Letters to the Editor
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Enviro-Luddites
I agree that there are dangers associated with genetically modified foods, and that they should be regulation of them. My problem with the way this issue is handled by environmental movement is that the loudest voices call for the most extreme action. Yes, genetically modified foods should be regulated, but the outright ban of them is nonsense.
It is similar to how some environmentalists dismiss nuclear power. Nuclear power has the potential to be a key ingredient in a balanced approach to prevent global warming that includes increased efficiency and conservation, wind, solar, an biomass. Yet many environmentalists will not even consider nuclear power, largely out of fear of the word "nuclear".
The debate over genetically modified plants seems to be following a similar pattern. Once the word genetics is brought up, people seem to tune out whatever comes next. This situation is in unfortunate considering the vast potential of this technology to improve agriculture and help feed the increasing population of the world.
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further irony
I would like to share, in addition to all of your offerings, two links. One is a German article about the die off of the world's bee populations and research that links it to GE crops. The other is about Monsanto and their PCB/DDT/Agent Orange legacy. I don't even understand myself how they can still be in business. I am outraged that after their invention of PCB's in the 1930's, subsequent pollution of the planet with them (that continues to this day) and their current attempts to pollute all of biodiversity with their intellectual monoculture? Why can't we stand up and say, "This is not for sale!" Why cannot we charge these people? I know that we want to hold on to a belief that our economic system, our industrial progress and our American Dream are infallible ... but it is killing us. As an earlier writer said that it is not about now, it is about the future ... I think that we need to act now to save both. Take a lesson from Bush, there is nothing wrong with admitting that as a culture we have been wrong, are on the wrong track and that we now need to sort through what we can do away with and what our survival depends on that we keep. P.S. let's make it sustainable this time P.S.S. Sorry Monsanto, sustainability isn't exactly profit turning
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,473166,00.html
http://www.theecologist.org/archive_detail.asp?content_id=820
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i call bs
This genetic manipulation is about ownership of the food supply versus a common cultural inheritance of natural and cultivated species already in common use. Lst time I checked we had enough variety and quality in food.
Shame on the writer.
We are gambling everything on the profits from the length of patent on a novel genetic modification. It isn't the same as staving off global warming in which we have already gambled and lost.
The fact that people are held liable for the spread of unwanted patented crops onto their own land should give pause to any reasonable person unless they stand to profit.
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GM = immoral?
A previous commenter said:
"For me, splicing genes from one species into another is a moral, not prudential, wrong."
Really? You're saying it's intrinsically wrong to screw with a soybean's genes? Why would that be? Whose rights does it violate?
I always thought the anti-GM argument was explicitly prudential. If it's really about it being somehow intrinsically, morally wrong, I have to reconsider the issue.
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disproportionate risk
I think the crux is this:
If we do everything necessary to reduce/reverse global warming and we are wrong and there is no global warming, at the end we are still left with a far better world that when we started (cleaner air, water, environment; reduced dependence on fossil fuels, etc.).
The same argument does not ring true when applied to the use of GMOs, does it?
Cheers,
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Enviro-Luddites, indeed
In my experience, any time you talk about GM-crops, people have a rather visceral reaction to them. Whether religious or environmental, most folks are rather Luddites about genetically modified foods. Right up until you talk about engineering traits into plants that *consumers* will want, rather than traits that have been useful to producers. The first generation of GM-crops were produced almost solely to the benefit of producers (think BT-corn and BT-cotton - both have tremendously improved yields for farmers). The next generation of traits to be engineered will be for consumers. Think caffeine-free coffee (that hasn't been treated so roughly that it tastes like crap). Think allergen-free peanuts, so your kid can bring peanut butter to school again. Think altering the fat content in vegetable oils so that you can get your Omega-3s from corn oil instead of from dwindling fish stocks. Think fat-free bacon (just kidding, who would want that anyway?). I think when these things get closer to market, we'll start having major changes in perception about GM foods.
You'll never get a group of scientists to say that GM-foods as a class will be safe in perpetuity. Reason being is it's a nonsensical statement. It would be rather like demanding that chemists say that every chemical ever made in the future will be safe. Offhand, I can think of half a dozen ways to engineer plants to not only make them not safe, but to make them lethal. But we can say that GM-crops currently in use are as safe as non-GM crops currently in use.
As to the spread of these traits into wild populations, this is not a real issue. For a trait to be spread to the wild, it has to confer an advantage - in the wild. Most agricultural plants have been so inbred for our very specific uses, then throw in a genetic modification or twelve, and these are plants that require our constant care to keep them happy. You won't have wild wheat rampaging through the plains of the Serengetti. Domesicated plants are generally pretty messed up, which is why we need farmers. GM-domesticated plants are even more so.