Another comprehensive, scientific report on genetic engineering in the food web concludes that it is dangerous, uneconomic and counter-productive. From our perspective as consumers the worst aspect is danger to health. From the producers’ perspective the worst aspect is the prospect of being under the thumb of biotech giants.
The report GMO Myths and Truths from EarthOpenSource explains why GM crops:
- Are laboratory-made, using technology that is totally different from natural breeding methods, and pose different risks from non-GM crops
- Can be toxic, allergenic or less nutritious than their natural counterparts
- Are not adequately regulated to ensure safety
- Do not increase yield potential
- Do not reduce pesticide use but increase it
- Create serious problems for farmers, including herbicide-tolerant “superweeds”, compromised soil quality, and increased disease susceptibility in crops
- Have mixed economic effects
- Harm soil quality, disrupt ecosystems, and reduce biodiversity
- Do not offer effective solutions to climate change
- Are as energy-hungry as any other chemically-farmed crops
- Cannot solve the problem of world hunger but distract from its real causes – poverty, lack of access to food and, increasingly, lack of access to land to grow it on.
Based on the evidence presented in this report, there is no need to take risks with GM crops when effective, readily available, and sustainable solutions to the problems that GM technology is claimed to address already exist. Conventional plant breeding, in some cases helped by safe modern technologies like gene mapping and marker assisted selection, continues to outperform GM in producing high-yield, drought-tolerant, and pest- and disease-resistant crops that can meet our present and future food needs.
The blind hubris of minions engaged by biotech was sadly illustrated earlier this year in conversation with the head of PR at Ireland’s Teagasc agricultural research institute, who stated that even their blight resistant potatoes revert to blight susceptibility after a few years when grown in industrial, monocultural systems.
Using nature sympathetic cultivation, eg organic, works.
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