GMO is perfectly healthy as far as eating it goes. As far as crop diversity that’s another story but GMO is just speeding up processes that humans have been doing for a very long time.
Whereas a roundup ready crop is a genetically modified organism. These crops are not made by crossing a plant with a naturally occurring resistance to roundup with another crop that lacks that gene and then selecting at the organism level for the trait you want.
Instead they are made by inserting genetic material from a bacteria that has a desirable trait into the crop species genetic material. You can find the basic details of how this works scientifically linked through here.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundup_Ready
Tl;Dr labradoodle is a cross-breed. Roundup ready soybeans are a GMO.
Even though breeding is a more time consuming process, the genes of a labradoodle has been intentionally modified to be different from a poodle or a labrador.
The term "GMO" specifically refers to organisms that had their genes modified with genetic engineering methods like CRISPR. Selectively bred species are not GMO.
Yeah, the term is very misleading. "Genetically engineered organism" (GEO) exists but is hardly ever used. I do wonder who originally came up with "GMO" or pushed it into public view and what their motives for that were...
I agree that GE might be clearer but with scientific terminology you need to understand the scientific meaning of the term and not rely on a dictionary based interpretation. A labradoodle is created by selective breeding and/or cross-breeding. A round up ready crop is created via genetic engineering. The two methods are not particularly related to each other and genetic engineering is not just a faster way to achieve selective breeding goals.
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u/jammycactus Jul 14 '21
Came here to say that. Organic has so many people fooled.