To me the GMO issue is very much alive and pertinent as nothing has changed since the protest other than perhaps there has been slightly more discussion about it. Which for me is a positive considreding this was a technology introduced under the public's ignorance.

Bear in mind that opinions are my own and by no means represent the views of the whole anti-GMO movement. I'll try to summarise what I see as multi-faced complex problem as much as I can. Please bear with me as it's fairly late.

I decided to join the protests against Monsanto for both reasons, corporate first and bio-tech second. The science part I can't strongly discuss but it doesn't take a scientist to understand many of the negative impacts of GMOs in their current state.

The swapping of saving locally adapted seed for a patented, centrally created, single variety makes communities more dependent on corporations and way less resilient, with no place to turn when GMOs fail. This also afects bio-diversity as heirloom varieties become extinct.

(Did you know that We Lost 93% Of Variety In Our Food Seeds just in the last 80 years?. GMOs will exacerbate this further.

Furthermore, it impacts farmers (specially small subsistence farmers) economically as the GMO seeds are more expensive and some promote the use of expensive pesticides. Again, negative environment impact.

On the science side, I don't want to pick on it as I don't want to become an easy target and be accused of not being an expert. That's fair enough, I'm not an expert. The reason I'm against biotechnoly as a whole is because it's hard for me to trust a science like the bio-tech industry that is so reluctant to label its own product. If the industry is 100% sure of GMOs safety and benefits, then the logical step would be to proudly label its products. It would be free advertising dammit. The fact that instead it spends millions trying to stop people from having a choice, just makes me loose my trust.

And to finalise... a general comment. I fail to understand bio-technologists mindset and approach towards nature. It appears to me that they have become so separate from nature that they are unable to care the consequences of changing even if (on the surface) a seemingly small part of the whole.

For each crop there are hundred (sometimes thousands) of varieties adapted to all sorts of soils and climatic conditions. Yet, we're trying to replace all of this valuable genetic bank, which took so incredibly long to select and evolve, with one (say a handful) genetically modified strain?

Nothing is separate in nature. But we seem to care very little about how a part that we modify, not only is going to affect the different beings in the ecosystem in which it's introduced but also everywhere it travels in its subsequent generations. Testing in a lab is a thing but releasing it into an ecosystem with hundreds of variables it's a different beast all together. It's a scenario which can't possibly be thouroughly tested.

We know that a pest is usually a symptom of an ecosystem out of balance. Usually it's out of balance because of human intervention in the first place. Instead of trying to comprehend the core problem of the symptom, we come up with a bigger hammer every time to stamp down on the symptom while the problem increases. (If a headache is persistent and you keep taking strongeer painkillers eventually you'll die out from the tumour.)

The wider problem is industrial mono-culture of course, which is a feast for pests and depletes and erodes soils, making crops ever more reliant on inputs from oil based fertilizers and chemicals. With or without GMOs this is not sustainable.

We need to switch to systems that take advantage of our genetic heritage (which is free for all) and create balanced perennial food production ecosystems, which enrich soils year after year. This design system already exists, it's called Permaculture but it's given very little attention because it doesn't fit the big agri-bis system. It's a new approach based on understanding and cooperation with nature instead of fighting it.

The whole attitude of forcing nature into a sanitised landscape to suit humans is not only arrogant (in the sense that we feel that as the pinnacle of evolution know better than evolution itself) it will eventually bite us in the behind big time. In fact it has already begun as the problems become bigger every time we try to fix a symptom. Biotechnology may have some knowledge of some of the part's inner workings but it fails miserably to comprehend what nature as a whole actually IS.

This is why I feel GMOs are not only a problem, they are totally uncessary to solve the worlds problems. We already have solutions to most of them, we just need to change the way we interact with nature so we can see them.

This is why I'm for nature and not bio-technology.