at Mon, 14 Feb 2005 02:05:01 GMT in 20050213190501.631df422@wafer,
(Eric Jorgensen) wrote :

....

While you're at it can somebody explain their objection to
high-fructose
corn syrup without using any dieting buzzwords? I'm all ears.

There is a valid objection to high-fructose corn syrup - GMOs. A large
percentage of the nation's corn crop these days is grown with genetically
modified organisms (GMOs), whose genetic code has been artificially
manipulated.

Research on potential health consequences of GMO's is spotty at best, and
since it's a new technology, there's no research on long term effects, for
the incontrovertible reason that these crops haven't been on the market
long enough for a study of long-term effects to be made.

More disturbing are the ethical consequences. It would be one thing if
genetic modification were being done solely for what one might take to be
socially beneficial reasons like increased crop yields or higher nutrient
values, but this is not the case. In fact, many of the GMOs currently being
raised have been created for things like herbicide/pesticide resistance.
It's bad enough that such crops encourage even more widespread use of
pesticides with known toxic properties and which definitely cause
environmental damage, but in fact typically the pesticides they're created
to resist are ones manufactured by the same company selling the seed (most
seed companies are owned by companies who manufacturer pesticides and
herbicides). Thus the company is actually trying to manufacture a market
for its own product.

Again, that in itself is ethically questionable, but in addition such
companies are creating GMOs with even more insidious properties. They're
designed to die out in one generation, so a farmer can't replant seeds
saved from the crop he just made - he's dependent on buying more from a
seed supplier. And these GMOs can also require an activator - another
chemical, usually manufactured by the same company, in order to produce a
crop at all. But even that's not the worst of it. Some of them are designed
so as to kill off any crops not of that GMO stock grown on the same land.
So the farmer is literally made a captive - he has to use the seed from the
company, he has to apply the chemical from the company, he can't back out
and revert to non-GMO production.

It's also impossible to contain GMOs, in the sense that a farmer adjacent
to the one growing GMOs can't prevent some seed from blowing over or
spilling over or in some other way migrating into the next field,
contaminating his crops in unpredictable ways. And, like the StarLink corn
episode a few years back, trying to control where GMO's end up in the
marketplace is fraught with difficulties. The government doesn't require
any sort of labelling for GMO crops, so the customer can't make an informed
decision even if they want to. It's for this reason that some people stay
away from corn syrup in any form - you can't know whether it contains GMOs,
and either you're unwilling to subject yourself to unknown health
consequences or you don't want to be a part of supporting very questionable
business practices.

--
Alex Rast

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