Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, to
Speaker 1: the podcast that looks at the future and says there's
Speaker 1: a bright golden haze on the meadow. I'm Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Vocal, and I'm Joe McCormick. And I like food,
Speaker 1: how about you, guys? Now? I hate it, against it,
Speaker 1: none of it. Never never eat of Forward Thinking hosts
Speaker 1: love food. Now I eat about every two hours. I've
Speaker 1: got a weird preference about the food I eat. I
Speaker 1: don't like it to be uh destroyed by fungus before
Speaker 1: it gets to my table. Very odd. I like corn
Speaker 1: fungus so or we a coach as we call it
Speaker 1: in Mexico. Yeah, when't because when I have a nice,
Speaker 1: yummy ear of corn, I hate. I don't like it
Speaker 1: when like most of the little yummy fruity bit it's
Speaker 1: are black and rotting. I can understand that. But they
Speaker 1: taste like truffles. They're delicious. Well, I have an interesting question. Okay,
Speaker 1: So imagine you're a corn farmer, all right, okay, and
Speaker 1: you and you want corn. You're not You're not going
Speaker 1: for this fungal infected corn. You know, you're you're a
Speaker 1: weirdo like me, and you like your corn unblemished by
Speaker 1: this mysterious fungal infection that's destroying crops everywhere. You've got
Speaker 1: a few options, right, right, So you could use huge
Speaker 1: amounts of chemicals and sides and stuff like kill off
Speaker 1: anything that isn't corn essentially, or you could notice that
Speaker 1: some other organisms have a natural resistance to exactly the
Speaker 1: kind of fungus that's killing your crops. Well, but how
Speaker 1: do how does that help you? Well, that's a good question.
Speaker 1: Is there any way that could help you with your corn?
Speaker 1: You take the corn and you take whatever organism it is,
Speaker 1: just rub them together. Actually, no, you have to put
Speaker 1: them into a room, put on some Verry White. I
Speaker 1: was thinking in a particle accelerator with Verry White. You know,
Speaker 1: I've been in a particle accelerator with very It was
Speaker 1: it changed my life, he felt the love I did. Actually,
Speaker 1: all right, So what we're talking about is genetically modified organisms. Here,
Speaker 1: we're talking about being able to take traits that are
Speaker 1: inherent in one type of organism and then try and
Speaker 1: apply them to a different type in order to make
Speaker 1: them more robust in some way, or more nutritional in
Speaker 1: some way. Right, it can be any kind of change
Speaker 1: you want. Really, but the idea is genetic material from
Speaker 1: one organism to another, or actually a synthetic gene. Also,
Speaker 1: that's true, that's true. It doesn't have to be You
Speaker 1: can make it right. You can make a copy of
Speaker 1: a gene that looks like it does a certain thing
Speaker 1: and duplicated in some way. Right. The idea is changing
Speaker 1: a an organism's genome to make it create the kind
Speaker 1: of plant or animal you want. Right, And there's a
Speaker 1: lot of controversy around this topic for multiple reasons. We'll
Speaker 1: get into all of that in this podcast. We'll talk
Speaker 1: about that, but before we get into that, I'm just
Speaker 1: curious about how this actually works. Okay, Well, first of all, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a gene, in case you guys forgot, is
Speaker 1: a sequence of nucleotides. It's part of a chromosome. This
Speaker 1: is generally speaking, something that ends up triggering a particular
Speaker 1: trait in an organism. Keeping in mind, this gets complicated,
Speaker 1: so some traits are actually the product of multiple genes.
Speaker 1: Some genes can produce multiple traits, but in general, that's
Speaker 1: what we're talking about is this this basic amount, this
Speaker 1: basic unit of heredity. You can think of it that way. Um,
Speaker 1: and if we identify what a specific sequence of nucleotides does,
Speaker 1: what how it expresses as a trait, then you could
Speaker 1: isolate that and perhaps introduce it into a new organism.
Speaker 1: So how do you introduce it? Well, in the old way,
Speaker 1: we would do this by introducing it. When you're talking
Speaker 1: about actual genetic modification, you would do this usually through
Speaker 1: bacteria or a virus. You would actually create bacteria or
Speaker 1: a virus has the material you want inside of it,
Speaker 1: and it would technically infect or transfect the target cells
Speaker 1: that you want to have this new trait. But we've
Speaker 1: got a different way, a better way, a really fast way.
Speaker 1: We shoot it with gene guns. I'm not joking. Gene
Speaker 1: gun gene guns. Yeah, it's it's called it's it's called
Speaker 1: bio ballistic transaction. That sounds or just ballistic. I am
Speaker 1: totally making this is not being made up. I'm totally
Speaker 1: telling the truth. Okay, So you you load up your
Speaker 1: gun with d n A and use his app it
Speaker 1: while you shoot it. It's actually it actually is a
Speaker 1: kinetic reaction, not a not a PP gun. That's important.
Speaker 1: That's an important distinction. Not p it's bang. Actually, actually,
Speaker 1: really more frequently it's puff puff, because it tends to
Speaker 1: be powered by air or some form of compressed gas.
Speaker 1: So what's going on here is that you you take
Speaker 1: the DNA that you want to insert into the cells
Speaker 1: that are your target cells, and you coat tiny little
Speaker 1: particles of metal. Often it's gold. We're talking like on
Speaker 1: the micron scale, so really really small particles. You coate
Speaker 1: that with the genetic material you want to introduce. You
Speaker 1: put that into these essentially plastic cartridges. So in a way,
Speaker 1: it almost becomes more like a shotgun than a bullet,
Speaker 1: but I almost always hear it referred to as a
Speaker 1: genetic bullet. Ah. Then you have these little air guns
Speaker 1: and they actually look kind of like revolvers. They hold
Speaker 1: multiple cartridges. You then pull the trigger. Compressed gas pushes
Speaker 1: the little tiny pellets through that inject into the cells,
Speaker 1: and that introduces the genetic material into the cells that
Speaker 1: you want to to to transfact with this new genetic information. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's essentially holding up cells and saying you're gonna change
Speaker 1: or else. Actually you don't even give them a choice.
Speaker 1: You just shoot them. Kind of crazy. Huh, you didn't
Speaker 1: know that. I did not. But of course that tiny
Speaker 1: little infection with that gun create can create a big
Speaker 1: change in the final organism. It all depends on exactly
Speaker 1: which genetic material you're talking about. In some cases the
Speaker 1: change may not be noticeable. In some cases the change fails.
Speaker 1: That you introduce a new type of genetic information into
Speaker 1: the cell in the hopes of getting this specific trait
Speaker 1: transferred from one organism to another, and it doesn't work out.
Speaker 1: We've seen this happen with uh, some some attempts to
Speaker 1: make different fruits and vegetables resistant to frost. So super
Speaker 1: cold fish tomato, right, well, there that was That was
Speaker 1: an example. There was also one where it was a
Speaker 1: fish strawberry, I think fish apples or something that I saw. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think I read the fish tomato didn't work. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And that's the problem is that they were finding these
Speaker 1: genes that they were hoping would mean that fruits and
Speaker 1: vegetables would have this resistant quality so that they would
Speaker 1: not be harmed by things like frost, but it turned
Speaker 1: out not to work. So it's not While it's very
Speaker 1: precise in the sense that we can very precisely insert
Speaker 1: genetic material into target cells. It's not precise in the
Speaker 1: sense that it is always going to express the trait
Speaker 1: we we are hoping for. So there are two different
Speaker 1: types of precision. Precision we're talking about here, um, But
Speaker 1: it's you know, the I've actually watched videos of how
Speaker 1: the gene gun works and it's pretty straightforward. I mean it,
Speaker 1: it's you. You point this thing at the Petrie dish
Speaker 1: where you've got the cells, the culture of cells that
Speaker 1: you want to affect, and put whom you hit it.
Speaker 1: Actually it's poof you hit it. That's pretty crazy. It's
Speaker 1: pretty cool stuff. So if it works when you're inserting
Speaker 1: this genetic material, that means that your new version of
Speaker 1: whatever organism you're working with. And for the most part
Speaker 1: we're talking about plants, we're talking about fruits and vegetables. Uh,
Speaker 1: then you're going to see that expressed in that generation
Speaker 1: of plants, and depending upon how that gene has passed along,
Speaker 1: it may end up creating more generations of that same
Speaker 1: sort of strain of plant. So this is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: What what what kind of things has this been used for?
Speaker 1: Kind of traditionally over the past twenty years of tradition
Speaker 1: that science has twenty years of tradition. Yes, well, we
Speaker 1: mentioned the fish tomato and that the idea behind that
Speaker 1: was it was an early sort of failed attempt, but
Speaker 1: but they thought, hey, there's this northern flounder that can
Speaker 1: live in really cold waters. Um what if we could
Speaker 1: take genes from it and put them into a tomato
Speaker 1: that would keep the tomato from from freezing in the cold,
Speaker 1: which obviously damages its tissue and affects the quality of
Speaker 1: the fruit. Um So, that didn't work so well, but
Speaker 1: there were some early successes that did get people going
Speaker 1: on the idea of GMOs. One of the first ones
Speaker 1: was um so it really started in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: Um uh. In nineteen eighty three, scientists created a gin
Speaker 1: metically modified tobacco plant. And what that was It was
Speaker 1: resistant to the canamycin antibiotic and uh as I understand
Speaker 1: that change has been important for later genetic modifications. Um so,
Speaker 1: that was sort of a precursor to, for example, one
Speaker 1: of the next big ones. The first one that was
Speaker 1: to be widely commercialized was in and that was a
Speaker 1: genetically modified food crop called the flavor saver tomato. Right,
Speaker 1: I read about that one, yeah, spelled without oh s.
Speaker 1: So it's like f l A v R s A
Speaker 1: vr Okay, well, at least it wasn't spelled without rs
Speaker 1: and be the Flavo Savo the flavor savor tomato. So
Speaker 1: the idea went like this, you've got a problem with
Speaker 1: tomatoes in that they're kind of delicate fruits. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: they have a sort of peak ripeness where the flesh
Speaker 1: is exactly how you on it. But it's really difficult
Speaker 1: to time that to you know, pick them at the
Speaker 1: right time and get them to the market at just
Speaker 1: the right time so the consumer can get them at
Speaker 1: their peak. Right though, the problem is that there's a
Speaker 1: there's a particular protein that breaks down the pectin in
Speaker 1: tomato cell walls. Right, it's called poly galacteronce. Polygalacteronce, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure that was a herald of galactus. It's an
Speaker 1: enzyme let's just say PG. Uh so uh yeah, the
Speaker 1: the PG enzyme in the tomatoes was identified in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties as what was probably responsible for breaking down
Speaker 1: these cell walls and the fruit and which would cause
Speaker 1: ripening and softening. Um, and so what the people behind
Speaker 1: the Flavor Saver tomato thought, and that this was a
Speaker 1: company called cal Jean. They were like, well, if we
Speaker 1: can insert a gene into the tomato that produces a
Speaker 1: sort of retroactive effect to do the opposite of this enzyme, UM,
Speaker 1: we can slow the breakdown of pecton and we can
Speaker 1: keep the tomato firm longer UM so that by the
Speaker 1: time thereby reducing waste and improving sales and exactly. UM.
Speaker 1: And so when this first came out, it was a
Speaker 1: big deal. People were excited about it, and there was
Speaker 1: there was a lot of demand UM it. Essentially it
Speaker 1: did well in the beginning, but some people say that
Speaker 1: it suffered from some sort of like media pr setbacks
Speaker 1: after people started getting worried about what genetically modified organisms
Speaker 1: might mean for the health and stuff like that. UM
Speaker 1: and so ultimately it's sort of petered out. But UM
Speaker 1: after the Flavor Saver tomato, we started getting a lot
Speaker 1: more uh new GM crops, Like in we got roundup
Speaker 1: ready crops and the roundup ready soybeans particularly, And what
Speaker 1: that is is um so round up is a herbicide
Speaker 1: UM that's used to eliminate weeds that get in the
Speaker 1: way of crop development. Frequently. The way that this works
Speaker 1: is that um, it will shut down a critical enzyme
Speaker 1: in plants that they need in order to to grow.
Speaker 1: And so um. But round up reready soybeans which first
Speaker 1: showed up in they're resistant to the active ingredient and
Speaker 1: round up which is called glyphosate. I think I'm saying
Speaker 1: that right, um, And that that's the poison that would
Speaker 1: kill these plants. But the roundup ready crops were resistant
Speaker 1: to it, so you could you could spray them with
Speaker 1: round up all day long and you'd kill all the weeds.
Speaker 1: But the plants that be fine. Um. And of course
Speaker 1: now we've got a ton of stuff on the market.
Speaker 1: Sure yeah, I mean Lauren, didn't you know something about that? Yes, yes, Um,
Speaker 1: there are many other crops that are using um that
Speaker 1: that glyphosate tolerant sort of sort of um genetic kick.
Speaker 1: But um. A lot of the corn that is sold
Speaker 1: not fresh in the US. It's sold either for feed
Speaker 1: or for processing into other products, many, many, many other products.
Speaker 1: If you've ever read up a little bit about what
Speaker 1: corn goes into, it is essentially everything um and uh
Speaker 1: else right right sure, um. So a lot of the
Speaker 1: corn in the US is engineered to create proteins produced
Speaker 1: by m a particular bacteria, and that that bacteria um
Speaker 1: will will kill insects when they ingest that protein, and
Speaker 1: so by splicing it into this corn, the corn kills
Speaker 1: insects when they ingest the corn. Pretty nifty for for farmers,
Speaker 1: but again something that people tend to worry about. Um.
Speaker 1: Most sugar beets that are raised for table sugar um
Speaker 1: are also herbicide resistant. There are lots of new things
Speaker 1: coming out as well. Um, well, mean, you know it's
Speaker 1: it's you've also got h cotton Seed is normally inedible
Speaker 1: to humans, but by fussing around with it just a
Speaker 1: little bit, you can you can get rid of the
Speaker 1: bit that makes it poisonous to us, which is also
Speaker 1: what makes it poisonous to lots of critters. Same thing
Speaker 1: with canola oil. Some of the new fun things that
Speaker 1: are coming out, and by and by fun things, I
Speaker 1: mean potentially a little bit terrifying. Um, let me guess,
Speaker 1: Let me guess human corn hybrids with human intelligence. That
Speaker 1: would be terrible in the South. They would just pop
Speaker 1: heat alone. I'm I'm I'm pretty sure that there is
Speaker 1: a documentary called Attack of the Killer Tomatoes that we
Speaker 1: might want to reference and but one project that's been
Speaker 1: in the works for a while something called golden rice.
Speaker 1: And this is um. It's it's fortified with beta carotene,
Speaker 1: which which gives it a yellow color, hence the term
Speaker 1: golden rice. Um. But this this is modified with genes
Speaker 1: from maize and a really common soil bacteria. And okay, so,
Speaker 1: so the human body needs beta carotene in order to
Speaker 1: make vitamin A, and you need to make vitamin A
Speaker 1: in order to not go blind. So that's that's a
Speaker 1: pretty This is a genuine issue in in lots of
Speaker 1: third world countries, right, there are a lot of places
Speaker 1: that have real problems getting access to vitamin A, and
Speaker 1: so there's vitamin A deficiencies in many parts of the world,
Speaker 1: right right, this is one of the reasons why people
Speaker 1: will tell you to eat your vegetables. But this, but
Speaker 1: this golden rice could could give people way enough vitamin
Speaker 1: A or way enough beta carotene to create vitamin A. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm to understand. I think it's still in testing, right
Speaker 1: it is. It is still in testing, right, this is
Speaker 1: figuring out what it's capable of. This is the sell
Speaker 1: right right, This is the hope. Um. But but you know,
Speaker 1: even even that is is causing a little bit of
Speaker 1: consternation within within. Yeah, there was a just this month,
Speaker 1: just a couple of days ago, I believe we are
Speaker 1: recording this podcast in August, and a bunch of GMO
Speaker 1: protesters stamped out a whole field of golden rice in
Speaker 1: the Philippines and the Philippines one of the test grounds. Yeah. Actually,
Speaker 1: so there were field trials of this rice, the golden rice,
Speaker 1: going on in the Philippines, but apparently a group of
Speaker 1: about four hundred farmers came in and just tore up
Speaker 1: the fields in protest. So what were they protesting precisely?
Speaker 1: Do you know? Well, let's see, I've got a quote here.
Speaker 1: This is from the New Scientists article about this um
Speaker 1: So they're quoting a farmer named Willie Marbella. What he
Speaker 1: said is the golden rice is a poison. That's that's
Speaker 1: pretty tough. I thought there was going to be more
Speaker 1: to it. That's the whole quote. Well, that's that's extremely
Speaker 1: well thought out. Well, no, I mean not to totally dismiss,
Speaker 1: but I mean they're there are multiple reasons why GMOs
Speaker 1: are controversial, and some of them are some people have
Speaker 1: concerns about right, and there there are some reasons that
Speaker 1: are based upon either ignorance or misinformation about GMOs. Then
Speaker 1: there's some that are not. You can't just dismiss them
Speaker 1: because there are some actual concerns that we do need
Speaker 1: to think about. And not all of them are pure
Speaker 1: food science, right, Some not all of them are all
Speaker 1: about nutrition or uh scientifically based. Some of them are
Speaker 1: economic reasons why people have objections. So it's a complicated issue,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna kind of cover some of that. We're
Speaker 1: gonna try and do that now. One of the things
Speaker 1: I would I would argue at the very top is
Speaker 1: that a lot of the people who have that initial reaction,
Speaker 1: this idea that this is unnatural or that we should
Speaker 1: not do it, need to realize that this, this way
Speaker 1: of manipulating organisms is something that's been part of human
Speaker 1: history for pretty much as long as we've had agriculture.
Speaker 1: That that is, that is literally what agriculture is. It
Speaker 1: is messing about with with crops to make them more
Speaker 1: probable to give yourself food security. Right, Manipulating the genome
Speaker 1: of a plant is nothing new. We've been doing it essentially,
Speaker 1: We've been doing the same thing with sloppier methods for
Speaker 1: thousands of right, Um, you know, grafting two kinds of
Speaker 1: citrus together to make a stronger plant with the kind
Speaker 1: of fruit that you want to eat off of it,
Speaker 1: or creating cultivates of a particular plant to create wildly
Speaker 1: different plants. For example, even in the twentieth century, just
Speaker 1: like a mutation breeding, So they subject seeds to radiation
Speaker 1: to try to cause them to create a mutation like
Speaker 1: seedless fruit. If you've ever had a seedless watermelon, our
Speaker 1: seedless orange, you are eating something that has been you
Speaker 1: know that its ancestor anyway has been irradiated. Well, And
Speaker 1: what I was going to mention is that if you
Speaker 1: if you want to go back to the whole cultivation,
Speaker 1: I mean this is this goes back thousands of years. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you've ever eaten broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, or Brussels sprouts,
Speaker 1: you have eaten various cultivates of all all the same
Speaker 1: wild cabbage plant that's found in the Mediterranean. Those none
Speaker 1: of those plants existed before humans essentially began to mess
Speaker 1: with this wild cabbage to make sure that they were
Speaker 1: growing the specific type of traits that they wanted so,
Speaker 1: I mean, granted, if you're a former president the United States,
Speaker 1: you might have some words about broccoli. But I enjoy
Speaker 1: all of these vegetables, and uh, you know with it.
Speaker 1: Before were doing a lot of research, I wasn't really
Speaker 1: aware of how I knew they were related. I didn't
Speaker 1: realize they were all just from the exact same ancestor
Speaker 1: but had been cultivated to grow into different forms. Oh well,
Speaker 1: so few of the foods that we eat are really
Speaker 1: resemblant of the I would argue the natural strain. None
Speaker 1: of them are corn. The corn we eat now, even
Speaker 1: the totally organic corn looks nothing like the corn it
Speaker 1: came from years and years ago, which this tiny little
Speaker 1: nubby thing or like more like what we would can
Speaker 1: starting grass. And for those of you who are not
Speaker 1: in the United States, well, maze, since since your corn
Speaker 1: in our corner, are that we use the term differently? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the natural the bananas you you true stored there, I mean,
Speaker 1: not like naturally occurring bananas. There are lots of different
Speaker 1: strains of the banana genus around the world, but none
Speaker 1: of them are that banana that we identify as the
Speaker 1: yellow sweet banana now, which by the way, is not
Speaker 1: as tasty as some other forms of banana. There are
Speaker 1: other forms of banana that are so much better. Once
Speaker 1: you fry a plantain in large, I think that it's
Speaker 1: hard to beat it for tasty factor in organic large.
Speaker 1: Once once you run run around in Hawaii at night
Speaker 1: so that they don't catch you. Uh yeah, the problem
Speaker 1: is making a getaway tough because all those peels very slippery.
Speaker 1: Oh that's another one. Hawaiian and papaya. If you've basically
Speaker 1: ever eaten a papaya from a grocery store, fresh papaya, um,
Speaker 1: that that came from Hawaii. That is genetically model find
Speaker 1: because they weren't able to grow them to a point
Speaker 1: where where they could be sold. And but um Okay.
Speaker 1: So people are still going to have this fear about
Speaker 1: genetically modified food crops, and to some extent, I can
Speaker 1: sort of understand. I can sympathize with where it's coming from,
Speaker 1: and I I agree that in some ways we do
Speaker 1: need to be very careful about it. Um. But here's
Speaker 1: the bottom line. What scientists are saying about genetically modified
Speaker 1: food crops is that there's no inherent risk, nothing that
Speaker 1: inherently makes this a greater problem than any traditional breeding technique, right, So,
Speaker 1: so in other words, that that doesn't mean necessarily that
Speaker 1: the product of a genetic modification won't be dangerous. It's
Speaker 1: just no more inherently likely to be dangerous than a
Speaker 1: new species of plant produced by any other means. Right,
Speaker 1: It's it's it's a different tool, but that's what it is,
Speaker 1: a tool, and it's all in how you use the tool,
Speaker 1: whether or not it ends up being a harmful or
Speaker 1: beneficial outcome. Yeah. Like, like we talked about how there's
Speaker 1: some misinformation out there, like the idea of using uh,
Speaker 1: genetic information from fish to try and fortify a fruit
Speaker 1: or vegetable with this this resistance of frost. Now let's
Speaker 1: say let's say that that did work. There's some people
Speaker 1: who are like, well, I don't want to eat that.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be a fishy tasting tomato. There's more than
Speaker 1: people surveyed, in fact, said that they thought it would
Speaker 1: taste fishing. But but that's the thing is that we're
Speaker 1: talking about genetic information about a particular trait. It's not
Speaker 1: like you are making some weird tomato fish hybrid right, right,
Speaker 1: And and genes don't contain some some essence of a being.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, any one bit of a fish's
Speaker 1: genes isn't going to make it taste like fish, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that seems to that kind of concern I think
Speaker 1: borders on a on a kind of magical thinking. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a definitely kind of magical thinking, and it's borne
Speaker 1: out of ignorance of just how genes work and how
Speaker 1: they how they're expressed, and how genetic modification works. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, I do think there are some totally
Speaker 1: legitimate concerns that people can have about how genetic modification
Speaker 1: of food crops will be implemented. Sure, absolutely. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, some of these herbicide tolerant plants I think
Speaker 1: are being created so that big corporations can dump as
Speaker 1: much herbside as they want all over their crops. And
Speaker 1: whether or not that herbicide has other side effects is right,
Speaker 1: It could have. The herbicide itself could have environmental impacts.
Speaker 1: So again, the genetic modification part isn't necessarily the problem
Speaker 1: in that case, although it does raise the concern that
Speaker 1: you could end up either creating very herbicide resistant strains
Speaker 1: of one of the weeds here, which is completely happening,
Speaker 1: or there's a even a fear that the genetic modify
Speaker 1: crops themselves could, uh could introduce this gene into other
Speaker 1: species of plants that are in the surrounding area or
Speaker 1: not even in the surrounding area, especially with things that
Speaker 1: um that free pollinate, like corn, for example, which is
Speaker 1: so heavily genetically modified. Um. You know, people have found
Speaker 1: strains of corn that that are similar to the ones
Speaker 1: being genetically modified in the United States as far south
Speaker 1: as Mexico, right, So, but I mean there's there's also
Speaker 1: a report in Nature that about that, uh, some weaty
Speaker 1: forms of rice have started to show the same sort
Speaker 1: of traits as genetically modified crops, even though they themselves
Speaker 1: were not modified. So so there's there's that fear that
Speaker 1: certain genetic modifications and applied certain ways could end up
Speaker 1: either hurting us or at least not the benefit would
Speaker 1: be very short lived. Yeah, there there are concerns about
Speaker 1: different kinds of crops, and one one thing that's helpful
Speaker 1: to think about is the different types of effects that
Speaker 1: are produced by genetic modification. Some are things that just
Speaker 1: makes say the product of the plant more useful to us,
Speaker 1: Like I can't really see that a flavor saver tomato
Speaker 1: would have that much of a survival advantage in the wild.
Speaker 1: But if you are creating a plant that does have
Speaker 1: a massive survival advantage over the natural strain, it it's
Speaker 1: much more likely that that kind of thing could become
Speaker 1: an invasive species if it gets into the wild and
Speaker 1: threatened biodiversity. Right. There's um, there's a kind of Atlantic
Speaker 1: salmon called called awkward advantage salmon that's that's being created
Speaker 1: and and this is a combination of a growth hormone
Speaker 1: gene from one type of salmon and a and a
Speaker 1: genetic switch from an ocean pout. And when you kind
Speaker 1: of smush the two together, Atlantic salmon will will reach
Speaker 1: their market weight in half the usual time, which could
Speaker 1: which is is kind of creepy. Yeah. Well, and then
Speaker 1: there's other other things as well. There's the whole monoculture argument,
Speaker 1: the idea that, uh, if you were to roll out
Speaker 1: GMOs on a very wide basis, then you get a
Speaker 1: lot of people growing the essentially the same strain of plants,
Speaker 1: and if something does come along that can affect that strain,
Speaker 1: perhaps something that you had not accounted for when you
Speaker 1: were designing the the designer genes or whatever that you're
Speaker 1: inserting into this crop. UH, then it could have a
Speaker 1: devastating effect that could lead to both famine and poverty. UH.
Speaker 1: And in fact, the poverty issue is another one that's
Speaker 1: big with GMOs. It's it's not even that. And again
Speaker 1: this goes beyond the science. This goes beyond whether or
Speaker 1: not the actual product is helpful are harmful from a
Speaker 1: nutritional standpoint or environmental standpoint. This is purely economic. One
Speaker 1: of the arguments has that has been made is that
Speaker 1: let's say that you genetically modify a type of crop
Speaker 1: that normally you could not grow and say a temperate zone,
Speaker 1: so normally it wouldn't grow in the United States, normally
Speaker 1: would grow someplace that was more like a tropical area.
Speaker 1: But you have genetically modified this plant, so now it
Speaker 1: can grow in temperate zones. The economic argument is, now
Speaker 1: there's no reason to import these uh these products from
Speaker 1: poorer nations that depend heavily upon agriculture as one of
Speaker 1: the means of generating money and and not having you know,
Speaker 1: it would it would mean that they would struggle even
Speaker 1: more because this money supply would be reduced or perhaps
Speaker 1: even cut off. If it were a large enough industry
Speaker 1: in these other countries. Though again the concern here is
Speaker 1: something that could just as easily apply to UH to
Speaker 1: breeding of plants without genetic modification. Sure, yeah, no it
Speaker 1: it's genetic modification again, is just the means to the
Speaker 1: end of getting to this point of being able to
Speaker 1: raise this particular crop in this particular place. It's more
Speaker 1: of a Again, it's an easy thing to point out,
Speaker 1: but you could arrive at the same thing through other
Speaker 1: means of of of manipulating plants. Of course, going in
Speaker 1: the opposite direction, there are some people who have seen
Speaker 1: genetic modification as a way to help people who especially
Speaker 1: live in like harsh climatic conditions. So you can create
Speaker 1: crops through genetic modification that are highly resistant to drought,
Speaker 1: which in especially some less wealthy places on the planet,
Speaker 1: drought can be a severe problem. Like absolutely, yeah, they
Speaker 1: don't have enough water for for human consumption, let alone
Speaker 1: for crops. So drought isn't just a problem like I
Speaker 1: can't get enough water to drink, it's a problem I
Speaker 1: can't get food either, because all your crops die. But
Speaker 1: if if you have drought resistant crops, that could cause
Speaker 1: a major barrier to famine in the world. And I
Speaker 1: think I think one of the reasons why people bring
Speaker 1: up the economic standpoint, the whole economic perspective of the
Speaker 1: GMOH debate, is that so much of the genetically modified
Speaker 1: crops that are in existence are coming out of the
Speaker 1: United States. And part of that is because there our
Speaker 1: entire nations, entire groups of nations that have essentially outlawed
Speaker 1: them for one reason or another, many of them I think,
Speaker 1: out of fear that by through genetic manipulation you are
Speaker 1: inviting potential disaster down the road, like like somehow either
Speaker 1: health effects or health effects are environmental effects. Yeah, sometimes
Speaker 1: it's a combination of them. Yeah. I read a story
Speaker 1: that in two thousand two, Zambia declined shipments of GMO
Speaker 1: corn during a famine. So people are serious about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's it's and you know, again, there are some
Speaker 1: concerns that I think, you know, are legitimate concerns that
Speaker 1: need to be addressed, and there are other concerns that
Speaker 1: are based largely on fear, uncertainty, in doubt, you know,
Speaker 1: the old the old fud um and uh so you
Speaker 1: have to be able to separate them and be able
Speaker 1: to understand them before you can start coming to conclusions
Speaker 1: about whether or not the tool itself is good or bad. Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And also another legitimate concern when you're considering a tool
Speaker 1: is that because GMOs give us a much greater ability
Speaker 1: to control the exact nature of what our crops are. Again,
Speaker 1: this is not a problem inherent with GMOs, but they
Speaker 1: can have the potential to be misused by someone with power.
Speaker 1: Say you are the head of a of an unethical
Speaker 1: agro business company and you want to create crops that
Speaker 1: you have the absolute patent too, and that people cannot
Speaker 1: uh may maybe say that UM can't produce new generations
Speaker 1: of seeds on their own, and you want you want
Speaker 1: to make more money. But I mean it is very
Speaker 1: possible that you can use these crops for unethical business
Speaker 1: practices UM, And so that's a legitimate concern to I
Speaker 1: don't want to present this issue as if there's nothing
Speaker 1: to worry about with GMOs. So I think the issue
Speaker 1: is not the science of producing the plant. That's how
Speaker 1: it's it's implement right, And and I do also want
Speaker 1: to say that that anything that is put out on
Speaker 1: the mass market for consumer purchase is tested if it's
Speaker 1: a GMO before before it's put out. That's another misconception.
Speaker 1: There's this idea that these things don't go through testing.
Speaker 1: I mean, right now, the FDA requires relatively stringent testing.
Speaker 1: It's actually, i mean way more rigorous than if you
Speaker 1: were to produce it in some other means that could produce.
Speaker 1: Just like a lot of the complaints about what could
Speaker 1: potentially come out of genetically modified organisms, like you said, Joe,
Speaker 1: the same sort of stuff can happen through other means
Speaker 1: of cultivating plants and changing plants, things that we've been
Speaker 1: doing for thousands of years. So people who argue that
Speaker 1: the restrictions or that the tests that the FDA and
Speaker 1: other organizations like the Environmental Protection Agency that they require
Speaker 1: these crops to go through, they you know, they say
Speaker 1: they're not stringent enough. Well, conventionally grown plants don't have
Speaker 1: to go through those tests, and you can still get
Speaker 1: the same sort of results that way, right, And to
Speaker 1: be fair, you know, we don't know what the effect
Speaker 1: could be seventy years down the road, but we don't
Speaker 1: know that for anything, right. It's it's it's one of
Speaker 1: those things where eventually you have to say all those
Speaker 1: sweet bananas. I regret, I have an arm growing out
Speaker 1: of my forehead. Regret nothing. It lets me take off
Speaker 1: my hat without having to put down my smartphone. I
Speaker 1: see the silver lining, Joe, you just see clouds. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but no, I mean I agree Lauren entirely that it's
Speaker 1: just it's it's there are there are things that we
Speaker 1: need to educate ourselves about. But that's the key word, right, educate.
Speaker 1: We need to make sure that we have actual, verifiable
Speaker 1: scientific information. There's a lot of I guess you could
Speaker 1: call it um hyperbolic reaction out there on both sides.
Speaker 1: I will, I will admit, I mean there are sides
Speaker 1: out there. Obviously, if you're reading something that's just telling
Speaker 1: you that genetically modified organ is ms are absolutely safe,
Speaker 1: no matter what the context, and then at the end
Speaker 1: you read a corporate name that happened to sponsor that page,
Speaker 1: then that obviously is a bias. But then you've got
Speaker 1: the other side that immediately reacts to anything that is
Speaker 1: genetically modified, either saying that that's unnatural and we should
Speaker 1: never do it, or because big corporations are involved, it's
Speaker 1: inherently evil. No, this is a tool. It can be
Speaker 1: used correctly. It can be misused. If it's used correctly,
Speaker 1: it has the potential to do a lot of good.
Speaker 1: We just have to be really good guardians. We have
Speaker 1: to be really educated, and we have to be vigilant,
Speaker 1: and we have to set that standard and demand that
Speaker 1: it's met. And in that case, humanity as a whole
Speaker 1: can can benefit from this technology, this this approach here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there we go. So only of the podcast likes food,
Speaker 1: but I was a lot. I'mbviously misinformation was spread, even
Speaker 1: at the beginning of this episode. I'm glad we could
Speaker 1: clear that up. Uh. I don't have any reservation buying
Speaker 1: something knowing that it's a genetically modified crop. It's not.
Speaker 1: I don't think that there's necessarily a need to label
Speaker 1: foods as genetically modified. I don't think that organic necessarily
Speaker 1: automatically means that it's superior or more healthy than genetically modified.
Speaker 1: It's a case by case basis thing. That's what I think.
Speaker 1: Anything you guys want to add before I close out,
Speaker 1: I just want to give a plug for what I
Speaker 1: thought was a really good article New York Times article
Speaker 1: July by Amy Harmon, and it was about orange farmers
Speaker 1: in Florida who were trying to fight against this parasite
Speaker 1: called citrus screening, and they're essentially having to turn to
Speaker 1: genetic modification as their last hope to to save the
Speaker 1: crops period right. Um. And as one counterpoint to what
Speaker 1: we talked about with oh, so you have round up
Speaker 1: ready crops, you can spray her beside just um, the
Speaker 1: idea here is, well, they're having to use so much
Speaker 1: pesticide to protect the oranges from the animals that spread
Speaker 1: this disease from the insect yea um that actually having
Speaker 1: a plant that was resistant would allow them to use
Speaker 1: much fewer pesticides. And anyway, I think it's a really
Speaker 1: good article. It's worth checking out. Definitely. It's called a
Speaker 1: race to save the orange by altering its d n
Speaker 1: all great pluck. All right, guys, Well that wraps this up.
Speaker 1: If you have anything you want to add to the conversation,
Speaker 1: go to FW thinking dot com. That's our website where
Speaker 1: we've got all of the video episodes of Forward Thinking,
Speaker 1: We've got the podcast, we have blog posts, we've got articles,
Speaker 1: lots of interesting information there. We look forward to hearing
Speaker 1: from you and we will talk to you again, really
Speaker 1: saying we're more on this topic in the future of technology.
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