Talk:Genetically modified food controversies/Archive 1

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Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 → Archive 5

Use of risk

It's more clear to readers if we reserve the work risk for potential dangers of deploying GM food - rather than referring to the health "risk" of delaying deployment. Everyone knows that millions of people die each year from starvation.

Also, let's copy the outline of risks and benefits from Talk:Genetically modified food.

If other people help, I know this spin-off is a good idea. Otherwise, I'm going to mave ve-ry slow-ly on this. --Uncle Ed 02:46, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Chicken faced Dona?

Check in the third paragraph under 'Present knowledge on GM food safety'. Seems like vandalism to me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.231.85.162 (talk) 08:25, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, this slipped through when a previous edit didn't fully revert all vandalism. It has been fixed now. Greenman (talk) 11:57, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Taxobox

Can we make a taxobox to group the articles? I'm thinking of these as the main three:

There may be more. Writers need to be aware of the division, especially when trying to do a merge (or when moving sections). --Uncle Ed 13:19, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Sources

I was wondering, where did all the sources go? There area bunch of notes, but they don't refer to anything. Weezcake 04:58, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

They're back Matt Yohe (talk) 01:14, 10 December 2007 (UTC)


Link number 26 doesn't go where it says it goes, there is nothing about the Amish on there. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.165.53.18 (talk) 07:30, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

French video

See [1], it's in French. Other than that very informative. Pro bug catcher (talk • contribs). 21:09, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Paul Lewis

At the moment, Paul Lewis in the article doesn't point to the right Paul Lewis. Either remove the link or correct it? Capuchin 10:39, 30 July 2007 (UTC) 

Paul Lewis (professor) ; freshly written. `'Míkka 22:58, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Bias

This article does seem a bit biased in favor of Genetic Modification, almost as if the contoversy is that scientists have the audacity to question the agribusinesses' statements on the safety of GMO products, not the very relevent health issues regarding their products. It'd be nice to see more information on Árpád Pusztai's findings that were published in a 1999 article in the Lancet, and a more neutral tone overall Evets70 —Preceding signed but undated comment was added at 01:12, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

How is it in favor? The Health Risks and Benefits section excludes Benefits entirely. The environmental section seems to be focused on proving that GM foods will harm the environment but offers few benefits to the environment. The entire article is slanted against GM, the fact that you can't see that is troubling. NineNineTwoThreeSix (talk) 07:47, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

"To date, not a single instance of harm to human health or the environment has been documented with GM crops. Several benefits have been widely accepted and are uncontested in the scientific literature." Right at the beginning of the article seems pretty biased to me —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.49.181.209 (talk) 23:52, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

This article is absolutely irritating.

From one paragraph to the next, I seem to be reading an article written by pro Gm then anti GM supporters arguing with each other. Sort of like “Yeah, but… no but, yeah but”. Another example where the Wikipedia project is useless when it comes down to controversy, politics or religion. Does anyone else get sick of attempts of subtle coercion by editors with their own narrow agenda to spout? I don't believe in it, but take a look at the Creationism article for instance. Lots of 'I must have the last word' rubbish throughout each section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Le Gibbon (talk • contribs) 05:42, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Really? There's a "benefits and controversies" section on the main GM foods page that links here, but I don't see a single direct mention of a benefit of GM foods. 76.64.187.201 04:19, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

No do you know whats completely useless...a bias article. Wiki-articles on controversy, politics, or religion should be like arguing because there is no correct answer. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nitrodsp (talk • contribs) 05:54, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism and legal action

Many questions and controversies have obviously surrounded the GM food technology. However, it is merely a matter of a personal choice - should we be involved in genetically modifying foods is not the question we should ask. Instead, just simply do not eat it! I have heard many accounts of vandalism against food that has been modified through biotechnology. Are they justified in their beleifs? No! They are not justified because there are many advantages to biotchenologically modified food which can benefit society. If they disagree with it, they simply should not eat it. Another thing that I've been hearing lately is the attempted legal means of ridding GM foods. Once again, legal means against the development of biotechnology-modified foods should not be taken because the advantages of GM foods outweigh the disadvantages. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Yankeesguy45 (talk • contribs) 03:36, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

How about the fact that organic gardeners and farmers do not want any contamination from GMO polen and seeds? We can refuse eating GMO food, but what garantuees do we have that organic or non-organic food is devoid of contamination. That is a very important problem! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.47.57.124 (talk) 09:03, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Bias (2)

Lets face it, only 2% of Britains are fully happy to eat GM crops (See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3134278.stm. Last updated September 24th 2003). So surely the article needs to be slightly bias against GM crops to reflect this, not for it?! And maybe a conclusion is needed, or its far too hard to understand all the arguments for and against... And about the mention of more on Árpád Pusztai's results? Well, I read through the article myself and just found it to be incredibly irritating as I don't know what to make of it. Theres also no real conclusion for it, and especially for using it as a reference it's useless. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.143.90.220 (talk) 09:43, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

This is an encyclopedia not an opinon poll. Why on earth would the results of an opinon poll influence and encylopedia article? Ttguy (talk) 10:25, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
The link to the study is dead, so I'm not sure on methods. Public surveys (or any science, for that matter) are worthless spin-bait without knowing how they were conducted. If it was a write-in campaign, for example, most of the people who would participate are those with strong opinions, and most people who oppose GM crops are firmly motivated against them, while most who do not oppose simply don't see what the fuss is about and aren't going to be motivated to send in a letter. Just reading the article (especially the "bullet point" summary), I have some suspicions about how impartial it is. " The more people engage in GM issues, the harder their attitudes and more intense their concerns" point contradicts the main body of the piece, which states that people are initially skeptical but less hostile with further explanation.Somedumbyankee (talk) 03:17, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Bias (3)

This article is about as biased as it gets – and I only read the intro. Firstly, it bores people with statistics about how many industry-financed studies have failed to find evidence that GM foods are harmful, when such studies can’t be trusted anyway. Secondly it has got the cheek to mention the emotive subject of blindness. A GM cure of blindness is a pipe-dream proposed for no other reason than to produce good headlines, Vitamin A pills are a much more cost-effective solution to this problem. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.78.106.247 (talk) 14:48, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Well you tend to get this sort of bias when you have a policy of only allowing stuff on the Wiki that has a reliable source to back it up. You tend to find that when someone puts up some negative story about GM they can not find a reliable source to back it up and so it tends to get knocked down. Ttguy (talk) 12:28, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
As to vitamin pills being cheaper than GM rice... I dont have the exact figures but what I do know - GM rice - free. Pills not Free. So I dunno about you but I think this puts GM rice as more cost effective.Ttguy (talk) 12:28, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
Really. That's a pretty flagrant opinion there. 2nd sentence anti. 3rd sentence pro. 4th sentence anti. 5 sentence pro. And that's in the intro. I don't know how much more neutral you can get there but if you think so highly of NPOV then fix it. --GParan (talk) 02:19, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Probably one of the most biased article i've read on wiki. Show yourself, GM enthusiast! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.17.224.54 (talk) 00:43, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Remember, bias works both ways. Don't act so disgusted that someone could possibly be in favour GM foods when neutrality is all about giving both sides equal footing. Rigourous scientific studies remain the only way to solve this sort of problem. Perhaps the reason the article appears biased is because scientific evidence does actually point towards GM foods as safe. I have never written or researched on the subject, so i do not know. But I do know that it's easy for scientists, fanatics and scaremongerers alike to start mudslinging before anyone has given the problem real scrutiny. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hotcolla (talk • contribs) 14:06, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
The question becomes: do we write an article that "teaches the controversy" (loaded language intentional) or that is limited to a list of facts from appropriate and verifiable sources without any cohesion? This article will be contentious either way. Somedumbyankee (talk) 07:39, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

The block quote in the 'Allergenicity' section contained a comment in parenthesis that was not part of the quote on the linked web page - seemed to be someone's personal opinion. I have removed the comment, as it was unsourced and it made it look as though the comment was part of the referenced quote. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.25.106.209 (talk) 09:59, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Dead Sheep?

Can someone dig through this article(http://www.psrast.org/btkillssheep.htm) or possibly find a better one to have more information on this topic (if it is deemed important)?

The article doesn't refer out. A google search (April 2006 cotton andhra pradesh) doesn't turn up any mainstream news, just sites carrying the same story. http://www.i-sis.org.uk/MDSGBTC.php is the release from the original source and should be the one cited, psrast.org looks kind of dubious (the awards they have are from defunct or dying organizations).
Comment: Why attack PSRAST? This is just an exact copy of the original Press Release of Institute of Science in Society (ISIS), a renowned NGO of scientists. PSRAST cannot be critisized for just quoting the ISIS press release which has specified its references. PSRAST has links to two Indian articles mentioning death of sheep, one describing the lesions in detail, see http://www.psrast.org/btkillssheep.htm . This, along with the critizism further down on this page looks like persecution, trying to cast doubts on an international NGO that is critical to biotechnology. Are you agents for the biotech industry or what? --Veritasprimo (talk) 00:23, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

A link from a link in the Google search leads to http://www.financialexpress.com/old/fe_full_story.php?content_id=125649 Is a story in May '06 about Indian cotton production and it doesn't mention the dead sheep, but does mention that the crop was a massive economic failure. http://www.agbioworld.org/newsletter_wm/index.php?caseid=archive&newsid=2662 appears to be a rebuttal (talks about cattle, not sheep). http://www.socialsciences.cornell.edu/0609/Contentious_Knowledge_kickoff.pdf is a powerpoint presentation that I wish I could hear the talk on, since it seems very appropriate to this conversation, but pages 17-30 seem to include more background on the framing story in India as far as the economic viability.Somedumbyankee (talk) 07:40, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Price increases due to mandatory labelling

GM lobbiests often mention price that food prices will increase if labelling is enforced. Their claims get more inflated as time goes by. In Russia it was from 0.5% to 15%. In the Phillipines, "as much as 12%". Now, in South Africa, the claim has jumped to "a minimum of 15%". I can't find any citations for their claims. This controversy belongs here. I'll probably make a start on it in a few days, but perhaps someone with more information readily available can make a start in the meantime. Greenman (talk) 00:38, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Title change: Genetically modified organism controversy

I propose that the title be changed to "Genetically modified organism controversy". The GMO controversy is a common way to refer to this. The controversy is not just about food; it's also about using GMOs to produce pharmaceuticals. II | (t - c) 23:42, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

claim that there is no regulation making companies test food

The article had this to say: This study indicates some of the possible risks of GM foods. In particular that there is no law or regulation in either the United States or Canada that required Pioneer Hi-Bred or any other company for testing for allergenicity or toxicity of GM foods prior to them being licensed to be grown and consumed in their respected countries.[16] Citing Nestle, Marion. Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism, 2003, University of California Press

I have not read the cited text. But Marion Nestle is wrong.

In the USA Food and Drug Administration regulates the safety GM food using the same standards and requirements as under U.S. food law generally. Substances added to food that do not meet the statutory definition of "generally recognized as safe," and that are not pesticides, are classified as food or color additives and must be pre-approved before they may be marketed.

Manufacturers GM foods are held responsible for the safety of their products under both general US law and general provisions of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. In addtion prior to marketing these GM foods manufacturers are required to submit to FDA documentation demonstrating their safety and await approval for their use [2].

GM food is not tested using the same standards and requirements as under U.S. food law generally. Because U.S. food law requirements would cost too much and increase time from development to market by several years GM is instead tested by substantial equivalence to make research economical. An example is GM Soy which passed substantial equivalence which meant that allergenicity and toxicity testing (both human and animal) was not required and they were approved by the FDA without them. Wayne (talk) 14:43, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Safety in the lead

I've removed a couple citations which were not cited appropriately in the lead supporting GM safety. Having read the NAS report, it does not say that "GM food is proven safe", but rather that "to date, effects have not been documented", and actually says there should be a lot more regulation. Other articles:

  • Safety of Genetically Engineered Foods: Approaches to Assessing Unintended Health Effects (2004) REVIEW ARTICLE in Archives of Animal Nutrition February 2005; 59(1): 1 – 40 GERHARD FLACHOWSKY1, ANDREW CHESSON2, & KAREN AULRICH3

1Institute of Animal Nutrition, Federal Agricultural Research Centre (FAL), Braunschweig, Germany, 2College of Medical and Life Sciences, School of Biological Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK, and 3Institute of Organic Farming, Federal Agricultural Research Centre (FAL), Trenthorst, Germany]

  • I was unable to find this study, although I found one quite similar.
  • Just added this back.
  • Comes from a promotional organization. No date, no evidence of peer review. Still, I used it to balance Organic Consumers Union promotional organization.
The AgBioTechWorld article you reference contains a bibliography of 42 peer reviewed articles on feeding studies done in animals with GM crop plants. The evidence that these studies have been peer reviewed is the fact that they are published in Journals known to have a peer review process. Sure the actual AgBioTech article itself has not been peer reviewed - but that is not the point. The point is that claims that there are no peer reviewed feeding studies on GM crops are lies. And just because the bibliography showing this comes from a "promotional organisation" does not negate the existance of the actual studies. Ttguy (talk) 10:44, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
Note that I left this AgBioWorld analysis in. I don't think there's many claims that "there are no peer-reviewed feeding studies on GM crops". Bibliographies from AgBioWorld could be somewhat suspect. For example, there's documentation of a debate in 2000 between a CSIRO scientist and Pusztai. The CSIRO scientist claimed there were 56 studies on GM foods. Pusztai subsequently reviewed the studies and found that really, there were only 4. This particular AgBioWorld article doesn't seem to suffer from those problems. II | (t - c) 18:43, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

On the other hand, the most recent 2009 review seems to say that GM foods are not that safe. So clearly casting the safety as some sort of consensus is poor. I summarized its statement.

Notably, no coverage of ecological effects, which are probably equally of concern in the literature. II | (t - c) 19:55, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

help on genetically modified food

can some people from here help create a summary of this page for the genetically modified food page? It is a mess and we could use some help :)Matsuiny2004 (talk) 22:00, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

substance

There is a lot of scientific context missing from this article, and also even the Genetically modified food article. Most people are not familiar with Recombinant DNA and even basic genetics and it needs to have a section that leads people in the right place. This article is also missing a lot of criticism that exists in the scientific croud. Someone should watch David Suzuki's On the nature of Things episode of GM crops for even a basic introduction and try to include some of that stuff. Stuff such as: infertility of crops, heterogeneous being more susceptible to diseases, unstudied interactions, legality of patents on living organisms, for example. This article instead just focuses on a few scandals but there are much more fundamental topics: Genetic modification is playing god, and that creates many implications.Scientus (talk) 09:55, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

L-tryptophan

I can't see the relevance of a toxic dietary supplement to the safety of GM food. Please read this source for some background. The tryptophan was produced by fermentation using a genetically-modified strain of Bacillus amyloliquefaciens and then purified from the growth media. Describing a pure chemical (with toxic trace contamination in this case) as a "food" seems a bit of a stretch to me. This material might belong in the dietary supplement article, but vitamin and amino acid supplements are not food. Tim Vickers (talk) 23:50, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

In 1989, Showa Denko genetically engineered a diet supplement to produce tryptophan at high levels which unexpectantly also produced trace amounts of a toxic dimerisation tryptophan product which caused Eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome. In the first months of use 37 people died and 1500 became permanently disabled. It is believed several hundred more have since died. The GE product was a purified single chemical which had passed the required substantial equivalence testing. Some scientists arguing for extreme caution in dealing with genetically engineered foods point out that if the substance had caused delayed harm, such as cancer 20 years later there would have been no way to attribute the harm to the cause.[1][2][3]

Being a dietary suppliment is irrelevant. Whether modifification is at fault is also irrelevant as no one knows what went wrong as, if I remember correctly, the company destroyed their manufacturing equipment. It is a well documented case that critics use as an example for highlighting safety issues/fears in food modification. This use of the incident in regards to food is supported by the last sentence of the paragraph which makes it relevant for this article. Wayne (talk) 09:20, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
I think the article on controversies about genetically modified food should only discuss genetically modified food. Adding random examples of unsafe products that do not relate to food and may, as you say, have nothing to do with genetic modifications does not improve the article. Is this last sentence the one supported by the source "www.seedsofdeception.com"? Tim Vickers (talk) 15:30, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
There are probably many sources as I have read similar claims in several newspaper articles and it is a concern of critics. I'll have a look. Wayne (talk) 09:52, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
I'm starting to think that we should use policy statements from major environmental organisations as the main source for the critics sections, we should be citing the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, this should give a better view of the main arguments. Tim Vickers (talk) 16:57, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
I'm new to this whole conversation. The Seeds of Deception guy has a video out, in several parts, accessable here:
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/647.html
as well as several books, listed here:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw_0_15?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=jeffrey+m.+smith&sprefix=Jeffrey+M.+Smit
in addition to the website cited above.
Is someone suggesting that a "dietary supplement" is not food?
If the book contains the same information as the video, it impeaches the lede sentence.
Wowest (talk) 05:08, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
"The GE product was a purified single chemical which had passed the required substantial equivalence testing. " Jeffery Smith is not correct here because -- since it was a dietry suplement and the FDA does not get to regulate dietry suplements - it did not pass any substantial equivalence testing. This is because it did not have to undergo any substantial equivalence testing. I suspect if this was regulated by the FDA the incident would not have occured because it would have failed the testing as the contaiminant would have been discovered. All the case highlights is how dangerous it is to have dietry suplements fall outside the FDAs juristriction.
BTW. it is not a food and it does not belong in the GM food article. It is not a food because it has to be manufactured by a drug company and is a purified chemical. Ttguy (talk) 10:35, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid you are wrong on all counts. All dietary supplements are regulated by the FDA as foods and have to pass substantial equivalency or comply with the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 to be marketed. According to the act, if the supplement does not contain a new ingredient and the ingredient was previously sold in the United States before October 15, 1994 then no safety testing is required as it is assumed to be substantial equivalent. Compliance is determined solely by the information that the manufacturer provides and if the supplement complies with the act it can be marketed without FDA approval. However, under FDA Rule 21 CFR 111, the FDA still regulates quality control and labeling while the manufacturer is required to submit adverse event reports. Analysis by high pressure liquid chromatography indicated that the product was more than 99.6% pure tryptophan and the contaminate 0.01% of the total mass. The genetically engineered tryptophan was equal in purity, and thus considered substantially equivalent to that produced using natural bacteria. The incident is relevant for this article solely as an example of the failure of substantial equivalency let alone it's toxic affects. Wayne (talk) 07:01, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

RS noticeboard question

See thread here. Tim Vickers (talk) 17:44, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Revert of recents edits

I have reverted the edits made by Ttguy because there seems to be a POV problem with the edit comments. If there are problems with the revert please discuss and we can work something out.

  • Comment: del unreferencend assertaion about Bt in the "herbivore" population.
    I replaced the paragraph and left out only the "unreferenced assertation".
The problem is that "herbivores" include things like sheep, cows, rabbits, deer etc, which are already resistant to Bt, since they are mammals. This statement about "herbivores" is just wrong, as it is too broad. Tim Vickers (talk) 18:17, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
  • Comment: del bit about crop failure with Bt maize. As this is nothing to do with ecological effects of Bt maize
    This is part of the controversy which is what the article is about so rather than omit it I changed the section title slightly.
  • Comment: del excessively wordy stuff on Bt and monarch butterflys
    Deleting almost all of it is a little to much. Replaced but :please voice your concerns here of what should be omitted so it can be discussed.
I've rewritten this bit, summarizing and quoting a review on the subject. Tim Vickers (talk) 16:29, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
  • Comment: Bt maize Bee CCD
Your edit made the virus the proven culprit which it is not. The paragraph gives arguements for both sides with most weight given to the virus.
Good point, other pathogens have also been implicated and there may be no one single cause. I've rewritten this a bit more. Tim Vickers (talk) 16:29, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
  • Comment: del text plagurised from http://www.examiner.com/ article by Vicki Godal
    That source is not used so couldn't compare. If it is plagiarised, why delete instead of rewriting? Please supply the entire link so I can do the rewrite if you'd rather not do it.
Just Google the old text, the original source is the second hit. I've rewritten this copyright violation and added a reference. Tim Vickers (talk) 18:17, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
  • Comment: del acusation about researcher refused Monsanto corn - cited refs offer no evidence of such
    I checked and the accusation is there. Does the source have to cite the claim beyond what Darvis himself said happened? If it does then see thiswhere the accusation is more detailed or this Petition presented to the EU parliament which not only makes the same accusation but also claims Monsanto refused corn to researchers in another country as well. Wayne (talk) 15:23, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
Good job. Thanks for the help Tim. Wayne (talk) 08:57, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
Which of the original references contains the accusation? On what page? Ttguy (talk) 10:35, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
BTW. A pdf press release from an anti-GM campaign group containing hearsay (which is what this is hardly constitutes evidence.
The source could be a lot better - particularly as this is just a primary source. If this is a notable and common concern then it will have been reported in reliable secondary sources, such as reputable newspapers or academic reviews. I'll have a look. Tim Vickers (talk) 16:29, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
Greenpeace doesn't mention this in its press briefing link. Tim Vickers (talk) 16:54, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
Darvas says it happened. The claim is very widespread, almost all anti GM sources use it as an example and the claim has been used in a court case so I would expect Darvas to have objected if it didn't happen. Wayne (talk) 17:32, 23 June 2009 (UTC)
If that is true, then it should be easy to find a prominent organisation making this claim, such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, or the Sierra Club. It might even have been reported in newspapers, providing a secondary source. Presently we have Jeffrey M. Smith and GM Free Cymru, which are not all that notable. Tim Vickers (talk) 17:37, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Source misrepresentation

In this edit the text below was added:

A human feeding study found that a gene and it's promoter (a promoter activates the gene) that were inserted into Roundup Ready soy both transfered to the DNA of intestinal bacteria. Although no effects have been documented, as the gene produces a bacterial protein partly identical with a shrimp protein known to be allergenic it is possible that a person with a shrimp allergy eating the soy may get problems in the long term from their own gut bacteria producing the protein.
*Netherwood, et al, Assessing the survival of transgenic plant DNA in the human gastrointestinal tract, Nature Biotechnology, Vol 22 Number 2 February 2004.

Looking through the paper cited (link) You will find that it states on the top of page 207 that the full-length gene was not detected in these bacteria, states on page 208 that this is "highly unlikely" to pose a risk to human health, and does not mention shrimp or allergic reactions at all. This attempt to insert original research using false sources is very serious and I'll report this at the OR noticebosrd. Tim Vickers (talk) 15:45, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

As I'm not a biologist the fault is likely in my rewriting the summary to avoid plagiarism. The original summary in it's entirety read:

A human feeding study found that the gene which was articially inserted into RR-soy turned up in the DNA of gut bacteria.

This may have several problematic consequences: The bacteria are enabled to create the foreign protein. If it is toxic (like in the case of Bt-toxin) or allergenic (as in the case of RR-soy protein), they may continue producing the harmful substance for years after you have eaten just one meal of the GE food. For example, the RR-Soy gene produces a bacterial protein which is partly identical with an allergenic shrimp protein. Consequently a person with shrimp allergy may get lasting problems from eating RR soy.

The same research found that also the promoter, that is attached to the inserted gene, also was transferred to the intestinal bacteria.
*Netherwood, et al, Assessing the survival of transgenic plant DNA in the human gastrointestinal tract, Nature Biotechnology, Vol 22 Number 2 February 2004.

Wayne (talk) 16:42, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

So you reworded text from http://www.psrast.org/rrsoyprobl.htm (I Googled that test you quoted above) and cited the Nature Biotechnology article as the source. Do you realise how dishonest that appears? Tim Vickers (talk) 17:10, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
Why does it appear dishonest? Although they do appear to be reliable there was a complaint earlier about PSRAST so I try to find online sources for what they say in preference. I've checked a number of the online sources they have given and found they did say what they wrote so used those instead but because that one was not online I accepted it as it was such a short summary. If it was wrong I got misled and apologise but that is what multiple editors are for. You check what others do and correct it if needed. Wayne (talk) 17:39, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
In response to my removal of material taken from an unreliable anonymous website, you took more material from this website, but changed the citation so the source was not obvious. That isn't acceptable, do you see that?. Tim Vickers (talk) 20:14, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
Remember to WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT. When I have a source which cites another source, I'll sometimes add at the end: "As cited in: [source]". Hopefully this doesn't happen again. I expect Wayne realizes that it's bad practice and he won't do it again. Hopefully he'll confirm that. II | (t - c) 05:50, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
I can now see the problems that can arise so will avoid it in future. I point out that I did check other sources to confirm the information and it is in fact correct. It was, according to my notes, presented in parliament last year as an example that could partially explain a 500% increase in hospitalisations for "severe anaphylaxis" since GM foods were introduced (in a discussion of labelling legislation for GM products). I just chose the shortest clear presentation which was a mistake. Wayne (talk) 15:41, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
BTW. Why is PSRAST not reliable? The scientists I have looked at are legit, PSRAST papers can be found on university websites and on the NZ government register of environmental organisations it says; "PSRAST is a global scientific organisation without any political, ideological or commercial bindings." The only problem with that seems to be that demanding GM food be tested for safety may actually be an ideology but that's splitting hairs. Wayne (talk) 16:10, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
PSRAST is a self-published website. The articles don't seem to be signed by authors. If you think a particular page from there should be cited, let us know and we can discuss it, but in the meantime there are better sources. II | (t - c) 16:44, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
Yes, a self-published, anonymous website = unreliable. Moreover, as I explained above, PSRAST made several serious errors when describing the Nature Biotechnology paper, so as well as being an unreliable source under the verifiability policy, you simply can't trust what that website says. Tim Vickers (talk) 17:28, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
while I accept that PSRAST is not a RS under the verifiability policy you must not confuse WP's definition of unreliable with the dictionary definition of unreliable. Albeit there are errors I have yet to find a claim not supported by other sources so until I find otherwise I assume the site can be trusted and can be used for direction to the sources for their own claims that are WP:RS. As such I would recommend it as a shortcut to using google in relation to controversies. Wayne (talk) 14:51, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
You can use it to help your own research, but it shouldn't be cited in the article itself. The site can't be trusted, but if the sources that it cites check out after you read them, then you can cite them. If you need access to a journal article Google Scholar sometimes has a link, and Tim and I can sometimes help - I have access to Nature Biotechnology. II | (t - c) 16:34, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
I already linked to the Nature Biotechnology paper (link). Please read this carefully Wayne and you'll see that the PSRAST "summary" of this research is junk. This website isn't just unreliable in theory, it is unreliable in practice. Tim Vickers (talk) 17:07, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
Tim Vickers' comment above on the PSRAST summary is not correct - or they may have corrected the text later. I just checked the page and found that they recognize that whole genes were not taken up. They write: "Although, in this study, the whole transgene was not incorporated into the bacteria, we find it justified to assume that whole transgene can be incorporated as well. Please note that it is enough for this to occur in one single case so as to have serious consequences, because this bacterium may multiply by thousands, and in addition it can transfer the gene to other bacteria through "mating" (horisontal transfer)." See http://www.psrast.org/rrsoyprobl.htm --Veritasprimo (talk) 23:52, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

we find it justified to assume that whole transgene can be incorporated as well

. This just shows how ignorant PSRAST is. The whole point about digestive systems is that they break up DNA into small fragments. So to just blindly assert that the whole transgeen can be incorporated without citing any evidence is just wrong. Ttguy (talk) 00:13, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Dona & Arvanitoyannis 2009 mysteriously removed

Not too long ago, PMID 18989835 was referenced in the article. It was quietly removed by User:TimVickers using the edit summary "Add RSM" [3]. A while ago I suggested some ground rules for editing and edit summaries (Talk:Genetically_modified_food#Ground_rules:_use_edit_summaries.2C_note_when_references_are_removed_and_why). I don't think this is an unreasonable request. I'd like an explanation as to why this review was deleted. II | (t - c) 17:03, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

I think I might have been trying to disambiguate where the quote was taken from, since this had two references and the quote only came from one of these sources. I've no objection to you adding this back, but it probably should be in a separate sentence. Tim Vickers (talk) 17:09, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
I don't have access to the paper at the moment, but maybe later. Thanks for the quick response. II | (t - c) 17:23, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Control of the food supply

One of the major areas of controversy relating to GM foods is corporate control over the food supply, which this article ignores. I've added a start with a quickly Googled source, but the section needs expansion and better sources. Greenman (talk) 11:23, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

This makes no sense, GM foods are given freely as food aid. Besides, they can only corner the market on their own food product (much like Kellogs), but they can't stop other companies from producing better products and the DEFINITIVELY can't stop people from using wild-type food. It is literally impossible to control food supply or get any sort of monopoly in the food market. You don't mention which corporations and seem to think they work together instead of competing against each other. News flash, even organic seed is grown by big evil companies and sold to farmers. NineNineTwoThreeSix (talk) 07:49, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I believe that Greenman was referring to dependence on pesticides which, from what I've read, can only be applied to genetically-modified plants. Also, Monsanto was (is?) suing farmers for GMO pollen being blown into their non-GMO crop fields and producing tolerant plants. Farmers would feel obliged to grow GMO crops just to keep out of court. I'd consider that corporate control. 207.50.147.26 (talk) 06:08, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Gene transference

I think this is a bad study ("It remains to be tested whether this DNA was still within the plant residues") but someone may have additional information.-Nutriveg (talk) 16:28, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Hamsters

These are news that worth following: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-smith/genetically-modified-soy_b_544575.html --Nutriveg (talk) 18:52, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Jeffrey Smith again? This obscure anti-GM advocate's writing already make up far too much of this article. We don't want it to become Jeffrey Smith's views on Genetically modified food. Tim Vickers (talk) 21:10, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
He is reporting on this unpublished study, it's worth following, even for debunking it.--Nutriveg (talk) 03:14, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Map correct?

I find the map at least misleading. In Switzerland and Italy the cultivation of GM products is banned. In Italy there had been some test crops but no production. http://www.gmo-free-regions.org/gmo-free-regions/bans.html Since the majority of the sources cited by the maps are in Russian are quite difficult to evaluate.--Dia^ 22:18, 10 June 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dia^ (talk • contribs)

The Map is misleading because it is not nuanced. There should either be more categories, or to keep it simple, the map could show countries where GE food for human consumption (as opposed to feed for livestock) is legal, but hasn't been approved for commercialization. There are some countries where GE foods are legal, but they have not been commercialized or grown outside experimental settings. For example, India recently put a moratorium on approving the first GE food for humans, BT Brinjal [[4]], so there is not currently any GE food that is grown. (BT cotton is approved and grown). The map should be taken down until more categories or nuanced reading of what is after all a "controversy" can be articulated. Infoeco (talk) 16:35, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

One good source may be Clive James, ISAAA Brief 41-2009 which lists the 15 biotech mega-growing countries and lists their crops. Other than U.S. and China all other countries are growing maize, or soy for processing or livestock feed. Infoeco (talk) 16:54, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. I removed the map. There are a few more in Wiki on GM, I will see if there is one with better information. --Dia^ 06:31, 16 June 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dia^ (talk • contribs)

Misrepresentation of the sceneario.

This article implies there's strong opposition to GE crops being eaten, but most GE foods are very likely to be safe. Even those who are against GE foods usually only demand that the GE foods be labeled, much like the ingredients, and it's a negelectable miniority who actually wants a real ban on the crops. To avoid implying the that opposition, we need to mention that many of those critics really only want GE foods to be labeled. 173.183.79.81 (talk) 07:35, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Deleted material from the lede

I have deleted some material from the lede because of several problems. For instance this section:

Several benefits have been widely accepted and are uncontested in the scientific literature. These include reductions in insecticide use on GE cotton,[1] enhanced biological diversity in GE cotton fields (compared to non-GE fields),[2] enhanced farmer income[3] and communal benefits,[4] increased yields for poor farmers[5] and improved health of farmworkers.[6] Although the use of herbicide tolerant crops remain controversial, because of the need to spray herbicides, it is clear that the use of these crops has promoted a shift to less toxic herbicides.[7]

Other than GM cotton, there is a huge amount of information that contests the benefits of GM crops. But even for cotton, which appears to be the most successful, to make such a broad statement and then offer one ref or a ref from Arizona is not acceptable. Gandydancer (talk) 11:40, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Exceedingly long paragraphs

I can't help but think that some of the paragraphs in this article are just too long to read comfortably (500 words seems excessive). They could probably be divided into manageable parts with minimal changes. Attys (talk) 04:42, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Safety assessments

The section currently states: The manufacturer's data is then assessed by an independent regulatory body, such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. This is apparently not correct as "data" implies scientific data and the sentence doesn't say that submitting the data is voluntary. While substantial equivalency is recognised world wide, it is handled in two different ways. The FDA substantial equivalency regulations run into tens of thousands of words but after reading them I feel they can probably be summed up as the following. In the United States, companies are self-regulating and, with the exception of GM foods that make a health claim, there is no requirement to seek approval before marketing a product the manufacturer deems substantially equivalent. The procedure is as follows. The manufacturer consults with the FDA to discuss the modification intended and to determine what tests are required. After developing the product, the manufacturer voluntarily submits a notification that states that the substantially equivalent product is "generally regarded as safe" (a GRAS exemption claim) to which the FDA replies with a "recognition of safety" GRAS approval accepting the manufacterers claim of substantial equivalency and safety. The notification from the manufacturer includes a statement that "the data and information that are the basis for [their] determination are available...to [the] FDA upon request," however, in practice, summaries of the manufacturer's safety and nutritional assessment data is assessed by an independent regulatory body, such as the Food and Drug Administration, United States Department of Agriculture or the United States Environmental Protection Agency depending on the type of product being developed. Compliance with these FDA "recommendations" is strictly voluntary but is almost universal, apparently as complying gives some legal immunity if something is found to be wrong with the product later but at no time does the regulatory body require the actual assessment data as it assumes the manufacturers claims are correct and that the product is GRAS. Have I missed something? In the European Union, companies must provide scientific evidence to support their claim of substantial equivalence (1997 Novel Food Regulation) in place of a safety and nutritional assessment before marketing. Considering that the substantial equivalence process is a major argument against GM foods I think both sytems should be mentioned. Comments?

My attempt to unravel the regulations can be found at Regulation of the release of genetic modified organisms. It focuses more on the process, but there may be some info that could help here.AIRcorn (talk) 11:36, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

"Take the Flour Back"

Early in May 2012, the Radio Four programme Today reported on a conflict between a group called "Take the Flour Back" and Rothamsted_Experimental_Station, and mentioned a protest the former group were staging against the trial Rothamsted were planning for May 27 2012 to use genetically modified wheat to protect wheat against aphids. This is a big controversy, so this should have some mention in the article. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 20:19, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Earth Open Source study

A recent study by apparently reputable scientists has been released by Earth Open Source in UK. It's stance is firmly against GM foods. Some of its findings should perhaps be included in the article. -- Dandv(talk|contribs) 23:22, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

According to their webpage, Earth Open Source is an anti-GM organization, and two of the three authors of the document (which is not a study) hold high positions in the organization. I don't think this is a neutral source. Arc de Ciel (talk) 00:04, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Moving controversies from GMO.

Transgenics should be restricted to Biology, Chemistry, and the physics of containment, wherever possible. To that end, I have moved all of the sections under controversies in that article to this article. 142.59.48.238 (talk) 19:15, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Change the title

The article is titled "Genetically modified food controversies." This implies there is actually some controversy about genetically modified (or, more precisely transgenic) foods.

There is currently no legitimate science that would contraindicate the use of transgenic foods. In fact, there isn't even the slightest bit theory behind why it could hypothetically be harmful.

The article's title should read "Opposition to genetically modified food." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lvttc (talk • contribs) 02:54, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

First I agree that the title isn't great but I think it is the best of the alternatives. The debate about GM food is not just about the safety of food, but about many surrounding aspects, as the lede describes. The heart of the matter is real controversy about risk. There are some who find the risks reasonable/tolerable, there are some who find the risks unreasonable/intolerable. The fact is that there has never been a longterm study of feeding humans food produced from transgenic plants, and so one actually knows (in the sense of experimentally validated scientific knowledge) whether it is in fact reasonably safe for humans to eat food from transgenic plants or not. Judging the risk is a matter of extrapolating from in vitro studies of the food itself and from animal feeding studies. Jytdog (talk) 15:56, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Genetically modified organisms-related articles

The articles this discussion should concern:

The concept of genetically modifying organisms (especially crops/food) is a fairly controversial topic, so I would imagine that the articles get a fair amount of visitors. That said, I want to point out some issues to the articles that could be fixed. I've assigned numbers to each suggestion/issue, so that they can be discussed in separate sections.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Yutsi (talk • contribs)

Quick comment. I have been checking page hits
First as a reality check
the Katy Perry article avg is about 17,000 hits per day http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/katy%20perry
More seriously the article on China has about 20,000 hits a day http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/china
Of the articles you mention....
GM foods is highest ballpark avg 2200 http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetically%20modified%20food
GM organisms avg is about 2000 http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetically%20modified%20organism
genetic engineering is about 2000 as well http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetic%20engineering
GM food controversies has been big of late but still avg only about 1000 hits (recent increase may be Seralini press release, California referendum.. I'd like to think it is because I have concentrated information there
http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetically%20modified%20food%20controversies
GM crops is pretty small, maybe 500 average. As I note below, I don't think people actually care about agriculture.
They care about food and the contoversies. Right?
http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetically%20modified%20crops
Regulation of the release of genetic modified organisms is the smallest, maybe 70. I think the title of this article is terrible but have not tackled renaming it.
http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/Regulation%20of%20the%20release%20of%20genetic%20modified%20organisms
The title name is fine. There are regulations that govern approval to work with GM organisms and regulations that set the protocols and restrictions while they are being developed and tested. This article is about the regulations governing the release of these organism into the environment. I was working on a parent article and will release it (unfinished most likely) to mainspace soon. AIRcorn (talk) 02:15, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
So.. not sure if that meets your idea of "fair number of visitors". :) Jytdog (talk) 17:56, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
Frankly my dear... If an article gets 10 hits a day on average IMO it earns its place in WP. This is supposed to be an encyclopaedia, not a tabloid rag. Not every word in a dictionary gets looked up every single day, and some of the most valuable entries are exactly the entries that one has difficulty finding anywhere else, sometimes because nowhere else bothers to publish them. Let's not fall into the trap of "I wish people would stop pestering us for X; we don't stock X; there is no demand for it!" As long as we can produce articles with intrinsic substance and significance and with a decent presentation of information and relevance, our only reaction to a low hit count should be to check whether it could be better presented to strike the eye of potential readers. JonRichfield (talk) 08:28, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
sarcasm my dear! I think you misunderstood my point. I have spent hours working on these pages - I want them to accurate because I believe wikipedia should always be excellent, regardless of whether the topic is "popular". You got more to my point with your last remark - and that is, how used are these pages? Relative to "popular" topics, and relevant to each other? Why is the regulation article - the one I would hope people read and learn about a lot, so rarely consulted? And my comment about "not sure if that meets you definition of fair number" - I really meant that - I have no idea what Yutsi had in mind when he said that. I like data and hard numbers so I put them out there.Jytdog (talk) 01:23, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Crossed wires my dear, I suspect. The nearest I came to deliberate acerbity was in rejecting any idea that a low hit rate was a priori a basis for questioning the justification for an article's existence. Sure, if large numbers of people read important topics, that looks good and we should aim for it, but for a lot of really vital technical topics it is fashionable to raise Cain chanting meaningless slogans in the streets, but God forbid that anyone should actually take time learning what it really is all about. (GMO-hatred is not the only such topic, mind you!)



Issue 1

hi read this — Preceding unsigned comment added by Purebuzzin (talk • contribs) 11:56, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Additional note. I just read the WP:SELFREF and I don't agree that anything here violates it. It is 100% OK to say "this article refers to X" What is not OK, is to write, "This Wikipedia article refers to X". That does not occur. The policy also teaches away from self-references that would not work in other media, for instance, in print. None of the instances do that either. So I disagree that anything violates WP:SELFREF. Jytdog (talk) 00:13, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Thanks for raising these issues. I have done a lot of work on this suite of articles over the past few months. When I came upon them, they were a real mess. By "mess" I mean things like:
(i) the same matter was discussed across all these pages. At great length, sometimes verbatim but often one stretching out randomly in X direction and another in Y direction. Most of the overlapping material concerned the controversy - namely, people emphasizing studies, especially from the Seralini group, that endeavored to show that GM food is very risky and regulators as not being strict enough.
(ii) the same study would be cited three or more times in a given article, described differently and with the reference formatted differently, making it appear that there were many more studies than there actually were.
(iii) there was not a lot of actual content. For instance there was really nothing about how farmers use GM crops or why they matter to farmers. But farmers are the ones actually buying the GM seed and using them. And the GM food article, remarkably, said almost nothing about what food you find in the store is GM. Again, remarkable.
I think that the articles were messy for three reasons:
a) fact: there is a set of people, anti-GM people, who are emotional about these issues. They are worried and angry and want other people to be motivated to help change the current system. (I still don't know much about the demographics or size of that group. Something on my "to-research" list)
b) fact: There are a few "segments" of material, each of which is fairly complex in and of itself, that read on each other, again in complex ways. The 'segments' can be divided up as the articles are -- the underlying science (genetic engineering article); broad examples of application of genetic enginering (GMO article); agriculture (GM Crops); what you actually might eat (GM Food), regulation of GMOs and food (regulation), and the whole controversy (which touches on all those and more).
c) judgement by me: a lot of the people (not all!) who are the most emotional, and most motivated to edit wikipedia, especially in what I call 'drive by" editing (don't have a logon but edit from an IP address, one or two times maybe) are also (gulp) ignorant about a lot of the complex matter. I don't mean "ignorant" pejoratively, just that they don't know stuff and I don't think they care to know. (see iii above) There is also a lot of half truth "information" about these matters that is passed around in that community. For example, much online discussion of Monsanto vs Schmeiser is wrong - and was wrong in several places in Wikipedia.
Therefore, when I cleaned these articles up by separating matter, getting NPOV sources, editing POV text to make it NPOV, etc, I tried to also signal very very explicitly to readers and editors what they could expect to find in a given article. This is to try to help prevent readers from expecting to find -- or wanting to add -- something about environmental damage from GM Crops in the article on GM Foods. The way things are configured now, nothing about environmental pros or cons of GM crops belongs in the GM food article, because that article is about actual GM food - the stuff you eat. What is GM food, exactly? That is what you should have learned after reading the GM article. And you should know that there are articles on other, complicated matters, that you need to read as well if you want to understand the whole picture.
I realize that this explicit guiding language is not normal wiki style. But because of the above, I think is essential to retain these explicit guideposts. Otherwise the articles will moosh back together again.
Two regular wiki editors, arc de ciel, and aircorn, have also raised concerns about this as well -- see User_talk:Jytdog#CommentJytdog (talk) 17:20, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
  • As I stated at Jytdogs talk page, I would prefer hatnotes to refer to different articles on similar topics. AIRcorn (talk) 01:50, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
Another user, Semitransgenic has objected to this paragraph - deleting it and noting "remove editorial remarks, use dablinks at the top of the page to tell readers of other relevant content". Happy to see a proposed example!Jytdog (talk) 15:39, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
I don't support this kind of in-article editorialising, dablinks (hatnotes), or an infobox would be a better method, the tone of the lead in general needs addressing. Semitransgenic talk. 15:47, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
It is not editorializing in the sense of giving an opinion. If you want to provide sample hatnotes I would be very interested to see them! What do you mean by "tone"?Jytdog (talk) 15:52, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
starting a paragraph with words like "nonetheless" etc. veers towards MOS:OPED. Lead prose should ideally be pragmatic, just provide an accurate summary of the key/notable content found in the main body of text. Semitransgenic talk. 16:19, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

If nothing else could we get an answer to this issue. The paragraphs that this concerns are these ones. AIRcorn (talk) 21:01, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

I am OK with how this was handled at Genetically modified food controversies if you want to implement, aircornJytdog (talk) 22:21, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
No problem. It is not looking like this is going to be closed soon. AIRcorn (talk) 00:07, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Issue 2

  • To the extent that these sections remain, I agree that they could be sorted that way - it would be better. In general I have tried to eliminate these sections, slowly, making sure that the matter is incorporated into the suite of articles. I understand that this is best under the MOS.Jytdog (talk) 17:21, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
  • The external links sections should be trimmed to just websites that contain an overview of the whole topic (i.e a website about GM mice should be on the GM mouse page, but is not needed on the GM organism one) but are not suitable for inclusion in the page itself (i.e a large list of GM crops like here. The less the better in my opinion and would be more than happy to see them trimmed. I however do not think that they should be separated based on their alignment. AIRcorn (talk) 01:57, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Issue 3

  • I don't really understand this point. Perhaps you could explain better. My POV: People's concerns about GM food are what drove the mess and what drives a lot of the ongoing editing. I have done my best to carefully sort things out. In my mind, GM food per se (what is it?) should be handled in the GM food article, and controversy around it (and many other surrounding issues), in the controversy article. Regulation of it and GMOs that produce it, in the regulation article. Crops that produce it (and other things) in the GM crops article. GMOs in general, and genetic engineering in general, in those articles. These topics are inter-related, for sure. They need to mention and reference each other. But the topics are separable. Jytdog (talk) 17:25, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Some overlap is inevitable, but it should be reduced as much as is practicably possible. I don't particularly like controversy sections in articles and would rather see the issues mentioned in the appropriate section. Although I concede that this might be hard to maintain in these articles. What should happen if we have a controversy article is that the GM food should have a controversies section linked with a main template to the controversies article. It should include a couple of paragraphs outlining or summarising the main points associated with food. The GM crops should have the same except its paragraphs should focus more on crops and so on. AIRcorn (talk) 02:05, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
The hard thing about your proposal, aircorn, is that opponents of GM food very rarely have a single focus and it is very hard to sort out the "heart" of many objections. Many seem to care most about industrial agriculture (many angles on this... so-called "corporate control of the food supply", messing with "nature", chemical use, etc. Others really seem to care about riskiness of the food they eat. Others seem more focused on corruption of regulatory agencies. And all those issues very much overlap and feed into each other. And there are problems that touch on everything. The key issue can be broadly captured under the rubric of gene flow/contamination. People worry about gene flow from GM crops to other crops and to weeds (environmental concerns and food-safety concerns, especially with pharming crops, and economic concerns for organic farmers); people worry about harvested crops being mixed (a la starlink); people worry about litigation from gene flow or contamination (mostly based on misunderstandings of Monsanto v Schmeiser). So I ended up with one big honking controversies article. Happy to hear thoughts about how to rationally separate!!13:55, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
Answered below AIRcorn (talk) 00:21, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Issue 4

  • No objection! Except that no article exists on genetically modified animals. Your link above points to an external links section in the GMO article.. strange. Jytdog (talk) 17:25, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
  • I would not move that article, if any should be move it is Genetically modified mammals with fish, insects, etc added as sub sections. AIRcorn (talk) 02:07, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
  • All this points, to me, to one article one main article on GMOs with subarticles to the various ... biological kingdoms maybe?? Jytdog (talk) 13:56, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Issue 5

  • I disagree very strongly. People care about what they eat -- what goes into their bodies. GM Foods needs its own article. GM Crops are agriculture -- most of the information you need to know in order to understand them, has nothing to do with food. Much of the material now in the GM crops article was originally in the GM foods article and I pulled it out and put into the GM crops article, and then expanded it. It still needs more expansion in some sections as noted in the article. Farmers don't buy GM seed, thinking about food. They buy them because they make sense to farmers as businessmen. The companies don't make GM seed, thinking about food. They make them so that their customers --farmers -- will buy them. It's agribusiness. It's not about food. (I am not saying that is a good or bad thing -- no moral judgement - it is just the way the world is). It is absolutely true that the companies have to satisfy regulators in order to do business, because some (but not even most) of the product directly becomes food and so it must be safe enough to eat. Most of the product goes to feed livestock and poultry (which then become food). Much of the product is used industrially and never becomes food (cotton, corn for biofuel, potatoes for starch used industrially. etc). It is true that some GM crops used directly as food have failed because farmers' customers didn't want to buy it as food (the New Leaf potato failed because farmers' target customer, McDonald's, didn't want GM potatoes for french fries, even though they satisfied Americans' desire for perfect-looking, unblemished food). But GM crops is its own topic. Look how long that article is already! And the GM foods article also requires expansion itself.. not even close to describing all the food you find in the store that is GM.Jytdog (talk) 17:36, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Keep them separate. Not all crops are food (cotton is one of the most common GM crops and it is a stretch to label it food, plus you have Amflora and biofuels that are being developed) and with the development of the GM salmon soon not all food are not going to be crops. It still needs some work separating the two, but the crop/food split is a good one at my mind. I would bring back the GM plant article at some stage too, and make it a parent one of the crop one for much the same reasons, there are some important GM plants used in research that are not and never will be grown as crops. AIRcorn (talk) 02:12, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
I have no quarrel with most of your points and the proposed separations of topics seem reasonable to me, but I am mildly puzzled as to why you exclude cotton from food plants as a topic. I don't eat much fabric or cotton wool myself, any more than I can help anyway, but I have eaten a lot of foods prepared or canned in cottonseed oil and have probably eaten more products of cottonseed cake than I know about directly, and a good deal more meat from animals that have eaten large quantities of cottonseed cake. Once you remove the gossypol, either artificially, or genetically, cotton is quite an important food plant. And beware what you say about hemp and poppies too! Just an obiter dictum... JonRichfield (talk) 08:41, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
Not too familiar with cottonseed oil, although I knew it existed. I mostly think of cotton as the fibre. Cotton would probably have to be mentioned in both articles, along with maize and the other food crops. Am working on organising a kind of heirachy now, so hopefully we can get the split better organised. There needs to be a Genetically modified cotton article created, plus one for tobacco, Arabidopsis and other important plants. AIRcorn (talk) 12:34, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
Right. That is the sort of thing I had in mind in my comment below when I spoke of "adjusting or even radically changing the suite of articles in the light of matters emerging..." JonRichfield (talk) 16:25, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
Thanks John! I am very aware that cotton is used to make cottonseed oil -- in fact I have been trying to get the Andrew Weil website to change its stupid page on cottonseed oil which is not accurate. http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/QAA400361/Is-Cottonseed-Oil-Okay.html See the Cottonseed_oil#Concerns_about_fats_and_toxicity that I edited to make accurate. And I do list cottonseed oil in the Genetically modified food article. In my comments above, I was not trying to exclude the use of cottonseed oil as food; I was just making the point that the cotton from GM cotton plants -- along with many other products of GM crops -- are not used for food. Sorry to have created a misunderstanding. Jytdog (talk) 13:13, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
No problemo. All such misunderstandings should only be so easily fixable ;-) JonRichfield (talk) 17:15, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment: To forestall almost inevitable accusations of POV, if not actual corruption by evil multinationals, I have no material, contractual, or commercial interest in any form of GM that I know about. Idealistically and intellectually I am deeply interested in the matter and deeply alarmed and disgusted at such examples as I have seen so far of, for example, large scale plantings of crops with genes for defensive production of single substances for pest control; such abuses rank with the early days of misapplication of antibiotics, both in human medicine and in agricultural and veterinary practice.
Interesting comment! I like the comparison with antibiotics. GM seed with stacked traits are now 25% of the market and growing steadily (http://www.isaaa.org/resources/publications/briefs/43/executivesummary/default.asp), so things are snapping into a line of intelligent use quickly....Jytdog (talk) 13:19, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. I was not aware of that trend. It is encouraging, though of course it is just a hint at the depth of responsibility that we bear when tinkering with such powerful tools. If we are not careful we shall simply turn a vital biotechnological opportunity into an exercise in the fostering of super-pests. JonRichfield (talk) 19:46, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
That said however, I regard GM as a field on a par with computing, the control of fire, printing, and the development of modern science in terms of historical importance for the future. There is no way that we could rationally justify ignoring or sidelining it. The question of how to present it, including how to split the topics into manageable articles is what matters, as already indicated in several of the contributions to this RFC. I have no particular quarrel with the proposed titles as presented, as long as each is coherently written and adequately cross-linked to the others. Questions such as what readers care about putting into their bodies are far less important than questions concerning the clarity and perspective of each article. Since the articles are in inevitably not independent, there must necessarily be some overlap, but this is hardly a new problem and requires no new techniques in dealing with it. Concise cross-reference plus clear reference to the main article for each topic is naturally important, but hardly challenging.
As I said, I have no quarrel with the proposed split, but I also would have no problems with adjusting or even radically changing the suite of articles in the light of matters emerging during their authorship and editing. JonRichfield (talk) 09:05, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Principles in using subarticles

Hi

IMO, any time we have subarticles, there should be a standard, brief paragraph in the "head" article (ideally taken from the lede of the subarticle and edited for concision if necessary) and a link to "main", and then keep an eye on those standard paragraphs for changes so that they stay short and plain. Ideally, no statistics would be in those standard paragraphs, otherwise when new data emerges we have to go back and update the data in many places which will inevitably lead to missing things and the overall suite falling out of sync within itself and with reality. I feel that we should try hard to avoid having long sections in different articles that cover the same matter. This was the state in which I found articles within this suite several months ago and most of my work has been consolidating overlapping material into clear, NPOV, well sourced discussions. Having a suite of articles covering various aspects of complex matter is indeed common in WIkipedia, but it is also commonly handed badly IMO. For instance in the suite of evolution articles, the main evolution article has a history section that is very long (7 paragraphs that fill my screen)... and there is an entire much longer subarticle on the history (about 10x longer). I glanced over the two texts and they don't tell the same story or even use the same refs.... this is not a happy thing for an encyclopedia and we should avoid doing this. This is for me a very important principle and I hope we can discuss it. Jytdog (talk) 13:58, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Organisation and consistency is the bane of Wikipedia. This seems reasonable though. AIRcorn (talk) 00:16, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
sorry you have thrown me off.. do you mean lack of organization and consistency are the bane (i.e. a source of harm) or do you mean that pursuing them is a bad thing? sorry, i don't know you that well and this was confusing...Jytdog (talk) 01:09, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
It was meant slightly tongue-in-cheek. Due to its nature Wikipedia tends toward inconsistent disorganisation (anyone can edit after all). It is amazing that it works as well as it does. Providing order is an admirable thing, and I will help out as much as possible, but at the end of the day you are going against the natural inertia of the project and no matter what you do, if you want to keep it organised it is going to take constant watching. AIRcorn (talk) 02:37, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
I totally hear you on that. :) I intend to watch for a long time. But I also want to structure things as much as possible, with explicit markers "This goes here, that goes there" - to help keep things in line.Jytdog (talk) 03:30, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
I don't see you getting consensus for the self references (issue 1 here). I would suggest using the hidden text function. Simply type<!-- Add appropriate comment here -->. It will only be seen by editors when the click the edit button. See this for how it might work. AIRcorn (talk) 03:39, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

(starting tabs over) Hi Aircorn... so far nobody has gone to the mat on the the self references. With respect to the objection raised in Issue 1, I wrote above, that if you read Wiki's self-reference policy, it is clear that these texts do not violate that policy. Nobody has responded to that so I assume nobody disagrees. My sense is that you and arc de ciel have objected on more stylistic grounds... but neither of you has gone to the mat on this. Is this indeed important to you?

But let's go back to the subject matter of this section. I have been trying to lay down a principle that sections for which we have big subarticles should just be very brief stubs - 1 paragraph taken from the lede of the subarticle, so that we don't end up with long, weedy descriptions of a given issue in different articles that extensively overlap with each other and with the main subarticle... which leads to inconsistencies and disorganization that you have described as a bane of wikipedia (and I heartily agree!). I thought we had kind of agreed on this... but you just recently expanded one of these stub sections with a bunch of material copied from a subarticle. So what gives? How shall we do this? I have been tempted to go into some of the articles you have created and apply this "stub principle" (for instance you have a section on "regulation of the release of genetically modified organisms" in your "regulation of genetic engineering" article that is my mind is waaaay too long and should be just a stub, as we have a whole article on "regulation of the release of genetically modified organisms") but i have held back from stubifying that section until (and only if) we reach consensus here.Jytdog (talk) 18:09, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

No one needs to got to the mat. We have consensus so far (me, Arc and Yutsi against you so far) not to use them. Is it important to me? No other things are more important at the moment, but one day I would like to get the articles up to Good standard and that is not going to happen with those instruction paragraphs in the lead.
I think we slightly misunderstood each other above. I agree that there should only be short summaries in the head articles, but we have a disagreement over what is short. I think that there needs to be enough information in the parent article that the reader will get a good overview of each topic, they should not be obliged to go to another article to find this. They should only have to go there if they want to find more details. Basically each article should stand on its own and stubby sections are not going to allow that. Three to four paragraphs covering the regulation and controversies should be enough, but anything less and the article is going to be incomplete. AIRcorn (talk) 21:38, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for talking! OK, on the guide paragraphs.. both Yutsi and Arc based their objection on their understanding of wiki policy, and as mentioned, I don't see how these run afoul of the self-reference policy. You seem to be basing your objection on that too, when you say that an article with these paragraphs, will never be Good. But what is the basis for that? Please explain...
Thank for zeroing in on the "stub" issue. I really appreciate it. So to you the key principle is that the article should stand on its own with respect to providing a good overview and that a compact stub is not enough. I had thought that the stub does provide an overview, but what I am hearing is that this is too high level for you -- it is not a "good" overview. So you want more of the story in all the articles. Whew that is all a tall order for complex matter like this. It helps me understand why you want longer "stubs." OK I need to think about this a bit! I will write again in a couple of days, this requires thinking and if I come into alignmnent with you, some major resetting for me. Thanks again.Jytdog (talk) 22:48, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
The Good articles have a set of simple criteria that they have to meet in order to gain that status. IMO they are a great base that every article should aspire to. One of those criteria is compliance with WP:Lead, which I don't think the navigational paragraphs meet. Another one is broadness, which is why I think we need more than one paragraph stubs in important sections. AIRcorn (talk) 16:41, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm not really watching the articles right now, but I just wanted to confirm that the objections I raised were indeed answered. It doesn't "feel good" from my own style perspective, but I don't know of any style guideline that rules it out. Also, I think that the general organization Jytdog has put in place is a good one; as he said, my concerns were only about the way they were disambiguated. It seems that people adding the same citations repeatedly is common in this group of articles, and this organization would probably help a lot. Arc de Ciel (talk) 03:00, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Overall structure

Let's have a focused discussion on overall structure. This is part of the topic mentioned above but only part. Let's map it out. It would be really great to do this with some kind of software that allowed us to draw things, but I am ignorant of how to do that. So I will take a shot at this using words alone.

Here is my perspective

  • genetic engineering (head article; should describe history and techniques and a high level overview of uses)´
  • GMOs - this should work be organized by the biological taxonomy of the kinds of organisms that have been modified and briefly state the purpose of the modification --> subarticles on various GMOs
  • GM crops - describes the agriculture and agribusiness of GM crops. Not about food, about crops. --> subarticles on various crops (many will be same subarticles of GMOs above)
  • GM foods - describes what foods we eat are GM. Not about agriculture, about food. This is by far the most trafficked article in the suite (fact), because people care about what they eat (opinion).
  • regulation - should be a brief, standard, subsection of each of the articles above, and describe the general principles of regulation, and provide an overview of each countries' current regs (right now lacks international agreements like Cartagena Protocol - needs to be added) --> subarticles on each country's history of regulations and international agreements
  • controversy - should be a brief, standard subsection of each of the articles above, and describe all the aspects of controversies around GM crops and GM food --> subarticles? I struggle with this. Part of my goal here is to give the full controversy full voice in one place, so that it is not inserted into every article on every genetic engineering topic, and gets clear, NPOV discussion someplace where everybody can find it.

All this done with the principle of subarticles mentioned above...Jytdog (talk) 14:00, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

I agree with pretty much everything here. Although I would think you would have to cross reference food in the crops article and crops in the food one. As far as the controversies go I would have a section solely on the health concerns in GM food and one solely on the environmental concerns in the crops one. Then I would have a section over-viewing the other concerns. I think the length of the controversy section should depend on the article. GE, food, crops, plants, animal, organisms should probably get their own section with a good overview of the issues relevant to each topic and a {{main}} to the controversies article. The sub-sub articles can probably just get away with a link provided in an appropriate section (e.g. in Bt brinjal it says in the first sentence of controversies "There are many controversies surrounding the development and release of genetically modified foods, ranging from human safety and environmental impacts to ethical concerns such as corporate control of the food supply and intellectual property rights" in the lead of the controversies section). The rest of the section just details the issues with the titles topic and does not dwell on the overall controversies. For the controversies article itself I would keep the public perception as the first header, then have health concerns, environmental concerns, regulatory concerns (including labeling), religious concerns and Intellectual Property concerns (including corporate control). Most should fit into one of these broad categories. It may become necessary to split health and environment to separate articles to reduce the size. AIRcorn (talk) 00:13, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Let me get this straight. You would have a pretty long section on controversies in (for example) the food article - in that one, focused on health. Then, again in the main controversies article, you would have another fairly long section on health (which is all about food)?Jytdog (talk) 01:53, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Depends what you mean by pretty/fairly long. I was thinking two to three, possibly four paragraphs (maybe a bit more in the controversies article). The health section in the GM controversies is well beyond fairly long already, especially if you add in Pusztai and Serilini. For example the GM food could be presented like:
  • History
    • [main to GM History]
  • Process
    • [main to GM Techniques]
  • Plant based
    • [main to GM Crops][see also to GM crops]
  • Animal based
    • [see also to GM animals]
  • Regulation
    • [main to GM Regulation]
  • Detection
  • Health concerns
    • [main to GM health concerns (if split from controversies)]
  • Other concerns
    • [main to GM controversies]

I like the smallification of text!! didn't know one could do that. Funny that you have "animal based" - there is no GM food from animals (yet). but in theory i see what you mean. But i disagree really really strongly that "GM crops" is main for plant-based GM food. GM crops is about agriculture. its not about food. why do you think gm crops is about food? more to say but that stopped me - one thing at a time!Jytdog (talk) 03:34, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Should have been see also like the animal one. AIRcorn (talk) 03:44, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Seems to me acceptable.Fox1942 (talk) 14:09, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Michael Taylor

I understand that there are some ideas about Michael Taylor that circulate in the anti-GM community and are accepted as facts in that community. And the exact way that this text was stated, is the exact way it is stated on many anti-GM sites. That's fine, but Wiki needs to have a neutral standpoint and facts need to be sourced. I will try to find some sources, but if anybody else can find unbiased sources please add them. This is important because this is about a living person. Wiki has strict policies on statements about living people and statements not supported by reliable sources will need to be deleted.

Two sources have been cited so far:

Baden-Meyer, A. Obama puts GMO booster in charge of food safety. Organic Consumers Association July 22, 2009 Retrieved September 21, 2012 which is here http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_18635.cfm
and
Obama Gives Former Food Lobbyist Michael Taylor a Second Chance at the FDA] CBS News January 15, 2010 http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-44040110/obama-gives-former-food-lobbyist-michael-taylor-a-second-chance-at-the-fda/

I was hopeful about the CBS news piece but it is clearly editorial, not news. It is POV. Organic Consumers by definition is POV on this issue.

Nobody can dispute facts sourced from neutral references - let's use them!

Also, description needs to be neutral. At an agency like the FDA, no one person can be responsible for any policy especially not something as major as the way GM food would be regulated.

Thanks!Jytdog (talk) 11:41, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

The problem is that the paragraph is the view of critics (all critics are POV) so it is exactly these sources which provide support for the negative claims. Proponents are not going to mention the negatives. In regards to Taylor and substantial eqivalence, he is responsible in that he wrote the policy in his capacity as a lawyer. It is public record (the FOI Memos) that scientists within the FDA opposed the policy. It is synth for us to link the two reliable sources but it does indicate responsibility. We should be able to accept the POV sources that do make the link. Re CBS, it may be an editorial but it shouldn't be considered POV as it gives both the pros and cons of Taylors appointment and doesn't appear to have any connection with the anti-GM community. This Organic Consumers Association reference may be of some help as it has embedded links to it's reliable sources. It is particularly notable for the links to the court cases. Wayne (talk) 17:21, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
I'd rather not get in an argument about sources. What would be useful would be to find something that supports these statements and is sober and even-handed - something for instance describing how the FDA arrived at its GMO review policy that described Taylor's role and (potentially) makes it clear that he was given carte blanche to develop whatever policy he wanted. Something like that. Blanket statements by critics are just not helpful. Maybe if he gave a speech and said something so broad, or somebody praising him (!) made a statement that was so broad... but a critic painting with a broad brush is just not credible. Like I said, let's find sources that are not impeachable. The NY Times, the Wall Street Journal, the federal register, something that is not breathless but is soberly reporting/describing. I am not pro-Monsanto, I am anti-bullshit (in the Harry Frankfurt sense). Hearing the same chrorus sung again and again doesn't mean it is a fact. I don't care if the republicans are chanting or the democrats; the anti-GMO people or pro-GMO. The point is to state what is true and back it up with something anybody on either side can review and say, OK. By the way I took your advice and clicked on the links in the Organic Consumer article. Many of them are broken, the one about Salon leads to a site with a version of the story that doesn't seem to match the story on the Salon site and no-where is there any link to a credible source about Taylor's responsibility for the development of the original GMO policies. I wonder if you actually checked them before you wrote that to me..... I know you believe these statements are true and you probably find my desire to validate them silly or maybe suspicious. But that is what we have to do here. [User:Jytdog|Jytdog]] (talk) 20:07, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
was just looking for good sources but have to go. this one is pretty good, tries to tell the whole (emphasize "whole") story in a sober, even voice:

http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2236&context=bclr&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Furl%3Fsa%3Dt%26rct%3Dj%26q%3Drisk%2520and%2520regulation%253A%2520u.s.%2520regulatory%2520policy%2520on%2520genetically%2520modified%2520food%2520and%2520agriculture%26source%3Dweb%26cd%3D1%26ved%3D0CDEQFjAA%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Flawdigitalcommons.bc.edu%252Fcgi%252Fviewcontent.cgi%253Farticle%253D2236%2526context%253Dbclr%26ei%3DyA5dUMPYJNPq0QHOtIDgBw%26usg%3DAFQjCNFfxx7Tk1PLvv-a6B2mDC5_6kMosA#search=%22risk%20regulation%3A%20u.s.%20regulatory%20policy%20genetically%20modified%20food%20agriculture%22
(sorry for the long url) Will keep looking!Jytdog (talk) 23:46, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

again here is the policy at stake here: Biographies of living persons I just re-read the policy. I am deleting this material from the page until we can source it. Jytdog (talk) 23:51, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

so we have it handy here is the text that i believe violates the biographies policy - I de-formatted the references so they are visible
Critics in the US have protested in regards to the appointment of pro GM lobbyists to senior positions in the FDA. Michael R. Taylor was appointed as a senior adviser to the FDA on food safety in 1991. Taylor is a former Monsanto lobbyist responsible for the ban on GMO labeling, is credited with being responsible for the implementation of "substantial equivalence" in place of food safety studies and known for his advocacy that resulted in the Delaney clause that prohibited the inclusion of "any chemical additive found to induce cancer in man.. or animals" in processed foods being amended in 1996 to allow the inclusion of pesticides in GMOs. (ref name="Baden-Meyer" Baden-Meyer, A. http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_18635.cfm Obama puts GMO booster in charge of food safety Organic Consumers Association July 22, 2009 Retrieved September 21, 2012) (ref http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-44040110/obama-gives-former-food-lobbyist-michael-taylor-a-second-chance-at-the-fda/ CBS News January 15, 2010) Following his tenure at the FDA, Taylor became a vice-president of Monsanto and critics have called for a review of his work at the FDA citing a conflict of interest. On July 7, 2009, Mr Taylor returned to government as the "senior advisor" to the Commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration for the Obama administration.(ref http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/2009/ucm170842.htm)

the statements that are problematic are:
1) Taylor is ...responsible for the ban on GMO labeling
2) (Taylor)...is ...responsible for the implementation of "substantial equivalence" in place of food safety studies (actually says "credited with being responsible" but that is just weaselly)
3) (Taylor) ..is known for his advocacy that resulted in the Delaney clause that prohibited the inclusion of "any chemical additive found to induce cancer in man.. or animals" in processed foods being amended in 1996 to allow the inclusion of pesticides in GMOs.

The following statement is probably supportable, but no citation is given:
4) Following his tenure at the FDA, Taylor became a vice-president of Monsanto and critics have called for a review of his work at the FDA citing a conflict of interest. Jytdog (talk) 01:29, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Would The Ecologist be a RS for Taylor and labelling? On a side note, I found this interesting. A critique of Substantial Eqivalence by Mae-Wan Ho. Wayne (talk) 06:35, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
Your view on the book The World According to Monsanto by Marie-Monique Robin? This seems to be the most detailed information I can find RE Taylor's involvement with the substantial eqivalence policy, Page 160 - 162, declassified FDA documents, specifically a letter dated October 7 1991 from the biotech coordinator to Michael Taylor that implied that Taylor determined the purposes of the regulations. On the basis of this, Taylor was interviewed by Robin and denied he wrote the regulations, claiming that Dr Maryanski had. However, the previous year Taylor had written a document for the International Food Information Council setting out how the biotech industry wanted GMOs regulated. When compared to the final FDA policy statement the two documents are so similar that either Taylor wrote the FDA statement or someone copied his earlier document with some minor changes. Dr Maryanski was then interviewed and wouldn't say who wrote it. He stated simply that Taylor was team leader whose job was to made sure the policy was written and that Monsanto was very much involved in determining the FDA regulations. We can't say that taylor wrote it without this attribution but as he was the team leader we can say he was responsible. What can we get out of this or is it all too hazy? Wayne (talk) 08:03, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for working with me! However, all these sources come from the same anti-GM world, right? Every article on the Ecologist's home page http://www.theecologist.org/ is from a strongly lefty/environmental POV. The opinion piece on substantial equivalence here http://www.i-sis.org.uk/subst.php by its own definition ("We are reproducing the Section on the principle of substantial equivalence to show how rediculous it is.") is tendentious -- and this is off the Michael Taylor concept in any case. "The World According to Monsanto" is also POV. For instance, the segment interviewing Maryanski that you mention. (start quoting the documentary) He states: "Basically, the government had taken a decision, that it would not create new laws, that it felt there were already sufficient laws in place, that had enough authority for the agencies, to deal with new technologies." She asks him: "That means the White House asked the agency to write the policy where GMOs should not be submitted to a specific regulatory regime? But this is not based on scientific data, this is a political decision?" He answers: "Yes, it was a political decision. It was a very broad decision that didn't apply to just foods, that applied to all products of biotechnology." Narrator: "Unbelievable. James Maryanski admits that GMO regulation was based on politics rather than science." (End quoting). So, this is the worst kind of "gotcha" reporting. Maryanksi is saying that the US needed to come up with a policy to regulate the biotechnology field as whole -- including drugs and diagnostics, industrial uses (for example, enzymes in laundry detergent are produced using biotechnology), agriculture/food -- all those industries were using biotechnology, and the US needed an overall regulatory framework. Overall regulatory frameworks -- policy -- are always political decisions. Always. They cannot not be. It is a distortion to say "oooo see it is political not scientific!" Very very POV and I would say harmful and misleading to the public. (by the way, the Boston Law Review article I linked to above, which describes the way this policy was reached, and the policy itself, makes it clear that the science would be a pillar of the regulatory regime ": (2) only regulation grounded in verifiable scientific risks would be tolerated" p 738) As an aside, in the next segment of the documentary, she goes on to misrepresent the concept of "substantial equivalence," and this misrepresentation has also damaged the public debate around GMOs. So no, "The World According to Monsanto" is not reliable and even-handed -- it is tendentious and POV.
As I said above, let's find references for these statements from a source without an axe to grind, that is credible to anybody.Jytdog (talk) 17:08, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
Have you read this article? http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/health/policy/14fda.html?_r=0

"Mr. Taylor is popular among many food-safety and nutrition advocates, who call him intelligent and courageous." and later: "At a food-safety conference in Washington last year, Dr. Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, stood in the hallway and debated Mr. Taylor’s qualities with Russell Libby, the executive director of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association. “He’s extremely knowledgeable and public-health oriented,” Dr. Jacobson said in a later interview." Not everybody views this guy as bad.Jytdog (talk) 02:31, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

I found similar text to the original one in the [[[Regulatory_capture#Food_and_Drug_Administration_.28FDA.29]] and also deleted it for the same reason. Need to put something back once we find reliable sources.Jytdog (talk) 13:02, 23 September 2012 (UTC)
  • Nice work so far. Well done. bobrayner (talk) 19:38, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

OK, so I spent most of today working on Taylor's wiki article. Michael R. Taylor I found sources that I believe are balanced. Please have a look there and tell me what you think! Jytdog (talk) 22:41, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Long term Roundup herbicide or Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize extremely toxic & carcinogenic PMID 22999595

Séralini GE, Clair E, Mesnage R, Gress S, Defarge N, Malatesta M, Hennequin D, de Vendômois JS.

PMID 22999595

Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize.


Food Chem Toxicol. 2012 Nov;50(11):4221-31.

doi: 10.1016/j.fct.2012.08.005.

Epub 2012 Sep 19.

Abstract

The health effects of a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize (from 11% in the diet), cultivated with or without Roundup, and Roundup alone (from 0.1ppb in water), were studied 2years in rats. In females, all treated groups died 2-3 times more than controls, and more rapidly. This difference was visible in 3 male groups fed GMOs. All results were hormone and sex dependent, and the pathological profiles were comparable. Females developed large mammary tumors almost always more often than and before controls, the pituitary was the second most disabled organ; the sex hormonal balance was modified by GMO and Roundup treatments. In treated males, liver congestions and necrosis were 2.5-5.5 times higher. This pathology was confirmed by optic and transmission electron microscopy. Marked and severe kidney nephropathies were also generally 1.3-2.3 greater. Males presented 4 times more large palpable tumors than controls which occurred up to 600days earlier. Biochemistry data confirmed very significant kidney chronic deficiencies; for all treatments and both sexes, 76% of the altered parameters were kidney related. These results can be explained by the non linear endocrine-disrupting effects of Roundup, but also by the overexpression of the transgene in the GMO and its metabolic consequences.


PMID 22999595 [PubMed - in process]

Full Free Text:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.fct.2012.08.005

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691512005637

http://research.sustainablefoodtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Final-Paper.pdf

--Ocdnctx (talk) 19:15, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for posting. From the study:
The lifespan of the control group of animals corresponded to the mean rat lifespan, but as is frequently the case with most mammals including humans (WHO, 2012), males on average died before females, except for some female treatment groups. All treatments in both sexes enhanced large tumor incidence by 2–3-fold in comparison to our controls but also for the number of mammary tumors in comparison to the same Harlan Sprague Dawley strain (Brix et al., 2005), and overall around 3-fold in comparison to the largest study with 1329 Sprague Dawley female rats (Chandra et al., 1992). In our study the tumors also developed considerably faster than the controls, even though the majority of tumors were observed after 18 months. The first large detectable tumors occurred at 4 and 7 months into the study in males and females respectively, underlining the inadequacy of the standard 90 day feeding trials for evaluating GM crop and food toxicity (Séralini et al., 2011). However, we do have this recent review which sees no harm: [5] Gandydancer (talk) 19:37, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
The limitations of this study have been widely discussed: 1 2 3 4. a13ean (talk) 19:46, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
This study also shows that eating higher concentrations of GM maize actually protects against cancer (see Top left graph in Fig 1). It is also discussed in quite a lot of depth here already. AIRcorn (talk) 20:44, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Comments on Article

Hi,

I just went through the article, and I made various comments which can be found here on a user subpage:

User:Jjjjjjjjjj/genetically_modified_food_controversies

Each comment is prefixed word the word "WikiComment".

Comments are stemming in part from the current debate going on in California with respect to Proposition 37:

Some comments include proposed revisions, but others are questions or reports on data or explorations.

Please feel free to take a look.

Responses could be written on the user subpage and/or here. Here may be better so that this can be the main page for any dialog.

Jjjjjjjjjj (talk) 05:49, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

thanks for your comments! addressed CA referendum in the lede -- good suggestion. will address others later! thanks again! Jytdog (talk) 12:07, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I just made a quick change which is fixing one of the internal links.
I looked into it a bit more this afternoon. So in the second comment we were talking about whether it is possible to extrapolate from differences in cancer rates, life expectancy, etc. So that would be a epidemiological study.
Like for example I got a notice for this one from the American Cancer Society (where they are planning to study around 300,000 people)
http://www.southatlantic-cancer.org/emails/cps3/baltimore.html
Or this one on vitamin D reported on in The New York Times:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/16/vitamin-d-shows-heart-benefits-in-study/
According to this news story there are some studies:
http://www.science20.com/science_20/blog/gm_maize_causes_tumors_rats_here_how_experts_responded-94259

"The first thing that leaps to my mind is why has nothing emerged from epidemiological studies in the countries where so much GM has been in the food chain for so long? If the effects are as big as purported, and if the work really is relevant to humans, why aren’t the North Americans dropping like flies?! - Prof Mark Tester, Research Professor, Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics, University of Adelaide

However, I wasn't able to find any with a PubMed Search:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=(epidemiological)%20AND%20GMO
But maybe there are some out there, and that could even be an additional section perhaps.
I've looked into some other things, and can post again, but just wanted to fix that internal link right away.
Jjjjjjjjjj (talk) 02:53, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
I didn't respond to this before. You appear to be trying to reinvent the science of toxicology. Toxicology is well understood and is used by regulators who examine safety of food derived from GM food before it is introduced to market. Please see the article on Regulation of the release of genetic modified organismsJytdog (talk) 15:10, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I received a response from Mark Tester (see blockquote above) -- and he wrote about epidemiological studies. I've summarized what he wrote at this user page:

User:Jjjjjjjjjj/genetically_modified_food_controversies_epidemiological_studies

Perhaps this could later be integrated into the article.

Jjjjjjjjjj (talk) 22:41, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

New Changes

Alright, changes have now gone through to the article and I also made some comments at User:Jjjjjjjjjj/genetically_modified_food_controversies

Jjjjjjjjjj (talk) 08:57, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

You replaced "there is now broad scientific and regulatory consensus that GM food on the market is safe to eat" with "most regulatory agencies and scientists now agree that GMO technology is safe to use in agriculture for human food". Your new statement is not accurate on 2 levels. Level of agreeement: there is consensus (it is not "many" which is much weaker). What there is consensus about: the question of whether food on the market derived from GMOs is safe to eat, is very different and more narrow than your statement " GMO technology is safe to use in agriculture for human food" which is actually false. GMO technology is not broadly, generally, absolutely safe to use to produce food - one could use it to do incredibly dangerous things like cause corn to product ricin. The point is that the regulatory regime is sufficient to ensure that existing products are safe enough and that future proposed products will only be allowed on the market if they are indeed shown to be safe enough.Jytdog (talk) 13:15, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
How does one measure scientific consensus? Just by the regulatory agencies (FDA, or its counterpart in the EU) ? What they are saying is that corporations influence the regulatory agencies through a variety of means. And that's what Séralini and other people say as well. They bring up Agent Orange and cigarettes.
Perhaps a further citation might be helpful -- but I don't know that there is anyway to quantify "scientific consensus".
I understand that GMO technology is not guaranteed to produce safe food. As the WHO said: "This means that individual GM foods and their safety should be assessed on a case-by-case basis and that it is not possible to make general statements on the safety of all GM foods." The wording of my statement wasn't intended to imply otherwise.
Jjjjjjjjjj (talk) 22:41, 26 October 2012 (UTC)


You added this text to the lede
Opponents also claim that corporations seek to manipulate and control scientists, government agencies, and the public into accepting a risky technology.[4][5][6]
I have no idea what the book says so cannot respond to it. The other two articles are POV and are focused on controversies over ads and op-eds around Prop 37. As I mentioned on your talk page, this stuff does not represent what mainstream science says and is also one-sided. Supporters of Prop 37 have also said lots of ludicrous things and have acted unethically by touting the Seralini results as meaningful and important. There is a huge firefight going on in California now over Prop 37 - this firefight should not distort the lede of this article nor the article as whole. If you want a section in the article on both sides of the debate over Prop 37, and a blow-by-blow of all the bullshit that is flying on both sides as the fight is waged (e.g. the ads featuring Miller who is really irrelevant from a scientific and regulatory point of view), please feel free to add it, but please do not layer all that stuff onto the actual issues.
Okay -- perhaps that could go into the section on Labeling -- with regard to prop. 37.
By the way -- I haven't read the book either -- but I'd say that's the gist of what the summary is reporting.
In Re to: "As I mentioned on your talk page...." -- I haven't seen any recent comments on my talk page. Anyway, I'll be away from Wikipedia for a while.
Jjjjjjjjjj (talk) 22:41, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
I made other edits to changes you made in the lede... restored proximity of Seralini discussion to discussion of safety. Eliminated some repetitions you created on public perception and regulation. Added "other side" to the market dynamics statement you made on the "oppose" side.
In the Seralini section, you removed the explanation I had provided that makes it very clear in layman's terms, why the number of rats in the Seralin study was not sufficient. You did this without comment. I have restored it. You may have good reason for changing it, but please provide it. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 13:15, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
Okay -- I said in my comments that I wasn't sure that WeedControlFreaks meets WP:RS, but I haven't looked into the blog that much.
My other thinking on that is that -- in particular with regard to the exact figures -- 86% of males -- and 72% of females. That's just one study. Now -- in contrast the information here:
http://www.huntingdon.com/assets/Posters/Poster0458.pdf?1340119893
is derived from an aggregation of studies.
Also, as stated in the comments it's possible the figures in the post got slightly off somehow.
Jjjjjjjjjj (talk) 22:41, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
Jytdog has some good points here. In particular, I want to stress that the Seralini study needs to be treated for what it is -- something which is noteworthy for inclusion news-wise, but not a WP:MEDRS or anything similar for the reasons already discussed in detail. Similarly, the attack piece on Bradford is clearly way WP:UNDUE for the lead, and while the Miller one might be worth mentioning, it is clearly undue for the lead, doesn't support what it's sourcing, and should be sourced to the original LA Times article rather than the pro Prop 37 web site. a13ean (talk) 14:47, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
Doesn't it meet WP:MEDRS as it is published in a reliable journal, unless it gets retracted at some point. It does fall under "Avoid over-emphasizing single studies, particularly in vitro or animal studies.". As such it currently takes up a large proportion of the article. Some of the wording needs to be changed e.g. "Seralini provided only a denial as opposed to statistical reasoning" is not at all neutral. The Pusztai affair is much more notalbe (recentism aside) and only takes up a fraction of the space, although admittedly it does have a main article. The whole article could actually do with some serious trimming, or at least be split.
Sorry I should have been more clear: it's an RS for the the fact that the work was done, but not to support any claims found in the study since it's only a primary source, and broadly criticized as unsupported. The criteria for the retraction of papers is actually very high, and just having a wrong conclusion of misleading analysis won't do it. For example the proposed mechanism, analysis and conclusion in this paper are now known to be totally wrong, but it won't ever be retracted because of this, since it still reports a novel experiment and its results. a13ean (talk) 17:30, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

One other thing: one can see that traffic to this article page went from 5,462 in August 2012, to 24,187 in September 2012, and already 27,718 for October 2012:

this is probably coming from the Proposition 37 debate.

Jjjjjjjjjj (talk) 06:55, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Possible problems

Surveys indicate that a majority of Americans support mandatory labeling. (However, such surveys often do not specify the effect on food prices.)

  • Why is it relevant to mention that surveys dont include the effect on food prices? This came up some years ago when there was a push here to get labelling legislation. The biotech lobby stated that it would increase labelling costs giving non-GM products an unfair advantage. The media pointed out that non-GM products often change labelling without cost to the consumers. The fact is that there is no effect, so mention of exclusion seems to not only imply that there would be, but that GM products would be somehow disadvantaged.
Of course changing words on a label costs almost nothing. But you are not thinking through this. This is not a question of pro-or con, it a simple matter of logistics. Right now, crops are harvested and sold to elevators, where harvests from various fields are all mixed. Elevators in turn sell the crop to processors that do things like turn corn into corn oil. Again, crops from many elevators are mixed at the processor. The corn oil is sold all over... and let's pick one thread, say a food maker like Kraft. Under the new law, Kraft would need to track what percentage of the corn oil was GM, and then exactly measure how much corn oil goes into say, a pop tart. And likewise track all ingredients in a pop tart so that they know if the pop tart as a whole falls over or under the threshold for labelling. All that tracking is a huge expense. And to the extent that there comes to be consumer demand for non-organic but non-GM food, we will have to build an entire separate infrastructure (separate elevators, separate trucks or train cars to carry harvest to processors, separate processing factories etc). So at minimum there will be a new huge amount of tracking work... at maximum, the cost of rebuilding an entire distribution network. You see? 14:38, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Another problem I see is that the article is relying too much on academic views which skews the issue in favour of the biotech industry. Consumers dont really care if current products are thought safe (the majority of the article), they care whether there is sufficient regulation or that there could be a problem in the future. An example is the section on substantial equivalence where concerns are minimised. Keeler and Lappe for instance showed the difference between a GM and same non-GM plant to show how much difference was permitted as an example that equivalence was too broadly defined to be called equivalent which is very relevant in regards to knowledge the public want to know, yet this was removed from the article leaving their comment basically looking like an unsupported passing reference in an opinion piece.
Science - the very method by which regulators determine whether food is safe -- is irrelevant for determining whether food is safe? Science - regulatory and academic science -- overwhelming shows that the risks from GM food currently on the market are negligible -- no more than the risks from conventional food. How in the world is that irrelevant? Anti-GM folks are indeed the climate-change-deniers of the left. It makes the conversation difficult/impossible when the scientific consensus is dismissed.14:38, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
  • I also notice that the purity of the food chain section has been reduced by deleting mention of the Flax contamination and it's effects which were more serious and far reaching than that of the Starlink case which is mentioned. The article has plenty of examples where the biotech industry nipped problems in the bud but is lacking in examples with negative outcomes. Wayne (talk) 03:58, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
Agreed that this needs improving. Will work on this. There are two big examples, starlink and the rice thing. Jytdog (talk) 14:38, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
  • In my country we already have tracking and separation of infrastructure and it has not visably affected price. There was a controversy not long ago when this was going to changed to mix GM and non-GM grains to reduce the cost. The public opposition was so great it was quickly blocked. You probably need to mention that you mean cost of separate infrastructure rather than just cost.
What is your country? More detail needed to understand the statement... thxJytdog (talk) 21:58, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
I saw from your user page that you are Australian. I live in New York. I've been reading about food in Australia. It appears that it is actually pretty hard to find any food in Australia that is actually labelled as retailers have shunned it. For example Coles doesn't use any ingredients derived from GMOs in its private label products (http://www.coles.com.au/Products/Coles-Products/Our-Brands/Coles/Our-Promise.aspx). I've been looking for studies to see what has happened to food prices since Australia started labeling. Can't find any yet. Do you know of any?Jytdog (talk) 01:38, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
  • I dont understand what you are replying to here as I never mentioned any science being irrelevant. What I'm saying is that public concerns are not being addressed by the science. I see no mention of the very real danger from loss of diversity or public fears regarding future dangers etc. It's all well and good for science to say substantial equivalence is ok but the example by Keeler and Lappe was a black and white comparison that could be understood by the general public who could then make and informed opinion. To date GMOs have provided no benifits to consumers so they are skeptical regarding the introduction of a new technology that they not only do not see any need for but are being forced to accept. In fact this is possibly the first time in history that people will have no choice in regards to whether they eat a new food or not because contamination cant be controlled. Wayne (talk) 03:13, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
This is a strange sentence: "What I'm saying is that public concerns are not being addressed by the science." I think the public is mostly concerned that GM food is dangerous to eat - maybe not acutely, but maybe in some long term way. What is frustrating is that the scientific community and the regulatory community have been steadily putting out a very clear message that GM food is safe enough to eat. It is not getting through, somehow. WIth respect to diversity, I do not think this is high on the public's list of concerns - that is indeed one of the concerns that environmentalists bring up, and is part of their larger argument against contemporary industrial agriculture in general. I am not sure what you mean when you say "I see no mention of the very real danger from loss of diversity" -- where do you not see that? Finally your statement that GM food is somehow "new food" flies in the face of mountains of regulatory science. Food derived from GMOs that is on the market has been shown to be substantially equivalent to food derived from non-GMOs. It is not new at all. No more new, for example, than food derived from hybrid varieties of crops like corn, which were un-naturally created by seed companies about a hundred years ago and have been sold to farmers and turned into food ever since, with no big announcement to the public. That is what the science tells us. And this is what I mean - you seem to be paying no attention to the mountains and mountains of work done by regulators and scientists around the world who have studied these foods extensively and found them to be equivalent to food already on the market. Why are you ignoring it? Have you taken the time to read the documents the OECD, FAO, FDSANZ, the EU food authorities, and the FDA have put out about all the work they have done? Jytdog (talk) 21:58, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
You dont understand the public viewpoint. To the public GMOs are new food and no mountains of scientic papers will convince them that "mating" a tomatoe with bacteria or a daffodil is as natural as a hybrid from two different related varieties. Even in standard breeding a new variety of apple is still seen as new. Substantially equivalent can also mean substantially different (how is a 25% to 30% difference in the important components between Roundup ready soy and non-GM soy equivalent?) and this is not explained in this article. Regardless of whether GM food is safe enough to eat why is the public being forced to eat a product they do not want or need? Again the article is not clear on this and basically just gives the biotech company view. A big concern is biotech control. All the controversy would go away if independent agencies (and the FDA can not be considered independent) did long term testing. An example of what I mean is the forensic system they have here. After several dodgy convictions based on flawed forensic evidence a Royal Commission was held that found major problems; basically that law enforcement are too subconsciously biased to do forensic testing. The government set up forensic laboratories independent from law enforcment whose techs are not permitted to investigate crimes or collect evidence and must publish all results of testing, whether favourable, unfavourable, relevant or irrelevant and whose services, data and results are available to both defense and prosecution. This is a model that the public would accept for GMOs. That biotech companies resist any oversight is why the public remains skeptical. Wayne (talk) 00:21, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
I asked you above if you have actually taken time to read what the regulators have tried so hard to communicate. You didn't answer, and when you write things like "Substantially equivalent can also mean substantially different" it becomes clear to me that you have not. And when you write something like "the FDA can not be considered independent" you are again making claims about reality that seem insupportable to me. I am baffled that you can believe that these hundreds of civil servants in countries around the world are all corrupt. I really don't see how it can be productive for us to continue to talk.Jytdog (talk) 01:38, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
So you are saying that the academic view is the only view that can be presented? Can you point out where I said that civil servants in countries around the world are all corrupt? Lastly, do you seriously believe that the FDA has affective oversight? The United States GM food regulatory system is industry self-regulated and voluntary. The FDA has never approved a GM food as safe, instead it conducts "pre- market reviews" that acknowledges that the biotech company has provided the FDA with a summary of it's data stating that the GMO is safe. The FDA relies almost exclusively on information provided by the GM crop developer, the majority of which is not published in journals or subjected to peer review. A peer reviewed Salk Institute study of the FDA's regulation of GMOs found that regulation of GM foods is a rubber-stamp approval process designed to increase public confidence, not to ensure the safety of genetically engineered foods.
  • "Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA’s job." — Philip Angell, Monsanto director of corporate communications.
  • "it is the food producer who is responsible for assuring safety". — US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
  • "Substantial equivalence is a pseudo-scientific concept because it is a commercial and political judgment masquerading as if it were scientific. It is, moreover, inherently anti-scientific because it was created primarily to provide an excuse for not requiring biochemical or toxicological tests." — extract from a peer reviewed paper in Nature 1999; 401(6753): 525–526
These points need to be addressed for neutrality.

Hi on the last statement from Nature. That was not a "peer reviewed paper", it was an opinion piece, and was roundly criticized in subsequent opinion pieces after it was published. This is the same sloppiness that I have found over and over in the anti-GM literature. That opinion piece is actually discussed in the Controversies article as is the criticism of it. That quote from Philip Angell is from the "Harvest of Fear" piece and the anti-GM community loves those quotes - one sees them all the time. They seem to be a perfect expression of corporate callousness. With respect to your comments about the FDA, I am sorry that you do not understand the regulatory process. I have tried to make sure the regulatory process is well explained in the regulation article; I will go back and review to make sure it is indeed clear. Briefly, in the US, the burden is on the sponsor of a new product to provide data and reasoning to the FDA that new products comply with the law - this is what the statement from the FDA expresses. It is the FDA's role to review that data and reasoning and judge -- in its sole judgement - whether the data and reasoning are sufficient to ensure that new product does comply with the law -- this is the meaning of the statement from Angell. The roles are clear - there is no ducking of responsibility. The exact same framework is in place throughout the US regulatory system. For instance with new drugs, the burden is on the company to spend the hundreds of millions of dollars it takes to conduct clinical trials - not on the government. The general perspective is that It would be a wasteful use of taxpayer money for the government to test new products that private companies will profit from, if the new products work during the testing, and will lose their shirt on, if the product fails during testing. The studies are risky -- many products fail during testing and are never even brought to regulators for final approval. I would certainly object if taxpayer dollars went to test new products instead of being used to build roads etc. Again -- saying it clearly and briefly -- in the US, companies pay for studies; regulators review those studies. Back to the larger topic: you still have not told me if you have read and thought about the documents produced by the OECD and FAO and the parallel documents produced in the US, to provide a regulatory framework. As I mentioned above, it seems to me that you have not. I don't understand how can criticize something so strongly that you do not understand. (but this is the climate-change-denier paradigm -- you don't agree with consequences, so you simply ignore or dismiss the data and information that leads to those consequences) Your assumption -- like the assumptions in the Nature opinion piece you cited -- appear to be that the regulators are in the pocket of the companies -- in other words, that they are corrupt. I view the regulatory community as working hard and in good faith to protect the public, and am very impressed with the documents they have produced, which frankly and clearly acknowledge the risks of GMOs (it is their job to see these risks clearly) and the practical limitations of time, money, scientific knowledge, and technology. I can't say anything other "Gee you really should educate yourself before you keep putting opinions out there." There I said it. I am happy to keep responding here but I wish you would do your own homework and that you would be more careful and thorough in your thinking.Jytdog (talk) 13:54, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Anti-labeling Arguments - certified organic

An editor labelled the following statement, under the anti-labelling section, with [citation needed] and [clarification needed] templates. Consumers who want to buy non-GE food already have an option: to purchase certified organic foods, which by definition cannot be produced with GE ingredients., using the edit summary "in the US this is not true". I've removed the fact tag, as that by definition is what certified organic is (I've linked to the article) - please add other discussions and reasons for the tags here. I understand that in the US accidental contamination is common due to the widespread use of GM crops, and that the 95% standard allows 5% of an organically-labelled product to be not organic (although still by definition approved). Please explain further how this is not true in the US. Greenman (talk) 12:08, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

In the EU, Products containing GMOs may not be labelled as organic unless the ingredients containing GMOs entered the products unintentionally and the GMO proportion in the ingredient is less than 0.9%. bobrayner (talk) 13:52, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
there are three standards in the US. From my understanding of the regulations, only the "100% Organic" designation conforms to the statement presented above.It is not necessarily true for products labelled "Organic" and less so for "Made with Organic Ingredients." Semitransgenic talk. 14:04, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
Other parts of the world have differing regulations, and we ought to shift our coverage away from US-centrism. bobrayner (talk) 14:11, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
true, this specific "Pros/Cons" item is sourced to an American commentator, it addresses the question as it relates to an American audience, it does not represent a global perspective. Semitransgenic talk. 14:18, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Noting scientific consensus on the safety on GM food in lede

Under the section "Health risks of consuming GM food" it does state that there is broad and regulatory consensus that GM food on the market is safe to eat but such an important conclusion by the scientific community should be mentioned in lede. Similar to how the global warming controversy page clearly states in its lede about the scientific consensus on global warming. Anyone else agree? Any objections to why it shouldn't be? BlackHades (talk) 22:06, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

It formerly was. I wrote it. I deleted it when I dramatically shortened the lede and the whole article as per the discussion above. Please join the discussion above about the length of the article and its lede. Thanks.Jytdog (talk) 23:12, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
Okay I'll move the discussion up there. BlackHades (talk) 01:27, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
Discussion above is not done.Jytdog (talk) 11:55, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Split

Since the end of July the article has grown from 45 kB "readable prose size" to over 120 kB (19353 words) "readable prose size" almost tripling in size. While I agree that consolidation of the various articles needed to be done, it might be a good idea to look at reducing the size of this page. To my mind the best way to split would be to create articles devoted to Environmental and Health issues and summarise them here. So I propose the creation of Environmental concerns with genetic modification and Health concerns with genetic modification and splitting information from here to there. There is a risk that they could become WP:POV forks, but if handled correctly it should be no worse than this article is now (which is really a just a POV fork from Genetically modified food). AIRcorn (talk) 03:17, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Interesting. I think it is more accurate to say that all the environmental stuff is more of a fork off GM crops than GM food, but that is a small matter. I think I would be OK with a split, but only with a true one -- one article on health (Health controversies of GMOs), another article on environment (environmental controversies of GMOs). I think we would need a third one, for economics where the sections on market dynamics, developing world, and IP issues could go (economic controversies of GMOs)... But I am strongly opposed to leaving an article in the middle with parts of all three. That is a nightmare. But a pure 3 way split could work. Interesting suggestion. Let's see what others say!Jytdog (talk) 03:27, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
I agree that the article is too long (far over the recommended limit given at Wikipedia:Article size). That being said, the article has very bad at concision and has a lot of largely irrelevant details, including a huge number of quotes (most of which appear unnecessary). My feeling is that some focused editing would bring the article much closer to a manageable size.
Also, I think the usual way to deal with an overly long article is to create subarticles – so we might have articles like Intellectual property and genetically modified foods, Seralini studies of genetically modified foods, etc – then this article would just contain a brief summary and a link to the main article. This is what already exists for the Pusztai affair.
A few of the reasons for not splitting the article (but creating subarticles instead) that come to mind are: there is no high-level overview of the entire controversy, it is difficult to decide where to place edge cases, we might need to create a new article for every concern that doesn’t fit in one of the current articles, the risk of POV forks (mentioned above), etc. Arc de Ciel (talk) 05:09, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

I think the first priority for the article would be to get the lead down to a smaller size. Jjjjjjjjjj (talk) 07:04, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Please see about three sections up. A "lede must be expanded" tag was put on a about a week ago and the tagger was quite insistent that the lede didn't follow wiki lede policy. So I expanded it to cover everything in the article. Rock and hard place!Jytdog (talk) 11:23, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
Splitting is unnecessary, the article simply needs some serious editing, the lead to begin with, it needs to summarise the key points from the main sections and should not offer material that doesn't appear in the main body. Also, the amount of bloat the September 2012 Séralini study has attracted is laughable, it deserves it's own article at this point. Semitransgenic talk. 15:55, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
Mindblowing. Semitrangenic, the commentor above, specifically called for the lede to be lengthened and put a tag on it saying now. Now it is too long? And not helping to fix it... frustrating. Jytdog (talk) 16:15, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
I think it was pretty obvious semitransgenic put the tag on because of the navigational paragraph considering this was the edit between their additions of the tag, the tag actually asked for it to be re-written not lengthened and the follow up comment posted here. The current lead needs to be cut into a third of the size and removing that paragraph would be a good start. AIRcorn (talk) 22:58, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
OK, that paragraph is gone. Jytdog (talk) 23:26, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
I was tempted to write a separate article on the latter Séralini study, but articles like that are very difficult to manage. (WP:GNG is easy to satisfy, WP:NPOV is much harder). On the flipside, it would make this article more manageable. What would everybody else think? bobrayner (talk) 17:05, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
I dislike the idea of giving such poor science, so opportunistically touted by its generators, its own article. I doubly dislike that we would still have to mention it here which would mean we would have to go over the main points, and then would have to do it again in more detail in a main article.Jytdog (talk) 18:11, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
That is how this encyclopaedia works, You start with a main article and it leads to more specific and more detailed ones the further down in the hierarchy you go. What we have now is a dumping ground for all the controversies surrounding genetic engineering when this should really just be an overview article.
Gotta say that i am little bit insulted that you called this article that I have worked hard to gather and edit ti fit the five pillars a "dumping ground." But I understand your point - too much content. :) Jytdog (talk) 11:54, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
It is possible to separate Seralini, although it is hard work to get to an acceptable standard (I know I was involved in trying to clean up the Pusztai affair). To be honest if this was a proper scientific review we would have maybe two to three sentences under health. Something like "In 2012 a study was published by Gilles Eric Séralini in the Food and Chemical Toxicology journal claiming that rats fed genetically modified maize developed cancer faster than rats fed non-modified maize. The study received widespread coverage in the media, but was criticised by other scientists for using rats prone to cancer, small sample sizes and non-standard statistical methods". But it is Wikipedia so details of the claims and counter claims will always end up here until we end up with the undue section that we have now. AIRcorn (talk) 23:21, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

OK I just went through and did a lot of trimming. Trying to make everybody happy here.Jytdog (talk) 02:46, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

I think an article for the Seralini studies in general could be useful, although not focused on just a particular one. Then again, it's also possible that sufficient cutting of the current version would make that article unnecessary. Arc de Ciel (talk) 03:25, 1 November 2012 (UTC)
Splitting is not necessary. After Jytdog's trimming, the page isn't any longer than the other scientific controversy pages of Global warming controversy and Creation–evolution controversy. BlackHades (talk) 01:59, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
It is still nearly twice the size of those pages. Readable prose size is 58/56kb for them and 94kb for this one. AIRcorn (talk) 02:59, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
Hi aircorn -- so i went through and did a lot of editing. Do you think we can edit it down to a manageable size? Or do we really need to split? If so, what do you think of my a true split, leaving nothing behind?Jytdog (talk) 13:16, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
It is much better. I think it is possible to get it down to an even more manageable size, keeping it there will be the problem. So by full split do you mean just having this article as a DAB page linking to the various controversies? Not sure about that. We could always go the Global Warming route and have Scientific opinion on GMO and Public opinion on GMO articles. AIRcorn (talk) 22:15, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
By "true split" i mean make 3 articles and leave nothing behind - no general article on controversies but instead have 3 - one each on health, environment, and economics.Jytdog (talk) 03:29, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
there seems to be a growing insinuation that global warming denial is somehow equivalent to being opposed to GMOs, this is a straw man. I would object to the fabrication of an article that paints "the public" as being somehow scientifically illiterate. Semitransgenic talk. 00:52, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
Not an insinuation but rather a flat-out accusation in a recent article in slate: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/09/are_gmo_foods_safe_opponents_are_skewing_the_science_to_scare_people_.html Jytdog (talk) 03:20, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
No, not equivalent, but there are definitely similarities (although it always surprises me how some groups support the scientific consensus for one and ignore it for the other). Anyway it doesn't hurt to look at how other topics cover controversies in order come up with ideas on how to sort this article out. AIRcorn (talk) 01:18, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
Also it is not about saying that the public are illiterate about science, but more that many of the scientific concerns are different to the public ones. Either way I still think a health/environment split is the most logical one if it is decide to go down this route. AIRcorn (talk) 01:22, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
In the important respect, i.e. taking a position against the evidence-based scientific consensus and arguing against or ignoring its existence or significance, they are similar. If we're talking fallacies (referring to your straw man reference), your last sentence is setting up a couple of false dichotomies and also I think either a hasty generalization or fallacy of composition. :-) Arc de Ciel (talk) 04:28, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
and of course some GMO cheerleaders also deny climate change, there are commentators on both sides of this argument, but this "global warming" generalisation is not a good analogy for a number of reasons:
Climate denial has a massive industry behind it; GMO critique bucks up against a massive industry.
The IPCC confirmed the consensus on climate, whereas its analogy for agriculture, IAASTD, did nothing of the sort for GMOs.
To equate GMO critique to climate denial is to engage in smear to end debate, not to engage in debate. Semitransgenic talk. 13:56, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
Nobody said they were the same or believed by the same people - for one thing, there is legitimate concern about risk (as described in the IAASTD report). The similarity to denialism in general comes when that risk is greatly exaggerated or when it is claimed that we already have evidence for harmful effects (as always, with the caveat "above the risk/evidence associated with any new food"). But as already stated below, I don't see why you brought up this topic. Arc de Ciel (talk) 08:40, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
I would say it is a useful way to point out hypocrisy, and is directed only to those on the left - of course it makes no sense if you apply it to those on the right. The argument briefly is that generally environmentalists accept the scientific consensus that global warming is happening and that it is driven by human activity. They get very frustrated with people who deny the science because they don't want to deal with the consequences -- with the need to reduce the production of greenhouses gases. But then a significant subset of those very same people who are frustrated with science-deniers, themselves deny the scientific consensus that GM foods on the market are safe enough. The argument is - why do you accept the scientific consensus for global warming but deny it for GM food? Are you science-driven or driven by ideology? It is a very relevant question.Jytdog (talk) 14:43, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
it may be relevant, but it is not the question at hand. "Ponting out hypocrisy" is not a rationale we use for the creation of new articles. Semitransgenic talk. 15:09, 9 November 2012 (UTC)']
semitransgenic you somewhat bizarrely introduced the topic of climate-change deniers and I responded to it. I have no idea how it relates to the topic of a split. I wrote: "By "true split" i mean make 3 articles and leave nothing behind - no general article on controversies but instead have 3 - one each on health, environment, and economics." and you responded: "there seems to be a growing insinuation that global warming denial is somehow equivalent to being opposed to GMOs, this is a straw man. I would object to the fabrication of an article that paints "the public" as being somehow scientifically illiterate"" Who proposed "fabrication of an article that paints "the public" as being somehow scientifically illiterate"? I certainly did not.Jytdog (talk) 15:50, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
@Jytog you not sure why you keep accusing me of things I have not done or said, AIRcorn raised the issue above. Semitransgenic talk. 16:44, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
Aircorn mentioned the global warming article as an example article of a controvesial subject. You are the person who brought up a connection between climate-change deniers and anti-GMO activitists and made the further strange leap to this whole "fabrication of an article that paints "the public" as being somehow scientifically illiterate"" thing - and you have still not explained what you meant by that.Jytdog (talk) 18:43, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
what I meant? surely it's self-evident? I don't think it requires explanation. Semitransgenic talk. 19:08, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
I am sorry I asked. Forget it.Jytdog (talk) 23:36, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Lead: See WP:lead

lead is NOT a summary of the main body of text and so fails WP:LEAD, please address the concerns set out in the guidelines before removing the banner. Semitransgenic talk. 15:39, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Please provide specific objections. Policy is general, applications are many and various. Also please note discussion above under Issue 1 with respect to paragraph you deleted. Thanks!Jytdog (talk) 15:42, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
there is a very clear specific objection: it does not summarise the article as presented in the table of contents. An overview of the key points (notable and sourced) as presented in each section, is what we need here. Semitransgenic talk. 15:52, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
OK I just dramatically shortened the lede (and everything else) as per discussion below.Jytdog (talk) 02:44, 1 November 2012 (UTC)
Shortening lede is fine but the scientific consensus should not be deleted from lede. It is extremely relevant to the topic and should be mentioned. The position of the science community is mentioned in all the other ledes involving scientific controversies such as Creation–evolution controversy and Global warming controversy. There is absolutely no reason for this controversy to be any different. Proposal to change lede to following. Flipping the supporters and opponents position in lede and adding one line in the supporters paragraph mentioning scientific consensus. Change highlighted in bold. BlackHades (talk) 01:32, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
I think it deserves more than that, actually (e.g. see the treatment in the articles you linked). I would have actually already made that change if I had the time. :-) Arc de Ciel (talk) 05:21, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
You're right it probably deserves more. Added one more additional line. Anyone have any suggestions to add on top of the bold highlighted below? BlackHades (talk) 08:40, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
applicable in the context of "In the United States..." Especially with regard to regulatory consensus. A good overview of the "consensus" debate can be found here. Semitransgenic talk. 18:33, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
That article is not about whether food from GM crops is safe, it is about GMOs in general - -all the issues this article deals with. Not relevant to consensus on safety of food. This is exactly the kind of sloppiness that originally led me to create one article on Controversies. Maybe there would be less confusion if we clearly separated controversies on food safety from controversies on environment from economic issues... but my sense is that people opposed to GMOs would just keep trying to insert all opposition everywhere and we will have to keep fighting uphill to keep things logically separated. 20:54, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
Semitransgenic, nowhere in your article does it give any impression that the scientific consensus that GM food is safe, is incorrect. Of the 5 they interviewed, only 2 were scientists and both support GM and would hence bolster the scientific consensus further. Non-scientific opinions are completely irrelevant. This is not meant to be a debate whether or not there is a scientific consensus, as this has already been established. This is meant to be a debate whether or not the scientific consensus should be mentioned in the lead and if so in what way it should be mentioned. BlackHades (talk) 21:25, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
article above not intended as a source, referred out of interest, nothing more. No objection to stating that "worldwide" scientific consensus exists, regarding the safety of "food on the market derived from GM crops," as long as we provide appropriate sourcing. The same goes for the matter of a worldwide "regulatory consensus," which is a separate issue; not sure we should conflate the two. Semitransgenic talk. 00:40, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

I made a small rewording of the addition, since it was a sentence fragment.

Besides that, I don't think the word "enough" should be included, since it implies that there are risks above those associated with non-GM food. Arc de Ciel (talk) 04:43, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Okay removed the word "enough". BlackHades (talk) 06:02, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
The word "enough" absolutely belongs. Nothing is absolutely safe. This is all about risk and there is always risk. The point is that GM food is safe enough.Jytdog (talk) 14:46, 9 November 2012 (UTC)


you have not addressed the matter of presenting sources for claims concerning a "broad consensus." Is this America we are discussing? or does it apply to the world more generally? If the latter, what sources are we using for this claim? And again, what about the the distinction that exists between "scientific" and "regulatory" consensus? For example, the situation in the EU is more complicated than that found in the US. Semitransgenic talk. 14:18, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
There are already sources for the scientific consensus that GM food on the market is safe enough. And EU regulatory authorities have declared some GM food to be safe -- those foods are part of what is included in the consensus. Those sources are cited.14:46, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
We need reliable secondary sources that address this matter of broad consensus, and that discuss it specifically, otherwise synthesis is likely. Additionally, if we applying this as a global generalisation, how do we account for the recent rejection of consensus in India? Semitransgenic talk. 15:00, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
Once again you have brought forth a source that does not discuss the safety of foods that are currently on the market that are derived from GMOs. The debate in India is on GM crops and encompasses environmental concerns and other matters. I do not believe you have looked at the sources cited, which specifically state that there is scientific consensus on the safety of currently marketed foods derived from GMOsJytdog (talk) 15:17, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
you appear to be an expert on the subject, could you please point me to the relevant sources? which ones specifically address the matter of global scientific and regulatory consensus? thanks. Semitransgenic talk. 15:33, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
comment below is not from me. I have said several times that the sources already in the article support the statement that there is scientific consensus that food on the market from GMOs is safe enough. please look at them.15:47, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
You can take a look at this: http://www.fao.org/docrep/006/Y5160E/y5160e10.htm . I believe the ICSU report mentioned there is this one: http://www.icsu.org/publications/reports-and-reviews/new-genetics-food-and-agriculture-scientific-discoveries-societal-dilemas-2003/ICSU_GMO_report_May_2003.pdf 134.76.183.215 (talk) 15:43, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
these are pretty old, a lot has happened since 2003, is there anything more recent? particularly with regard to regulatory consensus? they appear to be usable with regard to consumption but I see also the statement: "The lack of evidence of negative effects, however, does not mean that new transgenic foods are without risk (ICSU, GM Science Review Panel). Scientists acknowledge that not enough is known about the long-term effects of transgenic (and most traditional) foods. It will be difficult to detect long-term effects because of many confounding factors such as the underlying genetic variability in foods and problems in assessing the impacts of whole foods. Furthermore, newer, more complex genetically transformed foods may be more difficult to assess and may increase the possibility of unintended effects. New profiling or “fingerprinting” tools may be useful in testing whole foods for unintended changes in composition (ICSU)." .
Also, in 2005 the WTO stated: "Conflicting assessments and incomplete substantiation of the benefits, risks and limitations of GM food organisms by various scientific, commercial, consumer and public organizations have resulted in national and international controversy regarding their safe use as food and safe release into the environment...Such controversies have not only highlighted the wide range of opinions within and between Member States, but also the existing diversity in regulatory frameworks and principles for assessing benefits and risks of GMOs. In view of this lack of consensus, the Fifty-third World Health Assembly in 2000 adopted resolution WHA53.15 (WHO 2000b), according to which WHO should strengthen its capacity to support Member States to establish the scientific basis for decisions on GM food organisms, and ensure the transparency, excellence and independence of opinions delivered."
Can someone point to more recent content on this issue please? the recent source relating to issues in India clearly mentions a call for independent "biosafety tests...conducted before any field trial, including sub-chronic toxicity in small animals." If consensus existed there why would so many Indian scientists call for more safety trials? Semitransgenic talk. 16:39, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
semitransgenic, GM food that is marketed has been on the market since 2003. The sources in the article made it crystal clear that there is scientific and regulatory consensus that GM food on the market is safe enough to eat. And again you bring up sources that do not focus on the safety of food but that bring in environmental concerns as well. There is much less agreement about environmental risks of GM crops. Any source you bring that talks about both, will of course talk about lack of consensus. And the existing text already says that scientists and regulators who are in the consensus that GM food is safe enough want better tools and more data. They are scientists - they always want better tools and more data. Again, this is why I keep writing safe enough. Nobody who is reasonable would say that food from GMOs is 100% safe. Why? Nothing is 100% safe. Water is not 100% safe - too much of it kills you. Beans are not 100% safe -- they contain toxins. Tomatoes are not 100% safe - they contain toxins. Peanuts often have trace amounts of aflatoxin. You are going to be able to find tons and tons of sources that say that more data and tools are needed to help us better understand the risks of food from GMOs. That says nothing about the regulatory and scientific consensus that food from GMOs that is currently marketed is safe enough to eat. Jytdog (talk) 18:48, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
I'm not disputing that various sources discuss scientific consensus on food safety, I was simply asking for a reliable secondary source that clearly discusses the question of consensus in direct relation to statement "There is broad scientific and regulatory consensus that food on the market derived from GM crops is safe to eat," we simply require such sourcing, rather than expect our readers to scour primary material in an effort to substantiate such claims. And again, the Indian report is clearly discussing, amongst other issues, food safety issues. It suggests a need for further independent tests on "sub-chronic toxicity in small animals" and it states that tests should cover "food safety and toxicity tests on rodents and include sub-chronic feeding studies," so this is a large group of Indian scientists who are in fact not in agreement with the consensus as presented in the statement. Semitransgenic talk. 19:30, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
There are 4 sources in the article for the statement. You apparently still have not looked at them. And there were 5 scientists on the committee in India. You exaggerate.Jytdog (talk) 19:46, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
and you are misrepresenting information again, at least 100 scientists endorsed the TEC recommendations. Semitransgenic talk. 19:51, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
Semitransgenic, the scientific consensus has already been established. In 2012, the American Association for the Advancement of Science stated "Foods containing ingredients from genetically modified (GM) crops pose no greater risk than the same foods made from crops modified by conventional plant breeding techniques." http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2012/1025gm_statement.shtml The scientific consensus is already mentioned in the body of this article with several sources listed. Please review these. You yourself stated that you had no objection to stating that scientific consensus exists. Again this is not meant to be a discussion of whether there is a scientific consensus as this is already established. BlackHades (talk) 19:52, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
correct, I have no objection, as long as the sourcing covers global scientific and regulatory consensus, and does so using secondary sources. Semitransgenic talk. 20:06, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
The committee had five people. Oh and by the way here is information on the composition of that committee: "The only agricultural scientist on the technical expert committee dissociated himself, leaving five members who are biologists, but not biotechnologists, much less agricultural biotechnologists. The staunch opposition of these five to GE crop technology is well known, so it wasn’t surprising that they produced a heavily biased report." (http://www.indianexpress.com/news/battle-over-biotech/1026703) Not part of the scientific mainstream. As for the 100 scientists who supported it, great you have people like this: "Dr B N Viswanath, Agricultural Entomologist, Consultant in Organic Farming, Bangalore" and "Dr. Maya Mahajan, Phd Environmental Science, Green Alternatives, Coimbatore". Yep. Jytdog (talk) 20:12, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
not sure why you find it unacceptable for individuals in other scientific disciplines to express concerns if they have them, particularly in light of the level of regulatory corruption that exists in India. Incidentally, the article you are quoting is written by C Kameswara Rao, from the Bangalore based Foundation for Biotechnology Awareness and Education, a GM lobby group. Semitransgenic talk. 20:37, 9 November 2012 (UTC)


Addressing concerns by Arc de Ciel and Jytdog on the words "safe enough", how does everyone feel about changing it to "There is broad scientific and regulatory consensus that food on the market derived from GM crops pose no greater risk than conventional food" instead. BlackHades (talk) 19:58, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
Fine with that language but I don't think there is consensus to lengthen the lede. We are still debating whether to edit this article down further and keep it whole, or split it into different articles. If we do an article focused on safety then of course this would go in the lede of that article. Not sure if it would go in this one. So I suggest you sit tight... this is still very clearly stated in the body of the article so the content is there. :) Jytdog (talk) 20:20, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
It's only 2 sentences and highly relevant and absolutely should be there. All the other pages that involve scientific controversies specifically mention what the position of the science community is in the lede. This should not be any different. It should be there regardless of whether this article gets split or not. If it's a concern about size, we can find other sentences to contract or delete. BlackHades (talk) 20:36, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
DUDE. You recently joined the discussion and you are very welcome but please cool your jets. I worked hard to put this article and the other genetic engineering articles into some kind of decent NPOV and well sourced state and other people talking here have also tried hard to do the same. Again - I WROTE the text you want to put into the lede. I originally put it in the lede. I agree it is Important and True. But we are in the middle of a discussion here so just please chill out. The world will not burn down if this goes into a lede now or later. ALSO there needs to be balance. If you add this then we will need to add information contra-GMOs and off we go to the races. So please just chill for a bit. Thanks.Jytdog (talk) 23:34, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Seems you're the one that needs to chill. How exactly does the statement violate NPOV? Who says the world will burn down? I'm perfectly fine with adding information that is contra-GMOs. I welcome input in that regard. Others have stated no objection. And you're not being very clear why it shouldn't be done. Specifically what is the issue you're having? NPOV? Length? Split? Are you trying to say it shouldn't be there if it's not getting split? You're being extremely vague and not clear what exactly you're objecting to. BlackHades (talk) 01:22, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the objection is either. :-) Anyways, I think that the "no greater risk" statement is much better - it's an important clarification that tends to be forgotten. Arc de Ciel (talk) 08:40, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
The article covers many things -- it covers the safety of food, labelling, environmental concerns, regulatory capture, economic concerns, and philosophical/theological concerns. Right now the lede is tight and briefly mentions all those things. As I have mentioned several times, the exact text you want to add to the lede (albeit with your great alteration) was there before - as was a boatload of other text that discussed all the other issues - almost of which I had written to provide a complete summary of the article. However as per complaints on this page about the lede being too long, I dramatically shortened the lede -- here is the edit, if you have not gone back and looked at the history already: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Genetically_modified_food_controversies&diff=prev&oldid=520822553. Putting this particular thing back gives undue weight to the the health issue in the lede. On top of that, yes we will we have to acknowledge those who disagree with the consensus on this issue. One thing leads to another and soon the lede will be back to length it was before, at which point people will complain again. It is just not productive, to yo-yo like this. I am sorry you feel I am being vague - I have tried to communicate that there is a history here and you are entering into the story as it is unfolding. So please let's finish the discussion about length of this article and splitting or not, and then create an appropriate lede or ledes that fit whatever we end up with. That's my perspective. I don't believe you haven't commented on the question of the split or any of the other content in the article.. you seem to be focused on this single point. Maybe that is why my response doesn't make sense to you - I am looking at the whole article and what we are doing with it. Jytdog (talk) 21:51, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
I have commented on the split. I have said I don't feel splitting is necessary at this time. Although if there is, or have been, several attempts of downsizing and reediting, but the article still continuously gets to become an unmanageable size over time repeatedly, I would not be opposed to splitting at that point.
OK, thanks! Sorry i missed it.Jytdog (talk) 01:39, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
That being said, the issue of splitting should be irrelevant to this discussion. That is, the position of the science community, SHOULD be mentioned in lede. Regardless of whether a split occurs or not. This is consistent with all the other scientific controversies such as Creation–evolution controversy and Global warming controversy. A split occurred in Global warming controversy into Public opinion on climate change and Scientific opinion on climate change and the scientific consensus is still mentioned in the lede in the primary article Global warming controversy. So I don't understand what relevance the possibility of a split has on this discussion.
And yes I have seen the previous lede already. It was bloated I agree but certainly not due to the scientific consensus aspect. And while I agree that the lede needed to be dramatically shortened from the previous lede, it seems it was completely overdone and you can make the argument that the lede is too short now relative to the article. Your fear that there will be a yo-yo affect that will cause the lede to bloated again due to this aspect is unfounded with the following examples. Please take the time to review Creation–evolution controversy and Global warming controversy and see how the scientific consensus is handled in their ledes. They are short and precise and to the point and did not cause their ledes to be bloated at all. They don't even mention a counter position to the scientific consensus in their ledes so I'm unsure if one would be necessary here. But if you absolutely feel there should be one here, I went ahead and added one contra-GMO line from the previous lede. This should be all the words and lines that's needed. Very short but precise description on the scientific consensus with a a very short and precise counter argument. No bloat at all. If there are attempts by others to bloat it beyond this, we can revert them.
Do you agree or disagree with the following. The scientific consensus on GM food should be mentioned in lede regardless of whether there is split or not. Yes or no? If your answer is no, please give an explanation why this scientific controversy should be different than Creation–evolution controversy and Global warming controversy in that regard. You have yet to give any explanation or reasons to address this. Please state them if this is the case. BlackHades (talk) 00:16, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
I really appreciate you continuing to talk - and mirroring me so I know you heard me! I did address why I took it out and why i have been arguing against putting it back in -- I took out everything so that the weight of the lede would remain balanced. You keep talking about "the" scientific consensus but there is only consensus for one issue out of the many issues in the article. But look -- talking more about food safety in the lede is clearly super important to you, so have at it and add it back. We'll see what happens. Feel free to add depth to the other issues as well so we don't get shredded on undue weight in the lede on the food safety issue. I hear you that it is arguably too shortJytdog (talk) 01:39, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
I don't believe one line will suddenly make it undue weight. Not to mention the health effects of GM food seem to be a much more central focus of this controversy than either environmental or economical effects. There's much more studies done on health effects of GM. If you browse articles, forums, websites either pro or anti GM, there's far more focus put on potential health effects of GM food than there is environmental or economical impacts. Not to say those aren't controversial as well but there's less light being focused on them. And regardless, if there is a scientific consensus, it should be mentioned in the lede. When one exists for environmental and economical effects, that should be added as well. BlackHades (talk) 04:53, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
Now that we finally have a consensus to add the science community position on GM food in the lead, any objections to the lines below? I just recently added the Greenpeace and World Wildlife Fund position line. Should that line be there? BlackHades (talk) 04:53, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
there isn't consensus, and this is blatant meatpuppetry. Semitransgenic talk. 19:25, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
I suggest you substantiate that accusation if you want to make it.
With regards to BlackHades' question, note that the concerns listed in your second sentence are repeated in the sentences after. Other than that, though, I don't see any reason why Greenpeace/WWF shouldn't be mentioned since they are well-known examples of critics. Arc de Ciel (talk) 20:06, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
Semitransgenic, given that several have now agreed to add the science community position in lede with zero in opposition including you. That would be a consensus. As Arc de Ciel have already stated, please substantiate your claim. BlackHades (talk) 20:51, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
substantiate? it's pretty clear this is an undeclared secondary account, pretty sad that editors need to stoop this. Semitransgenic talk. 14:16, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Undeclared secondary account? LOL. Not everything in life is a conspiracy. BlackHades (talk) 19:09, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Pretty happy with the sentences as written. Just a few comments. I would remove nonetheless, it sounds weaselly and is not really needed. Also I am not so sure there is broad regulatory consensus. In America, Australia and most countries that actively grow the crops there would be, but Europe in particular does not seem to have it. You can't really have broad regulatory consensus when a large number of countries have moratoriums on restrictions on the use of GMOs. AIRcorn (talk) 00:00, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for making the proposed text stand out, aircorn. Just wanted to make 2 notes: 1) Now that I look at it again, I really do not like this for the undue weight. But as I said I will not block it. Also: 2) "regulatory" is an interesting notion -- are we meaning the same thing when we say the word? Aircorn you mention Europe. Regulators there and at FSANZ have approved scads of glyphosate-resistance and Bt modification events with respect to the safety of the resulting food. The regulatory community does agree that existing GM food is safe. There have been political decisions in various EU countries (and states in Australia) to not approve growing GM crops. In the EU, central authorities have shot down every single one based on food safety. Some nonapprovals based on environmental concerns have stood. And both the EU and Australia/NZ have mandatory labelling, to which retailers have reacted by not stocking any such labelled food. Result - there is hardly any GM food in the EU and Aus/NZ. But that is not due to regulators. My point: when I say "regulatory" I am referring to the output of regulatory authorities - I do not mean the ultimate decisions that political leaders or retailers make after that output is provided. To me, it is meaningful to talk about 'regulatory consensus" because the people who are in the regulatory bureaucracies are a community, and there is consensus in that community. Not sure what other folks mean when they say it. You seem to be working with more of the "ultimate decision by the government" notion. And if that is what we go with, I think it is fair to say that there is not regulatory consensus. Jytdog (talk) 01:16, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
You sum it up well. When I say regulatory I am talking about more than just the regulatory agency. For example, my understanding of the process in Australia is that FSANZ bases there regulatory approval on science. So the scientific consensus and the regulatory approval consensuses are one in the same as far as they are concerned. However they only deal with human and environmental safety. The individual state governments can regulate on other issues (i.e trade impact) and have imposed moratoriums on the planting of GMOs due to this. There is not consensus (let alone broad consensus) on political regulation, and as regulation based on science follows the scientific communities views it is already covered. AIRcorn (talk) 01:40, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
I think it is similar in Europe, where each country can effectively override GMOs approved as safe for other reasons. Some South American countries seem to have a similar process, with different governmental departments provide approval based on different aims (environment, human health and trade impacts being the general ones). AIRcorn (talk) 01:44, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Removed words nonetheless and regulatory. I put the first 3 sentences back together in one paragraph. I feel it looks and flows better this way. But if there's strong objection to that, I'll change it back. BlackHades (talk) 02:28, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Adding to article now. BlackHades (talk) 01:57, 13 November 2012 (UTC)


Comment Nov 8

Semitransgenic, with regards to [6], could you please address the actual reasons that I gave for my edit? Arc de Ciel (talk) 03:55, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

@AdC as it is you who insists upon deleting appropriately sourced content, would you mind stating clearly here why you believe the summary of Prop. 37 central argument is "redundant and misleading." If you believe this is misleading, can you please offer a summary below that explains to our readers what this Prop. 37 vote was about, and what the main issues were. Semitransgenic talk. 16:52, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure my original edit summary was quite clear. We already have a detailed description of the arguments on each side of the debate, in the introduction to the labeling section. In the paragraph immediately afterwards, it restates several of the arguments (thus redundant). However, it skips some of them as well (thus oversimplification, or as I put it in my second edit summary, misleading).
Proposition 37 is about the issue that was described in the preceding paragraph, and there is no need to make an abridged restatement of it. There are some components that are not redundant, e.g. the specific criticism that the measure was too complex, but this seems to me to be relatively unimportant and not worthy of a mention in a brief summary such as this. Or is it the specific list of opponents that you want to maintain? That's fine with me, although I would call it more suitable to the paragraph after, on funding sources. I don't understand your response that the content is sourced, because I don't see how that has a bearing on the reasoning that I had given. If there were relevant content in your Huffington Post source that was relevant to the general labeling debate and not redundant with the previous paragraph, it would be merged upwards to keep the discussion in one place. (On consideration, I actually think that it doesn't deserve its own section - the current form of the article doesn't explain why it might be more important than all the other labelling issues.) Again, can you please clarify your objection? Arc de Ciel (talk) 08:40, 10 November 2012 (UTC)


split discussion - let's focus on it

OK there is a proposal to split the article.

Below are the sections. Let's talk about what sections would go where if we were to split.

1 Public perception
2 Industrial agriculture
3 Labeling
4 Objectivity of regulatory bodies
5 Health risks of consuming GM food
6 Environmental risks and benefits
7 World Hunger
8 Agricultural economics
9 Intellectual property and market dynamics
10 Litigation in the US
11 India
12 Availability of GM seed for testing
13 Biological process
14 Religious issues
15 Controversial cases
15.1 Pusztai affair (health)
15.2 Lövei study on effect of Bt on non-target organisms
15.3 Aris study on human exposure to pesticides produced in GM foods
15.4 Netherwood study on gene transfer from food to humans
15.5 Séralini studies and responses
15.6 Protests

OK so here is a proposal: health is blue; environment is green; economic is red; mix is brown; don't know what to do with it, is black

1 Public perception (grab bag, includes health, environment, and economics)
2 Industrial agriculture (grab bag)
3 Labeling (really about health, I think, but also about regulatory)
4 Objectivity of regulatory bodies
5 Health risks of consuming GM food (health)
6 Environmental risks and benefits (enviromment)
7 World Hunger
8 Agricultural economics
9 Intellectual property and market dynamics
10 Litigation in the US
11 India
12 Availability of GM seed for testing
13 Biological process
14 Religious issues
15 Controversial cases
15.1 Pusztai affair (health)
15.2 Lövei study on effect of Bt on non-target organisms (environment)
15.3 Aris study on human exposure to pesticides produced in GM foods
15.4 Netherwood study on gene transfer from food to humans (health)
15.5 Séralini studies and responses (health)
15.6 Protests (this is about people attacking test fields where GM crops are grown which I image is a grab bag of reasons)

Looking at it, I don't think my idea of a pure split will work - there are too many mixed and unknown things that need a general article. I guess this is why aircorn (I think it was) proposed just splitting out health and environment and leaving brief discussions here. that would go a long way to cutting down the size, I guess... I still dread having discussions of controversial issues in more than one place, though.Jytdog (talk) 22:13, 10 November 2012 (UTC)

I still disagree with splitting. Splitting seems like it'll create a bigger mess than it'll solve. I think the size of this article can be managed without split. But if splitting were to occur, it would make more sense to split off the "controversial cases" section rather than "heath and environment". BlackHades (talk) 00:33, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
Maybe the best approach is to organise this article into the broad sections outlined above. Health, Environment, Economic, Regulation, Religion and other. I think we can merge the controversial cases back into the sections above without too much drama. Rearranging may help consolidate some of the information and allow us to trim it back. AIRcorn (talk) 00:36, 12 November 2012 (UTC)
Okay, I went ahead and have started this. So far I have only trimmed the Health section, but am willing to go through the rest. Thought I would pause here to see what everyone thought before diving in any further. AIRcorn (talk) 07:54, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
I didn't have enough time to go through everything in detail, but it looks like a good start. :-) Arc de Ciel (talk) 09:53, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
Given that nearly the entire section on Seralini was deleted, perhaps we should reopen the discussion of whether Seralini should get its own article. BlackHades (talk) 21:23, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
It probably should. I would create an article titled Committee for Research and Independent Information on Genetic Engineering if it was me. That way it can concentrate on all the studies and avoid some of the WP:BLP concerns that could crop up in a Gilles-Eric Séralini article. It is probably more notable too. AIRcorn (talk) 06:43, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for taking a stab at editing this down. I'm sorry but I strongly object to including the human studies in the health section. Two problems with them. 1) they do not meet the criteria for WP:MEDRS in that they are one-off studies, not reviews, and 2) they are horrible science that probably should not have been published. I was comfortable having them under a "controversies" section so that they were referenced somewhere (they should be) but they do not belong in the main health section. Likewise, I think that Pusztai does not belong in the animal studies section for the same two reasons. Seralini did a couple of reviews, but most of what he has published is his own studies and to the extent the paragraph discusses those papers they also fail WP:MEDRS and are also bad science. Can we please move all those out of the health section? ThanksJytdog (talk) 01:46, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
What is wrong with the Netherwood study? Anyway looking at it again I tend to agree that the human studies don't fit completely within health; they are more about horizontal gene transfer than anything else. Maybe the sections title should be changed and it moved to its own section. There is an issue of WP:Undue with Pusztai's and Seralini's experiments, but moving them to other sections does not solve that and they do fit in the current one. I would be more inclined to condense them to a single paragraph instead. AIRcorn (talk) 06:43, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
Netherwood study was shredded by critics. Hortizontal gene transfer is definitely a concern for anti-folks, they cite these studies all the time. But as I wrote these single studies are bad science, and more importantly they don't meet WP:MEDRS -- you didn't respond to that and I would appreciate if you would. The key thing for WP:MEDRS is that individual studies are not acceptable sources -- only reviews are. You'll notice that in the animal studies section the only articles I had there were reviews of the literature. So these single studies don't belong in the main health section as they are not acceptable sources for information about human health. We need to discuss them b/c they are part of the controversy but they are not reliable information about health.Jytdog (talk) 15:16, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
The study sees fine, it was just misinterpreted by some. MEDRS does not say that single studies are not reliable sources, just that they should be used carefully and in context. I think giving them there own section is probably worse in that regard. They could possibly go under public perception. The Pusztai one in particular has been credited with solidifying the public opposition to GM food. AIRcorn (talk) 21:59, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
I am sorry you are right I was thinking of the maternal feeding one. And you are also right about the MEDRS - OK to use with care. So I withdraw these objections. Thanks for the discussion. I am still unhappy about the crap science being presented next to good science but I don't see any way around it.Jytdog (talk) 04:38, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
No bother. I agree about the maternal one though, the detection levels would probably be discounted as background by most groups. Not much that can be done once they are published though. Just need to present them with the right weight and make sure the relevant criticisms are also there. AIRcorn (talk) 06:18, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

EFSA press release

Hi all,
Have you seen this?

Serious defects in the design and methodology of a paper by Séralini et al. mean it does not meet acceptable scientific standards and there is no need to re-examine previous safety evaluations of genetically modified maize NK603. These are the conclusions of separate and independent assessments carried out by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and six EU Member States...

Might be a good idea to tweak some of our content accordingly. bobrayner (talk) 20:00, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! It is one of the many regulatory reports cited in the seralini sectin -- i think there were something 8 differnet regulatory agencies that found the study not credible.20:04, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

hi, could someone add something, please?

i don't know how to edit an article, so could someone please add http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicians_for_Social_Responsibility as one of the groups against GMOs? It seems pretty stilted to have two environmental groups, one of which is seen by most people as radical, but not include a huge group of physicians. Sorry if i did this wrong. thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.103.247.31 (talk) 17:09, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

That's a reasonable request. However I went and looked at their website (http://www.psr.org/) and saw nothing about anti-GM positions or activity. It would be a bad thing to attribute to them a position they do not have. Could you please provide evidence (a source) that they have a stance (as an organization) or have taken action (as an organization) on this issue? thx Jytdog (talk) 17:27, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
Here are two links to them supporting labelling GMO's: [7] and [8]. Those are links in support of transparency, while here's an explicit link to an anti-GMP position: [9]. I don't know how the organisation functions with regards to its chapters, as some of these seem positions by specific chapters, which would need to be clarified in the article. Greenman (talk) 22:04, 11 December 2012 (UTC)
I'll let other people weigh in here, but my sense is that this is too tepid to make PSR have sufficient weight to justify mention. There are lots of organizations that have supported labeling and we cannot list them all. The organizations that we do mention have all had major initiatives against food from GMOs or about labeling.Jytdog (talk) 14:35, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

religious/spiritual aversion to GMO

It's untrue that no spiritual system has designated GMOs as unaccecptable. some are forums, but not all spirutual groups have centralized voices.

Rastafari often talk against it.12 3 4 so GMO is definately not Ital

Nation of Islam (NOI) teach that anything grafted from the original is "devil" that being the case, GMO would definately be banned. The above goes for the Nation of Gods and Earths.

Hebrew israelites also ban GMO's according to their official site 1 2

I'm sure I could find others, but this was just with a quick google search. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vapblack (talk • contribs) 22:26, 24 January 2013 (UTC)vap (talk) 22:39, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

I struggle with your first 2 sentences. How can we say whether a "system" has designated GMOs as unacceptable if there is no voice that speaks authoratitively for that "system"? If we want to go with one-offs, we could possibly have content that says things like: "person X of spiritual system Y opposes GMOs on the basis of A, B, and C tenets of spirtual system Y".... but we would need some reliable source (not a self-published source) that described that opposition, and also - AND VERY IMPORTANTLY - that put that person, and that position, in some context within the spiritual system, so that we can be sure that we are not giving undue weight to some minority stance within the spiritual system and therefore casting the spiritual system in an inaccurate light, which nobody wants to do. That is not respectful and it is also against wikipedia policies. I have not found sources that accomplish that. If you can find them I would be glad to use them!Jytdog (talk) 23:26, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
Also which of these two websites (http://www.twelve-tribes-rising.com) and (http://www.therealhebrewisraelites.com/) is the actual official website of the Hebrew israelites, and what is your basis for saying so?Jytdog (talk) 23:33, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
The section here does need expanding. I would recommend going to the daughter article Religious views on genetically modified foods and adding the information there first and then summarising or taking the more relevant points from that article and increasing the mention here to a full paragraph. AIRcorn (talk) 00:01, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
I had looked at that article and found nothing very notable in it to include here. but yes new content should go there first for sure! thanks for pointing that out.Jytdog (talk) 00:20, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Japan and South Korea suspended U.S. wheat imports for unapproved strain (Monsanto)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/european-union-urges-testing-of-us-wheat-imports-for-unapproved-strain/2013/05/31/eaaefcdc-c9fc-11e2-8da7-d274bc611a47_story.html Not sure how to incorporate this info in the page - it says Japan and South Korea have suspended wheat inports from the US following a discovery of an unapproved strain of wheat growing in Oregon, and the EU is advising members to test shipments. XOttawahitech (talk) 12:53, 3 June 2013 (UTC)

The article already has content on the discovery of the GM wheat in Oregon, in this section. 18:01, 3 June 2013 (UTC)
  1. ^ Tryptophan produced by Showa Denko and epidemic eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome. National Center for Biotechnology Information (Abstract) October 1996
  2. ^ John B. Fagan (November 1997). "Tryptophan Summary". Retrieved 2006-10-27.
  3. ^ Toxic L-tryptophan: Shedding Light on a Mysterious Epidemic Seeds of Deception.com Comments by Scientists and Others.
  4. ^ Drucker, Steven (2012). Altered Genes, Twisted Truth: How the Venture to Genetically Engineer Our Food Has Subverted Science, Corrupted Government, and Systematically Deceived the Public (Part One). Clear River Press.
  5. ^ "No on 37 Forced to Pull TV Ad After Misrepresenting Stanford University". Yes on 37: Right to Know. 5 October 2012. Retrieved 23 October 2012.
  6. ^ "Did Monsanto Write This Anti-GMO Labeling Op-Ed Signed by a UC Davis Professor?". 4 October 2012. Retrieved 23 October 2012.
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