GMOs, Food and FUD

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 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, 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 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, 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 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

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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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

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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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, 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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, 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

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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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.

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 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 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. 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. This is forward thinking dot dot problems, brought to you by Toyota. Let's Go Places,