Chipotle: The Long Defeat Of Doing Nothing Well

sangha · Dec 16, 2015

Mr Person said:
Well, that's not quite getting at what I was saying, which was that organic foods, which are neither GMO and which can use only certain pesticides, could not sustain the world population if all produced food was "organic".

I understand what you meant and it's not true. Organic methods can be just as productive and more efficient (because they use fewer inputs like chemical fertilizers, insecticides, etc) than current methods.

Second, GMO foods have increased yields in any numbers of ways. If a certain fungus is attacking a certain crop and a gene is spliced in making them resistant, the ones with the gene are going to produce more overall. There are also genes that can be used to ward off certain pests a crop may be attacked by. Then, there is the example of the new fast-growing salmon which should significantly increase output.

While your argument here is conceptually sound, reality has provided no evidence that it is true. GE crops have been used extensively in real life conditions and have not provided any significant increase in productivity.

Third, and frankly, it is the attacks on GMO foods that I consider to be the propoganda. As is well known, all domesticated crops are genetically engineered through selective breeding. Take your example of corn and examine its lengthy transformation into what we have today, beginning with an original southern Mexican crop 9,000 years ago.

I will admit that there are those who oppose GE crops using scientifically unsound arguments, those opponents do not undermine the scientifically sound arguments of others, nor do they make the unsound arguments of GE supporters sound.

And the "selective breeding = genetic engineering" is intellectually dishonest. I'm sure that you can recognize the qualitative difference between breeding of an organism and the insertion of genes from one species into the genome of another.

The only difference is that GMO techniques now allow direct editing of the genome to produce desired results.

Case in point

The only real concern is about the possibility of genes jumping between plant species, most specifically, from a food crop to a pest (or to the organic farmer's chagrin, from a GMO crop to their own). I have not read one single report of a GMO food being in any way unsafe to the customer.

No, that is not the only real concern. There are a number of important environmental concerns relating to the use of GE crops. For example, they have caused the use of herbicides to increase to several times its' previous levels.

Mach · Dec 14, 2016

I didn't see that it was caused by their semi-organic food use. Is there some better/more current data than this?

FDA Investigates Multistate Outbreak of E. coli O26 Infections Linked to Chipotle Mexican Grill Restaurants

Unfortunately, the distribution path did not lead to an ingredient of interest.The FDA also conducted investigations of some suppliers, but did not find any evidence that those suppliers were the source of the outbreak. Ultimately, no food item has been identified as causing the outbreak, and by the same token, no food has been ruled out as a cause .

Did some sick workers just contaminate the food? Forget to wash hands after the restroom, etc.?

Chipotle: The Long Defeat Of Doing Nothing Well

sangha

Mach