Luna del'Corvo

The issue is even far more complex than that, because there's a lot of other reasons for GMOs than food production, and a lot of non-GMO methods of obtaining food production that are far, far worse than GMOs.

I used to work in plant genetic engineering. The thing is, everything we eat has been engineered, but in different ways, and before GMOs no one had to even test their products before putting them on the market. The first Round-Up ready crops were obtained through cross-breeding naturally resistant species with ones that weren't, no 'gene manipulation' involved. Except somehow it's seen as natural to treat seeds with multiple carcinogenic chemicals, force them to mate with non-related species, and then rebreed in the normal species for generations using the same scary techniques until it still looks like a tomato, but no one mentions the 10% of ragweed DNA or whatever they used. In fact, no one even knows anymore, because some of that cross-breeding was done centuries ago.

Look at maize, if you want an example. Or wheat. The corn we eat now, while supposedly a direct descendent of maize from south america, looks so little like its ancestor you wouldn't even think they were the same family, never mind species. And the new corn, while growing bigger and juicier, so more attractive to western buyers, also takes 50% more nutrients in the soil per pound of kernels, and strips fields bare, requiring more manure and fertilizer, requiring fields to be left fallow for years at times, depending on the soil where it was grown. But there's no one protesting corn growers.

Another case in point - did you ever see 'broccoflower' in the 80's? The answer is no, because in the late 80s, someone used really nasty chemicals to force broccoli and cauliflower to breed, and they didn't even test the impact on the environment, the nativ species, or snything else before making it publicly available. Now it's almost impossible to grow your own broccoli, because it gets contaminated with broccoflower too easily.

I agree there are unresolved issues with GMOs - but from someone who worked in the area, let me say, the scientists are not unaware of those issues. The government may hem and haw, but talk to someone who actually works in a lab creating insulin from hemp seed, or trying to increase cold-resistance of wheat, and they will readily admit to all the issues you mentioned and more. They're just not on the news talking about it, because they're busy in a lab, trying to resolve those issues. So my biggest complaint about the anti-GMO groups isn't that they have questions - it's that they assume scientists are too stupid to be trying to find the answers.