Quote:
Originally Posted by joea
I'm glad Europe has tried to keep this stuff out-not sure how effective it is though.  |
As you said, they tried, and failed. Due to heavy American pressure and company lobbying in Brussel, the EU now demands member states to allow genetically altered seeds and food in general. The declaration duties are an alibi only, are impotent, and ignore already established realities. The French did this - and other - researches in a reply to the EU to meet legal conditions demanded by Brussel to allow a state jumping from this policy, else France would be required to meet it in full.
Fact is you cannot avoid to buy vegetable, meat and food in any supermarket that at one point or several points of the production process was not contaminated or build with genetically altered material.
Platapus,
you are correct, of course.
Of course it is about maximizing short-termed profits. But the high risk lies in that the short term maximization of profits of the few can mean a terrible high price for mankind in the future: the loss of cultivated crop that can survive in nature, mono-cultures suffering from devastating epidemics and destroying the soil, and other important species being damaged from eating such plants.
We follow this path of genetically altered sees so easy-minded but do not know about the longterm consequences. And these could turn out to be doing more damage than the altered seeds did good. And our super-intense soil farming and the according exploitation of the soils do their part in destroying the environment and sweet-water reservoirs and ground water levels. You cannot run mass-production in chicken farms without using tons and tons of antibiotics. You cannot run intense farming without ruining the soil and ground water levels. You cannot have concentrated cattle markets with immense damage done to the environment. And so on. Extreme means too extreme. Too much is always too much.
7 billion people, growing, is 6 billion too much. We explicitly breed the fundament of future human suffering of previously unseen proportions. We push the globe over the edge, and destroy our own survival basis.
It's discouraging. We have the hands of gods - but the brains of rabbits.