Talk:Genetically modified food controversies

suggestion

Found some information that may be of use to the Insecticides, or even Yield, section of your article. It is more recent than than the studies you have listed in the Insecticides section, and discusses the Bt sweet corn and insecticide use in New York, Maryland, Minnesota, Ohio, and Georgia. It supports your first sentence in the section, stating "Our data shows that using Bt sweet corn will dramatically reduce the use of traditional pesticides. ... growers should realize increased profits, and there will be less risk to non-target organisms..." Here is the link: http://sbc.ucdavis.edu/images/Shelton-Bt%20sweet%20corn%20multi-state%20trials-JEconEntomol-2013.pdf

Shelton, A.M., D.L. Olmstead, E.C. Burkness, W.D. Hutchison, G. Dively, C. Welty and A.N. Sparks. Multi-state trials of Bt sweet corn varieties for control of the corn earworm, Helicoverpa zea (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae). J. Econ. Entomol., October 2013

Just thought it might be helpful and provide more recent support to the section. Do with it as you like.

Also, I was wondering if you could give a few details on the Entropy article on herbicides that was deemed unreliable. I looked in the Talk archives and had trouble finding the discussion about it. Just curious what went wrong with it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fuller.328 (talk • contribs) 14:10, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

thanks for the citation! However that is a WP:PRIMARY source and so we shouldn't use it, per WP:OR, WP:NPOV, and WP:RS. Sorrry, I misdirected you about the Entropy article - it was originally brought up on the Monsanto article and from there went to WP:MEDRS. It later came up in the Glyphosate article too. here are the three most extended discussions.

• april 28 2013 Talk:Monsanto/Archives/2013/May#entropy_study.2Fbad_science.3F
• april 30 2013 Wikipedia_talk:Identifying_reliable_sources_(medicine)/Archive_7#Review_of_Monsanto.27s_Roundup_herbicide (this is the key discussion)
• december 2013 Talk:Glyphosate/Archive_3#Entropy_article_.28again.29

there you go. Jytdog (talk) 14:27, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed

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thanks for fixing that! Jytdog (talk) 00:17, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

lead

Lfstevens, about your edit condensing the lead, just so you know, not long ago another editor tagged this article claiming that the lead was not complete. See Talk:Genetically_modified_food_controversies/Archive_9#Lead_inadequate_tag. not objecting to your edit, just making sure you are aware of how it go to where it was prior to your edit. Jytdog (talk) 17:33, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

Copy edit

Working my way through this overlong article. Feedback encouraged. Comments (more to come):

• I don't see the point of having 8 refs for a single sentence. It would be great for an SME to pick a winner or two and reduce the glut.
• In the gene flow section, I found this:

There are concerns that the spread of genes from modified organisms to unmodified relatives could produce species of weeds resistant to herbicides that could contaminate nearby non-genetically modified crops or organic crops, or could disrupt the ecosystem,

I can't get it to make sense, which means I can't fix it. "produce species of weeds" sounds like gene flow. But the the (one functioning) ref talks about GMOs escaping and becoming considered weeds, which doesn't sound like gene flow. Lfstevens (talk) 23:12, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

About the multiple citations, I'm not sure which sentence you are referring to, but if it has anything to do with GMO safety and scientific consensus, please be aware that this has been a topic of lengthy discussion and dispute, so it is probably better not to delete any of those sources. That comment also relates to what Jytdog said just above.

About the gene flow question, I could be wrong, but that sounds like crop escape rather than gene flow to me, and perhaps is in the wrong section – I think. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:39, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Lfstevens please do an issue per section. it gets too messy to respond to multiple things in one thread. Jytdog (talk) 22:06, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

ditto what trypto said on the multiple citations on the scientific consensus statement. please don't change that - it is has been intensely negotiated, the exact language was subject of an RfC, and it is constantly under attack. Jytdog (talk) 22:06, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

I see this discussion expanding more rapidly than any article (>10k) that I've worked on. I will split up henceforth. Lfstevens (talk) 23:12, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

with respect to gene flow... PMID 12943539 describes outcrossing and horizontal gene transfer; the now-archived page on the Human Genome Project site mentions "unintended transfer of transgenes through cross-pollinatio"=n"; you are correct that the Progressive citation is about mixing seeds for planting or harvests (not gene flow); the NY Times article on salmon mentions interbreeding (gene flow) along with out-competing; ditto the Congressional Research Service report. i just fixed the citation on that; the other 3 work. I moved the Progressive citation and I removed the Human Genome Project citation as it says little, other than providing a useful outline. More generally, i acknowledge taht the sentences you point out, are "up to" a lot of things at once. Especially when you start to get into environmental issues, a host of things crowd in. The very idea of gene flow upsets people regardless of what it does. On top of that, the concrete results can be things like extinction of existing species (gene flow leading to "better" species which outcompete the existing ones), economic trouble (weediness conferred on otherwise not-so-weedy plants) Jytdog (talk) 22:13, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Agree that complex things are complex. This one seemed not complex but self-contradictory. I'd recommend treating gene flow separately from GM crops that are considered weeds when they travel, at least in the section on the former. One of the 3 refs that I checked did not address the subject. I removed that one. Another was a dead link. I marked that one. The third I left. Let me know if other action is appropriate.Lfstevens (talk) 23:12, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

and in general, thanks for your great work! Jytdog (talk) 22:47, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for noticing! Lots more to come. Lfstevens (talk) 23:12, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Economy?

I didn't see anything about the economy in this para:

Genetically modified crops play a key role in intensive crop farming, which involves monoculture, use of herbicides and pesticides, use of equipment that requires large amounts of fossil fuels, and irrigation. Opponents of modified food, like Jonathan Latham of the Bioscience Research Center and Vandana Shiva, often treat industrial agriculture and modified crops as closely related topics, and call for an agriculture that works with the environment instead of controlling it.

I left it there after shortening it. I'll try to find a better place for it. Lfstevens (talk) 01:48, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

that was another effort of mine at trying to explain how the various issues intersect and feed each other. one can drill down a lot into the various issues but i felt it was important to also show the integration. do you see what i mean? Jytdog (talk) 20:18, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Africa and India

I don't see why these have sections to themselves. I'd suggest merging them into the appropriate other sections (Labeling, etc.) Without objection, I will do so. Lfstevens (talk) 21:59, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

i struggled with where to fit that information. there is not that much on Africa. The India stuff was especially problematic, as 1) to some extent the issues replicate those elsewhere BUT 2) india has Vandana Shiva, a physicist turned anti-.... Big Food activist. As part of that speaks out against GMOs all the time. She wants all of India to go back to subsistence farming, as best I can tell. Claims to speak for the people... but in India like everywhere else GM crops have become available, actual farmers broadly adopted them as soon as they could. Her activism/organizing presents issues unique to India. 3) Likewise, the farmer suicide issues are unique to India. For those reasons India deserved its own section, in my mind. And since I had that, it made sense to put Africa next to, in a broader emerging markets section. That was my thinking anyway. Will be interested to see how you deal with it now... Jytdog (talk) 23:07, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

Widely misunderstood

I removed that bit because it was vague and not specifically sourced. It would be better to use a cited quote than a statement. Also how wide is widely? Another way to handle it is to cite some examples of its misuse. Lfstevens (talk) 22:26, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

i don't know if you read the source provided there, but it provides what you are asking. (I can download it and email it to you if you want) And in my experience, it is true; anti-GMO people bring up this story all the time as an example of how GMOs and Monsanto are evil. In the version that circulates in their world, the seed blew onto Schmeiser's land and blammo Monsanto sued him. In that version of the story, GMOs are bad because their seed is so easily spread, and Monsanto is evil because they take advantage of that easy spreading to sue everybody and their brother, like big bullies. Told that way, it is pretty compelling. But of course that version leaves out the key facts that it was Schmeiser's intentional saving, cleaning, and replanting the next year - his knowing actions - that got him into trouble. (there is a deeper and interesting more story about the clash between tangible material rights and intellectual property rights, but that has nothing to do with the main thrust of what gets people upset about the story)Jytdog (talk) 22:57, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

I wasn't doubting the truth of the claim. I just thought it needed a cite. The quote didn't seem to apply directly to the case. The supplied description makes me wonder why he was using Roundup in the first place. If he thought his seed was conventional he would have known that Roundup would kill the plants. Buying Roundup in ag quantities seems like a pretty clear indicator that your crop is GM. Are there any non-GM crops that use it? Lfstevens (talk) 23:41, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

there is a whole article on the court case, since it was a supreme court case. its wikilinked (or it was anyway :) ) in this article. short story with made-up narration for the purposes of compression: he was killing some weeds with roundup in the easement between the road and his field and some stray canola there didn't die. (his neighbor had planted GM canola, btw) there was kind of trail of it leading from the road into his field, and he thought, hmmm.... and sprayed that part of his field with roundup and sure enough, a bunch of it didn't die. so he sprayed more, til he found the end of it, leaving him with a free stand of GM canola, all by itself. he thought - "that is my land. that is my canola. i am going to save it and replant it, just like i do my regular canola. to hell with monsanto and their patents. this is my land, my canola." that is the argument he took all the way to the canadian supreme court. that is the clash between tangible material rights and IP rights that i mentioned. supreme court said that IP rights trump tangible material rights. along the way, he really played up the david v goliath angle and the anti-GMO folks got behind him full force, generally without understanding the actual story. if you spend just 5 minutes googling it you will find anti-GMO sites touting the (incorrect) story and lots of references to monsanto suing farmers "when seeds blow onto their land". Jytdog (talk) 00:01, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

and as I said above, the article from which the quote was drawn specifically discusses the Schmeiser case and specifically says that the case is widely misunderstood. Jytdog (talk) 00:19, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Developing nations

• Edited this pretty hard and found that the citations in several cases did not support the claims. I fixed what I could and left a cn in there.
• The section doesn't appear to be about economic issues or developing countries particularly. Without objection I'll put the material in a better place. Lfstevens (talk) 23:35, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

The Precautionary Principle (with Application to the Genetic Modification of Organisms)

The Precautionary Principle (with Application to the Genetic Modification of Organisms).

PDF download here.

According to Medium.com, "Genetically Modified Organisms Risk Global Ruin, Says Black Swan Author. Experts have severely underestimated the risks of genetically modified food, says a group of researchers lead by Nassim Nicholas Taleb."

I'm interested in a discussion on how the article by Taleb and his coauthors may be used to improve this Wikipedia article.

IjonTichy (talk) 17:06, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

There are also WP:FRINGE aspects to keep in mind whenever you see precautionary principle and GMO used in the same sentence. It would be a thorny thing to actually try to describe in this article, so I've largely left the topic alone. It could be worth describing someday, but it could easily be a major time sink. Kingofaces43 (talk) 17:28, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

This is a WP:PRIMARY source and we need to wait to see what secondary sources do with it.Jytdog (talk) 18:08, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your willingness to work this out on the talk page without igniting a conflict. While this specific application of the group's interpretation may or may not be germane for this article, it does seem appropriate as a proposed framework for assessing applications of the Precautionary Principle in that article. Lfstevens (talk) 23:19, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

of course! thank you for proposing this topic for discussion! however, this remains a primary source and we should not use it anywhere in Wikipedia. I have been meaning for a while to try to build some content about the PP in this article, but I wanted to use that article as a starting point and it is so, so bad that I have first been improving that article. That work is far from done and I still digging into what it actually is and how it is actually used. It is more complex than it is in the stories people throw around. Remember - regulators in the EU have approved lots of GMOs - the problems there have been politicians preventing their release. The paucity in the EU is not due to some more stringent application of the PPP (that is another misunderstanding widely found in the anti-GMO bubble) Jytdog (talk) 23:28, 29 October 2014 (UTC)

"this remains a primary source and we should not use it anywhere in Wikipedia." Far too restrictive. Based on that standard you would have to delete most of the current content on WP.

"The paucity in the EU is not due to some more stringent application of the PPP" - perhaps the regulators did not apply the PP but the politicians did, because of pressure from (at least some segments of) the public?

"anti-GMO bubble" - what about the pro-GMO bubble?

IjonTichy (talk) 00:12, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

The policies WP:OR and WP:NPOV both strongly urge editors to use secondary sources and the guideline WP:RS explains why. There is no deadline here - there is no reason not to wait and see how this is dealt with in secondary sources, so that we provide the public with reliable, NPOV content. Jytdog (talk) 00:16, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

I looked at the source, and it looks to me like authors proposing such a "principle". As such, I also think that it is premature to add anything about it to this page. Once we have sourcing to indicate either that the principle is being widely applied, or that it is at least widely discussed, I think we could add it here, but not until then. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:29, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

[Chuckling]. The "rule" about citing only secondary sources is itself a variation on the PP! And as in parallel with the widespread use of GMOs in many countries, the secondary source approach is not widely observed on WP. The exception is in the medical area, which has shown much greater discipline. GMO/pesticide articles are pretty good about that, too, in no small part due to jytdog's (dogged?) diligence. It would seem to me that supporters of the PP would analogously be supporters of the secondary source approach. Lfstevens (talk) 00:47, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Jytdog, we are all familiar with WP policies and guidelines and thus it is a waste of our time to list them here. However, all your other feedback, insights and suggestions are helpful. Thank you for that.

Kingofaces43, Tryptofish and Lfstevens, thanks for the feedback.

IjonTichy (talk) 17:13, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

FYI, Taleb and his followers are investigating whether GMO page editing is being whitewashed by corporations. I imagine due to failure of the black swan piece to make it to the page thus far. Mmangan333 (talk) 17:13, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for that link, Mmangan333. What is happening at that site falls afoul of WP:CANVASS, so if any new single purpose accounts show up here, we will know where they came from. And no, I am not part of a corporation. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:41, 2 November 2014 (UTC)