Head To Head
Log In
Register
U-Know! Forum »
gm foods
Log In to post a reply

43 messages
Topic View: Flat | Threaded
Merrick
Merrick
2148 posts

Re: gm foods
Jul 27, 2004, 18:04
'we have 6 billion plus humans on this planet and we are not going to stop them having more babies .so we have to come up with some new ideas'

Once again you're presuming GM can provide massively improved yields. There is not evidence of this, and indeed it's not really intended to.

It's intended to make farming simpler for those who use chemicals. By making a crop resistant to a patented herbicide/pesticide it means the crop can be saturated in one go, rahter than have several smaller sprayings over the course of a growing season.

It increases reliance on chemical farming. Chemical farming has only been with us for a couple of generations, and it is not sustainable. Those chemicals will become prohibitively expensive for most farmers within our lifetimes.

It's another example of our generation fucking over those to come, it's like saying we're rich because we're living the high life on loans and credit cards that'll be paid back by our children.

In the meantime, the use of GM and associated chemicals fucks up the soil quality and the biodiversity of the area around it. Pesticide monoculture farming not only kills the bugs that attack the crop, but the spiders and birds that live on the bugs - the less effective but perennial and sustainable pest control methods.

So, once the chemical farming becomes untenable, our ability to use organic methods has been fucked up by the chemicals killing off the wildlife.

We do indeed need new ideas - or rather old ones. For most of the world, small-scale farms growing a variety of complementary crops are far more productive than chemical agriculture.

Wheat that grows in sand is simply not going to happen without the nutrients coming from somewhere - that would mean a shitload of fertilisers, which is impossible to supply to poor farmers or on a mass scale.

If we want people to be able to feed themselves in future then we've got to establish sustainable good-yield farming. GM is not that thing.

GM is about getting corporate control of the last great unpatented market - the food we eat. They are not interested in 'feeding the world', they're interested in providing the wealthier farmers with easy crops so it makes them money.

'where is the proof that gm foods are dangerous?'

GM plants are designed to be resistant to herbicides, that's their whole point. Released into the open they will replicate, mutate, and cross-breed with other plants. There is the very real possibility of it swiftly evolving into something that is virilant and prolific.

Check what's happening to the British countryside with Japanese knotweed and to the woodlands with rhododenrons, both introduced species doing rather to well and killing off the diversity of life here. Now imagine something designed to be resistant to herbicides doing the same thing to arable land.

By the time you've got the proof for that, it's too late.

In terms of human health, it seems less dangerous but the fact remains that these are entirely new organisms. Crossing a vegetable with a virus at a gentic level and then metabolising it into your body?

And the thing is, it's not necessary. It does not provide more food, it just provides easier chemical farming and royalties for biotech firms.
Topic Outline:

U-Know! Forum Index