I don't have an issue with genetically modified food, but I do have an issue with Monsanto. They are the phillip morris of chemical companies, never trustworthy, always hiding dangerous activities, and generally being slimey bastards. Do some google searches to unearth more unsetling nastiness about things Monsanto creates that you eat. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=A1018BD684F0C6A62F01999A180E764B PDF links to how greenpeace fought to unearth Monsanto's deception: http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/gp_briefing_seralini_study.pdf http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/international/press/reports/mon863_chronicle_of_deception.pdf
Hmm, could they use it for ethanol? I heard because of ethanol production boosts that the lower amount of corn is going to drive up everything from baking good to meats.
According to a spokesperson from Monsanto this study is highly flawed since they forgot to mention that the rats were heavy drinkers. They probably could as your car probably doesn't care about the DNA of the corn but its going to be impossible to limit GMO corn to just ethanol and not the food supply. Corn based ethanol is also problematic as not only does it take corn out of the foodsupply but takes more resources to grow and process than ethanol from other sources. I'm thinking for the US prairie grass and cellulosic based ethanol should be the way to go as it takes little resources to grow those sources.
People should be careful to seperate genetically engineered food with genetically altered food. Most breeds of dogs are a result of "genetic engineering" - that is breeders do this all the time - and don't produce toxic dogs. That's what most bio-engineered food is. Now there's a lot of food where they use a virus to splice in genes to make something more resistent to disease for instance - that's another kind of bio-engineered food that's probably the kind that is more worrisome. But even there, you're merely transferring an existing gene from another plant with known affects. So the real question is....what have they done with the food. That's what they need to be open about. What was done to it? How were it's genes altered? And is there a study conducted by the FDA? And why not? Also, why isn't greenpeace mentioning the impact GM foods have on reducing birth defects and reducing cancer/other diseases. GM food can be made more disease resistent, which for corn there are many dangers with ingesting tortillas or other foods / drinks made from moldy corn. Of course, this isn't about saving lives - it's about fighting progress.
Didn't Monsanto get in trouble with some steroid they were giving to dairy cows or something? The name sounds familiar.
To elaborate, ethanol produces less heat energy than gasoline, given the same volume used. You'll have to burn more ethanol than gasoline for a given power output.
