Talk:Genetically modified fish

Untitled

I will be adding alot of material to the site to improve its content, design, references, supportive links and more..smatovu (talk)

smatovu I think the information you added is good and accurate information. The addition of some pictures would really compliment the sections that you have been editing. The expansion of the section on what would happen if these fish were to escape into natural habitats would really interest me as I am sure others as well. We also talked in class about the labeling of GMO's this may also be another possible avenue for you to make some important adjustments to this page. I hope this helps and good luck! Jjohns18 (talk) 16:25, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

FDA approval

see http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/27/16194566-fda-says-fast-growing-fish-would-not-harm-nature?lite

http://www.nationofchange.org/fda-quietly-pushes-through-genetically-modified-salmon-over-christmas-break-1356625080?fb_action_ids=10152348982400328&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map={%2210152348982400328%22%3A150887141726295}&action_type_map={%2210152348982400328%22%3A%22og.likes%22}&action_ref_map=[]#

Crazyness to allow approval saying fast growing fish are no problem... totally ignoring the example of asian carp in the mississipi.

2nd Review

I think this is a good article to work on. Maybe add more of an introduction to the topic as well as picture. I think a separate section for research, rather than under benefits would be helpful. As Jjohns18 said, you could introduce a section about labeling, as this could be a way to enhance the page. I think you are doing a great job, more pictures, figures, etc. Nimbus1ZZ-FE (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 22:28, 15 April 2012 (UTC).

Salmon section

Hi, I've been working on the AquAdvantage salmon entry and added a link to it. I'm glad to see this GM fish entry under development. I didn't realize so much work has been going on in this area. Amnot Areso (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 01:08, 22 April 2012 (UTC).

Genetically modified organisms-related articles

The articles this discussion should concern:

• Genetically modified food controversies
• Genetically modified organism
• Genetically modified food
• Genetically modified crops
• Genetic engineering
• Genetically modified fish
• Regulation of the release of genetic modified organisms

The concept of genetically modifying organisms (especially crops/food) is a fairly controversial topic, so I would imagine that the articles get a fair amount of visitors. That said, I want to point out some issues to the articles that could be fixed. I've assigned numbers to each suggestion/issue, so that they can be discussed in separate sections.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Yutsi (talk • contribs)

Quick comment. I have been checking page hits

First as a reality check

the Katy Perry article avg is about 17,000 hits per day http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/katy%20perry

More seriously the article on China has about 20,000 hits a day http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/china

Of the articles you mention....

GM foods is highest ballpark avg 2200 http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetically%20modified%20food

GM organisms avg is about 2000 http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetically%20modified%20organism

genetic engineering is about 2000 as well http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetic%20engineering

GM food controversies has been big of late but still avg only about 1000 hits (recent increase may be Seralini press release, California referendum.. I'd like to think it is because I have concentrated information there

http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetically%20modified%20food%20controversies

GM crops is pretty small, maybe 500 average. As I note below, I don't think people actually care about agriculture.

They care about food and the contoversies. Right?

http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/genetically%20modified%20crops

Regulation of the release of genetic modified organisms is the smallest, maybe 70. I think the title of this article is terrible but have not tackled renaming it.

http://stats.grok.se/en/latest60/Regulation%20of%20the%20release%20of%20genetic%20modified%20organisms

The title name is fine. There are regulations that govern approval to work with GM organisms and regulations that set the protocols and restrictions while they are being developed and tested. This article is about the regulations governing the release of these organism into the environment. I was working on a parent article and will release it (unfinished most likely) to mainspace soon. AIRcorn (talk) 02:15, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

So.. not sure if that meets your idea of "fair number of visitors". :) Jytdog (talk) 17:56, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

Frankly my dear... If an article gets 10 hits a day on average IMO it earns its place in WP. This is supposed to be an encyclopaedia, not a tabloid rag. Not every word in a dictionary gets looked up every single day, and some of the most valuable entries are exactly the entries that one has difficulty finding anywhere else, sometimes because nowhere else bothers to publish them. Let's not fall into the trap of "I wish people would stop pestering us for X; we don't stock X; there is no demand for it!" As long as we can produce articles with intrinsic substance and significance and with a decent presentation of information and relevance, our only reaction to a low hit count should be to check whether it could be better presented to strike the eye of potential readers. JonRichfield (talk) 08:28, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

sarcasm my dear! I think you misunderstood my point. I have spent hours working on these pages - I want them to accurate because I believe wikipedia should always be excellent, regardless of whether the topic is "popular". You got more to my point with your last remark - and that is, how used are these pages? Relative to "popular" topics, and relevant to each other? Why is the regulation article - the one I would hope people read and learn about a lot, so rarely consulted? And my comment about "not sure if that meets you definition of fair number" - I really meant that - I have no idea what Yutsi had in mind when he said that. I like data and hard numbers so I put them out there.Jytdog (talk) 01:23, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Crossed wires my dear, I suspect. The nearest I came to deliberate acerbity was in rejecting any idea that a low hit rate was a priori a basis for questioning the justification for an article's existence. Sure, if large numbers of people read important topics, that looks good and we should aim for it, but for a lot of really vital technical topics it is fashionable to raise Cain chanting meaningless slogans in the streets, but God forbid that anyone should actually take time learning what it really is all about. (GMO-hatred is not the only such topic, mind you!)

• 1. Per WP:SELFREF, self-references like "This article discusses x" should generally be avoided in the article's body, and, from a glance, these articles seem to use a lot of them.
• 2. The Further reading and External links sections could be sorted better. For example, they could be divided into subsections of Pro-, Anti-, and Neutral, or divided by the format of the publication (Web, book, journal, etc.).
• 3. There seems to be a significant amount of overlap in the articles. For instance, Genetically modified food seems to be mentioned a lot, especially when controversy is mentioned (e.g. in the last paragraph of Genetically modified organism's lead).
• 4. Genetically modified fish should be moved to Genetically modified animal, since transgenic animals do exist.
• 5. Since most of Genetically modified food concerns Genetically modified crops, we should merge the former into the latter, and merge any material in the former about animals into Genetically modified fish / Genetically modified animal. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yutsi (talk • contribs)

Issue 1

hi read this — Preceding unsigned comment added by Purebuzzin (talk • contribs) 11:56, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Additional note. I just read the WP:SELFREF and I don't agree that anything here violates it. It is 100% OK to say "this article refers to X" What is not OK, is to write, "This Wikipedia article refers to X". That does not occur. The policy also teaches away from self-references that would not work in other media, for instance, in print. None of the instances do that either. So I disagree that anything violates WP:SELFREF. Jytdog (talk) 00:13, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

• Thanks for raising these issues. I have done a lot of work on this suite of articles over the past few months. When I came upon them, they were a real mess. By "mess" I mean things like:
  

(i) the same matter was discussed across all these pages. At great length, sometimes verbatim but often one stretching out randomly in X direction and another in Y direction. Most of the overlapping material concerned the controversy - namely, people emphasizing studies, especially from the Seralini group, that endeavored to show that GM food is very risky and regulators as not being strict enough.

(ii) the same study would be cited three or more times in a given article, described differently and with the reference formatted differently, making it appear that there were many more studies than there actually were.

(iii) there was not a lot of actual content. For instance there was really nothing about how farmers use GM crops or why they matter to farmers. But farmers are the ones actually buying the GM seed and using them. And the GM food article, remarkably, said almost nothing about what food you find in the store is GM. Again, remarkable.

I think that the articles were messy for three reasons:

a) fact: there is a set of people, anti-GM people, who are emotional about these issues. They are worried and angry and want other people to be motivated to help change the current system. (I still don't know much about the demographics or size of that group. Something on my "to-research" list)

b) fact: There are a few "segments" of material, each of which is fairly complex in and of itself, that read on each other, again in complex ways. The 'segments' can be divided up as the articles are -- the underlying science (genetic engineering article); broad examples of application of genetic enginering (GMO article); agriculture (GM Crops); what you actually might eat (GM Food), regulation of GMOs and food (regulation), and the whole controversy (which touches on all those and more).

c) judgement by me: a lot of the people (not all!) who are the most emotional, and most motivated to edit wikipedia, especially in what I call 'drive by" editing (don't have a logon but edit from an IP address, one or two times maybe) are also (gulp) ignorant about a lot of the complex matter. I don't mean "ignorant" pejoratively, just that they don't know stuff and I don't think they care to know. (see iii above) There is also a lot of half truth "information" about these matters that is passed around in that community. For example, much online discussion of Monsanto vs Schmeiser is wrong - and was wrong in several places in Wikipedia.

Therefore, when I cleaned these articles up by separating matter, getting NPOV sources, editing POV text to make it NPOV, etc, I tried to also signal very very explicitly to readers and editors what they could expect to find in a given article. This is to try to help prevent readers from expecting to find -- or wanting to add -- something about environmental damage from GM Crops in the article on GM Foods. The way things are configured now, nothing about environmental pros or cons of GM crops belongs in the GM food article, because that article is about actual GM food - the stuff you eat. What is GM food, exactly? That is what you should have learned after reading the GM article. And you should know that there are articles on other, complicated matters, that you need to read as well if you want to understand the whole picture.

I realize that this explicit guiding language is not normal wiki style. But because of the above, I think is essential to retain these explicit guideposts. Otherwise the articles will moosh back together again.

Two regular wiki editors, arc de ciel, and aircorn, have also raised concerns about this as well -- see User_talk:Jytdog#CommentJytdog (talk) 17:20, 3 October 2012 (UTC)

• As I stated at Jytdogs talk page, I would prefer hatnotes to refer to different articles on similar topics. AIRcorn (talk) 01:50, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Another user, Semitransgenic has objected to this paragraph - deleting it and noting "remove editorial remarks, use dablinks at the top of the page to tell readers of other relevant content". Happy to see a proposed example!Jytdog (talk) 15:39, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I don't support this kind of in-article editorialising, dablinks (hatnotes), or an infobox would be a better method, the tone of the lead in general needs addressing. Semitransgenic _talk. 15:47, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

It is not editorializing in the sense of giving an opinion. If you want to provide sample hatnotes I would be very interested to see them! What do you mean by "tone"?Jytdog (talk) 15:52, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

starting a paragraph with words like "nonetheless" etc. veers towards MOS:OPED. Lead prose should ideally be pragmatic, just provide an accurate summary of the key/notable content found in the main body of text. Semitransgenic _talk. 16:19, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

If nothing else could we get an answer to this issue. The paragraphs that this concerns are these ones. AIRcorn (talk) 21:01, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

I am OK with how this was handled at Genetically modified food controversies if you want to implement, aircornJytdog (talk) 22:21, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

No problem. It is not looking like this is going to be closed soon. AIRcorn (talk) 00:07, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Issue 2

• To the extent that these sections remain, I agree that they could be sorted that way - it would be better. In general I have tried to eliminate these sections, slowly, making sure that the matter is incorporated into the suite of articles. I understand that this is best under the MOS.Jytdog (talk) 17:21, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
• The external links sections should be trimmed to just websites that contain an overview of the whole topic (i.e a website about GM mice should be on the GM mouse page, but is not needed on the GM organism one) but are not suitable for inclusion in the page itself (i.e a large list of GM crops like here. The less the better in my opinion and would be more than happy to see them trimmed. I however do not think that they should be separated based on their alignment. AIRcorn (talk) 01:57, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Issue 3

• I don't really understand this point. Perhaps you could explain better. My POV: People's concerns about GM food are what drove the mess and what drives a lot of the ongoing editing. I have done my best to carefully sort things out. In my mind, GM food per se (what is it?) should be handled in the GM food article, and controversy around it (and many other surrounding issues), in the controversy article. Regulation of it and GMOs that produce it, in the regulation article. Crops that produce it (and other things) in the GM crops article. GMOs in general, and genetic engineering in general, in those articles. These topics are inter-related, for sure. They need to mention and reference each other. But the topics are separable. Jytdog (talk) 17:25, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
• Some overlap is inevitable, but it should be reduced as much as is practicably possible. I don't particularly like controversy sections in articles and would rather see the issues mentioned in the appropriate section. Although I concede that this might be hard to maintain in these articles. What should happen if we have a controversy article is that the GM food should have a controversies section linked with a main template to the controversies article. It should include a couple of paragraphs outlining or summarising the main points associated with food. The GM crops should have the same except its paragraphs should focus more on crops and so on. AIRcorn (talk) 02:05, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

The hard thing about your proposal, aircorn, is that opponents of GM food very rarely have a single focus and it is very hard to sort out the "heart" of many objections. Many seem to care most about industrial agriculture (many angles on this... so-called "corporate control of the food supply", messing with "nature", chemical use, etc. Others really seem to care about riskiness of the food they eat. Others seem more focused on corruption of regulatory agencies. And all those issues very much overlap and feed into each other. And there are problems that touch on everything. The key issue can be broadly captured under the rubric of gene flow/contamination. People worry about gene flow from GM crops to other crops and to weeds (environmental concerns and food-safety concerns, especially with pharming crops, and economic concerns for organic farmers); people worry about harvested crops being mixed (a la starlink); people worry about litigation from gene flow or contamination (mostly based on misunderstandings of Monsanto v Schmeiser). So I ended up with one big honking controversies article. Happy to hear thoughts about how to rationally separate!!13:55, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Answered below AIRcorn (talk) 00:21, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Issue 4

• No objection! Except that no article exists on genetically modified animals. Your link above points to an external links section in the GMO article.. strange. Jytdog (talk) 17:25, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
• I would not move that article, if any should be move it is Genetically modified mammals with fish, insects, etc added as sub sections. AIRcorn (talk) 02:07, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
• All this points, to me, to one article one main article on GMOs with subarticles to the various ... biological kingdoms maybe?? Jytdog (talk) 13:56, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Issue 5

• I disagree very strongly. People care about what they eat -- what goes into their bodies. GM Foods needs its own article. GM Crops are agriculture -- most of the information you need to know in order to understand them, has nothing to do with food. Much of the material now in the GM crops article was originally in the GM foods article and I pulled it out and put into the GM crops article, and then expanded it. It still needs more expansion in some sections as noted in the article. Farmers don't buy GM seed, thinking about food. They buy them because they make sense to farmers as businessmen. The companies don't make GM seed, thinking about food. They make them so that their customers --farmers -- will buy them. It's agribusiness. It's not about food. (I am not saying that is a good or bad thing -- no moral judgement - it is just the way the world is). It is absolutely true that the companies have to satisfy regulators in order to do business, because some (but not even most) of the product directly becomes food and so it must be safe enough to eat. Most of the product goes to feed livestock and poultry (which then become food). Much of the product is used industrially and never becomes food (cotton, corn for biofuel, potatoes for starch used industrially. etc). It is true that some GM crops used directly as food have failed because farmers' customers didn't want to buy it as food (the New Leaf potato failed because farmers' target customer, McDonald's, didn't want GM potatoes for french fries, even though they satisfied Americans' desire for perfect-looking, unblemished food). But GM crops is its own topic. Look how long that article is already! And the GM foods article also requires expansion itself.. not even close to describing all the food you find in the store that is GM.Jytdog (talk) 17:36, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
• Keep them separate. Not all crops are food (cotton is one of the most common GM crops and it is a stretch to label it food, plus you have Amflora and biofuels that are being developed) and with the development of the GM salmon soon not all food are not going to be crops. It still needs some work separating the two, but the crop/food split is a good one at my mind. I would bring back the GM plant article at some stage too, and make it a parent one of the crop one for much the same reasons, there are some important GM plants used in research that are not and never will be grown as crops. AIRcorn (talk) 02:12, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

I have no quarrel with most of your points and the proposed separations of topics seem reasonable to me, but I am mildly puzzled as to why you exclude cotton from food plants as a topic. I don't eat much fabric or cotton wool myself, any more than I can help anyway, but I have eaten a lot of foods prepared or canned in cottonseed oil and have probably eaten more products of cottonseed cake than I know about directly, and a good deal more meat from animals that have eaten large quantities of cottonseed cake. Once you remove the gossypol, either artificially, or genetically, cotton is quite an important food plant. And beware what you say about hemp and poppies too! Just an obiter dictum... JonRichfield (talk) 08:41, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Not too familiar with cottonseed oil, although I knew it existed. I mostly think of cotton as the fibre. Cotton would probably have to be mentioned in both articles, along with maize and the other food crops. Am working on organising a kind of heirachy now, so hopefully we can get the split better organised. There needs to be a Genetically modified cotton article created, plus one for tobacco, Arabidopsis and other important plants. AIRcorn (talk) 12:34, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Right. That is the sort of thing I had in mind in my comment below when I spoke of "adjusting or even radically changing the suite of articles in the light of matters emerging..." JonRichfield (talk) 16:25, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks John! I am very aware that cotton is used to make cottonseed oil -- in fact I have been trying to get the Andrew Weil website to change its stupid page on cottonseed oil which is not accurate. http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/QAA400361/Is-Cottonseed-Oil-Okay.html See the Cottonseed_oil#Concerns_about_fats_and_toxicity that I edited to make accurate. And I do list cottonseed oil in the Genetically modified food article. In my comments above, I was not trying to exclude the use of cottonseed oil as food; I was just making the point that the cotton from GM cotton plants -- along with many other products of GM crops -- are not used for food. Sorry to have created a misunderstanding. Jytdog (talk) 13:13, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

No problemo. All such misunderstandings should only be so easily fixable ;-) JonRichfield (talk) 17:15, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

• Comment: To forestall almost inevitable accusations of POV, if not actual corruption by evil multinationals, I have no material, contractual, or commercial interest in any form of GM that I know about. Idealistically and intellectually I am deeply interested in the matter and deeply alarmed and disgusted at such examples as I have seen so far of, for example, large scale plantings of crops with genes for defensive production of single substances for pest control; such abuses rank with the early days of misapplication of antibiotics, both in human medicine and in agricultural and veterinary practice.

Interesting comment! I like the comparison with antibiotics. GM seed with stacked traits are now 25% of the market and growing steadily (http://www.isaaa.org/resources/publications/briefs/43/executivesummary/default.asp), so things are snapping into a line of intelligent use quickly....Jytdog (talk) 13:19, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I was not aware of that trend. It is encouraging, though of course it is just a hint at the depth of responsibility that we bear when tinkering with such powerful tools. If we are not careful we shall simply turn a vital biotechnological opportunity into an exercise in the fostering of super-pests. JonRichfield (talk) 19:46, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

That said however, I regard GM as a field on a par with computing, the control of fire, printing, and the development of modern science in terms of historical importance for the future. There is no way that we could rationally justify ignoring or sidelining it. The question of how to present it, including how to split the topics into manageable articles is what matters, as already indicated in several of the contributions to this RFC. I have no particular quarrel with the proposed titles as presented, as long as each is coherently written and adequately cross-linked to the others. Questions such as what readers care about putting into their bodies are far less important than questions concerning the clarity and perspective of each article. Since the articles are in inevitably not independent, there must necessarily be some overlap, but this is hardly a new problem and requires no new techniques in dealing with it. Concise cross-reference plus clear reference to the main article for each topic is naturally important, but hardly challenging.

As I said, I have no quarrel with the proposed split, but I also would have no problems with adjusting or even radically changing the suite of articles in the light of matters emerging during their authorship and editing. JonRichfield (talk) 09:05, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

Principles in using subarticles

Hi

IMO, any time we have subarticles, there should be a standard, brief paragraph in the "head" article (ideally taken from the lede of the subarticle and edited for concision if necessary) and a link to "main", and then keep an eye on those standard paragraphs for changes so that they stay short and plain. Ideally, no statistics would be in those standard paragraphs, otherwise when new data emerges we have to go back and update the data in many places which will inevitably lead to missing things and the overall suite falling out of sync within itself and with reality. I feel that we should try hard to avoid having long sections in different articles that cover the same matter. This was the state in which I found articles within this suite several months ago and most of my work has been consolidating overlapping material into clear, NPOV, well sourced discussions. Having a suite of articles covering various aspects of complex matter is indeed common in WIkipedia, but it is also commonly handed badly IMO. For instance in the suite of evolution articles, the main evolution article has a history section that is very long (7 paragraphs that fill my screen)... and there is an entire much longer subarticle on the history (about 10x longer). I glanced over the two texts and they don't tell the same story or even use the same refs.... this is not a happy thing for an encyclopedia and we should avoid doing this. This is for me a very important principle and I hope we can discuss it. Jytdog (talk) 13:58, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Organisation and consistency is the bane of Wikipedia. This seems reasonable though. AIRcorn (talk) 00:16, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

sorry you have thrown me off.. do you mean lack of organization and consistency are the bane (i.e. a source of harm) or do you mean that pursuing them is a bad thing? sorry, i don't know you that well and this was confusing...Jytdog (talk) 01:09, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

It was meant slightly tongue-in-cheek. Due to its nature Wikipedia tends toward inconsistent disorganisation (anyone can edit after all). It is amazing that it works as well as it does. Providing order is an admirable thing, and I will help out as much as possible, but at the end of the day you are going against the natural inertia of the project and no matter what you do, if you want to keep it organised it is going to take constant watching. AIRcorn (talk) 02:37, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

I totally hear you on that. :) I intend to watch for a long time. But I also want to structure things as much as possible, with explicit markers "This goes here, that goes there" - to help keep things in line.Jytdog (talk) 03:30, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

I don't see you getting consensus for the self references (issue 1 here). I would suggest using the hidden text function. Simply type<!-- Add appropriate comment here -->. It will only be seen by editors when the click the edit button. See this for how it might work. AIRcorn (talk) 03:39, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

(starting tabs over) Hi Aircorn... so far nobody has gone to the mat on the the self references. With respect to the objection raised in Issue 1, I wrote above, that if you read Wiki's self-reference policy, it is clear that these texts do not violate that policy. Nobody has responded to that so I assume nobody disagrees. My sense is that you and arc de ciel have objected on more stylistic grounds... but neither of you has gone to the mat on this. Is this indeed important to you?

But let's go back to the subject matter of this section. I have been trying to lay down a principle that sections for which we have big subarticles should just be very brief stubs - 1 paragraph taken from the lede of the subarticle, so that we don't end up with long, weedy descriptions of a given issue in different articles that extensively overlap with each other and with the main subarticle... which leads to inconsistencies and disorganization that you have described as a bane of wikipedia (and I heartily agree!). I thought we had kind of agreed on this... but you just recently expanded one of these stub sections with a bunch of material copied from a subarticle. So what gives? How shall we do this? I have been tempted to go into some of the articles you have created and apply this "stub principle" (for instance you have a section on "regulation of the release of genetically modified organisms" in your "regulation of genetic engineering" article that is my mind is waaaay too long and should be just a stub, as we have a whole article on "regulation of the release of genetically modified organisms") but i have held back from stubifying that section until (and only if) we reach consensus here.Jytdog (talk) 18:09, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

No one needs to got to the mat. We have consensus so far (me, Arc and Yutsi against you so far) not to use them. Is it important to me? No other things are more important at the moment, but one day I would like to get the articles up to Good standard and that is not going to happen with those instruction paragraphs in the lead.

I think we slightly misunderstood each other above. I agree that there should only be short summaries in the head articles, but we have a disagreement over what is short. I think that there needs to be enough information in the parent article that the reader will get a good overview of each topic, they should not be obliged to go to another article to find this. They should only have to go there if they want to find more details. Basically each article should stand on its own and stubby sections are not going to allow that. Three to four paragraphs covering the regulation and controversies should be enough, but anything less and the article is going to be incomplete. AIRcorn (talk) 21:38, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for talking! OK, on the guide paragraphs.. both Yutsi and Arc based their objection on their understanding of wiki policy, and as mentioned, I don't see how these run afoul of the self-reference policy. You seem to be basing your objection on that too, when you say that an article with these paragraphs, will never be Good. But what is the basis for that? Please explain...

Thank for zeroing in on the "stub" issue. I really appreciate it. So to you the key principle is that the article should stand on its own with respect to providing a good overview and that a compact stub is not enough. I had thought that the stub does provide an overview, but what I am hearing is that this is too high level for you -- it is not a "good" overview. So you want more of the story in all the articles. Whew that is all a tall order for complex matter like this. It helps me understand why you want longer "stubs." OK I need to think about this a bit! I will write again in a couple of days, this requires thinking and if I come into alignmnent with you, some major resetting for me. Thanks again.Jytdog (talk) 22:48, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

The Good articles have a set of simple criteria that they have to meet in order to gain that status. IMO they are a great base that every article should aspire to. One of those criteria is compliance with WP:Lead, which I don't think the navigational paragraphs meet. Another one is broadness, which is why I think we need more than one paragraph stubs in important sections. AIRcorn (talk) 16:41, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm not really watching the articles right now, but I just wanted to confirm that the objections I raised were indeed answered. It doesn't "feel good" from my own style perspective, but I don't know of any style guideline that rules it out. Also, I think that the general organization Jytdog has put in place is a good one; as he said, my concerns were only about the way they were disambiguated. It seems that people adding the same citations repeatedly is common in this group of articles, and this organization would probably help a lot. Arc de Ciel (talk) 03:00, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Overall structure

Let's have a focused discussion on overall structure. This is part of the topic mentioned above but only part. Let's map it out. It would be really great to do this with some kind of software that allowed us to draw things, but I am ignorant of how to do that. So I will take a shot at this using words alone.

Here is my perspective

• genetic engineering (head article; should describe history and techniques and a high level overview of uses)´
• GMOs - this should work be organized by the biological taxonomy of the kinds of organisms that have been modified and briefly state the purpose of the modification --> subarticles on various GMOs
• GM crops - describes the agriculture and agribusiness of GM crops. Not about food, about crops. --> subarticles on various crops (many will be same subarticles of GMOs above)
• GM foods - describes what foods we eat are GM. Not about agriculture, about food. This is by far the most trafficked article in the suite (fact), because people care about what they eat (opinion).
• regulation - should be a brief, standard, subsection of each of the articles above, and describe the general principles of regulation, and provide an overview of each countries' current regs (right now lacks international agreements like Cartagena Protocol - needs to be added) --> subarticles on each country's history of regulations and international agreements
• controversy - should be a brief, standard subsection of each of the articles above, and describe all the aspects of controversies around GM crops and GM food --> subarticles? I struggle with this. Part of my goal here is to give the full controversy full voice in one place, so that it is not inserted into every article on every genetic engineering topic, and gets clear, NPOV discussion someplace where everybody can find it.

All this done with the principle of subarticles mentioned above...Jytdog (talk) 14:00, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

I agree with pretty much everything here. Although I would think you would have to cross reference food in the crops article and crops in the food one. As far as the controversies go I would have a section solely on the health concerns in GM food and one solely on the environmental concerns in the crops one. Then I would have a section over-viewing the other concerns. I think the length of the controversy section should depend on the article. GE, food, crops, plants, animal, organisms should probably get their own section with a good overview of the issues relevant to each topic and a {{main}} to the controversies article. The sub-sub articles can probably just get away with a link provided in an appropriate section (e.g. in Bt brinjal it says in the first sentence of controversies "There are many controversies surrounding the development and release of genetically modified foods, ranging from human safety and environmental impacts to ethical concerns such as corporate control of the food supply and intellectual property rights" in the lead of the controversies section). The rest of the section just details the issues with the titles topic and does not dwell on the overall controversies. For the controversies article itself I would keep the public perception as the first header, then have health concerns, environmental concerns, regulatory concerns (including labeling), religious concerns and Intellectual Property concerns (including corporate control). Most should fit into one of these broad categories. It may become necessary to split health and environment to separate articles to reduce the size. AIRcorn (talk) 00:13, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Let me get this straight. You would have a pretty long section on controversies in (for example) the food article - in that one, focused on health. Then, again in the main controversies article, you would have another fairly long section on health (which is all about food)?Jytdog (talk) 01:53, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Depends what you mean by pretty/fairly long. I was thinking two to three, possibly four paragraphs (maybe a bit more in the controversies article). The health section in the GM controversies is well beyond fairly long already, especially if you add in Pusztai and Serilini. For example the GM food could be presented like:

• History
  • [main to GM History]
• Process
  • [main to GM Techniques]
• Plant based
  • [main to GM Crops][see also to GM crops]
• Animal based
  • [see also to GM animals]
• Regulation
  • [main to GM Regulation]
• Detection
• Health concerns
  • [main to GM health concerns (if split from controversies)]
• Other concerns
  • [main to GM controversies]

I like the smallification of text!! didn't know one could do that. Funny that you have "animal based" - there is no GM food from animals (yet). but in theory i see what you mean. But i disagree really really strongly that "GM crops" is main for plant-based GM food. GM crops is about agriculture. its not about food. why do you think gm crops is about food? more to say but that stopped me - one thing at a time!Jytdog (talk) 03:34, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Should have been see also like the animal one. AIRcorn (talk) 03:44, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Seems to me acceptable.Fox1942 (talk) 14:09, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

Unreliable source?

The following source is used as the sole citation in two paragraphs:

• Kirkden, R. and Broom, D.M. (2012). "Welfare of genetically modified and cloned animals used for food" (PDF). Retrieved November 30, 2015.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

The source in question is a report that apparently did not receive peer review and was "commissioned by Compassion in World Farming and made possible by a grant from the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA)." This is dubious at best. I suggest either finding a new source for the content that it footnotes or removing the content altogether.

jps (talk) 21:14, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Both authors are highly respected experts in their field - one of them even has his own WP article Donald Broom.DrChrissy ^(talk) 21:21, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Unfortunately, this is not good enough according to WP:RS. The claims that are being sourced are empirical claims rather than the opinions of the authors and so must be held to the scrutiny that we would apply to any other empirical claim. (We don't say in the offending paragraphs that Donald Broom thinks thus and such). If the author has faithfully reported facts, then it is simply a matter of finding a corroborating source that is published in a peer-reviewed journal or received proper editorial control. jps (talk) 21:29, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Where are the PAQs you are using regarding empirical content? WP:RS does not even contain the word.DrChrissy ^(talk) 21:42, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

WP:SCHOLARSHIP is pretty clear that unreviewed articles such as this one are problematic (in consort with reviewed articles or standard texts, they can be supplemental, but stand-alone is basically not okay). Such sources are especially problematic in situations where the content being sourced is not just an opinion (which is what I meant by "empirical"). jps (talk) 21:54, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

So was your comment about empirical claims just made up?DrChrissy ^(talk) 21:56, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

No. Empirical claims should be easily checked to be true. I cannot find another source that verified the claims of the two paragraphs. Please help if you can. jps (talk) 21:59, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

I have already provided a verifiable source - why should I provide you with a second?DrChrissy ^(talk) 22:07, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

As I explained, since the source did not go through proper peer review, it is not good for the content that the paragraphs contain. Considering the points outlined in the source itself, I cannot find the content in any peer-reviewed studies. I may have overlooked such a study, and, if so, please point it out to me. jps (talk) 22:09, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

How do you know it did not go through peer review?DrChrissy ^(talk) 22:13, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Oh! Sure, that's another possibility. However, I cannot find any evidence of this. If it undergoes peer review, it is usually published in a journal. That's not always the case, but it's a pretty standard sourcing exercise to look at the publisher and the standards for publication. In this case, this was a report that was commissioned by a special interest group, and there is no independent review process indicated by the publishers. jps (talk) 22:17, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.DrChrissy ^(talk) 22:22, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

When a paper has undergone peer review, it usually is pretty obvious (in fact, I cannot think of a single paper that was peer reviewed where it wasn't immediately discoverable that it was). While neither I nor anyone else can prove a negative, it would be irresponsible to assume that a paper was properly peer reviewed without any evidence for it whatsoever. If you have evidence that the paper was peer-reviewed, by all means show it to me! jps (talk) 22:25, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

When you read a paper/abstract in conference proceedings, how do you know it has been subject to peer review? When you read a book chapter, how do you know it has been subject to peer review? When you read web pages that have been commissioned by respectable scientific bodies (e.g. see here [1]) how do you know it has been subject to peer review?DrChrissy ^(talk) 00:27, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Conference proceedings sometimes are peer reviewed, but generally are not. You have to check the editorial policy. They'll tell you. This is not conference proceedings, however. jps (talk) 01:30, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

And that is exactly my point. Conference proceedings are considered RS, despite not being peer-reviewed.DrChrissy ^(talk) 01:42, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Um. No, they generally are not unless they've been subject to peer review. There are a few exceptions, but you'll find if you go through the archives at WP:RSN that conference proceedings are generally not accepted as reliable stand-alone sources precisely because they are usually not peer reviewed. They often contain mistakes, errors, and preliminary results which are intentionally excluded from Wikipedia. jps (talk) 01:45, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Where exactly was this published? There is no requirement that sources be peer reviewed. Minor4th 23:11, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

It is published at the url indicated at the beginning of this thread. I am classifying it as a monograph of established experts in the field, and therefore, as you have correctly stated, peer-review is not needed.DrChrissy ^(talk) 00:33, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Dr Chrissy, I do think this sourcing is questionable if it is an unpublished paper and has not been mentioned by any other reliable secondary sources. Minor4th 00:43, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

I feel that for another editor to be wading into this article stating without any justification whatsoever that WP:RS applies to "empirical" evidence, and criticising references on the basis of peer-review when they have no evidence whatsoever whether the source has been peer-reviewed or not, is borderline disruptive. WP:RS states "When available, academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs, and textbooks are usually the most reliable sources". The source is clearly a scholarly monograph and is therefore not only RS, but our guidelines state explicitly that it is one of the most reliable sources.DrChrissy ^(talk) 01:09, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry you don't understand the need for corroborating sources here. All you need is to find something in a reliable journal that has been subject to peer review. Or find evidence that this paper was published in a peer-reviewed journal. That's all you need to do. jps (talk) 01:30, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

There is no need for corroborating sources. Your claims about peer-review are just...incorrect. Wikipedia is about verifiability. I have provided a verifiable source that experts in the field have made these statements. I can easily provide the primary sources from which the secondary source derives it's content, but you have still not provided evidence (PAQs) that peer-reviewed content must be used. You must do this, or I suggest you are not listening to what I am saying.DrChrissy ^(talk) 01:38, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Above, I cited WP:SCHOLARSHIP. Did you miss that? In particular, read the second bullet point. It's pretty clear that we need peer review or reputable academic press. This source is neither of these. jps (talk) 01:40, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

In particular, read the first bullet point "For example, a review article, monograph, or textbook is better than a primary research paper." It says nothing about peer-review.DrChrissy ^(talk) 01:47, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Go ahead and ask at WP:RSN. It is not the intention of the guideline for you to ignore the rest of that list. Refusing to use peer-reviewed sources for empirical claims is bad practice and is strongly discouraged. jps (talk) 01:50, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

I suggest you go and ask at RSN because I'm not convinced you are here to discuss this logically. You have already stated that you do not know whether the source has been peer-reviewed. So, even if there is a stipulation of sources being peer-reviewed, you can not show that it is not.DrChrissy ^(talk) 01:58, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

I am certain that I am correct here with regards to standard Wikipedia practice, policy, and high-quality scholarship in general. As it is, the source has been impeached and unless we can find sources which have been subject to peer review and corroborate these claims, the content simply does not belong here. I will ping WP:RSN and WP:FTN to let them know about this discussion. jps (talk) 02:04, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Amazing to see what is basically a rehash of Talk:Glyphosate happening on this page. Again, I recommend that for this incredibly controversial (for some reason) topic, we adopt the convention of relying on secondary sources. You guys are spending hours and hours arguing about one change. Think about the number of changes to come. Will you repeat this exercise (on slightly different grounds, of course, to keep it interesting) next time? I also wonder whether if you were talking about a Monsanto-funded study, would you two switch sides about whether it met the reliable source criteria? Lfstevens (talk) 16:13, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Lfstevens, I could no agree with you more. It is absolutely incredible that this article has suddenly become controversial and, as you say, a rehash of Glyphosate. Perhaps you would like to look at editorial behaviour and motivation to gain some insight to this. I am beginning to wonder if some editors are editing to deliberately make articles "controversial" and thereby attempting to get overly-higher standards of sources, just to be disruptive. We almost need a definition of which articles are controversial and which are not!DrChrissy ^(talk) 23:34, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Secondary sources, maybe? The controversial articles are anything related to GMOs or pesticides, in case that wasn't clear. I see no cabal. I see those who buy the mainstream science up against those who believe that mainstream science has become corrupted by money. Each of these individual disputes is a rehash of that. Secondary sources are a way out. I see no other. Lfstevens (talk) 07:13, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Genetically modified trout?

Could others please comment on the reliability of reports of genetically modified trout and reports of their escape into a lake. Are these sources RS? [2] [3] DrChrissy ^(talk) 23:46, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

The aquaculture operation, probable fish escapes, and unusually large fish are all well documented. The question for me is whether the breeding technique used should be described as 'genetic modification'. The wired article describes it as such. This alaskan gov site provides more detail on tryploid breeding which does not seem to involve direct modifications to the genes: http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=fishinggeneconservationlab.triploid_trout. Dialectric (talk) 18:30, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I will research it in a bit more depth. There are other examples of genetic modification of trout which look a a little more "scholarly" [4] [5] and [6] DrChrissy ^(talk) 19:00, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

(The implications for WP:TROUT are disturbing. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:34, 21 December 2015 (UTC))

DrChrissy, can you provide some explanation for your recent addition on the escapes section? As above, my reading suggests that tryploid trout are not 'genetically engineered' and conflating tryploid lab-breeding with direct alterations of DNA or RNA adds confusion.Dialectric (talk) 17:33, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

My understanding is that "genetic modification" means a change in the genome of the animal. To my mind, adding another set of chromosomes to a normally diploid animal (i.e. triploidy) is changing the genome of the animal and is therefore genetic modification. Am I getting my definitions and interpretations mixed up?DrChrissy ^(talk) 17:47, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Follow up. I have just re-read Genetic engineering and it seems to be (very unsatisfactorily) that it depends on the definition used and the country you are in! Perhaps I (or you) should put in a statement to this effect when triploidy is first discussed in the article?DrChrissy ^(talk) 17:57, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

That's one of the weird things about this whole subject. It's all about the technique, not the outcome. We used to create new crops using the now-primitive technique of crossbreeding. Mostly, but not entirely - remember the (transgenic) pomato? - that was within a species. Now we do so only for better PR as in this case. The controversy arose when we started getting more sophisticated. As with many domains on the GMO topic, we're splitting hairs left and right over words. "Carcinogenic", "safe", all these words become supercharged in these articles. On the question at hand, I'd say use the definition in our articles, except that GMO points to GE points to biotechnology.

'Biotechnology is the use of living systems and organisms to develop or make products, or "any technological application that uses biological systems, living organisms or derivatives thereof, to make or modify products or processes for specific use"'

So, intent! (Snort.) So crossbreeding is in, so everything that we eat is a GMO, which ironically, is correct! So that's a dead end. I'd go with mods that use gene guns or other "new" tech. (Gene guns are pretty much obsolete.) Lfstevens (talk) 22:06, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

My impression from my knowledge of the underlying molecular biology (and unencumbered by having read the sources here, so beware!) is that inducing triploidy is done differently than introducing a particular gene. Specific gene introduction is done in a specific way, in effect inserting new DNA into the animal's existing DNA. Triploidy, in contrast, can be created without necessarily doing that kind of biochemical procedure – for example, by treating with chemicals such as colchicine that mess with meiosis and selecting for the offspring that turn out to be triploid. So in some ways, both these things are genetic modification, but triploidy is not done by the typical method of GM. So that's an additional reason why there isn't an easy definition.

Triploidy is certainly different from transgenes. It is present in nature, and naturally in some fish, and in some food fish, including salmonids and many cyprinids (i.e. carp). Check out polyploid. Lfstevens (talk) 03:57, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

But a tried-and-true Wikipedia way of dealing with it is to just go with sources. If there are sources that describe triploids as GM, then we can call them GM here. If sources don't do that, then we should not do it based on our own classification. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:39, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Sources are always good. That's why I went to our (presumptively sourced) definitions. It would be nice to be consistent with them. I'm just concerned that we don't pick a biased source that wants to say that these are "GM" as a way of trashing them, which does happen. Lfstevens (talk) 03:57, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

That sounds perfectly reasonable. I'll have a look at editing the article in this respect tomorrow, but getting it sorted might take a little while under 1RR.DrChrissy ^(talk) 01:10, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

@Lfstevens. I am a little confused with your last comment. Do you believe that there is an inherent "negative" about labeling something as GM? The Genetic engineering article states "Genetic engineering does not normally include traditional animal and plant breeding, in vitro fertilisation, induction of polyploidy, mutagenesis and cell fusion techniques that do not use recombinant nucleic acids or a genetically modified organism in the process. However the European Commission has also defined genetic engineering broadly as including selective breeding and other means of artificial selection. Cloning and stem cell research, although not considered genetic engineering, are closely related and genetic engineering can be used within them.". So, we could have it either way and supported by RS (I'm sure we could find another source to replace the dead link). I am not arguing for either here - I can see both sides of the argument - just trying to reach consensus.

References

DrChrissy ^(talk) 12:51, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

As Lfstevens suggests above, such a broad definition quickly becomes meaningless. Every breed of domestic animal and pet could then be tagged with a 'genetically engineered animal' category. The European Commission document, also effectively defines a 'narrow definition': The manipulation of an organism's genetic endowment by introducing or eliminating specific genes through modern molecular biology techniques. Tryploid breeding doesn't target specific genes, and from the alaska source I posted above, does not seem to directly involve molecular biology techniques.Dialectric (talk) 16:03, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

While I think that the broad definition that WP stumbled into is far more coherent, the "EU" definition corresponds to my understanding of common usage, with "modern" conveniently left undefined. E.g., if somebody last year came up with a significant refinement to trad crossbreeding, would that be "modern"? In any event, by the EU def, triploidy seems to not count. On the other point, yes, "GMO" is frightening to a significant part of the public. Putting that label on something new tars it for that audience. If the shoe fits, fine, but if not, we shouldn't go there. Lfstevens (talk) 16:38, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

If triploidy does not count as "genetic engineering" (which as has been pointed out, would require the definition to be so broad as to include almost everything domesticated) then the section on escaped rainbow trout is completely out of place. It would be like adding a section on seedless watermelons to an article about genetically engineered plants.tronvillain (talk) 15:01, 2 June 2016 (UTC)

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AquAdvantage Salmon

The AquAdvantage salmon does not have two transgenes, it has the protein coding sequence from a Chinook salmon growth hormone gene, and the promoter sequence from an ocean pout antifreeze protein gene. It is completely incorrect to say "the transgene allows the GM salmon to survive near-freezing waters and continue their development all year round", though the subsequent "It effectively acts like an 'on' switch for the hormone" does somewhat describe the action of a promoter sequence. The main article (AquAdvantage salmon, has this: "with a single copy of the opAFP-GHc2 construct, which codes for a promoter sequence from ocean pout directing production of a growth hormone protein using coding sequence from Chinook salmon." Something similar perhaps? tronvillain (talk) 22:08, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

References

Conservation

As established above, and apparent in Genetic modification as well as the definition at the beginning of this article, simply inducing triploidy does not constitute genetic modification. This makes the section on the introduction of sterile triploid "freshwater grass carp, also known as the white amur" to the US completely unnecessary.tronvillain (talk) 13:19, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

I need to read up on this more. The section you deleted appears relevant because of claims that if the GM trout escape they might dominate their environment. Hence I have reverted until we can get agreement on whether this is relevant. --David Tornheim (talk) 18:32, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

GM trout escape

@Tronvillain: Regarding "rm: rainbow trout - despite the article's use of the term "genetically-engineered", the fish are explicitly triploid rather than genetically engineered." [7] , "The article says that GM trout have escaped." [8], if we can't find easy agreement, I am thinking about taking to noticeboard to see if the article says that GM trout have escaped or not. --David Tornheim (talk) 18:41, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

It's a complicated question, and I'm not quite sure what I think. Triploidy changes the number of chromosomes, but it doesn't change the genes on those chromosomes. And it also renders the animals sterile, so that even if they did escape, they would have no impact on the genetics of wild trout. On the other hand, I do think a case could be made that triploidy is a sort of genetic "modification", so there certainly are issues of terminology. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:00, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Oh, it could certainly be argued that triploidy is a form of genetic modification, but then you have to extend the definition to include conventional breeding, mutagenesis, and various other breeding techniques; however general useage of the term refers to genetic engineering, as does this article, as well as the article on Genetic engineering (which Genetic modification redirects to). --tronvillain (talk) 19:10, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Yes, those are good points, and I am aware of the earlier discussions above. It is certainly true that the conventional definitions of GM require that the "M" be done via modifications of the DNA sequence, and that triploidy both fails that definition and predates the technology. That's certainly a valid argument in favor of the deletions that you made. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:15, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

@David Tornheim: That's just an example of Wired not understanding what "genetically engineered" means, or did they did, not understanding what was actually done to the fish. As the article says "Technically known as triploids, they're designed with three sets of chromosomes, making them sterile", and triploidy is clearly not genetic engineering. --tronvillain (talk) 19:29, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

I agree that Triploidy should not be conflated with genetic engineering. We should probably have an article on Triploid Fish which would expand upon the topic and clarify the distinction. This article should have at most a sentence or two on the topic, with links to the triploid fish article . Triploids have been modified by human intervention, but not on the level of directly altering genes.Dialectric (talk) 19:37, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Same here. Reliable sources tend to use direct gene manipulation as a narrow definition for whether something is genetically engineered or not. It is true that selective breeding, mutation, induction of polyploidy and other techniques can change the genetic makeup of an organism, but if we included them all we would be broadening the scope of this suite of articles far too much. I have brought this up a few times recently (see Talk:Genetic engineering in science fiction#Eugenics and Talk:Genetically modified organism#Dubious) so maybe it would be worth taking to a noticeboard or make a statement at a wikiproject so we can have something to point to. AIRcorn (talk) 19:56, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

OK, I'm now persuaded. Triploidy is not GM. I agree with deleting material about triploids, and I think it would be a good idea to have a separate page about triploid fish. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:08, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Another possible issue with the "Escapes" section is that it's copied almost verbatim from the source: "Even when fish are in a contained aquaculture environment, there is a high probability that some will escape. For example, in Norway, escaped farmed salmon account for around 30% of the salmon in rivers (FAO 2000). These escapees can be particularly harmful to wild populations..." --tronvillain (talk) 19:40, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Ouch. We should be aggressive about removing any content that is copied or too closely paraphrased. Much of that content was added by an editor who was later topic-banned, and that editor has had some problems with close paraphrasing. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:08, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Essentially the only change was flipping the order of the one sentence. It almost seems like it should just be a citation for a line somewhere else in the article, since it's about the possibility of escape if farmed conventionally, using evidence about unmodified fish. --tronvillain (talk) 21:57, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Genetically modified fish

Moved from User talk:Gulumeemee § Genetically modified fish

Hi Gulumeemee, I removed this sentence because it was exactly repeated twice in the same paragraph. I judged that the second use of it was unintentional.

"Others have claimed the sterility process has a failure rate of 5%.[34] "

Best, Paul — Preceding unsigned comment added by Peej03 (talk • contribs) 21:30, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

I removed the sentence. In the future, you can explain your edits in the edit summary. Gulumeemee (talk) 02:38, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

This discussion should have taken place on the talk page of GMO fish so others can find it (Talk:Genetically_modified_fish). Can one of you move it there, please? In the edit note, it says, "user explained it", but since it is not on the talk page, editors have no idea what explanation was made. So we have to go the extra step to hunt it down to find the explanation here. Yes, I agree the explanation would have been better in the edit note the first time, but since it is not it should go to the article talk page. Thanks. Ping to @Peej03:. --David Tornheim (talk) 23:43, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Notes & References

In this edit, the "References" section was converted to a "Notes" section, apparently to add "Greenberg, Paul (2011). Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food. Penguin. ISBN 0-14-311946-X" to the new "References" section, where it has remained alone for years, despite nothing apparent in the article specifically referencing it. As seen at WP:REFGROUP and WP:FNNR, you'd really only have both a notes and references section like this if you were using explanatory notes or short citations as per WP:CITESHORT, neither of which this article does. I'm reverting to the original citation style, with 30em columns instead of the deprecated forced two columns as per Template:Reflist, and removing Greenberg. --tronvillain (talk) 18:32, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

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Please update with info about the first CRISPR-edited fish

Please add some info about this to section #Food. It's currently included in 2021 in science like so:

The first CRISPR-gene-edited seafood and second set of CRISPR-edited food has gone on public sale in Japan: two fish of which one species grows to twice the size of natural specimens due to disruption of leptin, which controls appetite, and the other grows to 1.2 the natural size with the same amount of food due to disabled myostatin, which inhibits muscle growth.

Here are some additional infos and an image.

I already added info about this to a few articles so maybe it would be best if somebody else added it to this one. You could, for example, add some info about how the fish are contained from potentially reproducing (their edited genomes) in the sea, precise dates (in November and/or December) and info about the company, the form of approval and the sales.

The fish species are tiger puffer and red sea bream.

References

Prototyperspective (talk) 13:18, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia Ambassador Program course assignment

This article is the subject of an educational assignment at Georgia Gwinnett College supported by the Wikipedia Ambassador Program during the 2012 Q1 term. Further details are available on the course page.

The above message was substituted from {{WAP assignment}} by PrimeBOT (talk) on 16:27, 2 January 2023 (UTC)