Sunday, July 28, 2013

GMOs: Franken food or technological savior?

Amy Harmon has a great in-depth story in the New York Times about the science and controversy surrounding GMO crops.  The article is nominally built around the worldwide problem of citrus greening, which is huge, but nicely builds in a much broader story about GMOs.

Another great source for learning more about the GMO controversy is the book Tomorrow's Table, by Pamela Ronald and Raoul Adamchak.

My own take on GMOs so far: The hysteria against them is likely overblown, but the extraordinary promises by technological optimists are overblown too.  Traditional breeding is a solid and, over the long run, often superior and less costly substitute to GMOs.  What's more worrisome to me is that intellectual property laws and regulatory costs may be acting to concentrate the seed business and make it less competitive.  These later issues are complex, not exactly my forte, and I don't presently see clear answers to any of it.

Anyhow, it's nice to see good reporting on an evocative topic.

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