
GM Crops Like Golden Rice Will Save Lives of Hundreds of Thousands of Children - tomohawk
https://quillette.com/2019/12/01/gm-crops-like-golden-rice-will-save-the-lives-of-hundreds-of-thousands-of-children/
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pieceofcakedude
>After a quarter of a century of growing biotech crops in North and South
America, Asia and parts of Africa, the evidence is now clear: they have caused
no human or animal illness, and have huge environmental benefit, such as
greatly reduced pesticide use, less ploughing, lower greenhouse gas emissions,
less land required to grow a given quantity of crop, lower costs and higher
yields.

Good heavens... I hope nobody actually believes this stuff. How many uncited
pro-GMO talking points can you spot above?

This article brought to you by Syngenta's PR department.

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ZeroGravitas
I find it interesting that lower greenhouse gas is listed as a benefit, as I
believe the author is a coal-mine owning climate change denier that has argued
more carbon dioxide is a good thing:

[http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/the-benefits-of-
carbon-...](http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/the-benefits-of-carbon-
dioxide/)

If so, surely we shouldn't use this GMO crop?

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super-serial
The gains from GM crops are a lie[1] - most GM crops are made so agri-chemical
companies can sell more pesticide for pesticide-resistant crops. Overuse of
pesticides is killing all the insects and ruining soil quality.[2]

If you want to get more efficiency out of the food system you can easily do
that by going vegan. Raising livestock provides just 18% of calories but takes
up 83% of farmland. If you cut out meat you get 83% of the farmland back. You
don't even need to cut out meat completely - just have a couple more meals
each week without meat and you're saving many times more than any GM crops
could achieve.

[1] [https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/failure-yield-evaluating-
pe...](https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/failure-yield-evaluating-performance-
genetically-engineered-crops)

[2] [https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/hidden-costs-industrial-
agr...](https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/hidden-costs-industrial-agriculture)

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ncmncm
Promoters of GM crops always trot this out, but the overwhelming majority of
GM developments are much less beneficial to humanity, some actively harmful,
some just anti-competitive, some with unknown or unknowable consequences. They
generate legitimate suspicion about the technology itself.

BT toxin is an essential tool of organic farmers, that in normal circumstances
only ever appears on the surface of plants, and can be rinsed off. Some GM
crops make the plant produce the toxin throughout, where it cannot be rinsed
off. Nobody knows whether BT toxin is safe for humans to consume in such
quantities, but in any case a very likely short-term outcome of widespread use
of such crops is insects resistant to BT toxin, and farmers in need of a new
alternative.

Most of the GM crops are less pernicious but no more defensible. Soybeans that
are resistant to glyphosate are patented, so farmers have to buy new seed
every year, and they drive increased use of glyphosate on farms.

How do we get yellow rice without getting all the crap? Nobody knows.

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ZeroGravitas
Is there a word for when sociopaths use people's feelings of empathy against
them?

I find myself seeing this pattern everywhere but I'm not sure if I've got an
appropriate word to describe it.

Like a climate change denier pretending they're worried about birds being
killed by wind turbines. They know that we know they don't care, but they say
it anyway, because they know that we can't help but care about that kind of
thing.

~~~
carapace
"Propaganda"?

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anotheryou
If it's so good it help just children. Sob-story included in the title makes
it look biased to me...

