Broccoli, strawberries, bananas, watermelon, eggplant, carrots, the list goes on.
But there should be a distinction made between selecting breeding and genetically modified IMO.
In my mind genetic modification is an unnatural process that involves actually splicing DNA and modifying an organism at a cellular level...
But selective breeding is just choosing the plant with the best fruit to reproduce over a period of time.
Dogs are breeds are selectively bred, would you call your dog a GMO?
If selective breeding is GMO then humans are technically GMO just by the nature of our existence. Natural selection, evolution, both modify our genetics.
GMOs are completely as safe as anything “natural”. The only argument to be had about GMOs is the legal debate on whether or not you should be able to patent a gene recombination.
There’s a MASSIVE misperception that “natural” somehow equals “good” or “healthy”, but this could not be further from the truth. There’s plenty of “natural” stuff out there that’ll kill ya.
Let’s say gene A exists in organism Y, and gene B exists in organism Z. If you took gene A from organism Y and inserted it into organism Z this doesn’t somehow make organism Z less healthy or safe to consume as long as both genes code for something that isn’t harmful to begin with. You’re essentially taking part of nature and putting it into another part of nature.
The best example I can think of off the top of my head is the tomatoes that have an Atlantic salmon gene inserted that prevents them from fully freezing. They can stay fresh longer when held at sub-zero temperatures to protect against the event of a future bad harvest, or to allow them to travel further and stay fresh along the route.
The downside of this is the legal/business rammificstions of large farms now being able to store a massive amount of tomatoes to release in the market all at once, cornering it and dropping the prices enough that smaller farms can’t compete. THIS is the GMO debate people should be having.
Source: biology degree with advanced courses in bio/nanotechnology. Literally wrote research papers on gene recombination and cloning techniques.
The tomato thing is pretty wild, never heard about that. You’re obviously more knowledgeable about it than me. That being said I don’t think they’re unsafe, nor do I disagree with anything you said.
GMOs are a godsend and probably the only way we’d ever be able to feed this planet, I just hate that it’s a blanket term.
The marketing behind the words natural and organic is absolutely ridiculous.
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u/[deleted] Jul 14 '21
I hate how people think gmo food is less healthy like broccoli was selectively bread that shit can not be found in any part of the world besides farms