[pp.int.general] Artificial meat

[Marco Confalonieri]

Il 24/02/2012 10.49, Daniel Riaño ha scritto:
> We are not against GMO food. We are against patenting GM forms of
> life. Years ago, when I imagined something like that would happen
> sooner than later, I accepted that this was inevitable, first for the
> underdeveloped or overpopulated countries, then for the richer
> countries. (And unless you imagine some way to convert housed cows'
> methane in some sort of efficient energy, large farms of livestock
> have already their days numbered.)

I agree with your position on GMOs, but I don't think they are really
the true solution to the world starvation: GMOs for food production were
developed for economical reasons, and most of the agricultural GMOs
implement "by design" a sort of "DRM": their seeds are almost sterile. I
wrote a small article on that some years ago on this issue:

http://www.piratpartiet.it/pdf/2010-06-04.pdf (in italian)

Besides this, I think there are some weird "side effects" to the
improvements in the food production chain: while a part of the world is
dying from starvation, the other part produces so much food that its
production must be strictly regulated, like "milk quotas" in the EU, or
destroyed as in Sicily, an italian region, where farmers are PAID by the
European Union to throw away oranges over a certain quota. I bet the
same happens for many other types of fruits and vegetables across Europe.

I was told that in the USA the same happen with meat (anyone from there
can confirm or dismiss the information?)

In summary, I think that before taking on GMOs, the distortions of the
market should be addressed.

-- 
Marco Confalonieri