Berkeley CSUA MOTD:Entry 32619
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2025/07/10 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
7/10    

2004/8/1-2 [Health/Disease/General, Recreation/Food] UID:32619 Activity:insanely high
8/1     I found a bug on the organic Raomain I bought from Trader Joe.  Is is
        still edible as raw salad?  I know organic farming means not relying on
        pesticide to kill of bugs but would there be a danger from parasites?
        \_ TROLL ALERT, TROLL ALERT
        \_ Eat the bug and like it!  If necessary, you CAN be wormed.
        \_ If this sort of stuff bothers you, you can buy kosher food.
           Many people do, even if their religion does not require it. -- ilyas
        \_ It's food.  Food that is grown is grown outside.  Insects and
           animals live outside.  Food that is grown outside will be touched
           by insects and animals.  That is the way the world is.  Occasionally
           one of those insects will make it into the packaging, especially
           with leafy greens.  Throw the bug away and wash the lettuce, problem
           solved.  Are you people really that removed from where your food
           comes from?  -aspo
           \_ Aspo, no offense, but you are an idiot.  What about greenhouse
              grown food?  Is that 'outside'?  Get a clue.
              \_ Um, yeah, uh, greenhouse grown food is grown in an anti-
                 septic foam nutrient solution.  Food technicians in
                 Intel "bunny suits" meticulously pluck any alien life
                 forms from salad leaves, carefully brushing each leaf to
                 ensure a complete absence of unwanted bugs, weeds,
                 chemicals, or icky "dirt".  -John
        \_ If you knew how many bug bits are in every carton of fruit
           juice, organic or no, you probably wouldn't be bothered by
           this at all.  Still, I think the whole organic thing is BS.
           Genetically modified often means the plants have better natural
           resistance to pests, so they can use fewer pesticides than
           organic crops, not more.  BTW, leafy stuff should be fine if
           you wash it.  Sprouts, broccoli, etc, is the kind of thing you
           should cook.
           \_ If the pests don't even want to eat them, do you?
           \_ I don't think you know what 'organic' means. The federal
              standard provides that the food is produced without
              pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, irraditation, or
              bioengineering.
           \_ While most organic farming is bs, there is one aspect in
              which genetically modified crops are worse. Many gm grains
              do not produce seeds that can be reused for the next growing
              season which means that farmers must purchase new seeds
              every year rather than simply take seeds from the last
              harvest. The fact that farmers are beholden to ADM or some
              other large conglomerate is worrying, but the main problem
              is that by moving the natural selection process for grain
              from the wild to the lab, we can make the grains less
              able to cope with new forms of pests and infection.
              There is another lesser concern with gm crops for some
              peta/vegans, and that is crops which include animal genes
              might violate their no exploting animals principle.
              \_ There are no crops for consumption that I'm aware of
                 that contain animal genes.  When I've done work with
                 animal genes in plants, it's been as a research tool,
                 it serves no purpose to put an animal gene into a
                 plant for crop use.
                 \_ There's a strawberry which contains a protein from a fish
                    which makes them resistant to freezing (natural antifreeze)
                    I don't think it's been approved for human consumption,
                    though.
                 \_ http://www.geo-pie.cornell.edu/media/fishberries.html
           \_ What about crops which are more resistant to herbicides
              which encourage farmers to apply more weedkiller?
              \_ Oh, and it's especially cute when the crop in question can
                 interbreed with wild varieties and give them herbicidal
                 resistance too.
              \_ I think anyone who's done farming knows that it's always
                 better to try and use the minimal amount of chemicals.
                 The best way to do that, ultimately, will be with GM
                 crops, not organic.  Besides which, organic crops alone
                 cannot produce enough yield to feed our population,
                 so unless 2 billion people volunteer to not eat in the
                 future, or environmentalists agree to start letting
                 us convert forests to farm land, then GM crops are the
                 only option.  Besides, everything is genetically
                 modified, it's just that in the lab we can do it more
                 efficiently.
                 \_ You're not too bright are you? Just by switching from
                    slash and burn to organized agriculture I am sure we
                    could produce enough food. There isn't a shortage of
                    food in the world and this is not because of
                    pesticides. There's plenty of arable land left unused.
                 \_ You should read the Skeptical Environmentalist. He
                    makes it quite clear that by properly farming the
                    land already converted for agriculture use we could
                    easily feed the entire planet (even if the population
                    continues to increase). GM isn't really needed and
                    in the case of grains with the "terminator" gene,
                    it will actually make things worse since subsistence
                    farming will stop being the strong cheap source of
                    food for the developing world.
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7/10    

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www.geo-pie.cornell.edu/media/fishberries.html
About the creators of the GEO-PIE Project No anti-GMO literature would be complete without mentioning-- or even better, illustrating-- the"fishberry," the monstrous half-strawberry, half-fish. Even scientists and media sources frequently refer to tomatoes or strawberries with fish genes. The flounder gene encoded a protein which confers cold resistance to the fish. The goal was to develop tomato plants that could withstand frost in the field and fruits that resist cold damage in storage. This particular experiment however was a failure and did not produce frost resistant plants. Despite the failure, the story continues to circulate as if the experiment worked, or worse, as if the fish-gene tomato might exist or has ever existed in the marketplace. BBC special feature on genetic engineering uses the failed "tomato with fish genes" experiment to illustrate successful genetic engineering is particularly ironic. After explaining the steps of the process, the website concludes cheerily: "This GM tomato plant contains a copy of the flounder antifreeze gene in every one of its cells. The plant is tested to see if the fish gene still works. AFPs-- technically called thermal hysteresis proteins-- prevent freezing damage to cellular structures by slowing or stopping the formation of ice crystals inside a cell. Could there be "tomatoes with fish genes" in the future? But given the apparent "yuck factor" perception, it is doubtful that such a product would be marketable without a major change in public opinion. One key point that most retellings of the story miss is that the gene used in the experiments is not actually a "fish gene" in the sense that most people imagine. Although the genetic code is the universal language of life that all organisms on earth understand, there are "regional dialects." The genetic vocabulary used by plants is slightly different than that used by animals and other organisms-- technically referred to as "codon bias." Although a plant nucleus is capable of understanding an animal gene, the process works better if the gene uses a vocabulary more similar to the one a plant normally uses. For this reason, the researchers who developed the "fish-gene tomato" did not physically move a gene from an Arctic flounder into a tomato; instead, they created a synthetic gene from scratch based upon the genetic sequence of the flounder gene, but which had been translated into plant dialect to optimize its expression in the tomato. In 1996, a short-lived anti-GMO activist group based in Rochester, NY, named themselves after the nonexistent fishberries. The much more common variant of this tale about strawberries with fish genes--the "fishberry"-- is more problematic. There are no published studies involving strawberries, no companies which have announced research or marketing plans for such a product, no government records of field testing such a plant, and no trace in the media to explain how this story may have originated. It is possible that scientists from DNA Plant Technology (or elsewhere) may have publicly speculated about the benefits of using antifreeze genes in strawberries when the 1991 tomato research was published. The story may also be a conflation with Frostban-- a genetically engineered bacteria developed to protect strawberries and other fruits from frost damage--which had been field tested in 1987 and 1988. Nonetheless, shortly after the 1991 tomato study, the emphasis shifted from tomatoes with fish genes to strawberries with fish genes, and the image quickly became widespread in the media and in activist literature (and their costumes). How would this completely fictional story come to be repeated so widely? We suspect that scientists like to use the hypothetical example to illustrate both the universality of the genetic code and the "gee whiz" potential of genetic engineering to solve important agricultural issues. corn that produces the same protein used by organic farmers. Nonetheless, despite the widespread circulation of the tale, strawberries with fish genes are an urban legend and have never existed outside the minds of enthusiastic researchers and alarmed activists. References Hightower R, Baden C, Penzes E, Lund P, and Dunsmuir P 1991. Type II fish antifreeze protein accumulation in transgenic tobacco does not confer frost resistance. Cloning of an antifreeze protein gene from carrot and its influence on cold tolerance in transgenic tobacco plants.