Do You Find It Insidious That Some Companies Proudly Advertise their?

Do you find it insidious that some companies proudly advertise their products as non-GMO, capitalizing on their consumers' biases & paranoia?

I think that the positive side of GMOs has been well-promoted; there is an opportunity to engineer plants that are better targeted towards specific needs and realize it much more quickly than using traditional breeding methods. The problem needs to be stated, though. It’s three-fold. First, a child with a powerful weapon is a dangerous thing. The child does not have the perspective, the experience and the necessary mature rational mindset to manage the weapon safely. GMO and other genetic tools we are gathering may be like nuclear weapons in that we can do a lot of irreparable harm before we better understand what we are doing. As a society, we have a muchc shorter term view towards goals and rewards for our society, our people, our tribe than ever. We have conditioned ourselves to very short term thinking and very individualized goals, quick rewards with little sense of the well-bing of the whole. It’s just the way our society has gone, and while we rapidly build bigger and more powerful tools, we still don’t know how to “aim” them well. Genetics can and likely will have long term consequences world-wide. Look into how cavalier scientists, politicians and citizens (in blind faith) were with nuclear testing in the 50s. T would never do much of those tests now that we know better. We generally irradiated ourselves foolishly and needlessly and some paid the price directly with their health. Now we know the range and depth of impact from testing better and are careful what we do with Nuclear. Second. Out there in the fields. In practice, modified plants that are grown in the open will cross pollinate with existing plants. Those who grow heritage corn, for example, suddenly find that their plants, the area’s traditional breeds are being cross pollinated and taken over by the new GMO breeds that enter their area. This is especially insidious because not only are these sometimes precious breeds that have developed over centuries suddenly derailed and forceibly cross-bred with the latest experimental product out of the corporation labs, thus robbing the farmers and consumers in an area of their most valuable food resource, but then
THEN, the corporations come along and sue the farmers who will not start BUYING the patented product for patent infringment, because their crops were contaminated by the corporate product. Brilliant. In one fell swoop t have magically created a product out of what once was a common human heritage, our seed, our food, our time-tested agriculture and at the same time, t have eliminated the competition, our traditional varieties and eliminated anybody who doesn’t buy from the corporation, the new owners of the only seed stock we can legally grow. Third, is the problem with the corporate structure and system where profit for investers is the central value. So, the types of genetic modifications t are realizing are the ones that generate the most money, irregardless of the damage overall to society. Thus the actual GMOs that we are seeing put out there are in practice optimized to only grow well with every larger quantities of the chemicals t sell. Ever larger quantities of roundup or whatever, higher doses per acre are now being used for GMOS. We are seeing a dramatic increase in the concentrations of these chemicals in our waterways, environement, water supplies related to the use of these corporate GMOs . In sum, the problem is not whether the tool of GMO is useful or what good might come from it, but the fact that it is being done all wrong. before we can see long term results pan out, for the wrong goals, under the wrong legal structure and with the opposite results in practice than we really want to see with the use of this powerful new agricultural tool.