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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 20 2013 @ 04:49 PM EST |
So if you cannot recoup your cost without a government granted monopoly over a
natural process, maybe its time to consider that you simply have a broken
business model, and close up shop.
Naw, too obvious.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: PJ on Wednesday, February 20 2013 @ 04:54 PM EST |
I don't believe the result is healthy food. What
is the use of a lot of food that isn't healthy?[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, February 20 2013 @ 05:09 PM EST |
What do you think selective breeding is, but a relatively inefficient means of
genetically modifying our food?[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: RichardR on Thursday, February 21 2013 @ 03:39 PM EST |
It strikes me that the discussion about genetic modification almost always
centers around cost,
'fairness of use' etcetera. And oh, health issues --
but there are no indications that the actual
GM plants are less wholesome
than unmodified plants (sorry to disagree with you here, PJ).
However,
some other important issues are often neglected in my
opinion.
- Environmental issues: First, there's the rather
unsavoury principle behind Roundup Ready itself.
In this case, GM isn't used
to increase a plant's nutritional value or resistance to natural
diseases,
or decrease its dependence on water or fertilizer, so that less
chemicals, water and other scarce
resources are required. Nope, the whole
idea behind Roundup Ready is actually that more poison
can be sprayed
onto the fields without killing the crop itself or generating more weeds. This
alone
already amounts to putting the cart before the horse with regard to
achieving a healthier world.
But the effects of Roundup Ready are even more
detrimental than just poisoning the environment:
- "Superweeds":
Less than a decade and a half after the introduction of Roundup Ready crop
plants,
the first Roundup Ready-resistant weeds are rearing their leafy
green little heads, see e.g. this NYT article.
And just like the rise of
drug-resistant infectious diseases due to widespread use of
antibiotics,
these so-called superweeds are not just a threat to farmers
depending on Roundup Ready crops,
but to ALL farmers. The proposed solution?
Well you guess it: use even more poison, and work
harder to create new
poisons with corresponding genetic modifications.
- Loss of
diversity: Soaking huge monoculture areas with Roundup Ready results in
virtually
sterile places where nothing else can live. No other plants,
hardly any insects, let alone birds,
mammals and other animals.
Documentaries show extensive South American soy fields which are
completely
silent and devoid of life, for dozens or even hundres of miles on
end.
- More environmental issues: These technology-driven
mass-scale monocultures are one of the
leading causes of deforestation and
loss of natural environments. Once organizations have invested
in ways to
scale up their farming operations (you can hardly call them "farmers" any more)
this way,
there are hardly any economical barriers to extending the crop
fields indefinetely in order to make
bigger profits. It's just a matter of
buying more seeds, poison, and fertilizer, slashing once again
a few
thousand acres of forest, and the next million dollars in profits is all but in
the bank --
the same bank which finances and stimulates this ecological
vandalism.
Unfortunately, it is virtually impossible to change
this sort of scorched-earth agriculture,
if only because (indeed) it serves
to increase food production -- for now, that is.
And also unfortunate is
the fact that we're virtually all part of the problem,
by clinging to our
luxury carnivorous habits. And even being a flexitarian myself,
I wonder
where the soy in my "vegetarian alternative" comes from ... Still, it's
better
that I eat the soy myself, instead of stuffing it into a pig
sevenfold and eat that ... [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, February 25 2013 @ 10:16 PM EST |
Yes, genetically modified foods are potentially great.
However, each and every genetic modification produced by Monsanto has been
unhealthy, ecologically damaging, thoughtless, and generally bad. Monsanto is
the main reason for the anti-GM-foods movement.
*Monsanto* needs to be banned. GM foods need to be regulated by the EPA or the
FDA, and as a bad actor, Monsanto needs to be permanently excluded from the
industry. Actually, its corporate charter should be revoked.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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