Pope Francis Is on a Roll -- Brings Sanity to the GMO Debate

http://www.alternet.org/food/pope-francis-roll-brings-sanity-gmo-debate

“A technology severed from ethics will not easily be able to limit its own power,” said the pontiff.

Pope Francis Is on a Roll -- Brings Sanity to the GMO Debate
By Jill Richardson
June 24, 2015

Does genetically engineering crops — creating seeds with the DNA of other species inserted in them, like a tomato with DNA that includes genes from a fish — violate religious principles?

~snip~

Instead of delivering a verdict on the science, Francis probes the social issues related to genetically engineered crops that the U.S. government and biotech companies like Monsanto and DuPont often try to sweep under the rug.

He observes that “in many places, following the introduction of these crops, productive land is concentrated in the hands of a few owners,” while others lose their farmland. That means “the most vulnerable…become temporary laborers, and many rural workers end up moving to poverty-stricken urban areas.”

Meanwhile, the pope writes: “The expansion of these crops has the effect of destroying the complex network of ecosystems, diminishing the diversity of production, and affecting regional economies, now and in the future.”