Is there a scientist in the house!?! I drank GMO bourbon!

[El Vino]

Got a GMO question: after distillation, do the genetic modifications made by the seed companies "survive" to be a source of concern?

My unscientific skeptical side says - it doesn't matter. This GMO politically-correct thing has gotten way out of hand if we are worry about its effects in distilled spirits. As posted in another thread, if Four Roses is sourcing rye from Germany to find non-GMO grain, it bears note. But is it a marketing decision or a scientific decision?

What are your thoughts about genetically modified ingredients in your spirits?

[callmeox]

It is a legal decision based on their desire to sell spirits in locations where products containing GMO are banned.

[Jace]

I'm Pretty sure current science says it's all marketing. Some GMOs are scarier than others(some produce natural poison to kill pests), some are just modified for a better harvest. If GMOs were allowed in Denmark, I'd eat away and never give it a second thought.

Now, when it comes to distilled alcohol, even though you might have concerns regarding GMOs, I seriously doubt there'd be any kind of trace in it. The plant genomes, as far as I know, aren't even traceable in distilled alcohol.

[squire]

Starch is starch, politics is politics.

[El Vino]

Starch is starch, politics is politics.

I should have made the title: I drank GMO bourbon...and liked it!

[Special Reserve]

I hate to tell everyone, GMO corn has been around for a long time. Dekalb would advertise different varieties and usually it was easy to see teh difference.

[B.B. Babington]

since distillate is going to be small simple molecules, unlikely to be any issue at all. gmo fears mostly related to producing larger unknown molecules or proteins or etc.

[flaminiom]

I think non-GMO is basically about what might happen between when it goes in the barrel and when it's ready to bottle. A lot of food regulations could happen between now and then, especially in export markets. Other than strategic reasons... meh.

[alstevens]

I'm not a scientist so I can't really answer your question other than I've been reading and hearing more and more about GMO corn and bourbon lately as well.

Supposedly Wild Turkey, Four Roses, and a good chunk of the Buffalo Trace stuff uses non-GMO corn. So you could avoid it and still have plenty of good bourbons on hand. But I like Old Forester and some of you know I love Old Fitz BIB, Evan Williams, Elijah Craig, a big chunk of the Heaven Hills stuff. I don't want to stop drinking those and the GMO thing hasn't scared me off.

Honestly I think there are worse side effects to drinking alcohol than GMO corn.

When my girlfriend and I started looking for houses I learned about radon. I checked my childhood home and the basement at some points of the winter had medium to high levels of radon. I spent my childhood down there I freaked out a bit and then realized there is WAY more in life to worry about than radon.

Is GMO corn the same? Again, I'm not a scientist, but I think there are FAR more dangerous aspects to drinking alcohol than GMO corn. Just as I think there are probably far more dangerous things than Radon.

I will admit that it's a little alarming that if I'm understanding this correctly, due to GMO corns some of my favorite bourbons are illegal in other countries.

[Paddy]

The main thing to remember is.......... don't drink (GMO corn liquor) and drive. :grin:

Carry on...

[Coop776]

GMO schmee M O.

every organism grown commercially has been modified in some way. Cross breeding is modifying genomes. Better living through chemistry, I always say.

[El Vino]

Thanks for the links! Its going to take some time to work through, but a quick scan was really interesting. Like so many other things, making good whiskey appears to be a combination of science and art. It would be interesting to hear the distillers weigh in on the balance.

[B.B. Babington]

GMO schmee M O. every organism grown commercially has been modified in some way. Cross breeding is modifying genomes. Better living through chemistry, I always say.

yep, selective breeding can do fun things. google images for: belgian blue

[squire]

Absolutely! I don't think most people understand that fact. Practically every plant and animal we consume today (except through hunting and scavenging) has been radically altered from its natural form through selective breeding already.

I fully agree. Modification through selective breeding of crops and livestock has been going on for thousands of years, modern labs have just sped up the process.

For instance some Scotch producers (Macallan) emphasize their use of the original strain of Golden Promise barley yet no mention of the fact Golden Promise is a genetically spliced GMO created by British scientists back in the 1950s. Then what of the higher yielding strain that has largely replaced GP? Also a lab product yet one doesn't hear an uproar about Scottish whisky being made from GMO grains.

[TheNovaMan]

GMO schmee M O.

every organism grown commercially has been modified in some way. Cross breeding is modifying genomes. Better living through chemistry, I always say.

Amen, brother! (Darn 16 character limit)

[Scotch Neat]

I do believe we all are GMO's

[The Black Tot]

I'm all for being pro-science and all that. I don't worry that GMO vegetables are going to make me grow a third arm.

My objection centers around the fact that the "more accurate" approach seems more accurately aimed at making food look better (therefore selling for more money) and surviving custom pesticides, as opposed to TASTING better, which isn't really top on the priority list of the companies funding all this great stuff.

[Josh_NC]

I'm an engineer, and I've worked on fermentation purification processes where we had to remove all traces of modified DNA to satisfy european import laws (even got a call from a headhunter looking for someone to work in the KY liquor industry while I was doing that job

I don't know a ton about distillation but I can tell you that DNA isn't volatile, and what we're drinking is. Distillation should increase the concentration of low molecular weight species while reducing water concentration in the fermented starting material. If someone was trying to remove GMOs from their diet, distilled spirits should be pretty low on the list of things to worry about.

[t44tq]

The big difference between selective breeding and GMO at a molecular level is that with selective breeding, you are hybridizing an organism to select a particular trait. With GMO, you are actually editing or inserting genes into a plant's (in this case) DNA. The problem with GMO is that we don't have a complete understanding of most genes, so when you go and manually edit like that, you may have unintended consequences that are not visible right away. When you hybridize the old fashioned way, natural recombination is less likely to produce strange genes.

I agree that using GMO corn and producing bourbon with that corn is probably unlikely to result in much difference in the distilled whiskey end-product.

I'm not a geneticist by trade, so please feel free to correct any errors in my posting.