My only criticism is that it allows corporations to copyright crop strains and penalize farmers for growing from their own crop without paying. It terms of production, nutrition and getting resources to struggling populations, GMOs are an absolute win.
@Pikachu It doesn't even matter much whether glyphosates are good or bad for human beings.
They are catastrophically bad for fundamentally and absolutely essential wild life (like pollinating insects) without which there's not much point having a farm in the first place.
Reducing bio diversity is dangerous. If you rely on one type of cow, potato or lettuce that's immune to all known diseases, and a new one pops up that does kill that type, you won't have any of that category left.
@Pikachu it's already happening with traditional crossbreeding in combination with capitalism. If GMO makes a few strains even more superior than all others, their use will make up an even bigger percentage of all production.
@Pikachu we have been engineering animals, vegetables and fruit for many years, it is called selective breeding. Use of gene changing is a bit different though.
If you think about it, it's not the fact that things are gene-altered by humans, but that people are scared by science. Humans have been modifying the genes of plants and animals for thousands of years via selective breeding, cross-breeding, etc.
@Tetsuya They're getting better at it. It all changing the genome, just now it's much more advanced. It's not inherently bad, it's how and what is done.
Many of them stem from the IP laws you mentioned. American IP law basically makes it so that the companies have absolute control over all studies done on their "product" so independent studies on GMOs are functionally non existent. When the parameters of a study and who can conduct them are determined by the corporation it is by definition no longer independent.
Also through lobbying regulation of said products are also largely written by the corps themselves through "regulatory capture" which is a euphemism for legal corruption.
And if you listen to people like the CEO of Monsanto from a few years ago their stated goal was to eventually control the entire global food supply.
What's interesting is people questioning CROPS but most of us (me included), will not think twice before eating that delicious looking meal in a restaurant; "Whas the ingredients? Calories? Who cares! As long as it's to the specification." And "Oh! How much sugar in this drink? Where'd sugar come from? Whas the artificial items in the ingredients? *read ingredients * is that even English?" *pops into mouth*
We question where we can buy the best fruits as it's healthy for us. "Market!? Naah fam. They rot by the time we get it home. Supermarkets!? KMT seen the price, bro? Guess I'll wait another day." 馃し
What is a crop? Nice, clean, 90% SHOULD be our diet ESPECIALLY used for Home Made purposes and recipes. Now Politics and Business make us question the ethics of it all.
There was some weird things they put into it like genes and from what I know, there has been unintended side effects to not gmos but gene editing out diseases. They've tried to get rid of disease through gene editing and found out that it gave them something else instead. So that's kind of cautious. I mean it's only food in this case so I don't know if stomach acid would help but the whole putting unknown DNA stuff into food and then we don't know what that does to our own genetics kinda of irks me.
I looked it up and apparently the genes they put into food degrade and then there's natural genes that food already has.
However there is still a risk of gene transfer but it's low.
My biggest issue is the patent laws. You shouldn't be able to claim living things as intellectual property.
If you can claim living things as intellectual property, then the onus to control their propagation is on you. If a farmer did not intentionally plant your product, but your genetic property ends up in their field, they should be able to sue you and not the other way around.
My secondary issue is largely surrounding the trustworthiness of corporations in general. Genetic Modification is a powerful tool. Whether it is good or bad depends on how the people with ability to use that tool choose to use it.
I would honestly feel better about it if the government was operating and funding research and development based around objectives determined to be in the interest of the public good, with the products of said research released to the public domain.
@Pikachu GMOs were a scam for big agri to take more control over the food supply. If you want a case study, check out the indian farming industry ever since GMOs were introduced.
Predator seeds are seeds that produce fruit/veg etc with no natural seeds, so you have to go to companies like monsanto now bayer to get their seeds every season. GMOs have destroyed self sufficiency.
And the marketing tag line for GMOs was that they were going to solve world hunger. They clearly havent.
the biggest argument agent GMO's i know of and i dont know if it still is valid honestly, is that the Pestide Roundup caused cancer, they made roundup ready crops, do those cause cancer too?
I hated the capitalist side of the whole thing. Like after learning about terminator genes I could see outsourcing the crops to nation X and then activating those genes to create a famine and killing off the population. Like if something can be weaponized it will be weaponized. And the thing is I have no problem with GMOs. It's the humans that are my issue.
