While I’m not at all in favour of the way that some agribusiness corporations have behaved, such as in the case of Mr. Schmeiser, I don’t think the case against GMO-foods is as cut-and-dry as you make it out to be.

I encourage you to seek out some views to balance your own on this debate–the Frankenfood chapter of James MacWilliams’s Just Food is a good place to start.

The evidence can be conflicting and I don’t pretend to have a definite answer on the desirability of developing GMO seeds but I’ll offer a few points that I think are fairly indisputable:

-Their is clear evidence that famine in India and China has been drastically reduced over the past 30-40 years due to increased domestic food production that has been helped by technology (including GMO seeds).
-Farmers, companies, and governments, have been changing the genetics of the plants we eat for millennia through selection. Doing so in a laboratory is just a matter of degrees.
-To use your words, farming–whether small-scale and organic or conventional and corporate–is “effing with mother nature”. There is no wild environment that naturally clears itself of trees and other plants so that select varieties of food plants can grow for human consumption. Again it is a matter of degrees.

Nine billion humans cannot live on foraged berries, sea kelp, and humanely-killed grubs. I worry that the more politicised and emotional we in the developed world make food production to satisfy our desire for luxury and ethics the less quickly technology will be available to those who need it for subsistence.

Farm animals have been raised on GM feed for many years. Does this mean that GM feed is safe for animals and humans? Certainly it means that ill effects may not show up immediately. But laboratory studies designed to assess longer-term and more subtle health effects of GM feed on animals do show harmful health effects.
Mouse and rat feeding studies:

* Rats fed GM tomatoes developed stomach ulcerations [12]
* Offspring of rats fed GM soya had 4 times the death rate of rats fed non-GM soya [13]
* Liver, pancreas and testes function was disturbed in mice fed GM soya [14, 15, 16]
* GM peas caused allergic reactions in mice [17]
* Rats fed GM oilseed rape developed enlarged livers, often a sign of toxicity [18]
* GM potatoes fed to rats caused excessive growth of the lining of the gut similar to a pre-cancerous condition [8, 19]
* Rats fed insecticide-producing GM maize grew more slowly, suffered problems with liver and kidney function, and showed higher levels of certain fats in their blood [20]
* Rats fed GM insecticide-producing maize over three generations suffered damage to liver and kidneys and showed alterations in blood biochemistry [21]
* Old and young mice fed with GM insecticide-producing maize showed a marked disturbance in immune system cell populations and in biochemical activity [22]
* Mice fed GM insecticide-producing maize over four generations showed a buildup of abnormal structural changes in various organs (liver, spleen, pancreas), major changes in the pattern of gene function in the gut, reflecting disturbances in the chemistry of this organ system (e.g. in cholesterol production, protein production and breakdown) and, most significantly, reduced fertility [23]
* Mice fed GM soya over their entire lifetime (24 months) showed more acute signs of ageing in their liver [24]
* Rabbits fed GM soya showed enzyme function disturbances in kidney and heart [25].
* Feeding studies with farm animals:
* There are very few studies of this type that have looked directly at the long-term effects on farm animals. However, even these have shown problems:
* GM DNA can survive processing and is detectable in the digestive tract of sheep. This raises the possibility that antibiotic resistance and Bt insecticide genes can move into gut bacteria [26], a process known as horizontal gene transfer. Horizontal gene transfer can lead to antibiotic resistant disease-causing bacteria (“superbugs”) and may lead to Bt insecticide being produced in the gut with potentially harmful consequences. For years, regulators and the biotech industry claimed that horizontal gene transfer would not occur with GM DNA, but this research challenges this claim
* Sheep fed Bt insecticide-producing GM maize over three generations showed disturbances in the functioning of the digestive system of ewes and in the liver and pancreas of their lambs [27].