A Tale of Frankenfish or Salmoning Thru the Gates

Eli has been known to have a cross word with journalists who spring for every science story trolled across their desks by the usual suspects but the truth is that editors demand a story and, well as Bernard J put it, lightly edited

Journalists are often given the facts about a range of subjects, but their capacity for understanding, retaining and objectively representing these facts would put teflon to shame. All that matters is the story.

aka the framing, which is why the majic wand of framing is without cease sought by Jason Journalist as the all purpose golden fleece which will make everything well and good (and guarantee a byline and a paycheck) if only it could be found.  The rub, of course, is there is a huge fleece sales force out there optimizing their wares to capture any wandering Jasons which oft leaves it to the Better Blogging Bureau (aka Rabett Run although Tamino and others have been doing the better job lately) to dig out the interesting parts.

That requires digging and thinking a bit and which, in turn requires the blather to rise to the level of certainly wrong based on track record, but maybe something interesting there. If anybunny noticed, that is the Weasel's default position, e.g. the answer to the question of why don't you take me seriously, being well, because you are a clown.  This annoys clowns no end (you got your answer kai, now go away)

So when friend Kloor started on his Lomborgian GMOhad, Eli was seriously unimpressed.  This was simply another one of those "if you really cared about x you would do this other thing" that no one outside of those who want to stop x  takes seriously.  After all if we really cared about anything important why would anyone pay good money to see Lionel Messi or LeBron James when that resource could be used to do a b or c.

Perhaps at this point the Rabett might state his position on GMO food:  He eats the shit, as does most everyone in the world today. Eli was involved in some chemical research sponsored by Monsanto Chemicals when they decided to get mostly out of that business and concentrate on agriculture via BST and Round Up Ready everything.  There were conversations with many high up in the research area which made clear to the Buuny that the move was strictly business, they spotted a hole and decided to risk the business and fill it.

Eli might also state his position on food:  He likes the stuff as anyone who has ever met him will testify. As a bunny and today, he can eat without end,  the combination of which is a problem that leads to Rabett's Law:  There are no calories to waste.  Now it is true, there are some, not Eli, for whom this is not a problem, but every tasteless piece of cardboard is an opportunity for enjoyment lost. Modern factory agriculture is the tasteless in pursuit of less taste, and, of course, there are huge problems with the overuse of fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides which are accumulating in us and the environment.  These are delayed costs, much as climate change.

Which, finally, brings us to the frankenfish, aka AquaAdvantage salmon.  These are salmon that have been genetically modified to incorporate the ability to express an antifreeze protein and an additional growth hormone so that they will grow faster even in colder water.  The proposal is complex, only triploid (three copies of chromosomes) females would be sold for food.  Eggs would be produced on Prince Edward's Island Canada and shipped to a growth facility in Panama where they would be reared and eventually sold for food.  Full details can be found at the fda site.

Our friend Kloor wrote about how some foodie friends of his just about tossed him out the door when he went on about his anti-GMO hysteria thing about the salmon.

Yet, there are more twists and turns to this story than any fool looking for a quick headline can handle. For example it turns out that the major political opposition is not the foodies, but commercial fishermen in Alaska already threatened by lower salmon prices due to improved yields from fish farming.

Second, anyone who believes that AquaBounty can make a dime, or at least enough dimes to pay development costs, from the hybrid PEI/Panama Rube Goldberg scheme is a few pennies short of a dollar. Obviously this is an opening gambit which enabled the application to not deal with specific environmental issues that would have to be considered if the AquaAdvantage fish were raised in US waters.  The FDA Draft Environmental Assessment pretty well nails between the lines the reasons for this strategy

As the proposed action would only allow production and grow-out of AquAdvantage Salmon at facilities outside of the United States, the areas of the local surrounding environments that are most likely to be affected by the action lie largely within the sovereign authority of other countries (i.e., Canada and Panama). Because NEPA does not require an analysis of environmental effects in foreign sovereign countries, effects on the local environments of Canada and Panama have not been considered and evaluated in this draft EA except insofar as it was necessary to do so in order to determine whether there would be significant effects on the environment of the United States due to the origination of exposure pathways from the production and grow-out facilities in Canada and Panama.

Third, and this is the most interesting one, opposition to GMOs is not an political or an ideological issue along standard political divisions, although for some it may be ideological

A survey, quoted in Discover shows that there is no significant difference between liberals, moderates and conservatives on whether they would, prefer or would not eat GMOs.

	Liberal	Moderate	Conservative
Humans developed from animals	69	52	39
Humans developed from animals (non-Hispanic white)	77	55	38
Humans developed from animals (college educated)	86	66	47
Strongly favor nuke power	16	13	12
Favor nuke power	49	50	64
Oppose nuke power	28	27	16
Strongly oppose nuke power	7	9	8
Don’t care whether or not food has been genetically modified	15	20	18
Willing to eat but would prefer unmodified foods	56	53	55
Will not eat genetically modified food	29	27	27

Eli has been doing some reading.  Among the drivel he found a survey by Stephen Ceccoli and William Hixon on "Explaining attitudes toward genetically modified food in the European Union" International Political Science Review 2012 33:301, in other words the latest stuff.  So this is logistic regression modeling.of a survey, for good or ill.  A weak point is that for the regression they coded 1 for those who favor GMO food  and 0 for those who oppose.  A three or five point scale would have, in the Bunny's view, been much better, but you work with what you got.

To go through the results (incomplete table here to limit eye crossing)

	Coeff	Std Error	Sig Leve
Scientific literacy	0.264	0.062	0.000
Understand GM food	0.239	0.072	0.001
Internet exposure	0.071	0.020	0.000
Reading science frequency	0.436	0.064	0.000
Exposure to newspapers/magazines	-0.038	0.023	0.095
Agricultural policy competitiveness	-0.108	0.084	0.201
Promote organic food	-0.284	0.083	0.001
EU consumer protection	-0.390	0.085	0.000
Ideology (conservative is +)	0.053	0.015	0.001
Female	-0.459	0.062	0.000

There are thing that bunnies expect in this table and huge surprises.  The chalk is that in general those who have some scientific interest favor GM foods or don't reject them out of hand.  In the words of the authors

frequent reading about science and the importance of the Internet as a source of information about science are positively associated with support for GM food.  The importance of television is not statistically related to supprot for GM foods and the importance of newspapers and magazines  has a surprising negative effect.

Second, political ideology is not a strong predictor, in Europe and not in the US either as shown by first table from Discover. 

So what is the source of negative feeling on GM foods.

The distrust of people for consumer protection in Europe is reflected in the survey, undoubtedly associated with the mad cow disease debacle, the ~700 deaths from adulterated cooking oil in Spain, the glycol sweetners added to Austrian wine, etc.  Acceptance of GM foods in the US owes much to faith in the regulatory agencies, specifically the FDA and the US Department of Agriculture.  Attempts by industry to weaken regulation could (as in the early part of the twentieth century when there was none) backfire badly as people lose faith in the producers and their products.

Women are, as a group, strongly opposed to GM foods.  Those who favor organic agriculture are opposed to GM foods.   In most families (not Eli's) the women are the ones who buy and prepare the food. Some, and maybe even Eli, might call this the those who Cook and Chew Caucus, not the lefties, not the environmental crew.  People who are into food want taste.  GM foods are associated with factory farming, inexpensive but tasteless stuff and those who get their affirmation and pleasure from food want no part of it.

(UPDATE:  Ms. Rabett points out that women tend care about what they shove into their mouths, while guys, well guys are guys, and that the ladies would be much more concerned about the regulatory failures mentioned above)

So, moral of the story is that the GM folks need to think much more about taste.  A better tasting fish tomato is more vital to their success than a cheaper one.  Molecular cooking is in, but also traditional tastes must be catered to.