Essay by Eric Worrall
Political ecologists worrying that the EU is embracing genetic engineering to protect food supplies from global warming.
Genetically modified crops aren’t a solution to climate change, despite what the biotech industry says
Published: December 16, 2023 1.09am AEDT
Anneleen Kenis Lecturer in Political Ecology and Environmental Justice, Brunel University London
Barbara Van Dyck Research Fellow in Political Agroecology, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB)The European Commission launched a proposal in July 2023 to deregulate a large number of plants manufactured using new genetic techniques.
Despite extraordinary attempts by the Spanish presidency to force a breakthrough, EU members have not yet reached a consensus on this plan. But if the proposal were to be approved, these plants would be treated the same as conventional plants, eliminating the need for safety tests and the labelling of genetically modified food products.
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So, where has this proposal come from? Biotech firms seem to have succeeded in convincing the European Commission that we need new genetically modified crops to tackle climate change. They argue that by enhancing crops’ resistance to drought or improving their ability to capture carbon, climate change may no longer seem such a daunting challenge.
If this seems too good to be true, unfortunately, it is. Biotech firms have taken advantage of growing concerns about climate change to influence the European Commission with an orchestrated lobbying campaign.
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Although biotech firms are playing the climate card, only a small proportion of the genetically modified crops being developed deal with concerns related to the climate. In fact, the climate credentials of many of these crops are questionable. Modifications such as an increased shelf life, or being better able to withstand being transported are merely intended to smooth the operation of our unsustainable food system.
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Ultimately, people and the planet will pay the price when untested genetically modified crops penetrate our environments and the food chain.
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Read more: https://theconversation.com/genetically-modified-crops-arent-a-solution-to-climate-change-despite-what-the-biotech-industry-says-219637
The idea that GM is needed to protect crops in Europe from climate change is ridiculous. Crops are already grown in vastly different climates to Europe, and Europe itself embraces a significant range of climates. For example, if they need more drought resistant strains of wheat or whatever, they could buy some non-GM samples from Australia. Or perhaps from Spain.
Even stranger is the academic objection to GM as expressed in this article. They express concerns about monoculture crops and diversity loss creating a single point of failure, which seems fair enough, but they are also concerned GM might be used to increase food shelf life? Isn’t food waste one of the top issues greens usually complain about? Or do they want us to eat rotten food like our ancestors did, instead of genetically improved food which might retain its taste with less refrigeration and processing than traditional varieties?
There is no evidence after decades of use in the USA and elsewhere that GM is a significant health threat, so it is way past time the EU and other holdout nations retired their paranoia about GM. There is a low level risk which has to be tested with each modification, plant toxins are actually pretty toxic, so you need to make sure your new insect pest resistant wonder strain of tomatoes or whatever isn’t also poisonous to humans. However intensive cross breeding can also create similar issues – if you cross enough insect resistant strains, even without GM you run a risk of ending up with a crop variety which is too toxic for humans to eat. But decades of commercial use of GM supports the view that normal commercial testing and product liability law is enough to contain this risk, however the new commercial crop strain was created.
I wonder if the Greens participate in these projects….
Those greenies probably do not know, it takes 30 million acres in corn to displace 10% of the US gasoline. Without subsidies none of that would exist.
The US has 90 million acres in corn
The US has a total of about 325 million acres of cropland
The Green Blob proclaims they are in favor of The Science when dealing with climate change, and rejects it with genetic engineering.
Organic farming, biodynamic agriculture is as “scientific” as homeopathic medicine, i.e. a flat rejection of science.
Organic farming required cow-poo or similar.
What are they going to use when all the cows are gone because they produce methane, and everyone has become a vegan..
Night soil from vegans.
Sounds like a business opportunity for you, Tom. Me, I’m gonna start a scrap iron business in Ukraine.
I’d be very concerned with the illicit drug content of that vegan fertiliser.
“il·lic·it /i(l)ˈlisət/
adjective
forbidden by law, rules, or custom.”
Point stands, but they’ll void the concept “illicit”
They won’t just void the concept, they’ll void the drugs themselves.
I point that out fairly often…crickets
they reject Chemical farming science Tom
if youre american?
find some of Albrecht and Walter books and see what decent soils science was done by them decades ago
Most people who favor organic farming do not get the Penn and Teller routine of a petition to ban DiHydrogenMonOxide.
How is a longer growing season over a larger land area supposed to be a problem?
And why on earth do people persist in believing that there will be DRIER conditions on a warmer water world?
Deserts are hot because they are dry, not dry because they’re hot. If there’s any effect of ‘climate change’ that I’ve noticed going into my seventh decade of observation, it’s that we may getting a bit more rain.
New England is somewhat rainier and somewhat warmer. In past decades, whenever we had a drought- the idiots screamed climate change. They cried that the watersheds would dry up- and many reservoirs were low, like the huge Quabbin Res. that sends water to Bah-stin. Now that and all the other reservoirs are full. Now they’re screaming that the extra rain is a terrible thing- because a few towns had some dirt roads washed out- due to poor engineering. The modest increase in temperature and rain has been good for most gardens. Some farmer’s fields haven’t done so well- especially on the almost perfectly flat fields in the CT River Valley- that was once a huge glacial lake. Such flat land could probably benefit from improved engineering to get the water off. The life of a farmer is always tough- it’s either too hot, too cold, too wet or too dry- or, too many bugs and countless other problems that have been with us forever- nothing to do with CO2.
I can’t imagine why my comment that I’m responding to was moderated. No mention of U*Os or Hit*ler.
Respectfully suggest you remove those rose tinted shades, venture outside and engage A Farmer in conversation.
You will hear a completely different story
btw: deserts are as they are because oceans are full of water – you got Cause&Effect muddled up
That doesn’t even make sense.
You are adorable Peta.
Whenever I see your name, this is what I think of:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ze9huiQ6IEE
tsk tsk and its such a nice fun clip..but you didnt mean it that way didya
Why do you say that? I am quite fond of Peta and her large tracts.
Are you going to try and push the line that deserts were caused by fire, not a lack of water, again?
Don’t forget about soil erosion, Mark. After the sugar mongers burnt down the forests, all the loovely organics washed into the sea. Nothing but sand left behind.
Don’t be hoodwinked into believing nonsense about Hadley circulation and ITCZ. The band of deserts circling the earth is strictly a coincidence.
Everytime pollen is released by an anther and finds its way to another stigma means genetic modification has taken place. If you think all that does is to create poison, then the whole biosphere is already poisonous.
Just stop eating to spare yourself the grief of your beliefs. It is that simple.
There is a big difference between plant hybridisation, and genetic modification.
GM is altering the actual genetic structure at a base level.
The lines are more blurred than that. Random mutations and viral modification are natural forms of GM.
they are BUT theyre damned rare! irradiation to produce genetic mutations to avoid the lab based labelling is just another loophole they use. Id suggest natural viral mutation would be even rarer than naturally mutated by solar flares or soil radiation either
There is no evidence after decades of use in the USA and elsewhere that GM is a significant health threat,…..Nice straw man you put up there, pal! Need a match? Yours seem soaked.
A completely true statement that is completely relevant to the point being made, is now just a strawman?
yeah cos if you stop looking as soon as youve got a patent…just like the corona vax approved by EUse and then try and say it will be SEVENTY FIVE years to produce actual data…until you get sued by FOI and can magically produce 5k pages a month. and whats emerging is not so pretty already.
trials were one manufacturing method, what YOU got wasnt the same at all
Have you checked into the actual manufacturing of vaccines? They have NEVER been safe.
One rainy day, for a lark, I googled the ingredients of a common childhood vaccine. By that afternoon, I was the proud owner of a copy of this page, which I regularly update the link for, because they keep hiding it by changing the filename.
https://medcraveonline.com/IJVV/IJVV-04-00072.pdf
The covidiots just added a prion, or at least a prion factory; Baal Gates is in a hurry to achieve his World Piece, with 300 million deserving non-useless eaters. All buying their food from him’s pals, of course…
Look at the next to last page. Funding: None.
I wonder why?
Or shell out $4 trillion annually to your healthcare providers to repair the damage
Trouble is, they can’t. All you get is an ever increasingly expensive sticky plaster that covers up your ills and more oft than not, makes you worse
Where did he say that the only thing hybridization does is create poison. What he said is that it has a chance of producing poisons. Something that should be painfully obvious. Where do you think the poisons that some plants have came from in the first place?
the oter issue with hybrids is they tend to be a one hit wonder and wont breed true
a continual outlay for new seed, and removing the ability to save seed save money and grow seed thats acclimated to the area for decades and reliable
the oter issue with hybrids is they tend to be a one hit wonder and wont breed true
I am very curious how you reach that conclusion, given that the vast majority of vegetables grown by gardeners and small farmers are hybrids? Celebrity, Early Girl, Better Boy, some very popular tomatoes, are all hybrids. The Habanada, one of my most popular peppers, is a hybrid. It took 10 generations to stabilize it, but that’s how hybridization works.
And even if you only grow heirlooms, unless you limit yourself to a single strain, you can’t count on them breeding true if you grow them in close enough proximity (and “close enough” doesn’t mean “in the same field”)
inserting /changing genes is NOT the same in any way shape or form.
using the monmongrels line shows how well you were indoctrinated too.
tell me?
if a plants seed is SO NEW and UNIQUE its gets a patent as a new “invention” and PVR and the rest then apply..
then HOW on gods green earth is that magically coined phrase loved BY big Pharma of “subsantially equivalent applicable?
if its New and Novel then its NOT at all the same as a basic seed.
If you give me a Kia when I expected a Holden and you tell me its substantially equivalent…
I dont think I would believe that either!!
Of course it is. The only difference is the arrangement of the DNA. One is chemically engineered based on knowledge and one is chemically random based on chance. The end result is the same, a genetic modification.
The ONLY debate is whether humans should be involved in the activity or not. That is a moral question. Notice I said nothing about that.
There is NO solution to “climate change” because it’s NOT a problem.
Au contraire, Bob m’fellow! The solutions exist, now we have to find a crisis you’re willing to accept as justification for our inhumane solution…
In 2020 when COVID spread worldwide, human emissions of CO2 dropped by 6% according to the International Energy Agency, yet the rate of increase of CO2 didn’t change a bit.
It is nature that is causing the rise in CO2.
https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2020/global-energy-and-co2-emissions-in-2020
https://www.co2.earth/monthly-co2
Hey moderators, isn’t there some rule against posting the exact same post over and over and over again?
If not, there should be.
The elites and biotech want to have patents on GM crops and seeds while putting farmers using
unpatented seed out of business. If one controls the food supply, one controls the people.
Perfectly spot on – it’s about money and control
Don’t be so stupid. There is zero evidence for any of that. GM crops are an eminently sensible development
Who are the largest private owners of agriculture? I’ll start off with one, Bill Gates, you know the one of COVID vaccination fame.
GM crops are an eminently sensible development. Which, by the purest coincidence, can also be patented and such patents often have conditions prohibiting farmers from saving or selling seed from these crops so they are obliged to buy new seed every year. Not speculation nor science fiction – these patent conditions are already attached to gm seed use.
and you think that helps? anyone BUT the big aggro
the crops a dud(more often that you hear about) try n get recompense ,, dont hold your breath recent case they offered new seed but inputs and time lost income far exceed whats offered
you obviously arent in any way a farmer or associated with any
…and pretend they are doing it ‘for our own good’. of course.
They are doing it to make money. That it is also good us, is why we buy the stuff they are selling.
when the cost to buy and follow their very restrictive dictats on the growing season and control of price paid at silos handling etc WE are all paying far more than we should be be but hey the aggrocorps are raking it in
more fool US
Do you have any evidence that these evil companies are actually making overly large profits as a percentage? Or are you just one of those idiots who’s mind stops working whenever he sees large numbers?
The trite organic/socialist trope that buying hybrid seed is some kind of conspiracy, that farmers are too dumb to do math.
Socialists are convinced that everyone who isn’t a socialist is either evil or stupid.
wanting clean food and healthy soils is now socialist?
gee who knew?
Thinking that GMOs aren’t clean and that all big businesses are evil, is very much a socialist failing.
and forcing hybrid chem dependant crops on farmers is why so many are leaving and big aggri takes over huge swathes of land for more of their crap
Of course there is nobody forcing anything on anybody. That’s just the socialist trope that nobody would disagree with a socialist unless they are forced or bribed into it.
Don’t be so stupid. There is zero evidence for any of that. GM crops are an eminently sensible development.
THere is a class of people who are convinced that everything they don’t understand is a conspiracy against them.
youre assuming that we havent actually studied or read the data from the little you can get from corps on their gmo wunderseed.
bad mistake
Whether you have read it or not is debatable, that you have failed to understand it isn’t.
HOw does having a patent on one type of seed prevent others from using unpatented seeds?
because the big aggro Fharmers also now own almost every seed receival site silos and handling setup.(and mills as well) if you grow a NON GMO seed they either charge you a lot more for handling(ie keeping it safe from contamination BY their product-fat chance) and/or refuse to buy at all as its not what THEY want to sell.
it used to be GMO seed was charged extra to keep it from contaminating stable old seed types but when they got control that changed
So much paranoia, so little evidence.
The current pediatric “epidemic” in Northern China seems to be associated with vitamin A deficiency. GM Golden rice can prevent this in rice based societies, but the Greenies have prevented its use more or less world wide.
Vitamin A, like Vitamin C, turns up in all sorts of (unexpected) places
Unfortunately, a teeny weeny blot on the horzion called Soil Erosion means that the amount of those things in all other farmed produce has fallen off a cliff.
We know those things have gone, we see them floating away in every contemporary river/stream/creek whenever it rains, no matter how hard or how gently
People hate Golden Rice because they hate rice. period.
With good reason, ALL the folks in this world who depend on rice are diabetic
Even before most other trace elements vital to our immune systems are also vanishing for the same reason.
Notably Zinc, Selenium, Iron, Copper, Iodine and Magnesium
Everyone who depends on rice is diabetic? Do you have some data to back up that delusional claim?
A significant proportion of my generation grew up on mac’n’cheese most nights.
poor you. I didnt try that until a couple of yrs ago.
what a p*sspoor excuse for food!
Agreed. Elitist opposition to golden rice is destructive and ignorant.
no elites with an agenda pushing GMO onto 3rd world is destructive and ignorant of whats really missing in those places. water and seeds for better vegies.
and more gmo rice costing billions and decades to finally produce is better than growing carrots or other Vit A veg for the kids?
really?
its not just vit A they lack its enough decent food at all!!
Won’t higher CO2 levels cause most plants to become more drought resistant?
Without any GM?
Who knew?
Depends on what you mean about Genetic Modification. Humans have been messing with the natural selection of plants and animals, on every habited land mass, lkely for over 8000 years – and perhaps since before there were modern humans. In food crops, deliberate selection has always been aimed at improving yeild, increasing resistance to disease and predation, and at increasing the environmental range in which crops can be planted. In material and barrier plants, human selection has has always been to enhance the value of the particular plant. It is frequently demonstrated that there are genetic changes made to the offspring of many selections even after a single generation.
Could it be that political ecologists deny evolution?
Could it be that political ecology is, by definition, not a science but a field optimising social influence?
politic and big biz shouldnt BE controlling global food
Im apolitical for the most part but I want natural foods and clean soil
There is no evidence after decades of use in the USA and elsewhere that GM is a significant health threat, or at least nothing you plebes can prove without access to the scientific system that also refuses to supply proof of safety. GMO corn in Africa has exchanged their Bt genes with at least one species of Goosefoot, a common pottage herb. Please supply link to the research proving the safety of Bt toxin to the human lymphatic system. Please explain why the honchos at Monsatano had their GMO evangelist, Baal Gates say unto us: “We plan to eradicate all wild strains of crop plants”? You Keep your Frankenfood…far away!
Wanna recycle a few more conspiracy theories?
Give him a few minutes, the voices in his head are getting tired.
You really are a deluded fool. You’re putting up rediculous argument after ridiculous argument. Nothing you say has any scientific validity behind it. Did you get your info from a YouTube video made by a sweaty man with bad body odour in his filth ridden attic?
See my remark to MarkW, as silly as you…
Poor conspiracy nut job. Instead of actually defending his idiocy, which he can’t, he just lays on the insults even thicker.
The evidence of safety is extensive. The evidence of danger exists only in the fevered imaginations of conspiracy nut cases.
I’d love to see you produce a source for that Gates quote, but we both know you won’t.
Is that a Gates Quote? Definitely it should come with attribution if true.
It is the official Monsanto/ Syntegra policy. Why do you remember Baal Gates’ promises to save you from covidiocy, but you never remember any of the genocidal psychosis the man is known for?
Tuned into Baal’s wavelength? Totally heterodyned to his vibe? Complete sympathetic resonance, you and your messiah Baal Gates? You hear only the Master’s Voice?
What a buzz, eh?
Explains your conversational skills…
Hmm. As far as I know there are very few wild strains of crop plants. Most crop plants have been adapted quite a distance from their wild relatives over the centuries so that many are very different plants.
Not everyone is interested in food gardening, so I forgive you. May I ask you contemplate what that specific threat meant, in the light of your new knowledge, that there are species of crop plant out there, considered “wild”, and in urgent need of eradication?
A good primer on the subject would be checking in on the Mexican government’s programme of protecting their “wild varieties” from cross-pollination by the Yankee Frankenweeds.
Now let’s get on to the next post, I see some fool thinks growing corn for jet fuel will, what did the poor darling say? “…it will be good for the corn price”?
commercial fruit growers in Vic wanted roadside wild apple n peach trees killed as they might? contaminate or harbour pests.
those old adapted and tough as boots varieties are what will probably save the weaker cloned GM tampered commercial growers.
and ditto the call to remove thousands of “bad” wild olives all over sth aus…until the same olives were found resistant to disease the commercials die of, and BTW provided award winning oils beating the expensive weak grafted ones
true but slow and natural crosses etc which humans and animals also had time to adapt to not forced mutation/gene edits and whammo try this
Aw…Poopsie crawled out under Ma’s apron for some sunshine. Marky boy, please see the enclosed screenshot of the half-second DDG search for ” gmo cross polinate wild weed.” Half a second Marky, and a page full of evidence that genetics cross species boundaries.
Unfortunately, you (and every other here who tried to insult me) do not have the intellectual wherewithal to contemplate the significance of genetic pollution.
…and before someone tells me how Grampa also used GMO to breed better cattle (regular stupid argument by the Baal Gates disciples), go to heck and grow up, that was selective breeding, he didn’t have a turkey screw a sheep hoping for lighter wool….
Conspiracy nut jobs really do get their panties in a wad whenever the world refuses to validate whatever wacko thing they have decided to believe in today.
I’ve always known you were on the childish side, but you are going out of your way to prove just how juvenile, ill mannered and frankly stupid, you are.
Huh? I can’t trust American farmers but I should take news from/about Africa at face value?
What advice? I stated a fact regarding genomic pollution. Yours is one of the stupidest remarks I’ve seen outside Marky Wee’s.
yes amazing how denial of roundup affecting digestive process in human guts (not just bugs) was discovered to be wrong but handily kept quiet
Useless and expensive Mitigation all the way down! We can’t allow any successful Adaptation, or our theme is damaged. CAGW Rules! Remember, I was born sarcastic.
Wouldn’t be adapting plants to survive in a warmer world count as adaptation?
The Earth is still in a 2.56 million-year ice age. It is still quite cold. Over 20 percent of the land is frozen, either under glaciers or as permafrost. The old plant species have lived in much warmer environments than the present.
Do they need it? Most plants like more warmth, sunlight or CO2 and climate change is supposed to bring more rain which plants thrive on as well. Plants are likely to adapt better than most without any help at all.
Most plants have both a southern and a northern range, which I have always presumed to meant that there temperatures that were both too hot and too cold to be optimal for them.
The GM crops are amazing. That said it comes down to soil health which the
GM route fails to change. The “Soil Your Undies Challenge” opened my eyes.
Google it.
I have a neighbor who has gone somewhat organic and his yields are amazing,
he still buys/uses granular fertilizer but has combined the two. Big Ag is biased.
get him onto rock dust
within a year same spot in the garden the normal size spinach i grew went to 2ft long and lush no chem at all just the dust being incorporated BY happy biota and worms
My neighbor is of Dutch ancestry and comes from a long line of farmers.
They eat, sleep and breathe farming. I’ve known him since he was a young
boy. His idea of a vacation is going to a farming forum for a week. He has
a degree in engineering. He came back from one of those events with his dad a few years ago and put the new knowledge to work on a new piece of ground they bought next to me.
They started with a new center pivot irrigation
system and brought in a deep ripper and broke up the hard pan down about 30″.
Next they sprayed some very difficult weeds (leafy spurge) with glyphosate and
leveled it up and seeded some GMO malt barley. He got a nice crop of grain and with
the spraying several times a season cleaned up the weeds in 2-3 yrs.
He then planted a mixed forage stand and started to use it for a rest rotation cow pasture, they installed a watering system with the irrigation install and use electric tape fencing.
The next step was to stop early season calving in January and went to calving on pasture May/June. He calves unattended on pasture.
He has several hundred acres of hay ground nearby and
stacks the bales in a corner on this piece. He feeds these large round bales of hay in the winter by just setting the bales down in groups and not unrolling them, letting the cows do the work. It leaves a large amount of dung and hay that looks awful but after a year it’s
changes. They don’t till it. When they reseed they roundup and use a no till drill. They
mostly grow hay in sections on this piece but also grow some malt barley. He quit selling his calves and now grows them to market size and has his own processing plant and
sells direct to the consumer. Rumor has it he and some others are netting around
20% profit off their beef. This all started with a “Soil Your Undies Challenge”
This direct marketing trend is growing in this area. A larger ranch north of here has
been doing this for a while. They market in Colorado to high end restaurants.
You lost me at “Research Fellow in Political Agroecology”.
He invents arguments to sell to politicians on behalf of big agri-businesses?
The fear of GM is scientific nonsense.
True, additional genes are added to the crop plant. Those genes make useful ‘new’ proteins. But proteins are digested back to their constituent amino acids before absorption by the gut into the blood stream. only amino acids feed cells, and there is no immune response to them.
If that were not generally true, there would be an adverse immune response to all foods. It is basic biology.
Crohns and Celiac are uncommon immune response based intestinal diseases where the general protein truism doesn’t hold. In celiac, the gut lining responses adversely to wheat gluten before fully digested. In Crohns, the gut lining is damaged by an autoimmune response enabling protein ‘leakage’ resulting in immune response induced inflammation and pain.
“are uncommon immune response“s maybe they used to be uncommon. In everyone-needs-to-feel-special-and-different times, I feel like half the people I know claim some form of life-altering food intolerance. In earlier times they might have eaten fewer pancakes and snuck away with a tummy ache.
I get diverticulitis if I eat white bread, does that count?
i also suspected many claims too until I started eating a “healthy” grain bread..and developed bloating and uncomfy gut. stopped the bread and tummys fine. suspect GM canola seed in it might be a cause, and aus has started spraytopping our crops now as well.
half a mil for a harvester that cant handle chaff? so spend ever more on more roundup to drop the leaves.
and spraytopping wheat etc to speed up harvest leaving roundup on the husks that then get milled and shed the remnant glyphosate into the milled wheat, when its KNOWN to affect bug and human digestive processes mightn be the reason that for no apparent reason we seem to have thousands of celiac and IBS cases globally..and theres all the UN named other synergist chemicals that arent ON the labels at all (CIC waffle)
I raised a big family on an organic farm 40 to 55 yrs ago. My main objection during these early days of GMO was that vegetables didn’t taste right (cucumbers had a fish gene added and the taste was unpleasant) and tomatoes had hard green masses inside below the stems.
I didn’t particularly see danger to health of GMO. Foods are basically carbohydrates, proteins and lipids (mostly fats) and a suite of essential minerals and vitamins. They don’t use the wellknown toxic heavy metals in the process and they test for content of toxic organic substances. A bad-tasting cucumber, and a tomato with a hard “nut” you have to slice out probably is fairly nutritious. Since the early GMO days they have fixed these vegetables. At 86, I have eaten my share of GMO veggies along with good meat (with its delicious fat) and seem to be in good health.
Certainly we have brilliant sceptics fighting the Dark Side in Europe. But It seems to be largely a European thing to be fearful of GMO, Climate Change, free enterprise and the like. At least they seem more easily swayed onto such self destructive paths. Australia and New Zealand, perhaps from being so far away from Europe seem to look to The Old Country for their cues on these things, including the politics and they go gangbusters to out-do their inspirers.
Somehow, US Democrats got seduced by Europe’s incurable love affair with Marx. Democrat billionaires, though, cynically recognized the opportunity to capitalize on the Euro brain infarction to become trillionaires and rule the world.
We have been eating GM crops since the agrarian culture began. We have cross bred compatible crops for thousands of years to create better products.
We have been actively creating genetic ‘mutations’ for generations now by randomly irradiating seeds, discarding the innumerable failures and cultivating the best of the rest. It’s trial and error on an industrial scale, and it’s all completely legal.
But turn up with a process to improve accuracy dramatically and decrease the time frames and suddenly you’re Frankenstein.
Indeed, humans are all products of random genetic experimentation. We all produce innumerable genetic variations which can range from freckles to aggressive cancers.
We can all now be genetically screened to reduce the risk of couples with incompatible genes from having children handicapped at birth with appalling conditions.
But no, we are all forced to roll the dice of life and procreate on a completely random basis because God somehow wills it, yet he gave us the evolutionary skills to reduce the risk.
I know of no religion or even cult that forbids people from deciding whether or not to have children based on genetic tests.
Try asking a doctor to alter genes so you can have healthy babies. And lets face it, the Christian religion now celebrates homosexuality and transgenderism so citing religion as an example is a pretty bad argument.
Don’t confuse the Christian religion with the heretics who think they’re in charge Hotscot.
There is no technology that can alter the genes of a zygote.
What does the fact that a few branches of the Christian faith have decided to ignore the Bible so that they can be more popular have to do with your claims about religions rejecting a procedure that doesn’t exist?
That exists yet, or that you know of……
You brought religion into this, not me. I was just exposing what a weak argument it is. The Vatican and the Church of England are hardly “just a few branches of the Christian faith”.
The Vatican and the Church of England
are TWO branches of the Christian faith, despite their size in numbers. And a very large portion of their congregants disagree with those positions. Also, you didn’t say “branches” in your original statement.
Count me in that number. I utterly reject the heresy of antipope Bergolio
My original statement didn’t discuss the church. MarkW brought that into it.
Your original post brought in God, my response was that I know of no religion that agrees with your claim.
Such dodging and weaving is worthy of Stokes.
From your 12:42 at the head of this thread
Who brought religion into this???
I have seen no statement by any religion that argues against such a technology, even if it did exist.
If you can’t support your statements, maybe you shouldn’t be making them.
Some nominally Christian religious organizations accept one or both of those. Many, probably most, do not.
it will be interesting to see the progeny if any? of the gene altered kids
and yes we save mothers by caesarian who are so small hipped that theyd normally die and stop passing on their less than desirable traits to the gene pool. is that wise?
people with horrible natural genes who suffered through their own childhoods and yet they knowingly have kids and pass the same problems on again?
is that also wise or caring?
neighbours have strong heritable disease causing bone/ heart/gut/autoimmune/ and mental development issues, they had 3 kids who also have multiple kids and not ONE of the grandkids is normal or healthy, its cruel and yet they really dont care cos in Aus medicare pays millions over their lifetimes to keep them alive
Sounds to me like GMO products haven’t turned out to be the Frankenstein crop the green devils were hoping for. This is just testing the global warming waters before it goes out of favor. These people are disgusting.
when animal safety tests are 30 to 60 days? and no human testing was done?
when scientists asking for access to seeds for trials were denied?
well yes its a bit hard to provide research to the contrary. how convenient
CO2 is the main game. Fortunately the earth has dodged a bullet of CO2 drought and slowly rising CO2 will enable sufficient crop growth to feed a population doubling each 50 years.
Imaging if the earth has remained stuck in the CO2 drought of early last century.
The rate of growth in human population has dropped dramatically. Human population will peak and start falling in the next 10 to 20 years.
Yes, it’s amazing that a large majority seem unaware that we are close to the population we will be at after a brief spike and decline to a stable population. The theory that economic wellbeing brings decline in birthrates to a society is now well established.
Bangladesh has one of the fastest GDP growths in the world averaging 15% per annum over the past 2 decades and births per woman has declined from 7 children to just below 2 in that period. This is courtesy of a policy of building several large modern coal-fired power plants providing cheap electricity (with more on the drawing board).
Malthusians know this the last kick of the can. This is why the push to destroy economies, agriculture and impoverish the world. This is why the enormous pressure to legislate draconian measures to end fossil fuels, outlaw meat and control every aspect of life and choices. Already they are talking about climate change (when it’s really government policies) causing hunger and deaths.
The long-term climate the Earth is in is a 2.56 million-year ice age named the Quaternary Glaciation. The “climate scientists” only mean around 30 years when they speak of “climate.”
economic wellbeing or just access to birth control?
It is BOTH.
There is no study that shows that access to birth control makes a difference.
At one time the UN was on a big push to get birth control to poor women. It made no difference.
The birth rate of western populations and those of other wealthy nations like Japan and S. Korea has fallen dramatically over the last 50 years or so thanks to the wealth we enjoy now.
Developing nations like Africa have extremely high birth rates, which helps to counter the high levels of child mortality, nevertheless, their populations are growing.
The UN anticipates the global population will rise to around 9-10Bn by 2021 at which point they expect most developing nations to also be wealthy, at which point the global population goes into steep decline.
The birth rates in Africa are falling fast as well. They are nowhere near as high as they were 20 years ago.
Are you just trying to be awkward?
Birth rates in Africa are three times that of England which have also been falling rapidly.
You also make my argument for me. Africa is getting more prosperous and healthcare is improving so birth rates will fall as the country progresses.
and the falling fertility rate?
wonder why places that eat as they used to seem to breed just fine still?
And there’s the falling child mortality rate which is improving almost twice as quickly as the birth rate declines.
Maybe I’m missing a few facts here, but hasn’t the UN’s FAO plus the Chinese and Indian governments reported that agricultural output has tripled in the last half century, while wheat and rice production has reached record highs? If so, what’s the big issue with genetically modified crops? Aren’t we getting adequate yields from the traditional ones regardless of the alleged “climate crisis”?
Much of that increase has come from GMO crops.
no it has NOT india and africa are still protecting natural crops
The problem with people who grow non-GMO crops is this: They grow a harvest, then they keep the best seed to plant next year. As time goes by, every farmer improves the genetics of his crop (herd) by selecting for traits he finds useful.
Can you see the problems, Edward? Here are a few:
1) GMO seed deteriorates with every new generation, often (designed to be) infertile (go plant some commercial sunflower seeds, harvest them, and try plant those (empty) shells for next year). You have to buy new seed every year.
2) if you allow people to grow their own crops, you lose the tactical advantage of Food Security, in other words, how do you lock such food away from undeserving people, to keep it safe for the deserving?
3) People don’t like war. Banks do, weapon manufacturers do. Anal little psychopaths with delusions of adequacy like wars, but most people just really want it all to stop. So how shall we attain Baal Gates’ dream of only 300 million humans on earth? Softly and with ‘plausible deniability’ that’s how.
4) Roundup (and now
atraphine?) are vicious systemic poisons. An entire academia, the press, government and millions of gullible ‘consumers’ led by an “Independent Judiciary” are standing guard against any criticism of these wonderful agricultural advances. Gluten sensitivity, leaky gut syndrome, neuro-intestinal discommunication, chronic skin and kidney pollution, developmental abberrations… statistically correlate with the increased prevalence of Monsatano’s dreck, with a noticeable spike in diseases after monSatan started convincing farmers to spray Roundup on crops a few days before harvest. This will not make much money amongst honest farmers who don’t grow Roundup-ready Frankenweeds.GMO is not farming, it is biological warfare, and just like climastrology, the entire facade rests on arguments by authority, no criticism allowed.
You have to buy new seed every year.
I grow hot peppers. Not GMO – I don’t even know where to get GMO pepper seeds, or if they even exist.
I have to buy new seed every year. If not, I would pollute each strain and end up with things that are NOT habaneros, or serranos, or tepins.
Mechanisation, pesticides, fertilisers, motivation, government incentives etc.
Academia is not science … it is just publishing rubbish nodded through by their “peers” to ensure the continuance of their funding.
A minority of exceptionally smart players might be doing just fine while observers poke fun at an unexceptional majority.
What a weird headline. USA sports equivalent “Tom Brady not solution the to NHL hockey ratings.
Ok so I’m aware of the NHL and I know what hockey is (ice hockey presumably), I’m even aware of Wayne Gretzky, but I’m going to have to look up who on earth this ‘Tom Brady’ is, it’s one americanism too far.
So the science tells us GMOs are “safe and effective”?
Where have I heard that before?
Do you have any evidence that the science in this instance is wrong?
Or have you just decided that science is always wrong?
Proprietary papers published by corporate employees justifying their employer’s products, even though published in “respected peer review journals” are not necessarily ‘science’.
If your attention span was longer than your drive to insult grown-ups, you may have noticed the similarity in propaganda methods as applied during the covidiot scamdemic.
So Marky, are you the arbiter of what passes for science, or are you just yapping away, trying to find relevance in a world that obviously does not work the way your mommy told you.
Run along now, boy, go play outside with the other Followers of The Science.
Was it written on the side of a packet of condom’s?
Probably from Marky Wee-wee. He believes everything he likes to hear, then he comes into the lounge, counting adult’s teeth, interrupting them with the latest news from his TwatGramTokPost feed.
What is it with these conspiracy nut jobs. Not only are they incapable of making an intelligent statement, when someone dares to disagree with them, they immediately go for the juvenile insults. One might even think that they simply aren’t capable of doing better.
Have you stopped peeeing out your eyes yet, you little dork?
You will get as good as you give, you foulmouthed, boorish little troll. Now run off to Momma, she’s probably wondering if you’re wasting the Crisco again.
Why is it always the same with the eco-loons?
“Look, we can mitigate this specific consequence of climate change, such as it is, with GM crops!”
“No, no no. We must all go back to living in caves.”
“Look, we can solve some or even most of our energy needs with nuclear!”
“NO no no hell no. We must all go back to living in caves.”
“Look, we can mitigate against rising sea levels, such as they are, by building sea walls like Holland.”
“No no no. It’s back to the caves for everyone, because we’ve all been very naughty.”
ah yes so CAFO cruelty is fine when it provides misery for the animals excess drug use to combat diseases of stress and confinement, costs more to provide low quality corn gmo and other affecting guts of same animals and pollutes the soil and water around it. and yet grazing on grass providing soils with nutrients that can be tilled in and provide excellent next seasons pasture or crops isnt good?
toxic concentrated sludge to be disposed of is hardly economical or intelligent green use of efforts.
if that makes me a cave dweller than thats fine by me.
its fine to stuff 10k or more chooks in a fetid barn, again risking disease outbreaks as you now have all over eu and usa..but happy freeranging backyard fowl are a biohazard TO the inbred weak and genetically altered factory business
ah yeah right
gee my cave looks cosier by the minute!
the latest lunacy os feedlotting sheep in aus
you can smell it a mile away and the disease and ruined soils will be costly, ditto increased flystrike due to the massive crap buildup
when even the people doing CRISPR admit their alterations can and do “jump genes, and the original GMO hardly stayed put after the first yr
when farmers pay through the nose and sign contracts for gmo seed that requires ever increasing use of same company provided poisons and fertilisers to produce. when the chem/seed conglomerates tell you what grains you will grow because THEY also control the silos/storage
and when the soils are inert of all biota due to repeated roundup and other chemicals but its called green friendly pharming?
when a rising incidence of IBS and Crohns disease seems to be majority first world using these grains n chem.
it might be time to stop and think harder.
trust their science?
well NO because its , like warming, got a HUGE financial and control agenda.
and Tom Halla maybe you should READ about biodynamics a bit more,its actually rather a safe effective method of providing nutrients and keeping the soil biota booming
as is plain old rockdust
I thought we were only going to grow crops from now on to feed the insects, which, as a perfect food source, will have all the nutrients that the plebes need to work.
And gluten free!
Considering most horticulturists think of plant breeding as GMO I would say people need to stop freaking out about every little thing
If they did that, there would be nothing left to give their lives any meaning.
“Ultimately, people and the planet will pay the price when untested genetically modified crops penetrate our environments and the food chain”
Since the 1930’s irradiation and other techniques have been used to cause random genetic mutations in seedlings. The seedings were planted and beneficial mutations were preserved. Some 3000+ derived crops are currently in use without any pretesting. So these folks prefer randomly genetically modified crops to selectively modified