Just watching on the news about this new genetically modified purple tomato. They are now trying to convince us that this new sort is actually health beneficial, as it has antioxidants. I personally think that all food should be as nature intended it to be, and as organic as possible. We really have to be careful about allowing GM foods in Europe, because that is like opening the Pandora's box. If we allow certain sorts of GM foods to be produced, this would just allow big companies to experiment with everything. It took them months to find horse meat in products, how would they know then if a GM product is produced in a proper, non-harmful way (e.g adding fish genes to vegetables etc.). What are your thoughts about this?

I don't like tomatoes anyway, but if i did, I would certainly avoid GM ones. I do have tomatoes sauce and soup, if they used GM stuff i would avoid them as well.

IMO messing with natural foods is wrong and I would never eat anything that I knew to be GM.

I like tomatoes and I like them natural and red

Not all tomatoes are naturally red: Heirloom tomatoes.

I don't see the the big problem with the GMO process. The genes inserted into these plants are usually present in other plants, but instead of crossbreeding the genes are surgically transplanted (the red, uniform tomatoes you find in the supermarkets have been crossbred to stand up to mechanical picking, shipping, give them a longer shelf life, and ripened with ethylene). When genes from arctic fish are added it's to protect the plant from frost. That sounds like a good thing to me.

We don't know how crossbreeding fish genes with vegetables affects our health and our own genes. There is no enough research done about that, simply because big companies such as Monsanto and governments do not wont to finance it. This is a good documentary to watch: http://geneticroulettemovie.com

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...78691511006399

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/1...9#.UuPbjig4low

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...nticated=false

http://www.aaas.org/news/aaas-board-...-falsely-alarm

http://www.ama-assn.org/resources/do...eeredfoods.pdf

http://www.who.int/foodsafety/public...0questions/en/

We've been messing about with plant life for well over a hundred years; your nice green garden peas, petit pois never existed at one time until folk worked on them.

If you went back two or three hundred years and looked at a good garden it range would be poor compared to what we have now from cross breeding/F1 hybrids etc.

I'm not saying all GM crops are good but...don't just dismiss them as we have a growing number of mouths to feed on this ever shrinking planet.

As for tomato's, I will use tinned in cooking but prefer the ones I grow either at home in Wales or the tub grown when I'm living on Gran Canaria as they just taste so good.

We wouldn't be eating orange carrots every day if it was not for the Dutch.

We ate dodgy horse meat where it supposed to be beef and who knows what else is there that we don't know we eat everyday, various dangerous additives, colourings. Sorry, I don't believe them.

^This.

That video looks to be well dodgy propoganda... Didn't watch it all but the fact that it is using the widly discredited Dr Pusztai's research as evidence doesn't do it any favours. For instance the Royal Society found his research to be "flawed in many aspects of design, execution and analysis". Pusztai is a well known anti-GM campaigner, so not exactly unbiased and it shows in his work.

Universities and other organisations would love to do more research into GM foods here but it isn't helped that most of the time they've tried to set up a study, a load of protestors appear and rip the crops out of the ground!

Isn't the fact that hundreds of milions of consumers in the US have eaten GM foods for nearly 2 decades now without a single documented adverse effect pretty good evidence to it's safety?

Of course, if you have some reliable evidence to GM foods causing damage to health then feel free to post a link.... although Youtube videos dont count as reliable evidence.

One problem is once again large companies taking control of our food. once you get them telling us what seeds we can and can't use, also stopping us from seeds that reproduce, then you got problems.
The other is that we have no idea on the harmful effects if any GM have.

It is all fine and dandy saying we been cross-breeding crops for years, but if they are not meant to be cross-bred, then they will not. would you cross a cat and a Dog? nope, because it would not and can not happen.

Did you open any of the links I posted?

the number of 'natural' foods is very small & many tomatoes aren't red - have seen yellow, orange growing & dark skinned ones exist already. GM stuff has slipped through the net so there's a high chance most people have consumed it!
Oh & there are 2 separate types of GM ... Genetically Manipulated = genes modified in a lab & Genetically Modified = genes modified by mutagenic effect of sunlight etc etc = NOT in a lab

When you say 'dodgy horse meat' was this the recent find of horse meat in burgers and other fast foods? When you say dodgy how many people were ill and or died from eating it?

Most food is as the pesticides and added nitrates intended.
But if GM adds real benefits then I'm all for it.


A recent production trial of life saving Golden Rice got razed in the Phillipines.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_te...otest_and.html

Greenpeace Scum ?

So what's wrong with normal tomatoes? Our culture is obsessed with improving reality everywhere, starting with photos in rags and ending with food. It's not like there's not enough food in Europe and they need to come up with a solution quickly.