Boom, finally some sense about GM food that counteracts all the nonsense untruthful nonsense…
Boom, finally some sense about GM food that counteracts all the nonsense untruthful nonsense the anti-GM lobby is pushing into the debate.
"Genetically modified food should be grown and sold widely in Britain and consumer opposition to the technology is a “complete nonsense”, the Cabinet minister in charge of food and farming has said."
Food minister Owen Paterson backs GM crops – Telegraph
Genetically modified food should be grown and sold widely in Britain and consumer opposition to the technology is a “complete nonsense”, the Cabinet minister in charge of food and farming has said…
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9 Replies to “Boom, finally some sense about GM food that counteracts all the nonsense untruthful nonsense…”
I don't have a problem with GMO in general, I do have a problem with having a single strain/type of a food used overwhelmingly. With more varieties and strains, we're more protected from the unexpected: blights, droughts, pests, etc…
But it is not GM crops that has been pushing us towards simplified single strains crops. This is an ongoing process that is happening with or without GM crops. In my opinion that is a different (but very valid) discussion that should be answered more broadly!
Oh, I didn't mean that it was just a GMO problem. Just a trend that bears watching. An overwhelming majority of the corn grown in the US is one variety and it isn't doing well in the droughts we've been having.
+Angie Creasy-Thompson you might like this infographic by +National Geographic http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/07/food-ark/img/food-variety-tree-754.gif
excellent, I'm going to swipe that and post it!
If GMOs were patent free I would be fine with them. But they are not. Patent law is bad enough in technology & science; I'm completely against having the food chain controlled by it.
The problem has been well exposed by +Aylwyn Scally .
The questionable issue about the GM food is not of what the GM is made of, which is the classic fibre, proteins, carboydrates and vitamins.
We can eat them digest them and be happy.
The problem posed is a completely different one:
1. do we want seeds, for example the ones with the Terminator technology, which are infertile and oblige the farmer to buy new one every year, without the ability to save them and re-plant?
The multinational that own the seeds, owns your food and it's a bad idea. Unless we ban the ability to patent them, and they are in the public domain
2. are we aware of the loss of biodiversity and the therefore extremely binary outcome of a disease, which tend to result in :
a. all the crop survives
b. all the crop dies.
With different variates of the same species, we can at least hope that the disease will be spread on a percent of the crop, and not having this dreadful binary effect.
3. the ability to insert pesticides in the plant itself is encouraging an higher dosage of pesticide, which therefore triggers stronger pests (there is this thing call evolution, you know), which needs stronger pesticides and new seeds. This is clearly a bad idea.
So, to sum up, the problem of GM food is the environmental impact and the ownership of the resources.
The ways the system is shaped so far is not favourable for the majority of the mankind, therefore I'm against it fully.
There is plenty to discuss about what +Aylwyn Scally and +Michele Mattioni point out, but there is a difference between opposition to specific GM business models and modifications, and the opposition to any type of GM food on principle that is sadly so often the case in the media. In this light, the declarations from the minister are an improvement from the previous mindset.
Well, it seems that a declaration that goes like "the opposition is completely nonsense", given the reasons posted above, it's a bit off the line.