
How GMOs can save civilization (and probably already have) - okket
https://medium.com/impossible-foods/how-gmos-can-save-civilization-and-probably-already-have-6e6366cb893
======
2a0c40
Please also consider the risks:

[http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/PrecautionaryPrinciple.htm...](http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/PrecautionaryPrinciple.html)

~~~
dozzie
> By GMOs we mean transgenics, a gene transfer process that is markedly in a
> distinct risk class from conventional breeding and other "modifications".

...the "other modifications" including radiative genome modification, used to
achieve the very same genome as developed for GMO, but since the former method
is used for more than half a century (close to whole century, I think), it's
much more difficult to suddenly make it scary than it was with genetic
engineering.

It's funny how the modified food we've been eating for decades suddenly got
(vaguely) dangerous in the last twenty years, and only if the newer methods
were used to modify it.

------
badrabbit
The current global food supply from what I have heard is more than enough to
support much more than the current population of the planet.

The resistance to labeling gmo foods is essentially using the poor and working
class as guinea pigs. GMO will be cheaper,this means they can overprice
natural foods. Poor peoplle will consume GMO while the affluent consume
natural and organic foods.

A similar tend can be observed on how whole foods is mostly found in well-to-
do neighborhoods and walmart is found in poor neighborhoods.

Natural foods can be grown at a rate that sustains the planets population for
a very long time to come. I firmly believe this is about profit margins. At
leat let the people that will be affected by it the most have a say.

~~~
behindmyscreen
It's not a supply issue. Disease is wiping out our foods. Land is becoming
marginal as the climate changes and is making food production harder. People
are dying of vitamin A deficiency. GMOs can fix this.

~~~
badrabbit
When you fix symptoms you create more sickness. When you fix the disease, only
then will you solve the problem.

------
_emacsomancer_
Sure. But the corporations behind some of them seem to do their damnedest to
try to doom it. (We just need to make it illegal to patent plants.)

~~~
mcv
Much of the resistance against GMOs is not so much against purely nutritional
genetic modification (like golden rice - rice with added beta-carotene for
vitamin A), but to genetic modification to prop up business models, like
terminator genes, roundup-ready and Bt genes.

~~~
behindmyscreen
Terminator genes aren't used is any commercial crop. The last two make farming
easier and more productive so they are very popular amoung the farmers (even
the family farms)

------
X6S1x6Okd1st
It would be nice to outline more of the history that shows the gradient we
have gone through from selective breeding, to scientific plant breeding[1] to
even accelerating mutations through radiation[2], one of my favorite fruits
(ruby red rio star grapefruit) came from this! It's not just a handful of
examples that have gone beyond selective breeding and occasional crosses and
the efforts have only been increasing!

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_plant_breeding#Scie...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_plant_breeding#Scientific_plant_breeding)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_gardening#cite_note-:0-...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_gardening#cite_note-:0-2)

------
X6S1x6Okd1st
I've found the impossible burger to be the closest to animal free burger,
although it's not perfect.

Unfortunately at the moment it's still much more expensive, at one of the
burger places I go to the cost to swap in impossible burger brings the total
up by almost 50%.

It'll be really interesting to see how adoption looks when it's cheaper.

