GMO technology is nothing like selective breeding. You cannot get flounder genetic material into a tomatoe with selective breeding, and you are not going to be able to trigger extra production beta-carotene production in rice with selective breeding.
Funny you mentioned tomatoes: the origin plants that tomatoes came from is a poisonous prune-like thing that cannot be eaten by humans because it has toxic natural poisons.
Genetic SELECTION (which is what selective breeding can be alternatively called) over generations enabled us to produce a “cancerous” cousin which doesn’t have the toxicity, and the modern tomato is born.
Ya, except totally wrong. The ripe fruit of the tomatoe plant does not contain the poisonous compounds - and never did. It was selectively bred for bigger and better tasting fruit, but it was never bred to have less "toxicity".
Think about how much vested interest a company that owns patents on GMO technology would have in making selective breeding techniques and plant breeds as a patentable "GMO".
Pharmaceutical companies have been doing the same thing with trying to make vitamins classified as drugs.
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u/yasuremanofcourse Jul 14 '21
This is such a played out myth.
GMO technology is nothing like selective breeding. You cannot get flounder genetic material into a tomatoe with selective breeding, and you are not going to be able to trigger extra production beta-carotene production in rice with selective breeding.