@Kate_Kate Then you might like this project too!
http://gdr.cascoprojects.org/
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Thank you, Renata! Now it seems that my argument was shallow and human-centric, and I think I know less about GMOs than you do: especially about the ecological effects. I tought of this thread again on reading this timely addition to this discussion from Jacobin, “a plea for culinary modernism”: “The obsession with eating natural and artisanal is ahistorical. We should demand more high-quality industrial food.” I think that my statement was ill-worded, but I wanted to stress that we shouldn’t underestimate the power of the application of science to food in terms of creating more and better food—Laudan puts it like this, “For our ancestors, natural was something quite nasty. Natural often tasted bad.” I think that when you mentioned “mutations and abnormality,” I thought you were buying into this kind of Whole Foods-rhetoric of anti-GMO, but clearly that’s far from the case—you are just criticizing the thoughtlessness and recklessness of current systems, but not foreclosing the idea of improving these systems. And I wonder if, just because current genetic modifications are disastrous, if good genetic modifications are impossible tout court.
I like Laudan’s article because how it usefully indicates that all foods (dimsum, say) are technological inventions on the order of better saddles.
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