SPOILER ALERT: the answer is 'lobbying'. That is, the free, democratic, and fully legal, bribery of government legislators and elected officials by profit-driven corporate bodies.
Lobbying is fine. The problem with the US is you can literally buy votes in the legislature. That's because the legislator's individual votes were made public via sunshine laws. As long as you keep those votes visible they can be bought no matter how much indirection has to be introduced.
The alternative is a secret vote. Now only passed/unpassed legislation can be bought. This is a lot more expensive and requires a conspiracy, but it's a lot harder to hold the people in this conspiracy directly accountable since they can always plausibly deny how their vote was cast. I've yet to see another better solution for getting rid of the money to vote pipeline.
You can even have a middle ground. Make all votes secret, up until two months before someone's seat comes up election, then reveal all their past votes. Give voters information while reducing the window that lobbyists can use to buy votes.
> lobbying'. That is, the free, democratic, and fully legal, bribery of government legislators and elected officials by profit-driven corporate bodies.
That’s not really the definition of lobbying though. We should try to avoid hyperboles. Additionally, bribery is not legal and that’s not even remotely the form that the vast majority of lobbying takes today.
Of course it’s bribery. Everyone involved knows it’s bribery. The money is given with expectation of reward. If the bribing entity didn’t expect a direct reward, they wouldn’t give the money.
Now, everyone tries to hide behind levels of abstraction — “It’s just lobbying!” — but those are just fig leaves and reasonable people should see through them. E.g., “Exxon gave the money to my campaign committee, and I’m not involved with the finance end; my vote in favor of Exxon was just a coincidence.” That’s pure bullshit and everyone knows it.
So yes it’s bribery. Calling it something else is disingenuous.
Lobbying is not supposed to be bribery. It was supposed to be a a legally protected avenue for the governed to communicate with their representatives in government.
It has become a channel for corruption, though. The solution, which may be entirely impossible, is to select better representatives. But requires being a better people in the first place.
The phrase that should have been used is "campaign contributions" and "PAC contributions". All corporate PACs are purchasers of influence. It's especially obvious when the same company funds both sides.
Sure, lobbying rules need to change (companies shouldnt lobby and gifts of any kind need to be reined in; but citizen funded, with cap, interest groups are probably ok).
It seems like the other democratic thing, which is likely more impactful, is that most people don't give a shit about most issues like this. People have much bigger issues in their lives (and on the reps schedule), so there's no real pressure for regulators to changeover this issue vs others. For even more evidence of people not giving a shit, just look at voter turn out.
Your perspective is perverse. the onus should not be on citizens to be informed about every possible toxin and regularly take action. This is victim blaming 101.
The wisdom of the founding fathers of the U.S. impresses me. They didn't all agree on solutions and they didn't all agree on what was a problem. But together they chewed through a lot of tangly weeds.
Many people think the foundations of the U.S. are outdated and ill-informed of modern society. Most of those people are poor students of history. The U.S. founders were not poor students.
Regarding lobbyists and special interests in politics, the founders were not the least bit ignorant. In the end they settled on a clever mechanism to control them. The answer to special interests is special interests.
It might be argued that some special interests have escaped containment. Big oil is too big? But Biden just sent massive funding into solar and batteries and electric vehicles. Big chemical is too big? Trump gutted EPA? What about Big Pharma? Well, any system is going to have pendulums, and none of them will be perfect. But can they self heal? History suggests the current system is pretty good at that even if any given moment seems a bit off-kilter.
I'm not opposed to exploring other options. But to improve requires a recognition of the weanesses and the strengths of alternatives. Don't be too quick to dismiss the strengths of the current alternative.
I wish we'd just call it what it is--corruption. We've got to start holding our country to a higher standard if we want things to improve, instead of just making up new words to normalize it.
TFA mentions 102k signatures collected to petition to ban. Did you know the person with the clipboard gets paid per signature? All the incentives in these conversations are messed up.
This sounds like a variation of "both sides are terrible, so what can we do?". I'm not accusing you of anything, but that's often used by people doing terrible things to deflect criticism, so hopefully you understand why this doesn't come across as a useful comment.
At any rate, I think it's good that people collecting signatures are being paid for their time. If there's something actually bad about the petition though, it'd be good to hear about it.
What’s wild in my opinion is the unreasonable effectiveness of lobbying. Like $40k of lobbying can become $40 million is tax savings. I don’t understand why elected officials are so cheap to buy off.
Because a democratically elected government created the lobbying rules. It's the same, somewhat paradoxical, reasoning that allow for governments to systematically put up barriers to voting or to dilute votes through gerrymandering. Since its a elected government, its all good.
I’m a biochemist, and it drives me nuts how much the public worries about glyphosate but not really any other herbicides. Glyphosate may not be perfect but I’d worry more about almost any other type of herbicide, most of which are absolutely nasty.
I do not really buy this reasoning. Glyphosate has been proven to be harmful [ source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate ]. Other things might be worse, sure, but that does not mean we can allow Glyohosate to be used without thinking about the risks.
Risk is not all-or-nothing, and I am not saying glyphosate should be used without worrying about the risks. I am saying people have their relative risk assessment all wrong. There are different degrees of risk, and believe it or not, the known risks of glyphosate are dwarfed by the known risks of other alternatives.
Show me someone who can come up with a better herbicide, and I will show you a wealthy person.
Your own link disagrees with you. I think you are proving OPs point. Paraquat is an entirely different beast and is known to bad but people lump glyphosate in with really nasty stuff for no real reason.
Yeah, we know, paraquat is 30 times more toxic than glyphosate, and have actual peer-reviewed studies with significant enough numbers to link it to an increase on Parkinson disease. I think there was a preliminary study on its effect on other neurodegenerative sickness, but i can't find it, so i guess it was scrapped.
Glyphosate at most could maybe increase by 30% the risks of a quite rare cancer for farmers who use it in high dosage (so glyphosate in conservation agriculture is likely to be harmless).
I know TFA talks about paraquat, but other competing compounds are extremely relevant, because realistically if you stop using a herbicide you're probably going to be looking for some alternative.
If one herbicide is not completely replaced by another (some may try going completely herbicide-free, which has its own very different set of risks), it will certainly be partially replaced by another.
I don't support the "ban glyphosate" movement (for imo it is one of the lesser evils), but I would more easily support a "ban all herbicides" movement... Though I would be somewhat skeptical of the feasibility of going completely herbicide-free.
They are literally stuff meant to kill other stuff. As such they will be deadly for some stuff and likely also others. So I agree that we have to evaluate which of them is least worse. Or presents acceptable risk levels in comparative scenarios.
And we cannot farm successfully on scale we need without them.
> And we cannot farm successfully on scale we need without them.
The following study states that organic farming on average is 25% less productive than conventional farming. The major difference being the use of plant protection products (herbicides, pesticides, etc.).
That additional land use could be satisfied if the consumption of meat would be drastically reduced. Currently 33% of cropland are used for feed production. (https://www.fao.org/3/ar591e/ar591e.pdf)
So yes, we could farm successfully without them. But not at the current prices for produce and not with the current meat consumption.
Not GP but (former) chemist, and I share the same sentiment. Paraquat scares me. Note its direct chemical similarity to MPP+ [0], both sporting that methylpyridinium moeity (the CH3N+ in the ring). In fact the only real difference is paraquat is a two-for-one on neurotoxic functional group.
Glyphosate gets a bad rap in large part due to similarity to organophosphates (P-O-C), which are usually quite toxic, but it is in fact a phosphonate, with a direct P-C bond. I forget the exact mechanism, but it makes a difference.
Also glyphosate readily hydrolyzes, while paraquat is a "brick" that resists breakdown and is prone to bioaccumulation.
The mechanism of action is identical: methylpyridinium promotes the production of reactive oxygen species which wreak havoc on cellular machinery. In fact MPP is a "quat" and was briefly used as an herbicide. The chloride of MPP+ was sold under the trade name Cyperquat.
> As an herbicide, paraquat acts by inhibiting photosynthesis. In light-exposed plants, it accepts electrons from photosystem I (more specifically ferredoxin, which is presented with electrons from PS I) and transfers them to molecular oxygen. In this manner, destructive reactive oxygen species (ROS) are produced.
> MPP+ exhibits its toxicity mainly by promoting the formation of reactive free radicals in the mitochondria of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra.[9][10] MPP+ can siphon electrons from the mitochondrial electron transport chain at complex I and be reduced, in the process forming radical reactive oxygen species which go on to cause further, generalized cellular damage.
It would be if there was unambiguous proof that roundup was unsafe and that the manufacturer knew it. The health risks of glyphosate are ... not well determined and nobody has made a conclusive case. There was a lot of noise in the past done by scientists operating not in good faith.
However the risk to human health is (in my honest opinion and according to my best professional judgment) very minimal, and the greater risk is environmental. In part for this reason, I would think industrial application to be orders of magnitude more concerning than some old lady applying it in her patch of tomatoes.
> what are you doing to drive awareness of the problem to the rest of us?
I'm not specifically a specialist of herbicides (I know much more about biomedical stuff), but my experience during the pandemic has completely put me off trying to educate others. I've become extremely cynical and de-energized: the people who need help don't want it.
Herbicides aside, I worry a lot about the chemicals that we consider "normal". I signed up for a pest service after purchasing my home because we were getting ants and water bugs in the house. They have a package they they sell that includes a "full property" treatment, which I don't think I need. They list off a couple down "pests" that they kill, and go through a long script about how safe the chemicals are.
But like, how safe are they really? If they're spraying a cocktail that kills dozens of kinds of insects of all sizes, how does that have no effect on humans? Even at small doses it would seem that the effect would still be measurable. Surely whatever biological process that kills all those bugs also does something to people?
I don't let them apply chemicals inside the house, that's where I draw the line. And I'm probably not going to renew the extensive service. If nothing else, it's more chemicals around me that I can live without. But almost every one of my neighbors pays for something similar. How much are we inundating ourselves in this stuff? And what is it doing to the environment and ecosystem? This is one of those things that I feel like we'll look back on with deep regret in a few decades.
Yeah, we have ants in our house in the summer. I have found that as long as everything is clean, I hardly do see them. Usually if we spill something and miss a spot and tbey show up then they generally have it all cleaned up and are out of my way by the time I get back from work.
I've sworn off pesticides and herbicides and the effect on my property has been amamzing. It's like a little nature hub. Lots of insects outside, but it hasn't been an issue. We started to have lots of birds show up every day to feast, and there is a noticeable difference in the amoujt of birds that show up compared to all the homes around me.
At first all the pesky weird insects show up, but eventually the birds and bats and other predatory insects balance things out. One group I wasn't to keen on was a wasp nest. I got rid of that one but they moved to the other end of the property and aren't an issue. I don't know... I feel like we humans are too afraid of nature these days. I mean, everyone likes hiking in the national parks and tells themselves they want to preserve nature but don't really seem to interested on the day to day things that can help preserve other species' habitats.
I'm not perfect either. It takes some effort to question norms and behaviour you were taught, so I'm just as guilty as everyone else.
We keep a clean house, despite having 2 dogs and 3 young children. Ants haven't been a problem for a few years because I worked diligently to keep food in airtight containers, clean up, etc. But, this year, they came in for the water. They moved into our potted plants. It all happened so fast. I had to hire a pest control company to help us because nothing I did made a difference and I was finding them everywhere.
> But like, how safe are they really? If they're spraying a cocktail that kills dozens of kinds of insects of all sizes, how does that have no effect on humans?
Short answer: it's complicated, and there are in fact very targeted pesticides that are far less harmful to humans. In the same breath, we've had so many fuckups of the flavor of "use this wonder chemical! It's safe!" that it's easy to be wary.
Humans, having evolved as omnivores, are actually very good digesters of xenobiotics (foreign chemicals). The true masters of eating poison are rats (which, frankly it's cruel
and* not very effective to use poison to kill rats), and they are only about 6x better than us at metabolizing weird chemicals.
Insects have very different biology, so usually they can be orders of magnitude more selective than typical poisons. Most are nerve agents, basically Sarin for bugs. Note: they can still be very hazardous to poor metabolizers, e.g. cats.
There is little in the way of selectivity against arthropods (some are better at insects than arachnids, or vice versa). Anything effective against ants, wasps, or even beetles will likely harm bees.
Personally I use borax/sugar for ants (has to be eaten), and gamma cyhalothrin as a barrier only on the edges of my foundation, avoiding any zones which I think could spread out into the environment. I probably shouldn't even use that stuff really, but my partner insists.
Your skepticism is warranted. Of course the negative affects of these chemicals is down played by those who sell them. Many leech into ecosystems, our homes, and our bodies causing obvious and latent issues. I personally love insects and plants considered weeds as they are critical to our biosphere. I have learned to live with and around them managing a balance both in my house and in my garden. Chemical warfare should be a last resort.
Termites ruin a home. Ticks are more dangerous than the pesticides we spray on foliage. Mosquitos are just plain annoying. There’s also sone invasive species that bring down certain trees, such as Lantern Flys.
And how could I forget BpA? Known toxic chemical and in all receipts from thermal printers, which readily enters the bloodstream. Luckily they removed it from PC water bottles and can linings, except replaced with... BpS! Obviously a completely safe chemical, though no testing had been done.
We wrap food in PFAs. You know, that thing people are making a big deal about showing up in tiny concentrations in well water near military air bases. They're also on every waterproof jacket you can buy.
I don't think I shouldn't be worried about that as well, but I can make active choices to not add more compounds to the ones that are arguably forced on us.
Exposure to leaded gasoline and diesel is way more likely to have caused this increase tbh.
In France, the increased allergies isn't as noticeable in rural area as in cities. If it was caused by chemical we use on plant, the reverse would be true.
another hypothesis i heard was rural kids grew up with their immune systems exposed to more stuff and so better trained/less likely to overreact. personally, i always noticed kids with allergies tended to be weak and sickly much more often, so maybe that's related.
Anything done by genetic modification can be accomplish through breeding given enough time. There’s nothing special about genetic modification and it’s manipulating the genetic code which happens randomly in nature.
1. Plants defend themselves from predators (i.e. animals, humans, insects) via chemical warfare. These chemicals can and do disrupt the gut of the predator to dissuade them from consuming the plant. At least in humans, 70-80% of immune cells are contained in the gut. Many genetically modified plants are engineered to produce more of these gut disrupting chemical defense compounds to be more resistant to predators.
2. A study by the CDC estimates that 80% of Americans have glyphosate in their urine. Glyphosate is an antibiotic proven to be disrupting to gut bacteria. Crops are being genetically engineered to allow for more and more glyphosate exposure because the weeds are growing increasingly resistant to it, requiring even more glyphosate - which in turn runs off into our water supply. It's a positive feedback loop as nature abhors monoculture (less diversity = less evolutionary resiliency), and seeks to restore balance and diversity with pests, weeds, viruses, etc. Monocrop agriculture is fundamentally unsustainable
Genetic modification often produces altered proteins. These protein signatures do not match human T-cell allowlists, causing immune response.
Even if the modification is a simple addition between adjacent start and stop codons, that kind of modification could alter meta encodings that control other aspects of cell regulation, including (potentially) gene expression -- which would cause proteins that are coded for but that normally aren't present to become present in crops. Even one newly expressed protein (that is normally not ever expressed) could trigger immune response.
THere's a classic paper where somebody cloned brazil nut genes into soybeans. Unfortunately, the genes they cloned were the ones that code for protein allergens... making the resulting soybeans cause brazil nut like allergic response. I don't think this work was ever followed up, or repeated, but it's an entirely plausible mechanism by which genetic modification could cause allergies.
(are you a biologist? this stuff is pretty obvious to biologists)
where can i read more on this? tbh it doesn't make intuitive sense, like we don't have glyphosate peanuts so why are peanut allergies all of a sudden a thing but not corn?
Its 2022. If you have inert ingredients and unpronounceable ingredients in your diet (untested junk science), known harmful chems external from that are just par for the course.
Dead soil from herbicides and pesticides just mean that junk science is "busy as bees" :p
Readit News
I, for one, was not surprised.
The alternative is a secret vote. Now only passed/unpassed legislation can be bought. This is a lot more expensive and requires a conspiracy, but it's a lot harder to hold the people in this conspiracy directly accountable since they can always plausibly deny how their vote was cast. I've yet to see another better solution for getting rid of the money to vote pipeline.
The solution is simply to ban lobbying.
That’s not really the definition of lobbying though. We should try to avoid hyperboles. Additionally, bribery is not legal and that’s not even remotely the form that the vast majority of lobbying takes today.
Now, everyone tries to hide behind levels of abstraction — “It’s just lobbying!” — but those are just fig leaves and reasonable people should see through them. E.g., “Exxon gave the money to my campaign committee, and I’m not involved with the finance end; my vote in favor of Exxon was just a coincidence.” That’s pure bullshit and everyone knows it.
So yes it’s bribery. Calling it something else is disingenuous.
It has become a channel for corruption, though. The solution, which may be entirely impossible, is to select better representatives. But requires being a better people in the first place.
Yeah, it's bribery.
It seems like the other democratic thing, which is likely more impactful, is that most people don't give a shit about most issues like this. People have much bigger issues in their lives (and on the reps schedule), so there's no real pressure for regulators to changeover this issue vs others. For even more evidence of people not giving a shit, just look at voter turn out.
Edit: why disagree?
Many people think the foundations of the U.S. are outdated and ill-informed of modern society. Most of those people are poor students of history. The U.S. founders were not poor students.
Regarding lobbyists and special interests in politics, the founders were not the least bit ignorant. In the end they settled on a clever mechanism to control them. The answer to special interests is special interests.
It might be argued that some special interests have escaped containment. Big oil is too big? But Biden just sent massive funding into solar and batteries and electric vehicles. Big chemical is too big? Trump gutted EPA? What about Big Pharma? Well, any system is going to have pendulums, and none of them will be perfect. But can they self heal? History suggests the current system is pretty good at that even if any given moment seems a bit off-kilter.
I'm not opposed to exploring other options. But to improve requires a recognition of the weanesses and the strengths of alternatives. Don't be too quick to dismiss the strengths of the current alternative.
https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying_in_Germany
At any rate, I think it's good that people collecting signatures are being paid for their time. If there's something actually bad about the petition though, it'd be good to hear about it.
Sure, it's legal, but how is it democratic?
Show me someone who can come up with a better herbicide, and I will show you a wealthy person.
Glyphosate at most could maybe increase by 30% the risks of a quite rare cancer for farmers who use it in high dosage (so glyphosate in conservation agriculture is likely to be harmless).
[edit] TFA talk about paraquat anyway :P
If one herbicide is not completely replaced by another (some may try going completely herbicide-free, which has its own very different set of risks), it will certainly be partially replaced by another.
I don't support the "ban glyphosate" movement (for imo it is one of the lesser evils), but I would more easily support a "ban all herbicides" movement... Though I would be somewhat skeptical of the feasibility of going completely herbicide-free.
And we cannot farm successfully on scale we need without them.
The following study states that organic farming on average is 25% less productive than conventional farming. The major difference being the use of plant protection products (herbicides, pesticides, etc.).
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/IDAN/2019/6344...
That additional land use could be satisfied if the consumption of meat would be drastically reduced. Currently 33% of cropland are used for feed production. (https://www.fao.org/3/ar591e/ar591e.pdf)
So yes, we could farm successfully without them. But not at the current prices for produce and not with the current meat consumption.
> They are literally stuff meant to kill other stuff, with varying degrees of specificity and effectiveness.
The effectiveness bit is obvious, but I think the public thinks much less about specificity, especially in cases where there is a component of fear.
Glyphosate gets a bad rap in large part due to similarity to organophosphates (P-O-C), which are usually quite toxic, but it is in fact a phosphonate, with a direct P-C bond. I forget the exact mechanism, but it makes a difference.
Also glyphosate readily hydrolyzes, while paraquat is a "brick" that resists breakdown and is prone to bioaccumulation.
The mechanism of action is identical: methylpyridinium promotes the production of reactive oxygen species which wreak havoc on cellular machinery. In fact MPP is a "quat" and was briefly used as an herbicide. The chloride of MPP+ was sold under the trade name Cyperquat.
> As an herbicide, paraquat acts by inhibiting photosynthesis. In light-exposed plants, it accepts electrons from photosystem I (more specifically ferredoxin, which is presented with electrons from PS I) and transfers them to molecular oxygen. In this manner, destructive reactive oxygen species (ROS) are produced.
> MPP+ exhibits its toxicity mainly by promoting the formation of reactive free radicals in the mitochondria of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra.[9][10] MPP+ can siphon electrons from the mitochondrial electron transport chain at complex I and be reduced, in the process forming radical reactive oxygen species which go on to cause further, generalized cellular damage.
[0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPP%2B
You can buy glyphosate from different manufacturers, under different brand names. Roundup is just one of many.
However the risk to human health is (in my honest opinion and according to my best professional judgment) very minimal, and the greater risk is environmental. In part for this reason, I would think industrial application to be orders of magnitude more concerning than some old lady applying it in her patch of tomatoes.
I have limited knowledge about glyphosate, and don’t know much about herbicides in general. Help me (us) understand what makes them nasty.
I'm not specifically a specialist of herbicides (I know much more about biomedical stuff), but my experience during the pandemic has completely put me off trying to educate others. I've become extremely cynical and de-energized: the people who need help don't want it.
But like, how safe are they really? If they're spraying a cocktail that kills dozens of kinds of insects of all sizes, how does that have no effect on humans? Even at small doses it would seem that the effect would still be measurable. Surely whatever biological process that kills all those bugs also does something to people?
I don't let them apply chemicals inside the house, that's where I draw the line. And I'm probably not going to renew the extensive service. If nothing else, it's more chemicals around me that I can live without. But almost every one of my neighbors pays for something similar. How much are we inundating ourselves in this stuff? And what is it doing to the environment and ecosystem? This is one of those things that I feel like we'll look back on with deep regret in a few decades.
I've sworn off pesticides and herbicides and the effect on my property has been amamzing. It's like a little nature hub. Lots of insects outside, but it hasn't been an issue. We started to have lots of birds show up every day to feast, and there is a noticeable difference in the amoujt of birds that show up compared to all the homes around me.
At first all the pesky weird insects show up, but eventually the birds and bats and other predatory insects balance things out. One group I wasn't to keen on was a wasp nest. I got rid of that one but they moved to the other end of the property and aren't an issue. I don't know... I feel like we humans are too afraid of nature these days. I mean, everyone likes hiking in the national parks and tells themselves they want to preserve nature but don't really seem to interested on the day to day things that can help preserve other species' habitats.
I'm not perfect either. It takes some effort to question norms and behaviour you were taught, so I'm just as guilty as everyone else.
Edit: On mobile. Forgive the typos.
Short answer: it's complicated, and there are in fact very targeted pesticides that are far less harmful to humans. In the same breath, we've had so many fuckups of the flavor of "use this wonder chemical! It's safe!" that it's easy to be wary.
Humans, having evolved as omnivores, are actually very good digesters of xenobiotics (foreign chemicals). The true masters of eating poison are rats (which, frankly it's cruel
and* not very effective to use poison to kill rats), and they are only about 6x better than us at metabolizing weird chemicals.Insects have very different biology, so usually they can be orders of magnitude more selective than typical poisons. Most are nerve agents, basically Sarin for bugs. Note: they can still be very hazardous to poor metabolizers, e.g. cats.
There is little in the way of selectivity against arthropods (some are better at insects than arachnids, or vice versa). Anything effective against ants, wasps, or even beetles will likely harm bees.
Personally I use borax/sugar for ants (has to be eaten), and gamma cyhalothrin as a barrier only on the edges of my foundation, avoiding any zones which I think could spread out into the environment. I probably shouldn't even use that stuff really, but my partner insists.
Lol. My neighbor got pest treatment for the first time recently. Guess what happens? The pests move next door. So now we need pest control.
Profits are the only yardstick by which anything in the US is measured. Everything else is secondary.
https://www.appf.europa.eu/appf/en/donations-and-contributio...
Other countries have limits on campaign contributions, but claiming that they're known as "bribes" is a massive hyperbole.
Those contain alterations that (I hypothesize) are partially responsible for increased allergies in the US population.
In France, the increased allergies isn't as noticeable in rural area as in cities. If it was caused by chemical we use on plant, the reverse would be true.
2. A study by the CDC estimates that 80% of Americans have glyphosate in their urine. Glyphosate is an antibiotic proven to be disrupting to gut bacteria. Crops are being genetically engineered to allow for more and more glyphosate exposure because the weeds are growing increasingly resistant to it, requiring even more glyphosate - which in turn runs off into our water supply. It's a positive feedback loop as nature abhors monoculture (less diversity = less evolutionary resiliency), and seeks to restore balance and diversity with pests, weeds, viruses, etc. Monocrop agriculture is fundamentally unsustainable
Even if the modification is a simple addition between adjacent start and stop codons, that kind of modification could alter meta encodings that control other aspects of cell regulation, including (potentially) gene expression -- which would cause proteins that are coded for but that normally aren't present to become present in crops. Even one newly expressed protein (that is normally not ever expressed) could trigger immune response.
(are you a biologist? this stuff is pretty obvious to biologists)
https://www.propublica.org/article/asbestos-poisoning-chemic...
Its 2022. If you have inert ingredients and unpronounceable ingredients in your diet (untested junk science), known harmful chems external from that are just par for the course.
Dead soil from herbicides and pesticides just mean that junk science is "busy as bees" :p