Gene EDITING and genetic MODIFICATION are 2 distinctly different techniques:
In simple terms, gene editing is a small, controlled tweak to a living organism’s existing DNA versus the introduction of a new, foreign gene. … There are many pros to gene editing. It’s editing is less expensive, easier to use, and more accurate than genetic modification.*
I still believe that gene editing is natural cross fertilisation speeded up unlike genetic modification which introduces a completely different gene into the DNA molecule.
I agree.
We’ve been using selective breeding in both plants and animals for centuries if not millenia and that’s really just a slower, more time-consuming way to achieve pretty much what gene editing can do.
It seems Ronnie Biggs is no longer a great train robber then. As by the above semantic gymnastics, he simply asked them to hand over the contents of the train.
And look at what has happened to pedigree dogs as a result of money led selective breeding.
Also, the fact that something has happened for years, is not evidence that something is right. The Germans were not the first nation, or last, to commit genocide & Jimmy Saville was not the first, or last, to abuse children.
It’s an argument which is open to interpretation and which even the specialists involved cannot agree upon, as the following makes clear:
" Views on regulating the use of gene editing in producing genetically modified animals or crops have generally fallen into two camps, says Prof Katherine Denby from the University of York, who works on new ways to improve crops using tools such as gene editing.
The first camp argues that as gene-edited crops or livestock could have arisen through traditional breeding processes, they should not be classed as genetically modified organisms, meaning they wouldn’t be subject to genetic modification regulations.
The second camp holds that any organism made through gene editing should be regulated as a genetically modified organism, regardless of whether the final product could have been made using traditional breeding. Countries such as the US, Australia and Japan have taken the former, more relaxed, approach, while the EU has taken the latter, more stringent one."
It is worth looking at the way farm animals are treated. Take the grass eating cow. In modern factory farming, they are fed rendered meat & grain. Both unnatural food sources to them. Then as a result of the unnatural living conditions they are also fed large amounts of antibiotics too. So we know the over commercialisation of agriculture is far from healthy, or natural.
BSE was the result of feeding cows rendered meat. And now we want to play with the genetics of plants so the agro chemical companies, like Monsanto, can make even more profit?
Playing with the DNA of plants stops farmers from being legally able to hold back seeds & replant them. As the agro chemical companies own the plants DNA & how can any company own the DNA of a plant if that DNA has not been modified?
Follow the money & in the case of gentic engineering that means the copyrights & you will find there is no difference between genetic engineering & genetic editing.Unless you want to play semantic games or are involved in PR.
Quite true, I have never understood this push in this forum to protect the British farmer who gave you BSE and salmonella eggs. You can get Australian meat fed naturally and better quality for less yet try to protect a Welsh farmer with a couple of sheep fed god knows what.
This is what we humans do. Mess with nature and hang the consequences (which we don’t understand as there are too many variables for our small brains). Trouble is that nature comes back to bite us.
What?
When Oz beef is widely fed hormones unlike here in the UK and Oz chicken is rife with not only Salmonella but Campylobacter too I think that you can keep your supposed “better quality” meat to yourselves ta.
It’s only because China don’t want it now that you’re trying to palm the stuff onto us.
FYI British beef is widely recognized as being not only among the best in the world, but some of the most sustainable in the world too.
