Europe urged to embrace GM foods

Hellmutt's got a point. We can't just keep multiplying. I don't know that I like forced population controll done secretly though.

Not to go too far off topic but population control could, at some point, become a real issue. Too many people, and not enough food = some people are going to starve. One solution is to decide as a society and as a world that we will limit the family size at such a time when it becomes necessary to prevent overpopulation. I didn't say stop having children, we need children to survive, just put a conscious limit on it, and realize it is for the good of all. And I'm not saying something nutty like kill off the excess children if you have triplets or something, just keep in mind the bigger picture, and leave it at triplets. And really, anyone on this earth can be your "family." They may not be family by blood, they may not even be the same color, or be from the same part of the world as you, but by friendship, love, respect, companionship, etc they can be your family. And that is the family that we really need to push for here, that big family that spans the entire globe.

Anyway, that's my speach on population, back to GM foods.

Troy

Boundless Malthusiasm

There are several different types of controls for human populations, including the ever-popular war, as well as plagues, pestilence, famine and the occasional Horseman of the Apocalypse.

Humans will, as long as we exist, continue to multiply like crazed weasels (who controls the weasels themselves, anyway?). That's a given.

The question is by what means and how quickly humans will die.

As it turns out, there's only one way to enter the world, and millions of ways to leave it.

So far the system is working, believe it or not.

Genuine GM Parts

I used to pooh-pooh the claims of anti-GM food activists as the propaganda of economic warfare -- which much of it is -- but am coming to understand and agree with some of the concerns.

Food stocks are vital to the health and well-being of humans everywhere. They should not be tampered with casually.

Unless I am grossly misinformed, GM foods are not subjected to the kinds of health-consequence testing that drugs are, even though relatively few people take drugs, and everyone eats food.

The kinds of things GM foods are engineered to do, such as producing toxic chemicals to ward off insects, must have consequences in humans, particularly after years of consumption.

It would be inexcusably irresponsible to unleash GM foods on people that are not thoroughly tested in extensive, independently-monitored long-term trials on large test groups.

Antisocial Experiment

As things stand, these test groups seem to consist primarily of the population as a whole, with products being deployed long before their chronic effects can be studied, and yes, I do have a problem with that.

GM foods have, as best I can tell, been generally managed with varying reasonable degrees of care, but I am concerned that such care is not necessarily in proportion to the risks involved with respect to human health, ecosystems in which GM foods are grown and the potentially disastrous consequences of error or misconduct leading to widespread injury or death of consumers if GM food producers should make so much as one simple mistake out of billions of possible mistakes when designing and deploying foods.

It's excellent technology, and I am all for exploiting the benefits it can offer, but I urge caution and highly conservative policies when it comes to GM foods.

The alternatives are, in my opinion, reckless.

Btw, because Switzerland is not in the EU they were allowed to make this decision for themselves. Otherwise this would have been decided for them in Brussels.

If only the world was really that simple!

In actual fact economics made the decision for them. Over 90% of swiss trade is with the EU (which surrounds it on all sides). If the Swiss wish to trade with the EU it has to meet EU regulations which currently do not allow for Gm products. There choice was either use non-GM foods and sell to the EU or grow GM foods but have no market for them. In effect the choice was made in brussels for them.

This is not just true of the Swiss, all non Eu countries that rely on trade with the EU (e.g. Norway, Morrocco, Russia etc) as a major source of income are finding that they are having to meet EU regulations and rules to gain access to the markets. The downside is that because they are not part of the EU they have no say in what those rules are!