GMO OMG-2013 Documentary

Just watched this.     
  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKFCbaxZ...QJAYcqIYzv

Very interesting, informative and quite worrying?

Is there a 5 minute version? Or can you summarise it for me as anything over an hour is way too long for me to concentrate. Sorry

Is there a 5 minute version? Or can you summarise it for me as anything over an hour is way too long for me to concentrate. Sorry

A lot of rhetoric about Monsanto, which I expected but a lot of information I wasn't aware of. I didn't realise that just about everything we eat is GMO and we probably  won't find out the consequences, but future generations will!

Is there a 5 minute version? Or can you summarise it for me as anything over an hour is way too long for me to concentrate. Sorry

A lot of rhetoric about Monsanto, which I expected but a lot of information I wasn't aware of. I didn't realise that just about everything we eat is GMO and we probably  won't find out the consequences, but future generations will!

It's not true that everything we eat contains GMOs though. GMOs are much more common in America, where the documentary maker is from. Most UK supermarkets don't use GMO ingredients in their own brands, with the caveat that they cannot guarantee that the farmers who supply their animal products don't use GMO feed, and any non-own brand products should be clearly labelled if they do contain GMO ingredients. If you want to avoid GMOs then organic foods don't have any in, and the most common GMO crops worldwide are soybeans, maize, cotton and rapeseed. 

I don't think GMOs are much of an issue regarding our health: they're very well studied and the current scientific consensus is that they present no greater risk to human health than conventionally grown food. GMO crops have been used commercially since 1996, so you'd think over a quarter of a century of being exposed to them would be long enough to manifest negative health effects. Most of the studies which have shown negative health effects of GMOs have been widely discredited. 

I also don't see how inserting a gene from a plant's wild relative via scientific methods is any different than manually crossing a tomato with a wild relative to introduce blight resistance. I think transgenic GMOs are what concern people the most, since it seems weird to insert a gene from a completely different species into another organism. But GMOs can be incredibly useful: Golden rice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice) has saved millions of children from dying of Vitamin A deficiency, for example. 

I would also question the balance of the documentary, since a lot of the sponsors of the documentary are organic food companies, and it was produced by someone who sits on the board of the Rodale Institute (an organic agriculture non-profit). 

Some reading about the film and GMOs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMO_OMG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneticall...ies#Health
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneticall...and_safety
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMO_conspiracy_theories
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9ralini_affair

I found it interesting even if it did have an agenda?