whats your opinion on GM food?

In y opinion, the chemicall treatment of food today is way more irresponsible than the biomolecular genetic manipulation. After all, GM food is the most extensively tested product on the mareket, and when you take into considderation the amounts of antibiotics the meet industry inject to the stuff we eat, I dont really think the GM food is that bad in comparision...

No matter how much testing you do, you are oblivious to the long term effects of this technology.

Will someone enlighten me as to why we are using GM food anyway? There is supposed to be a huge surplus of crops anyway without GM.

No matter how much testing you do, you are oblivious to the long term effects of this technology.

Will someone enlighten me as to why we are using GM food anyway? There is supposed to be a huge surplus of crops anyway without GM.

Well, less nature have to succumb to crops... The quality of the products may also increase. As an example, natural tomatoes do not last half as long as the GM ones...

This is also the case with chemical treatement. Why should you be so much more sceptical to the GM alternative?

Well, less nature have to succumb to crops... The quality of the products may also increase. As an example, natural tomatoes do not last half as long as the GM ones...

But tomato shelf-life can be increased by simply adding ethene.

crikey, you know your stuff...are you wanting to do chemistry at oxbridge?

crikey, you know your stuff...are you wanting to do chemistry at oxbridge?

Not "are you wanting"!

"Do you want"

Becuase chemical treatment has been around for much longer than GM and it seems not to cause too much damage. I buy organic though.

Different chemicals are different you know? Just a minor difference in the shape of a molecule and you get dramaticly different results. It is not correct to say that chemical food is safe whereas GM is unsafe, it depends upon exactly what kind of chemicals you use, and in which concentrations. Just because adding E 330 is harmless (Vitamin C ) , it doesnt mean that the same applies to E 345. Furthemore, unless I am mistaken a certain artificial sweetener cause acute damage to the brain and make you a mental retart for the rest of yoru life if you have a certain rare disease. So they are not perfectly safe... Also, Antibiotic resistant bacteria have been tracked to the meet industry. In general, there is no reason to beleive the chemical treatment to be less harmfull than GM food. Yet GM food is almost tabu, while noone cares about the amount of chemicals you have in todays food...

Different chemicals are different you know? Just a minor difference in the shape of a molecule and you get dramaticly different results. It is not correct to say that chemical food is safe whereas GM is unsafe, it depends upon exactly what kind of chemicals you use, and in which concentrations. Just because adding E 330 is harmless (Vitamin C ) , it doesnt mean that the same applies to E 345. Furthemore, unless I am mistaken a certain artificial sweetener cause acute damage to the brain and make you a mental retart for the rest of yoru life if you have a certain rare disease. So they are not perfectly safe... Also, Antibiotic resistant bacteria have been tracked to the meet industry. In general, there is no reason to beleive the chemical treatment to be less harmfull than GM food. Yet GM food is almost tabu, while noone cares about the amount of chemicals you have in todays food...

The problem with GM food is that we don't know much about it....if governments persist with it then we will undoubtedly uncover any secrets it may have (not that there has to be any)...the difference between that and chemically treated products is that we have far more experience of chemicals as ralfskini pointed out, but also we have a lot of theory to back up the usefulness of chemicals since it IS a subject which we can rely on theory heavily as chemistry is almost a complete science. True some chemicals are nasty but isn't this why so many gardening chemicals have been banned?

And I think the detrimental effects of thalydamide were noticed only after the drug had been taken by many thousands of people

Doesnt this just show that synthetic chemicals are not as safe afterall? To be even more specific thalydamide exist as two optical isomers, and only one of these isomeres cause the problems. The other isomer gives the desiered effect. If anything this shoyuld show that the synthetic chemicals are not generally safe just cus they have been around for a long time.