‘Bigger’ issues in food production than GMOs to worry about

There are some ways of modifying food that haven’t been around for hundreds, much less thousands, of years and are anything but natural. One of these, is “mutation breeding” or “radiation breeding” — the use of radiation to induce mutations in plants and see where that takes you.

This goes hand-in-hand with all the other strange things we do in food production these days. Pesticides, growth-inducing antibiotics, hormones, artificial fertilizers — some of these affect our health, others the environment, some both. Think of bodies of water that become choked with toxin-containing algae because of fertilizer runoff from agriculture, and think about the water that Toledo residents weren’t allowed to drink for a couple of days.

We don’t label foods for pesticides, fertilizers or these other “conventional” food-production technologies. Only genetically engineered food is considered unconventional; it’s what the big labeling-law movement is all about these days. Why is that? Largely because groups of people have managed to make it an issue, not because it’s the one big dangerous thing happening with our food.

Read the full, original article: Stop fretting about GMOs; we have bigger food issues to worry about

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