h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3196768.stm

So what do we think? Will we all be eating GM foods in a few decades time? Or should we all be burning down the test fields?

Personally I think the research into GM crops is a good think, provided it is regulated in some way that stops huge multinational biotech companies making huge profits by exploiting third world countries that could benefit from GM technology. But I don't know enough about it to have a properly informed opinion, so I'd like to know what you all think.

The fact that Monsanto are pulling out of Europe and making 1 in 10 redundant, makes me feel it was a storm in nylon Tea-cup. Even Canada is putting on pressure.
In theory Mankind and Nature have been doing GM style cloning via standard genetics. All that is happening is that it is being done faster with Genes that could never come in contact with each other. Also as Mendel found, just because something is created, invariably it reverts to type or dies.
Maybe more spin and panic than necessary?

GM foods and anything that messes with nature can be seen to be unethical and thus crewates a storm of publicity against it. It must be said though that if crops can be grown cheaply and effectivly where the crop is most needed then it cannot be a bad thing. The problem for me is that the distribution of GM crops and the profits that can be made off them are going to go into the pockets of the top 20% earners on our planet and the people who should really be benefitting will, in the longrun, still be a mear microscopic nothing in the petri dish of global farming
Another problem with the GM image is fear, fear of the unknown, like the sailors who refused to sail because of sea serpants and giant squids etc, the public may be scared to venture down a road where Modified foods are commonplace.

There is an awful lot of misinformation in the media with regards GM crops. They are being developed for the main reason of creating bigger profets for the large companys who produce the GM food-sorts seed. Forcing farmers, in some of the poorer parts of the world to buy it from specific companys, and locking them into contracts which only seem to benifit the companys. The siteuation with regards GM food types in supermarkets seems fairly clear in the UK at least; most people don't want to buy it, so the supermarkets are going to be very unlikely to stock it unless they have to. Several UK supermarkets, for one I know Waitrose, have no GM produce contained in any of their own brand food. We don't need* GM food crops so why risk having them, 'risk' as in the potential, or possible effects on teh environment, wildlife, the land on which we grow food, farmers, national trade, human health.

You're right - we don't need GM crops, but some people do. With the effects of things such as global warming large areas of the planet will need hardier crops or be given up as useless. I'm not saying give it the all clear but just dismissing it as another capatalist moneymaker is also wrong.

That is true, where the GM technology can be used in food crops to combat a specific problem that will be of benifit then it would be hard to object on ethical lines, so long as exploitation wasn't being roped in with the thing. Its the way at the moment that some of the crops have a specific resistance to a specific pesticide/insecticide etc., that seems to create exploitation, as, once in a deal to buy this particular seed from the particular company, the farmer is pretty much tied up to purchasing the specific pesticides etc., which, oddly enough, useually ends up being from teh same company...