Genetically Modified Food

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Croghanite

Croghanite

Puritan Board Sophomore
Watch this documentary about genetically modified organisms (GMO).Most food in Europe has to be labeled GMO if 0.9% of ingredients are GMO. They are attempting to get animal products labeled i.e. eggs, milk etc.

[ame="http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3764995188693165078&hl=en"]The Future of Food- Lilly Films[/ame]
 
Being 1.5hrs I will have to watch it later but I watched another documentary that claims in the case of GMO corn, they basically shoot bug genes into the corn so that the corn produces a peciticide and when you eat it, it stays in your stomach and keeps producing pesticides which would basically turns our food into a slow kill drug. If this is in fact the case, I think that it is time for Christians to start asserting some Christian ethics into this whole GMO food issue. Does this documentary go into this aspect of GMO foods?
 
Answerman said:
Being 1.5hrs I will have to watch it later but I watched another documentary that claims in the case of GMO corn, they basically shoot bug genes into the corn so that the corn produces a peciticide and when you eat it, it stays in your stomach and keeps producing pesticides which would basically turns our food into a slow kill drug. If this is in fact the case, I think that it is time for Christians to start asserting some Christian ethics into this whole GMO food issue. Does this documentary go into this aspect of GMO foods?
Click to expand...

The documentary in the OP is the best introductory information on GMOs that I have seen. The documentary is put together very well and it is entertaining. It's a good watch

The world according to Monsanto is a very informative documentary on GMOs that goes more in-depth about Monsanto and the supposed adverse health affects. This documentary is extremely boring, not entertaining, but has a great deal of good info in it.
 
I am confident that if any of you folks watch the OP documentary, you will be pleased and glad that you watched it. I also believe that folks need to know about what is in our food and I think you will be surprised to find out how much of our food is Genetically Modified.

Anyone heard of GMO's before this thread? Genetically modified food in particular.
 
Whoa! I don't even know where to start. Very informative. I truly hope that it isn't as bad as that. :wow:
 
All of us in agriculture have. They've been used for years now.

I'll expand a bit on what Answerman said. There is a sort of bacteria,Bacillus thurengiensis, or BT which has been for years a life saver. The older people here remember when we often got worms in our ears of corn. Caterpillars are expensive!! Take fruits and nuts. You can't hardly sell apples if the customer gets a half of a worm after a bite. But you could spray this bacteria on your crops, and it would only target caterpillars. Not the good bugs, which is good for stewardship, and you don't have to wait much time after spraying before you harvest, because it doesn't hurt humans or farm animals to eat it. Not like dangerous chemicals, which can require over a month before you can legally harvest, due to it's danger to us.

So, someone gets a bright idea. Take the genes that do the actual killing of the caterpillars from BT and splice them into crops. Take corn. If you could cause caterpillars to die just by eating corn just think about how much gas, pesticides, labor etc.. you can save. Good for everyone, right? I remember my roommate in Uni, who's from a big walnut growing family. Think about how big walnuts are. Think about the expenses of spraying every inch of an orchard of trees thirty feet tall! He used to dream about splicing those genes into walnut trees.

And the same for tomatoes. I did a trial for my company for long shell life tomatoes. Imagine a tomato that will keep for weeks!!! You just take a gene from a sheep, splice it in, and there you have it.

So, now to ethics. For a theonomist, it's a no brainer. You're mixing things you're not supposed to mix. If you can't mix something so close as a horse and donkey, how much less a tomato and a sheep.

We can develop another couple ethical points as well, and I'll start with something that came up in a conversation with one of my landscape suppliers, a guy who has several nurseries.

So, we have corn. Really valuable, right? Where do you go if you want to breed something like disease resistance into corn? Or other useful traits? Like high levels of lysine or other nutritional benefits, getting corn to grow in difficult climates, etc..

Where you go its to where corn came from. To the huge genetic pool in Central America where corn came from. You go around and collect all sorts of samples of corn from villages, corn like grasses and so forth and start looking for genes. But what happens to that gene pool when some farmers get this genetically modified corn to grow? Corn is open pollinated. Before you know it (and my friend said it's in the process) that wonderful gene pool is polluted by the pollen of this Frankenstein. I don't think I have to draw this out further.

Now another (since I'm on a roll). So, this pollen causes this gene to get into other grass family species. Say it's a weed that naturally is kept under control by (drum roll) caterpillars. What type of advantage are we giving to something that will become an enemy to us in the future? Super weeds!

There's quite a bit more we can draw out. I frankly doubt that that gene will do anything to us, Answerman (although if you've seen research, I'll defer to you). We've been eating this stuff as a minute pesticide residue for years. It surely can't get into our cells. I can't see how it would build up in us (although again, I'm teachable). But there are SOOOO many other ways that this technology can do some major league messing around with things I'm in favor of stopping it right away.

You know, I've noticed that whenever someone comes up with an idea of removing the Sweat from our Brows in agriculture, it comes back to bite us. I'm all for saving effort, efficiency and the rest, but creating new life forms isn't the way to go, in my humble opinion.
 
I had never thought about it ethically before. Thanks for the points.

As for health reasons, I do not doubt one bit that it is bad for us. Tim mentioned that he does not think it can get into our cells. Well I do not know if it gets into our cells, but our bodies have to fight it off somehow. I see the problem in that our body can only fight off so many things before something slips through. This is one reason why I believe cancer is so rampant. Our bodies are so busy fighting (inefficiently I might add due to poor nutrittion) off the junk we eat, that it cannot fight off the big things like cancer or diabetes.

To combat this, I personally believe all Christians should eat an all-natural/organic diet. It makes our bodies run better and last longer. I have seen with my own eyes one person who was diagnosed with cancer. This scared the pants off her and her family. She had read something about eating organic and beating cancer once so she immediately switched to an all organic diet and within a matter of months the cancer was gone (without any real treatment from doctors). Another man who went to my church was diagnosed with diabetes. After reading The Maker's Diet, he went to an OT style natural diet. Within a month his diabetes was gone. The doctors were amazed and the man to this day says his change of diet was the reason.

God designed our bodies to fight off disease and infection. We as good stewards of what God has given us should enable our bodies to run at its peak, which means giving our bodies the best possible diet and nutrition possible.
 
TimV said:
So, now to ethics. For a theonomist, it's a no brainer. You're mixing things you're not supposed to mix.
Click to expand...

????

THis is a no brainer? Who knows what is not supposed to be mixed? Cotton and polyester still a bad combo?


Gentically altered food sounds great to me. What better way to lessen hunger and exercise dominion.
 
I daily see folks who eat nothing but "organic" and most of them die before 3.

I think we romanticize "all natural" stuff but I see "all-natural" all the time and people are sick and dying all around.

We are to exercise dominion over the earth, that can mean changing it and tweaking it to fill our needs.



Medicines and vaccinations are not all-natural and they fight off sickness a lot better than the unaided human body much of the time.
 
Pergamum said:
I daily see folks who eat nothing but "organic" and most of them die before 3.

I think we romanticize "all natural" stuff but I see "all-natural" all the time and people are sick and dying all around.

We are to exercise dominion over the earth, that can mean changing it and tweaking it to fill our needs.



Medicines and vaccinations are not all-natural and they fight off sickness a lot better than the unaided human body much of the time.
Click to expand...

I not sure who you are seeing dying so I cannot comment on them. I can only say that the group of guys I hang out with that are all natural or organic are some of the most in shape people I have ever met. They have more energy and get sick less than most people.

What I do see is people dying all time due to bad diet. Alot of heart disease could have been prevented through simple dietary lifestyle changes, but they continue to eat bad food in large quantities.


Could you elaborate on the all natural people dying all around you?
 
Pergamum said:
I daily see folks who eat nothing but "organic" and most of them die before 3.

I think we romanticize "all natural" stuff but I see "all-natural" all the time and people are sick and dying all around.

We are to exercise dominion over the earth, that can mean changing it and tweaking it to fill our needs.



Medicines and vaccinations are not all-natural and they fight off sickness a lot better than the unaided human body much of the time.
Click to expand...

Medicines and vaccinations are good, but how many times have we heard cases where antibiotics are no longer working because we take them too much? We are too pampered to just accept the fact that I got a cold and deal with it for a few days. Instead we rush to a doctor who gives us the latest and greatest antibiotic. In return the bacteria mutates and becomes resistant (mostly because again we are too lazy to finish the medication once we start to feel better).

Vaccines are being proved more and more to cause autism in children. The high mercury is not good for developing babies.

Overkill is bad. For example, the army requires me to get a flu vaccine each and every year. Why? the flu will not kill me. I may get sick for a week, but in the end I still live and turn back to normal.
 
Pergamum said:
what could be more natural than roots and wild animals?
Click to expand...

What on earth are you talking about? This isn't a proper diet. Are you equating eating roots to those who will not eat GMO foods?

Respectfully, do you know anything about GMO's?
 
mangum said:
Pergamum said:
what could be more natural than roots and wild animals?
Click to expand...

What on earth are you talking about? This isn't a prpoer diet. Are you equating eating roots to those who sill not eat GMO foods?
Click to expand...


I had mentioned that we should eat natural which was my anti-GMO food stance.

Perg gave his quote in reference to the genetically mutated corn from earlier. I doubt he was saying that was all we needed to eat.
 
Who is talking about overkill?

I am merely defending the good practice of altering our environment.


Altering our food makes it more plentiful;pesticides have helped; DDT has saved lives from malaria, vaccinations benefit 99.99% of the population.
 
Pergamum said:
Who is talking about overkill?

I am merely defending the good practice of altering our environment.


Altering our food makes it more plentiful;pesticides have helped; DDT has saved lives from malaria, vaccinations benefit 99.99% of the population.
Click to expand...

Altering our food makes it less plentiful; pesticides have killed and called diseases; you shouldn't eat DDT as part of your daily diet; some vaccinatians have benefited some people.
 
Chaplainintraining said:
mangum said:
Pergamum said:
what could be more natural than roots and wild animals?
Click to expand...

What on earth are you talking about? This isn't a prpoer diet. Are you equating eating roots to those who sill not eat GMO foods?
Click to expand...


I had mentioned that we should eat natural which was my anti-GMO food stance.

Perg gave his quote in reference to the genetically mutated corn from earlier. I doubt he was saying that was all we needed to eat.
Click to expand...

I am talking about jungle tribes who live "naturally"; and more than half never live to 18. Dominating our environment has consistently made us - on average - more and more and more healthy.
 
Chaplainintraining said:
Pergamum said:
I daily see folks who eat nothing but "organic" and most of them die before 3.

I think we romanticize "all natural" stuff but I see "all-natural" all the time and people are sick and dying all around.

We are to exercise dominion over the earth, that can mean changing it and tweaking it to fill our needs.



Medicines and vaccinations are not all-natural and they fight off sickness a lot better than the unaided human body much of the time.
Click to expand...

Medicines and vaccinations are good, but how many times have we heard cases where antibiotics are no longer working because we take them too much? We are too pampered to just accept the fact that I got a cold and deal with it for a few days. Instead we rush to a doctor who gives us the latest and greatest antibiotic. In return the bacteria mutates and becomes resistant (mostly because again we are too lazy to finish the medication once we start to feel better).

Vaccines are being proved more and more to cause autism in children. The high mercury is not good for developing babies.

Overkill is bad. For example, the army requires me to get a flu vaccine each and every year. Why? the flu will not kill me. I may get sick for a week, but in the end I still live and turn back to normal.
Click to expand...


1 out of 150 kids today are diagnosed with a form of autism.

Avoid Flu Shots, Take Vitamin D Instead by Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD
 
mangum said:
Pergamum said:
Who is talking about overkill?

I am merely defending the good practice of altering our environment.


Altering our food makes it more plentiful;pesticides have helped; DDT has saved lives from malaria, vaccinations benefit 99.99% of the population.
Click to expand...

Altering our food makes it less plentiful; pesticides have killed and called diseases; you shouldn't eat DDT as part of your daily diet; some vaccinatians have benefited some people.
Click to expand...

Altering our food makes it MORE plentiful as does pesticides, or else why would anyone have ever begin using them in the first place?

Who said you should eat DDT everyday?


And the majority of all vaccinations have benefitted a large majority of the people that took them.


I dare you to come live with me and not keep up with your immuniations!
 
Pergamum said:
mangum said:
Pergamum said:
Who is talking about overkill?

I am merely defending the good practice of altering our environment.


Altering our food makes it more plentiful;pesticides have helped; DDT has saved lives from malaria, vaccinations benefit 99.99% of the population.
Click to expand...

Altering our food makes it less plentiful; pesticides have killed and called diseases; you shouldn't eat DDT as part of your daily diet; some vaccinatians have benefited some people.
Click to expand...

Altering our food makes it MORE plentiful as does pesticides, or else why would anyone have ever begin using them in the first place?

Who said you should eat DDT everyday?


And the majority of all vaccinations have benefitted a large majority of the people that took them.



I dare you to come live with me and not keep up with your immuniations!
Click to expand...

As soon as you do some (a lot!) of study and research on the many topics you've brought up (and made sweeping conclusions based on your assumptions) I will do so. ;)

And when you say "immunizations" that could be referring to thousands of different sorts. It's not a catch-all phrase.
 
As it happens, two people that I know of at work have become severely ill from a flu shot they just took. One has been hospitalized. A few others had just a "small flu" for a week. I am the only one who has not taken the shot... I'm also the only one who has not had the flu. (The only time I ever got the flu was in 2003...the same day I had a flu shot).

All of them were upset with me when I showed them the CDC report that NONE of the flu shots in this region prevented ANY of the strains of flu last year! They, and most of the faithful, have no idea that it is a las vegas gamble at best for the shot to prevent flu that changes every year.

After this, the co-workers would not receive any documentation from me concerning the ingredients in the shot.
 
The burden of proof lies on you to prove that approved immunizations are unsafe; the research has been done already.

Immunizations include MMR and polio which have done a LOT of good.

Don't feed me junk science here and then demand that I disprove it.
 
p.s. I am a nurse and my wife was a community health nurse over our whole county in the US. Yet you tell me to do my studying and get my facts straight before I get back to you?
 
If you want to take about the flu shots, lets start another thread. Don't lump flu shots in with MMR and polio and then discredit the whole batch.
 
Pergamum said:
The burden of proof lies on you to prove that approved immunizations are unsafe; the research has been done already.

Immunizations include MMR and polio which have done a LOT of good.

Don't feed me junk science here and then demand that I disprove it.
Click to expand...

What junk science have I fed you? None. Relax. And, I know most people equate "government approved" with "thus sayeth the Lord" so I only cite government research. The documentation I give to these types will never be from independent sources.

We are having some over lap with topics here.
 
Pergamum said:
p.s. I am a nurse and my wife was a community health nurse over our whole county in the US. Yet you tell me to do my studying and get my facts straight before I get back to you?
Click to expand...

Wasn't aware you being a nurse qualifies you to opine on all things scientific. Would it suit you if I cited my trusted medical professional against your wife's credentials? Is this how science is done?
 
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