Is this what you guys think it means when GMO comes up in conversation?
Do you know what else is a GMO?
Dogs. Literally ALL dogs have had their genetics modified to make them more docile, loyal, trusting, energetic, obedient ect.
Ears of corn used to be the size of your thumb. Through selective ‘breeding’ we chose the strains of corn that were the biggest, fastest growing, most resilient ect. Ect.
THAT is a GMO. I don’t know where the idea that genetic modification meant they’re injecting your food stuffs with chemicals to change its DNA. That’s not how it works.
However, they ARE spraying your veggies with pesticides and that is something you should be worried about.
Companies like Monsanto are evil. But not because they are breeding crops to feed more people. But because they’re monopolizing the farming market, sueing farmers who share a geographic area and have some of the same strains of crops in their fields because of unavoidable cross pollination and lying about their business practices.
This is Normal Borlaug. In 1942 he received his Ph. D in plant pathology and genetics. In Mexico, he developed semi-dwarf, high-yield, disease resistant varieties of wheat. A genetically modified food. He introduced these to Mexico, Pakistan and India, resulting in double the wheat yields in a 5 year span. In 1970, Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for saving one billion lives from starvation, and contributing to world peace through increasing the world food supply.
Genetically modified food is great.
This, a thousand fucking times this. Privilege is spouting and spreading pseudo-science bullshit you saw on your Facebook feed or on Twitter because unlike people in drought and famine prone areas of the world, you have the option to do just that. Those other parts of the world that don’t have the benefit of a food surplus and can’t pick and choose what they eat depend on GMOs to not die of starvation or watch their children waste away.
I despise Monsanto as much as the next person and if they ever go out of business, I’ll be the first to dance a jig, but condemning GMOs just because one megacorp is a pile of shitbags is beyond idiotic. If scientists can create new strains of seeds that can withstand disease, pests, all while yielding more foodstuff, then we should be throwing our support behind them.
Also, “They are feeding us chemicals!” is a fundamentally ridiculous statement.
Why?
As a chemist, I’m gonna let you in on a little secret:
Everything is chemicals.
GMO scaremongering is second only to vaccine scaremongering
I always laugh when people say “there are chemicals in my food!” because buddy…. you are chemicals. People are literally made of organic compounds, which are… chemical compounds with carbon in ‘em. YOU ARE THE CHEMICALS
Chemicals in my me?
It’s more likely than you think
I for one welcome multi crop per season, drought resistant staple crops like rice with vitamin A and iron, so people don’t starve, go blind or get anemic.
Cereal with vitamins A, D and C (aka GMOs) so kids don’t suffer scurvy as they started to suffer in Orange County, CA because they didn’t consume enough vitamin C.
Kids (particularly young kids) of vegetarians are at risk of kwashikor and anemia from not consuming enough protein and iron without GMOs, or do you want to try feeding a kid who likes neither peanuts or spanish either of those things?
Monsanto is a bad business model with terminator plants (plants that don’t reseed) and umteen thousand patents and Bayer-Monsanto is a nightmare already happening and we should all fight it and anything else that uses the same bad business model. However that doesn’t mean the GMOs themselves are bad.
Potential uses for GMOs that woud be super helpful. Flood and drought resistant rice and wheat. Plant in Bangladesh and Pakistan, two countries that experience this bi-extreme problem every year.
Multi crop quinoa – grow enough so developed countries aren’t artificially raising the price higher than Bolivians who eatthis as their staple crop can afford.
Low water rooibos tea. South Africa, where rooibos tea is grown, is now experiencing an extreme drought. Given the drought, many poorer people might now be turning to less than clean sources where they can find water and given the lack of tea, might just drink it rather than boiling it first (a major plus of tea).
Low water wheat and other crops. It would be awesome if we could turn the growing deserts into food growing deserts, particularly as climate change continues to advance the areas that get little water. That way Kenya and Somalia could have food despite more severe droughts and that way people can start growing crops in deserts.
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