Half truths vs emotion, is not the way forward.

The government has allowed field trials of genetically modified mustard in India. It has been labeled DMH 11 so we do not know what kind of modification has been done to the mustard genome. The good thing is that it has been developed by government scientists to increase yield by 28-30%, which would be good for the economy because Indians use a lot of mustard oil in cooking. High yield hybrid rice, which needs less water, has been cultivated for years so why not mustard. The debate about genetically modified or GM foods has become increasingly bitter with supporters relying on half truths and emotional blackmail about reducing hunger and the opposition labeling it as Frankenfood, like something monstrous. Probably about 15% of the total land area of the world is arable so GM foods will be able to reduce hunger. That is not true. There is no shortage of food in the world, there is a shortage of access to food, because of war, epidemics, such as the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, or poverty. Research shows that about 33% of food is wasted, amounting to $750 billion a year, equivalent to food produce of 28% of farms and 39% of household waste consists of fruits and vegetables. Reduce waste and reduce the numbers of people in the world through universal access to family planning and hunger will disappear. GM foods, especially those produced by private firms, do not give higher yields but are modified to be resistant to pesticides produced by those companies and so increase harvest by killing weeds. There is concern that they maybe carcinogenic. If GM crops are so fantastic why are so many farmers using GM crops committing suicide. GM seeds are expensive and companies use, what is known as, ' terminator technology ' which means that seeds produced by these plants cannot be replanted so once a crop is destroyed there is no hope. Farmers borrow money to plant such crops in the hope of earning more money but if prices crash they are left with large debts which they are unable to repay. Suicides by desperate farmers has been called ' GM genocide '. One expert has pointed out that gene transfers are common in nature so why should genetic modification by humans be any different. Gene mutations are indeed common in nature but they occur over many millennia and the bad ones are eliminated through Darwinian natural selection. Producing hybrid plants which need less water is one thing but incorporating bacterial genes to produce toxic proteins which kill insects is dangerous. BT cotton is fine because it is outside but BT food may cause disease. We need a controlled study where a group of people are fed only BT food and see whether there is any increase in diseases such as cancer compared to people eating organic food. Logic instead of half truths and emotion.