Whew I am glad. I love the more spirited discussions, but am always afraid (since people can't see what you are saying only what you type) that it will get taken the wrong way or I will offend someone. I really didn't want to get too much into comparing or refuting information as I didn't want to seem like I was pointing fingers or calling someone a liar or anything, but I understand the need to provide references as well. In the future I will bookmark more so I have them ready at hand to reference.
And just so you know, it was the information and questions posted by yourself, GrillingFool, and his wife that got me searching the Internet these last few days for more information on the subject. So I thank you for that, it has gotten the wife and I looking more into this subject, and that is always a good thing in my opinion.
Until now I really hadn't given it much though outside of the flurry of lawsuits being passed back and forth between Monsanto, farmers, and organic farmers. The only frustration I had was much of the information was very confusing and often
seemed to contradict each other. I am sure alot of that stems from the fact that some of what they are talking about is pretty technical, to say the least, LOL.
Some interesting things I did read are that crops currently in testing include ones that could potentionally reduce greenhouse gases? I also know they were planning ones that were naturally resistant to pesticides, but not sure if they have already released them or if it is still in trials. Hey anything that reduces reliance on pesticides and herbicides is a good thing in my book!
One thing that did kinda strike me was just how different are GM crops from none GM crops in regards to disease resistance? I thought I had heard that for the most part they were much more hardy than none GM crops and could even withstand more variances in climate than non GM crops. Is this true?
I was doing a search on that, but am having difficulty finding information specifically regarding that issue. Call me silly, but I was just having thoughts of "what would happen if a disease struck effecting only GM crops kinda along the lines of Dutch Elm Disease?"
For instance, if all the genetic modifications accidently took out a little known but very necessary resistance that caused the GM crops to die off.
How likely an event could this be? And how easily, if at all, could we bounce back from it?
Anyway, good discussion, really got my brain thinking these last couple of days, it needed the exercise anyway