GMO soy and corn in chicken feed? Discussion

[ChickenLeg]

There is growing pressure to use the government to force farmers to do various things that sound really good to people who are several generations away from living on a farm. At the very least, try to look into possible unintended consequences.

And into what has already been done - the pressure tends to lag behind what is done like requiring freezing too, for canned pickled vegetables.

Subsidies are a very blunt tool, expensive if not impossible to implement with even vaguely reasonable precision.

I was born and raised on a farm and I see government regulation as a great tool to help keep our lands more environment friendly, our food safe, and proper labor laws enacted

I agree subsidies can be used improperly, especially when they go mainly to the land owners who lives in the big cities or to large corporations instead of the local farmer. I was just throwing out the idea since thats how the government typically entices farmers into trying out new methods of agriculture.

 

[Iluveggers]

Anyone interested in government regulations on farming should read “Everything I want to do is Illegal” by Joel Salatin.

Amazing read. It will make you mad or frustrated.

 

[3KillerBs]

I submit that government regulation is almost always the worst possible way to promote best practices in nearly any field.

Government is inefficient, wasteful, inflexible, and subject to entrenched corruption.

 

[lesliedow]

The cancer rates skyrocketing are enough to make me be careful, proven or not. I KNOW natural products w no chemicals won’t hurt me. We eat Whole Foods, locally sourced meat that is free-ranged and grass-fed, and no GMOs. I’d prefer to be safe. In Europe feom what I understand, all products containing GMOs are labeled. In the US, companies have to pay to be labeled NON GMO. Seems backward to me. We should have a right to be able to know what we eat & choose what we want to put in our bodies (or the bodies of our animals).

Actually Cancer rates are not skyrocketing at all. And also "Cancer" is a cluster of diseases not a single one. So when you talk about Cancer rates you have to be specific. GMOs are not causing cancer. And the "whole food" producers are not cancer researchers. This whole discussion is pretty much free of any actual data. Oh one more thing, you DO know what you put in your bodies and those of your animals because the FDA mandates this based on a series of laws starting with the Pure Food and Drug act of 1906 and The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938. Right now is the safest time to be alive in the history of the planet. Even going back 50 years and you see a loss in life expectancy and higer death rates for Cancer and other complex diseases.

 

[lesliedow]

I submit that government regulation is almost always the worst possible way to promote best practices in nearly any field.

Government is inefficient, wasteful, inflexible, and subject to entrenched corruption.

Great, then go back to before the FDA was put into place and live then. Your life expectancy would drop significantly as would your animals'.

 

[3KillerBs]

Great, then go back to before the FDA was put into place and live then. Your life expectancy would drop significantly as would your animals'.

Healthy and safety protections and fraud protection =/= forcing government-defined best practices on people.

 

[ChickenLeg]

I like Joel Stalatin, anyone who can make a farm work without pesticides and synthetic fertilizers is making progress forward

 

[lesliedow]

@Weeg
Organic is a marketing term. Are you aware that hydroponic plants cannot be labeled organic even if they meet the legal requirements of trace amounts of pesticides? It's because this is a marketing term and often does not have a lot to do with anything else. GMO has been around since man started selective breeding. There is nothing inherently dangerous about GMO foods. Nothing. Now treat them or the seeds with pesticides that also impact animals or with neonicotinoids that kills bees and other pollinators and that is totally different. It is also true that farmers feed animals food that is cheap and/or more available but may not be best for the animial (like soy and corn) but again this has nothing to do with GMO. You are conflating your arguments. Also, the literature on glyphosate does not support the WHO recommendations or the court cases. Glyphosate is also responsible for reducing hunger in developing countries. Our affluent society has a ton of privilege built up around that and the whole organic food movement.

 

[lesliedow]

Healthy and safety protections and fraud protection =/= forcing government-defined best practices on people.

You are incorrect. That is exactly what this is. I suggest you read some of the 438 and warning letters from the FDA to bad actors and see for yourself.
https://www.fda.gov/inspections-com...liance-actions-and-activities/warning-letters
https://www.fda.gov/inspections-com...inspection-references/inspection-observations

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I tend to agree, though it is *at times* better than the alternatives. Its why we keep (re)making governments.

and Leslie, the same FDA responsible for protecting us from dangerous products (with, admittedly, some successes) is the same FDA which prevents us from using potentially beneficial products - one of the reasons the US lags behind other developed nations in at-home testing for the current pandemic, why we were slow to sequence when a researcher already studying virii on the Pacific Coast first noticed, and why we had to suspend a large number of FDA regulations to get the vaccines currently in use in the first place, rather than continuing to wait for most of the next decade, in the regular course of events.

Its neither an untarnished good, nor an unmitigated bad. Educated, intelligent, responsible people can engage in reasonable debate about where the line should be drawn.