Contro natura

People tend to think that GMOs are ‘unnatural’, or that they ‘go against nature’, but how often is this opinion actually a product of the information we are fed by the media? The word GMO scares people, because we think that anything that has been modified by humans must be harmful to our health. Creso wheat, for example, is considered unnatural, because it has been modified in a laboratory with radiation, and the same goes for all human interventions on plants.

What we really need is accurate information on the significant differences between agriculture, conventional cultivation, organic cultivation, GMO cultivation, as well as the history of food itself and the modifications it has undergone over time. We should all try to learn more about these processes, and analyse them further, rather than simply accepting superficial information and allowing it to shape our opinion on the subject. The media and political messages have convinced the general public that GMOs are poison, and that organic food is always the best option.

This, however, is not the case, because humans have always intervened in the nature of plant species, in order to guarantee that crops survive, and to protect them from parasites. The processes that, nowadays, people call ‘unnatural’ have actually always existed.