Genetically modified food and Mr. Rifkin
See "Antibiotech Effort Bloomed Despite
Little Funding and Lack of Consensus"
By STEVE STECKLOW, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
today.
This Rifkin fella seems a bit over the top, maybe
way over the top judging by the quote the Journal
got from him (GMO foods, with respect to new
technology, will become "the single greatest failure
in the history of capitalism...")
Don't get me wrong--I'm all for organic, and only
partly because I can afford it. But if GMO foods
reduce the use of pesticides and herbicides, then
what is not to like. That is oversimplifying it, but
that is the main point to GMO I think.
I am certainly aware of the balance between living
cheap and living well, I'd love to have a private
vegetable garden from which I could pick nothing but
organic fresh veggies, but I seem to remember from
my last garden that it was quite a battle with pests,
you can expect some veggies to fail. That is unacceptable
if you want to feed the world.
Do people really worry about feeding the world--I could
afford to go totally non-GMO and also organic, but this
is not an alternative for impoverished nations.
Expensive Organic foods might bring peace of mind:
My wife and I have to endure yet another ultrasound--
if this baby turns out to have problems you can be sure
I'll be wondering what junk in the environment did this
to us, atmospheric pollutants, pesticides, what about
chlorinated floridated tap water, quite a list out there.
I certainly wont be blaming GMO foods!
A recent opinion in Nature mentioned that one of the
big problems with Organic farming is the reliance on
Cow manure--see how everybody always has to take their
point to extremes (natural rock fertilizers and green
manure, and allowing a field to lie fallow and
accepting lower yeilds for doing all that are more
is a better way to go organic).
What is my point...well it is that people never seem
to know how to pick the right enemies. Boy, if we just
got rid of pig farms and lawn pesticides in this country
--now that would be the right place to start!
Anyway the fella in Nature...let's see here--that would
be Anthony Trewavas, page 231 of 18 Nov, 99 Nature--he
made a few very good points (setting the cow manure slip
up aside). One point was that the movement of non-native
species around the globe is obviously a much bigger
threat to local gene pools than the threat presented
by GMO crops. Much Food Many Problems was the commentary--
Nature has had quite a lot of GMO news and articles of late.
Sure hope I don't flip out and turn into some green eyed
radical if baby McFarland does indeed have problems. But
rather than going completely organic, and taking up this
radical cause against GMO foods, maybe I'll just blame
God and his cosmic rays. And that is food for thought. |
