Quite a few dark GM clouds were gathering during 2015. Be prepared for the storms to break.
Any time now, expect a raft of industry stunts to persuade
regulators and consumers that black is white.
Try these for size...
It may sound like a contradiction in terms, but scientists
have decided there is such a thing as "natural GM". They reason that, therefore, unnatural GM is
nothing to worry about and so neither regulations nor safety tests are needed
[1].
Also, apparently scientists have decided that humanly-conceived
techniques to invade and alter the genome according to humanly-conceived
specifications don't count as 'GM', and therefore don't need regulations nor
safety tests [2].
Needless to say, the scientists who are redefining 'GM' for
us tend to have a lot of professional and financial incentives to want GM to be
natural, unregulated and, most of all, untested.
Be prepared to give food safety regulators an argument.
The coming year seems likely to usher into our food chain
the first GM animals.
This could be the beginning of the end of salmon as we know
it [3], and open flood-gates to GM meat [4], not to mention GM herds of
suffering four-legged drug factories [5].
Be prepared to holler in protest.
Just in case these new versions of the GM game added to the
old versions of biotech confusology start tying your brain in knots, here's a
timely reminder of why GM, an any form (and GM in any form is artificial
by definition), can never be safe.
Natural DNA (genes and all the other regulatory bits) in a living
cell is non-mechanistic. It modifies
itself in a continuous, precisely orchestrated, context-dependent, and very
fine-grained way. DNA changes are
negotiated by the organism itself, as a whole, and with reference to its
environment [6].
The unconnected, mechanistic genetic changes wrought by
human hand and conceived by human mind are, at best, a spanner in the works,
and at worst, a disease.
You are what you eat.
Your body reflects the health and coherence of what you eat. Your food is your medicine.
Background (1-5 following shortly):
[1] ARTIFICIAL
HORIZONTAL GENE TRANSFER - January 2016
[2] SMART BREEDING
TOOLS - OR HIDDEN GM? - January 2016
[3] GM SALMON
APPROVED - January 2016
[4] SUMO STEAKS IN
THE PIPELINE - January 2016
[5] NEW ZEALAND'S GM
COW DISASTER - January 2016
Mónica Fernández, Interview with Mae-Wan Ho, Science in Society 67 Autumn 2015
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