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I consider very important the quality of foods for the human health.
The picture is complicated with the trans-genic foods.
Natural foods vs. trans-genic foods
I think that the trans-genic foods are not well studied.
In my area is importer much corn and soy of this type.
A doctor ( and researcher) puts us in writing
" not consume any corn or soy "
What do you think?

Do you know where corn came from? It used to be a grass. Grass with seeds not much different than the grass you might see on the side of the road. Tell me, how different from its ancestors does it have to be before it becomes untrustworthy? You don't mind genetic manipulation over the course of human lifetimes but when it more rapidly developed, you are afraid. All of our food is a far cry from its "natural" state. Humans see something that takes a lot of work so we naturally try to reduce or optimize that workload. Either that, or enslave some other race to do it for us.

Humans have tried to change the genome of the crops they grow for as long as humans have been farmers. Transgenic food is just, I believe, a 2.0 version of the old efforts to get better plants.

But there are risks. Suppose scientists find out how to give corn, wheat, rice or some other crucially important crop a gene that makes the crops resistant to many kinds of insects and pests. That would be good, yes? We could grow these crops without using so much pesticide, which would be a blessing indeed.

But suppose this new super-gene were to spread from the crops to the really unwanted weeds that compete with the crops. Suddenly we might find that we have created super-resistant weeds, which might force us to use all those old pesticides again. Then, when the weeds get resistant to our pesticides, we might be left with ever-healthier weeds and diminishing crops.

Ann

Isn't that kind of like being afraid of standing next to someone with a different hair color because you might transfer some genes from them and end up with their hair color?

The scariest things about food have already happened. Wild animals have been driven to extinction. Ancient forests are long gone. The grasslands of America are devoid of the vast herds which once roamed it. All of these things feed the ever-growing human population and none of them can be undone. Replacing the current crops to result in even greater output per acre to feed even more mouths is such a minor thing compared to what's already been committed. Maybe the food will taste weird. Perish the thought! Some poor human might have to suffer a bland tomato...

geckzilla wrote:
The scariest things about food have already happened. Wild animals have been driven to extinction. Ancient forests are long gone. The grasslands of America are devoid of the vast herds which once roamed it. All of these things feed the ever-growing human population and none of them can be undone. Replacing the current crops to result in even greater output per acre to feed even more mouths is such a minor thing compared to what's already been committed. Maybe the food will taste weird. Perish the thought! Some poor human might have to suffer a bland tomato...

Rice was manipulated to produce Vitamin A too, where poor people who depend on rice got a lot health benefit, like less eye diseases.

Messing up ecology with manipulating DNA is somethin else. I think humanity is not prepared for the aftereffects of manipulating large scales of
plants and animals. Modern Genetics is still in baby shoes.

Monsanto Company wants to dominate crop industry by manipulating crop DNA ,so only their products to let this corn grow well. This is abusing DNA changes.

Manipulating DNA was already done in old ages, throughout middle ages, by fertilizing, insaminating healthy plants or animals who are stronger, beefier with each other,
their way took over generations of plants and animals and humans who dit it.
Mendel's inheritance rules is a classic example.

Tomatoes were well sold, when they just looked red, so the companies took plants which produced red tomatoes and took always the semen of the redest ones.
But the ones who consume them want also tomatoes which smell like tomatoes today, so the companies have to mix and cross DNA from the good smelling ones with the dark red ones
till they got the tomatoes which are sold best. Netherlands is exporting a lot of tomatoes to Germany.

saturno2 wrote:I consider very important the quality of foods for the human health.
The picture is complicated with the trans-genic foods.
Natural foods vs. trans-genic foods
I think that the trans-genic foods are not well studied.
In my area is importer much corn and soy of this type.
A doctor ( and researcher) puts us in writing
" not consume any corn or soy "
What do you think?

I love the idea of transgenic foods. I don't think safety or food quality are reasonable concerns. Genetically modifying our foods is another way that we can direct our scientific knowledge to benefiting us all. (Of course, nearly all of our foods have been deliberately modified by humans; transgenic techniques merely speed up the process.)

My only concerns with transgenic foods are ones of business and social policy: I think in many cases these foods are consciously developed in ways designed to make farmers dependent upon the seed producers- by making crops less perennial, by making them seedless, etc. And I'm concerned about the trend towards monocultures. But these things have nothing to do with transgenic foods themselves, but with our agricultural policies in general.

I read somewhere that Corn has been manipulated to the point that it can no longer self-propagate. Further, that a fresh batch of seeds need to be sewn for the next crop as the kernels of the old crop will not propagate

BMAONE23 wrote:I read somewhere that Corn has been manipulated to the point that it can no longer self-propagate. Further, that a fresh batch of seeds need to be sewn for the next crop as the kernels of the old crop will not propagate

Many seed crops (including corn and wheat) have been modified so much that they can't really propagate naturally, since the seeds drop straight below the plant, or even fail to detach from the head at all. But you can hand propagate both corn and wheat in most cases, except where the plants have been deliberately modified to produce sterile seeds.

best regards for all
Thanks for your important notes
geckzilla wrote
Do you know where corn came from?
I don¨t know

A study by French scientist Gilles-Eric Seralini, indicates that trans-genic corn consume halved life expectancy of rats to half, in addition them harm the
liver and kidneys.
Food and Chemical toxicology

Of course. The technique to produce trans-genic foods is a positive scientific advancement. Excellent!
It is not good producing this type of foods without studying the consecuences for humans, as it has ocurred with certain drugs ( the thalidomide, for example ).