Isn't part of the benefit of GMO foods that you can make them tolerant to various pesticides? There are other ways to use GMO to make more productive crops, but my understanding was that one of the big reasons is that you can make crops that ignore pesticides that wipe out existing pests.

There's a lot of reasons. That is one large one, but you can also integrate natural pesticides into the genome of the plant, ie. Bt corn.

Which could be equally dangerous as external pesticides like glyphosate.

Every single plant and fungi in the world contains natural pesticides to fend off pests and pathogens. E.g. caffeine, nicotine.

What's your source that's an outrageous claim

More self-evident than outrageous but alright.

You're right, but I think what they are saying is that they would like to see new GMO crops developed for consumer benefit instead of herbicide resistance.

Doesn’t sound too profitable

... to pesticide manufacturers, no. But say, a GM tomato[1] that had added nutrients seems like it could make someone rich? I'd be happy to throw a few in my salad.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_tomato#Im...

Focused on the wrong target.

> Isn't part of the benefit of GMO foods that you can make them tolerant to various pesticides?

and diseases and parasites and weather etc etc

um... how do you think plants become tolerant to diseases and parasites? pesticides

and altering their DNA

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5422515/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5488630/

I'm not sure the relevance of this fact to the GP's request?

I wish they would look at flavor, texture and other things that matter when doing GMOs...

That would be counterproductive. GMO crops have a lower yield than non-GMOs without the application of pesticides.

https://geneticliteracyproject.org/gmo-faq/can-genetic-engin...

The linked article says that GMO crops produce higher yields and use less pesticides than non-GMO crops.