If there is one concept that drives much of divide in the GMO debate, it’s substantial equivalence. Having different understandings or misunderstandings of the concept leads to rancor, distrust and talking past each other.
Debating the ethics of the Séralini retraction gives us opportunities to elucidates just what it means to ‘ask questions’ and critically think about industry influence and conflicts of interest.
GUEST AUTHOR: Alma Glenn Laney
There has been quite a lot of talk about the latest paper from Seralini’s group that claims that there are substantial metabolome differences between genetically engineered corn and non-GE corn
There is some odd and fuzzy-headed thinking that asserts that crop breeding should be exempt from intellectual property protection. Often expressed as “Nobody should be able patent life”.
How often have you heard some version of:
“I don’t want to eat food that makes insects stomachs explode! / I don’t want to eat food that’s been bred to withstand being drenched in toxic herbicides”
This may be the most common misconception out there. Let’s try to reconnect it with reality a little bit.
One of the most common objections to biotech crops that comes up on the internet is some variation on this theme:
“I don’t want to eat a tomato that has fish DNA. Breeding in a laboratory is not the same as breeding that happens in nature over hundreds of years.”
There’s a lot of misunderstanding packed into those two sentences
Any discussion of GMOs on the internet brings a swarm of commenters. No matter the topic, an inevitable pattern of comment is “Yes, but what the author ignores is (insert common anti-GMO myth)”.
Here are three of the most common tropes that litter those discussions.
GUEST AUTHOR: Marco Rosaire Conrad-Rossi There is no figure in the anti-GMO movement that commands more respect than Vandana Shiva. An Indian writer and activist, […]
GUEST AUTHOR: Kevin Folta, professor and chairman of the horticultural sciences department at the University of Florida | Follow him on Twitter: @kevinfolta | He […]
I wasn’t ideologically opposed to genetic engineering, I just figured that given our current understanding of nutrition and ecology, the technology wasn’t really ready for prime time. I figured if we couldn’t figure out margarine, then we weren’t ready to start tinkering with plants at a genetic level. Common sense, right?
It took a while to realize that was an incorrect model for thinking about GE breeding. There are a number of realizations that I went through before leaving that behind. Here are ten of them:
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