Sen Ruderman, where is the proof

[snorkle]

Thousand acre mono-crop farms aren't about sustainability; Or even about feeding our Island. Like Sugar, they are about export, corporate profit, expedience, and defilement of the Aina.

The best combination of agricultural health and economic prosperity for us "rubbah slippah" folk is small, diversified farming.

[Rob Tucker]

Thousand acre mono crop farms are about feeding a population of seven billion people. Small farming is wonderful... it just won't feed too many people.

[OpenD]

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Originally posted by Oneself
Everything you've said is completely inaccurate. you are just spouting off old wives tales. At this point your just lying or you arent educated on the subject matter you speak of.

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Like a child who has no real argument, once again you resort to calling names.

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1- FACT -It would take a dog of medium size to eat 1-3 pounds of bakers 85% or more cacao chocolate to cause serious damages. That amount of chocolate would make any one sick.

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Fact, dogs die every year from eating chocolate. A good friend nearly lost her Corgi when it discovered a gift wrapped box of See's chocolates that had been placed under the Christmas tree and ate them. It barely pulled through after three days in the veterinary hospital.

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Chocolate can sicken and even kill dogs, and it is one of the most common causes of canine poisoning, veterinarians tell WebMD.

Veterinarian Michelle DeHaven says the worst case of chocolate poisoning she ever saw happened when some owners fed their eight-pound poodle a pound of chocolate on his birthday.

“We had to treat the dog with fluids and anti-seizure medication for five days," says DeHaven, who practices in Smyrna, Ga. "Every time we stopped the meds he would start seizuring again. You wouldn’t feed a kid a pound of chocolate, but they fed it to a small dog.”

http://pets.webmd.com/dogs/guide/dogs-an...-the-facts

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2- just because there hasnt been studies, doesnt mean its not true.

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Doesn't mean it's true, either. Proof is proof. Either you have some, or you're just telling a story.

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Anyone who was able to tie their shoes all by themself in high school, can understand that poison, any form is harmful to a degree.

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So all Homeopathic Pharmacists should be arrested for attempted murder? Sorry, but there are lots of toxic materials which we take in and excrete every day without harms because they are such small quantities. Dosage is everything. Vitamin A, for example, can be very toxic in high doses. Matter of fact, there are 60,000 cases of toxicity from Vitamins reported in the US every day.

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If you are suggesting that the round up and other pesticides are not harmful to humans, than why are they spraying them in HAZMAT suits ?

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Again, it's all in the dosage. Spraying any chemical, even fertilizer, in concentrated application, can be hazardous in a way that is completely harmless in the extremely diluted form that reaches the end consumer. A good analogy is household bleach, which can burn your skin if applied full strength, but which makes water safer to drink when you add a cup of it to your catchment tank.

Besides, have you ever seen them spray papayas? They stand underneath the tree and spray upwards. What doesn't stick to the tree or the fruit comes back down. The suits keep them from getting all wet with the chemical.

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you have to be kidding me. SMDH.

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Not at all. I'm all about facts and logic and proof.

[peteadams]

What’s really interesting to me at this point about the anti-GMO issue is its striking resemblance to other anti-science issues. A short list would include:

Anti-evolution
Anti-big bang/age of the universe
Anti-climate change
Anti-vaccine
Anti-GMO

Groups against evolution and the big bang are closely identified with conservative political ideology and fundamentalist religion. Groups denying climate change are closely identified with the petroleum extraction industry and their conservative political allies, who typically have economic interests in their states and in their reelection. Anti-vaccine and anti-GMO are rather different with some of the constituency of the former and a lot of the latter coming out of folks with relatively liberal political views. The anti-vaccine crusade has been at least partially identified with suburban “soccer Moms” and our current anti-GMO crusade with long standing liberal support of organic foods and anti-corporate views. This was notable in the NYT article featuring Gregor Illegan in which a UH scientist rather plaintively wondered why people who were generally on his side in political matters (“my people”) had given themselves over to the anti-GMO side.

What is consistent about the GMO issue with the other issues is that it is “a lot like religion” as Rob wrote. I would go further and say that our anti-GMO crusaders are exactly like a religion (which in its dictionary definition does not necessarily include a supernatural deity). Perhaps the most relevant aspect of the religious nature of the anti-GMO crusade is its reliance on faith rather than facts. Science is simply the best method humans have developed to distinguish between fact and fiction (Google Karl Popper's writings, for instance). Whatever point and counterpoint occur in our GMO debates, the body of scientific knowledge about the food safety of GMO crops is deep and extensive. There is no comparable body of knowledge whatsoever for the anti-GMO position (I won’t repeat all the links that were covered in previous GMO threads here on Punaweb). For instance, there is no “poison” in GMO crops in any scientifically verifiable way. Maybe it's complicated to understand that Bt is harmless to humans but kills certain insects. But that's a fact verified by good science. Nonetheless anti-GMO activists repeat the “poison” term based on what therefore can only be described as unshakeable faith. And on and on.

The county council meetings on Ford and Wille’s anti-GMO legislation remind one of nothing other than the raucous and unhinged 2010 Tea Party town hall meetings widely shown on the news at the time. It is deeply disappointing that a large enough portion of our Big Island community should be so captured in this faith-based anti-GMO ideology, behaving like those Tea Party groups, that legislation has been passed that can and probably will, if not thrown out by legal challenge, adversely impact Big Island agriculture.

[Permie]

I am very scientifically oriented. I am not anti-GMO. From a scientific perspective, I think the field is exciting and fascinating. At the same time, I am keenly aware of just how little research has been done on the potential adverse effects. The research is being done on the general populace which is highly unethical in my opinion.

Some GMO are no doubt perfectly safe. Others, due to their nature, especially those that insert a foreign systemic pesticide into plant tissue, need FAR MORE research before they can be deemed safe. Since the current topic is BT GMO, here are some questions that have not been answered by the scientific community:

1. Yes, humans do not have the receptor that causes toxicity. However, studies have shown that exposure to BT can cause IGG and IGE antibodies (source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1566654/). While BT breaks down quickly in the environment, GMO BT is systemic in the plants. How is this affecting us? Does a small percentage of the population develop an immune response against proteins in the BT bacteria which in turn makes us allergic to any crop containing GMO BT? We do not know. Another interesting study: An interesting study: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf802059w

2. BT has been shown to cross the placenta. How does BT affect the fetus? Does it cause issues with their immune system since it is shown to invoke an immune response? As the blood brain barrier is not developed in the fetus, how does BT affect the brain of developing children? We do not know.

3. Resistant bugs to GMO BT are becoming prevalent. Once they become widespread, what happens to the organic growers who have used BT as one of the first lines of defense for many years? Just as we're now realizing that giving antibiotics to cows is a terrible idea due to antibiotic resistant bacteria becoming prevalent, I suspect that we'll find that making entire crops of plants carry specific pesticides was a terrible idea as well.

4. How does the BT toxin and BT bacteria invading our intestines (which it normally would not) affect our gut flora? Does it have any mutagenic or other affect on our intestinal flora?

5. When you go to the doctor and get prescribed medication, when you are at the pharmacy, they have fancy computer software that checks for interactions between your medication and other medications. And the pharmacist may also tell you something like, "Don't take your 6-mercaptopurine with milk because they interact". Compounds LOVE to interact. They LOVE to share the same metabolic pathways. They LOVE to do things scientists just didn't think about. Would you all care to guess how much data there is on systemic pesticide GMO and potential interactions with medications, other GMO, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and common foods?

I am not anti evolution. I am not anti big bang. I am not anti climate change. I am not anti vaccine. I am not anti GMO either. I am however, against the populace being the guinea pigs when these products should be going through rigorous animal then human trials just like the medications we receive from our doctors. But even then, if a small percentage of the population has a certain genetic makeup or gut flora that makes them susceptible to a certain medication, they can avoid that medication. If these pesticides are prevalent in all our foods, how does one avoid that?

I am religious about one aspect of all of this though. Since the biotech companies are fighting every step of the way to stop GMO ingredient labeling so I can at least have the freedom of choice, I do have to pray that when I am dumb enough to buy something from the store, that it does not contain GMO ingredients.

[Permie]

Let me see if I can come from a different direction with this. Think about all the medications you've heard about that have been pulled off the shelf because, even after tremendous scientific review and studies, it turns out they cause major side effects. Maybe we've been incredibly lucky with all the GMO on the market thus far. But due to the virtual rubber stamping of new GMO, the abhorrent lack of scientific review before they come to market, sooner or later something bad will get through. Just think if we have a food that gets the genetic equivalent of being able to create Thalidomide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide in its tissues (this is just an example of course). This product is rubber stamped, becomes widely adopted, and enters our food supply. What then?

As someone who has been involved in bringing new drugs to market, I can tell you that, while the process is pretty good, there is greed and corruption within that system. The GMO approval process? It absolutely terrifies me. If we're going to treat all GMO the same (which is unfortunate in my opinion) then, despite some no doubt being great scientific advances, I must side with the cautious party and be against them all.

[Obie]

Permie
I am not going to take the time to refute all of your false statement because they have been previously covered.

I will point at this link that I found when I was reading your first point about bt causing allergic reactions.This from your source and it says it is perfectly safe.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11067772

[Permie]

Oh? Care to link me to where all of what I put forth was previously covered and refuted? I assure you a lot of scientists will be happy to have their concerns satiated.

As for your link, it says, "no significant concern for allergenicity". Nowhere does it say, "Perfectly safe" when it comes to allergenicity because it is not. Do you have actual access to the paper you link or did you just read the abstract. Because they present nothing in the actual paper that quantifies the allergenicity risk nor did they present any new information. They simply take data like I linked and interpret the fact that BT invokes IGG and IGE responses as, "not being significant". Ask any allergist and I assure you that they will disagree.

[steve1]

Maybe this topic should be filed under Politics, since there is no category for Yelling or Screaming. From what I can tell all of the people posting already have their minds made up and everyone is firmly fixed in their positions.

The topic might as well be guns, abortion, taxes, religion or gay marriage because everyone seems to have something to shout about and nobody is really listening.

The topic of "GMO" is very broad and covers lots of territory because there are so many different applications and it can cover everything from disease resistance to poison production.

Personally I am a big fan of labeling. Large font. Ingredients should be the largest font on the label. If you have to hide what is in your product then you really can't be trusted. If you have to bribe politicians to get laws passed so your product doesn't have to be labeled then you definitely have something to hide. Hopefully a lot of people boycott your product and support honest producers.

[mary blonde]

Well said!!

Live Aloha