Madeline Ostrander is a freelance journalist based in Seattle and the former senior editor of Yes! Magazine.
Agricultural scientists Miguel Altieri and Maria Alice Garcia put it in this way, in a review paper about biotech (published in 2005, but the concerns remain valid):
GM crops are truly biological novelties that would not exist via natural processes … One of the consequences of these processes may be a generalized contamination of natural flora by GM traits and a degradation and erosion of the commonly owned genetic resources today available for agricultural development. It is virtually impossible to quantify or predict the long-term impacts on agrobiodiversity and the processes they mediate resulting from widespread use of GM crops.
This isn’t to say that genetic engineering should never be part of a solution to global food problems. It is simply to say that those who are hesitant about GMO have a reasonable point — there is a lot we don’t know, both about risks of genetic engineering and the alternatives to it.
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