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The MeatEater Podcast
Ep. 290: Is Wild Game Really Organic?
Play Episode
2h14m
Steven Rinella talks with Fred Gould, Chester Floyd, Phil Taylor, and Janis Putelis.
Topics discussed: Jani rehabbing a target; the vegetarian GMO expert who used to live in a hippie van; bison garum and koji mold; MeatEater Campfire Stories and old dads giving life; asking for your ball joint back after a hip replacement surgery; the link between The Tox and entrepreneurship; strontium and a woolly mammoth that loved to walk; learning from spider mites; bitter cucumber peels due to Cucurbitacin C; the co-evolution between plants and insects; tobacco as the first plant to be made toxic to caterpillars; the safety factor; what does "natural" actually mean?; getting the chestnut back in the forest via genetic engineering; use of synthetic biology conservation; transgenic, cisgenic, gene editing, and genomic selection; crop yield quantity vs. crop quality; breeding potatoes so that they're less carcinogenic when fried; optimizing for shelf life and visual appeal; fishy strawberries; and more.
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00:00:08
Speaker 1: This is me eat your podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything presented by first, like creating proven versatile hunting apparel from Marino Bass layers to technical outerwear for every hunt. First like go farther, stay longer. This is uh, this is on your Instagram, Johnnie, I haven't posted it yet. You fix it too, Yeah, I was. I was thinking about it. I will at some point in the next week, so if listeners were to go to your thing, they would find it. Yeah, Yanni, really, Yanni rehabilitated a did you tell me what you did? Yanni? You rehabilitated. It's a Reinhardt target I gotta use are our buddy Ben O'Brien gave it to me and uh, just after it was in pretty good shape when he gave it to me, but after explain Yeah, it's say three three dimensional um life size mule deer target. That's not life size. It is really. Oh yeah, I'm telling you it is. I mean it's that thing is hard to carry if you carry the body and the head and the piece of the antlers are attached to his ear forehead chunk. It's a lot to carry. It's it's a big it doesn't this picture makes it look out of scale anyways, close to life size mule deer three D target for shooting. You just changed it, yeah, to make you happy. So I want to hear about it here in five more minutes. If you say, well, it's actually only six which is a mule deer is high. Um. Anyways, after a couple four years of sitting out in the Montana sun and weather, at the foam was sorted certaining to degrade. So I called up Ryan Hart and she said, oh, yeah, no problem. This is what you do to bring it back to life. Take a can of spray paint whatever color you want to color your three D target, and uh, you know, repaint it and then take some Thompson's deck ceiling like water ceiling, paint that over it. And you should be good to go and do that. You know, when you see it wearing off, and if you know, you know the water is not beating on it anymore. And uh so I went and got to think a can of khaki was the closest I could get to like the tan colored of a mule deer's body. Already had some black and white, and then I got a dark walnut because I wanted to as I was he I don't know what ran Hart was thinking, but when I got this buck and had these, the antlers are like, I'm guessing they model them after because they're giant. Yeah, it looks like one of the it looks like one of those deer that who's that ran looks like one of those dear Randy. Yeah yeah, yeah, type in Randy Almer mule deer. And then this is what this target is modeled after. Anyways, they're very yellow the antlers, and I didn't feel like they were very realistic, so I went to repaint those because I wanted to protect those two. I thought, you know, it would be kind of fun to turn him and turn him into the mythical timber buck that Stephen and I heard about when we were hunting Colorado together. Dark antler timber buck. Yeah yeah, I get buck fever looking at you and he's target. Yeah, no, he's he's intimidating. Um here, friends, it is a high class. We're camping last weekend and I had my I had a three D target off in the meadow, you know, and I mean, there must have been ten times I come around the corner and kind I couldn't get used to that. It was quite the antlers they are. How long did that take you? Oh, I don't know. As long as it takes the spray Holcanus spray paint. It's pretty, it's pretty detailed. So we got a letter. We got a letter in. Oh, I'm gonna do it. Oh, I'm gonna introduce our guests, Fred Gould, Fred, Okay, here's how this goes. People will remember, people will remember a long time ago. If you've been, if you follow the show closely, U Karin, our beloved producer, had one day it was kind of spouting off about that fair Phil. Yeah, that's a great way to put it. Stopping spouting off. Karin was spouting off about GMOs genetically modified organism. It was well intentioned spouting off. She wasn't spouting off. She was just I don't know what she's doing. God's talking about GMO of like taking like arctic char and mixing it up with strawberries. I don't know. And then and then crackted herself a week later, and then corrected herself a week later. But the emails kept coming. The emails kept coming, and I said, well, Crim, why don't you go track down a GMO expert. He's here now, used to live in a Van University distinguished professor in the Department of Entomology that's studying bugs and plant pathology at North Carolina State University and rally right role, I though they're real particularly and the co director of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center. You got it. Um, once we get down with our up top stuff getting an interview, do you do you have any idea what we're talking about with the strawberries and the art at char Yeah, you know, phenomenal, genuine vegetarian, used to live in a Van. Self described former hippie. Krim sent me an article back, did you did you quit being a hippie? I guess I did, but like aged out. Um, yeah, that's gonna be a great conversation. Also, the other thing that inspired uh that the inspired justus want to have a conversation about GMOs. And we'll get to this is it's a very popular thing to have like a shirt or whatever it has a deer on it, like a white tailed deer. Who and white tailed deer? I love people, I mean they like. They like edge habitats, they like agricultural landscapes, they like disturbed landscapes. They like areas where the human presence uh decreases the predator load. Right, they like crows, Canada geese, what else, white tailed deer, magpies, magpies, just things that are sort of the winners of the anthrop a scene. Dogs, dogs, Increasingly coyotes are finding like fuge from persecution in urban in the sort of urban suburban landscape. I feel like increasingly a lot of more animals, especially predators. Yeah, they're kind of like, you know, these people aren't that bad. You're gonna learn how to deal with them. Um. Anyways, people like to have a shirt or whatever, stickers and stuff they have a deer on it and it'll say like organic, or they'll have they'll talk about mallard ducks being organic. And we've we'll ask you about this, we've talked about increasingly. UM. I would say that if you're eating a mallard duck in North America in the lower forty eight, probably not man, probably not right right, They are all eaten corn out of a GMO field somewhere, soybeans like probably not organic. They probably wouldn't be able to be certified organic. I don't think so that you probably, I don't know, you know what, I don't have an answer for that. I'm not sure. I'm not sure how how they would certify something like that. But it's a high The likelihood is that if you're gonna shoot it yourself, nobody's going to care. Yeah, but I mean meaning that if he's migrating through like if he's migrating from Canada to coastal Louisiana, UM, and it's utilizing air cultural fields like, it has a very high lighthood of stumbling into some kind of grain. Well, we need to get to all of this because it's really kind of curious. And I mentioned to you that on the US reserves for a long time you weren't able to grow genetically engineered crops. So if you shoot and a word of four reserve, right it was, it would have been non GMO. So that's that rule is has been changed and it's sort of filtering down, but it probably will change. Right So right now, if you want to get your non GMO ducks, you know, before we do our some of other stuff you got, we gotta talk about these jars here of bison garam darm. How do you pronounce that? I have no idea. That's a good research project. Someone find out how to pronounce that, so we don't sound stupid. You mind doing that film? Uh tell real quick? Talk about those the because you live in North Carolina, um, and you're talking about the the least corn land. Explain that. Yeah, So it's an interesting thing because you know, I man, you have all these reserves, right, and there's a lot of water, but there's I have a lot of land there and they want to have food for the ducks you know that migrate there. And what they've done is they allow farmers to grow corn on that land, right, and then they're allowed to harvest most of it, but they have to leave some of it behind, so they're not paying rent on the land like they would with a typical landowner. Right. It's kind of funny cause it winds up sounding like, um, it's reminiscent of the sharecropper system. Well, it is exactly, I mean, and they leave that amount standing and that's for the waterfowl. But you know, there's all of course, you know, given it it's a federal program, they have regulations and they don't want certain pesticides right that would hurt the aquatic animals and and so on. So they have regulations on what you're allowed to spray. And you know, there are a lot of good reasons for for having some of those regulations, but some of the others, you know, have sort of seeped in. And one of those was about using genetically engineered corn and so that was prohibited. So that has been prohibited. So you know, it's a problem for the farmers because some of the weed problems, for example, are kind of really tough on those refuges. So you know, they need to make a certain amount of profit off that amount that they're able to harvest. So you know, it gets a little bit tricky, but they have things worked out, but it will be The farmers would love it if those regulations were changed. And so during the Trump administration, they lifted the regulation on they lifted the prohibition, they lifted that The argument, you know what the argument for the foreign against arguments. You know, I wish I could give you all the rational but I don't think this was just a rational kind of thing. I think it was probably a lot political. But there is some some kind of rationale because indeed a lot of the crops that are genetically engineered genetically engineered for herbicide tolerance, right, so if you have herbicide tolerance, you can spray more herbicides on that. So if there if it's a herbicide that's not allowed or something like that, that's an issue. But I think more of it was really just that idea of of natural and I thought we could get to that because I think more of the GMO thing has to do with natural versus this whole thing about safety. And I think it's really useful, you know, especially with your guys. You know, it's it's really interesting to talk about that. But all I would say is that it will be great for the farmers, you know, if that changes. I don't think it's going to harm the refuges, but duck hunter and duck but presumably there will be more duck food. I don't think there'll be a big change in it. But I think you should tell all your listeners to will lobby against relaxing that law so that they can continue to get organic ducks. This is a called action. Yeah, this is a call to action. That's bold. Um you have are you protected in your job. You talked about, so this is a difference between having a federal and so you have. I thought you're gonna ask me if I'm protected from losing my job when I say things you have? Do you have? What the words escaping me? When you get immunity from prosecution? What you want? That's great. You're gonna get the straight story, right, Okay? Fred hank Ty, you got anything to add in? Add in? But we have. I didn't know this existed. I got a package in the mail from Lasiano Culinary School in the Latian Islands or in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and the guy someone the director of the culinary school there, director and instructor of culinary arts at Lake Superior State University. I didn't know they had that program I went to that. I'm not quite a lung because I only did a semester there. I went to three schools before I finished, like regular college, Skeeing Community College, Lake Superior State University, Grand Valley State University. I did one semester at Lake State and had no idea that this exists. That was one of your brothers. They he runs the program there. He sent me a beautifully typed letter. And they've been experimenting with various forms of fermentation, and they have a they've been making koji mold. But he took this is this jar in front of you, honest, which looks like a jar of If I handed that to you with no label, what would you think you were looking at? Oh boy, I mean, it's like the color of molasses. But it just it's it's just liquid. Yeah, so sauce, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, fish sauce. Maybe. So they've been they've been dicking around with kogi mold, putting it on various forms of grain. Okay, the mold itself is sweet and fruity. They've used it for many things, including toasting it for salads, making risotto, lacto fermenting it which I don't know about, making bread pudding. Koji mold is also an important greenia for many of the Asian pantry staples, such as here I'm in more familiar territory mi so fish sauce show you, or soy sauce and saki. They were making it with coffee. Then they took a freshly slaughtered and ground bison meat. So the meat from a freshly. I'm trying to say ground bison meat. And they put the cog on there which is grown on barley. And they put the bison meat, kogi, salt and water, place it in a rice cooker set to warm, and they skimmed it and stirred it for ten weeks, then strained out the solids, which they then dehydrated and made a bison spice with and jarred it for use. My goodness, I feel like maybe we should share one of these an auction one of them in the auction House Oddities or do you want your own jar? We have two jars. No, we could share. We could share a jar. Have you cracked that open yet? No? Man, just go open the box right now. This is like, this isn't even in the document. I challenge you to find this in the document and what we're are in what are It's not in there? Phil, Well, i'll see. Let me save you the time. It's not in there. That's how freshness is. H's open a damn thing up? Now? Well? Yeah, I think we should have a smell and maybe it takes. I want to save a jar for ther House Oddities to raise money for our access initiatives. Oh, yeah, you don't even have to put your nose to it. Here's what he says. He says, We've been marinating our bison backstrap steaks. This is probably making you want to make Fred friends over there, licking his lips. Yeah, we've been marinating our bison backstrap steaks in it for a few days before we sue, feed and butter base them. It does a really nice job of breaking down the muscle fibers in the steak and tenderizing it. We also use the sauce as the umami component in a saracho honey glaze for sashimi salmon. Can anyone hear anybody here? Fred, you might be Can anybody in Layman's terms, explain O Mommy, Yeah, let's hear it. Phil tell him it's so it's so easy Phil to do it. I was gonna say, it's one of those things like the meat. It's the meat sensation. It's it's like that Supreme Court justice who was asked to define porn. He just said, I just I know it when I see it. I feel like that's you, mommy, you know when you taste it. I can't describe it. Don't ask me. Well, this sauce. Definitely is ou Mommy. I looked it up at Mariam Webster. I just want to drink that, like put a little bob or something in there. Miriam Webster says. It's the taste sensation that is produced by several amino acids and nucleotides such as glutamate and aspirate, and has a rich or meaty flavor. So you're right, characteristic of cheese, cooked meat, mushrooms, soy and ripe tomatoes, very very prevalent in Asian cooking. I feel like they're always talking about, mommy, have you found out how to pronounce what we're sitting on right now? I looked it up. I got I got two pronunciations gear room and ga room. But I think the biggest things that that you as an oo sound gar room, Like mommy, there you go. Um, So we're gonna put a jar of this. Someone's gonna tell us there's like some kind of legal problem with this. Yeah, That's the only thing I was thinking is you know, you can't auction off food? Why not? I don't know that's what, but I was thinking there might be a legal issue with it homemade, you know, not f d A U S. D A Inspects blah blah blah. I'm gonna I try. I try to. I try to put in my used T shirts with the essence of Yanni because I know that some folks like those T shirts. Steve, you know, they shot me down. Why. They didn't really give an answer. They just said, I think that's too much. It's like like like Ralph Nader works here now or something. Uh, I'm gonna find out a way because I'm also planning on auction off my big court jar of python oil the auction house. Oddity's real quick is is we're starting an auction house and it will all fund access, like like we did the Shiloh Pon. We kicked in money to buy Shilo Pond and Maine to turn it into public land. Um, we just raised a bunch of money for UH to support state state level access initiatives like state level private land, you know, public hunter private land. What's the word I'm looking for hunting access? Yeah, issues, um, other projects. So we're starting to sing in the first thing when we launched the auction house is it's all going to be stuff like gear used on season ten of our our Netflix show Mediator, like actually used both my binal harnesses from that season, my backpack from that season. We got one of Clay's guns in that season hopefully the Raccoon hide. All that kind of stuff tanned and then we've got paintings, We got crazy stuff. I tell you that I reached out to our buddy Luke Colmbs and he's going to chip in for the auction house audit. No, but I meant you and forgot. Yeah, he's in North Carolina. Do you want to hear that? Do you want to hear the country singer your boys coming in big? What are you talking about? Luke's coming in big for the House of Oddities? Is he donating that tour bus? Okay, not that big, but a signed guitar that he's played on stage with your kids, along with T shirts from the tour Signed man. It was one text and he came back with I am so in here you go my favorite from that episode that we film a loop which is coming out with September. I was explaining him. I was explaining to Luke how I think pronghorn when you smell them like their fur, their hair, I think it smells like fried corn chips. It really does. And I told him, I said, when you smell that thing's gonna smell like freedo corn chips. And he said, we'll bust out the bean dud. Uh oh. Two more promo things we gotta do. So on a previous episode of the show, we played of our of our random house audio original, Meat Eater's Close Calls No camp Fire Stories right meters camp Fire Stories Close Calls, which I should point out is on its second month on the New York Times bestseller list. Congratulations for audio originals. We're doing more, like, we're doing more. Do we get that stamp as a company or does that count as like under your sort of list of author Uh. I would think it would be where the company would claim it. Nice. Anyways, we're doing more of those, and so we're looking for your stories. UM's so camp fire stories. So if you if you're familiar with the Campfire Stories and you have this camp Fire Stories audio original Meat Eaters camp Fire Stories close Calls, and you're like, holy ship, those boys should know about X. Send that to you camp Fire Stories at the meat Eater dot com. Um. Savannah, my beloved partner that work on all this with and Brody, Savannah was saying, if you want, you can give shout outs to folks who sent in their dad's stories and tell them we want more. She said, we have an overwhelming number from veterans, like she's glad we have so many stories from veterans, and a lot of stories about people's dads. And she said, uh, the old sweet dads give me life. And she said, it's also funny how everyone's subject line is crazy ass story, which I think we might have said to use that, don't we. Yeah, so keep them calm and as well. It kind of defeats the purpose when everyone is saying craziest stories. It kind of it loses its effect when everyone's using it. Do you get what I'm saying. It's like if you asked my kids if something was epic, like they go down the little five ft hill in the yard and it was a sled rug. Yeah. The other thing we're working on and we I don't know how many we have, but we need a lot more. Um keep sending in the keep sending your submissions to fund up Old Deer stands because I'm still pushing. Like now with the success of the calendar, tremendous success. Now no one can stand in the way of making it a fine art coffee table book. I'm proud of you. No one can stand in my way. I told Ross he'd have he'd encounter zero resistance on that project going forward. So send your pictures of crazy old deer stands two funked up old deer stands at the media dot com. We've gotten over. I don't know. That was a long time ago there, Now what that's a lot of pictures to look through. Seflixom he listens so like Walleye podcasts and this is the poet draws the salary dream job. I was gonna say, kee paying him for this, Like I feel like I should be paying you guys. Um. A surgeon wrote in saying that he had a this comes off. We were talking about a cannibalism article that was in vice of a guy that had, like I can't remember why, he had an amputation and then had a party and made tacos and like his friends came over ate his arm foot right foot? Is that what it was was advice? Uh? A surgeon rode in and he had to go through a deal he had with a guy. He gave a hip replacement too, and the guy really wanted his ball joint back, So the doctor had humored him and went through a lengthy process of getting it checked out for hospital for the legality. Then she got it squared away, gave the guy his ball joint back and asked what he was gonna do with it, and he couldn't decide between turning it into the handle on a gun cleaning rod or the shifter for his truck. That's a redneck move right there. Toxo plasmosis, which we spent a lot of time on. Who oh, yeah, we had a do we have a yeah, we had an expert on for that. Toxo plasmosis. Did you ever hear that? Fred, I've heard of it. It's like bacterial infection that's passed through feline feces. And there's this interesting I was skeptic, but I've I've become not a skeptic. Telling my favorite quote of all time, Johnnie, Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect. I was telling my kids that there, and I try to explain after them, trying to teach six every night at dinner. There tell me something that some guy at school told him, some kids school, something like no, just no, it's like not, he's not telling the truth. Oh right, your kids are back in school already, so I started, Oh yeah, just the strachers. Joe was so and So's dad got a checked by a grizzly. I feel like I would have heard about them, man, you know. Um uh. Anyways, this is weird thing where it seems and there's like some research out of Africa that like toxoplasmosis is transmitted like the whole is through feelines. Even herbivores get it from just like grazing close to cat excrement. But it seems that an animal um infected with toxoplasmosis loses its fear of feelines reduced inhibitions. And I don't know if it's just reduced inhibitions or reduced inhibitions of feelines. But for instance, they were looking at what was that animal that the what's the like the thing that everybody in Africa's lie is mad at all times? It was in Africa. It wasn't a dingo dog. No no, no, no. That they're looking at like of hyena pops that are infected with toxoplasmosis that they track get killed by lions, ones that aren't infected. It's a very low percentage, but they did. There's a study in this journal that someone sent us um that risky business linking toxoplasma in fact and entrepreneurship behaviors across individuals and countries. WHOA, you lose your inhibitions, you become more entrepreneurial when uh not in fact? Yeah? When in fact with the toxic plasmosis. Yeah, well that's cool. I mean, you know, I mean there are a lot of these cases with plants, right that they have compounds in them that when a herbivore eats them, all right, they get a little bit of hallucinogenic kind of effect and they're happy and hang out. Well, oh he does want to get eaten to have his seed spread. No, he wants if if you're eating the plant and you lose your inhibitions and some carnivore comes in, that's what's pretty good for the plant. So you know, I told you I was a hippie, but I mean, you like, but the thing about it, right, hippie is just hanging out. Do we have that here in North America's prayer? Does that happen in North America? Yeah? Well I'm trying to think. I mean, you know psilocybina. That's pretty much rooms, right, I'm gonna read the first line of the abstract discipline such as business and economics often rely on the assumption of rationality when explaining complex human behaviors. However, growing evidence suggests that behavior may concurrently be influenced by infectious micro organisms toxico plasma infects and estimated man, how can this be true? Two billion people worldwide and has been linked to behavioral alterations in humans and other vertebrates. Are a quarter of the world's population? Is that correct? Seven billion people on the planet. Uh? You know Rick Smith's I know that number always because when someone's saying like, someone will mentioned like someone doing some crazy thing and people be like no, and Brick'll be like, there's seven billion people on the planet. Of course someone's into that. Mhm Um, that's really interesting. If you want to get, like your spouse onto on board with an idea that they can't get on board with. They think it's risky her hang out by the literal to get a little go over to the old litter box. Um, this is a great story. This is a this is legitimately fascinating story right here. Um, there's a research real quick though. It's not only a correction, but in twenty nineteen, we're up to seven point six billion, so you might as well just start saying eight. I'll switch round it up. We're getting there, Fred, This right is gonna tickle your fancy all right. Um I I know of this gentleman because my my brother in Alaska actually studied under him. Uh. There's a research named Matthew Wooler who interestingly, Matthew Wooler, who is doing work on woolly mammoth's at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. So this, this is interesting, This is good to look at. This guy focuses on stabile isotopes and he's looking at the isotope strontium. Might pronounce that right, straw stum. Now, strontium is is like a stable isotope that occurs and soils and comes from from the natural ground. Okay, And it's like the vegetation regimes change, but that stays the same. And it's one of these isotopes that varies across the landscape. But over time, right, the climate might change, vegetation regime change, animals change, it doesn't change, and it's in varying in uh densities across the landscape. So this guy first, these guys went and they were looking at some kind of shrew I think is it in here? They were looking at some kind of vol or shrew, and they were taking the teeth out of voles and shrews that are widely distributed across northern Alaska, and they have a very small home range. So when you catch one and take his tooth out the strontium, the stabile isotope in the soil, is grows into its teeth and he doesn't stray fire. So when you catch one, you can assume that he's always been in some tight little spot, and so you can look at how this isotope is taken up in this guy's tooth, and his tooth continuously grows right. So you can then measure that like the level of the tooth, and you can make a map of how much of this stuff exists across the landscape and various areas. They then, how do you feel about my explanation? That sounds great? Don't you don't want to repair it in anyway? They get a tusk off of mammoth. It's a big gas tusk um and they take that mammoth tusk and rip it in a band saw all the way around, so they like run it through a bandsaw, and they have this big, curly split tusk. And apparently this is the same thing on sheep horns too. When you cut it and look at it in profile, as it grows, it grows in what looks like stacked ice cream cones, and it's very clear on the inside, but on the outside that the differences get they get smoothed over from you, so you can't tell. But when you cut it looks like stacked ice cream cones. Where he's continuously putting out new tusk. So these things whatever, they get like an eight nine ft tusk over the course of the life this mammoth, their tusks they're looking at with him, he's a twenty eight year old mammoth. When he's a little baby sucking on his mother's milk, that's like the very tip of his tusk, and that grows out. And then when he's twenty eight years old, what's going on with his tusk is like emerging from his jaw. Then they can take and look at because they put together this map of this stable isotope and the soil and then they can take and look as he grew, where was he living and this thing. You look at the map they published, it's in it's in the journal Science. You look at the map they published the detail of how this thing spent the years of its life. It is incredible. It was born and raised and spent like its adolescents south of the Brooks Range when it hits around the time it was fourteen, I think they hit sexual maturity. He migrated up through a pass to the north side of the b Range and then later made another migration near the Colville River. He it seems like he walked enough to have traveled around the Earth twice in his migrations and then died of starvation along the Coalville. And they can tell he died of starvation because his diet changed to just like to look like a carnivore. And it was when he was he somehow it had an injury, couldn't eat anymore, it seems, and just self digested and was taking in no vegetation and that's where he died. It's an incredible map. Was the map in the male was Matt Beth Shapiro who's been on this show. It was her lab that determined some of the some of the demographics about the animal years old, seventeen thousand, one years ago, a male mammoth. You look at the Smithsonian link or the the Science link. I read about it in Science. So you had to pay to get access to the whole thing. No, someone sent me one of those J store or whatever links. I'd show you the map, Fred, but I don't know. I've seen that. It's an incredible bit of work, man, excellent, very cool piece of work. So I guess you talked to Beth about bringing back that mammoth. She's great. We're trying to get her back on the show. One more thing, Fred, and we're gonna one extremely quick. One's extremely quick. Hey, whatever, this is fun. Guy wrote it about why do you trapp Why do conna bears have the desert the size destination they have. I called some experts. No one knows. So conna bears like generally like traditionally, conna bears are coming like one tent. Everybody knows one ten body gripping traps. I called a trap expert. I call him Joe Beaver, but his name is Mike. Uh. He said, I have no idea, man, he goes it's a very confused system. It's like a one ten n a bear has a four inch jaw spread unless you buy a blile one ten, which is a four point five inch straw spread. Now if you can't say it, so, a one ten zero has one spring and a four inch spread, A one two zero has two springs four inch spread. And there's a one fifty with a five inch spread, one sixty with a six in spread. So at this point you're thinking like, okay, one five five inch spread, one six zero six in spread. Well that goes to hell when you hit a two twenty which has a seven inch spread, to eighty at eight three thirty at a ten, he's like, there's no rhymer. It doesn't mean anything. If anyone has corrected this, it's Minnesota Brand traps. They launched a trap called them m B twelve sixteen j C. And that's like a rifle caliber because it actually means something, m B Minnesota Brand twelve sixteen. It's twelve by sixteen j C. It was invented by John Kratty of Michigan. So you got a couple of those, don't you. So in short for your answer, the best I can tell in my casual research that I don't know. No one knows what the hell it means. It's like one of small three is big to his medium enough. Yeah, I was trying to find something on it. I was looking all over the place, couldn't find anything. A guy from East Texas wrote in He's conflicted about the use of orange plastic trailmarking tape surveyors tape that hunters used to navigate their way to and from their hunting areas. This is he says, On one hand, I understand that everyone has the means to purchase a GPS or even a smartphone to utilize mapping apps that have become so accessible. On the other hand, I hate walking through the woods and seeing orange flag and tape littered all throughout. Some of it's been there for years. Something looks like it was just put up, he says. When I see it, I put in my pocket and throw in the garbage. Am I bad? Am I doing my fellow hunters wrong? I pick up every scrap I see. I do the same thing, Josh. I've left a lot of it throughout my life because we used to mark blood trails with it. Um not go back and pick it up whatever, you're lazy. Most of it's plastic, right man, It's just plastic, orange svarrious tapes. I hate seeing. It's not okay to leave plastic in the woods. I hate seeing it. Always go grab it much if you're using it to mark ways in. I think a much more a nicer spot is just get those little glow in the dark thumb tacks. You can see it in the daylight. At night, your flashlight hits it. We used to use those to get into duck spots. Just stick thumb tacks and trees. We used to also walked through was a a machette and blaze all the trees. That was common practice. Just being dumb. But yeah, I've hung a lot of that tape. I don't like it. This guy be other ways well, obviously on X tracking function is definitely the easiest. Yeah, but he's trying to be he's trying to be compassionate and empathetic. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I know acknowledging. Maybe not everyone has. Sure you got like a roll of surveyors tape laying around. I can't like, you know, I can't blame someone for using it, but I just think you should when you're done. Grab But yeah, exactly, you're done grab all right? Fred? You're queens, Yeah, New York City. Yeah, you began your career. Explain this studying spider might evolution. Yeah, and insecticide resistance? Is that a good avenue into this or what's the best avenue to get into your work? Well, that's not a bad one to get into how to get into the ems? Yeah, So I'll tell you, you know, the way I got into this whole thing is through that work and spider mites. So the thing is is that you know, plants are attacked by herbivores, right, and spider mites are one of them. Spider mites are actually you know, I think you know that it's really tiny, right, like aphids and such. A really tiny big caterpillar is different, right, A single spider night they're attacked by the spider mites attack plants, all right. So the spider mites feed on lots of crops. And as a matter of fact, spider mites, a single spider mite species one called a two spotted spider mite attacks plants in your house and attacks crops like corn or soybeans. And it's not an ai it's not an a it's actually not even an insect has it has eight legs. But the important thing is that it attacks these crops and plant breeders, today's plant breeders try to breed their crops so that to be resistant to the attack of the spider mite. All right, so they wouldn't have to spray insecticide or carraside as it would be. So what's interesting carrasite is because erachnant, right, so as opposed to insects. Um, So what is the what is the base word you using? Like insecticide? I get it, it's like a thing that kills insects, But what is the word a caraside? But what is the cas a caraside? That must be my leftover queen's act. I don't know. Yeah, you're saying, like right, yeah, right, So in any event that you know, breeders breed that into their plants. I do this all the time for pathogens as well. You know fungi that you know that caused the Irish potato famine. Right, breeders will breed potatoes so that they won't be attacked by that fungus. Right. The problem is that these are living organisms and they evolve, and so those spider mites evolve to become able to feed on those crops that the breeder so carefully bred to be resistant to them. Let's spider mites are interesting. All right. Let me just say this. I worked on cucumbers. Right. Have you ever eaten a cucumber and the peel is bitter? Listen? Yesterday, Oh I had I left one of my garden too long. My daughter. My daughter was like not into it and wanted me to peel it. Right, yeah, Okay, that's due to cucurbitations. See right, it's a compound. It's a terpenoid compound, doesn't doesn't really matter, but it's a chemical, right, it's a chemical that is making that cucumber toxic to those spider mites. Yeah. So for my thesis, well, that's what makes it. That's what that bitterness when you well, so this is the right. So, but the thing is that that cucurbitation is in the leaves as well, So the spider might speed on the leaves. So if you want to protect them, that would be that's a great resistant cucumber variety. So for my thesis, the question was, wait, you're gonna put all these years and it could take ten years to breathe these cucumbers to be resistant. Well, I looked at those spider mines. They have a generation every week or two a right, how long is it gonna take them to become adapted to it? And I did experiments in my thesis and show that they could become adapted to that toxin and then you know, then you wouldn't have any utility to that cucumber. But okay, I'm just trying to be I'm trying to be considered of people tracking along talk about by what mechanism they become adapted to explain that, Like they're having many offspring that are all a little different. Yeah, okay, So spider mines like human beings, right, we're all different, right, blue eyes, brown eyes, whatever. We have genes that control that. So with spider mites, they have genes that differ in terms of the metabolism of that itider mite and spider mans have evolved over millions of years, right to feed on plants, so they've always had to be dealing with toxins before humans existed. Right that plants are always producing toxins to kill off the things that feed on them. It just makes sense. That's why you have all these spices right in the grocery store. Then plants did not make spices for you. They made it to protect themselves or and and some other things, but mainly to protect themselves right against uh, either insects or mammals or against um, you know, pathogens. Imagine how helpful capskin is, right, you know how many things are gonna want to eat? How many wild animals are gone into a haberdactly? Right? And then of course you have insects that have adapted to a certain plant and they sequester that company. They put that compound into their bodies like a monarch butterfly does. Right. They take from the milkweed that they feed on, they take the cardenoloids that obviously cardiac effects, and they put them in their body. So when a bird feeds on them in Mexico where they all migrate, they would spit them out. Of course, there are birds that have adapted to be able to deal with that toxin as well. But anyway, it's a whole coevolution, right of the plants and the insects that I studied when I was in graduate school. But the whole idea is for have applied implications, right, so that you know, how could you have a sustainable agricultural system where you use less insecticide and the plants protected themselves. So that's what I was studying, going about by business, and some people cared about it. Most people didn't write, but it was an important thing for sustainable agriculture, right, I mean at the big level. Two. I mean, you know, we were having a real problem with wheat with the hessian fly, right, would adapt so quickly to every time in the Midwest. So they put out a new variety of wheat that was resistant to this hession fly. That really is problematic. It would last for four years or so, and then the hessian fly would adapt to it. Well that's not sustainable, right, you gotta So that's what I was studying because because the ultimate goal is it's like the ultimate goal is too pronged. It's continue to produce food to feed people, and to reduce how much chemical you need to spray, right, Yeah, And and to get back to your question of what what happened there was that some of the mites had different metabolic pathways than others, just as in the same way that our digestive systems are different one human to another, and those that were able to deal with that cucurbitation, that compound that stays so bitter to you, we're able to survive. And the ones that didn't die it off. So over time the population shifted from the majority of dying because they were when they feed on a cucommer plant to the end the majority of them survived and did just fine because they had the enzymes or whatever it took to deal with that c curbutation. I think a good way here. I want you to explain this whe you correct me if it just doesn't work for people. I'm just trying to put in human terms, um a human but no, no, no, I don't mean I'd just be like terms not might, but check me out on it, right, Uh. I imagine most people will accept the idea. There's a thing called celiac disease. Okay, wee allergy. Imagine we were living in an environment where all we ate was wheat. Um something switches and only humans only eat wheat. Now you would find in the future that you had run out of people with Celiac disease, and you would have uh, there would be a strong selective pressure against people that had Celiac disease, and you could envision the future in which that had gone away. That would be us evolving, right, Yeah, and in the same way we're talking about. Yeah, and of course, you know, think about people who are lactose intolerant. Right, A lot of cultures Almost everybody is lactose intolerant once they are adults. Right, when you're young, you need to be able to deal with your mother's milk. But unless you're a milk drinking culture, you lose that. So certain groups in Africa that use milk, and certain groups in Europe that use milk have those genes, but in other places you don't because that wasn't adaptive to have, right. So the story, right, So I'm just working on my way, but then all of a sudden people develop these genetically engineered crops, right, and all of a sudden, well that brown okay really yeah, it was earlier later, Okay, So we're gonna have to get into definitions, right, right, what is the GMO and all that. I'll tell us a little story and then we'll get back to that, right. But the whole thing is that there had been and organic insecticide called bacillustheringens or BT, and it was sold called dipel and organic farmers used that. And basically it was a fermented soup and dried down of bacterial spores, right, but organic farmers used it because it was natural, right. It was it was a bacteria that kills insects, produced naturally, you know. Abbott produced it in these big fermenters that they used for pharmaceutic you know, like this big industry and organic pharmacusic. But also back in my state of North Carolina, tobacco farmers used it against caterpillars, you know, and this is you know, pretty intensive, and you put it in the tobacco and when the you know, caterpillars feed on it, they get disease and they die. Right. But they're one of the things about that bacterias it had a single protein that it produced. It was toxic to the guts of the insect that actually made holes in the cells. Right. So folks from Montsanto and other people were working on that. But what they did was they found the gene that codes for that protein. And we'll get into this a little bit. When you want to say, what is the GMO and what is an organic duck? All right? Because what they did was they took the DNA code from that bacteria and they moved back back one step all right, good, good? What's what one step one step back? What had the okay? What had the thing that rots the hole through the gut? This protein? All right, there was proteins. It's part of that bacteria. Every time that bacteria, you know, makes a spore, so it could last, you know, when there's no food around, it would sort of protect itself by making this toxin. And it was a protein toxin. Okay. So that so that's what the farmers were using. Right, they spray it and when the catapety living protein, well, they spray how do you call a living a protein with in a living bacteria and sometimes they kill the bacteria to process it. But whatever it was, that yeah, and actually it would only stay out there for about four days because with sunlight and everything else, it would decompose. But the main thing is that's how they kill caterpillars, right, using that protein which was toxic. Right, once the caterpillar ate it, it died. So so what these technology people did was they took the gene that codes for that protein. So right, let's just go back to you have Every organism has d N A, and the d n A is read you know, in in the cell by and becomes rn A, right, and that becomes protein. So for every gene, everybody says you get one protein a. Right. So that's the whole translation of you have a People would call it like a blueprint is the DNA and the house is the protein. So you go from that blueprint to the protein. So the protein is what's killing that insect. So what these technology people did was it took that blueprint and moved it from the bacteria into a tobacco plant. At first, that was the that was the like the original one. Yeah, tobacco was like the white rat of plant biology because we so eased to work with. I know, I know it's weird, but that that's that whole was largely driven by Chester. Okay, whoa wait a minute here what noll I listen? So here these boys started chewing as young babes. Okay, well, hey, I'm not the GMO in you just just all right, So let me tell you about that, all right, Chester, So here we have this, right, the first plant, the easiest thing to make to be toxic to these catapults, and it was. And anybody who grew up in North Carolina some of your listeners know this that if you grew up in North Carolina for years ago and you were a little kid, you got paid money for every caterpillar that you pulled out of a tobacco plant and squeezed, because they you know, and stead before all this insectici Yeah, exactly exactly. So that was like, that's like, that's that's like the wait wait wait, okay, that's the first I mean, that's like like the first thing like what people would have called a genetically modified organism. Well that i'd have to say in terms of something that could have been a commercialized crop. Yes, that's probably so let me tell you all right, all right, Well, the is a reason why you don't know about it, and that is they developed that. And we were working actually with some of the companies to test some of this because so these are companies that no longer exists Romans Do you know Roman has? Yeah, Well you wouldn't because they don't exists a tobacco producer. Well, no, they were a chemical producer. Okay, I mean you know these these things really complicated. When you get to these companies. You know, there's no more Monsanto, right, Oh there is, it's gone. Bayer bought them. Yeah, so that's what happens. But to get back to the story, was that we we tested some of these tobacco plants and they were like a mortality of the caterpillars. Right now, this is a protein that comes from an organic thing that people have been using in tobacco, right, and they put protein and they put that natural protein into that tobacco plant. Okay, And we actually did have a meeting with Reynolds Tobacco company to talk about this as to whether that would be a good idea for their tobacco. And you know, I don't want to swear to this, but the word that came back to me was they considered it, but their pr people figured that they're smokers would not want to because because it would have the hand out. My right, I'll smoke, I'll smoke twenty these things a day, but there's just some things I won't do. Right exactly. But now wait a minute, now, have you ever heard of organic tobacco? Yeah, yeah, right, you've heard of organic tobacco because it's out on the market, but not transgenic tobacco because that will kill you. No anyway, I mean people are fine, even though they could have killed of those caterpillars. Right, So so I just this is why this human nature. Did any tobacco Did any big tobacco company pick up on it? Nobody did. They don't want it. It's never I mean, we grow tobacco in North Carolina, you know, big Lake creage. Still they still spread it. Yeah, really yeah, okay, real about that, Phil. I can't tell Phil's pay attention. No, I'm I'm paying attention. I just when you were talking about Yeah, these health conscious smokers just reminded me of all the guys in my dorm room rolling their own cigarettes. But oh it's it's loose leaf tobacco, so it's good for you actually, right exactly, So so just you know, get around. We'll get to this health thing. Right. But but what got me involved? Right, because I'm interested in using this stuff, but using it so it's sustainable. And I learned from those spider mites it only took them like two months to adapt to this cucurbitation thing right back in you up, how would when it when it makes sense to you get into how you wouldn't have had the same problem with your tobacco leaves. Well that's what that's where I come in. So I'm actually trained as an applied evolutionary biologist, right, so I'm interested in how these things evolved. Right, So the idea is how can we stop evolution? Right? So it was clear to me that if all of a sudden, so the organic tobacco people when they put out their bt the dipell and stuff like that, it only lasts for a couple of days, right, so it's not out there all the time. But what the Monsando people were doing was using a promoter that turns on this gene that makes that protein all the time from the time the seedling comes out until it dies. Right, So the insects are exposed to it all the times, like taking antibiotics all the time, right, good or not good? Well, it's going to cause the bacteria resistance in the same way, right that. So we were sort of saying, gee, this could be a good thing, but not the way you're doing it. We need to come up with a way that you could use it and have more sustainable agriculture. So the insects won't adapt to it, and so that's my area of interest. But when I was doing this before GMOs, there were plenty of other things to work on, like the Hessian fly that I mentioned before that I was working on and who's that of pain in the ask you again, wheat growers. Yeah, but the amount of money that's available for crop breeding for Hessian fire resistance is not huge, so you know, getting making headway with that was kind of slow. But when transgenic crops came out, all of a sudden, there was all this controversy about them, right, and so there were the people who said you needed to feed the world, and people said it's gonna poison you. And we were saying, hey, wait a minute, we've been using this for organic stuff, but if you use it too heavily, it's gonna go away and it's not going to be sustainable. And so we were in the middle, and all of a sudden there was a lot of attention to this, to the point that when the first crops, the first cotton in the first corn came out with BT in it, the Secretary of Agriculture label that those crops a public good. That right, it's going to decrease the amount. Oh god, I gotta go back. It was in nineteen ninety six that that came out, something like that, Phil look down there, okay, But but the main the piece on that that was really important was he says, a public good, so we have to protect it. So he involved or the U. S d A, involved our group and some others to come up with what approach could you take to slow down the evolution of resistance to this? And I could go into a bunch of detail, but I think I don't hop if you want it. But you know, it's basically a way of actually, like with an antibiotic, right, the doctor who says take it until the very end, right as many days as you want give it, give those back to a really high dose. A huge evolutionary challenge that hopefully they can't meet. So our whole we came up with lots of different approaches, but the one that the companies thought they could meet was coming up with a very high dose and the plant of this protein that's not at all toxic to humans, not at all toxic to humans, right, and it can't be carcinogenic in a sense because it breaks down. But we get into that, but the main thing was that you could have a high dose but also leave some of the crop without any of the BT talks and at all. So that would produce susceptible insects that would then mate with any few resistant insects. So it's called the high dose refuge approach. And the U s c A made that uh and and the e p A made that code. You know, that was what was needed. Of course, that you have to have enforcement. And that's the problem, right, I mean, people are planning refuges and using the high dose for some insects, but it hasn't turned out quite as good. But when it's used over the last twenty years, since nineteen nine, well since nine, um, in those insects haven't become resistant. In cases where it hasn't been used, insects have become resist. So that's been you know, a nice story at least, you know in terms of you know, if you think and you plan carefully, you can do something more sustainable. Uh. Let's approach this. You're smiling. I want to approach this whole subject from a different angle from all right, Um, when you go to the whole foods store, not like whole foods where you go to like a you know, like a fancy s fancy store. Here in this town. We have what's there with the co op? Yeah, I one time saw an advertisement in in the co op. I don't like, really, I don't really going into that much, but um, it's just a little too special. There was an advertisement in there for a cat psychologist. But it was one of those ones where you you know, you cut the fringe and write your number on all the fringe pieces on the paper and tear them off. All of them had been torn off. A cat psychologist. Okay, somebody could have just been upset with that and then just like seeing an orange tape in the woods, you gotta tear that. It was just people calling her to goof on her. But um, anyhow, you go down to this place, okay, whatever, and you buy a box of cereal and bold letters on no GMOs? What are they signaling to? Like? What are they what are they telling people that people think they're hearing? What are they telling people that they actually need to know? Is it? Uh? Is it a non point? Oh man? Yeah, you can get non gmo water. Really, someone who bother to put that out there? Well, you get no water that has no calories in it too, So it's a back up. Most of the stuff you buy in the grocery store, you couldn't get GMO if you want it because it's not there. So, you know, a lot of people think that when they go to the grocery store, if they buy peppers, they buy carrots, they have to look out that they're not getting GMO. Vegetables. Well, there are a couple of vegetables that have been you know, that our GMO, but mostly it's just corn and soybean and cotton. In the US, there are sugar beets, there's a specialty apple that doesn't brown, and stuff like that. Yeah, but very little. Would you like one of those special apples taste good? Yeah, well apparently apparently they Yeah, they don't brown. You know, you could put lemon on them. Now that's another way of doing it. But you know, you could send your kids to school and they would have apples it wouldn't brown, sliced apples, or you could have it in a salad bar and you could lead it out for two days and nobody would know u. Yeah, but anyway, but there are a lot of good things coming along in those ways, but it's not out there so much. But to get to the corn, soybean, cotton, sugar beets, um, canola, Uh, mostly the big crops and the big pest because you know a lot of it's been done for her beside tolerance, um, for g life's sake. Now that the weeds is somebody of your people know have become resistant to life sit because it's been overused, same same old, same right, so they're going to other other compounds. But um, basically you have to think about it commercially. You know what's the market for these different things, right, I mean the amount of market for sea quarn seat is huge in the United States, So that's where you want to make your investment, not in blackberries. Right so so, but but so to get to your point, let me get to your point. But I want to on top of that, it's more like, um, it's not that you couldn't that that someone couldn't mess around with carrots and find some improvement if they wanted to. It's just like it's it's more like it's it's out there for things that there's been a need. It's not that there's a reason why in the future you wouldn't have GMO carrots yeah, yeah, you could, and people are working someone incentivized people are people are working on that. There's been a recent article, I guess, in the New York Times about somebody working on tomatoes that would be more nutritious, right, And there's a lot of that going on, but they haven't hit the market. But to go back to your thing about going to the grocery store, go to any old grocery store and look at cheerios in the cereal section, right, and you'll see that they're on the boxes of cheerios. If you look at the regular old cheerios, you know, like good old what oats, you look on the box that said no GMOs on it, you'll see the label. Well, I don't know what it's like in Montana, but in North Carolina, you go to the grocery store, in the box says no GMOs. But you go and look at some of those fancier cheerios that have some other things in them, maybe corn syrup, um, maybe you fanci, oh, probably maybe honey nut, whatever it is, something that has corn in it or soybean in it, and those say contain some GMOs. Right, So they're being honest with you. Of course, the regular cheerios that are made out of oats don't have any GMOs. And because there aren't any oats that are produced that have GMOs in them. But you could go down the aisle to another sort of like cheerio e kind of sweet sweetened with some kind of corn, then then it's going to have GMO in it. Now we can get to the question of as corn syrup a GMO. Right, So if you have corn that's been genetically engineered, right, somebody put herbicide tolerance into that corner. Somebody put that protein I was talking about into that corn all right, Well that protein was there, what makes it a GMO? Right? Well, of course we can go back just to quickly. I think all your folks know that genetically modified is any crop that we grow? Right? Corn was developed from teosinte thousands of years ago by cut farmers in Mexico, right, And it was like a grass, right it was. Yeah. I mean so all of these things anything you have, potatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes grow wild in the andes, these little things that might kill you because of the content. Yeah, all of those things have been Yeah, so that's something that's really really exciting. The apple is some little ship and thing from Kazakhstan or something, right, right, all of these things that oh yeah, well they it really is. It's really grass from the western hemisphere, so potatoes, you know, you well, the main thing is, you know this is way back at the turn of the century. You know, this is like you had Darwin right discovered all this stuff about natural selection and this uh Russian agricultural evolutionary biologists um got interested um in g can I use evolution to understand how to get better crops for Russia at that time before the revolution. And his whole thing was going all over the world to collect the most diverse germ plasm he could German pleasant meaning the most netic diversity. Right, So he's going to Kazakhstan, he'd go to the United States or Mexico, collect all these seeds and bring them back to his operation, huge operation to save those seeds and breed better crops. Right. But to get to your point, you know where all these things came from. So he was really one of these people who went back to find the grasses or to find what was the original potato thing that led to a potato um so that you could find things in the andies. So they came from different parts of the world. Right, I wish I could give you all of the diesels. But obviously rice, you know, came from Asia. Soybean came from China, right, and then they spread over the world. You know, we think of Italians being into tomato sauce, right, Well, they didn't have tomatoes. Do you want to hear these stories in my first book? All right, all the Italians got turned and worried about them in the beginning, and right, so, I mean this is the story of of this is early interesting and even more interesting of the person aonalities to study it. There was this controversy about the origins of corn for like thirty years. I don't know, I thought it still was. No, I don't think so it's quieting though, Well, michell, when Michael Pollan wrote that book, the Hell's that book called, it was about weed, about her marijuana, taters apples, okay, yeah, boy desire. Yeah, it was about we think that we're using these plants, and it was about how they're using us. And it's like how these plants conquered the world, right, you know, conquered the world by appealing to humans. But you were just talking about that, right, in terms of animals that love hanging out, Right, all those squirrels in my backyard, Eastern Eastern grays. How many acres you got, No, I'm in this, I'm in this, I'm in the city. You want to go ahead. My squirrels they're pretty smart. So let's get back of that thing, right. So, um, all these crops are really you know, we're genetically modified, right, they're genetically modified from something wild again, like those spices. They didn't come to you as the bounty of nature. They came to you screaming and hollering as as you got them to come, or they got us to breathe them so they could live nicely in a big, huge cornfield. Here, now I'm getting okay, here's where this, here's where you gotta get clear. If there's a difference between like if I whatever, I'm messing around my garden. Yeah, okay, and I'm and I'm whatever messing around with pole beans, and I mixed the different kinds of pole beans, and and I stumbled across and also I realized I got some kind of weird variety that loves my yard. Okay, no one is gonna be like I'm not eating that something bits pole beans. Those are GMOs right there, head, Like, what is the difference? There's a difference. I don't know what it is. I'm I honestly don't know, but I know that GMO. I don't say GMO apologists is GMO explainers like to point to, well, everything is because everything's been manipulated, right, So but um, all right, so let me let me you know, you're having me on your show because I was in charge of writing this six page report on GMO. And we don't use the word GMOs. Don't. We use genetically engineered crops and genetically engineered foods. And the reason we do that is to stay clear of this as we can, because it is such an odd definition. It got. It was a label that sort of stuck, you know, like frankin foods or something, you know, like it's just the one that sucked. But it muddles the water because indeed, people sort of what's happening here is you know, we've been engineering, you know, genetically modifying food for a long time. We've sometimes made mistakes in the breeding. You know, there was a potato that came out that had more alkaloid in it that had to be taken off the market because what would it do. It would make people sick. You know, Alkaloids are I don't know, They're just toxic to a lot of things, right, And that's why when we bread, when the original people bread those tomatoes sol in a city that that like copersicum, they got you know, they kept breeding for the ones that wouldn't produce as much alkaloid. Right. Mostly what happens in tomatoes or in some potatoes is they'll produce the alkaloid until they get ripe, and then they get rid of it over time. Well, so that makes it well. One of the things is they defend themselves against birds eating the fruit too early before it's mature. Right, So once that seed is mature, then they want the bird to disperse it, so they make the fruit taste sweet and nice. Those plants are smart, right, or whatever evolution is has worked. But but again that's happened a lot. So what we differentiate that because people are interested is this new technology with the first applications coming out. I've where some commercially bread potatoes that had this protein, the BT protein that from that bacteria. When that first came out, the idea was, Wow, this is so new that genetically engineering this, and we don't know if in putting that gene into the plant, they have caused some disruption of the plant's physiology and now maybe it's making an alkaloid that's going to kill us because we've disrupted the genome of that plant. I mean, we didn't know much about this. I mean it was really interesting when they first put that bacterial code, that blueprint from a bacteria into a plant. It didn't work very good because those things have been separated so long that the plant didn't know how to interpret that blueprint very well. So they readjusted the blueprint, made it red. I don't know what, you know, they adjusted how those codes were so they could get the same protein out and the plant would recognize it. So that was like an early fear was I don't know what that is, right, And you know, in a certain sense, it was such an early fear. I mean, I'm I'm trained as an evolutionary biologist, and when that was happening, I said, oh my god, wait a minute, this is not gonna work. You have well no, I was just thinking of it like this is stupid. You know, you have these bacteria that evolves millions, billions of years different from the plants that these they haven't seen each other's code and forever you're gonna take something, throw slap it in there and somehow it's gonna and it worked, you know, And it was like taking an old cassette tape trying to get it your computer though, right, yeah, but anyway that that sort of stuff happened, and but people were still especially think if you're not that tuned into all the ramifications of the DNA and the protein and the evolution, or you think, man, this is wild ass stuff, right, you're gonna put that in there and expect everything to be copasetic, you know. So a lot of the early concern well, what some of it was about the protein itself, right, was well, that protein is fine if you put it on the top of a plant and you eat a little bit of it, but now it's going to be concentrated and you're gonna eat it. Do we have enough studies so the washing, right, no washing that off. So you know, the studies had to be done to make sure. And some people didn't trust the FDA or the U s d A or the E p A you know, to do it well or something like that. So there was a lot of controversy in the in the first years. So, but I think that the issue was if it was bred by you in your garden or by a company, uh like Harris or whatever. You know, some companies using traditional means to breed it. Well, we trust that. We've been trusting that for a hundred years, right, We've always had that kind of agricultures. But this is brand new, and I don't trust it. And by the way, I just generally don't trust the government, you know, or whatever it would be. And I think it's going to poison people over time. Right, I think that was a major concern. Now. The other concern, and that's one thing I want to talk about, is the issue of damn, this is not natural. I'm eating bacteria. I'm eating char in my strawberries, you know, strawberries at the char and it you know, like, what is this? So there was this great sort of uh bio design art group that designed the thing that would be called the mayo tomato. Right, tomatoes don't have a lot of protein in it, so we'll take mayacin as a good protein and put that Gane in tomato, So when you eat the tomato, you could be a good vegetarian, not become a n e maker or whatever. Um So, so that could be kind of weird, and that that's some of the safety stuff. But the other part is that is natural. So I would want to say that over time, those things have been tested, that the ones that are out there have been tested over and over again, some by the industry and you might not trust industry, but some by academic labs or other groups, or government groups and European groups, right, Europeans are very worried about GMOs, so they've done a lot of testing. When we wrote the six hundred page report, we had a huge number of references about safety testing, and in the back of that report we separate each of those references in terms of who did the study and who funded the study. So if somebody doesn't trust industry or government, you know, like they can pick and choose. But I think you find that if you go over the all those studies, you still come to the same conclusion that that corn in the Midwest is not going to affect your health in any measurable way. I mean, there's no way with anything for us to know if it's going to take a year off your life, right, I mean, you know, it's too many other variables, but we have that all the time. We don't know if a Mediterranean you know, Mediterranean diets supposed to be good for you, but eggs were good for you then they were bad for you. And cholesterol. You know, there are a lot of things where it's very hard to get that douta because it's so little. So you can say I don't trust it. But why would you then trust something that Steve Brendan his garden, right, it was weird, right, you find this mutant and you didn't find it, but you found that mute int your garden. How would you know that that mutation hadn't done some weird thing to the temples that the plant uses to kill its enemies. It wouldn't occur to you to be suspicious. It might occur to me, but it won't occur. It won't occur, It won't It won't occur to the U, S d A or f d A in any big way. Um. They do test things to make sure that they're substantially equivalent, they call it, you know, they look to see that they have the same amount of vitamins and so on. But only when it's something big, not something where somebody comes up with a new heirloom variety. They're not going to test that. So the deal is is that, um, you know, over time, there's been enough testing on the things that are there now. But when people start messing around with the pathways them selves. So let's say somebody wants to give you a better tomato and this was his article, I guess in the New York Times, um about I think it was New York Times um making a better tomato that would have more of these antioxidants in it. Right, Well, when you do that, you change the pathways. Because plants. Every plant makes five to a hundred different of these compounds that serve them in some way, right, So when you shut off the pathway to make one of them, you're gonna make more of something else. So we don't know in the future. You know, I don't want to say that just because we've proven that these few crops are safe that in the future you wouldn't be able to make a crop that would be genetically modified and would have health implications. So that's that is feasible that that could happen, So you just have to monitor well. And now compared to we have great tools, you know, the same way you do personalized medicine. We could get a blueprint of a person, right, and now you can do the whole genome of plants and find out if there's anything strange that's been affected by putting that gene in. So there's more of that I would my personally, I think that would be needed, uh, to figure this out, you know, to make people, you know, feel that due diligence has been done about safety. Do you think that the organic label is Do you think it's nonsense? No, I don't think they were getting laybals nonsense. But do you feel that if but but being a being a GMO whatever the hell? What the word you like? Better? Genetically engineered? Yea genetically a genetically engineered organism or an organism that's been fed genetically engineered organisms isn't eligible for organic labeling. Right, Well, so this you asked me if I thought organic labeling was a problem. But I think organic labeling is not just for GMOs. So the issue? Yeah, yeah, what all you know, it's it's you know, it's it's a value system, right, I mean, I really like to get things that have grown locally just because I want. I think, you know, we really need our agriculture and we don't want it all to be grown in some desert in Arizona somewhere. Um. But you know, so there are reasons why people do things. But in terms of the safety issue, if that's all you're concerned about, right, I don't think that the things you buy in the grocery store that our g M O versus non GMO are going to be any different in terms of your health. Okay, I'll give you one exception, but um, I think that the important piece that you're getting to though, is in terms of eating a duck that had fed on GMOs. Right, is that? So think about this duck, Okay, goes into a corn field out in North Dakota right where you did a show, right, and you shoot, these ducks were on soybeans and corn right exactly, and almost certainly all of that was probably engineered, at least most of it was engineered, right corn right, And so to worry about eating that duck because of the GMO that it's GMOs as opposed to the lead that it was exposed or whatever, maybe in your shotgun shell. You know, I mean it's it wouldn't be an issue to me. And let me explut the sound of your body shock and going off next next your ear. That's a whole other part. Right, what kind of risks are you willing to take? Right? But the thing is is that think about that duck. Right, So the plant makes a kernel. Let's you know, the corn kernel that it's eating, right, it takes it in gizzard. You talk about how you know, grinds it all up, it digests it that it's that d NA gets degraded, right, that DNA gets you know, there's all sorts of enzymes, and people have done testing to show that those that DNA gets degraded in the gut. Right, the digestive process digests that DNA and digests that protein to make great I mean no ascids to build duck. It doesn't wind up putting that protein from the bacteria straight into the meat. So by the time you actually get that duck. And people have done testing more on cows, right, you know, you don't find that in the milk. You find little fragments maybe, but you're not going to find a whole gene in there. And then you know, so that you know, it's that question of what makes it not be organic? Yeah, what does make it not your Well, I think the idea is it's not about biology as much as a social issue. Like organic beef. Okay, so you're so organic beats beef? Oh beef, Okay, there are if you buy I'm a vegetarians, I think beats when you say beef. If you buy organic beef, you're looking for a handful of things, right, It'll have to do with medications and all that. But um, if someone did, let's say a beef producer did everything organic except one detail they fed it GMO corn, genetically engineered cor that beef would be ineligible for organic labeling. But you're saying that a chemist wouldn't be able to go into that flesh and find the incriminating DNA. If they found it, it would be little pieces. I mean, they would not find something right, right, they wouldn't find functional protein or functional DNA and that meat. Right. But let's get to the issue here. I mean, you know it's not you know, like, well, well, it's not an issue about science, I think sometimes, right, I think, why why is it that you know you don't want to use certain antibiotics or certain like the antibiotics are not going to be in that beef either, right, I don't know. Well, yeah, then you know you're gonna feed them to that cow to keep it healthy. Right, But the antibiotic breaks down as well. But there against isn't the worry like the growth hormones. Okay, so that's a whole other thing, the growth hormones. So again, I don't think that there's any evidence that using the growth hormones is going to make that meat bad for your health. Now, of course the way that it's produced might make it bad for your health. Right, So if you put all this santbiotics and and all these growth hormones in it, so you can put all these animals together and not worry about them getting infections and stuff like that, you know, it's a whole production system. So I do think organic as a statement, you know, about a production system as as opposed to only health. Now, I'm not saying that's what every person who buys organic is feeling, right, I think there are a lot of people who buy organic because they worry about the health effects. You know what I'm saying, Like, there's so many things. But I think I mean that you might be making a sort of landscape animal welfare decision, or you're making a personal health decision, or you don't even know, you just know that it's supposed to be right. It's like it's supposed to it and you can afford it, right. Yeah, So it could be a lot of things to a lot of different people. But um, I know that there are you know, um, some organic farmers who think that you should be able to use genetically engine here at corn Rye. But but that's not the rules, that's not the way it's set up. But you know, actually, and if you thought about each of these individual groups, you'd have eight different kinds of organic labels, right. So I think that's just the way it is. And there was a definite, big debate with you in U. S. T A about to include genetically modified corn and soybean as being okay to be organic. There was a there was a debate and it came out with that not being in the you know, the rule being not No. I was not un gladly well, because it's it's an issue about really again not about the science, about values, right, I think that um, well, I mean, it could have said something about the safety, but I don't think that was the big issue. Let me just bring this around to you, all right about the natural part, right, Um, I think about your followers and people who are hunters who care, right, who are conservationists as well, right when you go out to hunt. Well, let's let's bring it back to fishing. Okay, So if you go fishing for trout, we you rather would you feel better about yourself? Have you caught a natural trout or one that was released by hey? Whatever? The breeding? Absolutely natural? Oh? Natural? I prefer native. Um. Like, to me, there's like extra points um in my mind, if it's a native animal native to the landscape, meaning a rainbow trout in Alaska, um, to me has far more value than a rainbow trout in Montana. M Um. I view a rainbow trout in Montana as being like a corrupted h It came from a hatchery, it's corrupted, it was brought in by man. I hunt turkeys in a lot of areas where they're not native, and when I'm hunting turkeys where they are native, it feels more special to me. Okay, that's what I want to I mean, I'm sure that a lot of your listeners feel that. I can tell you a hell a lot of trout fisherman like native brook trout, steelhead, a steelhead out of Lake Michigan. Is it a steelhead? I understand all of this, and I agree with you, but I think that it would almost be down the middle two people that are like, man, it eats the fly, it jumps, looks pretty captured. Like I just don't know. I don't know if there's that many people that have your value system, because when they're looking at trout, let me fishing generally. Put this way, you're probably right Chester. You're a big fish, big fisherman. Here. I want you to speak to because he's a guide who takes oh and so somehow his opinions. Let me let me you'll get your chance. Let me explain why I think that that's true. I don't know what the hell he's gonna say. If you talk to a person who, let's say you talk to a person who lives and breathe steelhead, a steelhead fanatic, Okay, I don't know how many there are. Let's there's ten thousand steel in the northwest part of the steel head fanatic anywhere Great Lakes Region, Pacific rim you go find me a hundred steel head fanatics, randomly sampled Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Okay, Oregon, Washington, a very small subset of fisher I'm choosing people who have who are steel head fanatics. You don't have a lot of steelhead fanatics from Kentucky. I don't have access to Go ahead, and you said to these steel head fanatics, Uh, would you rather catch a native steel head or a hatchery steel head? Ninety nine out of a hundred, ninety out of a hundred, it's gonna say, oh, native one of the fanatics. Now you've got all these people that don't know I will say, I don't know there, but I can't think of oh, you know, the all the ones I know are not friendly to not kid friendly. You don't think i'd agree with that, No, because you're guiding people who probably don't even know that rainbow troll aren't from here. I tell him all the time, like, that is a native fish you caught. That's way cooler than that one. You're that way cooler. Yeah, okay, all right, so here we are right in a way in my mind is I think it's cool you bring it up. Did they taste better? No, that's not saltwater. Okay, Sam out of the salt water tastes better Sam out of fresh water. But that's not that's nothing to do with just die right, right. But I guess I just want to bring this around to the cheerios, right. I know, I'm I'm tracking. I want to lay a very solid foundation for whatever you're gonna say. Okay, so, but those are your values, right, I mean you and there's a reason behind your values. I could explain it, but it wouldn't be like terribly convinced. And that's where I think we get in trouble with trying to get an somebody who wants to buy organic, Because Steve, I think it feels like to you probably feels like you're cheating or you're taking a shortcut when you're not. But when you're, when you don't catch like it's something that's native, right, like kind of in your head? Is that how you would frame it? No, it's um. I view. If I was going to say, what was like, what is the most purest form of nature? Okay? I love nature? Okay, I regard it as a sacred thing. Um, even though we are part of nature, right, We're like a component of nature. I somehow have more respect and admiration for the sort of natural mechanisms of Nate that the non human, non intentional mechanisms that drove the distribution of species around the planet. Okay, it's just like to see to be on the landscape with things that arrived in some way that was outside of my species manipulation seems to me more admirable. It's just the story is more intriguing to me. Yeah, So I think where this metaphor comes in is that where you kind of touched on it earlier, where you sort of said, well, Fred brought up the fact, well, we've been doing we've been doing GMOs for thousands of years, but like in your head, long term selective breeding is not the same as I think what people picture when they picture GMOs now is someone in like a lab with a hazmat suit on and like some syringes and a petri dish creating corn and then yeah, exactly, but that's but I think Fred is kind of looting the fact that that's that's not what it's really happened. Well, but but that's this is this whole issue, right, that's really interesting what you was just saying. So it goes back to these kind of values that people have, you know, like you're kind of connection to it, something that really was on the land, and you're connected to it, and you go out there and you do it yourself in a sort of natural way. You're out there trying to deal with this dead carcass that you're trying to bring back a thousand miles or whatever. Right, I mean, it's you're you're out there in that natural situation, and that's valuable to and and so getting around this whole thing about genetic engineering and natural you know, that thing of the people in the lab coats. This seems to be I think to a lot of people who want an heirloom variety or as you were saying, you know, that's pretty intriguing to hear how plants evolved, Right, people who want to have that connection to not being natural but being our cultures have over time. The Chinese culture did one thing, the Mexican culture did something else. Right, That's why Mexican hate GMO corn. Right, you know, we bread this stuff. Our ancestors bred gmo corn, you know, and now you're taking it an injecting it with all the stuff and sending it back to us. You know, we don't. You know, it's not natural, it's not our culture anymore. So I want to bring it connected to conservationists. Right. So you know the story of the chestnut tree in the US. But it was a major part of the forest in the US and it got wiped out by a fungus chestnut chestnut blight. You still can find it out there, but it's only little stumps because once it gets big enough, it gets knocked out, all right. So people have taken Chinese chestnut and crossed it with American chestnut to try to bring the Chinese chestnut's resistant to that fungus. Right, try to bring that in and then plant that out, so you have a hybrid of a Chinese chestnut and an American chestnut. You try to get rid of as many of the Chinese genes. And it's very interesting that we call them American and Chinese. Right. But now genetic engineers have come up the way of moving I think it's a wheat gene into the native American chestnut to protect it against the blight. And this has been going on for a while and there are a huge number of people, some probably some of your listeners who are real proponents of getting the chestnut back into our forests. And the way to do that is to genetically engineer the chestnut tree. So you know, it's a whole. It's a chestnut tree, more of a chestnut tree than the Chinese American hybrid. It's just put you know, a little bit of DNA in there and it protects that chestnut tree. But it's a genetically engineered, transgenic chestnuts tree. So the question the landscape back when Daniel Boone came down through the Cumberland gas right, look more like that, and look more like that, but it would be transgenic and it bears eating right right. And so what I bring up to people is how you know, like also, you know about the kittured fungus right with amphibians kittrid fungus now, but the kittured fungus has been causing the extinction of a lot of amphibians, especially in the tropics. Oh, I don't know about this. I don't know the name of it, but anyway, I mean it's a it's a big deal. So you know, one of those kind of things is wow, what about if you genetically engineered all these frogs pieces to be resistant to the kitchened fungus. So I think twenty years from now, one story is, oh no, people didn't want that genetically engineered frog, and the other as they did. So you go to the forest on one side and a no frog, not much in the way of frogs. You go on the other side and you got all these incredible frogs. And I'm sure you've seen some of these incredible frogs, right, But what does it mean to you to go out into a forest and have this experience and come back and see that? Wait? Was I in a natural forest or was this just a Hollywood movie? I just was in. Right, what does that mean in terms of nature? And where is genetic engineering taking us? And actually, I have to say there is right now that I see in the International Union of is having a meeting to discuss use of synthetic biology for conservation. Really, yeah, it's a very controversial issue. You know. I'm working with a group that's trying to get rid of rats and mice from islands where they cause loss of biodiversity, and we're using a novel technology called gene drive. Well, we're trying to it's far away. It's not there. Basically, well, basically it's a way of having inheritance that pushes the gene into a population, and in this case, we'll be pushing a gene into population who caused the eradication of the mice on that island. The gene it's a gene that makes males instead of males, and females have a whole bunch of males, Are it? I mean, this is just it's not there. I don't I don't want to. I don't want anybody to think that that's the The other is just to have basically in fertility genes, right, so those won't go, but you want to restricted to the island. But there are all sorts of things going on in terms of synthetic biology about just making the arits or something like that blackfoot to be resistant to the diseases, right, so that you can save biodiversity using genetic engineering. But the conservation biology group is really struggling with this, right I think, because and think about it. You know, it goes back to your thing about the fish, right, you know, what kind of natural world do you go out into? Is it? Is it? What what makes it natural? If you guys need someone to do this, I'll do it. Just bring me. I'll tell you chest nuts a okay, yeah, okay. The mouse thing, I think real careful how you can keep those mice and getting yeah yeah, yeah, well I think there's a lot of work being done. I can handle all. Yeah, yeah, well I think, man, I would be very nervous about right right swimming off, you're leaving, you're leaving, and he jumps on the boat right right right, So actually, ill you know that actually the work of the people I work with at NC State are trying to work on one of these gene drives that won't escape from the island. Yeah. I don't want to go into this, but it's a great it's a great question. Yeah. But I mean that's that's has been. I mean I have to say that of all the genetic engineering stuff, the scientists themselves are probably more worried than the public in some ways. So think about this thing about you have a gene that could spread into the island and get rid of all those rats and mice and and really be good for biodiversity. That's pretty clear that, you know, some people say, oh, you're gonna get rid of them, and they're part of the food chain. Now, now it would lead there's evidence that getting you know, getting rid of those leads to higher biodiversity. But you go, ask anybody who rides the New York City subways about getting rid of you know, using this technology, should get rid of the Norway rats? Yeah? Yeah, And what do they say, say do it right? Because they hate rats and it's a non native and it's and and but you know it's gonna move back to Norway, no doubt, right, I mean, I guess the thing is people the scientists who do it, who have ecological backgrounds, they're like you, they're worried about this stuff. But the public has different opinions. You know, if you don't stereotyping me man generally not like on the food thing. It doesn't like just I could. It doesn't matter to me if my kids I had a bowl of cereal, I don't. I don't really like cereal. I mean, I'll eat it, but like it has no barrier whatsoever? What I do watch out for? And I should ask you about this? Um. Somehow I got in my head in some kind of convincing way that I don't like him. Uh, I don't like them, the milk with bull vine growth hormone. I was like, we can afford the other kind, so't I'm not saying I don't know. I don't know, but I'm like, it's just not a big deal. We can buy the other They don't go through that much, but we can buy the other kind. And I don't need to, like, wonder if there's something I'm supposed to pay attention to. Yeah, that's probably a lot of people, like I don't really know, but it's know something that I don't have the energy to go find out right. And that's that whole thing again that the people in the developed world to get accused of. Wait a minute, you know, it's easy for you to be against genetic engineering because you've got the extra money to buy that stuff, the extra whatever, like, but people in the developing world needs g amounts. That's what. That's what. That's That's a great segue. And what I want to ask you next seven and a half billion people, seven point three what is it? Like I said, just round up to COVID trimmed off. So no, no, not, I mean I mean not enough. I mean that not enough to change not enough to change a decimal. I don't think so whatever some seven and a half billion people on the planet, and buy your understanding if we were going to globally Okay, we're gonna we we come to this global decision. Uh, we're done with GMOs. No more. I can't put them in the ground. Um. Is it true that we would that you would buy necessity, need to Probably you would buy necessy probably be starving off a couple of billions of that seven and a half billion people, that you would starve them off. How do I answer that? I think it's like yes or no. I mean, if I had to give you a yes or no, I'd say no, you wouldn't You wouldn't necessarily be starving them off, all right? Um, But I think it's it's a lot of people use that as an argument for GMOs. That's the that's the one that resonates with people. So I guess this is this is a tough one for me because I want to go back in the place where genetics were, which is pretty incredible, right. I told you when they made that tobacco plant, I was like, whoa, But things are changing that you know what, genetic engineering. We've got better go back to what is genetic engineering? Right, it's those people in the white coats right who are doing this, right, But people in white coats do a lot of things, and one is to actually take a gene from a bacteria and stick it in a plant. Another thing that they found that they could do is take a gene from a wild tomato that made the tomato resistant and just put that gene in, right, So they're not taking it from something really weird to taking something similar, so that where you're taking it, yeah, tomatoes and putting tomatoes and tomatoes. Right. So if you start out with the bacteria, it's called transgenic. Moving something trans across the species barriers, right, So that's transgenic. This is called cysgenic because it's similar, right, So you put it in and it's not so weird system. And now the big thing is something new. Instead of moving char into strawberries, you'd be moving like char into another charge right. Yeah, yeah, char from you know, one region of the country into another one to make it more tolerant um. But now there's something called gene editing, right, and this is something that's happened with humans in China, right where you go in and you actually just tweak a human gene, right, But can you tweak just a plant gene? Right? It's you're not doing anything coming from any place else. You're just changing that gene. And that's called gene editing, and it's just one kind of genetting. You use genetting for a lot of new things. It's this thing called crisper that everybody talks about now, right, So that scene is somewhat different by some people because it's more natural because it's not transgenic. Right. But in terms of what you can do to the plant, you can do a lot of new things. But what's coming along behind I ain't. That is something even to me more interesting because as you know, like with human diseases, some human diseases are caused by one gene. So you can think, oh, well, we could fix that one gene, yeah, right, But most human diseases are caused by ten to a hundred genes acting together. You can't make a cure where you're changing a hundred genes at least with the technology we have now. And the same thing with a plant. If you want to increase plant yield, it seems real simple. Oh, we're just gonna put this one gene and it's gonna be salt tolerant. Well, that happens once in a while. But the way progress is really being made now by the big companies is they're doing something called genomic selection. And again we can get into a lot of diesels, but they're looking at the whole genome of the plants they're selecting and coming up with the best combinations that fit together. And it requires a lot of computer power, a lot of this whole thing about um, machine learning and and all that artificial intelligence has come up with the best ways. So plant breeding to get higher yields is happening because of high tech. But the new high tech is not transgenics. That's way back. So the you know, so when people say, oh, we're never going to feed the world unless we have genetic engineering, and say, well, what do you what do you mean by genetic engine You mean good plant breeding. Let's have good plant breeding, right, and so good plant breeding can do a lot, but it's no longer this narrow thing that happened that everybody was focused on, and this other stuff is going on, and again nobody knows about it. It's like the genetically engineered tobacco, right, it's in the background. It's it happened now, but this stuff is coming, and you know, for good or bad. I think a lot of the big companies are hiring a lot of computer people to help them with this stuff as opposed to people out in the field, because you can improve a plant without looking at it. There's another argument, another their pro gmo argument, and I keep using that's okay, we all know, we don't talk about is that from a conservation perspective? Is that I've heard people say from a wildlife conservation perspective, Um, they work better, they put off more bushels per acre, so it winds up being less. Land needs to be converted into monoculture. Agriculture to meet our needs because it's just more efficient. And if you, uh, look, if you're a duck hunter and that you and you're worried about the prairie pothole region, and when when grain prices are high, more of the prairie pothole region gets tilled, and it gets tilled closer to the pond's edge, and more duck habitat is lost. Um, why not solve that with more efficient agricultural systems so we have more ducks. That's another argument right. I like the efficiency argument and conserving land. But let's ask that question about what has jen engineering done so far since to increase yields of corn, soybean and cotton. I can a lot no, alright, so, so yields of corn per acre? Let me yeah, hold on, let me give you the deal here, right, Yeah, So Monsanto had an article published in a peer review journal showing how this has been increasing. That so when we were doing the six d page study for the National Academy of Sciences, right, we got down on it, right. We looked carefully at the data, same data they used, all right, And if you look at yields of corn, soybean and cotton over time, right, and we were looking from nineteen eighty to two thousand fifteen. I think it was where we ended to look at what's happening to yields. They're going up, you know, this fluctuation from year to year, like like per unit of space, like per per acre yield. Yield per acre for cotton, soybean, cotton have been going up since nineteen eight They've been going up since nineteen thirty. But I mean we were looking at the data as was months out off about nineteen eighty and you see the yields going up on all three crops. And then happens and all those crops are now genetically engineered in the US. Not every one of them, but most of them. And you ask, well, the the yields going up faster because I spiked, Yeah, not at all. Really, that's the data. Then I can show you that line, that is a straight line. Now some people will say, so what did we gain? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So some people say, oh, well, if we have climate change and all of that, if we didn't have genetic engineering, would be going down. But if you look at wheat or oats, remember not genetically unshared, those yields are still also going up the same way. So there really isn't the evidence in the United States so far. I'm not saying it can't happen. People have been trying since the nineteen eighties to increase the efficiency of photosynthesis, but it's a hard problem. They haven't solved it. So let me put I want the same thing. Maybe you guys got into this or not. If you looked at amphibians that or pollinators or whatever the hell monarchy waterflies, I don't know, And you look at like amphibian counts from adjacent wetlands over from fifteen in does that pivot some way? Good? Good question. Okay, So there I can give you another answer, not for those amphibians, but for insects. Okay, So by not using as much insecticide, there's more bio diversity of insects in the non you know, in the GMO fields than in the fields that are not GMO that are spread with the insects side of course, right, I mean that that is there. So so you are helping in the way of concertion. But then there's an efferent different question here about you wanting to keep your little areas that are natural from going into farming. So well, I'm good, and I build this genetically engineered crop that is highly tolerant or it's fair. It's fair, it's fair, like prayer po whole region whatever. Sure, I would like to I would like to retain as much waterfowl nesting habitat as possible. So I all I wanted to bring up is if some scientists uses genetic engineering in a way to make those areas commercially useful, because now they have a plant that will survive better and also produce something for humans so we could have more meat and not worry about efficiency of eating being a vegetarian. Right, I mean, so I guess what I what we get to? You know, of course I'm with this Genetic Engineering and Society Center, you know, to keep asking these questions as deeply as we can to ask Wait a minute, you have a nice story, but is that the only way the story unfolds? Where it could unfold in a different way. I think what we find is that we need a lot of brains to be thinking about how it's going to be used, not whether we can make it. You know, I'm sure you have examples as in hunting, right. You know, you can make something, it's how you use it that determines, you know, whether it's an ethical way animals and stuff like that. So I think that's important. Let's say we're hiking, yeah, and you you fall off a cliff there's no chance of surviving, and I yelled down, Um, so are GMOs good or bad? What would you yell back? Yes? And no? But I mean that's the deal, right? Yeah? I had that with some students, right, they had this, So let's come to the chase, right right? Huh? So I would would say anybody who says to me should have a moratorium on genetic engineering research. I think such a more term would be a very bad idea, right, But I think that we need to be very careful in the way we use these things. And I think there are examples of these where if it's not interesting. Example, in in Africa, Burkino Fosso is the first country that said, hey, bring me genetically engineered cotton that has that BT and that has that protein that it kills caterpillars, and we won't be able to won't be using as much insecticide, which we can't afford anyway. Right, So they get this genetically engineered cotton, they start growing it, and they produce more per hectare then they would have without it, and they used less insecticide and a since you think the farmers are really happy about that, right, and everybody should be happy about it, except that they didn't breed it, right. They brought over sort of an American variety that they back crossed into the cross sit into the African type. The African type in the Franco African countries produces longer fread to count, right, and so they were producing more, but it wasn't of the quality that was needed, so it sat on the market and the country then banned it again. Right, So it's it's how you do it. It would have been a great thing if they had done it right. And other examples had a lot of shitty cotton a lot of Americans. But but I just want to bring another really interesting example to me is about corn. Is that actually using traditional breeding they Jeanette, they bread corn to be more drought tolerant, and who could be against drought toners like mother and apple pie, right, But what it was interesting was that when they gave it to farmers to farm, and you think, oh, this is gonna be good because it's gonna lower the impact of drought. But there's a spacing that most of your you know, some of your listeners know when they're planting corn, they planted a certain spacing. But if you plant the corn too close, you get to a point in a normal year, you cause drought to happen because the corn plants are just sucking up all the order. So there's a certain optimal distance. Well, if you have drought tolerant corn, you can plan it closer in a good year and get higher yield and then the field though still drought sensitive. Is it making sense right? Each plant is drought tolerant, but it's the way the farmer plants it. So this is why yes and no, is that we have to figure out what is our goal with this genetically engineered stuff. You know, is it for more sustainability of specific farmers or global issues. I don't know that that's a bad thing that there that you're having higher yields and it's still sensitive to drought because we do have crop insurance in the U S. It's underline. And also you're talking about it, you know global economy where wealth too bad for Iowa? But man am I making a killing in North Carolina because they haven't a problem. Uh you know, I mean, you know, there's all I'm trying to get out here is I don't have an So it's it's a in the system. It's a whole system that you're dealing with. So when we talk about what are the issues with GMOs, and this is this whole thing about our group, the Genetic Engineering Society Center, is to sort of dig a little deeper. And it's not just about the genetic insurance any technology as they're coming on. We have to think about them more in terms of what the repercussions are. I don't. I'm not, you know, against risk. I mean, we always have to take risk. You always have to answer ask that question if you don't use GMOs, are we're gonna be able to feed the world? Right? So you better have an answer to that about how you're going to do that if you don't use GMOs. And I would say that there are some places where you really GMOs have decreased the amount of pest side used by farmers in um, certain in certain countries in South Africa's an example where decreasing pest side use meant that fewer farmers round up in the hospital at the end of the season. Well that's the safety of GMOs. That's interesting, And I said, I'd come I should make this one comment. Uh, there's a group called Simplot in Idaho. Right, they breed potatoes. Well, they bread a potato that has lower acrylamide in it. Acrylamide when you fry your potatoes or toast your bread, turns into something that is considered a probable carcinogen. So those potatoes are possibly less Carson and genetic if you're eating French fries. Yeah, but then again, you shouldn't eat French fries. Right, Your simplot gotta start you hear that story? Simplot was his due Jr. Simplot, and it was during the depression. Teachers were being paid with these bonds and Idaho, okay, they're being paid with bonds and the bonds had to mature over some period of time. It was like a deferred payment. Simplot. He wanted to like, I'm not sure about the sequence, but basically started buying these bonds and people fifty cents on the dollar because they need money, gets himself a bunch of pigs piglets, and takes him out in the desert, gets a big cauldron, takes him out in the desert and starts shooting wild horses to fatten those hogs. That's how he got to start an egg And that's Simplot today. My goodness, Well I didn't know that story. I pad toxic plasma risk aversion. That's how he got his That's not that's what started that. Yeah, my buddy's kids just want to work for Simplot. I bet he don't even know that. Yeah, well the world is complicated, so I think, you know, taking a certain amount of step back and ask. You know, when somebody gives you these lines, you know, these simple answers. GMO is a good, GMOs are bad, you know, I don't know. It's it's harder to when you jump off a click. Okay, they're okay to eat. So I think the ones that have been tested and are on the market today, I would agree that those are fine to eat, and I eat them all the time. I probably have eaten more GMO sweet corn than most people because we were growing that stuff. So I didn't mind. I I you know, for ethics or health or combination. I told you I was a hippie, so I was well. I was. I was hitchhike and cross country wound up. But somebody's farm out in Nevada, and he wouldn't need anything. He didn't kill himself. I thought, now that made sense to me. I'm not gonna eat anything less kill it myself. That's how I started. And I got a bunch of chickens, and after they stopped laying eggs, I couldn't kill the suckers. So that was the end of it, and I became a vegetarian. How many years ago was that when I was nineteen? No kid, yeah now now now I'm just a vegetarian, right, I don't think about that every day. Oh no, no, I'm not gonna let me ask you. Let me ask you this one because I was we got my friends, got some kids that are vegetarians, and I was messing with them because they always eat marshmallows. Neat marshmallows. No oh wait, wait wait, vegetarian, vegetarian eat marshmallows. I'm a vegetarian who eats more shows on campfires because that's natural. Yeah, oh man, you guys got anymore? This has been great. This is what I knew, what happened. Yeah, you know what this is. This tells you the power of krint. I told crim to find someone said I don't want like an ideologue? G m O ideologue? Did she say, Steve, He's gonna want to know what that word means. Like a person driven, a person driven by a sort of like severely drawn perspective. Would happen ilogue ideologue? Yeah? Like a person who's you know, full of fired brimstone. I've got a question. So in Wisconsin, if you look at a lot of these corn fields, they all look the same. And some of these little farms where I grew up are organic dairy farms and they have, you know, a hundred two hundred acres, and their corn that they're feeding their cows looks exactly the same. Is the neighbor next door who does not have an organic dairy farm. Is that corn that those because it like looks exactly the same? Probably gmo corn. Well it could be, of course, I can't tell you. But you could have two fields next to each other, one being GMO and one being non gmo, and they will look the same. So let's go back to when we said, how do you get it so that you could have this SPT this protein in the corn and not have the insects adapt to it. The way that that would be done is by having the BT corn that you know that produces that protein and the non BT corn. Right, So, farmers, even if you're a conventional farmer in the Midwest, many of them plant that refuge. Some planted to ones that are herbicide tolerant, but some planted to non gmo. So the companies have decreased the effort they put into producing new non GMO varieties, so the yield on a non GMO variety has become a little bit less than what you get from a GMO. Forget about the insects and anything, just because the breeding effort isn't is as great. But they typically are are not that different. So yes, you could be looking at it. A breeder, you know, as great eyes were looking at the differences, might see it, but you probably wouldn't. I mean, the differences among varieties about hybrids is greater than the difference between the GMO and the non GMO. I know, go ahead, you gotta follow up. I got a question. I got a question for Phil. Yeah, when you're shopping for groceries, do you are you like when you're picking cereal out? Are you keeping an eyeball out on GMO? Oh no, no, no, I mean I'm glad you's gonna see if I was. I was looking to see if this has changed your mind about it. I do occasionally shop at the co op Steve, and I've got a great cat psychologist if we need one. There's just so many buzzwords these days that people are people are are afraid of, uh, you know, like GMO, gluten, MSG and for various reasons. Uh. So it's it's nice to sit down and like and actually just throughout the facts and have you you know, like Steve said, you're falling off a cliff. I still don't have the answer for you. So yeah, that's because it's it's just to the point where you can look at a can of mountain dew and it says gluten free and it's like, yeah, no, ship, just like like that's how that's how these companies have to label things these days because they're people are afraid of things and they don't know why. I don't know why. And they have the money to pay the extra two cents. Right, it's not such a big deal and whatever if Company A is doing it, company they all jump on you. But you're gonna ask something else. No, No, I'm okay, Well no I don't know what was it. Well, I was just saying like like all that all that corn is modified over time, no matter what. So like I just don't quite I don't quite get it, you know, like in a way. So so it's become a big deal because of the pressure on it. Right, Yeah, so you have white corn and yellow corn, right, Yeah, they're more different. Yeah, you're married, Fred No, No wait, wait, a minute. Wait, that's it, you're out. Yeah, I get to talk to someone always might not want to know. I know that we've covered it, and we've had some people right in with the good answers, but I think we should hear Fred's take on it. But like, I think the question around, if we have all this power to just like mess around and make things like better to grow, how come no one's doing that just to make my strawberries always taste like fish. Did you ever get around with the child strawberry? Yeah, so that was another thing. Your strawberries taste like what? Just like the strawberries out of my garden or for whatever. I just feel like in general, out of all the regions I've lived right now, I lived in the worst region ever for like the quality of produce. I get, everything just taste like bland. Just give me some good berries. I can't tell if it's a You might I mean, if you if it wasn't for texture and and looks inside, you might confuse the asparagus with the Brussels sprouts, or the asparagus with the green bean. I mean, everything just seems to be just there. That's all this whole thing started, too, is that that Steve was talking about growing strawberries outside his house in Seattle and how they tasted so good, and you can go to the grocery store and things just kind of taste bland, and you go to the farmer stand there and all I do is I eat tomatoes and the water mills and all that great produced here. But I haven't had a good tomato in Montana since I moved here. But yeah, we had a we had a produce, we had a produced supplier. Well, I want to interject my own and say that I could win the county fair with the strawberries I'm growing right now, Okay, but produce supplier rolled in. And he was saying, because we were talking about that, and he was saying, the industry has optimized for shelf life and visual appeal. He's like, you put a big, gass, shiny, waxy apple that's bland and flavor next to a superb apple that's like blemished, smaller. It's colors aren't his vibrant. They're just gonna pick up the big shiny one. Yeah, I know we were putting a b And also, taste is subjective, but Fred, I don't know if if you can touch on that at all, Like you, are there any studies about how GMO affects the flavor of something or I I don't have not people have studied that and not seen an effect on the flavor of these things that are not flavorful to start with. So this was the whole thing. One of the first products was a flavor savor tomato and you can look at it, remember that term. Okay, so this is a great story. I mean, these these folks were academics, I think, I think you see Davis, and they made this tomato that would stay good on your shelf. So that means that you could pick them when they were closer to being ready, you know, so that you wouldn't pick them so green. So the idea was you would save the flavor that you had in that tomato. They were very careful to advertise that they were genetically engineered. They went through all of the testing. They were not. They were genetically so they went through all of the regulations to make sure everything was okay. But the marketing didn't work and the whole thing fell apart. And there is a great film that anybody could probably find on YouTube about the labor Saver tomato and what happened with that. But that was a great example of you know, the first things being tried was this little for your tomato. But now there definitely are people who are trying to use regular breeding things, you know, this genomic selection thing I mentioned, and other things to improve the taste that's been lost over time. So if you read academic journals, you'll see that there are a lot of small academic groups working on these things to try to make those things. But the question is how do you get that through the regulations? And you're not going to be as a small academic and a market that stuff. It's gonna wind up with a big company, and that big company has got to make sure that it ships right and it looks right and all of that kind of thing. So there are some hurdles. But with this whole crisper new approach to genetic engineering, you know, and gene editing, we may be able to come up with some of those things. But then I do want to ask, you know, where is the public going to be on the natural versus artificial? Okay, I think if this thing tasted wonderful, oh there you go. I think it would be a green versus purple state. No, I don't know. I don't know what it would be, but it would be you know, people would differ. Right and wait a minute, this is totally unnatural. This is not a strawberry, but it tastes great. I think people will take this tastes great, and I'm buying it, you know. So you know, I think that if you could produce something really good, and there are companies doing this now, some of them are venture capital companies have gotten investments from big companies. My senses, in the next ten years we will see um, some fruits and vegetables coming out that really do taste better. I sure hope. So just that might be your next investment, man, I'm into it. Okay, last question, last question for Crins. Say, all right, now, what's going on with the strawberries and the fish? Okay. So, so one of the big deals is that sometimes you get a frost in the early season or something like that, and you don't want your produce to just turn to mush, right because of ice crystals forming. So I think there's been some of this kind of talk that you know, some of these very arctic fish and stuff have anti freeze proteins, and the idea would be, can you move those genes for this anti freeze into something else right and make it? But the first that's not on the market, That is not I've never been on the market. There was a guy who early on, many many years ago came up with what's called ice minus bacteria that wouldn't nuclear you know, so when you know, one thing that happens is you know, in terms of that frost affecting your crop, is that it nucleates, you know, so the ice forms and then it proliferates. So if it's certain bacteria that allow that to happen more than others, so you could replace one with another. I mean they use it apparently now where they have strains of when they make ice, you know, snow, artificial snow, they put some bacteria and it makes it work better. Yeah, spraying spray stuff on the wing of an airplane or something. You know, I'm talking here this bitter sweet and timber ridge. I can't remember the Boying Mountain when they got to make snow. I don't know what I'm saying. If you had something that would inhibit ice grol inhibit yeah, yeah, you know, I'm talking a little out of turn. This is not my area. But just to say that that that that bacteria. You know, the story early on was, you know, because of regulations, the sky shows up in like space suit to put out these bacteria on the plants, and everybody thinks it must be really dangerous because space. So, yeah, you don't want to see a space suit on your farm field. Something's going wrong, right, yeah, all right, man, thank you very much for joined elves. Great, okay, thank you. Yeah, this is fun. I'm feeling better about everything. Good, I'm feeling more complicated about everything. We're definitely have to have Fred on again. This is fun. Come out to my taste time with the meat tasty finally get that laughing around meeting here and we'll we'll have fred on talking about that. Oh yeah, maybe you should gear up for a lab grown a whole bunch about start up. You can come back up part all right, stay too, Part two Fred and Lab grown Meat alright, coming soon
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