"GMO" Term Impedes Biotech Dialogue

"One of the issues that's inhibiting the advancement of the discussion is this term ‘GMOs,' because it's scientifically meaningless," says University of California professor Dr. Pamela Ronald who also wrote the book "Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food." This was quoted in an article published in Public Radio International. According to the article, each biotech crop should be looked at on a case-to-case basis. For instance, herbicide tolerant corn is neither similar, nor comparable to insect resistant corn.

The article also quoted Amy Harmon of New York Times, who said that there is an "echo chamber of misinformation" on biotech, fed by social media. "My concern is that we will reject a tool that could help," Harmon says. "If there's a tool that's not intrinsically dangerous, and that could yield more nutritious foods and we rejected that just based on fears and misperceptions of the technology, it would be a really tragic thing."

Read the original article at http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-11-03/why-term-gmo-scientifically-meaningless.