3 ms·
Don't feed the trolls. They understand the difference between baked bread and CRISPR editing. They're just trying to get a rise.
by coding123 6y ago
Don't feed the trolls. They understand the difference between baked bread and CRISPR editing. They're just trying to get a rise.
- aidenn0 6y agoI'm pretty sure there is no CRISPR modified wheat being sold in the US. The wheat from antiquity does not even remotely resemble wild grasses that it descends from and even less so today. Maize has even been intentionally hyrbidized for almost a century; I'm less familiar with wheat from that sense. Yes, tools like CRISPR are game changers and should be approached with caution (and we almost certainly aren't going to do so, at least for animal feed-stock crops), but GMO labeled food is very broad brush with often arbitrary distinctions (much like the "artificial" vs "natural" labeling rules)
- jcranmer 6y agoPeople underestimate the capabilities of farmers, especially those that existed millennia before anyone could write. But look at a picture of teosinte, and compare it to maize. Maize is emphatically not a natural plant; why should a plant grow appendages it's not strong enough to support? That shift in plant structure occurred over perhaps one or two millennia, and would have required extremely active selective breeding to occur. Start poking at our plants' genomes, and the evidence for calling it genetic engineering is somewhat clearer. Our cereal crops basically suffer from plant equivalents to genetic conditions such as Down Syndrome. They shouldn't be able to survive, and indeed generally cannot survive without active management by humans. And being unable to survive without human intervention is common enough that we've given it a special name: domestication.