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Genetically-Altered Salmon? It Doesn't Stop There!

From Yahoo Science.

"...it's only the start of things to come. In labs and on experimental farms are:

• Vaccines and other pharmaceuticals grown in bananas and other plants.

• Trademarked "Enviropigs" whose manure doesn't pollute as much.

• Cows that don't produce methane in their flatulence.

And in the far-off future, there may be foods built from scratch — the scratch being DNA."

...

"All of the animals, plants and microbes we use in our food system, our agricultural system, are genetically modified in one way or another," says Bruce Chassy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "That, or they're wild."

The modifications are mostly from selective breeding and hybridization, the traditional ways of changing plants and animals. But these methods used for thousands of years are compared by genetic engineers to using a sledgehammer. They say their techniques are like using a scalpel."

...

"More than four-fifths of the soybean, corn and cotton acreage in the United States last year used genetically engineered crops, according to a 2010 National Academies of Sciences study.

David Ervin of Portland State University in Oregon, who chaired the committee that wrote the report, said it found no large-scale environmental risks associated with the current genetically engineered corn, cotton and soybeans in the United States. As for future crops, "you just have to be very cautious," depending on the nature of the plants, he says.

The report, which didn't consider health impacts of eating genetically engineered crops, did recommend large-scale studies of ecological effects of such crops, Ervin said."

...

"With the world population predicted to surpass 9 billion before 2050, genetically engineered food is the only hope to avoid starvation, he says.

That many people cannot be fed "using agriculture as it is right now," Murray says. "What is the cost to humanity if we do not use this technology?"

My questions:

1. When will the FDA require these foods to go through the same clinical trials as newly-invented drugs, testing to see what the side effects are and if any allergy risks are associated with food.

2. If scientists are so worried about how we're going to feed the population in the future, perhaps they ought to think about adding birth control to the food instead of other genes! I'd like to take this time to remind scientists that we already produce enough food to give away to the rest of the world, so what's the problem?

It's getting to where we may need to consider going vegetarian or vegan just to get clean, affordable food in the future. Organically-raised meat prices will certainly shoot through the roof (like they aren't there already) because of new demand for clean meats.

By getting FDA approval NOW, we're essentially all being used as guinea pigs in food trials.

Posted by Cute at 7:20 PM

Labels: health