Hi ,in Italy this week is return in the media circuit the news of OGM ,the issue is :Italy out to OGM (OGM free)because the products natural is best for health of man.... I thing at the conditions of farming of start 1900,if the man not have a new idea for farming we don't have food for every man ;today the new idea is OGM ?or not ?why? Your opinions is important for me !Please reply your opinions !alex
I believe that is GMO in Italian. I am not against careful ethical research and development of genetically modified organisms, but I don't really trust corporations and other business interests to do this ethically. It is hard to be ethical, when the basic motivation is financial profit. Some wonderful plants could come from this type of research. It is a sort of speeded up evolution. That is, humans are creating and selecting the new variants of genetic crossing instead of nature and producing possibilities that never would have occurred naturally. But if the development of new organisms is not done carefully and they are not thoroughly researched before being released into the environment, horrible disaster could result--think super strong disease resistant invasives. Obviously we have already passed this point. As far as the food produced from such plants, the normal testing that would be done on a newly discovered plant food source should work as well on artificially created plants. I am really more concerned with genetic research being done on microbes and viruses, especially pathogenic ones. Like all things humans develop there seems to be benefit and hazard. With the intense loss of species occurring across the planet at the moment and the threat to agriculture from global warming, it may very well be that the human species will need to carry on this research and development in order to feed itself.
That seems reasoned, Eric. I do not want to become dogmatic for or against genetically modified organisms, but there are concerns. One thing about GMOs: a key component is to have a marker so you can ID your product. That way the corporation marketing a GMO product can come after those people planting seed pollinated by neighboring GMO crops and force them to pay royalties. Monsanto has done this with corn and won in court. It seems to me if the corporation is going to charge the neighboring farmer for GMO royalties, then the corporation should keep its pollen to its own field. It is also possible (likely?) that crops only modified by having a genetic marker implanted will be marketed. The marker is what the company is charging for -- the "improvements" are only marketing, which is to say if you perceive there to be more value you will pay for it. We might one day buy a brandywine tomato under a Super-Tastier GMO Tomato brand. Next round: crops genetically modified to withstand Round Up applications, so the weeds can be killed and not the crop. That seems like a dangerous genie to let out of the bottle.
Ditto to the above. GM organisms themselves are largely neutral, but why people develop them is very often not. One of the ones I like the idea of least is GM crops developed for herbicide tolerance, thereby enabling growers to increase herbicide use to completely eliminate all competing natural plant life in a region without harming the crop. Extremely destructive of biodiversity, since not only are all native plants destroyed, so is all of the other life (insects, birds, etc) dependent on them. It's actually almost that bad in most of Britain already even with conventional intensive farming, though because the crop is not completely herbicide-resistant, it does mean a few other plants do manage to survive in small numbers.
one reason of italian media is "no fish gene in the tomato!But i eat tomato with pestcide and water contamined! For me" not and stop" is not good idea ,my idea is one large experimental for many years on field ,yes the problem is pollen that by the wind arrived in every field , but nuclear energy too have similar problems! remember you Chernobil ?(ex URSS) Ucraina after this disaster the nuclear test continued! Murroroa (France test)teaching!!
Every organization is motivated by financial profit, even if it does not accumulate a profit on paper. Profit in itself is not the issue, but rather what it represents: the capacity to grow, and gain influence, power, manpower, annual budget, jurisdiction, and ultimately a fiefdom of some sort. All organizations have but one primal urge, and that is to grow. You shouldn't trust ANY organization to put ethical, humane, or other altruistic interests nor even its purported core mission ahead of its own. As someone pointed out to me the other day, the AIDS industry has no motivation to actually find a cure for AIDS. Empire-building is a fundamental human impulse, one that probably couldn't be bred out of us by the most advanced genetic manipulation techniques!
I avoid genetically modified food if possible, and don't like the idea of using it in plants for any reason. I should add that I don't imagine that it is possible to avoid it, at least not in Canada, and at least one of our farmers have found out it isn't even possible to avoid growing it. I don't like the idea of genetic modification of ornamental plants either, should that be in the offing. I find I already have a bad reaction to patented plants. I think Eric makes an excellent point though that meddling with plants may turn out to be insignificant compared to messing with bacteria or viruses.
