Frankenfood: The implications for today and the future

*bookmarking to read further later but want to remind myself to mention the thing I read once about splicing peanut genes into tomato genes that absolutely terrified my peanut-allergic but tomato-loving self*

Huh. Interesting.

very interesting considering it's rice, a not so complex carbohydrate.

Walter, I would still take raw milk cheese over pasteurized any day, despite the improvements

Glad to hear that, cav! :wink:

Raw goat's milk cheese! My favorite. Even I can't justify spending that much more on cheese though.

I get a 5 year old raw milk cheddar from Quebec in small amounts that is actually somewhat reasonably priced.

Well, being on this side of the border, I can't. Actually, I can't find well-priced vermont raw cheese here. I wonder if it's specially taxed.

cav

Cheddar, from Chesterquebecshire, I see

It would depend on the specific product I sell. To take two extreme cases, I wouldn't produce mayonaise without making sure my eggs are free of salmonellas. On the other hand, I'd have no trouble at all producing T-shirts without knowing if my cotton is from a gene-manipulated crop or not. Your earlier implication that the producer must always know whether his inputs are GM is unsupported. I suspect you know this, and that this is the reason you detect non-existent chagrin in my post when I ask you for evidence.

a) I'm not suggesting politicians are always wrong. I'm just unwilling to take your word that they are less likely to be wrong than the businesses whose decisions they're interfering with. b) Government officials are more likely to be disinterested than company officials, but they are also more likely to be incompetent. The reason is simple: If you're disinterested, your incentive to get informed will be low. c) I agree company executives lie, but again, I won't accept without evidence your implication that politicians and bureaucrats lie less. People are people, and people lie -- no matter if they work for a business or for government.


No, just disagreement and a pig-headed insistence on evidence.

-- Thomas

Here's an interesting article on our subject. It's in the Economist, so gozmo will no doubt dismiss it. Nevertheless I highly recommend it. I especially found this piece about the cross-pollination problem interesting:

Since no plausible evidence has yet emerged of risks to human health from eating GM food, the environmentalists' main remaining objection is that GM plants may cross-pollinate others, spreading their alien genes to other species with unpredictable environmental effects. Some evidence has emerged suggesting this could happen, though a breakthrough announced this month by a group of Canadian scientists may overcome the problem: they have developed a sort of agricultural contraceptive, in which GM plants that pollinate their non-GM relatives produce only sterile offspring. The initial research was carried out on GM tobacco plants but, if it proves applicable to other species, it may make GM crops' worldwide spread unstoppable.

-- Thomas

Walter, it may be far from it's native home, but Canada makes some of the best Cheddar in the world...you should try it sometime

Well, certainly better than the Irish I get at my local cheese shop.

Cavfancier: We may never agree on gene manipulation, but it's nice to see we're all part of the universal raw milk cheese brotherhood

Oooh yeah, Thomas....

Which reminds me....the dairy industry that prevents us from getting all the raw milk cheese we desire....perhaps a subject for another thread?

Not a bad idea -- but wouldn't it be boring if we all agreed with each other?

Hmm...good point....

Actually I do get my raw milk cheese: 'my' cheese shop (which is in a normal supermarket) has about 15 different kinds and additionally five organic ones. (Just cow milk)