No news from the eastern GMO front

Posted by Lene Johansen

There is nothing new in a New York Times story about the GMO standoff in Europe. It is a political standoff, caused by activists who claim to represents consumers. Consumers, on the other hand, have shown that they don’t really give a damn when it comes to selecting one or the other in the store. Dr. Nicholas Kalaitzandonakes, of the University of Missouri-Columbia, and his team have since replicated these surprising results in China.

The science is fairly settled at this point, and 11 years of experience with commercial production since them molecular plant breeding method was presented to the research community 35 years ago has given us a fairly good record to show that this breeding method has the same level of risk as other breeding methods we use for plants.

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12/28/2007 @ 12:35 pm | Agriculture, Environment, International, Trade | Comments

3 Responses to “No news from the eastern GMO front”

  1. Posted by: Ted - 12/28/2007

    Whoever wrote this is either not following the studies… or is hoping that we the reader are not!!!

  2. Posted by: Mr. Fusion - 12/30/2007

    Consumers don’t give a damn because they don’t know when they are eating genetically modified foods. Nor do they have any idea what kind of hormones, pesticides, antibiotics, or herbicide residues are on / in their food. Maybe if food producers were forced to label with how much and what type of hormones the hamburger had in it consumers might think twice.

    Suggesting there is 35 years of GMO is disingenuous. Most genetically modified foods have only been created within the last few years. Long term studies have yet to be done. Another point is that much GM food is not for human consumption. AND, just because the GM food produced so far appears safe, we don’t know about what they create tomorrow. There have been too many organisms that have escaped from labs to really feel safe.

    Consumers don’t complain because consumers don’t know and the food industry doesn’t want them to know. The food industry doesn’t want them to know because then the consumers would complain.

  3. Posted by: Lene Johansen - 01/03/2008

    Sorry, my bad. GMO’s have been around for 25 years, not 35.
    I thought the Miami Symposium Mary-Dell Chilton and Rob Horsch presented their proof of concepts at was January 1973, but it was actually in January 1983.

    GMO’s have been sold, and eaten commercially in the US 11 years, we are entering the 12 year now. The food industry has by far been the biggest driver of GMO bans in Europe, so I am not sure why you are saying they don’t want consumers to know. The food industry is more concerned than consumers ever was, they actually drove the consumer concern.

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