yet we don't mandate pesticide disclosure on the label.
Well you should.
My point is that VT won't pass that as it's well-established practice. Even though the science says that there's little threat from the vast majority of GMOs, they'd rather go after the new technology, than the known concern from the older tech.
"We don't do this good thing, therefore we shouldn't do that other good thing either."
Great rationale.
Catering to anti-science paranoids is not a good thing.
Bingo. GMOs sound scary and this is nothing but pointing justifiable anger at Monsanto (a legitimately sketchy company) I'm the direction of its product rather than its business practices.
I think this is a distinction without a difference. Its sketchy business practices are in support of its products. I don't quite know how you can argue if you don't trust Monsanto how you can believe that GMOs are safe when the research backing that largely comes from Monsanto scientists.
I'm also not specifically anti-GMO. I've written several times here that I think the evidence of both the alleged harm and the alleged benefits or GMOs are pretty thin.
This just strikes me, when it comes to GMO use in food, as a lot of money spent to produce very little of benefit to consumers or to society.
I think it's pretty clear the real reason Monsanto and other large agricultural companies like Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) are pursuing GMOs is, what the conspiracy theorists say it is: that they want to patent seeds so as to turn them into an ever increasing profit center and to have as few farmers as possible use saved seeds. These agriculture companies have the farmers they sell to sign contracts that stipulate that the farmers won't use any saved seeds but will buy new seeds every year.
Monsanto and maybe other large agricultural companies have done research into developing GMO 'terminator' seeds that don't reproduce. Monsanto denies they've ever sold terminator seeds commercially, but they don't deny doing research into them, and this is obviously a legitimate concern to those who are anti-GMO: what would happen if terminator seeds got into the wild and 'mixed' with natural seeds?. Given this obvious potential risk and that they deny they have any interest in commercializing these seeds, why did they do research into them in the first place?
Given all this, I don't know how anybody can be legitimately suspicious of big-business and still claim that anybody who is anti-GMO must also be anti-science.
Fair points, and I certainly don't trust Monsanto - I just think conclusions on this field are being reached too early. I'm just worried an interesting and revolutionary field got get choked off before greater benefits/risks are uncovered. The whole anti-GMO reaction seems more "It's bad because I think it's bad!" rather than anything more concrete. It seems awfully Luddite to me.
The other thing that grates at me is that the anti-GMO crusade is being waged in wealthy, well-fed Western nations from a position of privilege (it hurts me writing that haha). Poorer countries that may benefit from sturdier crops resistant to diseases and pests that, thankfully, we don't have in the West could help alleviate hunger and famines. I'm not saying they WILL, but I don't think it's right that we contribute to stigmatizing GMOs permanently until we give them a chance.
