3 ms·

Sure, but on an evolutionary scale, humans and other dependent species have time to catch up to the changes. That's not true for changes wrought from GM.

• linkregister 10y ago
  Plant breeding has brought many adverse emergent properties. It involves selecting for a few alleles while having no way to prevent unintended alleles from being bred in. Introduction of invasive species have permanently degraded many ecosystems. The current method of mass-farming agriculture spreads purpose-bred plants around the world. The current method of agriculture is also high risk.
• pluma 10y ago
  You can't speak of an "evolutionary scale" when there are literally intelligent designers at work, carefully cross-breeding each generation for optimal results. It's a slower process than direct genetic manipulation, sure, but "evolutionary" implies thousands or even millions of years when the reality is closer to decades.
  • Bartweiss 10y ago
    This is true enough, but even decades is a far different time frame from the average GMO. 30 years of directed breeding generally means a one-off cultivar being bred into something new and then popularized. The current GMO cycle involves a 1-5 years of test plantings, followed by national distribution. So agreed, the evolutionary scale isn't applicable here, but it's still worth noting that GMOs represent a substantial acceleration from the directed-breeding scale.
    • pluma 10y ago
      Except "atomic gardening" is considered "organic", so triggering random mutations and seeing what works is much faster than "30 years of directed breeding". https://mvd.iaea.org https://mvd.iaea.org