Nicely summarised, Andrew, although "faddish fearfulness" might be
going a bit too far.
I don't want GM for similar reasons to not wanting all the antibiotics
that US animals have. We don't need a build-up of the chemicals but
nor do we need more tasteless food with a potential for disaster.
There would be no going back on GM, and I don't believe the promises
made by the likes of Monsanto.
And we probably have enough capacity for food production now if we
organised it better ...
Chris
On 2 Nov 2009, at 21:40, Andrew Fildes wrote:
> Agreed - two classes of things although GM is simply a way of doing
> the same thing faster or even more strangely.
> We had no problem producing low-grade, tasteless, cheap food by
> selective breeding and hybridisation. Tough, square tomatoes come to
> mind.
> But GM fearfulness is a classic example of faddish behavior - there is
> a faint possibility that we may produce a toxic hybrid but it's not
> terribly likely.
> And we eat plenty of foods with toxins in them anyway - I would
> recommend not eating too many walnuts at one sitting as I know to my
> cost.
>
> Faddish fearfulness is fuelled by people with an agenda - political or
> commercial. The people who've convinced us to consume vast quantities
> of bottled water, for instance. A good example is the current
> popularity of 'gluten-free' foods. Gluten needs to be avoided by at
> most 1% of the population with levels of coeliac disease - almost all
> of them blue-eyed northern European ethnic types. For everyone else,
> it's actually healthy. Very healthy. And as for the idea that a gluten
> free diet helps control autistic behaviour - no actual proof
> whatsoever.
>
> That said, I'm no fan of Monsanto. No, they aren't evil but they are
> corporate. The were a chemical company until Plant Variety Rights
> legislation was passed (and they were actively involved in promoting
> it). Then they got into the seed business as a complementary activity
> to glyphosate production (RoundUp).
--
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