Some people are afraid of GM crops because we have altered the "natural" DNA of the plant. Well guess what? Farmers have been doing that for centuries with selective breeding. Now it's done in a lab... so what?
GM crops
by ball. 18 Replies latest jw friends
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Euphemism
Farmers have been doing that for centuries with selective breeding. Now it's done in a lab... so what?
With all due respect, I think that's a somewhat disingenuous argument. I'm no agricultural expert, but I can see a couple of important differences:
1. Laboratory GM allows for both broader and faster changes than traditional selective breeding.
2. As a corollary of #1, the results of lab GM are much less predictable.
I'm certainly not against GM crops. I'm sure that, as Carmel said, there are plenty of controls and precautions in place. But my point is, those controls are far more stringent than those on traditional breeding, and with good reason. So implying that the two are equivalent is a bit of a stretch.
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XQsThaiPoes
My thing is so what life is life. What ever dominates dominates. Just as long as man stays on top GMO's are no different than a new specise evolving or be created. Hey for once creation scientist can be right about the orgins of the specise.
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simplesally
Here is a good read:
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Black Sheep
I see a few similarities with what we are all familiar with.
GM producers and scientists present themselves as our saviours.
They demonize the anti-GM brigade as standing in the way of feeding the burgeoning population and, therefor, as morally bankrupt as they don't care if people starve to death by not accepting GM technology.
They present themselves as inspired by mankind's new God, science.
They only present us with the info that supports their dogma and sweep anything that contra-indicates their position under the carpet.
These are the primary characteristics of cults.
The Greenies, of course, do similar tricks to convince you that their religion is the Troof, so one has to be very careful before subscribing to either doctrine.
My take on it is this:
If we had spent the same amount of manhours and money, in the past 100 years, researching ways to increase the efficiency of organic food production instead of ways of selling food producers chemicals and GM technology, we would have a very efficient system of producing high quality, high volume food by now.
Black Sheep
******GM, GW, HIV=AIDS, Vegetarian/Vegan, JW Apostate******
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XQsThaiPoes
BS we have it is called the factory farm. How do you think we feed 6 billion people every day with so little farm land. The only thing that there is left to change are the crops.
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Country_Woman
for what it is worth.
I don't know very much re this item, but I've read somewhere that (some food) manipulated organismen aren't fertile anymore, with other words: a farmer can't collect seeds but have to buy it. I know from lots of flowers that the seeds are steryl, they are multiplied in other (not the natural) way. Once the fertile and steryl sorts are mixing, what is left ? (to be honest, I don't know if they can be mixed at all).
In general I think that it is giving the "seed-sellers" to much power.
Genetic engeneering is'nt good or bad, it has great potential (both ways I think) and I am just very careful with what I am eating. If possible (that's when it is showing on the label) I choose "normal" food.
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Black Sheep
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1214644,00.html"
But the recent famines have rarely resulted from inability to produce food. Almost always you find civil war in the background, corruption, or - as in the Ireland of the 1840s or recently in Argentina - starvation in the midst of plenteous crops that are earmarked for export. In the short term, more production leads to glut - and so world prices for coffee have dropped by nearly 70% in the past five years.
In Britain, the rundown of the agrarian workforce is foul, but not quite disastrous. We are rich and have alternatives. But in the developing world, 60% of people work on the land. In India, that is 600 million. Commercial forces worldwide have been urging India to industrialise its farming as Britain has done. This would increase yields and bring down costs - but would also put at least 500 million out of work. The envisaged alternatives fall short of what would be required by orders of magnitude. IT, India's great success, employs barely 100,000.
So, there is another side of the GM debate. The food will be cheaper but the poor buggers who GM puts out of jobs can't afford to buy it.
Who wins? Monsanto? The farm labourers?
Is GM going to cause more starvation through poverty than it is supposed to save us from?
Many years ago I was presented with statistics from the NZ dairy industry, comparing farm incomes and efficiencies from fifty years earlier to what they were getting at the time.
Animal numbers had gone from 50 to 500 per farm, yields per animal had improved, yields per acre had improved, labour content had dropped, and get this, inflation adjusted annual income to the individual farmers was exactly the same. So, for all their efforts the farmers were no better off, and because of amalgamation of farms there were a whole lot less of them.
Who profited from all of that effort? Was it the farmers? Their labourers?
Unemployment had risen during that time, I wonder why.
Rural pubs, once great places to meet real people with a real affinity for the land are disappearing along with their towns and wonderful country schools. Technology has a lot to answer for, and I am in favour of a giant leap backwards in some departments.
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designs
Genetically modified grazing grass called Tifton 85 began to give off cyanide gas and killed several cattle outside of Austin Tx. California will vote this Novemenber to at least force food producers to label GMOs for the consumer.