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News flash : “nonGMO” crops are already genetically modified from wild plants, just through a more painstaking process of cross breeding and artificial selectio
by kobeya 9y ago
News flash : “nonGMO” crops are already genetically modified from wild plants, just through a more painstaking process of cross breeding and artificial selection over random mutations. This is already happening and would happen anyway.
- herrity4 9y agoAll genetic modifications aren't created equal. If you can get to it from cross breeding, it's probably not that foreign a trait, but if you to say splice pea DNA with mesquito DNA or something, that result could have consequences consumers would rather not worry about when buying produce. I'm not saying it's a fine dilineation or anything and I'm not anti science, but there are more nuanced regulations in food labeling today than GMO nonGMO.
- kobeya 9y agoWith the availability of genetic sequencing you can get from anywhere A -> B in the reachable genetic search space through selective breeding, and still qualify for regulatory purposes as non-GMO. You can get out of that loophole by prohibiting the non-GMO label for anything that was bred based on direct genome sequencing, but that's a game a whack-a-mole as I come up with another scheme. And at the end, what's the point? Regulate what you actually care about in the food, not what process was taken to get there.