Science of Cooking

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Mexico waiting on US proof that GM corn safe for its people, deputy ag minister says (www.reuters.com)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

You can find the document submitted by Mexico here: https://www.iatp.org/sites/default/files/2024-03/MexUSMCAInitialEng.pdf

On the point of transgenic varieties having a negative impact on local strain diversity, I think the concerns are valid. The introduction of high-yielding GMOs can lead to displacement of local varieties and ultimately decrease diversity.

I skimmed through the document to see if they make some good points about the health impact of GMOs. From what I can gather, the arguments are:

Glyphosate herbicides are commonly used when farming GMO corn. There is no global consensus on the potential long-term health effects associated with exposure to glyphosates and formulations that contain it.
Techniques to modify the genome are not perfect. Often, viruses are used, and some viral proteins could be inserted into the genome. Other things could go wrong. Ultimately, you may have an unexpected phenotype that turns out to make the plant toxic.
They argue that the GMO corn has a worse nutritional profile than native varieties. This worse nutritional profile ultimately has a negative health impact.

Personally... Maybe the glyphosate claim I can get somewhat behind but the other two health claims I don't find compelling. The risks over-stated, and their use of citations is not great.

I have an example of their use of citations that made me chuckle... They write:

Mexican corn, mainly native corn, has a better quality in nutritional terms, including compounds that prevent diseases and promote human health.^75^

And the citation reads:

^75^ In Mexico there are scientific compilations and files that bring together the aforementioned literature.

Ah, well, thank you for that 😅

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I'm glad you responded. I was really curious to see, as this smells more political than health related.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah. Claims about potential health effects can be very persuasive.

It is a factual claim that something could go wrong, or that we have a gap in our understanding, and the outcome of that may be detrimental to our health. We can't disprove this because it is true, and so what we need to do is to assess risks in a balanced manner. It is also a factual claim that a de-novo mutation could occur and produce a toxic strain, or maybe we do not understand something about a plant that we commonly eat and we later find out that it is carcinogenic. Our understanding evolves over time, and risks are everywhere.

But most politicians are not so concerned with painting a balanced picture. The claim "a risk exists" is always factual and that is good enough to push an agenda.

In my opinion this does not in itself mean that one political position is better than the other. Maybe the health claims are not a good argument, but there are many other valid reasons to want to stop GMO corn.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I'm more suspect about the companies involved than the concept of GMOs to be fair haha.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Profit? What's that? No no, that's never a motive. We only want the world to be a better place thanks to our wonderful technology.

[–] xkforce 4 points 8 months ago

Do... do they not know that corn was selectively bred from what amounts to a wheat like grass? Modern corn is NOTHING like its wild ancestor (which still grows there) granted thats a different method of altering what genes are or are not there but its still a form of modification by humans. What we used to do is just a very crude and haphazard way of doing it in a way that we have no idea what actually happened whereas with modern GMO, you are making very specific changes.