Why do you think it is the anti-GMO groups and not the other way around? I’m naturally more suspicious of the groups that have the most money invested, in the same way tobacco companies had more investments at stake than medical researchers funded by government grants, and big oil and coal have more (money) to lose than climate scientists.
Of course Monsanto et al have invested a lot of money into research that shows that GMOs are safe. That is of course not in any way proof that there is anything wrong with that research, but it definitely makes me more careful in interpreting the results.
I can understand not trusting Monsanto, Cargill, Bayer, etc., but humans have been genetically modifying plants since the dawn of agriculture, we just have tools to do it with way more precision now. Borland and others have used Mendelian genetics to create rust-resistant wheat, golden rice, and other "miracle" crops. With modern tools, you can test genetic variants more intentionally without relying on random selection each generation.
There is nothing inherently dangerous about doing this, and it has the potential to do a lot of good for humanity. It's important not to conflate the demagoguing of massive agricorps with a useful scientific technique.
The bigger scam is that, despite producing more calories than we could possibly use, they've continued modifying crops for calorie yield and chemical resistance, which has made a lot of crops less nutritious (per kg eaten), less tasty, and more dependent on advanced human intervention to successfully grow.
The most common use of the concept GMO exclude simple breeding, which is what we have done for thousands of years. We didn’t use to transfer genes between species or even between kingdoms.
I’m not that worried, but I’m not that fast to exclude the possible that something goes dangerously wrong somewhere, say some crop with new genes that make it spread uncontrollable through a whole ecosystem, in the same way invasive species sometimes do.
And then of course the issues you bring up in your last paragraph. The technique is in general not used to help humankind or the world, but to maximise revenue for the corporations. At least in the industrialised world, it is now more important to increase biodiversity than to maximise yield.
You mean, we don’t need GMOs to worry about that? Maybe it’s great if we don’t have to worry about some GMOs in addition to the problems we already have.
There are agri businesses that use GMO and those who don't. Naturally they would try to use what they can - real studies, fake studies, activists, etc.
Point being, there is money to be made on both sides.
GMO's are one of the reasons that food is still relatively abundant despite the population growth, where a few decades ago there were predictions that the world simply couldn't sustain the population growth that began around the 1960's. I suspect that continued growth will render the GMO debate moot by virtue of few alternatives to starving. As it is, AFAIK, GMO farms & imports are already relatively common in poorer & less developed countries.
I honestly never understood the objection to GMO. Identifying the gene that some plants have to resist disease & turning it off never struck me as any more inherently risky than the end result of a multi-generational cultivation process that ultimately selects for the same or similar variations.
Who benefits from GMO prohibition? Big chemical and agtech would make a fortune on designer crops. I imagine they could easily lobby if that was simply a matter of money.
Different for different types of GMO. Some would allow use of currently unusable land and easier entry so those who already have the usable land and don't want new entries perhaps. Everything that labels itself 'Organic', too or builds their brand around it, too I'd imagine.
At any rate, I'm not convinced it's so much a lobbying problem than appealing to a questionable public sentiment. How much of that sentiment is driven by profit and how much of it is driven by more mundane misconception is hard to tell (for me).
Edit:
> Big chemical and agtech
Not necessarily. Some GMO strains require less chemicals and make some of the tech redundant.
Lobbying can be very powerful, but it's also very far from the cynical caricature that legislation is consistently sold to the highest bidder.
One trivial example is that Google, one of the richest company in the world, has been trying to build housing in its home town of Mountain View for 20 years. Last I heard, nothing had happened.
Non-GMO and organic products still require fertilizers and pesticides that are manufactured by the chemical and agriculture industries. Organic, specifically, is essentially just freezing pesticide technology to the 50s. Somehow that's a good thing.
Organic is a huge industry which actively fights gmo products. Regardless of actual organic produce, you have to pay to get the organic certifiers and organic labeling.
Don't prohibit GMO, just invalidate the patents and regulate the results. If everyone can select the seeds that are designed best downstream farmers and consumers benefit from the reduction of monopoly.
Pesticide manufacturers, fertilizer manufacturers, seed companies without the gene editing know how. A very large number of people who are happy with the status quo and see disruption as a danger to their bottom line.
My point is that if all crops go organic, then they no longer have the higher margin of a premium product and are still at the current commodity price.
And my point is that everyone involved in organic certainly doesn’t want their narrative muddied by GMOs. If people accept that modified food is better, that destroys the demand for organic.
There's certainly a balance that needs to be struck with GMOs.
The environmental and health impacts of new GMOs should be studied and regulated, but this "don't eat frakenfood" rhetoric or "No GMO" labeling aught to disappear as (as you've mentioned) it can be a huge win for hunger concerns.
> "We found that ties between researchers and the GM crop industry were common, with 40 percent of the articles considered displaying conflicts of interest," said the study.
> Researchers also found that studies that had a conflict of interest were far more likely to be favorable to GM crop companies than studies that were free of financial interference.
> Conflicts of interest were defined as studies in which at least one author declared an affiliation to one of the biotech or seed companies, or received funding or payment from them
Of course Monsanto et al have invested a lot of money into research that shows that GMOs are safe. That is of course not in any way proof that there is anything wrong with that research, but it definitely makes me more careful in interpreting the results.