Neonanocyborgasm
Deity
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2004
- Messages
- 4,695
You're probably right, the claimed threats to biodiversity are probably as crazy as the hypothetical climate changes paranoid people are raging over.
There is a difference. Climate change is not merely a hypothetical but has already happened, and has been demonstrated to happen.
And when you bought the pure stuff - rice, corn, and so forth - it was (supposed) to be just that. Not anymore. GMO will if used universally infect all corn, rice, etc. So again, the circumstances justify special caution.
Crops, genetically modified or not, cannot "infect" other crops.
And there is no such thing as "pure" crops. We have been messing with crops for 8000 years since the invention of agriculture. The crops we harvest today usually bear little resemblance to their wild ancestors. This has not resulted in the destruction of Earth's ecosphere. We have done the same to animals. Goats, sheep, cows, chickens, and even dogs and cats bear only minimal resemblance to their wild ancestors. Gene modification is just another tool in the agriculture industry to produce better crops, no worse than selective breeding or planting, using mouldboard plows, or grafting tree branches. All of these practice are completely unnatural, yet somehow GMO gets special attention as being an environmental hazard.
Btw, I STILL have not heard of a safety risk to the use of genetically modified crops. What exactly is the risk? That corn may grow on mountaintops?