2014-06-11

Genetically Modified Organism

I've run into a handful of people who are worried about food produced from Genetically Modified Organisms.

I've always heard stories of the geneticists yanking wildly-foreign genes and splicing them into food, and been instructed in the horrors thereof.

I haven't heard any of them explaining whether or not it would be a good idea to pull genes that produce vitamins in corn, and attempt to splice them into the genetic code of rice.

Speaking of genetically modified food...how much genetic modification by selective breeding has gone into meat-chickens? How much has gone into dairy cattle or beef cattle?

What about fruit? (Most apples were produced by pollination. Once a desirable apple type is found, branches from that tree are cut and grafted into other trees. Thus, the Granny Smith or HoneyCrisp are each sourced from a single tree, in genetic terms.)

What about grains? Oats, corn, wheat, and rice have all been modified by farmers over long spans of historic time.

Separating dangerous modifications from harmless or useful modifications is much more important than sloganeering about "evil GMO food."

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