Re:Chipotle Says Adios to GMOs, as Food Industry Strips Away...
by balabaster on Tuesday April 28, 2015 @01:39PM
(#9453987)
That may be so, but GMO crops never became the huge issue it is today until the mental (and emotional) link was made between chemicals pumped into our crops and our health. GMOs for better or worse have allowed one or more of these to proliferate. So for all the other good things it may have done that are unlinked to these chemicals, that may be totally safe for humans, GMOs have been villainized because in their minds, GMOs have allowed these chemicals to interfere with our health and now people are on a witch hunt. They've found someone to blame and they're on their way with their pitchforks. When they've killed GMOs off and there are still problems, they'll move on with their pitchforks to the next point of blame.
Re:Chipotle Says Adios to GMOs, as Food Industry Strips Away...
by baldfat on Tuesday April 28, 2015 @02:30PM
(#9454285)
Our food pre-GMO Round Up resistant seed was sprayed with herbicides already, just not Round Up. They would have to spray for specific weeds and do multiple of sprays and mix these herbicides together. To argument is that now that it is one herbicide it is actually less chemicals and less mixing of different chemicals to keep out weeds.
GMO that are naturally resistant to insects will also help lower the amount of pesticides that are used.
In the 1990s I had friends that were wheat farmers and I would fly out there and work for 2 weeks for a vacation. It was fun but I also would go out and inspect the fields to see if there were bugs or weeds (Wild Wheat and mustard was the worst) to see if something had to be done to say the crops. My friend always was worried about losing his crops to something and sadly he did sometimes lose whole square miles of crops.
No. Genetic modification for one particular purpose (herbicide resistance, the best example of which is Monsanto's RoundUp Ready) might increase the use of the particular herbicides (e.g., RoundUp) and might have some connection to levels of them in food we eat, but pesticides are a different issue, and, in any case, modification for purposes related to herbicide and pesticide use aren't the only genetic modifications.
So, insofar as there is a legitimate reason to be concerned about the use RoundUp Ready crops and other herbicide-resistant genetic modifications, it makes as much sense to generalize from that to generalized opposition to GMOs as it makes sense to generalize from legitimate reasons to be concerned about the use of software by the NSA to implement mass surveillance systems to generalized opposition to software.