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Edited on Fri Jan-20-06 05:59 PM by dusmcj
The problem is that GM crops are being run as a multibillion dollar for-profit industry. Which directly implies that controls and environmental safeguards are nowhere to be found.
The Coalition Provisional Authority wrote into the 100 Rules for the New Iraqi Order that agriculture in the cradle of civilization, the point of origin for the grainstocks that have been feeding a good part of human civilization for a few tens of thousands of years, shall be opened to private suppliers and respect "intellectual property". Which in this case means patented genotypes, i.e. GM seeds. This is made tangible by requiring farmers not to retain part of their crop as seedstock as they have for the last few millenia, but rather to buy new seedstock every year. Further, any biotype containing patented gene sequences becomes the property of the owner of the patented sequence. I.e. no homegrown crossbreeding.
That was dissemination. Now for pollution: GM sequences have already been found in non-GM corn crops, among other fundamental feedstocks. The same for a variety of other testtube creations. We do not have the breadth of vision, nor the concrete knowledge, to predict what perturbations these alterations in genetic sequences optimized by hundreds of millions of years of evolution will have both on the viability of the affected species and on its macroscale interactions with its environment, including but not limited to us (e.g. will it poison us in the long term ? poison other consumer species ? will it encourage the growth of parasite species ?). Hence we cannot responsibly allow the uncontrolled entry of GM sequences into uncontrolled biospheres.
The problem as always is controls and accountability. Giving priority to a free market intrinsically militates against controls and accountability, because the fastest path to profit is to minimize cost, and controls create cost. You want genetic modification for beneficial ends, fine; add a lobbying component which is required to succeed to your agenda, the required success is that environmental safety is prioritized ahead of private profit. Not made to fit in with, prioritized ahead.
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