[magicplinger]

I knew it, I just knew they have been messing with our seeds and plants. I have been planting a garden for many years and I know how the plants are supposed to act, but this year the plants were acting crazy. They didn't produce much at all, everything was a lot smaller than it should be, and at one point they stopped producing altogether for at least a month, and it wasn't caused by heat, weather or other conditions. My cherry tomato plant which usually produces a zillion times more than I could ever use, did grow tall and lush, but only produced a handful of tomatoes. There isn't even one green one on it right now. That ain't normal.

Please be sure to read the article, this is very serious stuff!

Genetically Modified (GM) Plants and Seeds

 

[diabetes86]

I get tired of this #### we have been genetically modifying foods for 1000 of years. Its called cross breading and selecting specal plants for there productivity and re planting and cross breading them...and so on. Why do you think an ear of corn is 7" tall and not 2 inches as original. the difference is now we can decide which gene to put in. its much less of a guessing game. And we will get better at it. We used to cross bread plants and hope we got what we want.

 

[magicplinger]

We'll see what happens. Only time will tell.

 

[Shanny]

I'd just like my sweetcorn to taste like corn! Not that I can even eat it anymore, but I remember making corn chowder out of some of the new super sweets years ago, and it didn't even taste like soup. Too sweet!

I'll stick with the heirloom seeds.

 

[jwags]

I've given up growing a garden the last few years because my yied is so small and it seems to take longer and longer to get the vegetables. In our climate we really can't plant to almost Memorial Day because of frost. So we are lucky to get any veggies much before end of August. I do grow herbs which do pretty well. I have read a lot about genetically moified wheat and anti nutrients. It seems that the genetic modification that prevents bugs from eating the wheat does numbers on our digestive system maybe causing tons of GI problems.

 

[smorgan]

I get tired of this #### we have been genetically modifying foods for 1000 of years. Its called cross breading and selecting specal plants for there productivity and re planting and cross breading them...and so on. Why do you think an ear of corn is 7" tall and not 2 inches as original. the difference is now we can decide which gene to put in. its much less of a guessing game. And we will get better at it. We used to cross bread plants and hope we got what we want.

Don't you think it is a little naive to assume that "artificial selection" which you describe (simply selecting the best from each generation as a source for the next) is equivalent to splicing fish genes into a strawberry seed to get a huge, tasteless imitation of a real strawberry? I think most of us see a huge difference between the two.

 

[diabetes86]

Its modifying the jeans. The jeans of the corn plant are not the same as the jeans from 2000 years ago. We changed them. there are only 4 parts to the jean (A,C,G,T) and No I dont see a difference it is still A,C,G,T

 

[smorgan]

Its modifying the jeans. The jeans of the corn plant are not the same as the jeans from 2000 years ago. We changed them. there are only 4 parts to the jean (A,C,G,T) and No I dont see a difference it is still A,C,G,T

First of all, it's normal to change "jeans" after wearing them for 2 or 3 days (or if/when they begin to stink!), but you're talking about "genes" here, not "jeans".

Second, NO "we" didn't change them by engaging in animal husbandry, plant breeding, etc. They changed in a natural way in which they have always changed. All we did was preserve the ones we liked better for reproduction. After many generations, we were able to influence the trajectory toward what suited us. But, we had not role whatsoever in the actual genetic changes which took place.

This is nothing whatsoever like directly manipulating genes of plants and animals in a manner which could NEVER occur without our intervention like my example of splicing genes from a fish onto the genetic material of a strawberry.

Those are two radically different scenarios. There is simply no way to know what kind of effects the second one might have down the road.