Ideas on genetic engineering hard to swallow
Published:Sunday | April 7, 2013 | 12:00 AM
THE EDITOR, Sir:
Two things in Gwynne Dyer's column 'Genetic engineering: golden rice' (Gleaner, April 6, 2013) are of concern to me:
1. "But it's now clear that GE crops pose no health risk ... ."
2. "The opposition to GE crops never came from farmers, and it's now in steep decline in the general public as well." Not true. I sat and watched a documentary on Monsanto a few years ago which outlined what happened in Canada to Canadian farmers. They lost everything to lawsuits brought against them by Monsanto. Tell them that there was no opposition to GM crops!
Granted that we have had enhanced food stock for a long time, and granted that golden rice is effective against blindness in children (the thrust of your article).
However, when a crop has pesticides within its DNA, I take exceptions to being told that people now accept GE/GM food stock. I will never feel comfortable eating this type of food.
Finally, to equate adding pesticides to the DNA of a crop is not the same as having natural cross-pollination.
LOIS ROBERTSON-DOUGLASS