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:::::true, this specific "Pros/Cons" item is sourced to an American commentator, it addresses the question as it relates to an American audience, it does not represent a global perspective. ] <sub><small>]</small></sub> 14:18, 6 November 2012 (UTC) :::::true, this specific "Pros/Cons" item is sourced to an American commentator, it addresses the question as it relates to an American audience, it does not represent a global perspective. ] <sub><small>]</small></sub> 14:18, 6 November 2012 (UTC)


== Noting scientific consensus on the safety on GM food in lede == == Noting scientific consensus on the safety on GM food in lead ==


Under the section "Health risks of consuming GM food" it does state that there is broad and regulatory consensus that GM food on the market is safe to eat but such an important conclusion by the scientific community should be mentioned in lede. Similar to how the ] page clearly states in its lede about the scientific consensus on global warming. Anyone else agree? Any objections to why it shouldn't be? ] (]) 22:06, 7 November 2012 (UTC) Under the section "Health risks of consuming GM food" it does state that there is broad and regulatory consensus that GM food on the market is safe to eat but such an important conclusion by the scientific community should be mentioned in the lead. Similar to how the ] page clearly states in its lead about the scientific consensus on global warming. Anyone else agree? Any objections to why it shouldn't be? ] (]) 22:06, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
::It formerly was. I wrote it. I deleted it when I dramatically shortened the lede and the whole article as per the discussion above. Please join the discussion above about the length of the article and its lede. Thanks.] (]) 23:12, 7 November 2012 (UTC) ::It formerly was. I wrote it. I deleted it when I dramatically shortened the lede and the whole article as per the discussion above. Please join the discussion above about the length of the article and its lede. Thanks.] (]) 23:12, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

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Michael Taylor

I understand that there are some ideas about Michael Taylor that circulate in the anti-GM community and are accepted as facts in that community. And the exact way that this text was stated, is the exact way it is stated on many anti-GM sites. That's fine, but Wiki needs to have a neutral standpoint and facts need to be sourced. I will try to find some sources, but if anybody else can find unbiased sources please add them. This is important because this is about a living person. Wiki has strict policies on statements about living people and statements not supported by reliable sources will need to be deleted.

Two sources have been cited so far:

Baden-Meyer, A. Obama puts GMO booster in charge of food safety. Organic Consumers Association July 22, 2009 Retrieved September 21, 2012 which is here http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_18635.cfm
and
Obama Gives Former Food Lobbyist Michael Taylor a Second Chance at the FDA] CBS News January 15, 2010 http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-44040110/obama-gives-former-food-lobbyist-michael-taylor-a-second-chance-at-the-fda/

I was hopeful about the CBS news piece but it is clearly editorial, not news. It is POV. Organic Consumers by definition is POV on this issue.

Nobody can dispute facts sourced from neutral references - let's use them!

Also, description needs to be neutral. At an agency like the FDA, no one person can be responsible for any policy especially not something as major as the way GM food would be regulated.

Thanks!Jytdog (talk) 11:41, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

The problem is that the paragraph is the view of critics (all critics are POV) so it is exactly these sources which provide support for the negative claims. Proponents are not going to mention the negatives. In regards to Taylor and substantial eqivalence, he is responsible in that he wrote the policy in his capacity as a lawyer. It is public record (the FOI Memos) that scientists within the FDA opposed the policy. It is synth for us to link the two reliable sources but it does indicate responsibility. We should be able to accept the POV sources that do make the link. Re CBS, it may be an editorial but it shouldn't be considered POV as it gives both the pros and cons of Taylors appointment and doesn't appear to have any connection with the anti-GM community. This Organic Consumers Association reference may be of some help as it has embedded links to it's reliable sources. It is particularly notable for the links to the court cases. Wayne (talk) 17:21, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
I'd rather not get in an argument about sources. What would be useful would be to find something that supports these statements and is sober and even-handed - something for instance describing how the FDA arrived at its GMO review policy that described Taylor's role and (potentially) makes it clear that he was given carte blanche to develop whatever policy he wanted. Something like that. Blanket statements by critics are just not helpful. Maybe if he gave a speech and said something so broad, or somebody praising him (!) made a statement that was so broad... but a critic painting with a broad brush is just not credible. Like I said, let's find sources that are not impeachable. The NY Times, the Wall Street Journal, the federal register, something that is not breathless but is soberly reporting/describing. I am not pro-Monsanto, I am anti-bullshit (in the Harry Frankfurt sense). Hearing the same chrorus sung again and again doesn't mean it is a fact. I don't care if the republicans are chanting or the democrats; the anti-GMO people or pro-GMO. The point is to state what is true and back it up with something anybody on either side can review and say, OK. By the way I took your advice and clicked on the links in the Organic Consumer article. Many of them are broken, the one about Salon leads to a site with a version of the story that doesn't seem to match the story on the Salon site and no-where is there any link to a credible source about Taylor's responsibility for the development of the original GMO policies. I wonder if you actually checked them before you wrote that to me..... I know you believe these statements are true and you probably find my desire to validate them silly or maybe suspicious. But that is what we have to do here. ] (talk) 20:07, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
was just looking for good sources but have to go. this one is pretty good, tries to tell the whole (emphasize "whole") story in a sober, even voice:

http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2236&context=bclr&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Furl%3Fsa%3Dt%26rct%3Dj%26q%3Drisk%2520and%2520regulation%253A%2520u.s.%2520regulatory%2520policy%2520on%2520genetically%2520modified%2520food%2520and%2520agriculture%26source%3Dweb%26cd%3D1%26ved%3D0CDEQFjAA%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Flawdigitalcommons.bc.edu%252Fcgi%252Fviewcontent.cgi%253Farticle%253D2236%2526context%253Dbclr%26ei%3DyA5dUMPYJNPq0QHOtIDgBw%26usg%3DAFQjCNFfxx7Tk1PLvv-a6B2mDC5_6kMosA#search=%22risk%20regulation%3A%20u.s.%20regulatory%20policy%20genetically%20modified%20food%20agriculture%22
(sorry for the long url) Will keep looking!Jytdog (talk) 23:46, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

again here is the policy at stake here: Biographies of living persons I just re-read the policy. I am deleting this material from the page until we can source it. Jytdog (talk) 23:51, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

so we have it handy here is the text that i believe violates the biographies policy - I de-formatted the references so they are visible
Critics in the US have protested in regards to the appointment of pro GM lobbyists to senior positions in the FDA. Michael R. Taylor was appointed as a senior adviser to the FDA on food safety in 1991. Taylor is a former Monsanto lobbyist responsible for the ban on GMO labeling, is credited with being responsible for the implementation of "substantial equivalence" in place of food safety studies and known for his advocacy that resulted in the Delaney clause that prohibited the inclusion of "any chemical additive found to induce cancer in man.. or animals" in processed foods being amended in 1996 to allow the inclusion of pesticides in GMOs. (ref name="Baden-Meyer" Baden-Meyer, A. http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_18635.cfm Obama puts GMO booster in charge of food safety Organic Consumers Association July 22, 2009 Retrieved September 21, 2012) (ref http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-44040110/obama-gives-former-food-lobbyist-michael-taylor-a-second-chance-at-the-fda/ CBS News January 15, 2010) Following his tenure at the FDA, Taylor became a vice-president of Monsanto and critics have called for a review of his work at the FDA citing a conflict of interest. On July 7, 2009, Mr Taylor returned to government as the "senior advisor" to the Commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration for the Obama administration.(ref http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/2009/ucm170842.htm)

the statements that are problematic are:
1) Taylor is ...responsible for the ban on GMO labeling
2) (Taylor)...is ...responsible for the implementation of "substantial equivalence" in place of food safety studies (actually says "credited with being responsible" but that is just weaselly)
3) (Taylor) ..is known for his advocacy that resulted in the Delaney clause that prohibited the inclusion of "any chemical additive found to induce cancer in man.. or animals" in processed foods being amended in 1996 to allow the inclusion of pesticides in GMOs.

The following statement is probably supportable, but no citation is given:
4) Following his tenure at the FDA, Taylor became a vice-president of Monsanto and critics have called for a review of his work at the FDA citing a conflict of interest. Jytdog (talk) 01:29, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Would The Ecologist be a RS for Taylor and labelling? On a side note, I found this interesting. A critique of Substantial Eqivalence by Mae-Wan Ho. Wayne (talk) 06:35, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
Your view on the book The World According to Monsanto by Marie-Monique Robin? This seems to be the most detailed information I can find RE Taylor's involvement with the substantial eqivalence policy, Page 160 - 162, declassified FDA documents, specifically a letter dated October 7 1991 from the biotech coordinator to Michael Taylor that implied that Taylor determined the purposes of the regulations. On the basis of this, Taylor was interviewed by Robin and denied he wrote the regulations, claiming that Dr Maryanski had. However, the previous year Taylor had written a document for the International Food Information Council setting out how the biotech industry wanted GMOs regulated. When compared to the final FDA policy statement the two documents are so similar that either Taylor wrote the FDA statement or someone copied his earlier document with some minor changes. Dr Maryanski was then interviewed and wouldn't say who wrote it. He stated simply that Taylor was team leader whose job was to made sure the policy was written and that Monsanto was very much involved in determining the FDA regulations. We can't say that taylor wrote it without this attribution but as he was the team leader we can say he was responsible. What can we get out of this or is it all too hazy? Wayne (talk) 08:03, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for working with me! However, all these sources come from the same anti-GM world, right? Every article on the Ecologist's home page http://www.theecologist.org/ is from a strongly lefty/environmental POV. The opinion piece on substantial equivalence here http://www.i-sis.org.uk/subst.php by its own definition ("We are reproducing the Section on the principle of substantial equivalence to show how rediculous it is.") is tendentious -- and this is off the Michael Taylor concept in any case. "The World According to Monsanto" is also POV. For instance, the segment interviewing Maryanski that you mention. (start quoting the documentary) He states: "Basically, the government had taken a decision, that it would not create new laws, that it felt there were already sufficient laws in place, that had enough authority for the agencies, to deal with new technologies." She asks him: "That means the White House asked the agency to write the policy where GMOs should not be submitted to a specific regulatory regime? But this is not based on scientific data, this is a political decision?" He answers: "Yes, it was a political decision. It was a very broad decision that didn't apply to just foods, that applied to all products of biotechnology." Narrator: "Unbelievable. James Maryanski admits that GMO regulation was based on politics rather than science." (End quoting). So, this is the worst kind of "gotcha" reporting. Maryanksi is saying that the US needed to come up with a policy to regulate the biotechnology field as whole -- including drugs and diagnostics, industrial uses (for example, enzymes in laundry detergent are produced using biotechnology), agriculture/food -- all those industries were using biotechnology, and the US needed an overall regulatory framework. Overall regulatory frameworks -- policy -- are always political decisions. Always. They cannot not be. It is a distortion to say "oooo see it is political not scientific!" Very very POV and I would say harmful and misleading to the public. (by the way, the Boston Law Review article I linked to above, which describes the way this policy was reached, and the policy itself, makes it clear that the science would be a pillar of the regulatory regime ": (2) only regulation grounded in verifiable scientific risks would be tolerated" p 738) As an aside, in the next segment of the documentary, she goes on to misrepresent the concept of "substantial equivalence," and this misrepresentation has also damaged the public debate around GMOs. So no, "The World According to Monsanto" is not reliable and even-handed -- it is tendentious and POV.
As I said above, let's find references for these statements from a source without an axe to grind, that is credible to anybody.Jytdog (talk) 17:08, 22 September 2012 (UTC)
Have you read this article? http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/health/policy/14fda.html?_r=0

"Mr. Taylor is popular among many food-safety and nutrition advocates, who call him intelligent and courageous." and later: "At a food-safety conference in Washington last year, Dr. Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, stood in the hallway and debated Mr. Taylor’s qualities with Russell Libby, the executive director of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association. “He’s extremely knowledgeable and public-health oriented,” Dr. Jacobson said in a later interview." Not everybody views this guy as bad.Jytdog (talk) 02:31, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

I found similar text to the original one in the ] and also deleted it for the same reason. Need to put something back once we find reliable sources.Jytdog (talk) 13:02, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

OK, so I spent most of today working on Taylor's wiki article. Michael R. Taylor I found sources that I believe are balanced. Please have a look there and tell me what you think! Jytdog (talk) 22:41, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Change the title

The article is titled "Genetically modified food controversies." This implies there is actually some controversy about genetically modified (or, more precisely transgenic) foods.

There is currently no legitimate science that would contraindicate the use of transgenic foods. In fact, there isn't even the slightest bit theory behind why it could hypothetically be harmful.

The article's title should read "Opposition to genetically modified food." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lvttc (talk • contribs) 02:54, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

First I agree that the title isn't great but I think it is the best of the alternatives. The debate about GM food is not just about the safety of food, but about many surrounding aspects, as the lede describes. The heart of the matter is real controversy about risk. There are some who find the risks reasonable/tolerable, there are some who find the risks unreasonable/intolerable. The fact is that there has never been a longterm study of feeding humans food produced from transgenic plants, and so one actually knows (in the sense of experimentally validated scientific knowledge) whether it is in fact reasonably safe for humans to eat food from transgenic plants or not. Judging the risk is a matter of extrapolating from in vitro studies of the food itself and from animal feeding studies. Jytdog (talk) 15:56, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Genetically modified organisms-related articles

The articles this discussion should concern:

The concept of genetically modifying organisms (especially crops/food) is a fairly controversial topic, so I would imagine that the articles get a fair amount of visitors. That said, I want to point out some issues to the articles that could be fixed. I've assigned numbers to each suggestion/issue, so that they can be discussed in separate sections.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Yutsi (talk • contribs)

Quick comment. I have been checking page hits
First as a reality check
the Katy Perry article avg is about 17,000 hits per day http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/katy%20perry
More seriously the article on China has about 20,000 hits a day http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/china
Of the articles you mention....
GM foods is highest ballpark avg 2200 http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetically%20modified%20food
GM organisms avg is about 2000 http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetically%20modified%20organism
genetic engineering is about 2000 as well http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetic%20engineering
GM food controversies has been big of late but still avg only about 1000 hits (recent increase may be Seralini press release, California referendum.. I'd like to think it is because I have concentrated information there
http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetically%20modified%20food%20controversies
GM crops is pretty small, maybe 500 average. As I note below, I don't think people actually care about agriculture.
They care about food and the contoversies. Right?
http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetically%20modified%20crops
Regulation of the release of genetic modified organisms is the smallest, maybe 70. I think the title of this article is terrible but have not tackled renaming it.
http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/Regulation%20of%20the%20release%20of%20genetic%20modified%20organisms
The title name is fine. There are regulations that govern approval to work with GM organisms and regulations that set the protocols and restrictions while they are being developed and tested. This article is about the regulations governing the release of these organism into the environment. I was working on a parent article and will release it (unfinished most likely) to mainspace soon. AIRcorn (talk) 02:15, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
So.. not sure if that meets your idea of "fair number of visitors". :) Jytdog (talk) 17:56, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
Frankly my dear... If an article gets 10 hits a day on average IMO it earns its place in WP. This is supposed to be an encyclopaedia, not a tabloid rag. Not every word in a dictionary gets looked up every single day, and some of the most valuable entries are exactly the entries that one has difficulty finding anywhere else, sometimes because nowhere else bothers to publish them. Let's not fall into the trap of "I wish people would stop pestering us for X; we don't stock X; there is no demand for it!" As long as we can produce articles with intrinsic substance and significance and with a decent presentation of information and relevance, our only reaction to a low hit count should be to check whether it could be better presented to strike the eye of potential readers. JonRichfield (talk) 08:28, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
sarcasm my dear! I think you misunderstood my point. I have spent hours working on these pages - I want them to accurate because I believe wikipedia should always be excellent, regardless of whether the topic is "popular". You got more to my point with your last remark - and that is, how used are these pages? Relative to "popular" topics, and relevant to each other? Why is the regulation article - the one I would hope people read and learn about a lot, so rarely consulted? And my comment about "not sure if that meets you definition of fair number" - I really meant that - I have no idea what Yutsi had in mind when he said that. I like data and hard numbers so I put them out there.Jytdog (talk) 01:23, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Crossed wires my dear, I suspect. The nearest I came to deliberate acerbity was in rejecting any idea that a low hit rate was a priori a basis for questioning the justification for an article's existence. Sure, if large numbers of people read important topics, that looks good and we should aim for it, but for a lot of really vital technical topics it is fashionable to raise Cain chanting meaningless slogans in the streets, but God forbid that anyone should actually take time learning what it really is all about. (GMO-hatred is not the only such topic, mind you!)



Issue 1

hi read this — Preceding unsigned comment added by Purebuzzin (talk • contribs) 11:56, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Additional note. I just read the WP:SELFREF and I don't agree that anything here violates it. It is 100% OK to say "this article refers to X" What is not OK, is to write, "This Misplaced Pages article refers to X". That does not occur. The policy also teaches away from self-references that would not work in other media, for instance, in print. None of the instances do that either. So I disagree that anything violates WP:SELFREF. Jytdog (talk) 00:13, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Thanks for raising these issues. I have done a lot of work on this suite of articles over the past few months. When I came upon them, they were a real mess. By "mess" I mean things like:
(i) the same matter was discussed across all these pages. At great length, sometimes verbatim but often one stretching out randomly in X direction and another in Y direction. Most of the overlapping material concerned the controversy - namely, people emphasizing studies, especially from the Seralini group, that endeavored to show that GM food is very risky and regulators as not being strict enough.
(ii) the same study would be cited three or more times in a given article, described differently and with the reference formatted differently, making it appear that there were many more studies than there actually were.
(iii) there was not a lot of actual content. For instance there was really nothing about how farmers use GM crops or why they matter to farmers. But farmers are the ones actually buying the GM seed and using them. And the GM food article, remarkably, said almost nothing about what food you find in the store is GM. Again, remarkable.
I think that the articles were messy for three reasons:
a) fact: there is a set of people, anti-GM people, who are emotional about these issues. They are worried and angry and want other people to be motivated to help change the current system. (I still don't know much about the demographics or size of that group. Something on my "to-research" list)
b) fact: There are a few "segments" of material, each of which is fairly complex in and of itself, that read on each other, again in complex ways. The 'segments' can be divided up as the articles are -- the underlying science (genetic engineering article); broad examples of application of genetic enginering (GMO article); agriculture (GM Crops); what you actually might eat (GM Food), regulation of GMOs and food (regulation), and the whole controversy (which touches on all those and more).
c) judgement by me: a lot of the people (not all!) who are the most emotional, and most motivated to edit wikipedia, especially in what I call 'drive by" editing (don't have a logon but edit from an IP address, one or two times maybe) are also (gulp) ignorant about a lot of the complex matter. I don't mean "ignorant" pejoratively, just that they don't know stuff and I don't think they care to know. (see iii above) There is also a lot of half truth "information" about these matters that is passed around in that community. For example, much online discussion of Monsanto vs Schmeiser is wrong - and was wrong in several places in Misplaced Pages.
Therefore, when I cleaned these articles up by separating matter, getting NPOV sources, editing POV text to make it NPOV, etc, I tried to also signal very very explicitly to readers and editors what they could expect to find in a given article. This is to try to help prevent readers from expecting to find -- or wanting to add -- something about environmental damage from GM Crops in the article on GM Foods. The way things are configured now, nothing about environmental pros or cons of GM crops belongs in the GM food article, because that article is about actual GM food - the stuff you eat. What is GM food, exactly? That is what you should have learned after reading the GM article. And you should know that there are articles on other, complicated matters, that you need to read as well if you want to understand the whole picture.
I realize that this explicit guiding language is not normal wiki style. But because of the above, I think is essential to retain these explicit guideposts. Otherwise the articles will moosh back together again.
Two regular wiki editors, arc de ciel, and aircorn, have also raised concerns about this as well -- see User_talk:Jytdog#CommentJytdog (talk) 17:20, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
Another user, Semitransgenic has objected to this paragraph - deleting it and noting "remove editorial remarks, use dablinks at the top of the page to tell readers of other relevant content". Happy to see a proposed example!Jytdog (talk) 15:39, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
I don't support this kind of in-article editorialising, dablinks (hatnotes), or an infobox would be a better method, the tone of the lead in general needs addressing. Semitransgenic talk. 15:47, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
It is not editorializing in the sense of giving an opinion. If you want to provide sample hatnotes I would be very interested to see them! What do you mean by "tone"?Jytdog (talk) 15:52, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
starting a paragraph with words like "nonetheless" etc. veers towards MOS:OPED. Lead prose should ideally be pragmatic, just provide an accurate summary of the key/notable content found in the main body of text. Semitransgenic talk. 16:19, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

If nothing else could we get an answer to this issue. The paragraphs that this concerns are these ones. AIRcorn (talk) 21:01, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

I am OK with how this was handled at Genetically modified food controversies if you want to implement, aircornJytdog (talk) 22:21, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
No problem. It is not looking like this is going to be closed soon. AIRcorn (talk) 00:07, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Issue 2

  • To the extent that these sections remain, I agree that they could be sorted that way - it would be better. In general I have tried to eliminate these sections, slowly, making sure that the matter is incorporated into the suite of articles. I understand that this is best under the MOS.Jytdog (talk) 17:21, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
  • The external links sections should be trimmed to just websites that contain an overview of the whole topic (i.e a website about GM mice should be on the GM mouse page, but is not needed on the GM organism one) but are not suitable for inclusion in the page itself (i.e a large list of GM crops like here. The less the better in my opinion and would be more than happy to see them trimmed. I however do not think that they should be separated based on their alignment. AIRcorn (talk) 01:57, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Issue 3

  • I don't really understand this point. Perhaps you could explain better. My POV: People's concerns about GM food are what drove the mess and what drives a lot of the ongoing editing. I have done my best to carefully sort things out. In my mind, GM food per se (what is it?) should be handled in the GM food article, and controversy around it (and many other surrounding issues), in the controversy article. Regulation of it and GMOs that produce it, in the regulation article. Crops that produce it (and other things) in the GM crops article. GMOs in general, and genetic engineering in general, in those articles. These topics are inter-related, for sure. They need to mention and reference each other. But the topics are separable. Jytdog (talk) 17:25, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Some overlap is inevitable, but it should be reduced as much as is practicably possible. I don't particularly like controversy sections in articles and would rather see the issues mentioned in the appropriate section. Although I concede that this might be hard to maintain in these articles. What should happen if we have a controversy article is that the GM food should have a controversies section linked with a main template to the controversies article. It should include a couple of paragraphs outlining or summarising the main points associated with food. The GM crops should have the same except its paragraphs should focus more on crops and so on. AIRcorn (talk) 02:05, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
The hard thing about your proposal, aircorn, is that opponents of GM food very rarely have a single focus and it is very hard to sort out the "heart" of many objections. Many seem to care most about industrial agriculture (many angles on this... so-called "corporate control of the food supply", messing with "nature", chemical use, etc. Others really seem to care about riskiness of the food they eat. Others seem more focused on corruption of regulatory agencies. And all those issues very much overlap and feed into each other. And there are problems that touch on everything. The key issue can be broadly captured under the rubric of gene flow/contamination. People worry about gene flow from GM crops to other crops and to weeds (environmental concerns and food-safety concerns, especially with pharming crops, and economic concerns for organic farmers); people worry about harvested crops being mixed (a la starlink); people worry about litigation from gene flow or contamination (mostly based on misunderstandings of Monsanto v Schmeiser). So I ended up with one big honking controversies article. Happy to hear thoughts about how to rationally separate!!13:55, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
Answered below AIRcorn (talk) 00:21, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Issue 4

Issue 5

  • I disagree very strongly. People care about what they eat -- what goes into their bodies. GM Foods needs its own article. GM Crops are agriculture -- most of the information you need to know in order to understand them, has nothing to do with food. Much of the material now in the GM crops article was originally in the GM foods article and I pulled it out and put into the GM crops article, and then expanded it. It still needs more expansion in some sections as noted in the article. Farmers don't buy GM seed, thinking about food. They buy them because they make sense to farmers as businessmen. The companies don't make GM seed, thinking about food. They make them so that their customers --farmers -- will buy them. It's agribusiness. It's not about food. (I am not saying that is a good or bad thing -- no moral judgement - it is just the way the world is). It is absolutely true that the companies have to satisfy regulators in order to do business, because some (but not even most) of the product directly becomes food and so it must be safe enough to eat. Most of the product goes to feed livestock and poultry (which then become food). Much of the product is used industrially and never becomes food (cotton, corn for biofuel, potatoes for starch used industrially. etc). It is true that some GM crops used directly as food have failed because farmers' customers didn't want to buy it as food (the New Leaf potato failed because farmers' target customer, McDonald's, didn't want GM potatoes for french fries, even though they satisfied Americans' desire for perfect-looking, unblemished food). But GM crops is its own topic. Look how long that article is already! And the GM foods article also requires expansion itself.. not even close to describing all the food you find in the store that is GM.Jytdog (talk) 17:36, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Keep them separate. Not all crops are food (cotton is one of the most common GM crops and it is a stretch to label it food, plus you have Amflora and biofuels that are being developed) and with the development of the GM salmon soon not all food are not going to be crops. It still needs some work separating the two, but the crop/food split is a good one at my mind. I would bring back the GM plant article at some stage too, and make it a parent one of the crop one for much the same reasons, there are some important GM plants used in research that are not and never will be grown as crops. AIRcorn (talk) 02:12, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
I have no quarrel with most of your points and the proposed separations of topics seem reasonable to me, but I am mildly puzzled as to why you exclude cotton from food plants as a topic. I don't eat much fabric or cotton wool myself, any more than I can help anyway, but I have eaten a lot of foods prepared or canned in cottonseed oil and have probably eaten more products of cottonseed cake than I know about directly, and a good deal more meat from animals that have eaten large quantities of cottonseed cake. Once you remove the gossypol, either artificially, or genetically, cotton is quite an important food plant. And beware what you say about hemp and poppies too! Just an obiter dictum... JonRichfield (talk) 08:41, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
Not too familiar with cottonseed oil, although I knew it existed. I mostly think of cotton as the fibre. Cotton would probably have to be mentioned in both articles, along with maize and the other food crops. Am working on organising a kind of heirachy now, so hopefully we can get the split better organised. There needs to be a Genetically modified cotton article created, plus one for tobacco, Arabidopsis and other important plants. AIRcorn (talk) 12:34, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
Right. That is the sort of thing I had in mind in my comment below when I spoke of "adjusting or even radically changing the suite of articles in the light of matters emerging..." JonRichfield (talk) 16:25, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
Thanks John! I am very aware that cotton is used to make cottonseed oil -- in fact I have been trying to get the Andrew Weil website to change its stupid page on cottonseed oil which is not accurate. http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/QAA400361/Is-Cottonseed-Oil-Okay.html See the Cottonseed_oil#Concerns_about_fats_and_toxicity that I edited to make accurate. And I do list cottonseed oil in the Genetically modified food article. In my comments above, I was not trying to exclude the use of cottonseed oil as food; I was just making the point that the cotton from GM cotton plants -- along with many other products of GM crops -- are not used for food. Sorry to have created a misunderstanding. Jytdog (talk) 13:13, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
No problemo. All such misunderstandings should only be so easily fixable ;-) JonRichfield (talk) 17:15, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment: To forestall almost inevitable accusations of POV, if not actual corruption by evil multinationals, I have no material, contractual, or commercial interest in any form of GM that I know about. Idealistically and intellectually I am deeply interested in the matter and deeply alarmed and disgusted at such examples as I have seen so far of, for example, large scale plantings of crops with genes for defensive production of single substances for pest control; such abuses rank with the early days of misapplication of antibiotics, both in human medicine and in agricultural and veterinary practice.
Interesting comment! I like the comparison with antibiotics. GM seed with stacked traits are now 25% of the market and growing steadily (http://www.isaaa.org/resources/publications/briefs/43/executivesummary/default.asp), so things are snapping into a line of intelligent use quickly....Jytdog (talk) 13:19, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. I was not aware of that trend. It is encouraging, though of course it is just a hint at the depth of responsibility that we bear when tinkering with such powerful tools. If we are not careful we shall simply turn a vital biotechnological opportunity into an exercise in the fostering of super-pests. JonRichfield (talk) 19:46, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
That said however, I regard GM as a field on a par with computing, the control of fire, printing, and the development of modern science in terms of historical importance for the future. There is no way that we could rationally justify ignoring or sidelining it. The question of how to present it, including how to split the topics into manageable articles is what matters, as already indicated in several of the contributions to this RFC. I have no particular quarrel with the proposed titles as presented, as long as each is coherently written and adequately cross-linked to the others. Questions such as what readers care about putting into their bodies are far less important than questions concerning the clarity and perspective of each article. Since the articles are in inevitably not independent, there must necessarily be some overlap, but this is hardly a new problem and requires no new techniques in dealing with it. Concise cross-reference plus clear reference to the main article for each topic is naturally important, but hardly challenging.
As I said, I have no quarrel with the proposed split, but I also would have no problems with adjusting or even radically changing the suite of articles in the light of matters emerging during their authorship and editing. JonRichfield (talk) 09:05, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Principles in using subarticles

Hi

IMO, any time we have subarticles, there should be a standard, brief paragraph in the "head" article (ideally taken from the lede of the subarticle and edited for concision if necessary) and a link to "main", and then keep an eye on those standard paragraphs for changes so that they stay short and plain. Ideally, no statistics would be in those standard paragraphs, otherwise when new data emerges we have to go back and update the data in many places which will inevitably lead to missing things and the overall suite falling out of sync within itself and with reality. I feel that we should try hard to avoid having long sections in different articles that cover the same matter. This was the state in which I found articles within this suite several months ago and most of my work has been consolidating overlapping material into clear, NPOV, well sourced discussions. Having a suite of articles covering various aspects of complex matter is indeed common in WIkipedia, but it is also commonly handed badly IMO. For instance in the suite of evolution articles, the main evolution article has a history section that is very long (7 paragraphs that fill my screen)... and there is an entire much longer subarticle on the history (about 10x longer). I glanced over the two texts and they don't tell the same story or even use the same refs.... this is not a happy thing for an encyclopedia and we should avoid doing this. This is for me a very important principle and I hope we can discuss it. Jytdog (talk) 13:58, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Organisation and consistency is the bane of Misplaced Pages. This seems reasonable though. AIRcorn (talk) 00:16, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
sorry you have thrown me off.. do you mean lack of organization and consistency are the bane (i.e. a source of harm) or do you mean that pursuing them is a bad thing? sorry, i don't know you that well and this was confusing...Jytdog (talk) 01:09, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
It was meant slightly tongue-in-cheek. Due to its nature Misplaced Pages tends toward inconsistent disorganisation (anyone can edit after all). It is amazing that it works as well as it does. Providing order is an admirable thing, and I will help out as much as possible, but at the end of the day you are going against the natural inertia of the project and no matter what you do, if you want to keep it organised it is going to take constant watching. AIRcorn (talk) 02:37, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
I totally hear you on that. :) I intend to watch for a long time. But I also want to structure things as much as possible, with explicit markers "This goes here, that goes there" - to help keep things in line.Jytdog (talk) 03:30, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
I don't see you getting consensus for the self references (issue 1 here). I would suggest using the hidden text function. Simply type<!-- Add appropriate comment here -->. It will only be seen by editors when the click the edit button. See this for how it might work. AIRcorn (talk) 03:39, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

(starting tabs over) Hi Aircorn... so far nobody has gone to the mat on the the self references. With respect to the objection raised in Issue 1, I wrote above, that if you read Wiki's self-reference policy, it is clear that these texts do not violate that policy. Nobody has responded to that so I assume nobody disagrees. My sense is that you and arc de ciel have objected on more stylistic grounds... but neither of you has gone to the mat on this. Is this indeed important to you?

But let's go back to the subject matter of this section. I have been trying to lay down a principle that sections for which we have big subarticles should just be very brief stubs - 1 paragraph taken from the lede of the subarticle, so that we don't end up with long, weedy descriptions of a given issue in different articles that extensively overlap with each other and with the main subarticle... which leads to inconsistencies and disorganization that you have described as a bane of wikipedia (and I heartily agree!). I thought we had kind of agreed on this... but you just recently expanded one of these stub sections with a bunch of material copied from a subarticle. So what gives? How shall we do this? I have been tempted to go into some of the articles you have created and apply this "stub principle" (for instance you have a section on "regulation of the release of genetically modified organisms" in your "regulation of genetic engineering" article that is my mind is waaaay too long and should be just a stub, as we have a whole article on "regulation of the release of genetically modified organisms") but i have held back from stubifying that section until (and only if) we reach consensus here.Jytdog (talk) 18:09, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

No one needs to got to the mat. We have consensus so far (me, Arc and Yutsi against you so far) not to use them. Is it important to me? No other things are more important at the moment, but one day I would like to get the articles up to Good standard and that is not going to happen with those instruction paragraphs in the lead.
I think we slightly misunderstood each other above. I agree that there should only be short summaries in the head articles, but we have a disagreement over what is short. I think that there needs to be enough information in the parent article that the reader will get a good overview of each topic, they should not be obliged to go to another article to find this. They should only have to go there if they want to find more details. Basically each article should stand on its own and stubby sections are not going to allow that. Three to four paragraphs covering the regulation and controversies should be enough, but anything less and the article is going to be incomplete. AIRcorn (talk) 21:38, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for talking! OK, on the guide paragraphs.. both Yutsi and Arc based their objection on their understanding of wiki policy, and as mentioned, I don't see how these run afoul of the self-reference policy. You seem to be basing your objection on that too, when you say that an article with these paragraphs, will never be Good. But what is the basis for that? Please explain...
Thank for zeroing in on the "stub" issue. I really appreciate it. So to you the key principle is that the article should stand on its own with respect to providing a good overview and that a compact stub is not enough. I had thought that the stub does provide an overview, but what I am hearing is that this is too high level for you -- it is not a "good" overview. So you want more of the story in all the articles. Whew that is all a tall order for complex matter like this. It helps me understand why you want longer "stubs." OK I need to think about this a bit! I will write again in a couple of days, this requires thinking and if I come into alignmnent with you, some major resetting for me. Thanks again.Jytdog (talk) 22:48, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
The Good articles have a set of simple criteria that they have to meet in order to gain that status. IMO they are a great base that every article should aspire to. One of those criteria is compliance with WP:Lead, which I don't think the navigational paragraphs meet. Another one is broadness, which is why I think we need more than one paragraph stubs in important sections. AIRcorn (talk) 16:41, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm not really watching the articles right now, but I just wanted to confirm that the objections I raised were indeed answered. It doesn't "feel good" from my own style perspective, but I don't know of any style guideline that rules it out. Also, I think that the general organization Jytdog has put in place is a good one; as he said, my concerns were only about the way they were disambiguated. It seems that people adding the same citations repeatedly is common in this group of articles, and this organization would probably help a lot. Arc de Ciel (talk) 03:00, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Overall structure

Let's have a focused discussion on overall structure. This is part of the topic mentioned above but only part. Let's map it out. It would be really great to do this with some kind of software that allowed us to draw things, but I am ignorant of how to do that. So I will take a shot at this using words alone.

Here is my perspective

  • genetic engineering (head article; should describe history and techniques and a high level overview of uses)´
  • GMOs - this should work be organized by the biological taxonomy of the kinds of organisms that have been modified and briefly state the purpose of the modification --> subarticles on various GMOs
  • GM crops - describes the agriculture and agribusiness of GM crops. Not about food, about crops. --> subarticles on various crops (many will be same subarticles of GMOs above)
  • GM foods - describes what foods we eat are GM. Not about agriculture, about food. This is by far the most trafficked article in the suite (fact), because people care about what they eat (opinion).
  • regulation - should be a brief, standard, subsection of each of the articles above, and describe the general principles of regulation, and provide an overview of each countries' current regs (right now lacks international agreements like Cartagena Protocol - needs to be added) --> subarticles on each country's history of regulations and international agreements
  • controversy - should be a brief, standard subsection of each of the articles above, and describe all the aspects of controversies around GM crops and GM food --> subarticles? I struggle with this. Part of my goal here is to give the full controversy full voice in one place, so that it is not inserted into every article on every genetic engineering topic, and gets clear, NPOV discussion someplace where everybody can find it.

All this done with the principle of subarticles mentioned above...Jytdog (talk) 14:00, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

I agree with pretty much everything here. Although I would think you would have to cross reference food in the crops article and crops in the food one. As far as the controversies go I would have a section solely on the health concerns in GM food and one solely on the environmental concerns in the crops one. Then I would have a section over-viewing the other concerns. I think the length of the controversy section should depend on the article. GE, food, crops, plants, animal, organisms should probably get their own section with a good overview of the issues relevant to each topic and a {{main}} to the controversies article. The sub-sub articles can probably just get away with a link provided in an appropriate section (e.g. in Bt brinjal it says in the first sentence of controversies "There are many controversies surrounding the development and release of genetically modified foods, ranging from human safety and environmental impacts to ethical concerns such as corporate control of the food supply and intellectual property rights" in the lead of the controversies section). The rest of the section just details the issues with the titles topic and does not dwell on the overall controversies. For the controversies article itself I would keep the public perception as the first header, then have health concerns, environmental concerns, regulatory concerns (including labeling), religious concerns and Intellectual Property concerns (including corporate control). Most should fit into one of these broad categories. It may become necessary to split health and environment to separate articles to reduce the size. AIRcorn (talk) 00:13, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Let me get this straight. You would have a pretty long section on controversies in (for example) the food article - in that one, focused on health. Then, again in the main controversies article, you would have another fairly long section on health (which is all about food)?Jytdog (talk) 01:53, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Depends what you mean by pretty/fairly long. I was thinking two to three, possibly four paragraphs (maybe a bit more in the controversies article). The health section in the GM controversies is well beyond fairly long already, especially if you add in Pusztai and Serilini. For example the GM food could be presented like:
  • History
  • Process
  • Plant based
  • Animal based
  • Regulation
  • Detection
  • Health concerns
  • Other concerns

I like the smallification of text!! didn't know one could do that. Funny that you have "animal based" - there is no GM food from animals (yet). but in theory i see what you mean. But i disagree really really strongly that "GM crops" is main for plant-based GM food. GM crops is about agriculture. its not about food. why do you think gm crops is about food? more to say but that stopped me - one thing at a time!Jytdog (talk) 03:34, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Should have been see also like the animal one. AIRcorn (talk) 03:44, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Seems to me acceptable.Fox1942 (talk) 14:09, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Long term Roundup herbicide or Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize extremely toxic & carcinogenic PMID 22999595

Séralini GE, Clair E, Mesnage R, Gress S, Defarge N, Malatesta M, Hennequin D, de Vendômois JS.

PMID 22999595

Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize.


Food Chem Toxicol. 2012 Nov;50(11):4221-31.

doi: 10.1016/j.fct.2012.08.005.

Epub 2012 Sep 19.

Abstract

The health effects of a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize (from 11% in the diet), cultivated with or without Roundup, and Roundup alone (from 0.1ppb in water), were studied 2years in rats. In females, all treated groups died 2-3 times more than controls, and more rapidly. This difference was visible in 3 male groups fed GMOs. All results were hormone and sex dependent, and the pathological profiles were comparable. Females developed large mammary tumors almost always more often than and before controls, the pituitary was the second most disabled organ; the sex hormonal balance was modified by GMO and Roundup treatments. In treated males, liver congestions and necrosis were 2.5-5.5 times higher. This pathology was confirmed by optic and transmission electron microscopy. Marked and severe kidney nephropathies were also generally 1.3-2.3 greater. Males presented 4 times more large palpable tumors than controls which occurred up to 600days earlier. Biochemistry data confirmed very significant kidney chronic deficiencies; for all treatments and both sexes, 76% of the altered parameters were kidney related. These results can be explained by the non linear endocrine-disrupting effects of Roundup, but also by the overexpression of the transgene in the GMO and its metabolic consequences.


PMID 22999595

Full Free Text:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.fct.2012.08.005

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691512005637

http://research.sustainablefoodtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Final-Paper.pdf

--Ocdnctx (talk) 19:15, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for posting. From the study:
The lifespan of the control group of animals corresponded to the mean rat lifespan, but as is frequently the case with most mammals including humans (WHO, 2012), males on average died before females, except for some female treatment groups. All treatments in both sexes enhanced large tumor incidence by 2–3-fold in comparison to our controls but also for the number of mammary tumors in comparison to the same Harlan Sprague Dawley strain (Brix et al., 2005), and overall around 3-fold in comparison to the largest study with 1329 Sprague Dawley female rats (Chandra et al., 1992). In our study the tumors also developed considerably faster than the controls, even though the majority of tumors were observed after 18 months. The first large detectable tumors occurred at 4 and 7 months into the study in males and females respectively, underlining the inadequacy of the standard 90 day feeding trials for evaluating GM crop and food toxicity (Séralini et al., 2011). However, we do have this recent review which sees no harm: Gandydancer (talk) 19:37, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
The limitations of this study have been widely discussed: 1 2 3 4. a13ean (talk) 19:46, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
This study also shows that eating higher concentrations of GM maize actually protects against cancer (see Top left graph in Fig 1). It is also discussed in quite a lot of depth here already. AIRcorn (talk) 20:44, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Comments on Article

Hi,

I just went through the article, and I made various comments which can be found here on a user subpage:

User:Jjjjjjjjjj/genetically_modified_food_controversies

Each comment is prefixed word the word "WikiComment".

Comments are stemming in part from the current debate going on in California with respect to Proposition 37:

Some comments include proposed revisions, but others are questions or reports on data or explorations.

Please feel free to take a look.

Responses could be written on the user subpage and/or here. Here may be better so that this can be the main page for any dialog.

Jjjjjjjjjj (talk) 05:49, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

thanks for your comments! addressed CA referendum in the lede -- good suggestion. will address others later! thanks again! Jytdog (talk) 12:07, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I just made a quick change which is fixing one of the internal links.
I looked into it a bit more this afternoon. So in the second comment we were talking about whether it is possible to extrapolate from differences in cancer rates, life expectancy, etc. So that would be a epidemiological study.
Like for example I got a notice for this one from the American Cancer Society (where they are planning to study around 300,000 people)
http://www.southatlantic-cancer.org/emails/cps3/baltimore.html
Or this one on vitamin D reported on in The New York Times:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/16/vitamin-d-shows-heart-benefits-in-study/
According to this news story there are some studies:
http://www.science20.com/science_20/blog/gm_maize_causes_tumors_rats_here_how_experts_responded-94259

"The first thing that leaps to my mind is why has nothing emerged from epidemiological studies in the countries where so much GM has been in the food chain for so long? If the effects are as big as purported, and if the work really is relevant to humans, why aren’t the North Americans dropping like flies?! - Prof Mark Tester, Research Professor, Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics, University of Adelaide

However, I wasn't able to find any with a PubMed Search:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=(epidemiological)%20AND%20GMO
But maybe there are some out there, and that could even be an additional section perhaps.
I've looked into some other things, and can post again, but just wanted to fix that internal link right away.
Jjjjjjjjjj (talk) 02:53, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
I didn't respond to this before. You appear to be trying to reinvent the science of toxicology. Toxicology is well understood and is used by regulators who examine safety of food derived from GM food before it is introduced to market. Please see the article on Regulation of the release of genetic modified organismsJytdog (talk) 15:10, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I received a response from Mark Tester (see blockquote above) -- and he wrote about epidemiological studies. I've summarized what he wrote at this user page:

User:Jjjjjjjjjj/genetically_modified_food_controversies_epidemiological_studies

Perhaps this could later be integrated into the article.

Jjjjjjjjjj (talk) 22:41, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

New Changes

Alright, changes have now gone through to the article and I also made some comments at User:Jjjjjjjjjj/genetically_modified_food_controversies

Jjjjjjjjjj (talk) 08:57, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

You replaced "there is now broad scientific and regulatory consensus that GM food on the market is safe to eat" with "most regulatory agencies and scientists now agree that GMO technology is safe to use in agriculture for human food". Your new statement is not accurate on 2 levels. Level of agreeement: there is consensus (it is not "many" which is much weaker). What there is consensus about: the question of whether food on the market derived from GMOs is safe to eat, is very different and more narrow than your statement " GMO technology is safe to use in agriculture for human food" which is actually false. GMO technology is not broadly, generally, absolutely safe to use to produce food - one could use it to do incredibly dangerous things like cause corn to product ricin. The point is that the regulatory regime is sufficient to ensure that existing products are safe enough and that future proposed products will only be allowed on the market if they are indeed shown to be safe enough.Jytdog (talk) 13:15, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
How does one measure scientific consensus? Just by the regulatory agencies (FDA, or its counterpart in the EU) ? What they are saying is that corporations influence the regulatory agencies through a variety of means. And that's what Séralini and other people say as well. They bring up Agent Orange and cigarettes.
Perhaps a further citation might be helpful -- but I don't know that there is anyway to quantify "scientific consensus".
I understand that GMO technology is not guaranteed to produce safe food. As the WHO said: "This means that individual GM foods and their safety should be assessed on a case-by-case basis and that it is not possible to make general statements on the safety of all GM foods." The wording of my statement wasn't intended to imply otherwise.
Jjjjjjjjjj (talk) 22:41, 26 October 2012 (UTC)


You added this text to the lede
Opponents also claim that corporations seek to manipulate and control scientists, government agencies, and the public into accepting a risky technology.
I have no idea what the book says so cannot respond to it. The other two articles are POV and are focused on controversies over ads and op-eds around Prop 37. As I mentioned on your talk page, this stuff does not represent what mainstream science says and is also one-sided. Supporters of Prop 37 have also said lots of ludicrous things and have acted unethically by touting the Seralini results as meaningful and important. There is a huge firefight going on in California now over Prop 37 - this firefight should not distort the lede of this article nor the article as whole. If you want a section in the article on both sides of the debate over Prop 37, and a blow-by-blow of all the bullshit that is flying on both sides as the fight is waged (e.g. the ads featuring Miller who is really irrelevant from a scientific and regulatory point of view), please feel free to add it, but please do not layer all that stuff onto the actual issues.
Okay -- perhaps that could go into the section on Labeling -- with regard to prop. 37.
By the way -- I haven't read the book either -- but I'd say that's the gist of what the summary is reporting.
In Re to: "As I mentioned on your talk page...." -- I haven't seen any recent comments on my talk page. Anyway, I'll be away from Misplaced Pages for a while.
Jjjjjjjjjj (talk) 22:41, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
I made other edits to changes you made in the lede... restored proximity of Seralini discussion to discussion of safety. Eliminated some repetitions you created on public perception and regulation. Added "other side" to the market dynamics statement you made on the "oppose" side.
In the Seralini section, you removed the explanation I had provided that makes it very clear in layman's terms, why the number of rats in the Seralin study was not sufficient. You did this without comment. I have restored it. You may have good reason for changing it, but please provide it. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 13:15, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
Okay -- I said in my comments that I wasn't sure that WeedControlFreaks meets WP:RS, but I haven't looked into the blog that much.
My other thinking on that is that -- in particular with regard to the exact figures -- 86% of males -- and 72% of females. That's just one study. Now -- in contrast the information here:
http://www.huntingdon.com/assets/Posters/Poster0458.pdf?1340119893
is derived from an aggregation of studies.
Also, as stated in the comments it's possible the figures in the post got slightly off somehow.
Jjjjjjjjjj (talk) 22:41, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
Jytdog has some good points here. In particular, I want to stress that the Seralini study needs to be treated for what it is -- something which is noteworthy for inclusion news-wise, but not a WP:MEDRS or anything similar for the reasons already discussed in detail. Similarly, the attack piece on Bradford is clearly way WP:UNDUE for the lead, and while the Miller one might be worth mentioning, it is clearly undue for the lead, doesn't support what it's sourcing, and should be sourced to the original LA Times article rather than the pro Prop 37 web site. a13ean (talk) 14:47, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
Doesn't it meet WP:MEDRS as it is published in a reliable journal, unless it gets retracted at some point. It does fall under "Avoid over-emphasizing single studies, particularly in vitro or animal studies.". As such it currently takes up a large proportion of the article. Some of the wording needs to be changed e.g. "Seralini provided only a denial as opposed to statistical reasoning" is not at all neutral. The Pusztai affair is much more notalbe (recentism aside) and only takes up a fraction of the space, although admittedly it does have a main article. The whole article could actually do with some serious trimming, or at least be split.
Sorry I should have been more clear: it's an RS for the the fact that the work was done, but not to support any claims found in the study since it's only a primary source, and broadly criticized as unsupported. The criteria for the retraction of papers is actually very high, and just having a wrong conclusion of misleading analysis won't do it. For example the proposed mechanism, analysis and conclusion in this paper are now known to be totally wrong, but it won't ever be retracted because of this, since it still reports a novel experiment and its results. a13ean (talk) 17:30, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

One other thing: one can see that traffic to this article page went from 5,462 in August 2012, to 24,187 in September 2012, and already 27,718 for October 2012:

this is probably coming from the Proposition 37 debate.

Jjjjjjjjjj (talk) 06:55, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Lead: See WP:lead

lead is NOT a summary of the main body of text and so fails WP:LEAD, please address the concerns set out in the guidelines before removing the banner. Semitransgenic talk. 15:39, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Please provide specific objections. Policy is general, applications are many and various. Also please note discussion above under Issue 1 with respect to paragraph you deleted. Thanks!Jytdog (talk) 15:42, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
there is a very clear specific objection: it does not summarise the article as presented in the table of contents. An overview of the key points (notable and sourced) as presented in each section, is what we need here. Semitransgenic talk. 15:52, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
OK I just dramatically shortened the lede (and everything else) as per discussion below.Jytdog (talk) 02:44, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Possible problems

Surveys indicate that a majority of Americans support mandatory labeling. (However, such surveys often do not specify the effect on food prices.)

  • Why is it relevant to mention that surveys dont include the effect on food prices? This came up some years ago when there was a push here to get labelling legislation. The biotech lobby stated that it would increase labelling costs giving non-GM products an unfair advantage. The media pointed out that non-GM products often change labelling without cost to the consumers. The fact is that there is no effect, so mention of exclusion seems to not only imply that there would be, but that GM products would be somehow disadvantaged.
Of course changing words on a label costs almost nothing. But you are not thinking through this. This is not a question of pro-or con, it a simple matter of logistics. Right now, crops are harvested and sold to elevators, where harvests from various fields are all mixed. Elevators in turn sell the crop to processors that do things like turn corn into corn oil. Again, crops from many elevators are mixed at the processor. The corn oil is sold all over... and let's pick one thread, say a food maker like Kraft. Under the new law, Kraft would need to track what percentage of the corn oil was GM, and then exactly measure how much corn oil goes into say, a pop tart. And likewise track all ingredients in a pop tart so that they know if the pop tart as a whole falls over or under the threshold for labelling. All that tracking is a huge expense. And to the extent that there comes to be consumer demand for non-organic but non-GM food, we will have to build an entire separate infrastructure (separate elevators, separate trucks or train cars to carry harvest to processors, separate processing factories etc). So at minimum there will be a new huge amount of tracking work... at maximum, the cost of rebuilding an entire distribution network. You see? 14:38, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
  • Another problem I see is that the article is relying too much on academic views which skews the issue in favour of the biotech industry. Consumers dont really care if current products are thought safe (the majority of the article), they care whether there is sufficient regulation or that there could be a problem in the future. An example is the section on substantial equivalence where concerns are minimised. Keeler and Lappe for instance showed the difference between a GM and same non-GM plant to show how much difference was permitted as an example that equivalence was too broadly defined to be called equivalent which is very relevant in regards to knowledge the public want to know, yet this was removed from the article leaving their comment basically looking like an unsupported passing reference in an opinion piece.
Science - the very method by which regulators determine whether food is safe -- is irrelevant for determining whether food is safe? Science - regulatory and academic science -- overwhelming shows that the risks from GM food currently on the market are negligible -- no more than the risks from conventional food. How in the world is that irrelevant? Anti-GM folks are indeed the climate-change-deniers of the left. It makes the conversation difficult/impossible when the scientific consensus is dismissed.14:38, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
  • I also notice that the purity of the food chain section has been reduced by deleting mention of the Flax contamination and it's effects which were more serious and far reaching than that of the Starlink case which is mentioned. The article has plenty of examples where the biotech industry nipped problems in the bud but is lacking in examples with negative outcomes. Wayne (talk) 03:58, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
Agreed that this needs improving. Will work on this. There are two big examples, starlink and the rice thing. Jytdog (talk) 14:38, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
  • In my country we already have tracking and separation of infrastructure and it has not visably affected price. There was a controversy not long ago when this was going to changed to mix GM and non-GM grains to reduce the cost. The public opposition was so great it was quickly blocked. You probably need to mention that you mean cost of separate infrastructure rather than just cost.
What is your country? More detail needed to understand the statement... thxJytdog (talk) 21:58, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
I saw from your user page that you are Australian. I live in New York. I've been reading about food in Australia. It appears that it is actually pretty hard to find any food in Australia that is actually labelled as retailers have shunned it. For example Coles doesn't use any ingredients derived from GMOs in its private label products (http://www.coles.com.au/Products/Coles-Products/Our-Brands/Coles/Our-Promise.aspx). I've been looking for studies to see what has happened to food prices since Australia started labeling. Can't find any yet. Do you know of any?Jytdog (talk) 01:38, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
  • I dont understand what you are replying to here as I never mentioned any science being irrelevant. What I'm saying is that public concerns are not being addressed by the science. I see no mention of the very real danger from loss of diversity or public fears regarding future dangers etc. It's all well and good for science to say substantial equivalence is ok but the example by Keeler and Lappe was a black and white comparison that could be understood by the general public who could then make and informed opinion. To date GMOs have provided no benifits to consumers so they are skeptical regarding the introduction of a new technology that they not only do not see any need for but are being forced to accept. In fact this is possibly the first time in history that people will have no choice in regards to whether they eat a new food or not because contamination cant be controlled. Wayne (talk) 03:13, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
This is a strange sentence: "What I'm saying is that public concerns are not being addressed by the science." I think the public is mostly concerned that GM food is dangerous to eat - maybe not acutely, but maybe in some long term way. What is frustrating is that the scientific community and the regulatory community have been steadily putting out a very clear message that GM food is safe enough to eat. It is not getting through, somehow. WIth respect to diversity, I do not think this is high on the public's list of concerns - that is indeed one of the concerns that environmentalists bring up, and is part of their larger argument against contemporary industrial agriculture in general. I am not sure what you mean when you say "I see no mention of the very real danger from loss of diversity" -- where do you not see that? Finally your statement that GM food is somehow "new food" flies in the face of mountains of regulatory science. Food derived from GMOs that is on the market has been shown to be substantially equivalent to food derived from non-GMOs. It is not new at all. No more new, for example, than food derived from hybrid varieties of crops like corn, which were un-naturally created by seed companies about a hundred years ago and have been sold to farmers and turned into food ever since, with no big announcement to the public. That is what the science tells us. And this is what I mean - you seem to be paying no attention to the mountains and mountains of work done by regulators and scientists around the world who have studied these foods extensively and found them to be equivalent to food already on the market. Why are you ignoring it? Have you taken the time to read the documents the OECD, FAO, FDSANZ, the EU food authorities, and the FDA have put out about all the work they have done? Jytdog (talk) 21:58, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
You dont understand the public viewpoint. To the public GMOs are new food and no mountains of scientic papers will convince them that "mating" a tomatoe with bacteria or a daffodil is as natural as a hybrid from two different related varieties. Even in standard breeding a new variety of apple is still seen as new. Substantially equivalent can also mean substantially different (how is a 25% to 30% difference in the important components between Roundup ready soy and non-GM soy equivalent?) and this is not explained in this article. Regardless of whether GM food is safe enough to eat why is the public being forced to eat a product they do not want or need? Again the article is not clear on this and basically just gives the biotech company view. A big concern is biotech control. All the controversy would go away if independent agencies (and the FDA can not be considered independent) did long term testing. An example of what I mean is the forensic system they have here. After several dodgy convictions based on flawed forensic evidence a Royal Commission was held that found major problems; basically that law enforcement are too subconsciously biased to do forensic testing. The government set up forensic laboratories independent from law enforcment whose techs are not permitted to investigate crimes or collect evidence and must publish all results of testing, whether favourable, unfavourable, relevant or irrelevant and whose services, data and results are available to both defense and prosecution. This is a model that the public would accept for GMOs. That biotech companies resist any oversight is why the public remains skeptical. Wayne (talk) 00:21, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
I asked you above if you have actually taken time to read what the regulators have tried so hard to communicate. You didn't answer, and when you write things like "Substantially equivalent can also mean substantially different" it becomes clear to me that you have not. And when you write something like "the FDA can not be considered independent" you are again making claims about reality that seem insupportable to me. I am baffled that you can believe that these hundreds of civil servants in countries around the world are all corrupt. I really don't see how it can be productive for us to continue to talk.Jytdog (talk) 01:38, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
So you are saying that the academic view is the only view that can be presented? Can you point out where I said that civil servants in countries around the world are all corrupt? Lastly, do you seriously believe that the FDA has affective oversight? The United States GM food regulatory system is industry self-regulated and voluntary. The FDA has never approved a GM food as safe, instead it conducts "pre- market reviews" that acknowledges that the biotech company has provided the FDA with a summary of it's data stating that the GMO is safe. The FDA relies almost exclusively on information provided by the GM crop developer, the majority of which is not published in journals or subjected to peer review. A peer reviewed Salk Institute study of the FDA's regulation of GMOs found that regulation of GM foods is a rubber-stamp approval process designed to increase public confidence, not to ensure the safety of genetically engineered foods.
  • "Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA’s job." — Philip Angell, Monsanto director of corporate communications.
  • "it is the food producer who is responsible for assuring safety". — US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
  • "Substantial equivalence is a pseudo-scientific concept because it is a commercial and political judgment masquerading as if it were scientific. It is, moreover, inherently anti-scientific because it was created primarily to provide an excuse for not requiring biochemical or toxicological tests." — extract from a peer reviewed paper in Nature 1999; 401(6753): 525–526
These points need to be addressed for neutrality.

Hi on the last statement from Nature. That was not a "peer reviewed paper", it was an opinion piece, and was roundly criticized in subsequent opinion pieces after it was published. This is the same sloppiness that I have found over and over in the anti-GM literature. That opinion piece is actually discussed in the Controversies article as is the criticism of it. That quote from Philip Angell is from the "Harvest of Fear" piece and the anti-GM community loves those quotes - one sees them all the time. They seem to be a perfect expression of corporate callousness. With respect to your comments about the FDA, I am sorry that you do not understand the regulatory process. I have tried to make sure the regulatory process is well explained in the regulation article; I will go back and review to make sure it is indeed clear. Briefly, in the US, the burden is on the sponsor of a new product to provide data and reasoning to the FDA that new products comply with the law - this is what the statement from the FDA expresses. It is the FDA's role to review that data and reasoning and judge -- in its sole judgement - whether the data and reasoning are sufficient to ensure that new product does comply with the law -- this is the meaning of the statement from Angell. The roles are clear - there is no ducking of responsibility. The exact same framework is in place throughout the US regulatory system. For instance with new drugs, the burden is on the company to spend the hundreds of millions of dollars it takes to conduct clinical trials - not on the government. The general perspective is that It would be a wasteful use of taxpayer money for the government to test new products that private companies will profit from, if the new products work during the testing, and will lose their shirt on, if the product fails during testing. The studies are risky -- many products fail during testing and are never even brought to regulators for final approval. I would certainly object if taxpayer dollars went to test new products instead of being used to build roads etc. Again -- saying it clearly and briefly -- in the US, companies pay for studies; regulators review those studies. Back to the larger topic: you still have not told me if you have read and thought about the documents produced by the OECD and FAO and the parallel documents produced in the US, to provide a regulatory framework. As I mentioned above, it seems to me that you have not. I don't understand how can criticize something so strongly that you do not understand. (but this is the climate-change-denier paradigm -- you don't agree with consequences, so you simply ignore or dismiss the data and information that leads to those consequences) Your assumption -- like the assumptions in the Nature opinion piece you cited -- appear to be that the regulators are in the pocket of the companies -- in other words, that they are corrupt. I view the regulatory community as working hard and in good faith to protect the public, and am very impressed with the documents they have produced, which frankly and clearly acknowledge the risks of GMOs (it is their job to see these risks clearly) and the practical limitations of time, money, scientific knowledge, and technology. I can't say anything other "Gee you really should educate yourself before you keep putting opinions out there." There I said it. I am happy to keep responding here but I wish you would do your own homework and that you would be more careful and thorough in your thinking.Jytdog (talk) 13:54, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Split

Since the end of July the article has grown from 45 kB "readable prose size" to over 120 kB (19353 words) "readable prose size" almost tripling in size. While I agree that consolidation of the various articles needed to be done, it might be a good idea to look at reducing the size of this page. To my mind the best way to split would be to create articles devoted to Environmental and Health issues and summarise them here. So I propose the creation of Environmental concerns with genetic modification and Health concerns with genetic modification and splitting information from here to there. There is a risk that they could become WP:POV forks, but if handled correctly it should be no worse than this article is now (which is really a just a POV fork from Genetically modified food). AIRcorn (talk) 03:17, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Interesting. I think it is more accurate to say that all the environmental stuff is more of a fork off GM crops than GM food, but that is a small matter. I think I would be OK with a split, but only with a true one -- one article on health (Health controversies of GMOs), another article on environment (environmental controversies of GMOs). I think we would need a third one, for economics where the sections on market dynamics, developing world, and IP issues could go (economic controversies of GMOs)... But I am strongly opposed to leaving an article in the middle with parts of all three. That is a nightmare. But a pure 3 way split could work. Interesting suggestion. Let's see what others say!Jytdog (talk) 03:27, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
I agree that the article is too long (far over the recommended limit given at Misplaced Pages:Article size). That being said, the article has very bad at concision and has a lot of largely irrelevant details, including a huge number of quotes (most of which appear unnecessary). My feeling is that some focused editing would bring the article much closer to a manageable size.
Also, I think the usual way to deal with an overly long article is to create subarticles – so we might have articles like Intellectual property and genetically modified foods, Seralini studies of genetically modified foods, etc – then this article would just contain a brief summary and a link to the main article. This is what already exists for the Pusztai affair.
A few of the reasons for not splitting the article (but creating subarticles instead) that come to mind are: there is no high-level overview of the entire controversy, it is difficult to decide where to place edge cases, we might need to create a new article for every concern that doesn’t fit in one of the current articles, the risk of POV forks (mentioned above), etc. Arc de Ciel (talk) 05:09, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

I think the first priority for the article would be to get the lead down to a smaller size. Jjjjjjjjjj (talk) 07:04, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Please see about three sections up. A "lede must be expanded" tag was put on a about a week ago and the tagger was quite insistent that the lede didn't follow wiki lede policy. So I expanded it to cover everything in the article. Rock and hard place!Jytdog (talk) 11:23, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
Splitting is unnecessary, the article simply needs some serious editing, the lead to begin with, it needs to summarise the key points from the main sections and should not offer material that doesn't appear in the main body. Also, the amount of bloat the September 2012 Séralini study has attracted is laughable, it deserves it's own article at this point. Semitransgenic talk. 15:55, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
Mindblowing. Semitrangenic, the commentor above, specifically called for the lede to be lengthened and put a tag on it saying now. Now it is too long? And not helping to fix it... frustrating. Jytdog (talk) 16:15, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
I think it was pretty obvious semitransgenic put the tag on because of the navigational paragraph considering this was the edit between their additions of the tag, the tag actually asked for it to be re-written not lengthened and the follow up comment posted here. The current lead needs to be cut into a third of the size and removing that paragraph would be a good start. AIRcorn (talk) 22:58, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
OK, that paragraph is gone. Jytdog (talk) 23:26, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
I was tempted to write a separate article on the latter Séralini study, but articles like that are very difficult to manage. (WP:GNG is easy to satisfy, WP:NPOV is much harder). On the flipside, it would make this article more manageable. What would everybody else think? bobrayner (talk) 17:05, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
I dislike the idea of giving such poor science, so opportunistically touted by its generators, its own article. I doubly dislike that we would still have to mention it here which would mean we would have to go over the main points, and then would have to do it again in more detail in a main article.Jytdog (talk) 18:11, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
That is how this encyclopaedia works, You start with a main article and it leads to more specific and more detailed ones the further down in the hierarchy you go. What we have now is a dumping ground for all the controversies surrounding genetic engineering when this should really just be an overview article.
It is possible to separate Seralini, although it is hard work to get to an acceptable standard (I know I was involved in trying to clean up the Pusztai affair). To be honest if this was a proper scientific review we would have maybe two to three sentences under health. Something like "In 2012 a study was published by Gilles Eric Séralini in the Food and Chemical Toxicology journal claiming that rats fed genetically modified maize developed cancer faster than rats fed non-modified maize. The study received widespread coverage in the media, but was criticised by other scientists for using rats prone to cancer, small sample sizes and non-standard statistical methods". But it is Misplaced Pages so details of the claims and counter claims will always end up here until we end up with the undue section that we have now. AIRcorn (talk) 23:21, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

OK I just went through and did a lot of trimming. Trying to make everybody happy here.Jytdog (talk) 02:46, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

I think an article for the Seralini studies in general could be useful, although not focused on just a particular one. Then again, it's also possible that sufficient cutting of the current version would make that article unnecessary. Arc de Ciel (talk) 03:25, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Anti-labeling Arguments - certified organic

An editor labelled the following statement, under the anti-labelling section, with and templates. Consumers who want to buy non-GE food already have an option: to purchase certified organic foods, which by definition cannot be produced with GE ingredients., using the edit summary "in the US this is not true". I've removed the fact tag, as that by definition is what certified organic is (I've linked to the article) - please add other discussions and reasons for the tags here. I understand that in the US accidental contamination is common due to the widespread use of GM crops, and that the 95% standard allows 5% of an organically-labelled product to be not organic (although still by definition approved). Please explain further how this is not true in the US. Greenman (talk) 12:08, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

In the EU, Products containing GMOs may not be labelled as organic unless the ingredients containing GMOs entered the products unintentionally and the GMO proportion in the ingredient is less than 0.9%. bobrayner (talk) 13:52, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
there are three standards in the US. From my understanding of the regulations, only the "100% Organic" designation conforms to the statement presented above.It is not necessarily true for products labelled "Organic" and less so for "Made with Organic Ingredients." Semitransgenic talk. 14:04, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
Other parts of the world have differing regulations, and we ought to shift our coverage away from US-centrism. bobrayner (talk) 14:11, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
true, this specific "Pros/Cons" item is sourced to an American commentator, it addresses the question as it relates to an American audience, it does not represent a global perspective. Semitransgenic talk. 14:18, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Noting scientific consensus on the safety on GM food in lead

Under the section "Health risks of consuming GM food" it does state that there is broad and regulatory consensus that GM food on the market is safe to eat but such an important conclusion by the scientific community should be mentioned in the lead. Similar to how the global warming controversy page clearly states in its lead about the scientific consensus on global warming. Anyone else agree? Any objections to why it shouldn't be? BlackHades (talk) 22:06, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

It formerly was. I wrote it. I deleted it when I dramatically shortened the lede and the whole article as per the discussion above. Please join the discussion above about the length of the article and its lede. Thanks.Jytdog (talk) 23:12, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
  1. Drucker, Steven (2012). Altered Genes, Twisted Truth: How the Venture to Genetically Engineer Our Food Has Subverted Science, Corrupted Government, and Systematically Deceived the Public (Part One). Clear River Press.
  2. "No on 37 Forced to Pull TV Ad After Misrepresenting Stanford University". Yes on 37: Right to Know. 5 October 2012. Retrieved 23 October 2012.
  3. "Did Monsanto Write This Anti-GMO Labeling Op-Ed Signed by a UC Davis Professor?". 4 October 2012. Retrieved 23 October 2012.
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