In 9000 years, humans have altered sweetcorn to make it 1000 times larger, 3.5 times sweeter, much easier to peel and much easier to grow than its natural ancestor. It no longer resembles the original teosinte plant at all. Around half of this artificial selection happened since the fifteenth century, when European settlers placed new selection pressures on the crop to suit their exotic taste buds. The newest varieties were developed by extensive testing in laboratories.
Inofgraphic via JamesKennedyMonash
I think this is the original source of the infographic: https://jameskennedymonash.wordpress.com/category/infographics/artificial-vs-natural-foods/
I don’t believe it’s helpful to obfuscate the difference between breeding processes. I completely agree that it’s an unimportant difference, but who are you trying to convince? The Anti-GMO crowd are not going to be convinced by just glossing over the difference in breeding techniques and pretending selective breeding is the same thing as transgenic breeding. Is this just preaching to the choir to drum up more fervour in the culture war? How is that helpful or consistent with promoting genetic literacy? I made this criticism on here more gently before, but you didn’t respond and you’re still doing it.
I would say that convincing someone who defines himself as “anti-GMO” is practically impossible. On the other hand, educating people who are not very much into the debate, but still think “GMOs are harmful” because they overheard someone say it once, is completely feasible. The thing is that people understand breeding techniques intuitively, and are thus not intimidated by them, but anything that takes place in the lab by white-coats is “unnatural” and frightening. Explaining that selective breeding has a major impact on the genetics and properties of a plant, usually way more than modifying one or two genes specifically, and with less understanding of the overall impact, is a very important part of educating the public. At least to my opinion.
Selective breeding of plant crops often happens in a lab too.
I don’t believe there’s anything intrinsically more risky about transgenic breeding techniques than selective breeding techniques (*if you think about the conventional terms here, they’re not really contrasting the same features of the processes they’re describing, it’s a bit of a logical mess but hey that’s conventions for you!). Both can be used for good ends or unwise ends. There are far more real examples of selective breeding having been used to create organisms which either suffer sentiently or cause problems for other organisms (e.g. us).
Big e.g. super high yielding Holstein-Friesian dairy cows which have ~30% clinical lameness of which about 40% is hereditary (probably due to genes but could also be developmental differences due to environments between sample populations), whereas the Swedish and Norwegian Reds have been bred for a wider range of production and health and robustness and welfare and lower veterinary intervention costs, so they have lower milk yield but overall they’re marginally more profitable because the input and intervention costs (mainly fertility management) are so much lower, they live and produce longer and at the end of production they’re still worth something for meat, whereas Holstein-Friesians at the end of production are usually too scrawny. That difference in results has been entirely by selective breeding, but arguably if your formula for ‘suffering’ is intensity x duration x frequency, then it’s one of the biggest animal welfare problems in the world, if not the biggest (broiler chickens also pretty bad, similar sort of unwise short-termist breeding programme strategies).
It doesn’t take transgenic breeding techniques to create monstrosities and abominations, good ol’ traditional selective breeding can be used for unwise ends too.
Also biocontrol – nowadays in the Soil Association Standards, they recommend biocontrol agents without caveats or a procedure for checking whether they’re appropriate. However, the first generation of biocontrol was a mixed disaster – they deliberately used low specificity biocontrol agents which could establish in the local environment, like cane toads and mixoma virus. Nowadays to get a biocontrol agent licensed you have to prove it will be highly specific and that it’s incapable of invading the local habitat beyond its target area – e.g. parasitoid wasps in polytunnel horticulture which are incapable of surviving a UK winter are fine.
The Infographic is not effectively educating the public because it is obscuring the difference between breeding processes. Both are actually selective. It might help to try to introduce more accurate terminology. ‘GM’ is selecting from variants generated by directing horizontal gene exchange and ‘conventional selective breeding’ is selecting from variants generated by sexual reproduction/ vertical transmission of genes. An infographic explaining that to the wider public might be helpful! Semantically ‘genetic modification’ could include both processes, but conventionally now it doesn’t, so trying to squish them together without explaining what the different processes mean but why that difference is not intrinsically important or even relevant to the outcomes is not helpful for convincing those who are not already convinced.
Shoval, I am too ignorant to be either Pro- or Anti-GMOs. Also, people do not understand selective breeding “intuitively.” Do you think the American Indians KNEW they were creating corn. Or that the caveman knew he was domesticating dogs? Not a chance. This was learned through observation of human actions in the human environment, and it took several thousand years to go from hunter-gatherers to agriculture and the domestication of animals.
Finally, educating the public is a far cry from deceiving the public. And self deception and deceiving others, is far more inherent in Humans than is intuition, let alone rational thinking. As I stated earlier, I am agnostic about GMO’s and their effects on different species. I do not know the effect of genetic engineering over the generations. Nor am I arrogant enough to believe I have such answers. I know full well that it has not been conclusively proven that GMO’s are harmful. But that fact does not prove there is no potential for therm to evolve into something harmful. As you well know, genes are constantly changing. And there is no telling how a particular genome may take advantage of new genetic material. This is initially discovered by following a scientific process. But unknowns can not be presumed to be good or evil. But it appears that questioning positions that appear to be taken on faith is evil.
Today is the one and only time I have seen your reply to my post. This is why I did not respond to your post, I was unaware of it. Didn’t you close your argument with me with a false and unsubstantiated judgement about my person?
Actually, I am agnostic about GMO’s. Because I am a mere mortal, I can not predict the long term effects of directly inserting the genetic material from one species into another. But I am concerned about the techniques used to defend GMO’s, such as hiding the fact there are GMO’s in particular foods. This amounts to deceiving the buyers because we deem them too ignorant to make their own decisions. This is, of course, academic. There are GMO’s in most foods, today, because cross pollination happens. And farmers who are found to be growing GMO foods without realizing it, are sued out of business. And sitting on the Supreme Court is none other than the husband of a woman who is on the board of directors for Monsanto. And when Clarence Thomas read the Constitution in such a manner as to protect Monsanto from any and all liability law suites that target Monsanto, he was also acting without foreknowledge about how this will effect humans and the ecosystem.
Then there is the commonly recited lie perpetrated by the true believers that the difference between selective breeding is the same as genetic engineering. This is not an unimportant difference, but who are you trying to convince, and why?
George – I wasn’t directing an unsubstantiated false accusation at you but criticising whoever made the Infographic because it’s misleading to conflate the two breeding processes into “genetic modification” when conventionally that term means transgenic breeding. The negative bit wasn’t aimed at you at all!
For someone all about not being false, you really screwed the pooch with the claim of farmers getting sued for accidental reasons. The court cases about lawsuits with GMO seed are all public information. If you really wanted to see the details you could.
This is why Agnostics in any area are garbage. Too stupid to open your eyes because you’d rather stay in your slacktivist position and let others sway your opinion instead of looking at actual facts. Food Inc is not a good source material. Grade: F+, buddy.
Bone, I have no idea who or what Food Inc is, but your continual personal attacks say a lot about you. I have seen the details of the lawsuits involving GMOs, and they do not say Bone approved.
I am not impressed by your know it all self promotion. Agnosticism is the only honest option when many variables are unknown.
Hard to trust any information with errors in the simplest of maths. From 8 varieties to 200 is not a 67 fold increase, but a 25 fold increase. And last time I checked 190mm is not 1000 times larger than 19mm. This infograph is aimed at scaring people off the fence. The simple arithmetic failure, or blatant lies, leave me wondering is any of the information presented factual. I think probably not.
I can’t attest to your concern with the mathematics behind the number of varieties (perhaps they are considering the advent of hybrid corn). I initially had the same concern with the “~1000 times larger claim”. However, after a second of thinking about it, if you not only factor in the length of modern day ear of corn but also the width, it seems like a plausible claim.
There isn’t enough information above to say the numbers are wrong, the genetic makeup of present day corn may be derived from only 3 of the 8 varieties (66.6 recurring), and 10 times longer doesn’t mean 10 times bigger. If it’s also 10 times wider and 10 times deeper then you have 3 dimensional math 10 x 10 x 10 = 1000. So maybe the math is off, or maybe not. I prefer to not jump to conclusions.
are u a scientist ?
You’re right – maize that we eat today is exactly the same as it was 9000 years ago, because of bad math. Thank you for setting the record straight.
Selective breeding IS NOT the same as genetic engineering. I sure home Monsanto is paying you all well for this.
I’m sure you’ll continue to say everyone who disagrees with you is paid to do so, while you provide no actual facts. Is someone paying you to be an inept moron? I didn’t think so.
how is not the same ? is there a difference in results by altering genes based on the technique used ? educate me because I’ve never heard of it
This is just embarrassing. However, if your argument is that everything that is the result of selective breeding is also a GMO, then presumably we can dispense with all these patents that are being filed, because they do not represent anything new in the “art”?
If I plant an apple pip and create a new variety of apple that has production potential, I would expect to be able to patent it, so your argument isn’t relevant.
No. That’s like saying you can’t patent a new clock design because sundials have been around forever.
well many seeds bred with specific traits for commercial use are patented ..GM , hybrid etc… so I don’t understand your point
only a handful of varieties are patented and many of them aren’t even GM but if a seed company has developed a specific seed that is to be used commercially , seems fair that they should be able to recover the investment and be able to continue improving agriculture with the income generated by these seeds
This website is the buzzfeed for genetic literacy. Everything on here is a repost from another site or some spin to protect BigAg. It’s sad that the “scientists” that repost blogs all day can’t get jobs actually doing real scientific research on GMO crops because they don’t have to.
Illogical assumptions and conclusions.How do you know what you claim to know. Sensationalism sells much better than actual science.
This article sites the Center for Media and Democracy investigation that uncovered the source of John Entine’s (founder of GLP) funding for this junk science website. http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/02/atrazine-syngengta-tyrone-hayes-jon-entine
Please consider reading this to the end.
http://lifestylescience.eu/why-our-opinions-about-ourselves-arent-always-valid
I saw a magazine article in the last six months, but the magazine might have been older. That article used very similar graphics, I remember the corn numbers and graphics were almost identical, but presented this information for ten or twenty different fruits, vegetables and grains. Unfortunately I can’t find that magazine now. Can anyone help me track down that article? I have searched. Many thanks to anyone who can help find this.