Hellobee Boards

Well, in this day and age, I'm of the belief that nearly everything has been somewhat modified. That's why heirloom varieties exist. Foods are made to be resistant to certain diseases, they've been bred to not have any seeds, etc.

I don't believe all GM food is bad (although I'm uncomfortable with, say, GM animal sources), and I definitely don't think all organic food is worth the hype. Although I personally prefer my food to be as un-messed with as possible, I do think GM foods have a place in today's society. I think it's really fascinating that they can take certain foods and hybridize them or make them resistant to certain diseases. I science

It doesn't change my opinion that a journalist changed his opinion.

While I don't think GMOs are inherently dangerous they've been used for pesticide tolerance, which can increase the use of pesticides. Additionally, they're not efficient since they're not targeted to local environments. While seeds are normally selected for their local environments (soil, rain, temp) when grown year after year, when they come from a company they aren't individualized locally. This has had sad consequences especially in places like India where the GMO crops need a lot more water than what local seeds required, making smaller farm operations go out of business. This has also taken down variety and with variety you get more homogenous tastes, so for food lovers it's not a good thing either.

And GMOs are shrouded in secrecy. They need to allow independent research, which very oddly it is illegal to publish any data not approved by the companies.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=do-seed-companies-control-gm-crop-research

@littlebug: I had never heard of Mark Lynas before today and I've regularly read about and participated in research related to GMOs for over 10 years now. I don't think any one person spearheaded an anti-GMO movement, but if I had to give it a figurehead I'd say Percy Schmeiser.

There's scientists who are for GMOs and those who are against. I agree there's a lot of misinformation in the anti-GMO camp about technology, and I don't think most scientists that are against are against the technology but think there are real problems with how GMOs are being used, some of which I talked about in my last post.