The problem with GE is that there are no standards yet concerning the risks of unintended effects. Even with conventional breeding, you can get unintended effects due to wild-type toxins in various food plants. But GE offers additional risks, such as allergens from genetic sources (in this case snapdragons) that aren’t in normal foods. I think it is entirely proper to have some sort of risk management to prevent our traditional knowledge of food risks from careless subversion. In other words, regulatory standards that must be met for non-allergenicity, non-toxicity, and other potential problems based on the introduction of new gene products into our food systems. Just like we want regulatory clearance of food additives, artifical sweeteners, and other synthetic introductions to our food systems.

Originally Posted By Inoculated Mind
‘Hmmm… I want more antioxidants… and this GE tomato has more of them… but it’s GE… but it has antioxidants…’

Or, as Rebsie pointed out minutes before you, “I think I’ll eat a punnet of blueberries instead”.

But you’re right too. Pamela Ronald’s discussion of sweetcorn engineered to kill earworms is a good example. People don’t like earworms, and they don’t like pesticides, so they need to make a choice that can make weak minds explode with the effort.

So if researchers really want people to eat their tomatoes, why engineer them?

I have to go somewhere right now so I can’t read much in depth about this post and respond at length, this looks like a great news find. But I will suggest something I’ve said before elsewhere and will say again. We are heading for a cultural collision on GE crops. The very people who are the most opposed to them for whatever reason are going to find more and more of them that specifically appeal to what they’re looking for in foods. ‘Hmmm… I want more antioxidants… and this GE tomato has more of them… but it’s GE… but it has antioxidants…’

What concerns me is the way this is being reported in the mainstream media, where the “story” is that these GM tomatoes are providing a new and unique health benefit. Most people don’t know enough about it to realise that the beneficial pigment is widely available in other fruits, and the suggestion is that this is somehow a breakthrough which was only made possible by genetic engineering. Cynical marketing, I call it.