Problem-Reaction-Solution: “In Lean Times, Biotech Grains Are Less Taboo”

April 21st, 2008

There’s no conspiracy. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the FrankenpHood Satan worshippers and black magicians are going to use the food crisis as some kind of opportunity to expand the use of their garbage as desperation kicks in.

“Yes, please give us your ‘terminator’ seeds. We want to fill our bellies with hideous pesticides and alien proteins. Thank you, Master.”

Via: IHT:

Soaring food prices and global grain shortages are bringing new pressures on governments, food companies and consumers to relax their longstanding resistance to genetically engineered crops.

In Japan and South Korea, some manufacturers for the first time have begun buying genetically engineered corn for use in soft drinks, snacks and other foods. Until now, to avoid consumer backlash, the companies have paid extra to buy conventionally grown corn. But with prices having tripled in two years, it has become too expensive to be so finicky.

“We cannot afford it,” said a corn buyer at Kato Kagaku, a Japanese maker of corn starch and corn syrup.

In the United States, wheat growers and marketers, once hesitant about adopting biotechnology because they feared losing export sales, are now warming to it as a way to bolster supplies. Genetically modified crops contain genes from other organisms to make the plants resistance to insects, herbicides or disease. Opponents continue to worry that such crops have not been studied enough and that they might pose risks to health and the environment.

“I think it’s pretty clear that price and supply concerns have people thinking a little bit differently today,” said Steve Mercer, a spokesman for U.S. Wheat Associates, a federally supported cooperative that promotes American wheat abroad.

The group, which once cautioned farmers about growing biotech wheat, is working to get seed companies to restart development of genetically modified wheat and to get foreign buyers to accept it.

Even in Europe, where opposition to what the Europeans call Frankenfoods has been fiercest, some prominent government officials and business executives are calling for faster approvals of imports of genetically modified crops. They are responding in part to complaints from livestock producers, who say they might suffer a critical shortage of feed if imports are not accelerated.

In Britain, the National Beef Association, which represents cattle farmers, issued a statement this month demanding that “all resistance” to such crops “be abandoned immediately in response to shifts in world demand for food, the growing danger of global food shortages and the prospect of declining domestic animal production.”

The chairman of the European Parliament’s agriculture committee, Neil Parish, said that as prices rise, Europeans “may be more realistic” about genetically modified crops: “Their hearts may be on the left, but their pockets are on the right.”

With food riots in some countries focusing attention on how the world will feed itself, biotechnology proponents see their chance. They argue that while genetic engineering might have been deemed unnecessary when food was abundant, it will be essential for helping the world cope with the demand for food and biofuels in the decades ahead.

3 Responses to “Problem-Reaction-Solution: “In Lean Times, Biotech Grains Are Less Taboo””

  1. quintanus says:

    This would definitely be the year for vegetarians to go on a campaign of promoting lower consumption based on ethics of poverty/equity rather than animal rights. A friend’s father was buying a lot of high quality beef, and it seemed unusually cheap, given inflation of food. Apparently what is happening this spring is that some beef growers are dumping their cattle due to feed prices.

  2. Aaron says:

    The major assumption of the article is that GM help to increase food production. Is there evidence that it will do that?

    There’s none in the article but here’s some evidence that it does the opposite

    http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/exposed-the-great-gm-crops-myth-812179.html

    Typical of most GE, it’s a failure – except for the fact that it can be patented

  3. Eileen says:

    My fingers are trembling on the keyboard as I write this. THAT PEOPLE WILL USE THESE MODIFIED SEEDS IS PART OF THE ROCKEFELLER-BUSH PLAN TO KILL THE HUMAN RACE OFF. FACED WITH POSSIBLE CROP FAILURE OR “GUARANTEED SEEDS” WHAT PERSON WITHOUT INTERNET ACCESS WOULDN’T SUCCUMB TO FRANKENSEEDS?
    Sorry, I just get so UPSET by these SEEDS. I personally love to buy my seeds from Seeds of Change. But Oi. The company is owned by the Mars candy bar family.
    I am VERY PARANOID (if you haven’t gathered that by now oops). Where I buy my seeds from anymore is equivalent to what a female might equate to a sperm bank.
    Never will I plant a frankenfood seed.
    The future of THE HUMAN RACE DEPENDS ON NOT PLANTING FRANKENFOODSEEDS.

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