Below are some recent comments from Pope Francis on GMOs:1
This one brings to the fore the paucity of independent research:
“GMOs is an issue which is complex, it must be approached with a sympathetic look at all its aspects, and this requires at least one more effort to finance several lines of independent and interdisciplinary research.”
Below, he says that human intervention may be creating more problems than it’s solving, “often in the service of finance and consumerism.”
Technology that is linked to finance, claims to be only solving problems … this solves a problem by creating others.
It creates a vicious circle in which the intervention of the human being to solve a problem often worsens the situation further. For example, many birds and insects die out as a result of toxic pesticides created by technology, they are useful to agriculture itself, and their disappearance will be compensated with another technological intervention that probably will bring new harmful effects.
Looking at the world we see that this level of human intervention, often in the service of finance and consumerism, actually causes the earth we live in to become less rich and beautiful, more and more limited and gray, while at the same time the development of technology and consumerism continues to advance without limits.
These were translated from Italian. I wish I knew Italian so I could pick through his full document. You can hear his study behind his words.
1 Pope Francis Slams GMOs And Pesticides For Environmental And Social Damage, Sustainable Pulse, 16 June 2015
Keep in mind when you hear that there is a scientific consensus that GMOs are safe … that the science the consensus was based on is:
1. Not fully transparent.
2. Conducted primarily by corporations that seek to benefit from a “GMOs are safe” finding.
You are so right, Bix. Nor (as you know), has enough time passed to evaluate the long-term effects of GMO foods.
I really like how he said this, “… causes the earth we live in to become less rich and beautiful, more and more limited and gray.”
This characterization could apply to many technologies. He focuses on GMOs, but even without them, the direction of agriculture has been to monocrop, and to use heaping amounts of synthetic fertilizer and pesticides … causing the earth to become less rich and beautiful …