09-30-2012, 08:34 PM
quote:
Originally posted by Shekelpal
Whoever keeps bringing up that we have always had GMO's since the beginning of farming, clearly does not understand and has not researched what GMO's are and yet is defending them as harmless to people and the environment.
GMO's are almost 2 what 3 decades old. In the past, farmers developed, for instance, different varieties of apples by crossing seeds OF THE SAME SPECIES. There are 1000's of varieties of apples, the Peruvians grew hundreds of varieties of potatoes, their staple crop. This is a great agricultural system because some varieties may be more resistant to one thing and others more resistant to the next pest. If some were effected others survived. They had redundancy (which I think is a really good thing).
Monocrop planting is probably the reason for GMO's. The old wisdom of varieties fell by the wayside because of huge corporate farms.
GMO's use molecules from DIFFERENT species which are combined into one molecule to create a new set of genes and in some instances including genes allowing the crop to be more “roundup ready”, thereby making roundup ready plants, which do not use LESS roundup but are engineered to be able to take more. This produced a disaster in Argentina where roundup ready soybeans were planted for several years and eventually produced super weeds that roundup could not kill and the crop production had to be halted.
No one knows what GMOs will do to certain protein/gene combinations in the human body. When the human genome was “finished” scientists were fairly shocked that there were many more proteins identified than combined up with genes. The neat theory of one protein to one gene was not so neat anymore. They talked about many genes that were inactive and did not know what proteins triggered them to be active. Some are triggered in some illnesses and allergies, and there was concern about GMO's and the new proteins that may trigger now inactive genes from GMO foods. Any more studies you can point to? Don't they use viruses and bacteria to enable the DNA in GMO foods?
The crap about Hawaiian papaya farmers making good after GMO papaya, is exactly crap. Ringspot got replaced by black spot. A few people I know got out of farming papaya because it did not make any money. GMO's would not sell to Japan or lots of other places.
Farmers who go with GMO have to buy new GMO seed each year. They cannot develop the best variety seed for their crops, thereby stopping an intelligent way of farming. If their GMO seed pollutes a neighboring field, the people owning that field can be sued by Monsanto. Their once organic crop has been changed to GMO. They did not want it and are being sued for it. Monsanto provides corporate control of food sources. This is certainly not pono to me.
Monsanto as a company has caused damage. It used to make agent orange. It poisoned a whole town in, I think it was Alabama. Read accounts of how Monsanto threatened people in the EPA when the crooked testing results were submitted for their GMO's. under the Bush Administration.
Seriously, look into all this and you will be very shocked.
I am not an expert here, but as someone who is thoughtful and looks into things, I really believe this is a bad idea.
Thank you Shekelpal - there is certainly a disconnect with those who stick their head in the sand as to when "GMO" started. It's refreshing to see your commentary. This isn't just a little shift from our human heritage of "crossing seeds OF THE SAME SPECIES", it's a major departure!! Please, can I order some tofu with with an embedded grasshopper gene - it may help me finally dunk, or to form an exo-skeleton! Yes, that is progress!!