I may be growing my own food for the chickens after all, due to genetic editing

[EddieSalita]

I am not a scientist expert or anything like that. GMO's scare the squat out of me. Why?
I know we have been crossbreeding seeds etc.. improving etc...
THIS IS HOW I UNDERSTAND, FROM WHAT IVE READ.
GMO IS different. Labs are adding growth hormones for more crop yield.
Adding insecticides (or whatever it's called) to determine pests and prevent yield loss.
I'm not comfortable eating a product altered with growth hormone or a poison that kills bugs etc.. .
Farmers also take the stalks from corn , wheat, soy, whatever (leftover after crop is harvested) and use as feed for their livestock. So a cow eats it. GMO contaminated now?
If the government is convinced GMO is safe? Why are there warnings a product contains it?
20 years from now, scientists may be slapping the side their head asking "what were they thinking-to create gmo"?

I'm less concerned about GMO than I am about what I means. In many cases they are engineered to resist a particular herbicide, which is then sprayed on that crop to trigger drying off for harvest, and or to control weeds.
That herbicide is then consumed by the end user. As we have seen over the years... herbicides long considered safe, sometimes end up not being safe at all.
Not mentioning pesticides yet.

At the end of the day the guts ingests huge variety of DNA of all kinds of bizarre things all the time. A poor analogy os one of venom. One can drink plenty of certain types of venom. But inject a drop and poof!

Like many things in life..... the dose makes the poison. If we have learned anything over the last few years, it's that science isn't as pure and integral as we may like it to be.

So I would be prepared to eat DNA. In fact I have little choice in that. It's what keeps me alive nutritionally in a way. But I'd rather not inject foreign DNA if I can avoid it.

As mentioned, gene editing isn't very conceptually different from selective breeding. Natural or human steered. But the purpose for which it is done, and the ramifications of that are what matter to me,

Wheat is often wholesale sprayed by glyphosate or similar to kill it off for harvest. History tells us that synthetic herbicide isn't necessarily always going to be entirely studied for safety free of vested interests.

My two cents.

 

[saysfaa]

Please let us know.

Sorry. I forgot to let you know. I didn't try to harvest the rye. And never planted the wheat. My farmland is not near our house so I can't get there as often as I would like. And even less so last summer due to various heath issues in the family. I ended up spending very nearly all my time there tending the tomatoes.

Maybe this year. Actually, less likely this year. The main health issue is my son in law's immune system is destroying his kidneys. His kidney function went from "no concern; just watch it, eat low salt diet" fifteen months ago to 40% a year ago. Then, with very aggressive treatment and extremely restricted diet, it still dropped to 20% shortly before Christmas; 16% now.

20% is getting on the transplant list. About 15% is needing dialysis.

Transplant before starting dialysis has better results. And live donor transplant has better results independent of whether it is done before or after dialysis. Live donor transplant is also more likely to happen sooner - if there is a match.

Ds is the most able of our family to donate. He matches 2 of 6. That is possible but 4 or 5 would be much better.

Six of six is best, or course, but odds of finding it are low enough that the transplant center recommends not waiting in hopes of finding that.

 

[Perris]

sorry to read about your S-in-l's kidney problem; I hope a good match appears soon and that the treatment works well so he recovers asap.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Our condolences on your famiy's challenges. Hopes a better mach for your son in law's kidney appears soon on the donor list.

 

[Chicken_tiger_catt]

Humans have been selectively breeding plants and animals for advantageous traits for thousands of years. We keep pushing for more product with less waste in less time. GMOs (or whatever we are calling them now) are just the next step in this. If we can force 1000 years of cross breeding by just modifying the genetics of a seed and result in a bigger, better and faster plant with no side effects from their consumption, why shouldn't we?

GMOs have been the big scary thing for some time as the enemy to "healthy eating", but the reality of the situation is that the alternative is starvation. With this absolutely ridiculous population we are trying to support on this rock, we NEED the ability to pump out even more food from our limited farms just to keep people fed.

THANK YOU. So many people see gmo as the bad guys, meanwhile CHICKENS THEMSELVES have been drastically changed by centuries of selective breeding, and it’s actually not normal for most birds to lay 5- 6 eggs a week. That would be like if a girl’s time of the month was the entire month!

 

[BDutch]

Humans have been selectively breeding plants and animals for advantageous traits for thousands of years. We keep pushing for more product with less waste in less time. GMOs (or whatever we are calling them now) are just the next step in this. If we can force 1000 years of cross breeding by just modifying the genetics of a seed and result in a bigger, better and faster plant with no side effects from their consumption, why shouldn't we?

GMOs have been the big scary thing for some time as the enemy to "healthy eating", but the reality of the situation is that the alternative is starvation. With this absolutely ridiculous population we are trying to support on this rock, we NEED the ability to pump out even more food from our limited farms just to keep people fed.

The truth behind the GMO for soy and corn for chicken (and.. ..) feed is the use of lots of poison and when it comes from Brazil the ‘landlord farmers’ have been harvesting the rainforest it.

In general Im not against GMO for bigger crops. But harvesting and burning the rainforests is awful. And using huge amounts of poison is really bad for the soil and for the people who who work in the fields . The soy and corn in the chicken feed still contains much poisons. The soil really dies after a few decades and almost nothing grows on it anymore.

Spoiler: What i posted before

From a trustworthy site;
Agricultural genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are plants obtained by gene transfer or more recently by gene-editing. Their major common phenotypic trait for which 99% have been modified is that these are designed to be grown with pesticides, which may bioaccumulate in the plants and/or the consumer, and/or express insecticides in their cells.
Examples of both types are Roundup-tolerant soy and corn and Bt insecticidal plants…

Read more…
https://enveurope.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12302-020-0296-8
]

So to grow poisoned GMO crops are not a good way to feed the world population. A better way is to grow more protein rich crops for human consumption and to eat less meat. Because growing meat is a very inefficient way to grow food and factory farming makes a lot of greenhouse gasses we don’t need at all.

 

[NanaK]

I am very sorry and wish the best for your family.
There has been 2 transplant patients in my family. The process is scary and affects all involved. My father had a heart transplant and his brother a kidney.

My uncle's kidneys shut down almost all at once. They think it may have been caused by repeated strep infections but it is not known. He was only about 20 yrs old at the time and had recently married. He had to go on dialysis for a while until a donor was found. He received a cadaver donor. His new kidney did well and he even fathered a healthy child.

My uncle's surgery was in the 1970's and my father's heart was in 1992. The rejection meds do have side effects but they have come a long way since their experiences.

I pray he doesn't have to take this road but know some do well.

 

[BDutch]

… Actually, less likely this year. The main health issue is my son in law's immune system is destroying his kidneys. His kidney function went from "no concern; just watch it, eat low salt diet" fifteen months ago to 40% a year ago. Then, with very aggressive treatment and extremely restricted diet, it still dropped to 20% shortly before Christmas; 16% now.

20% is getting on the transplant list. About 15% is needing dialysis.

Transplant before starting dialysis has better results. And live donor transplant has better results independent of whether it is done before or after dialysis. Live donor transplant is also more likely to happen sooner - if there is a match.

Ds is the most able of our family to donate. He matches 2 of 6. That is possible but 4 or 5 would be much better.

Six of six is best, or course, but odds of finding it are low enough that the transplant center recommends not waiting in hopes of finding that.

Sorry for your sons condition. I hope your son will be okay soon again of course.

 

[Chickenberg Goldenegg]

Why do you think there are no side effects?

Something about mixing poisonous frog DNA with corn to repel bugs sounds like a giant disaster waiting to happen. Do you want to be the poor sucker suing for compensation 30 years from now?

 

[Krugerrand]

THANK YOU. So many people see gmo as the bad guys, meanwhile CHICKENS THEMSELVES have been drastically changed by centuries of selective breeding, and it’s actually not normal for most birds to lay 5- 6 eggs a week. That would be like if a girl’s time of the month was the entire month!

There is a world of difference between GMO and selective breeding. GMO typically introduces genes from completely unrelated plants/animals. This is something that will NEVER happen naturally. NEVER.

On top of that, the genetic modification it not typically the main problem. Most GMO plants are altered so that they can grow drenched in Roundup. The result is that GMO produce typically has residual Roundup on it. That leads to all sorts of health problems.

PLUS, the GMO genetics can cross pollinate with non-GMO varieties of the same plants ... essentially 'contaminating' them. Add to that, patent laws have been structured so that these seeds are 'licensed.' Thus farmers cannot save their seeds for future use and are further dependent on corporations seeking to suck profit out of farming. (Think how this works in the world of pharmaceuticals.) And, to make matters worse, these corporations have sued farmers whos non-GMO products have been contaminated with GMO pollen for propagating patented genetics.