Taking sides on GMO's

Erik Van Lennep erik@tepuidesign.com
Fri, 14 Nov 2014 10:22:15 PST
Fascinating to watch the polarity build every time GMOs are brought up. It
gets political and emotional so quickly, and neither filters well for
logic.

I have a background in plant breeding,ecology, biology, sustainability and
policy, for what it's worth.

For me the largest problem around GMOs is political/economic, which comes
down to power. A very rich industry is buying politicians to write policy
supporting the same industry in evading due process and objective,
independent assessment. And it's no wonder. If they were made to adhere to
the same constraints put into place to protect the public in other
situations, they would have a much harder time making their profits. The
scale of this industry is so massive, and the *de-facto *monopolies they
have established (in direct contravention of laws prohibiting monopolies)
so powerful, that they now tell us what to eat.

And I am sorry for anyone who believes this is "conspiracy theory",but
that's a political / emotional response which would collapse if you just
did some independent research to verify it for yourselves. It's all out
there, but you won't find it in the mainstream media, because that was
bought long ago by members of the same 1% who are stockholders in the GMO
giants. You have to dig deeper, but that shouldn't be too much of a
challenge to bulb fanciers accustomed to searching out rare seeds.

The second issue is biological. It has to do with the vectors used to
insert the foreign genes. These are various specialized and modified virus
and bacteria which are adapted to transfer their own DNA into host
organisms. When it is swapped for the DNA of the developer's choice, they
carry out their job.

The problem is that neither the vectors nor the foreign DNA stays put. It
has been shown to migrate into other plants, and not only by pollen
transfer. In fact lateral transfer (between similar as well as unrelated
organisms) of DNA in Nature turns out to be more common that was once
believed. But under natural conditions organisms have more capable filters
to protect themselves. Again, if this sounds incredible to anyone, do your
homework and see for yourself.

So yes, GMO technology is massively different from what occurs in Nature,
as well as what occurs in more traditional hybridization and plant
selection in the field or under glass. And the wrong people have been left
in charge of the process, and are doing it for all the wrong reasons.

Erik



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