You don't really see random mutations that have occurred over millions of years and have been subject to natural selection as the same thing as human manipulation of genomes do you?
I see it as completely identical. Any change you could cause by genetic manipulation could, in principle, be the result (however unlikely) of random mutation. And if it were, there would simply be no question at all about exploiting that new trait in agriculture. So why should GM be subject to such an extremely different level of scrutiny, when the results are the same?
That is certainly not my view!
No, and I didn't mean to imply that it was. My apologies for the confusion - more than anything I was
agreeing with you, that the position of GMO opponents that it's inherently wrong to "monkey" with the genome is blinkered, and reflects an ignorance that the genomes of all species are inherently "self-monkeying."
In fact, with regard to these Roundup resistant weeds, I questioned whether we should be getting into an arms race with nature.
We're always in an arms race with nature - or, better perhaps, a Red Queen's Race. (You know, where one must run as fast as they possibly can merely to stand still.) The field environment is, by definition, one which is highly favorable to the cultivation of plants, and many plants try to take advantage. We call them "weeds" when they're not what we wish to have growing in our fields. Any attempt to keep weeds out is going to promote adaptation to weed control - in Mexico, where maize is still largely hand-cultivated and hand-weeded, teosinte has adapted to the practice by growing as tall as, and naturally
in rows like, the corn which it is a weed of.
Any effort to control pests is going to result in pests adapting to the control. Modern agronomists try to manage the evolution of resistance as much as possible, but frequently that requires farmers to farm in ways that depress their yields and therefore their profit. For instance, the planting of "refuge crop", non-resistance-trait crop that allows insect pests to take refuge and reduces the selection pressure that promotes insect resistance to the trait. And what many are not aware of is that the restrictive licensing regimes that people often criticize agrobusinesses like Monsanto for are a very important tool in making sure farmers don't screw the pooch for everybody by assuming that their neighbor will plant refuge, so they don't have to. It's a collective action problem, and restrictive licensing is one of the only tools Monsanto and other seed breeders have to make sure that farmers are doing their part to manage pest resistances.
If you know of evidence that specific GMOs have been fully and thoroughly tested and proved to be safe for human and animal consumption, then please present it.
Well, they've been in the food stream for 20 years. They've been subject to countless feeding studies for twice as long with no discernable difference from conventional hybrids. And again,
there's no proposed mechanism by which they cause harm. The claims of "harm" are all based on the precautionary principle - "we don't know that they don't cause harm" - but we have as much evidence of their safety as we do for anything else in the food stream Generally Regarded as Safe (GRAS), so I see no reason to conclude that they're
not GRAS.
In fact, the burden of proof should be on the genetic engineers to prove their products are safe, not on the opponents to prove there is a problem.
At this point, genetic engineers have met the burden of proof to have the current marketed GMO technologies be GRAS. Maybe 30 years ago, that was not the case, but it is now. It was the case before GMO products came to market, and that to me seems proper. At this point, I think the burden of evidence lies with those who want to overturn their GRAS status, and I've not seen anything that even moves the needle in that direction.
™ Version 4.2
(1)
