The Big Picture: Feeding Edge

[Samurai Goomba]

For a show called The Big Picture, you seem to be missing it and focusing on a small issue of semantics.

What people are worried about are genetically CREATED foods. Foods that don't exist and can't be found in the natural world. A Chicken Wing, Chicken Nugget or Coca-Cola is not a FOOD. It is a product created from food-like materials, flavored with artificial chemicals, sterilized, packaged in environment-harming plastics or litter-causing packages and mass-marketed to as many people as possible, with the GOAL being to make people buy and eat as much as possible (addiction-causing flavorings help with this), regardless of whether those people are hungry or not.

Food addiction isn't just caused by addictive personalities.

And then there's Monsanto and all of that. Monsanto is like the Mr. Burns of real life.

When genetic engineering hurts the sustainability of agriculture and attempts to enforce capitalism through the creation of crops which don't produce seeds (or when Monsanto and others try to force peasant villages to not collect seeds), that is heinous.

I've watched a few of these Big Picture episodes and have found your opinions in them pretty far off, unbalanced and making no attempt to acknowledge any validity on the other side.

 

[Rumpelstiltskin]

The problem is not genetic engineering itself, it is a tool that can be use for either "good" or "evil", the problem is it's been used for "evil". So most of the people who fight against it, are just fighting against the bad use of that kind of technology.

I live in Argentina, a country that has an agriculture based economy, and I can confirm what others have stated before me: Monsanto is an evil corporation. Also, it is not the only one being evil or irresponsible, there's also rich farmers and politicians helping it out.

Well, not so long ago farmers began planting soybeans they bought from Monsanto and started selling soy to chinese pigs (no, this is not a metaphor, chinese pigs are eating tons of soy). The problems being: this have almost driven the country into a single crop farming system and that they are using glyphosate as a weed killer. As some of you may have guessed glyphosate is really toxic and is screwing around with the soil fertility and the health of the people who works on the farms. Those people also work under inhuman conditions: They are paid wages way below the minimum and live with all they co-workers and their families in tiny houses.

Altough many people have done exhaustive research, people like one of my college teachers, no one is taking serious measures to stop it. The government tried to solve the problem of inhuman work conditions by negotiating with the owners of the farms as follows: If the owners improved the working conditions of their employees, the government would allow them to export all the corn they wanted to. All this ended with the big landlords making a protest in which that consisted in not exporting anything for two weeks, unbalancing the exportation balance in the process.

So as you can all see, the problem of genetic engineering is that people are dicks =(

 

[Duck_Man52]

for some reason if frakenfood was actually real, I would want to try it lol. I don't know why?

 

[shumajax]

most of the genetically modified food is not made so food is better for you or longer lasting or even for some trivial reason like color no what they do in lab is make modify crops so that they can with stand being constantly sprayed with herb-aside or so that they have built in pest-asides and there has been no studies in to the long term effect of this accelerated and haphazard approach to evolution. also a big source of controversy in this area come not from the food itself but of the application of patients to living things. if you patient a living thing you own it and all of it kin and all of it decedent this is a powerful thing and should not be taken lightly. there more to the story than you put out there bob.

 

[Solivagus]

What farmers did wasn't genetic engineering, it was selective breeding or artificial selection (going by Darwinian terminology).

I know what you were getting at and I understand this isn't your area of expertise and so on, but correct terminology is important in these things. Artificial selection focuses on the physical traits or phenotypes while genetic engineering focuses on the genes or genotypes. And now I've bored you. You're welcome.

 

[Jagji56]

Here is the thing, company's are genetically engineering seeds they sell so they only grow once, and there for, making them more money. I don't mind GM food, I mean, potato chips are GM, you only have to read there packaging to find that out. No, its the company's that are taking advantage of the technology (if you can call it that) that I am worried about.

 

[Ninja Twinky]

FMA reference, i love your videos because they talk about actual issues and such.

 

[personion]

Through years and years of these genetic breedings, seeds start to get less fertile. The apple 100 years ago was much more bitter than the apple we eat today. That means our bodies are consuming more sugar than ever before, and this explains a lot of problems.

 

[NightRavenGSA]

I have no problem with selective breeding or recombinant DNA, when done correctly.
I do however have a problem with the lack of ethics and accountability when it comes companies like Monsanto

 

[saber152]

What farmers did wasn't genetic engineering, it was selective breeding or artificial selection (going by Darwinian terminology).

I know what you were getting at and I understand this isn't your area of expertise and so on, but correct terminology is important in these things. Artificial selection focuses on the physical traits or phenotypes while genetic engineering focuses on the genes or genotypes. And now I've bored you. You're welcome.

yea he has a point, but in the end it all depends on what we are referencing and how it's exacted, now scientists can actually splice DNA in and out of cells. what bob said about the sheep, was in the wrong terminology but had the same idea behind it, physically u are making the best sheep breed with other sheep with the same wool output (for example) to make the next generation hopefully have the best or better wool output, this is selective breeding, in the end though both sheep have a gene that makes them produce more wool then others.

I think the term genetic engineering is more along the lines of actually taking the gene out of a cell and placing it in something else to make it ether better or something completely different.

 

[VioletHorizon]

I'm not from America, and I've never heard of those arguments before. I've also heard of good arguments against genetically modified foods, not because of health concerns, but because of socio-economic impacts (like huge corporations monopolizing on certain strains, killing off smaller businesses due to higher barriers of entry) as well as threats to biodiversity.

 

[Jux]

Good video, just want to point out one thing. Common misconception about defibrillation is that you can restart a heart with it, like you see in medical dramas. This isn't true. Defibrillation is simply a means of 'resetting' an irregular heart rhythm, it is actually useless once your heart goes asystole. A flatline is pretty much just treated with CPR and an intravenous vasopressor.