dtgreene: Personally, I think it's best to buy a mixture of GMO and non-GMO food. This way, you'll keep supporting both, hopefully enough so that both are viable, and if some disease wipes out one of them, the other will still be an option.
Basically, this is a situation where diversity (of crops, in this case) is good; a monoculture can be wiped out with a single disease, while with more diverse crops, it's not so easy for that to happen. We don't want a repeat of the Irish Potato Famine, right?
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Don't forget those who can lactate, but whose milk is not safe for the baby (for example, if the person lactating is carrying a nasty virus).
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I could say that there are ethical issues with this as well.
Of course, a far worse problem is the patenting of organisms; in fact, I would say that both patent and copyright law have gone too far at this point. (In particular, copyright terms are way too long.)
I myself usually buy based on the following factors: price(because when you're on a budget "organic"/natural foods are the more expensive and unrealistic option)/variety-strain(specific flavors/textures/etc)/and lastly the company's policies(to a small degree).
In a nutshell, I eat whatever I can afford and that tastes good. Stuff that's "bad" for me I eat in moderation, but I still indulge.
And yeah, a variety of species helps to prevent species-endangering diseases(dutch elm/cocoa plant/banana tree diseases/etc), so more species helps.
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Agreed. Formula prevents infected mothers from spreading diseases(in the rare case the mother didn't do it via giving birth to them, anyways).
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Terminator seeds are a double edged sword. They are bad in that farmers must re-buy new seed every season(and can't simply use old crop's seeds to replant) and they could lead to the dying off of species based solely on terminator seeds.
They DO, however, keep the problem of lawsuits via crosspollination at bay(to a degree). They can also keep potentially bad species from spreading too far in the ecosystem.
As for patents: Yeah, they suck(in general as well).
Why
the owners of Mickey Mouse/Bugs Bunny/etc can dictate such long terms for
EVERYONE's IPs(and thus keep stuff out of the commons for way too long of a peroid, imo) I could never understand.
Heck, many games that are abandoned(
as in truly abandoned titles with no IP holders left)
cannot be legally hosted/downloaded in some countries because of such laws...even though there's no one left to legally object to such being distributed.
By making copyright terms so long, ideas that could be built upon by society(for good or ill) can't until 50+ years have gone by. (I get that IP holders worked hard and deserve the money, but 50+ years of it?!?)
Darvond: In a nice world, all the mobile phone carriers would just agree to standardize their radio bands.
In this world, 5G's rollout in the US is probably going to be delayed thanks to screwballs.
It is? Happy day :D
But seriously, 5G is mostly untested(on human/animal life) and they want to erect towers every 100 yards or so to propagate signals(thereby messing with the local wildlife that may be affected and forcing some to sell their lands or right on their lands to build these things).
If they did quality/quantity testing and it was proven safe/safeish I wouldn't care.
