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> There is a unknown side to GMO, perhaps it can lead to super species that we can never get rid of in the future and will destroy bio diversity. I can see how
by sampo 10y ago
> There is a unknown side to GMO, perhaps it can lead to super species that we can never get rid of in the future and will destroy bio diversity.
I can see how this kind of fear stems from watching scifi-movies, but it is totally unfounded.
When we breed super-productive or super-muscular beef cattle, for example the Belgian Blue [1], absolutely no one is afraid that these bodybuilder-looking muscular cows could survive alone in the wild, kicking the ass of natural populations of deer, elk, wolf and bear, and take over the ecosystems.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=Belgian+Blue&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=Belgian+Blue&tbm=isch
Yet somehow, when breeding high-yield crops, people mistake the high productivity in the controlled, pest-controlled, fertilized, irrigated farming conditions to some kind of general life vigor, ready to spread outside the farm and outcompete the natural vegetation.
Nothing could be further from the truth. No crop plant, GMO or non-GMO, could ever stand a change outside the farmer's care.
- mafuy 10y agoCattle is easy to control. It does not pollinate across a fence. If it happens to escape, it is relatively easy to find it. Neither of these points apply to plants. So I think that part your comparison is entirely invalid.
- sampo 10y ago> It does not pollinate across a fence. There is no wild corn or wild soybean or wild potatoes in the forest or meadow across the fence which the farmer's crop could pollinate. Also it has never happened that a potato (or any crop plant) escaped into the wild and survived there.
- partiallypro 10y agoSome GMO plants don't produce spores or seeds at all for this very reason, and because Monsanto, etc have an incentive to keep their IP on a tight leech.