Food « Biofortified

The Inadequacy of Anecdotes

by Karl Haro von Mogel on 15 April 2009

Over on OpEdNews Blogs, there is a rather lengthy discussion going on beneath a post by “Yup Farming” called “Independent Studies Refute GMO Safety Claims.” Those ‘studies,’ of course, are an assembly of non-peer-reviewed and anecdotal claims, but that is not the reason why I bring it up. The discussion was derailed by a few tangents, and I was just about to abandon reading it any further, until someone posted their real reason why they believe that GE foods are unsafe. Personal experience.

Barbara Peterson, a retired correctional officer from California, described how she eliminated a food reaction that her mother was having, through dietary changes. She then went on to experiment on herself:

You’d think I would have learned from this, but no. I kept on with the processed foods for myself, along with the good stuff. Well, guess what? Yup, I got the ugly stuff too. This stuff was so bad that it started on my leg and spread all the way to my shoulders and down my arms. It looked like the worst case of oozing poison oak you have ever seen. It felt like bugs were crawling under my skin, and I couldn’t sleep. I was going crazy.

I started experimenting on myself, and researching about GMOs.
Continue reading…

Risks of the gaps

by Karl Haro von Mogel on 1 April 2009

Editor’s Note: The following post was part of an April Fools Joke. Go here for more details.

By William Harvey:

As I always say, “All we know is still infinitely less than all that remains unknown.” As a statement of fact, it is plainly obvious, but what is less obvious is that it also makes a splendid guiding principle for life.

I try as best I can to base my life in the best that science has to offer, but I know (more than most it seems) that often times, science does not have all the information we need to make decisions. In many areas of science, from global warming to evolutionary biology, there are gaps in our knowledge that make deciding on a course of action difficult. So I think we need to return to some of the fundamentals.

Some scientists say that we don’t know enough about global warming, that the gaps in our knowledge of climate science are too big to make policy decisions based upon it. We could just listen to the majority of climate scientists, but ‘consensus’ is not a reliable guide for truth – it merely reflects the current state of knowledge, which in science, is always changing. But what is not changing is that large corporations continue to profit off of climate science denialism, and the risk of inaction outweighs the risk of action.

In evolution, creationists often point to ‘gaps’ in evolution, such as between one fossil and another, and are fond at pointing out when a new fossil turns up that the number of gaps have increased. I think they have a very valid point, and it got me thinking about food safety in the same terms.

Mendel’s Garden: Frankenpeople!

by Karl Haro von Mogel on 11 March 2009

Welcome to the 29th edition of Mendel’s Garden, the monthly one-stop-shop for the best the blogosphere has on Genetics. I have hosted the Garden a couple times before on my personal blog, but this month we find ourselves on Biofortified. This is a group blog on plant genetics and genetic engineering, to try to sprinkle a little fertilizer on the discussion of the majority of the eukaryotic biomass on this planet – plants! And we’ve got some plant genetics-based blog posts to talk about, but the theme for this edition is FRANKENPEOPLE!

How to Breed Cucurbits

by Karl Haro von Mogel on 8 March 2009

Are you a backyard breeder? Do you want to be? Well with this video, now you can!

Well, I think if you are a plant breeding student, a breeder looking to train a new workforce, or someone who’s really just curious about how you can possibly make seeds to grow ‘seedless’ watermelons, you’ll like this video. Written and narrated by Yours Truly, and painstakingly stitched together by UW’s own Clark Thompson, with help from a whole array of resources and experts, I give you:

Pollination Methods: Cucurbits

What’s in the corn syrup? Guest Post by Renee Dufault

by Anastasia on 4 February 2009

In Something tastes bad…, I questioned IATP’s use of the Env. Health paper Mercury from chlor-alkali plants: measured concentrations in food product sugar. The paper described an experiment that took place in 2005. Renee Dufault, the lead author, described how she obtained samples of high fructose corn syrup and tested them for mercury. When she went back for more samples, her employer (the FDA) asked her to switch to a different project, so no more tests have been conducted. We can only hope that increased funding for the FDA will result from the recent elections and in response to the many recent threats, particularly peanut butter!

Renee has offered to discuss her experiment, her interactions with the FDA, and her reaction to the IATP report. I heartily agree with her call for more testing, but extend the call beyond mercury to include other contaminants, chemical and biological. I also agree that removing mercury from our environment should be top priority, but still feel that mercury exposure from coal-burning power plants is far more dangerous due to quantity than mercury from chlor-alkali plants. However, it certainly couldn’t hurt to switch chlor-alkali plants over to newer (non-mercury) technology!