by Elsewhere 60 Replies latest social current
It's amazing... a lot of people are willing to stop the flow of food, so long as the only people who will starve are the little brown people in third world countries. They've never enjoyed real food, modern medicine or modern luxuries anyway... so it's not like they are missing anything.
Ok, let's, using artificial means such as petroleum based fertilizers and pesticides and genetically engineered crops, pump up the world human population to 20 billion or so. Yah, that's a good idea.
ok i think there are several issues here...
a) genetic food is as harmless or dangerous as any other crop for humans. the claim that this is dangerous for people is rediculous. the panic campain was started in europe by the ecology parties and several environmental orgs. in oder to scare people into voting for them and making donations.
b) genetic food has so far certainly not rescued millions or billions of people. this claim is as rediculous as the first. many modifications serve for instance to make the plants resistant against a specific herbizide. oddly enough the herbizide and the resistant plant are both sold by the same company. monsanto et al. the poor countries that would need crops that can grow faster etc. cannot afford them anyway.
c) the modified crops will make farmers completely dependant on the large pharma corporations which produce these crops. farmers will have to buy the seeds each year from the company.
d) cross pollination can and does cause the modified plants to mix with other plants. this could have in principle serious ecological consequences. for instance to give an exaggerated example if crop A is made resistant against beatle X but the resistance gene gets transferred to all other plants that beatle X can eat than beatle X will die out. this in turn can cause many other species to die out...
but overall the issue is hugely blown out of proportion imo.
c) the modified crops will make farmers completely dependant on the large pharma corporations which produce these crops. farmers will have to buy the seeds each year from the company.
I dont know the specifics of this case. Nor do I care one way or another about GM foods. In fact I would eat them just as well as I would eat Ford or Chrysler Foods (wink). However the one thing I do find disturbing is that just mentioned. Some foods are being purposefully modified to prevent germenation without a specific chemical or purchase of new seeds the following year. This forces the farmer every year to buy new seeds. While that in itself is not to disturbing, assuming there is a higher value in those seeds, such as high crop yields, or lack of need for pesticides...there have been concerns that those plants would cross breed with other plants, rendering those plants unable to produce in future generations.
Ima not gonna tie myself to a dock over the issue though. Just a curiousity.
hyghlandyr,
there have been concerns that those plants would cross breed with other plants, rendering those plants unable to produce in future generations.
do you by chance have a link to this?
on a first look this seems rather unlikely to me since infertile plants would not spread any further and thus not compete with the wild type species. (but in bio there is always something that one can overlook )
I think that picture Elsewhere posted is one of the most complimentary ones of Allen Greenpeace to date!
mac.....a little fluctuation in the interest rate never done killed nobody class
Mac...too funny.
| do you not know that the majority of the British population is dead against GM foods, | ||
| When I read this I thought why? . Where is the logic in being against GM foods -nothing wrong with them and as another poster has pointed out it is only like domesticating otehr species --it is still genetic engineering - then I read this | ||
| Re: How Greepeace loves to kill millions of innocent people... | May 9, 2004 | |
| Pius are you really trying to tell me that to save all these lives is a good thing? Are we not over populated enough? Is it not about time that in order for the human race to survive we need to get rid of a billion or so, whomsoever that may be? Think logically, not emotionally. Be realistic about this, not idealistic. And then I had a big smile on my face and thought yes -- how true - we actually should not do anymore GMfoods and let a few million starve to death - we are over populated - and let Greenpeace take all the blame | ||
I do seem to remember reading in the WTBTS publications that they believe the governments of 3rd world nations and such are taking the food and selling it to buy weapons instead of feeding people anyway much like N. korea and Ethiopia . It's pretty apparent that people are determined to kill each other off one way or the other.
One more aspect of dependancy is that the U.S. has warehoused tonnes of the breeder seeds from the original indigenous crops in the lands where GM goes to. As GMs are pushed, the local govts. (eg Thailand) make GM compulsory even for peasant subsistence farmers who were accustomed to maintaining multiple complementary species. As they are increasingly compelled to rely upon one crop, their indigenous species die out, leaving the U.S. with the original genetic capital that enabled the GM. Also, while the GM have been so far safe for consumption, the pesticides that are absolutely required to make the GM grow are not subject to the same rigorous quality control, and pesticide-related diseases are not unheard of. One other thing related to whoever said the third world could lose a few people: I'm the opposite of a bleeding heart, but it has to be acknowledged that the third world/"developing world" would not be so populous without the investment capital that the first world/"developed world" had to pour into them to keep smoothly running the colonial legacy economic machine of extracting their raw materials which enables as many of "us" to sit in front of a monitor. No overpopulated "third world", no computer for "everyone" (in the first world). However "simply" "overpopulation" might be brought under control in the third world, it doesn't shine a candle to the consumption of the first world. And the most immediately interesting question on consuption is oil, which enables United States food subsidies. (There are issues other than colonial legacy, including rights of women, but that's a different topic.)
So it's a conspiracy? I love it.
And subsidies are the answer? Socialism reigns!
We have been genetically modifying foods for hundreds of years through selective breeding of plants. Now we do it by modifying DNA. This doesn't turn food into poison.
If GE foods help feed billions of people, it should be done.
Penn & Teller did a great Bullshit episode on this topic.
