highflyer
Well-known member
- Jan 21, 2016
- 2,548
However...
GM foods are owned by big pharma/corporates which control their use. This means that growing food is no longer a self-sustaining industry. You cannot plant corn, reap, eat 90% and replant 10%. You have to pay the "copyright" at each stage, you have to use their pesticide, fertilizer, etc.
It takes away the control of the process from the grower and moves it to a supplier.
The suppliers are not doing all this research for altruistic reasons. They WANT to control the argriculture systems so that they can profit from the most essential of systems.
Whatever the long term impacts of tampering with ecosystems the way they do, there are very real impacts of tying, at times whole nations, to a particular "brand" of a food stuff.
It may be true that the actual corn/wheat/rice/rapeseed are sfe and undifferentiable from the "natural" version, but all scientists will tell you that tampering with ecosystems have always had some serious, unforeseen consequences that are impossible to reverse.
Precisely. Industry is desperate to pretend that the debate over GMO is just about human health (inadvertently helped by large numbers of naive consumers who have bought into those fears). This allows them to (correctly in my view) 'debunk' the fears about health and seemingly win the argument. When in reality the real concern is about whether or not we think it is Ok for massive global corporations to 'own' the primary means of production in our foodchain.It's part of a much bigger debate about of ownership and control of technology/IP etc which will dominate economic and political debate in future.