Now, to clear up a few things. You say that StarLink had a "potential to trigger allergic reactions," but in the end, it was proved there were no allergic reactions.
Sorry, Schiller, but you cannot prove a negative. Right off you're spouting nonsense.
You wonder if the "modifications make the food more nutritious," and they do. They also reduce carcinogens in food.
Oh, and how is that? What about making crops more durable against aggressive chemical toxins makes them more nutritious?
Do the modifications make the food more tasty? Not, as you say, "Quite the opposite." The only consumers who get a chance to taste "GM food" are those who eat GM sweet corn. Otherwise, it's all just an ingredient, and the result is up to the cook. But GM sweet corn reduces pesticide spraying by half.
Actually, quite a bit more than corn is genetically modified -- as you point out yourself lower in your own comment. (C'mon, now, try to be consistent!)
Pig genes in tomatoes to make them more durable in weather is one thing and have a longer shelf life. More subtle modifications to make tomatoes more red is another thing.
Many vegetables have lost much of their flavor over the past couple of decades. Moving them into something more akin to the Twinkie development process does not seem very promising to me.
GM modifications do not make the food prettier, but that would be a waste of time, and as you say, "packaging is everything."
Actually making food look better while it's on the shelf is a big part of it.
You wonder if "the modifications make the plants more durable to stand up to even more massive sprayings of toxic pesticides?" That's *not* the point.
Okay, herbicides in this case. I'd like to see you chug a quart of it and tell me how wonderfully nutritious and flavorful it is.
If GM foods are so wonderful, then why is agribusiness working so hard to keep what it's up to secret? Why does it fight any and all labeling of GM foods? Shouldn't the customer know? Wouldn't they want the customer to know that ADM has improved upon nature's work? Why do they spend millions of dollars lobbying against organic farms and organic labeling and standards?
And we haven't even gotten into morality of forcing third world countries with entire populations living at subsistence levels to pay patent license fees for grains they've been cultivating for centuries. Food is food, and the last people I'd trust fucking with it are a bunch of corporations loyal only to dividends looking for ways to make a buck on hunger.
Sorry, Schiller, but you cannot prove a negative. Right off you're spouting nonsense.
Oh, and how is that? What about making crops more durable against aggressive chemical toxins makes them more nutritious?
Actually, quite a bit more than corn is genetically modified -- as you point out yourself lower in your own comment. (C'mon, now, try to be consistent!)
Pig genes in tomatoes to make them more durable in weather is one thing and have a longer shelf life. More subtle modifications to make tomatoes more red is another thing.
Many vegetables have lost much of their flavor over the past couple of decades. Moving them into something more akin to the Twinkie development process does not seem very promising to me.
Actually making food look better while it's on the shelf is a big part of it.
Okay, herbicides in this case. I'd like to see you chug a quart of it and tell me how wonderfully nutritious and flavorful it is.
If GM foods are so wonderful, then why is agribusiness working so hard to keep what it's up to secret? Why does it fight any and all labeling of GM foods? Shouldn't the customer know? Wouldn't they want the customer to know that ADM has improved upon nature's work? Why do they spend millions of dollars lobbying against organic farms and organic labeling and standards?
And we haven't even gotten into morality of forcing third world countries with entire populations living at subsistence levels to pay patent license fees for grains they've been cultivating for centuries. Food is food, and the last people I'd trust fucking with it are a bunch of corporations loyal only to dividends looking for ways to make a buck on hunger.