"Genetically-modified" food.

[gridlore]

OK, quick rant.

I am sick to death of people freaking over genetically modified food. It's not poisonous, it's not unnatural, it is in fact just a faster method of the breeding techniques that turned this into this.

GM foods are more resistant to disease and insects. They can be made to grow in soils that are normally to weak of alkaline to support food crops. Plants can be bred to resist herbicides. There are over 6 billion people on this planet. Personally, I think we need to find ways to feed them all.

This came from a post in Kiri's journal about Mother's Cookies being saved by Kellogg's. Rather than rejoice about the best cookies in the West being saved, people began whining. You do not whine about my access to Iced Oatmeal cookies being restored.

Comments

[biomekanic.livejournal.com]

Also the way people freak out over irradiated food.

I've heard a lot of "you don't know what will happen if you absorb those engineered genes!"

The stupid, it burns.

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

Personally, I think we need to find ways to feed them all.

GM food's not going to help places like Zimbabwe.

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Nope. Shooting Mugabe and his cronies is where you need to start there. But I was thinking of places like the Horn of Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and Western Australia.

[chaoswolf]

We had some really interesting topics about GMOs for our last critical thinking paper. Not the one for the final, but one of the major assignments. Lots of things to know, but Michael Pollan (food enthusiast who wrote our text book) says there has to be a national definition of it.

[jarlsberg71.livejournal.com]

I have no problem with GM Produce, but I draw the line with SOME GM animals. especially since they don't know the full ramifications on a living being and those that consume it rather than plants that are (let's face it less complex)

Reading some of the things that they do to veal cattle is bad, (and I just don't eat veal) but what they do to more than 60% of the rest of the beef industry's cattle, taking calves and super-growing them for food in 1/2-2/3 the time it takes if they were to eat grass alone. It's just not right to feed cows Wrigley's Spearmint Gum *in the wrapper* to cows, and yet they do. farmers can supplement a good portion of the cows diet with stale candy. I'm far from earthy crunchy, but that's just not right.

I'll be using my tax return to buy a heard of Herefords in the spring. :)