Opposition to Genetic Modification (GM) or genetically engineered (GE) food crops has developed an undeserved status as a priority in the enviro fanatics world, considering that they are preventing important food improvements.
The anti GM GE movement is causing great harm.
The green revolution that feeds millions more than was projected by the Malthusian pessimists is based on good genetic modification of food crops.
Now the nuts and the flakes of California have decided they need to warn people about GM.
To what advantage?
Henry Miller MD and Greg Conko are doing important work. Golden Rice is just one example, but there are others.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2012/10/08/genetically-engineered-in-california-a-food-label-we-dont-need/
True enough, but the willingness of the government in places like the People’s Republik of Kalifornia to collaborate with these extremists is disgusting.
Their habit of making regulations that make life simple for themselves and untenable for us is worse.
How about we blame the food activists for being crony capitalist morons, and we blame the politicians for caving to the demands of a loud minority in exchange for whatever kick-backs and increases in power they received. I have plenty of hate to go around 🙂
You beat me to it. Darn my obsessive proofreading.
That depends on your definition of “natural”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holstein_cattle
“The Dutch breeders bred and oversaw the development of the breed with the goal of obtaining animals that could best use grass, the area’s most abundant resource. Over the centuries, the result was a high-producing, black-and-white dairy cow. It is black and white due to artificial selection by the breeders.”
The modern Holstein doesn’t closely resemble the cattle of five hundred years ago and could be seen as an entirely different animal from the cows herded by the pastoral nomads of Asia in 300bc. About 2000 years ago you’d find two distinct breeds (solid black and solid white) from which the modern Holsteins are assumed to be crossbred.
Human interference in animal genetics for the purposes of increasing yield is just about as old as history. Even if it’s as simple as saving seeds from the best crops for replanting next year, mankind is imposing its will upon nature by choosing what genes move on to the next generation. Whether that’s the same as directly manipulating the genetic code of a plant by adding genes that could not be combined through cross pollination is a different question. Personally, I think people’s fears have more to do with bad sci-fi horror films than genuine scientific evidence.
the current Holstein has been carefully bred through selective breeding processes to have the exact milk composition that’s most favoured by dairies.
As that preference changes over time due to shifts in their product catalog (more or less butter, more or less cheese, etc.) the selection process for breeding partners is changes as well to change the milk.
This has been going on for decades. Before that the cows were mostly bred purely for either milk volume or meat volume (body mass).
THAT had been done for thousands of years.
The Holstein is a relative newcomer in the cattle game, the breed did not exist when the Americas were colonised.
There were other white/black and white/red races, which over time were bred into what the Holstein is now (and yes, there are white/red Holsteins, but they’re mostly bred for meat rather than milk).
They’re as natural as is the wheat that makes that ‘biological’ bread, or the tomatoes you buy in the ‘eco’ isle of the supermarket. IOW not natural at all but the process of centuries to thousands of years of human selection of the breeding process.
efffectively, those pressure groups are the government…
Aw Heck, a black and white aurochs. I should have known.
Yes a Holstein is a natural variant. Been around for 2000 years or so.Nothing but Holstein DNA in those cows.
You do realize that the label deal was not started by the government don’t you? Let’s place the hate where it belongs, right at the feet of food activists.
I once had a conversation with an otherwise intelligent young woman who was convinced that KFC was raising genetically engineered headless, footless chickens. She was stymied when I asked her how that could possibly cost less than raising them the normal way, but she still didn’t stop believing. Some people just really want the anti-cooperate sci-fi dystopia to be true.
I think at least part of the psychology is due to our education SYSTEN glorifying counter culture revolutionaries. Children’s heroes all “fought the power” in one way or another, but middle-class children are generally so well-off that they have to invent forms of oppression to rebel against.
Well written piece. The anti GMO/GE position looks like a continuation of the historical belief in good and bad foods, foods with magical properties and the like. We’ve been genetically engineering food and animals for a good piece of human history. Anyone want to tell me that a Holstein is a natural bovine variant?
GE/GMO seems to be a faster way to get through the selective breeding process. I’ve thought for a long time that some of this is because a majority of people don’t know where their food comes from or much about producing food. I’m not sure about that. A lot of highly educated people seem to fall into the “healthier” natural, organic, non-GMO foods are best class. Maybe they ought to try taking a hoe to 20 acres to remove grass. Maybe they would be a little more amenable to Roundup tolerant.
“To what advantage?” Pure cronyism. Organic farmers can’t compete. They can rail about health and nature all they want, but at the end of the day, most people just can’t afford to pay $4 for a tomato. As usual the standard practice is to run to the government to make the other guys raise prices and advertise against themselves.
This proposition was defeated in 2012 by 51% of the votes.
Good thing too.
I have family that have hobby farms that they supplement their incomes with and they would have had to submit their produce to labs on a regular basis to prove that it was not GMO.
There is no way they could have supported the cost and effort to do this for EVERY different variety of crops.
It is an example of the government killing small operations by making it only financially viable to operate on a large scale.