How GMOs can save civilization (and probably already have)

> By GMOs we mean transgenics, a gene transfer process that is markedly in a distinct risk class from conventional breeding and other "modifications".

...the "other modifications" including radiative genome modification, used to achieve the very same genome as developed for GMO, but since the former method is used for more than half a century (close to whole century, I think), it's much more difficult to suddenly make it scary than it was with genetic engineering.

It's funny how the modified food we've been eating for decades suddenly got (vaguely) dangerous in the last twenty years, and only if the newer methods were used to modify it.

Please, no. The Anti-GMO movement has no science behind it what so ever.

Exactly. I find the article very misleading, and intentionally muddying the issue.

A quote:

  > And livestock, a pillar of our food system for millenia, are major culprits in climate change, water shortages, biodiversity losses and massive degradation and destruction of forests and other ecosystems — compelling us to quickly move to a predominantly plant-based diet.

  > To meet these challenges, we must employ all of the technological tools at our disposal.

Actually, if we were to move to a predominantly plant-based diet, that would solve a major part of our food problem. At the moment, we're choosing to feed cattle and even throw away food, rather than feed the hungry. World hunger is in a large part an economic choice stemming from economic inequality.

But where the article really muddies the issue is here:

  > It is safe to say that, without systemic genetic modification of crops and livestock, civilization would not exist.

and:

  > But the process of genetic modification, central to progress in agriculture throughout history, has become controversial.

The article pretends that selective breeding and genetic engineering are the same thing, and claims that the thing that people have been doing for centuries is suddenly controversial. They are different things, and the one that's been going on for centuries and forms the basis for modern agriculture is not remotely controversial. But he wants his genetic engineering to piggy-back on the accomplishments of selective breeding.

Whatever your opinion on the necessity or danger of genetic engineering is, the above is a dishonest argument that doesn't help the discussion at all.

What are natural foods? There isn’t a single “natural” strain of wheat, rice, soy or maze on the planet in mass use today.

Only a few decades ago we gave a geneticist, Normal Borlaug a noble peace prize for helping to reduce world hunger by creating semi-dwarf wheat which was resistant to disease and pesticide and it was the first mass application of genetic engineering driven cultivation in the world.

It's not a supply issue. Disease is wiping out our foods. Land is becoming marginal as the climate changes and is making food production harder. People are dying of vitamin A deficiency. GMOs can fix this.

Much of the resistance against GMOs is not so much against purely nutritional genetic modification (like golden rice - rice with added beta-carotene for vitamin A), but to genetic modification to prop up business models, like terminator genes, roundup-ready and Bt genes.

Patents exist outside GMOs. Honey crisp Apple's we're under patent for example.

The patent claim against GMO is a canard.