I’m sick to death of people being precious about #GMO produce. Functionally there is no difference between a grape bred to have little or no seed and a grape that has been modified in a lab for the same thing. Y’all are just scared of science.
You wanna talk about #Monsanto charging for “licenses” for their crops, ok. Talk about agribusiness killing the planet, ok. Talk about corporations copyrighting genetic code, ok. These are all valid concerns.
But the science is sound.
@kithop @ajroach42 organic and gmo is totally a thing you can have, and honestly a good combination in my mind.
@Ethancdavenport Talk about the use of monoculture? :P
@Angle I was just discussing that in another toot on this thread. BIG problem for soil quality and biodiversity, which capitalism and the state both encourage.
@Ethancdavenport Seriously. When people oppose things like GMOs for bullshit reasons they just weaken the case against them.
With the possible extra issue that Monsanto has made many crops "Roundup Ready" which encourages the use of chemicals to create monoculture fields, wiping natural genetic modifications off the map.
@Algot monoculture is a HUGE problem, not only bc of roundup ready. Capitalism creates the conditions for cash crops like soybeans and corn, which the state subsidizes. What’s the impetus for growing other things when the government pays farmers (independent and corporate) to grow one or two things?
Not to mention the total inefficiency of livestock, which takes massive amounts of energy and water to raise and process. Totally unsustainable.
@Ethancdavenport
@Algot
Also: there are herbicide resistant non-GE crops too. But paradoxically there is more biodiversity within the GE group. Because it's easier to GE-in a trait to any given existing variety, there are apparently loads of GE cotton varieties from Monsanto alone for different climates. All of which remain inter fertile with non-GE: if we attack gene patents, the worries about biodiversity remain slim.
@Algot @Ethancdavenport
Also, obligatory follow-up: it's possible, and widespread, to patent non-GE traits and crops too. It's a common and dangerous fallacy that GE is an enabler of crop/life patenting, in fact it has nothing specifically to do with it. GE -does- allow patented traits to be introduced to other species, broadening their base. But patented traits that are not GE are still widespread.
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@Ethancdavenport All of this is reasonably true (character limits though).
And, many of the faults with GMOs are more the issue of capitalism and the companies behind them, not the act of modifying plants.
Eg, the stifling of more suitable alternative crops in dry or very cold regions. It's not that there's no demand - if nobody sells the seeds and biosecurity laws mean you can't import them, you can't grow it. So you give up and grow what everyone else is growing.
@Ethancdavenport But, people distrust of the food system is by and large justifiable.
They just lack the information to articulate it well, and misdirect their fear. Marketing doesn't help either.
(I'm more angry about the loss of cultivar diversity. That's 99% the fault of agribusiness, and genetic modification could probably speed up resurrection or recreation of some totally lost cultivars.)
@Ethancdavenport Yep, farmers have been GMing Os for millennia.
@Ethancdavenport
problem is, what are they changing? I want public repos FIRST.
Quite sure we will just end up with more food, but lower nutritional quality if not just containing random shit to be safe from bugs which will be unregulated for years before causing damage, and then "oh we didn't know".
Also what are we trying to solve? We produce too much food only to waste it, both by discarding it or feeding it to animals.
@Ethancdavenport Even people getting squeamish over transgenic stuff bothers me. We're built to eat just about anything except what's specifically evolved to kill us. Our stomach acid doesn't give a single fuck if there's fish protein in our broccoli.
@floatoverblow
hmm tell that to an allergic.
@Ethancdavenport
@caffeine @Ethancdavenport Yeah, there's that. You get what I mean, though.
@floatoverblow
I get it. But I'm seriously worried about the fact this (what you can "import" in the food) is going to be poorly regulated for quite a long time.
Food production is extremely regulated for a reason, GMOs get a free pass to mix anything from any living being.
The science is good, the regulations are 0, the actors (big corporations that can afford it) are not trustable.
@Ethancdavenport while I agree with the sentiment, there *is* an important difference between GMO and selectively bred organisms: with GMO it's possible to make genetic modifications that would not have been possible by just selective breeding.
This creates a lot of possibilities, some of them potentially dangerous.
So, additional scrutiny and caution regarding GMO is, in fact, justified.
@Ethancdavenport THANK YOU. I am hoarse from screaming this from the rooftops. Glad to know I’m not screaming alone.
The science is sound that what... mutations are always harmless?
@Ethancdavenport @ajroach42 Totally - I'm not against GMO food, I'm against the pesticides that get sprayed on them. If GMO is 'more nutritious/tastier/easier to grow/better', great! If GMO is just 'doesn't die when we soak everything in Roundup', heck no, because it's the Roundup and similar I don't want anywhere near me.
I want... Organic *and* GMO? Yeah, I don't know either.