1669
you're doing ReSeArCh rong!!
(lemmy.ca)
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules
IMO: GMOs are sus. Fuck the rest though.
GM is just a technology, which can be put to many uses, and there are many methods. All pasta wheats, for example, are derived from radiation mutants.
The risk isn't derived from the technology but how it is used. The proprietary technology is used to prevent farmers from creating their own seed (including using copy right laws) while increasing their dependency on matching pesticides. Industrial agriculture is not sustainable - insect populations are dwindling because every square foot of landscape is sprayed with poison. GMO is used to further industrialize agriculture, e.g. by making crops resistant to poison, which in turn can (and will) be used more liberally.
Nature does evolve quickly when posed with harsh conditions. Roundup and other poisons used agriculture make the targeted pests resistant quickly.
Some GM features can be fine, but there are no cheats in real life. Constructing an environment that makes resistance and strength the viable strategy for pests will not work. Harmony is the only sustainable choice.
No, they implied that insects build resistance to it.
Most of the foods you eat are GMOs and have been for centuries because that’s another term for selective breeding. Modern GMO tech simply speeds up the process.
By a variety of definitions around the world, yes it is. At least until farmers lobbied to redefine it because they didn't want to be associated with GMO's: (emphasis mine)
There is no doubt in my mind that we are genetically modifying a plant when we are selective breeding it for specific genes. The fact that the mutation occurred naturally doesn't change the the fact that there was human intervention.
It isn't really equivalent. GM by gene editing is precise and quick; GM by selective breeding and deliberate mutation is slow and random
I wonder if anyone will ever work out what genes make good apples. It would save so much random breeding
The problem with GMOs isn't the GMOs themselves, it's why they've been GM'd. If they've been modified to be "roundup resistant" so they can dump a truckload of glyphosate on them, or something similar to that, that might be a problem.
If I'm buying fresh produce it's not a problem, I can can make double sure to wash it properly. But if it's processed food, I definitely do not trust food manufacturers to get all that shit off the vegetables.
Looking for GMO free canned fruit/vegetables, frozen fruit/vegetables, or anything with fruit/vegetables in it is, in my opinion, a good idea. But a fresh cucumber? Just wash it.