GMO conspiracy theories are organic manure

Real conspiracies do exists. We have some examples like the Watergate Scandal, the Lincoln assassination or the 9/11 attacks by Al-Qaeda. Those conspiracies seems to have an interesting point in common: very few people seems to have been involved. AFAIK the 9/11 attacks is the biggest proven conspiracy and only 19 people were necessary to hijack the planes.

Is that an indication than the bigger the crowd, the smaller the secret can be?

Imagine being part of a conspiracy trying to operate under the radar: you surely want to keep the people involved to the minimum to decrease the chances to be discovered. A secret group can be infiltrated, somebody might be turned, open her mouth at the wrong moment or a communication line can be infiltrated.

Every extra person in a conspiracy increase the chances to be discovered exponentially. Time doesn’t help with hidding the truth either, listen at all those ex scientologists explaining in great details the inner working of the church (my lawyers helped me with the phrasing of this sentence).

The more incredible the claim, and the more people involved to accomplish it, the more solid evidence is needed to take the theory seriously. Usually opinions and anecdotal evidence is the best you get.

This is why I have a very hard time following people claiming a conspiracy around GMO food. The scientific consensus on the safety of GMO, after 20 years of studies, is quite strong. Every relevant scientific organisation seems to support the claim that GMO are as safe as conventional crops.

Even in GMO averse Europe, the science agencies seems to be in agreement that GMO are safe to consume.

When presented with the obvious scientific consensus most anti-GMO person I have talked to reject it immediately without even a shred of doubt.

The justifications I have heard to dismiss science are multiple. But the one argument I have heard the most is that the scientists are paid by the big agronomic companies such as Monsanto to publish countless bogus studies supporting the safety of GMOs.

Monsanto is the lonely villain in the seed business. A convenient simplistic narrative worthy of a Disney Movie. I have to admit the dark past of this company know mainly for producing the Agent Orange for the U.S. army (along with DOW) and some PCBs chemicals doesn’t help my case.

At this point in the debate, when I reaffirm that the science is sound and I will not entertain any conspiracy theory, I a usually told I am a big naive or a shill!

Have the one bringing up those arguments thought one second about the amount of people that would need to be paid, corrupted and silenced to get that GMO conspiracy running? 1000, 10'000, 100'000 persons? And not a scientist came out to tell the truth about this conspiracy? Ha yeah, I forgot, scientists go into science for the money…

This is why I find this argument is ludicrous and concluded this is pure rationalisation to square a world view based on nothing more than ideology.

But wait, I also have a conspiracy theory of my own.

The organic conspiracy

The organic big agro industry is making billions and billions of dollars out of their business of selling high margin food to gullible consumer with no know benefit. To insure and expand their juicy profits they need to gain market shares from their competition: the conventional food store that sells non-organic products.

The easiest way is to create fear around the competition’s products is to attack the newest breeding technique on the block: GMOs frankenfood.

No need for real science here: fear is their best ally. They just have to support some ideologists politician and a couple of unscrupulous scientist to create enough noise. Pay Greenpeace for some efficient marketing, and destroy the field tests to slow down research.

Easy, cheap, very few people involved, and a lot of money to be made and also appearing to be an hero and health promoter in the process. Which business man in their right mind would pass such an opportunity?

Who is the Goliath in the room?

The organic industry is gigantic: The Whole Food stores had the same revenue than Monsanto in 2014 and it is just one store franchise. I let your imagination wonder about the reach of a global organic conspiracy.

Many organic farmers however rely upon the company Seeds of Change for their seeds. This company happens to be owned by Mars, the candy company. According to Forbes, Mars is the sixth largest private company in the United States with revenues of $33 billion in 2013 — geneticliteracyproject.org

I often hear the that anti-GMO are David, and Goliath is the big aggro industries. Think again: there is many big players that benefit directly from discrediting GMO foods safety. If I am naive or a shill then your imagination is not very well developed. Nefarious means can be trivially attributed each side of the argument.

If you cannot trust science, how do you discern fact from fiction? If any data, opinion, or study can be easily attributed to a conspiracy without supporting evidence what is the mechanism used to to trust one conspiracy theory over the other?

Labeling GMO foods

Europe is already labelling GMO foods while in the US it is another story. I don’t deny it is nice to have this information but I also have to ask myself if it is not a misguided endeavour.

What about mutagenesis which is the dirty secret of organic farming. This is a process in plant breeding where random mutations are induced in plant DNA using chemicals or radiation. Scientists have been doing this in the laboratories since the 1930s. We now regularly eat more than 2,000 mutagenically created foods, including such organic favorites as Ruby Red grapefruits and versions of wheat used to make organic Italian pasta–all developed over years of laboratory research. — geneticliteracyproject.org

Mutagenesis sounds like a highly random and dangerous process when compared to GMOs precise gene manipulation technics. I find it hypocritical to demand labelling on GMO when at the same time ignoring other methods.

Why we don’t label things that have a proven impact the world instead? For example: underpaid labor in the fields, soil erosion, carbon footprint, energy efficiency, pollution of the soil, water use efficiency?

Imagine your Apple products with: “Designed in California, built in suicide factories” or on H.M. clothes with “Made with cheap child labor”?

Environmentalists seems to care more about their own comfort, having a visibly clean habitat and eating organic food than human suffering in countries far away.

But I need natural food!

How about a nice natural banana… Nothing more natural than a banana right?

Pity the banana. Despite its unmistakably phallic appearance, it hasn’t had sex for thousands of years. The world’s most erotic fruit is a sterile, seedless mutant. — conservation magazine

Ho no, poor loveless banana! How about an orange instead. Surely it can’t be bad.

These plants have a high frequency of parthenocarpy, however, so they still produce fruit. Such trees do not require seed for propagation. In fact, propagation by seed would be disadvantageous because the progeny would differ from the parent. Instead nurserymen frequently propagate fruit trees asexually, usually by grafting. — scientific american

Humm that doesn’t sounds too good either. Parthenocarpy, Sterile fruit, grafting… But my watermelon is ok to eat?

Seedless cultivars are produced by crossing a tetraploid (4X=44) inbred line as the female parent with a diploid (2X=22) inbred line as the male parent of the hybrid. The reciprocal cross (diploid female parent) does not produce seeds. The hybrid is a triploid (3X=33), and is female and male sterile. — Seedless Watermelon Breeding

That doesn’t sounds very natural… tetraploid, triploid … those breeders are creating sterile seedless monsters!

In fact every single food we take for granted today is the product of human manipulation and are therefor unnatural in the sense that they don’t grow in nature by themselves.

What people usually mean by natural in the context of food is the contrary of artificial:

Definition of Natural: existing in or derived from nature; not made or caused by humankind. — Google

Agriculture is by this very definition artificial. All the food we grow are all artificially selected, mutated and hybridised and genetically modified in some shape or form. We destroy our natural habitat to make place for fields and domesticated animals. We use all the water and the soil for our own benefit. We spread the land with fertiliser to improve yield and pesticide to control pests.

It should be obvious to anybody than farming is absolutely in no way “natural”, never was and never will.

Isn’t organic more natural?

An organic farm is just a romantic fantasy of what farming used to be in good old days.

Claiming it is more natural make as much sense than saying than a car is more natural than a plane.

Organic farming uses pesticide, fertiliser and mechanic work. It uses more land to produce the same amount of food and therefor it is trivial to make the argument that organic farming is encouraging the destruction of the latest natural areas we still haven’t converted into farmland.

If you want real natural food you have to get back to basics: getting your food from nature by hunting and gathering.

This option is available to the very few “lucky” people blessed to live close to what is left of wilderness. Try survive 1 year on a regime of berries, bitter roots and rotten meat without developing sever malnutrition, diseases and parasites or just dying of food poisoning and maybe after you will be qualified to talk about natural food.