17 Mar 2011It was a misnomer if ever there were one, based on ignorance and fanned by mischievous opponents. I speak of the term "genetically modified" or "Frankenfoods" to describe the new series of crops that have been produced by modern genetic techniques.
This rather than the age-old process of plant (or animal) breeding, which hybridized organisms that carried some desired traits and hoped for fusing them together in the offspring of the crosses. Believe me, all the offspring of such hybridizations are genetically modified in thousands of ways that went far beyond the traits under particular consideration. This process has been going on for millennia. Indeed, the only common crop I can think of that may not have been so modified is the pine nut.
But when quicker, cleaner and infinitely more traceable techniques became available in the 1980s and since, many folks conjured up all sorts of biological nightmares that still haunt the development of food for the masses a-hungering at present and expanding to mid-century. Some of this concern was understandable in the early years, but biotechnically derived crops (the name preferable to "genetically modified," obviously) have become the most intensely studied, regulated, debated crop introductions in all of human history.
http://greenbio.checkbiotech.org/news/progress_biotech_crops
