On your first note—incorrect, at least within the narrow scope you have defined. As I demonstrated with my first comment, I personally am not afraid of GMO’s. I’m afraid of GMO’s for which I can not obtain proper documentation and disclosure. If that aspect is covered, I will make the decision to buy on my own. And there are many more like me—there *is* a market for GMO foods. Just not so long as the cloak and daggers act is maintained by the incumbents we both despise.

The fastest way to remove the incumbents from the market are to provide a better solution, more value, than they are. But it has to be a better solution to the consumers—not just what you think it should be. In this case, once the consumers are educated, they will demand proper labeling and disclosure. The education is the difficult part of the problem, but if people understand the why, they’ll get the job done. Without the why, you can’t get to the how and without the how you can’t get to the when and where.

The issue of GMOs already in the wild requires a comment thread in and of itself. I find the actions of Monsanto and the “Roundup-ready” debacle to be absolutely despicable. Their decision to put those strains into the wild were premature and irresponsible. Many parties are at fault in that case and the farmers who didn’t want to be involved in the first place were the ones who took the hit. When I first learned this had even occurred it just made me want to spit and throw things. That a government could hold the farmers responsible for something they had no control over…ugh, I’m getting frustrated all over again just typing this!

But at the same time, your very admonition that pollen can travel miles is argument against holding Monsanto liable for trespass and intrusion. That would be the fault of the wind and bees—good luck with that lawsuit. It is a situation where there’s no good solution after the cat is out of the bag, but I do understand the sentiment of wanting to place the blame at the doorstep of he who tipped the first domino… It just doesn’t work in the courts, or we would all be jailed for *something*.

I think Controlled Environment Agriculture where GMOs can be fully contained are the way to move forward with the research properly. Not to mention being a mutually beneficial line of research, as advances with CEA techniques can then be applied to improve existing techniques. Heck, I’d even go so far as to literally take the research off-planet if it is deemed the responsible thing to do.

Additionally, there are researchers who are contemplating what it would take to create a biological system which is inherently incompatible with DNA as we know it. This could be a great solution. At least in theory, such GMOs wouldn’t be able to interact with existing life. Personally, I’m dubious for several reasons, not least of which is that life…tends to find a way. But, it is certainly a solution to keep an eye on.

Although I said nothing about truth in labeling, my comment, “blindly consuming food which should still be in the lab under testing is certainly foolish,” could have been used to discern that I would support it. Although I would assume our philosophy differs greatly on the subject. I do not believe regulation is the answer, as it sets a minimum set of specifications which must be disclosed. I’d much prefer the market be educated and demand such disclosure themselves, so that manufacturers which fail to provide—fail. I’m talking about disclosure on a level beyond which any form of regulation would have a shot at providing, thanks to those “revolving door” lobbyists we both take issue with. However, I also recognize that such education would be a huge, unlikely-to-succeed-any-time-soon undertaking. But, that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop striving for it.

I’ll put it this way: I long for the days when if you purchased an appliance, it was assumed you would receive the schematic along with it. I’ve often pondered many hours on what it would take to create a line of electronics which provides what an engineer would consider a “complete set of specifications”. As I make my foray into the world of hydro-, aero- and aquaponics I find that I’m desiring such a line of products in this market too…

The issue of going cross-species is one of the points I was referencing with my original reply. That’s part of “understand[ing] precisely what we’re doing.” Until the science is proven, no one should be seeing such GMO foods show up on their table—especially without disclosure. We appear to be mostly on the same page.

Genetic engineering is an information technology. It is entirely possible to represent DNA as a set of bits. As technology moves forward, genetic engineering will become a bedroom hobby the same as computer programming. Right now, GE is sitting somewhere around 1960 in programming terms, depending on which synthetic biologist’s timeline you’re looking at. But it is about to explode and catch up to 2010 in far less than fifty years, because of how well it overlaps with IT. The wheels are already on the cart.

In fact, we’re almost there already. Right now, I can download the software required to build up my own sequence, send it off to a service like DNA 2.0 or Mr. Gene and I’ll get back my very own custom DNA sequence for pennies per base pair…

No one is saying precaution doesn’t need to be taken. The researchers on the leading edge of the field fully admit that this technology can lead to horrific consequences. But, those precautions are being taken. These services watch for sequences known to be potentially dangerous and flags are raised. Thanks to that, the services can exist safely, so that many minds, the world over, are able to tackle the field and provide solutions, safely and efficiently.

Your own blog is running on open source software. It exists because those great minds of the world got together and produced Linux, Apache, PHP, MySQL and WordPress. Imagine a world where we have open access to a bank of genetic designs which have all been proven safe and isn’t controlled by one large corporation…goodbye energy crisis, goodbye high manufacturing costs, goodbye hunger.

Sure, this is all off in the future, but at one point in time so was human flight, landing a man on the moon and any number of things we now take for granted…

The key is understanding the science fully. Blindly consuming food which should still be in the lab under testing is certainly foolish. But once the science has evolved to a point where we understand precisely what we’re doing by adding gene X and removing gene Y, then campaigning against it officially becomes a Luddite’s game.

Don’t forget, horticulture has a long, rich history of genetic control and modification. The current practitioners simply label it “cloning” and “hybridization” without noting for the layman that the geneticists use the same language—they’re doing the same thing, just using different tools. The dividing line comes due to the fact that the new tools provide more precision and ability, which must be used with care.

Learn to drive safely or try to ban cars; you’re going to get more done if you understand all the turns in the road.