I did mean necessity. Much of the UK argument for GM food is based around world hunger and that is the driver that most researchers are using. While I accept that there are many commercial benefits for some a commercial argument will be hard for the UK to swallow. Also farmed fish just does not taste as good
Which is rather a misleading headline, as the article seems to conclude that seafood is not really a factor.
[h=2]GM salmon can combat world food shortage[/h]But the world is already short of food. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has estimated that there were 925 million hungry people last year and this year the World Bank has estimated that the number will rise to 940 million.
Where will the food come from to feed these people and those being born in increasing numbers? Not from agriculture according to a recent article in The New York Times. The newspaper states that farm output is already failing to keep up with demand caused by a growing population coupled with the rising affluence in once poor countries. Consumption of the four staples that supply most human calories – wheat, rice, corn and soybeans – has outstripped production for much of the past decade with some grains doubling in price since 2007.
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It is unlikely that seafood industry can do much to help ease the current food shortage, but anything to increase output would undoubtedly help. The US Senate has not yet given a ruling on the FDA approving GM salmon for human consumption. Will there be one very small step in enabling fish production to increase? It is probably better not to bank on it.
I don't think anyone is saying we don't need more studies, I think there should be more studies on all foods, GM and non-GM.
Here is a more recent story.
Maybe he hasn't seen all the evidence on the Natural News website???
******GMO: follow-follow-up***** August 6th, 2014
Interesting to see the range of reaction to my GMO remarks. One blog proclaimed "Tyson tells Liberals to Chill Out". When in fact I never mentioned anything about politics or political affiliations at all. Other blogs proclaimed that I supported GMOs, asking if I was paid by Monsanto. And in other places, the reaction could only be described as virulent.
I maintain the sense, thrust, and meaning of my comments.
In fact -- apart from my "chill out" quip in the video, which clearly deserved further explanation -- I didn't really vote one way or another on GMOs. You want to distinguish how genes are modified? Okay, then label everything, and create two subcategories of GMO. One that indicates laboratory and one that indicates agriculture. I said this explicitly in my Facebook post.
Furthermore, I never said GMOs were safer or more dangerous. I implied that if you think GMO-laboratory is **inherently** more dangerous to human life than GMO-agriculture you are simply wrong. They both can be bad for the environment. They both can be less healthy. They both can disrupt the local flora and fauna. But both methods wield an awesome power to improve food in every way that matters to humans: yields, appearance, vitamin content, sweetness, resistance to insects, resistance to weather extremes, and so forth.
As in all new foods, transgenic or otherwise, they should be tested for safety. [how many times do I need to say that?] And they should be tested for their effect on the environment. If the regulatory system is failing at this then it should be modified. And if the tests indicate a risk to the health of some humans and a benefit to others, then this should appear on the labeling. By the way, we already do this for peanuts, to protect people from peanut allergies. But there's no talk of banning them.
I note, of course, that we don't do this for wheat - a fully domesticated, genetically modified food. Yet many people suffer from wheat (gluten) allergies. Meanwhile foods that contain gluten display no explicit warnings at all. You just know that you're not supposed to buy and eat that baguette if you suffer from this condition.
Imagine if today, scientists showed you the Aurochs Wild Ox, and said -- "Give us time. In just a few years, we will genetically modify this wild animal, turning it into a different sub species whose sole purpose is to provide vast quantities of milk for humans to drink. They will produce 10x as much milk as did the original animal. But they will require vast grasslands to sustain. And some of you will get sick because you won't be able to digest the lactose. But no need to label this fact. People will just figure this out on their own. The rest of you will be fine. We'll call the result a Holstein Milk Cow."
What would anti GMO-laboratory people say this story? Would they embrace it or reject it? Of course, over the past 10,000 years, this is exactly what we've done to that Ox - or whatever is the agreed-upon origin of the domesticated Cow. Call it GMO-agriculture. If you reject GMOs you fundamentally reject it all.
Finally, I found it odd that people presumed I was taking sides. As an educator, my priority is to make sure people are informed -- accurately and honestly. For the purposes of general enlightenment, but especially before drawing policy or legislation that could affect us all.
I have nothing more to add. Or to subtract. On to other topics for me.
-Neil deGrasse Tyson
I thought it was the other way around, that FB post was a response to the negative feedback he was getting about the video...hmm. Thanks.
Partial Anatomy of my Public Engagement
August 10, 2014 at 1:04pm
Some have said, "You're an astrophysicist, why are you speaking on GMOs?". The simple answer, in this case, is that I was asked. By a reporter. Several years ago. On my book-signing line. After a talk I gave on the universe. I barely remember the occasion. It was video-recorded. Then re-discovered a couple of weeks ago by a news aggregator (I'm toldMother Jones). Got posted on YouTube. Became viral. Triggered a wave of reactions in the Blogosphere. Prompting me to fully clarify the points I made in the 2m 20s interview.
People commonly ask me things that are not about astrophysics because (I think) they trust my capacity to analyze information. And they are confident that I might offer a perspective or point of view that can assist their own analysis and understanding. That’s what any educator would do.
I am counted among the ranks of experts on Space Exploration, the Universe and, I suppose, Science Literacy — common topics of my invited talks. But I nonetheless think deeply about hundreds of other subjects. (such as genetics, baseball, war, peace, cloning, photography, intelligence, athletic performance, fountain pens, insects, aliens, human aggression, martial arts, impressionist art, Broadway musicals, mob psychology, human physiology, food fads, film-making, human rituals, food preparation, and fine wine.) Yet I hardly ever volunteer those thoughts publicly, unless asked directly -- as what happened with GMOs.
At first glance it may not be obvious, but if you carefully review my postings, and almost anything else i do publicly, including my Twitter stream, I rarely express opinions. More typically, I offer ways of looking at things that, at their best, make you think. And at their worst, are just idle, pointless thoughts that I share. I resist offering opinions because I actually don’t care if anybody share my opinions. They are my opinions, not yours. That’s the entire reason why I don’t (publicly) debate people. Often, debates are for when you want everybody who is paying attention, to have your opinion and not the opinion of your opponent. Instead, I attempt to offer tools and perspectives to help you see the forces of nature, empowering the reader or the listener or the viewer to think rationally about the world. (Hmm. I suppose that's, itself, an opinion: I think it's good for the individual, the nation, and the world to see and value objective realties.)
By the way, scientific debates happen all the time - at scientific conferences. But they are not typically staged. They arise after a talk is given and your colleagues challenge your claims or assertions or conclusions or assumptions in your research paper. No matter how this unfolds, the underlying premise is that there would be little or no disagreement if the data were better, or if there were more of it. So nearly all scientific arguments occur on the bleeding edge of research. Once a better state of data solves the dispute, we go drink a beer and move on to the next unsolved scientific questions.
There rest of the world is different. As we all know, armies of arguers lurk in the internet brush, waiting to pounce on every opinion offered by anyone who dares express one.
A while ago I posted a Tweet that implicitly juxtaposed both the First and Second amendments of the US Constitution. After one of the more publicized school shootings in America, I Tweeted: "In Walmart, America's largest gun seller, you can buy an assault rifle. But company policy bans pop music with curse words.” That’s simply a fact. People who presumed I was trying to express an opinion were actually divided on which way they though my opinion was leaning. Some ranted, “They have every right to sell guns!” Others proclaimed, “As a corporation Walmart has every right to protect children by not selling harmful music if they choose to!”. The urge was high to presume I was expressing an opinion worthy of attacking.
In yet another example, there's a Meme of me out there with the following quote: “God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance”. Well, that for sure looks like an aggressively expressed opinion, poised to rile millions of religious people. Turns out, I actually did say it in an interview. So, unlike so many other Memes of me out there, this quote is accurate — but COMPLETELY out of context. What I actually said, in reaction to Bill O’Reilly’s attempt to give evidence for God by listing things that science can’t explain, was: “If that’s how you want to invoke your evidence for God, then God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance.” Want to re-live the clip? It’s here: http://bit.ly/X5dhdP So I’m not even in that sentence. It’s a simple if/then statement.
These pedagogical philosophies had an occasion to merge when the New York Times asked me in 2011 what I would do if I were President. Here’s what I replied: http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/read/2011/08/21/if-i-were-president
I remain honored and flattered that so many people care so much about what I say — a responsibility that I do not take lightly.
Respectfully Submitted
Neil deGrasse Tyson, a servant of curiosity.
