There is more than enough food to feed the whole of the planet, why on earth do we need to make even more of it?

There is more than enough food to feed the whole of the planet, why on earth do we need to make even more of it?

There is more than enough food to feed the whole of the planet, why on earth do we need to make even more of it?

I don't agree that there is more than enough to eat. It has to be produced in eth right places. The UK has to import food you don't produce enough. You need the US to produce your food for you. You even expect Africa to produce food and have it shipped to you. In principal its no different for fish. Why overfish natural fish when you could farm it. Do you think we should go back to scavenger grain collection like before farming of grains took hold thousands of years ago? A lot of salmon is already factory farmed. Its not natural and if you can use technology to reduce disease or increase the quality of the food then we should do it, provided it is tested. Just remember that changes in food are produced by traditional breeding now and there is no regulation of that whether its crops or animals but it is well known that thousands of genes are changed with breeding. If you want a debate using emotion that's what it is - emotional and not logic based. If the UK wants to go back to the dark ages for food production it is on the right track. It looks like food production in the UK is more a hobby.

I saw steak from a Hereford cow on the menu in a restaurant the other night.

I hope that Mr McKie, Greenpeace and other lobbyist groups will fight against the "unnecessary abuse of nature" that is GM via selective breeding.

Miko9000, you, in the UK, waste too much food.

Miko9000, Factory Farming and Genetically Modified food resources are two separate issues.

@MartynInEurope

Yes, there is enough food for everyone, BUT:

1. It is rarely distributed evenly and moving it is costly and unsustainable.

2. It is often in the form of food the locals cannot or do not want to eat. Milk biscuits for Asia anyone?

3. Many people don't want handouts, they want to be able to occupy and live of their ancestral lands, as the planet changes they need help to do that more productively as well as to tackle issues like salt levels and drought resistance.

4. Perhaps you did not actually read the article about the sustainability benefits of farm animals that excrete less phosphorous, or methane (something in the pipeline) or convert their food into flesh more efficiently (how is that bad?). Something the article didn't cover was that those animals engineered to be resistant to viruses and bacteria will use fewer antibiotics. GM food vs antibiotic resistance? I know which side of that one I'm on.

You may not see a benefit to yourself. That does not mean there isn't one to someone else.

You could alays process the pig waste in an anaerbic disgester and get power and lovely fertiliser out of it......if you use the waste heat to dry biomass you can get another set of fuel out of it.......why bother?

If you want more efficient beef production go intensive which is cruel or go for micro cows either new american bred ones or some old breeds and extensive.

Isn't the idea of tilapia thats it' fed on vegetable feed rather than fish from the sea so wouldn't this miss the point?

Oh and above all just waste and eat less.

For the americans out there we have a lot less land per a person than you do so if you were in the same situation you'd import an awful lot more. And you still import food anyway.

While this article makes an attempt to sound rational and sensible, it fails to recognise that the genetic engineering of plants and animals is a ploy by corporations to own and control the food chain. The patenting of these 'new creations' (novel foods) gives absolute power to the Monsnato's of this world and leaves us, ordinary citizens, with less and less choice.

This is a very dangerous situtaion for mankind. We are faced by a monocultural 'fascistic food chain' gaining absolute advantage within the globalised market place; and eventually displacing 'real food' and the biodiversity of nature that goes with it.

Robin McKie and his colleagues need to open their eyes and write about the bigger reality and cease tying themselves up in the small world of scientific appraisels.

Think "horse".

There would be less need to import food into the UK, or use GM crops here, if the land, or land to grow feed crops, if the 1.3 million (hobby) horses in the UK were culled and the land used more usefully. (Stat from British Equine Trades Association).

Anyone here on CiF know enough about the gee-gees to post how many acres of land is needed to feed these horses?

MartyninEurope has a point:

Australians throw 20% of all the food they buy in the bin.

Why do we need giant pigs and cows when most Westerners eat far more meat than is healthy?

And if we allow Monsanto etc. to get GM animals into the food chain, before long it'll be all but impossible to find non-GM animals to eat, and the producers will be under the heel of their GM masters.

Third world hunger has complex origins - GM is not going to fix it.

Now go watch "Food, Inc." Preferably while eating something organic.

"you are what you eat" - Discuss.

I look forward to reading your essays at the end of the holidays.

And then there are the meat courses

Implying that fish isn't meat?

GM food isn't any more dangerous or 'unnatural' than cross breeding.
But if you don't like the idea of it, just don't eat it. I don't eat any meat for this reason (fish included).

Maybe we should just eat less fish?

Dafydd12345

GM food isn't any more dangerous or 'unnatural' than cross breeding.

GM is radically different from crossbreeding, and introduces many new dangers.

e.g. Transgenes are designed to transfer into other organisms and be expressed there and there is evidence that GM food has already transferred its traits into our gut flora, if not into our own cells.

Also GM organisms often produce completely unexpected proteins in addition to the ones being deliberately engineered in. These can be toxic, and are thought to have lead to some disasters already, as in the case of the GM tryptophan that killed 37 and permanently disabled 1,500 people in the United States.

As the article states:

For a start, there are few aspects of the food industry that could really be described as "natural".

The situation with the stuff now deemed as "food" is already disastrous. To add to it with genetically modified animals is the opposite direction we should be headed.

muscleguy
which is why kenyans should grow their own food not roses/greenbeans for us and haitians should go backto growing their own rice ectr.
the worldbank needs to but out and we all need to get as selfsufficiant as posible. enough of southamerican fruit and veg out of season.
the system is crazy.

Its the ultimate human arrogance to think that we can improve on nature - or even that nature can be improved.

It has been said that the secret to human "success" is our ability to adapt the environment to suit ourselves. Surely it is obvious now that by changing our environment we succeed only in degrading our life support system?

Noting that Hindu people have been following this diet for centuries, aVegetarian or more specifically a vegan diet is 10 times more efficient in terms of land and energy consumption than a flesh based diet, whatever monsterisation has taken place to maximise the growth of the hapless animal in question-

If you are concerned about food security, limiting mass-extinction and reducing our carbon footprint- promote this and let scientists explore ways of making vegan cuisine as palatable and desirable as salmon.

If you own a bio-tech company , well then, giant monster salmon is your wallet's way forward-

but

As Jonathan Safran Foer's analysis of the factory farming of salmon, shows, these poor fish grow in water filthy with their own faeces, trapped with sea-lice at tens of thousands of times the natural occurence- they are literally eaten alive.

Biochemical assays of farmed salmon blood show the stress hormone levels to be high-

farmed salmon live their lives in a state of panic,trapped in salmon hell

wheteher they are normaal ones or transgenic monsters.

This is a false priority and ethically wrong, contemporary medievalism

contemporary medievalism

- very good!

There actually is not much of a case for GM salmon; the reductionist scientific logic which claims thats its physiologically no different from any other salmon is both flawed and irrelevant.
We are indeed what we eat.
The appalling environmental destruction of salmon farming will simply be exacerbated, it may become marginally cheaper, corporate profits may be marginally enhanced, but more wild fish will be ground into fishmeal to feed them, more poo will contaminate the oceans creating more dead zones, more lice will infest the salmon requiring more chemicals to treat them.

Why do it?

I think what depresses me the most is that on these threads we are in more or less agreement, that all creatures in factory farming are subjected to disgusting conditions which "necessitate" various evils, all of them well described -

- but it is still legal. It earns big money and pays big legal fees to provide ongoing permission.

I would say these methods of food production are like the new slave trade, there are golden triangles with the various branches of the food industry. These contribute feedstuffs, cages, slaughterhouse and refrigeration equipment, pharmaceuticals, planning appplications, training semi-skilled workforce and then supplying marketing techniques that blind the public to the real conditions.

In the future the complicity of veterinary science will look horrible. It is really long overdue for vets to lobby against all this cruelty, and the wider environmental damage too.

sparclear (29/08/10 - 8:28 a.m.). I would query your suggestion that "veterinary science" (or even "agricultural science", for that matter) might be 'complicit' in whatever horrors you ascribe to the farming industry. If it were not for the contributions made by such professional scientists, there could be very few "farmed products" available at all as food, and even if there were, they could be so disease-riddled as to make them totally unsuitable for human consumption. Back to the primeval gathering, hunting and scraping around practices etc. might be the obligatory end result. Are you personaly familiar with any of the various processes of "production and processing" of foodstuffs of animal origin ?. Please try to Imagine what would happen if your "hands off recommendation" were to be applied to the field of human medicine !.

Animals are tools. Tools for getting un-hungry. Who gives a damn? They wouldn't even exist otherwise. And no, GM is NO different to any selectively bred animal, they can't be. Any yes, big agro-businesses are evil. Just like most other large businesses that supply normal food and everything else. So lets just not eat anything.....

@DocDave
Simply incorrect to suggest that my argument was for ALL veterinary science and ALL agriculture science to be off limits

I put in a plea, and shall keep it there, for vets to stop "having to" earn their livings colluding with animal cruelty, out of respect for the creatures whose health they have studied long and carefully, and vowed to protect.

sparclear

Being an agricultural vet is like being a car mechanic, whereas the pet vets are more likely to care and have empathy for their patients. Probably

sparclear (29/08/10 - 8:38 p.m.). Your message has come through loud and clear. I am glad to know you have a high opinion of MOST vets and MOST agriculturists, since the vast majority of them are most respectful, professionally, as to the health and welfare of their charges. You see, I taught as a Professor in a Vet. Sciences Faculty for 30 years, have a DVM (animal production) son, a DVM daughter (small animal practice), and a third B.Sc./MBA son who sells the final quality products of the aquaculture industry to his wholesale commercial clients. It's "all in the family" as one might say, when it comes to health and welfare considerations regarding animals: it is not only unethical but also "unproductive" not to provide them with the best treatment possible. Hope we have cleared the point up.

thanks for coming back on line Doc

Collusion may be the central point of debate:

taking my analogy of the slave trade, there were plenty of salaried people whose skills perfected it, or who turned a blind eye to the source of wealth of various employers. Society regarded it as normal, a cultural permission was given so to speak.

There is another parallel, the slum building that went on in industrial towns. Expertise was devoted to cramming the maximum number of factory workers terraces in to a minimum spaces at the lowest possible expense. It took some very committed and persuasive people to campaign against these excesses, sometimes over generations. People we admire, now we look back, for not being afraid to speak the truth and stand up against exploitation.

We are not giving up about factory farming or changing the law and we pray that the powerful science lobby will join us, free of contractual pressure to keep its mouth shut.