Since genetic modification has entered the production of food trillions of servings of GM food have been given to billions of people without any signs whatsoever of negative reactions.

GM plants can produce food with vitamins and far greater nutritional value as well as survive in low water conditions and be resistant to pests.

All in all GM foods are proving to be as good or better for people and the environment. Is it time to call BS on the anti-GM scare campaign?

SM,

Like all new things introduced for human consumption, critical analyst is important. When you first took up smoking, tobacco companies told you smoking was good for you, and you believed them, becoming a pak-a-day man . Same with alcohol, 10 schooners a day was no problem for you, now you lament being a nico addicted gout ridden alcoholic. I was truly sorry when you told us that, about your gout.

BTW, I suggest you give up the booze and the coffin nails, otherwise you may not make 40.

BBTW; any minor lung complaints.... emphysema, cancer, we certainly hope not, but if you want to spill your guts again about your health, feel free, I like others here, are most understanding.

I'll overlook the "good for the planet", which grates, and is unexpected from SM. GM food is good for PEOPLE - those things the Greens and other extremist hate. They don’t care about the planet; they just don’t like humanity.

GM food is still produced by farmers, unlike the muck that the above-mentioned baddies want made in a laboratory to complement their insects.

GM food has already saved millions from starvation, and the objectors who thought that GM crops were going jump their boundaryies like something from the Day of the Triffids have seen sense and quietened down.

GM is a boon for humanity when the planet that is being made such a fuss of cannot provide, particularly in areas where people live on only what they can grow - unlike the rich Greens and other parasites who expect the poor to pay for their virtue-signalling.

Again - Thanks for another interesting discussion
Shadowminister.

There are already quite a few GM plant foods that many
may not be aware of. Canola, cotton, sunflowers to name
some. We use margarine, cooking and salad oils without
thinking about them. There's further experimentation being
done on barley, sugarcane and wheat to name just a few.

It is the way of the future that is already happening and
strict safety assessments are in place.

A problem with the GM food industry is that the crops grown are subject to copyright and seed must be bought by the owner so farmers cannot grow crops from their own seed. Many smaller operators in the USA are being forced off the land by big corporations.

As an example of copyright there have been cases where a GM canola crop had "spread" into an adjoining non-GM crop and was then legally seized by the GM company who could thus prove ownership.

In the end it means that basic food crops will be totally privately owned and controlled by companies like Monsanto. What could possibly go wrong?

I'm rather agnostic as regards GM foods. I used to think that we needed them in order to grow sufficient food for the every increasingly world population. But now it is clear that (1) the world population is either declining or about to start declining and (2) current technologies are able to feed that population even without the aid of GM technology.

OTOH it is clear that GM foods are both cheaper to grow and require the use of less insecticides/herbicides and that has to be a nett good.

There are some areas where GM is extremely useful. For example, Golden Rice is able to add vital beta-carotene to diets low in it. I haven't seen recent figures but a decade or so ago it was thought that about 500000 kids went blind per year due vitamin B deficiency. Of course the green movement opposed Golden Rice even sabotaging rice fields because the greens always put ideology over human life.

It is claimed that food crops will be owned by GM companies. While it is true that any seed which uses the GM technology is indeed owned by the original inventor, it is also true that farmers aren't forced to use GM seeds. They can continue to or return to using traditional crops if they want or if they find the GM company's terms onerous. But the fact is farmers use GM because it is more productive and requires less inputs.

Apart from the drug and syphilis-riddled Village idiot who can't spell to save his life, the point is that GM foods are clearly safe for human consumption.

With about 1/4 of food grown being eaten or damaged by pests, more by weeds, drought etc, the benefits of plants capable of dealing with various challenges and with added vitamins and other vital nutrients, will go a long way to relieve hunger and malnutrition around the world.

Given that the non-GM crops have been so evolved that they barely resemble the original plants our ancestors used to cultivate (like the pug dog that originated from a wolf) the changes from GM are not dramatically different.

The legal issue raised by Rache is not as simplistic as he would like to make out.

"GM food is good for the planet."

With that line of thinking, then so too is the increase in autism and cancers.

I myself am guilty of eating frankenfoods, but I'm not ignorant of the cost to human health.
It's keeps us all fed, but it's not exactly good quality food.

Food quality in my opinion has been going down, but people don't notice it so much because the quality of the home-brand stuff has gotten better over the same period.

Make no mistake, it's mostly all mass produced crap.
- Unless you like eating sawdust and house crickets.

If they can substitute an ingredient to gain an extra 1% profit without us noticing what they've put in it, they definitely would.

You see those sausages at woolies, they're not real sausages.
Do they think I never went to a butchers and know what a real one is?
What they're selling as sausages is closer to dog-food.

Sadly, many things in our society reached a peak some years back and then started going backwards.

AC,

There is absolutely no link between GM food and cancer or autism. In fact, the increases in these diseases are more prevalent in countries that eschew GM food.

Do you have even a tiny jot of evidence that GM food is not good for people?

I would prefer GM foods to the insects that some people recommend and are handing out, unauthorised by parents, to school children, as recently reported.