Just a simple question.

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12 years 11 months

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Which would be really nice if there was some way, other than buying premium priced organic veg, that we could avoid ingesting all the pesticides, herbicides and fungicides that are currently sprayed in huge quantities on the non-GMO veg that we now consume.

If GMO can reduce or eliminate any or all of this, it gets my vote as being the least worst option.

Moggy

It is the price we and our descendants are paying and will pay for a burgeoning world population trying to feed its self from finite and increasingly exhausted agricultural land.

GM produce ? I'm reminded that, if a thing can go wrong; it will.

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24 years 2 months

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There is always Soylent Green....

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11 years 5 months

Posts: 11,141

Custodians of the planet? What does that mean, in reality? We live here -we have evolved from single cell organisms and doubtless we will be exterminated by our our own or or others evolution. We do not hold the planet in custody for anyone but our own race.

It will ultimately die with or without us.

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24 years 2 months

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Maybe the wrong phrase for the notion, but I mean as in only having the planet for a short period of time before 'handing it on' to your children, grand children, great grandchildren and on into the future. What we do with the planet now may not affect us in the short term, but may have a disastrous result for future generations.

No doubt someone will know the correct phrase...

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24 years 2 months

Posts: 16,832

I wonder if your descendents will be as grateful?...

Not having any descendants, it is of zero importance to me.

But if you are happy that your descendants continue to ingest a lot of noxious chemicals for fear of the unknown bogeyman that is GMO then I am happy with your choice. Why shouldn't I be? Even though I rather feel there may be a better way.

Moggy

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24 years 2 months

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In a hundred years, our descendants will look back in surprise on our reliance on many things. I suspect sugar will be the worst of those, not GMO. If, that is, the machines are not in control..

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11 years 5 months

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Foods have been irradiated for decades and fruits, vegetables and other crops have been mutated by human intervention for millenia. Natural genetic modification has taken place through natural evolution.

The ignorant tabloid media's idiotic scare stories probably did more to damage the perception of GM than anything else, to the global detriment of millions.

If we need to feed billions more of us over the coming decades we have no choice but to utilise GMO to a far greater extent. The global population depends on it.

Member for

12 years 11 months

Posts: 6,535

Yes, you've made exactly the right point. "Modification thru' natural evolution".

That is Nature's way - as you correctly identify.

GM is the laboratory way. It, by comparison with evolution, is instant.

It doesn't permit Nature to at least iron out some of her genetic mistakes.

I wonder if the law of unforeseen consequences will come into play ?

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11 years 5 months

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You quote me out of context. The first sentence of the same paragraph is equally relevant.

The law of unforeseen consequences is no more relevant to GMO than it is to anything else. However strongly you believe the protection to be something might always bite you back. Hence the law so named.

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12 years 11 months

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I selected that particular phrase because it was the one that generated my answer. The 'law of unforeseen consequences' is completely relevant to GM because, as with everything that Man does when entering uncharted territory, there maybe consequences which cannot be foreseen.

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11 years 5 months

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Well I agree. You have effectively repeated my point. As I said the law is "no more relevant" to GMO than to any other of man's inventions and the application of his discoveries over the past few thousand years.

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19 years 5 months

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A lot of the things done to/for food (GMO/preservatives/pesticide/fertilizers) is a result of wanting greater yields.
Why? Because there are more people.
We are feeding more and more people on less and less land.

The wealthy gladly pay a great deal extra for organic foods...being oblivious that if the entire food industry went organic, millions (presumably those who can't pay...but don't worry, they don't live near you) would starve.

Why isn't anyone talking about population control?
It was a big topic in the 70s-80s..now you never hear of it.
You have luddites who want to go back to nature for conservation and environmental purposes, but no one seems to be addressing the reason why there are more environmental issues.

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12 years 11 months

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JB

See #62

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9 years 6 months

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Why isn't anyone talking about population control?

Malthus did in 1798. The Chinese are talking about it as well. :applause:

Who else should be talking about population control though? The government? I don't see that working out so well. David Attenborough suggests that some form of population control should be introduced in Africa to counter the environmental damage caused by the West. I don't see that working out so well either! Plenty of people talk about population control, but they are usually talking ill-informed ********.

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16 years 2 months

Posts: 2,248

Agree entirely with Moggy and Charlie.
The public have been lied to and duped with regard to GMO's, all in the interests of Big Organic.
An industry in which the main players revenue is larger than that of their favourite bogy man, Monsanto.

Organic produce has as much if not more, pesticide and herbicide used in it's production as GMO produce.

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16 years 2 months

Posts: 2,248


It doesn't permit Nature to at least iron out some of her genetic mistakes.

I wonder if the law of unforeseen consequences will come into play ?

And what of all the mistakes nature has made, are those to be conveniently ignored? It is a complete fallacy to believe "nature" somehow trends towards only those mutations that are eventually non harmful.

This is then followed by the mysterious "unforeseen consequences" fear bullsh*t. GMO products have been tested, tested and tested over several decades. There are no recorded instances of GMO produce causing any detrimental effect to humans.
Yet ill informed woo spouting idiots still trot out "oh but it's too early" "we just don't know" "unforeseen unintended consequences."
Shall we revert to the time before the internet when the local idiot only got to spout his ill informed crap in the local pub to whatever audience choose to listen to them? Thought not...
Or how's about air travel, there's been a few crashes lately, is air travel something we should take another look at, unforeseen consequences and all that.
Finally how about the internal combustion engine, there's rather a high number of folk that die through interaction with that beasty, unforeseen unintended consequences, perhaps we should seek to restrict the use of that? Thought not again.

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12 years 11 months

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Unforeseen consequences? You missed thalidomide and beta blockers.

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20 years 8 months

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There is always Soylent Green....
I thought I was the only one on here who remembered that book.

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24 years 2 months

Posts: 16,832

Don't remember the book, but loved the movie (Last screen appearance of Edward G Robinson)

Moggy