The Next Huge GMO Crime Is Here

It’s “genome-editing” of food crops.

The official propaganda could go several ways. One version: “We won’t be inserting foreign genes from other species into food plants anymore, as we do now in GMO crops. Instead, we’ll be tweaking and editing the genes that are already in the plants. It’s wonderful.”

Of course, this “new and improved process” can produce unintended and unpredictable effects that ripple through plant DNA. Oops.

Here is a cautionary statement from Jennifer Doudna, the co-discoverer of the latest and greatest method of gene-surgery, called CRISPR: “I guess I worry about a couple of things. I think there’s sort of the potential for unintended consequences of gene editing in people for clinical use. How would you ever do the kinds of experiments that you might want to do to ensure safety?”

The same worries would apply to gene-editing food plants—especially if no one intends to do long-term studies on the health effects of eating this food.

We’re on the cusp of a new level of GMO crime-business, and the man in charge of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), Sonny Perdue, is cheerleading from the sidelines.

Perdue says the newest gene-edited plants won’t be any different from those developed by traditional non-GMO breeding methods.

Which is like saying a missile fired from a tank is identical to an arrow shot from a bow.

Here is the brand new policy from the USDA: “Under its biotechnology regulations, USDA does not regulate or have any plans to regulate plants that could otherwise have been developed through traditional breeding techniques…This includes a set of new [gene-editing] techniques that are increasingly being used by plant breeders to produce new plant varieties that are indistinguishable from those developed through traditional breeding methods.”

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