The only silver lining in the GM foods debacle for me is that it's gonna drive a lot of people toward organic foods. Now, if we can keep the corporations from so adjusting the definition of "organic" that it includes GM foods...
cheers, Jo
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i'm trying to understand why the Left is so against GM food. GM and the more antiquated inbreeding (pollination, grafting, etc.) have resulted in far more nutritious food produced at much lower costs. much of the third world now uses the more nutritious food produced by older inbreeding methods developed by scientists in many countries under different types of governments, but primarily under Western capitalism. hopefully, these people will enjoy the GM food with even more nutrition and less cost.
Left can't be against GM for technical reasons since all bio-scientists agree that direct manipulation of genes is far more efficient and reliable than the old-fashioned inbreeding for desired traits. they agree, too, that there are absolutely NO differences in nutritive value of GM food over any other agricultural methods.
true, whenever one selects genes for the desirable traits, whether directly (GM) or indirectly (inbreeding), one unavoidably selects undesirable traits too. however, so far, the GM undesirable traits appear to be fewer than those produced under inbreeding.
on balance, GM foods offer the third world better food sources than formerly, if the GM providers can get the food to the people who need it.
so what's the beef? because GM undermines traditional farming methods and its "workers"? because successful GM food might favor capitalist production methods that might undermine the interests of its adversaries?
norm