Despite pervasive human intervention, the dynamism of the natural world overcomes virtually all artificial boundaries and limits. We directly experience nature’s refusal to stay within the lines we draw. Plants penetrate concrete sidewalks; moving water inexorably surmounts or breaks through barriers; nature retakes land abandoned by humans.
Seed dispersal and plant cross-pollination are examples of this dynamic movement in the natural world. In fact, the plant world depends upon it. The notion that we can control genetically modified organisms requires a willful blindness to this fundamental fact of nature.
“Guilty by GMO Contamination”
Genetically modified crop seed can contaminate other crops. Seed movement, pollen flow and other causes result in “gene flow”, the transfer of genes from one population to another. This occurs in a variety of natural ways: via birds, animals, flooding, or wind. It can also result from human activities such as farm or seed cleaning machinery, spillage during transport, and other human errors throughout the production process.Transgenic contamination cannot be recalled. Genetically modified plants continue to reproduce where the seeds are sown or blown and where plants are pollinated. Their traits are passed on to subsequent generations of crops. They also reproduce in nature where genetically modified varieties can forever alter wild relatives, native plants, and ecosystems.
Part I
Part II
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