifying. Um, let me guess,
Let me guess human corn hybrids with human intelligence. That
(14:29):
would be terrible in the South. They would just pop
heat alone. I'm I'm I'm pretty sure that there is
a documentary called Attack of the Killer Tomatoes that we
might want to reference and but one project that's been
in the works for a while something called golden rice.
And this is um. It's it's fortified with beta carotene,
(14:50):
which which gives it a yellow color, hence the term
golden rice. Um. But this this is modified with genes
from maize and a really common soil bacteria. And okay, so,
so the human body needs beta carotene in order to
make vitamin A, and you need to make vitamin A
in order to not go blind. So that's that's a
pretty This is a genuine issue in in lots of
(15:11):
third world countries, right, there are a lot of places
that have real problems getting access to vitamin A, and
so there's vitamin A deficiencies in many parts of the world,
right right, this is one of the reasons why people
will tell you to eat your vegetables. But this, but
this golden rice could could give people way enough vitamin
A or way enough beta carotene to create vitamin A. Well,
(15:34):
I'm to understand. I think it's still in testing, right
it is. It is still in testing, right, this is
figuring out what it's capable of. This is the sell
right right, This is the hope. Um. But but you know,
even even that is is causing a little bit of
consternation within within. Yeah, there was a just this month,
just a couple of days ago, I believe we are
(15:54):
recording this podcast in August, and a bunch of GMO
protesters stamped out a whole field of golden rice in
the Philippines and the Philippines one of the test grounds. Yeah. Actually,
so there were field trials of this rice, the golden rice,
going on in the Philippines, but apparently a group of
about four hundred farmers came in and just tore up
(16:17):
the fields in protest. So what were they protesting precisely?
Do you know? Well, let's see, I've got a quote here.
This is from the New Scientists article about this um
So they're quoting a farmer named Willie Marbella. What he
said is the golden rice is a poison. That's that's
pretty tough. I thought there was going to be more
(16:40):
to it. That's the whole quote. Well, that's that's extremely
well thought out. Well, no, I mean not to totally dismiss,
but I mean they're there are multiple reasons why GMOs
are controversial, and some of them are some people have
concerns about right, and there there are some reasons that
are based upon either ignorance or misinformation about GMOs. Then
(17:03):
there's some that are not. You can't just dismiss them
because there are some actual concerns that we do need
to think about. And not all of them are pure
food science, right, Some not all of them are all
about nutrition or uh scientifically based. Some of them are
economic reasons why people have objections. So it's a complicated issue,
(17:25):
but we're gonna kind of cover some of that. We're
gonna try and do that now. One of the things
I would I would argue at the very top is
that a lot of the people who have that initial reaction,
this idea that this is unnatural or that we should
not do it, need to realize that this, this way
of manipulating organisms is something that's been part of human
(17:46):
history for pretty much as long as we've had agriculture.
That that is, that is literally what agriculture is. It
is messing about with with crops to make them more
probable to give yourself food security. Right, Manipulating the genome
of a plant is nothing new. We've been doing it essentially,
We've been doing the same thing with sloppier methods for
(18:09):
thousands of right, Um, you know, grafting two kinds of
citrus together to make a stronger plant with the kind
of fruit that you want to eat off of it,
or creating cultivates of a particular plant to create wildly
different plants. For example, even in the twentieth century, just
like a mutation breeding, So they subject seeds to radiation
(18:31):
to try to cause them to create a mutation like
seedless fruit. If you've ever had a seedless watermelon, our
seedless orange, you are eating something that has been you
know that its ancestor anyway has been irradiated. Well, And
what I was going to mention is that if you
if you want to go back to the whole cultivation,
I mean this is this goes back thousands of years. Uh.
(18:52):
If you've ever eaten broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, or Brussels sprouts,
you have eaten various cultivates of all all the same
wild cabbage plant that's found in the Mediterranean. Those none
of those plants existed before humans essentially began to mess
with this wild cabbage to make sure that they were
growing the specific type of traits that they wanted so,
(19:17):
I mean, granted, if you're a former president the United States,
you might have some words about broccoli. But I enjoy
all of these vegetables, and uh, you know with it.
Before were doing a lot of research, I wasn't really
aware of how I knew they were related. I didn't
realize they were all just from the exact same ancestor
but had been cultivated to grow into different forms. Oh well,
(19:38):
so few of the foods that we eat are really
resemblant of the I would argue the natural strain. None
of them are corn. The corn we eat now, even
the totally organic corn looks nothing like the corn it
came from years and years ago, which this tiny little
nubby thing or like more like what we would can
(20:00):
starting grass. And for those of you who are not
in the United States, well, maze, since since your corn
in our corner, are that we use the term differently? Yeah,
the natural the bananas you you true stored there, I mean,
not like naturally occurring bananas. There are lots of different
(20:20):
strains of the banana genus around the world, but none
of them are that banana that we identify as the
yellow sweet banana now, which by the way, is not
as tasty as some other forms of banana. There are
other forms of banana that are so much better. Once
you fry a plantain in large, I think that it's
hard to beat it for tasty factor in organic large.
(20:41):
Once once you run run around in Hawaii at night
so that they don't catch you. Uh yeah, the problem
is making a getaway tough because all those peels very slippery.
Oh that's another one. Hawaiian and papaya. If you've basically
ever eaten a papaya from a grocery store, fresh papaya, um,
that that came from Hawaii. That is genetically model find
because they weren't able to grow them to a point
(21:02):
where where they could be sold. And but um Okay.
So people are still going to have this fear about
genetically modified food crops, and to some extent, I can
sort of understand. I can sympathize with where it's coming from,
and I I agree that in some ways we do
(21:23):
need to be very careful about it. Um. But here's
the bottom line. What scientists are saying about genetically modified
food crops is that there's no inherent risk, nothing that
inherently makes this a greater problem than any traditional breeding technique, right, So,
(21:46):
so in other words, that that doesn't mean necessarily that
the product of a genetic modification won't be dangerous. It's
just no more inherently likely to be dangerous than a
new species of plant produced by any other means. Right,
It's it's it's a different tool, but that's what it is,
a tool, and it's all in how you use the tool,
whether or not it ends up being a harmful or
(22:09):
beneficial outcome. Yeah. Like, like we talked about how there's
some misinformation out there, like the idea of using uh,
genetic information from fish to try and fortify a fruit
or vegetable with this this resistance of frost. Now let's
say let's say that that did work. There's some people
who are like, well, I don't want to eat that.
It's gonna be a fishy tasting tomato. There's more than
(22:31):
people surveyed, in fact, said that they thought it would
taste fishing. But but that's the thing is that we're
talking about genetic information about a particular trait. It's not
like you are making some weird tomato fish hybrid right, right,
And and genes don't contain some some essence of a being.
I mean, you know, any one bit of a fish's
genes isn't going to make it taste like fish, right, Yeah,
(22:55):
that that seems to that kind of concern I think
borders on a on a kind of magical thinking. Well, yeah,
there's a definitely kind of magical thinking, and it's borne
out of ignorance of just how genes work and how
they how they're expressed, and how genetic modification works. On
the other hand, I do think there are some totally
legitimate concerns that people can have about how genetic modification
(23:19):
of food crops will be implemented. Sure, absolutely. I mean,
you know, some of these herbicide tolerant plants I think
are being created so that big corporations can dump as
much herbside as they want all over their crops. And
whether or not that herbicide has other side effects is right,
It could have. The herbicide itself could have environmental impacts.
(23:41):
So again, the genetic modification part isn't necessarily the problem
in that case, although it does raise the concern that
you could end up either creating very herbicide resistant strains
of one of the weeds here, which is completely happening,
or there's a even a fear that the genetic modify
crops themselves could, uh could introduce this gene into other
(24:06):
species of plants that are in the surrounding area or
not even in the surrounding area, especially with things that
um that free pollinate, like corn, for example, which is
so heavily genetically modified. Um. You know, people have found
strains of corn that that are similar to the ones
being genetically modified in the United States as far south
as Mexico, right, So, but I mean there's there's also
(24:27):
a report in Nature that about that, uh, some weaty
forms of rice have started to show the same sort
of traits as genetically modified crops, even though they themselves
were not modified. So so there's there's that fear that
certain genetic modifications and applied certain ways could end up
(24:50):
either hurting us or at least not the benefit would
be very short lived. Yeah, there there are concerns about
different kinds of crops, and one one thing that's helpful
to think about is the different types of effects that
are produced by genetic modification. Some are things that just
makes say the product of the plant more useful to us,
Like I can't really see that a flavor saver tomato
(25:14):
would have that much of a survival advantage in the wild.
But if you are creating a plant that does have
a massive survival advantage over the natural strain, it it's
much more likely that that kind of thing could become
an invasive species if it gets into the wild and
threatened biodiversity. Right. There's um, there's a kind of Atlantic
salmon called called awkward advantage salmon that's that's being created
(25:39):
and and this is a combination of a growth hormone
gene from one type of salmon and a and a
genetic switch from an ocean pout. And when you kind
of smush the two together, Atlantic salmon will will reach
their market weight in half the usual time, which could
which is is kind of creepy. Yeah. Well, and then
there's other other things as well. There's the whole monoculture argument,
(26:00):
the idea that, uh, if you were to roll out
GMOs on a very wide basis, then you get a
lot of people growing the essentially the same strain of plants,
and if something does come along that can affect that strain,
perhaps something that you had not accounted for when you
were designing the the designer genes or whatever that you're
inserting into this crop. UH, then it could have a
(26:21):
devastating effect that could lead to both famine and poverty. UH.
And in fact, the poverty issue is another one that's
big with GMOs. It's it's not even that. And again
this goes beyond the science. This goes beyond whether or
not the actual product is helpful are harmful from a
nutritional standpoint or environmental standpoint. This is purely economic. One
(26:42):
of the arguments has that has been made is that
let's say that you genetically modify a type of crop
that normally you could not grow and say a temperate zone,
so normally it wouldn't grow in the United States, normally
would grow someplace that was more like a tropical area.
But you have genetically modified this plant, so now it
can grow in temperate zones. The economic argument is, now
(27:03):
there's no reason to import these uh these products from
poorer nations that depend heavily upon agriculture as one of
the means of generating money and and not having you know,
it would it would mean that they would struggle even
more because this money supply would be reduced or perhaps
even cut off. If it were a large enough industry
(27:25):
in these other countries. Though again the concern here is
something that could just as easily apply to UH to
breeding of plants without genetic modification. Sure, yeah, no it
it's genetic modification again, is just the means to the
end of getting to this point of being able to
raise this particular crop in this particular place. It's more
(27:46):
of a Again, it's an easy thing to point out,
but you could arrive at the same thing through other
means of of of manipulating plants. Of course, going in
the opposite direction, there are some people who have seen
genetic modification as a way to help people who especially
live in like harsh climatic conditions. So you can create
(28:08):
crops through genetic modification that are highly resistant to drought,
which in especially some less wealthy places on the planet,
drought can be a severe problem. Like absolutely, yeah, they
don't have enough water for for human consumption, let alone
for crops. So drought isn't just a problem like I
(28:28):
can't get enough water to drink, it's a problem I
can't get food either, because all your crops die. But
if if you have drought resistant crops, that could cause
a major barrier to famine in the world. And I
think I think one of the reasons why people bring
up the economic standpoint, the whole economic perspective of the
GMOH debate, is that so much of the genetically modified
(28:54):
crops that are in existence are coming out of the
United States. And part of that is because there our
entire nations, entire groups of nations that have essentially outlawed
them for one reason or another, many of them I think,
out of fear that by through genetic manipulation you are
inviting potential disaster down the road, like like somehow either
(29:16):
health effects or health effects are environmental effects. Yeah, sometimes
it's a combination of them. Yeah. I read a story
that in two thousand two, Zambia declined shipments of GMO
corn during a famine. So people are serious about it. Yeah,
so it's it's and you know, again, there are some
concerns that I think, you know, are legitimate concerns that
need to be addressed, and there are other concerns that
(29:37):
are based largely on fear, uncertainty, in doubt, you know,
the old the old fud um and uh so you
have to be able to separate them and be able
to understand them before you can start coming to conclusions
about whether or not the tool itself is good or bad. Well. Yeah,
And also another legitimate concern when you're considering a tool
is that because GMOs give us a much greater ability
(30:02):
to control the exact nature of what our crops are. Again,
this is not a problem inherent with GMOs, but they
can have the potential to be misused by someone with power.
Say you are the head of a of an unethical
agro business company and you want to create crops that
(30:22):
you have the absolute patent too, and that people cannot
uh may maybe say that UM can't produce new generations
of seeds on their own, and you want you want
to make more money. But I mean it is very
possible that you can use these crops for unethical business
practices UM, And so that's a legitimate concern to I
(30:45):
don't want to present this issue as if there's nothing
to worry about with GMOs. So I think the issue
is not the science of producing the plant. That's how
it's it's implement right, And and I do also want
to say that that anything that is put out on
the mass market for consumer purchase is tested if it's
(31:06):
a GMO before before it's put out. That's another misconception.
There's this idea that these things don't go through testing.
I mean, right now, the FDA requires relatively stringent testing.
It's actually, i mean way more rigorous than if you
were to produce it in some other means that could produce.
Just like a lot of the complaints about what could
potentially come out of genetically modified organisms, like you said, Joe,
(31:29):
the same sort of stuff can happen through other means
of cultivating plants and changing plants, things that we've been
doing for thousands of years. So people who argue that
the restrictions or that the tests that the FDA and
other organizations like the Environmental Protection Agency that they require
these crops to go through, they you know, they say
(31:50):
they're not stringent enough. Well, conventionally grown plants don't have
to go through those tests, and you can still get
the same sort of results that way, right, And to
be fair, you know, we don't know what the effect
could be seventy years down the road, but we don't
know that for anything, right. It's it's it's one of
those things where eventually you have to say all those
(32:12):
sweet bananas. I regret, I have an arm growing out
of my forehead. Regret nothing. It lets me take off
my hat without having to put down my smartphone. I
see the silver lining, Joe, you just see clouds. Yeah,
but no, I mean I agree Lauren entirely that it's
just it's it's there are there are things that we
(32:35):
need to educate ourselves about. But that's the key word, right, educate.
We need to make sure that we have actual, verifiable
scientific information. There's a lot of I guess you could
call it um hyperbolic reaction out there on both sides.
I will, I will admit, I mean there are sides
out there. Obviously, if you're reading something that's just telling
(32:58):
you that genetically modified organ is ms are absolutely safe,
no matter what the context, and then at the end
you read a corporate name that happened to sponsor that page,
then that obviously is a bias. But then you've got
the other side that immediately reacts to anything that is
genetically modified, either saying that that's unnatural and we should
never do it, or because big corporations are involved, it's
(33:21):
inherently evil. No, this is a tool. It can be
used correctly. It can be misused. If it's used correctly,
it has the potential to do a lot of good.
We just have to be really good guardians. We have
to be really educated, and we have to be vigilant,
and we have to set that standard and demand that
it's met. And in that case, humanity as a whole
(33:44):
can can benefit from this technology, this this approach here. Yeah,
there we go. So only of the podcast likes food,
but I was a lot. I'mbviously misinformation was spread, even
at the beginning of this episode. I'm glad we could
clear that up. Uh. I don't have any reservation buying
(34:08):
something knowing that it's a genetically modified crop. It's not.
I don't think that there's necessarily a need to label
foods as genetically modified. I don't think that organic necessarily
automatically means that it's superior or more healthy than genetically modified.
It's a case by case basis thing. That's what I think.
(34:29):
Anything you guys want to add before I close out,
I just want to give a plug for what I
thought was a really good article New York Times article
July by Amy Harmon, and it was about orange farmers
in Florida who were trying to fight against this parasite
called citrus screening, and they're essentially having to turn to
(34:51):
genetic modification as their last hope to to save the
crops period right. Um. And as one counterpoint to what
we talked about with oh, so you have round up
ready crops, you can spray her beside just um, the
idea here is, well, they're having to use so much
pesticide to protect the oranges from the animals that spread
(35:13):
this disease from the insect yea um that actually having
a plant that was resistant would allow them to use
much fewer pesticides. And anyway, I think it's a really
good article. It's worth checking out. Definitely. It's called a
race to save the orange by altering its d n
all great pluck. All right, guys, Well that wraps this up.
(35:35):
If you have anything you want to add to the conversation,
go to FW thinking dot com. That's our website where
we've got all of the video episodes of Forward Thinking,
We've got the podcast, we have blog posts, we've got articles,
lots of interesting information there. We look forward to hearing
from you and we will talk to you again, really
saying we're more on this topic in the future of technology.
(35:59):
This is forward thinking dot dot problems, brought to you
by Toyota. Let's Go Places,
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, to
the podcast that looks at the future and says there's
a bright golden haze on the meadow. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
I'm Lauren Vocal, and I'm Joe McCormick. And I like food,
(00:23):
how about you, guys? Now? I hate it, against it,
none of it. Never never eat of Forward Thinking hosts
love food. Now I eat about every two hours. I've
got a weird preference about the food I eat. I
don't like it to be uh destroyed by fungus before
it gets to my table. Very odd. I like corn
(00:47):
fungus so or we a coach as we call it
in Mexico. Yeah, when't because when I have a nice,
yummy ear of corn, I hate. I don't like it
when like most of the little yummy fruity bit it's
are black and rotting. I can understand that. But they
taste like truffles. They're delicious. Well, I have an interesting question. Okay,
(01:11):
So imagine you're a corn farmer, all right, okay, and
you and you want corn. You're not You're not going
for this fungal infected corn. You know, you're you're a
weirdo like me, and you like your corn unblemished by
this mysterious fungal infection that's destroying crops everywhere. You've got
a few options, right, right, So you could use huge
amounts of chemicals and sides and stuff like kill off
(01:34):
anything that isn't corn essentially, or you could notice that
some other organisms have a natural resistance to exactly the
kind of fungus that's killing your crops. Well, but how
do how does that help you? Well, that's a good question.
Is there any way that could help you with your corn?
You take the corn and you take whatever organism it is,
(01:56):
just rub them together. Actually, no, you have to put
them into a room, put on some Verry White. I
was thinking in a particle accelerator with Verry White. You know,
I've been in a particle accelerator with very It was
it changed my life, he felt the love I did. Actually,
all right, So what we're talking about is genetically modified organisms. Here,
we're talking about being able to take traits that are
(02:18):
inherent in one type of organism and then try and
apply them to a different type in order to make
them more robust in some way, or more nutritional in
some way. Right, it can be any kind of change
you want. Really, but the idea is genetic material from
one organism to another, or actually a synthetic gene. Also,
that's true, that's true. It doesn't have to be You
(02:39):
can make it right. You can make a copy of
a gene that looks like it does a certain thing
and duplicated in some way. Right. The idea is changing
a an organism's genome to make it create the kind
of plant or animal you want. Right, And there's a
lot of controversy around this topic for multiple reasons. We'll
get into all of that in this podcast. We'll talk
(02:59):
about that, but before we get into that, I'm just
curious about how this actually works. Okay, Well, first of all, uh,
you know, a gene, in case you guys forgot, is
a sequence of nucleotides. It's part of a chromosome. This
is generally speaking, something that ends up triggering a particular
trait in an organism. Keeping in mind, this gets complicated,
so some traits are actually the product of multiple genes.
(03:22):
Some genes can produce multiple traits, but in general, that's
what we're talking about is this this basic amount, this
basic unit of heredity. You can think of it that way. Um,
and if we identify what a specific sequence of nucleotides does,
what how it expresses as a trait, then you could
isolate that and perhaps introduce it into a new organism.
(03:46):
So how do you introduce it? Well, in the old way,
we would do this by introducing it. When you're talking
about actual genetic modification, you would do this usually through
bacteria or a virus. You would actually create bacteria or
a virus has the material you want inside of it,
and it would technically infect or transfect the target cells
(04:08):
that you want to have this new trait. But we've
got a different way, a better way, a really fast way.
We shoot it with gene guns. I'm not joking. Gene
gun gene guns. Yeah, it's it's called it's it's called
bio ballistic transaction. That sounds or just ballistic. I am
(04:29):
totally making this is not being made up. I'm totally
telling the truth. Okay, So you you load up your
gun with d n A and use his app it
while you shoot it. It's actually it actually is a
kinetic reaction, not a not a PP gun. That's important.
That's an important distinction. Not p it's bang. Actually, actually,
really more frequently it's puff puff, because it tends to
(04:52):
be powered by air or some form of compressed gas.
So what's going on here is that you you take
the DNA that you want to insert into the cells
that are your target cells, and you coat tiny little
particles of metal. Often it's gold. We're talking like on
the micron scale, so really really small particles. You coate
(05:14):
that with the genetic material you want to introduce. You
put that into these essentially plastic cartridges. So in a way,
it almost becomes more like a shotgun than a bullet,
but I almost always hear it referred to as a
genetic bullet. Ah. Then you have these little air guns
and they actually look kind of like revolvers. They hold
multiple cartridges. You then pull the trigger. Compressed gas pushes
(05:38):
the little tiny pellets through that inject into the cells,
and that introduces the genetic material into the cells that
you want to to to transfact with this new genetic information. Yeah,
it's essentially holding up cells and saying you're gonna change
or else. Actually you don't even give them a choice.
You just shoot them. Kind of crazy. Huh, you didn't
(06:00):
know that. I did not. But of course that tiny
little infection with that gun create can create a big
change in the final organism. It all depends on exactly
which genetic material you're talking about. In some cases the
change may not be noticeable. In some cases the change fails.
That you introduce a new type of genetic information into
(06:21):
the cell in the hopes of getting this specific trait
transferred from one organism to another, and it doesn't work out.
We've seen this happen with uh, some some attempts to
make different fruits and vegetables resistant to frost. So super
cold fish tomato, right, well, there that was That was
an example. There was also one where it was a
(06:43):
fish strawberry, I think fish apples or something that I saw. Yeah,
so I think I read the fish tomato didn't work. Yeah, yeah.
And that's the problem is that they were finding these
genes that they were hoping would mean that fruits and
vegetables would have this resistant quality so that they would
not be harmed by things like frost, but it turned
out not to work. So it's not While it's very
(07:05):
precise in the sense that we can very precisely insert
genetic material into target cells. It's not precise in the
sense that it is always going to express the trait
we we are hoping for. So there are two different
types of precision. Precision we're talking about here, um, But
it's you know, the I've actually watched videos of how
(07:25):
the gene gun works and it's pretty straightforward. I mean it,
it's you. You point this thing at the Petrie dish
where you've got the cells, the culture of cells that
you want to affect, and put whom you hit it.
Actually it's poof you hit it. That's pretty crazy. It's
pretty cool stuff. So if it works when you're inserting
this genetic material, that means that your new version of
(07:48):
whatever organism you're working with. And for the most part
we're talking about plants, we're talking about fruits and vegetables. Uh,
then you're going to see that expressed in that generation
of plants, and depending upon how that gene has passed along,
it may end up creating more generations of that same
sort of strain of plant. So this is pretty cool.
(08:09):
What what what kind of things has this been used for?
Kind of traditionally over the past twenty years of tradition
that science has twenty years of tradition. Yes, well, we
mentioned the fish tomato and that the idea behind that
was it was an early sort of failed attempt, but
but they thought, hey, there's this northern flounder that can
live in really cold waters. Um what if we could
(08:32):
take genes from it and put them into a tomato
that would keep the tomato from from freezing in the cold,
which obviously damages its tissue and affects the quality of
the fruit. Um So, that didn't work so well, but
there were some early successes that did get people going
on the idea of GMOs. One of the first ones
was um so it really started in the nineteen eighties.
(08:54):
Um uh. In nineteen eighty three, scientists created a gin
metically modified tobacco plant. And what that was It was
resistant to the canamycin antibiotic and uh as I understand
that change has been important for later genetic modifications. Um so,
(09:17):
that was sort of a precursor to, for example, one
of the next big ones. The first one that was
to be widely commercialized was in and that was a
genetically modified food crop called the flavor saver tomato. Right,
I read about that one, yeah, spelled without oh s.
So it's like f l A v R s A
(09:38):
vr Okay, well, at least it wasn't spelled without rs
and be the Flavo Savo the flavor savor tomato. So
the idea went like this, you've got a problem with
tomatoes in that they're kind of delicate fruits. Right. Um,
they have a sort of peak ripeness where the flesh
is exactly how you on it. But it's really difficult
(10:01):
to time that to you know, pick them at the
right time and get them to the market at just
the right time so the consumer can get them at
their peak. Right though, the problem is that there's a
there's a particular protein that breaks down the pectin in
tomato cell walls. Right, it's called poly galacteronce. Polygalacteronce, I'm
(10:23):
pretty sure that was a herald of galactus. It's an
enzyme let's just say PG. Uh so uh yeah, the
the PG enzyme in the tomatoes was identified in the
nineteen eighties as what was probably responsible for breaking down
these cell walls and the fruit and which would cause
ripening and softening. Um, and so what the people behind
(10:46):
the Flavor Saver tomato thought, and that this was a
company called cal Jean. They were like, well, if we
can insert a gene into the tomato that produces a
sort of retroactive effect to do the opposite of this enzyme, UM,
we can slow the breakdown of pecton and we can
keep the tomato firm longer UM so that by the
(11:09):
time thereby reducing waste and improving sales and exactly. UM.
And so when this first came out, it was a
big deal. People were excited about it, and there was
there was a lot of demand UM it. Essentially it
did well in the beginning, but some people say that
it suffered from some sort of like media pr setbacks
(11:31):
after people started getting worried about what genetically modified organisms
might mean for the health and stuff like that. UM
and so ultimately it's sort of petered out. But UM
after the Flavor Saver tomato, we started getting a lot
more uh new GM crops, Like in we got roundup
(11:57):
ready crops and the roundup ready soybeans particularly, And what
that is is um so round up is a herbicide
UM that's used to eliminate weeds that get in the
way of crop development. Frequently. The way that this works
is that um, it will shut down a critical enzyme
in plants that they need in order to to grow.
(12:18):
And so um. But round up reready soybeans which first
showed up in they're resistant to the active ingredient and
round up which is called glyphosate. I think I'm saying
that right, um, And that that's the poison that would
kill these plants. But the roundup ready crops were resistant
to it, so you could you could spray them with
(12:39):
round up all day long and you'd kill all the weeds.
But the plants that be fine. Um. And of course
now we've got a ton of stuff on the market.
Sure yeah, I mean Lauren, didn't you know something about that? Yes, yes, Um,
there are many other crops that are using um that
that glyphosate tolerant sort of sort of um genetic kick.
(13:04):
But um. A lot of the corn that is sold
not fresh in the US. It's sold either for feed
or for processing into other products, many, many, many other products.
If you've ever read up a little bit about what
corn goes into, it is essentially everything um and uh
else right right sure, um. So a lot of the
(13:25):
corn in the US is engineered to create proteins produced
by m a particular bacteria, and that that bacteria um
will will kill insects when they ingest that protein, and
so by splicing it into this corn, the corn kills
insects when they ingest the corn. Pretty nifty for for farmers,
(13:46):
but again something that people tend to worry about. Um.
Most sugar beets that are raised for table sugar um
are also herbicide resistant. There are lots of new things
coming out as well. Um, well, mean, you know it's
it's you've also got h cotton Seed is normally inedible
to humans, but by fussing around with it just a
(14:07):
little bit, you can you can get rid of the
bit that makes it poisonous to us, which is also
what makes it poisonous to lots of critters. Same thing
with canola oil. Some of the new fun things that
are coming out, and by and by fun things, I
mean potentially a little bit terrifying. Um, let me guess,
Let me guess human corn hybrids with human intelligence. That
(14:29):
would be terrible in the South. They would just pop
heat alone. I'm I'm I'm pretty sure that there is
a documentary called Attack of the Killer Tomatoes that we
might want to reference and but one project that's been
in the works for a while something called golden rice.
And this is um. It's it's fortified with beta carotene,
(14:50):
which which gives it a yellow color, hence the term
golden rice. Um. But this this is modified with genes
from maize and a really common soil bacteria. And okay, so,
so the human body needs beta carotene in order to
make vitamin A, and you need to make vitamin A
in order to not go blind. So that's that's a
pretty This is a genuine issue in in lots of
(15:11):
third world countries, right, there are a lot of places
that have real problems getting access to vitamin A, and
so there's vitamin A deficiencies in many parts of the world,
right right, this is one of the reasons why people
will tell you to eat your vegetables. But this, but
this golden rice could could give people way enough vitamin
A or way enough beta carotene to create vitamin A. Well,
(15:34):
I'm to understand. I think it's still in testing, right
it is. It is still in testing, right, this is
figuring out what it's capable of. This is the sell
right right, This is the hope. Um. But but you know,
even even that is is causing a little bit of
consternation within within. Yeah, there was a just this month,
just a couple of days ago, I believe we are
(15:54):
recording this podcast in August, and a bunch of GMO
protesters stamped out a whole field of golden rice in
the Philippines and the Philippines one of the test grounds. Yeah. Actually,
so there were field trials of this rice, the golden rice,
going on in the Philippines, but apparently a group of
about four hundred farmers came in and just tore up
(16:17):
the fields in protest. So what were they protesting precisely?
Do you know? Well, let's see, I've got a quote here.
This is from the New Scientists article about this um
So they're quoting a farmer named Willie Marbella. What he
said is the golden rice is a poison. That's that's
pretty tough. I thought there was going to be more
(16:40):
to it. That's the whole quote. Well, that's that's extremely
well thought out. Well, no, I mean not to totally dismiss,
but I mean they're there are multiple reasons why GMOs
are controversial, and some of them are some people have
concerns about right, and there there are some reasons that
are based upon either ignorance or misinformation about GMOs. Then
(17:03):
there's some that are not. You can't just dismiss them
because there are some actual concerns that we do need
to think about. And not all of them are pure
food science, right, Some not all of them are all
about nutrition or uh scientifically based. Some of them are
economic reasons why people have objections. So it's a complicated issue,
(17:25):
but we're gonna kind of cover some of that. We're
gonna try and do that now. One of the things
I would I would argue at the very top is
that a lot of the people who have that initial reaction,
this idea that this is unnatural or that we should
not do it, need to realize that this, this way
of manipulating organisms is something that's been part of human
(17:46):
history for pretty much as long as we've had agriculture.
That that is, that is literally what agriculture is. It
is messing about with with crops to make them more
probable to give yourself food security. Right, Manipulating the genome
of a plant is nothing new. We've been doing it essentially,
We've been doing the same thing with sloppier methods for
(18:09):
thousands of right, Um, you know, grafting two kinds of
citrus together to make a stronger plant with the kind
of fruit that you want to eat off of it,
or creating cultivates of a particular plant to create wildly
different plants. For example, even in the twentieth century, just
like a mutation breeding, So they subject seeds to radiation
(18:31):
to try to cause them to create a mutation like
seedless fruit. If you've ever had a seedless watermelon, our
seedless orange, you are eating something that has been you
know that its ancestor anyway has been irradiated. Well, And
what I was going to mention is that if you
if you want to go back to the whole cultivation,
I mean this is this goes back thousands of years. Uh.
(18:52):
If you've ever eaten broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, or Brussels sprouts,
you have eaten various cultivates of all all the same
wild cabbage plant that's found in the Mediterranean. Those none
of those plants existed before humans essentially began to mess
with this wild cabbage to make sure that they were
growing the specific type of traits that they wanted so,
(19:17):
I mean, granted, if you're a former president the United States,
you might have some words about broccoli. But I enjoy
all of these vegetables, and uh, you know with it.
Before were doing a lot of research, I wasn't really
aware of how I knew they were related. I didn't
realize they were all just from the exact same ancestor
but had been cultivated to grow into different forms. Oh well,
(19:38):
so few of the foods that we eat are really
resemblant of the I would argue the natural strain. None
of them are corn. The corn we eat now, even
the totally organic corn looks nothing like the corn it
came from years and years ago, which this tiny little
nubby thing or like more like what we would can
(20:00):
starting grass. And for those of you who are not
in the United States, well, maze, since since your corn
in our corner, are that we use the term differently? Yeah,
the natural the bananas you you true stored there, I mean,
not like naturally occurring bananas. There are lots of different
(20:20):
strains of the banana genus around the world, but none
of them are that banana that we identify as the
yellow sweet banana now, which by the way, is not
as tasty as some other forms of banana. There are
other forms of banana that are so much better. Once
you fry a plantain in large, I think that it's
hard to beat it for tasty factor in organic large.
(20:41):
Once once you run run around in Hawaii at night
so that they don't catch you. Uh yeah, the problem
is making a getaway tough because all those peels very slippery.
Oh that's another one. Hawaiian and papaya. If you've basically
ever eaten a papaya from a grocery store, fresh papaya, um,
that that came from Hawaii. That is genetically model find
because they weren't able to grow them to a point
(21:02):
where where they could be sold. And but um Okay.
So people are still going to have this fear about
genetically modified food crops, and to some extent, I can
sort of understand. I can sympathize with where it's coming from,
and I I agree that in some ways we do
(21:23):
need to be very careful about it. Um. But here's
the bottom line. What scientists are saying about genetically modified
food crops is that there's no inherent risk, nothing that
inherently makes this a greater problem than any traditional breeding technique, right, So,
(21:46):
so in other words, that that doesn't mean necessarily that
the product of a genetic modification won't be dangerous. It's
just no more inherently likely to be dangerous than a
new species of plant produced by any other means. Right,
It's it's it's a different tool, but that's what it is,
a tool, and it's all in how you use the tool,
whether or not it ends up being a harmful or
(22:09):
beneficial outcome. Yeah. Like, like we talked about how there's
some misinformation out there, like the idea of using uh,
genetic information from fish to try and fortify a fruit
or vegetable with this this resistance of frost. Now let's
say let's say that that did work. There's some people
who are like, well, I don't want to eat that.
It's gonna be a fishy tasting tomato. There's more than
(22:31):
people surveyed, in fact, said that they thought it would
taste fishing. But but that's the thing is that we're
talking about genetic information about a particular trait. It's not
like you are making some weird tomato fish hybrid right, right,
And and genes don't contain some some essence of a being.
I mean, you know, any one bit of a fish's
genes isn't going to make it taste like fish, right, Yeah,
(22:55):
that that seems to that kind of concern I think
borders on a on a kind of magical thinking. Well, yeah,
there's a definitely kind of magical thinking, and it's borne
out of ignorance of just how genes work and how
they how they're expressed, and how genetic modification works. On
the other hand, I do think there are some totally
legitimate concerns that people can have about how genetic modification
(23:19):
of food crops will be implemented. Sure, absolutely. I mean,
you know, some of these herbicide tolerant plants I think
are being created so that big corporations can dump as
much herbside as they want all over their crops. And
whether or not that herbicide has other side effects is right,
It could have. The herbicide itself could have environmental impacts.
(23:41):
So again, the genetic modification part isn't necessarily the problem
in that case, although it does raise the concern that
you could end up either creating very herbicide resistant strains
of one of the weeds here, which is completely happening,
or there's a even a fear that the genetic modify
crops themselves could, uh could introduce this gene into other
(24:06):
species of plants that are in the surrounding area or
not even in the surrounding area, especially with things that
um that free pollinate, like corn, for example, which is
so heavily genetically modified. Um. You know, people have found
strains of corn that that are similar to the ones
being genetically modified in the United States as far south
as Mexico, right, So, but I mean there's there's also
(24:27):
a report in Nature that about that, uh, some weaty
forms of rice have started to show the same sort
of traits as genetically modified crops, even though they themselves
were not modified. So so there's there's that fear that
certain genetic modifications and applied certain ways could end up
(24:50):
either hurting us or at least not the benefit would
be very short lived. Yeah, there there are concerns about
different kinds of crops, and one one thing that's helpful
to think about is the different types of effects that
are produced by genetic modification. Some are things that just
makes say the product of the plant more useful to us,
Like I can't really see that a flavor saver tomato
(25:14):
would have that much of a survival advantage in the wild.
But if you are creating a plant that does have
a massive survival advantage over the natural strain, it it's
much more likely that that kind of thing could become
an invasive species if it gets into the wild and
threatened biodiversity. Right. There's um, there's a kind of Atlantic
salmon called called awkward advantage salmon that's that's being created
(25:39):
and and this is a combination of a growth hormone
gene from one type of salmon and a and a
genetic switch from an ocean pout. And when you kind
of smush the two together, Atlantic salmon will will reach
their market weight in half the usual time, which could
which is is kind of creepy. Yeah. Well, and then
there's other other things as well. There's the whole monoculture argument,
(26:00):
the idea that, uh, if you were to roll out
GMOs on a very wide basis, then you get a
lot of people growing the essentially the same strain of plants,
and if something does come along that can affect that strain,
perhaps something that you had not accounted for when you
were designing the the designer genes or whatever that you're
inserting into this crop. UH, then it could have a
(26:21):
devastating effect that could lead to both famine and poverty. UH.
And in fact, the poverty issue is another one that's
big with GMOs. It's it's not even that. And again
this goes beyond the science. This goes beyond whether or
not the actual product is helpful are harmful from a
nutritional standpoint or environmental standpoint. This is purely economic. One
(26:42):
of the arguments has that has been made is that
let's say that you genetically modify a type of crop
that normally you could not grow and say a temperate zone,
so normally it wouldn't grow in the United States, normally
would grow someplace that was more like a tropical area.
But you have genetically modified this plant, so now it
can grow in temperate zones. The economic argument is, now
(27:03):
there's no reason to import these uh these products from
poorer nations that depend heavily upon agriculture as one of
the means of generating money and and not having you know,
it would it would mean that they would struggle even
more because this money supply would be reduced or perhaps
even cut off. If it were a large enough industry
(27:25):
in these other countries. Though again the concern here is
something that could just as easily apply to UH to
breeding of plants without genetic modification. Sure, yeah, no it
it's genetic modification again, is just the means to the
end of getting to this point of being able to
raise this particular crop in this particular place. It's more
(27:46):
of a Again, it's an easy thing to point out,
but you could arrive at the same thing through other
means of of of manipulating plants. Of course, going in
the opposite direction, there are some people who have seen
genetic modification as a way to help people who especially
live in like harsh climatic conditions. So you can create
(28:08):
crops through genetic modification that are highly resistant to drought,
which in especially some less wealthy places on the planet,
drought can be a severe problem. Like absolutely, yeah, they
don't have enough water for for human consumption, let alone
for crops. So drought isn't just a problem like I
(28:28):
can't get enough water to drink, it's a problem I
can't get food either, because all your crops die. But
if if you have drought resistant crops, that could cause
a major barrier to famine in the world. And I
think I think one of the reasons why people bring
up the economic standpoint, the whole economic perspective of the
GMOH debate, is that so much of the genetically modified
(28:54):
crops that are in existence are coming out of the
United States. And part of that is because there our
entire nations, entire groups of nations that have essentially outlawed
them for one reason or another, many of them I think,
out of fear that by through genetic manipulation you are
inviting potential disaster down the road, like like somehow either
(29:16):
health effects or health effects are environmental effects. Yeah, sometimes
it's a combination of them. Yeah. I read a story
that in two thousand two, Zambia declined shipments of GMO
corn during a famine. So people are serious about it. Yeah,
so it's it's and you know, again, there are some
concerns that I think, you know, are legitimate concerns that
need to be addressed, and there are other concerns that
(29:37):
are based largely on fear, uncertainty, in doubt, you know,
the old the old fud um and uh so you
have to be able to separate them and be able
to understand them before you can start coming to conclusions
about whether or not the tool itself is good or bad. Well. Yeah,
And also another legitimate concern when you're considering a tool
is that because GMOs give us a much greater ability
(30:02):
to control the exact nature of what our crops are. Again,
this is not a problem inherent with GMOs, but they
can have the potential to be misused by someone with power.
Say you are the head of a of an unethical
agro business company and you want to create crops that
(30:22):
you have the absolute patent too, and that people cannot
uh may maybe say that UM can't produce new generations
of seeds on their own, and you want you want
to make more money. But I mean it is very
possible that you can use these crops for unethical business
practices UM, And so that's a legitimate concern to I
(30:45):
don't want to present this issue as if there's nothing
to worry about with GMOs. So I think the issue
is not the science of producing the plant. That's how
it's it's implement right, And and I do also want
to say that that anything that is put out on
the mass market for consumer purchase is tested if it's
(31:06):
a GMO before before it's put out. That's another misconception.
There's this idea that these things don't go through testing.
I mean, right now, the FDA requires relatively stringent testing.
It's actually, i mean way more rigorous than if you
were to produce it in some other means that could produce.
Just like a lot of the complaints about what could
potentially come out of genetically modified organisms, like you said, Joe,
(31:29):
the same sort of stuff can happen through other means
of cultivating plants and changing plants, things that we've been
doing for thousands of years. So people who argue that
the restrictions or that the tests that the FDA and
other organizations like the Environmental Protection Agency that they require
these crops to go through, they you know, they say
(31:50):
they're not stringent enough. Well, conventionally grown plants don't have
to go through those tests, and you can still get
the same sort of results that way, right, And to
be fair, you know, we don't know what the effect
could be seventy years down the road, but we don't
know that for anything, right. It's it's it's one of
those things where eventually you have to say all those
(32:12):
sweet bananas. I regret, I have an arm growing out
of my forehead. Regret nothing. It lets me take off
my hat without having to put down my smartphone. I
see the silver lining, Joe, you just see clouds. Yeah,
but no, I mean I agree Lauren entirely that it's
just it's it's there are there are things that we
(32:35):
need to educate ourselves about. But that's the key word, right, educate.
We need to make sure that we have actual, verifiable
scientific information. There's a lot of I guess you could
call it um hyperbolic reaction out there on both sides.
I will, I will admit, I mean there are sides
out there. Obviously, if you're reading something that's just telling
(32:58):
you that genetically modified organ is ms are absolutely safe,
no matter what the context, and then at the end
you read a corporate name that happened to sponsor that page,
then that obviously is a bias. But then you've got
the other side that immediately reacts to anything that is
genetically modified, either saying that that's unnatural and we should
never do it, or because big corporations are involved, it's
(33:21):
inherently evil. No, this is a tool. It can be
used correctly. It can be misused. If it's used correctly,
it has the potential to do a lot of good.
We just have to be really good guardians. We have
to be really educated, and we have to be vigilant,
and we have to set that standard and demand that
it's met. And in that case, humanity as a whole
(33:44):
can can benefit from this technology, this this approach here. Yeah,
there we go. So only of the podcast likes food,
but I was a lot. I'mbviously misinformation was spread, even
at the beginning of this episode. I'm glad we could
clear that up. Uh. I don't have any reservation buying
(34:08):
something knowing that it's a genetically modified crop. It's not.
I don't think that there's necessarily a need to label
foods as genetically modified. I don't think that organic necessarily
automatically means that it's superior or more healthy than genetically modified.
It's a case by case basis thing. That's what I think.
(34:29):
Anything you guys want to add before I close out,
I just want to give a plug for what I
thought was a really good article New York Times article
July by Amy Harmon, and it was about orange farmers
in Florida who were trying to fight against this parasite
called citrus screening, and they're essentially having to turn to
(34:51):
genetic modification as their last hope to to save the
crops period right. Um. And as one counterpoint to what
we talked about with oh, so you have round up
ready crops, you can spray her beside just um, the
idea here is, well, they're having to use so much
pesticide to protect the oranges from the animals that spread
(35:13):
this disease from the insect yea um that actually having
a plant that was resistant would allow them to use
much fewer pesticides. And anyway, I think it's a really
good article. It's worth checking out. Definitely. It's called a
race to save the orange by altering its d n
all great pluck. All right, guys, Well that wraps this up.
(35:35):
If you have anything you want to add to the conversation,
go to FW thinking dot com. That's our website where
we've got all of the video episodes of Forward Thinking,
We've got the podcast, we have blog posts, we've got articles,
lots of interesting information there. We look forward to hearing
from you and we will talk to you again, really
saying we're more on this topic in the future of technology.
(35:59):
This is forward thinking dot dot problems, brought to you
by Toyota. Let's Go Places,
Fw:Thinking News
Hosts And Creators
Jonathan Strickland
Joe McCormick
Lauren Vogelbaum
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