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Africa, Genetically-Modified Food, and Racism

Is it racist to prevent Africa from getting GM Foods?

  • Yes, it's racist.

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Last night I watched an episode of Penn and Teller's sucky show "BS!" about genetically-modified food.

Now, I don't know much about this developing issue, but the big guy Penn opened his big mouth at the end of his little episode and called the refusal to ship GM food to Africa "racism."

Is he right? Here's some info on this:

The African Centre for Biosafety (ACB) has petitioned the African Union to consider a ban on the cultivation, import and export of genetically modified (GM) crops in Africa at its January 2013 summit.
The request comes at the same time the Kenyan government has banned genetically modified food imports, citing insufficient evidence assuring public safety. Public health officers have already received orders to enforce the ban at all points of entry.

In a statement reportedly signed by over 400 African organizations, the ACB criticized GM foods for lack of safety information, as well as for patents and privatization that it says threaten small farmers.
ACB director Mariam Mayet spoke on a study recently published in the Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology that showed a connection between GM maize, and organ damage and premature death in rats.

“The results of this study have been discredited by scientific bodies with industry ties, but even they acknowledge that long-term safety studies do not exist and are necessary. Maize is a staple food for millions of Africans, making it imperative to ensure that it is safe in the long term,” Mayet said in a media statement.

Africa pushes for genetically modified food ban - World Mathaba

What do you guys think? Is it racist to not have genetically-modified food shipped to Africa? How about the fact the WE tend to eat more modified food than natural, organic stuff?
 
Genetically modified food is perfectly fine. It usually is crossbred or seeds are given genes to help them survive in different climates or to grow faster. The sheer lack of information and ignorance at the word "genetic" is probably going to result in people starving to death.
 
Genetically modified food is perfectly fine. It usually is crossbred or seeds are given genes to help them survive in different climates or to grow faster. The sheer lack of information and ignorance at the word "genetic" is probably going to result in people starving to death.

It arguably already has. What is more insidious and two faced is that you have European interest groups which have fought so hard to manufacture this hysteria in an effort to defend commercially unsustainable farming economies.
 
Genetically modified food is perfectly fine. It usually is crossbred or seeds are given genes to help them survive in different climates or to grow faster. The sheer lack of information and ignorance at the word "genetic" is probably going to result in people starving to death.

I largely agree with that, and it's not racism, but safety at issue. There is a large difference in gluten content as opposed to heritage with wheat and I imagine there's also difference in components of the maize.

But it doesn't end there, the problems with GMO and patented seeds don't all revolve around the health of the resulting food, but also in the additional tricks the companies play to keep those seeds proprietary.
 
I don't know if it's racist, but it's dumb. Africa will need GM crops more than anyplace else on the planet in coming centuries.
 
I acknowledge that there are patent problems, which will most likely be a problem with any kind of living thing that reproduces.

However, the safety issue is usually minimal and the crops grown are safe to eat. A company won't make a profit selling seeds to farmers that are going to wind up making those who eat the crops ill.

Regardless, when you have starving people in nations where food is scarce why is it such a pressing issue if the food is higher in gluten or might not have the same nutritional value as wild type plants? Shouldn't being able to provide food be a higher priority? I will also agree though that it isn't racism to not send over genetically modified food, especially when it's the home nations themselves that are banning it.
 
The thing that gets me worried is that I've heard some plants are bred with genes from fish that withstand cold temperatures and other such animal. That there's an "antifreeze" gene bred into corn so it lives longer. I may be woefully ignorant on this subject and I likely am, so I really dunno what the empirical truth is. I think that companies have a big interest in selling these crops to Africa, too, so on the flipside of one party's racism is the self-absorbed greed of the other.

I'm big on heirloom gardening and organic stuff, so I'm biased.... but I don't want to be wrong on this stuff, either.
 
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I acknowledge that there are patent problems, which will most likely be a problem with any kind of living thing that reproduces.

However, the safety issue is usually minimal and the crops grown are safe to eat. A company won't make a profit selling seeds to farmers that are going to wind up making those who eat the crops ill.

Regardless, when you have starving people in nations where food is scarce why is it such a pressing issue if the food is higher in gluten or might not have the same nutritional value as wild type plants? I will also agree though that it isn't racism to not send over genetically modified food, especially when it's the home nations themselves that are banning it.

Because you may be borrowing from Peter to pay [feed] Paul. Feeding a bunch of folks on something that may cause a spike in illness down the road just pushes problems down the road. Not to mention the dangers of monoculture. They could easily set themselves up for greater sufferring in a generation or two.

They're doing the right thing asking for the info up front.
 
GM food is generally fine to eat. The issue is that the seeds will not produce the same thing as the parent crop. This would require people to constantly have to buy seed from the patent holders every year and the seeds that fall and germinate would be weeds. some people feel that this somehow makes it wrong or that if the weeds were not there there would be no weeds apparently (weed is a relative term anyway describing anything you do not want to be there). It is more about money than race IMHO and a lot of folks are trying to use this as an end-run against agri-businesses by saying this is all a giant conspiracy to sell weed killer.
 
Related to my concerns of GM plants is the facts that there are many meats that are loaded with antibiotics and steroids, which are then absorbed into our bodies.

How is there any way to gauge the safety of these plants, and how do we know which business-mongers won't use their money and influence to hide the real results?
 
Because you may be borrowing from Peter to pay [feed] Paul. Feeding a bunch of folks on something that may cause a spike in illness down the road just pushes problems down the road. Not to mention the dangers of monoculture. They could easily set themselves up for greater sufferring in a generation or two.

They're doing the right thing asking for the info up front.

I do not think the dangers of these foods (if they exist for certain crops) outweighs the danger of starvation that many nations in Africa currently face. I highly doubt that eating the foods is going to somehow cause an equal number of deaths to starvation.
 
As an entertainer and performer, Penn Jillette is world-class.

As a political analyst, he's hit-or-miss. His quasi-religious adherence to doctrinaire libertarianism (ironic given his atheism) makes him mostly Miss.
 
Food for human consumption is ARTIFICIALLY scarce, not genuinely scarce.

It is made artificially scarce by basing access to it upon purchasing power.

THAT's the source of present starvation. Not crop yields, not tariffs or other national policies. Not organic vs. GMO.

People starve today because profit is treated as more important than need, whether on the scale of individual consumers, countries, or whole industries.

GM foods are not presumptively safe, nor are they presumptively unsafe. The hazards must be assessed on a case-by-case basis, using actual science (not ideology). The obvious catch is that there is a massive and incredibly powerful global commercial interest in pushing GM foods, based largely upon mass theft (i.e. patenting staple crops, charging subsistence farmers royalties on their own crops, and all manner of political maneuvering to FORCE GM foods upon populations that are neither informed nor consenting). This is not an issue of starvation versus survival, but of violence vs. autonomy.
 
Food for human consumption is ARTIFICIALLY scarce, not genuinely scarce.

It is made artificially scarce by basing access to it upon purchasing power.

THAT's the source of present starvation. Not crop yields, not tariffs or other national policies. Not organic vs. GMO.

People starve today because profit is treated as more important than need, whether on the scale of individual consumers, countries, or whole industries.

People starve today, because of the same reasons people have starved throughout history, and because of corrupt politicians. Zimbabwe was once considered the breadbasket of Africa, until Mugabe started confiscating the property of white farmers, and now millions of his own people are starving, when they weren't before. It's not profit-driven so much as human depravity and corruption driven.
 
Genetically modified food is perfectly fine. It usually is crossbred or seeds are given genes to help them survive in different climates or to grow faster. The sheer lack of information and ignorance at the word "genetic" is probably going to result in people starving to death.

yep.

and for those who are convinced GM food will kill them, there's nothing you can do to convince them that it won't.

it's sad, too, because with predicted population growth, 70 percent of the new food is going to have to come from technology or from cutting waste, which also requires chemicals that some idiot blog like natural news will make false claims about.

i run into the same thing with vaccines all of the time. i'm not against natural; i'll just point out that the natural human lifespan is 40, and it's perfectly natural to starve to death before reaching that age.
 
What do you guys think? Is it racist to not have genetically-modified food shipped to Africa? How about the fact the WE tend to eat more modified food than natural, organic stuff?

Frankly, I think it has nothing to do with racism, and everything to do with the need of Africans, and the supply on the end of those who donate. If I'm ****ing starving, and someone offers me food, I'm likely to take it. If I can afford to be choosy about whether or not my food is GM, then I'm really not that hungry.
 
Genetically modified food is perfectly fine.

No, it's not. Actually, it's pretty dangerous (unintended, long term consequences) and it's a manifestation of man's arrogance. :doh
 
Food for human consumption is ARTIFICIALLY scarce, not genuinely scarce.

It is made artificially scarce by basing access to it upon purchasing power.

THAT's the source of present starvation. Not crop yields, not tariffs or other national policies. Not organic vs. GMO.

People starve today because profit is treated as more important than need, whether on the scale of individual consumers, countries, or whole industries.

GM foods are not presumptively safe, nor are they presumptively unsafe. The hazards must be assessed on a case-by-case basis, using actual science (not ideology). The obvious catch is that there is a massive and incredibly powerful global commercial interest in pushing GM foods, based largely upon mass theft (i.e. patenting staple crops, charging subsistence farmers royalties on their own crops, and all manner of political maneuvering to FORCE GM foods upon populations that are neither informed nor consenting). This is not an issue of starvation versus survival, but of violence vs. autonomy.
When I read the OP my first thought was that Africa was not really rejecting GMO due to health concerns but due to fears of Neo-neocolonialism. I think they are right to fear it, Monsanto would set themselves up as the world tyrant of the food supply if they could. It's one of the aspects of advancing technology about which to be seriously concerned, the tendency of the developer of the technology to insist on absurd levels of exclusivity.
 
Frankly, I think it has nothing to do with racism, and everything to do with the need of Africans, and the supply on the end of those who donate. If I'm ****ing starving, and someone offers me food, I'm likely to take it. If I can afford to be choosy about whether or not my food is GM, then I'm really not that hungry.

I agree it has nothing to do with racism. However, I'll give you a good example of how "charitable" giving sometimes leads to a greater problem. Nestle for decades gave away baby formula to mothers of newborns in poor areas of the world. Sounds good, right? However, the giveaway only extended to the first few months of the baby's life. Just long enough for the mother to stop lactating. Then, in order to feed their child they had to buy formula. The mothers would then buy the amount of formula they could afford, and have to water it down to make it last. The end result was a lot of sick and starving infants.
 
Most GMO food is TREATED AS IF SAFE for the same reasons the folks walking around unprotected in the first nuclear test zones treated it as safe...they had/have no sense of the effects, and were only beginning to consider them.

We're past that original naivety already. Now we've moved on into the "Hey maybe we should test this out first?!?" (public) vs. "Nah F*** That Testing, It Will Interfere With Our Stolen Profits" (Big AgriBusiness) stage.

Here's how we know that we DON'T know the long-term consequences of mass-scale industrial GMO agriculture:

There hasn't yet BEEN a long-term time period for mass-scale industrial GMO agriculture.

So the general question is:

Do we adopt the usual approach to radically invasive technologies, which would be the Precautionary Principle?

or

Do we resign ourselves to profit supremacy, and piss all over the conscientious scientific approach (Precautionary Principle) for the sake of protecting private profit?

The default response is the latter, because we live under profit supremacy.

As usual, there is a massive conflict between what makes sense (health and sustainability-wise) vs. who (or more appropriately what is in charge).
 
Here's a basic list from a .gov website:

GM Products: Benefits and Controversies
Benefits

Crops
Enhanced taste and quality
Reduced maturation time
Increased nutrients, yields, and stress tolerance
Improved resistance to disease, pests, and herbicides
New products and growing techniques

Animals
Increased resistance, productivity, hardiness, and feed efficiency
Better yields of meat, eggs, and milk
Improved animal health and diagnostic methods

Environment
"Friendly" bioherbicides and bioinsecticides
Conservation of soil, water, and energy
Bioprocessing for forestry products
Better natural waste management
More efficient processing

Society
Increased food security for growing populations


Controversies

Safety
Potential human health impacts, including allergens, transfer of antibiotic resistance markers, unknown effects
Potential environmental impacts, including: unintended transfer of transgenes through cross-pollination, unknown effects on other organisms (e.g., soil microbes), and loss of flora and fauna biodiversity

Access and Intellectual Property
Domination of world food production by a few companies
Increasing dependence on industrialized nations by developing countries
Biopiracy, or foreign exploitation of natural resources

Ethics
Violation of natural organisms' intrinsic values
Tampering with nature by mixing genes among species
Objections to consuming animal genes in plants and vice versa
Stress for animal

Labeling
Not mandatory in some countries (e.g., United States)
Mixing GM crops with non-GM products confounds labeling attempts

Society
New advances may be skewed to interests of rich countries

Genetically Modified Foods and Organisms --HGP Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues
 
I agree it has nothing to do with racism. However, I'll give you a good example of how "charitable" giving sometimes leads to a greater problem. Nestle for decades gave away baby formula to mothers of newborns in poor areas of the world. Sounds good, right? However, the giveaway only extended to the first few months of the baby's life. Just long enough for the mother to stop lactating. Then, in order to feed their child they had to buy formula. The mothers would then buy the amount of formula they could afford, and have to water it down to make it last. The end result was a lot of sick and starving infants.

Well, in a case like this, mothers should be a little smarter, and breast-feed their babies, if they can't afford formula. There is always a carrot on the end of a stick, and if you're not sharp enough to look at the fine print, then you're being suckered.
 
What do you guys think? Is it racist to not have genetically-modified food shipped to Africa? How about the fact the WE tend to eat more modified food than natural, organic stuff?


There could be racists wanting or not wanting genetically modified food sent to Africa.But a ban by itself is not racist.
 
Well, in a case like this, mothers should be a little smarter, and breast-feed their babies, if they can't afford formula. There is always a carrot on the end of a stick, and if you're not sharp enough to look at the fine print, then you're being suckered.

The doctors at the hospitals ought to have told the mothers that breastmilk dries up if the mother doesn't nurse, so if you don't use it, you lose it. Nestle may well have culpability here, but the last and most important source of info, the doctors, dropped the ball.
 
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