"A truly extraordinary variety of alternatives to the chemical control of insects is available Some are already in use and have achieved brilliant success. Others are in the stage of laboratory testing. Still others are little more than ideas in the minds of imaginative scientists, waiting for the opportunity to put them to the test. All have this in common: they are biological solutions, based on understanding of the living organisms they seek to control, and of the whole fabric of life to which these organisms belong. Specialists representing various areas of the vast field of biology are contributing - entomologists, pathologists, geneticists, physiologists, biochemists, ecologists - all pouring their knowledge and their creative inspirations into the formation of a new science of biotic controls." -- Rachel Carson, Silent Spring. Chapter 17 ("The Other Road") paragraph 3. Houghton Mifflin, New York, 1962.

• Greenpeace defines GMOs in a way that nature contradicts. They claim GMOs are organisms created in a lab in ways that could never happen in nature. But everything scientists do in the lab to create GMOs involves using molecules and processes discovered in nature, brought into the lab, and used to replicate the kind of genetic changes we find everywhere we have looked in nature. The "GMOs" produced in the lab are based directly upon and modeled after those we find in nature, produced with the same methods of gene exchange, applied in the same way Mother Nature has done for billions of years. Nature thus demonstrates that we are all GMOs, every living thing on planet Earth is a GMO.


• The argument that "we don't know enough" is contradicted by the data. So-called GMOs are produced with modest changes to a small number of genes (usually one or two) that are specifically targeted. The changes sought are predictable, predicted, and thoroughly screened over many years of field trials to ensure there are no surprises before commercial distribution can follow. By contrast, a large percentage of the "natural" seeds Greenpeace favors, including thousands of varieties planted and grown by organic farmers, have been produced by radiation mutagenesis. This changes a huge number of genes in entirely random and completely unpredictable ways. Radiation mutagenesis has been a mainstay of conventional plant breeding since the end of World War Two. The inherent unpredictability and uncertainty with this method, blithely accepted by Greenpeace and organic farmers around the world, has actually created some safety problems; well-known examples include both celery and potatoes.


• However, traditional breeding methods of the sort Greenpeace espouse fall far short of producing the type and number of agricultural innovations we need to face the challenges of sustaining humanity in the 21st century, which can be met more easily, quickly, and safely with modern molecular breeding.


• Greenpeace's argument that GMO crops have been a failure is blatantly false. No technological innovation in the entire history of humanity since the dawn of agriculture and human civilization has been taken up by farmers more rapidly and more widely than seeds improved through biotechnology (see http://www.isaaa.org/resources/publications/briefs/51/default.asp). As noted elsewhere on this website, the demonstrated safety of these innovations has been made abundantly clear in the scientific peer-reviewed literature and in the experience of millions of farmers on billions of hectares over the past two decades. The dramatic environmental and economic benefits have been equally striking and abundantly clear. Indeed, if GMOs were the failure Greenpeace claims there would be no need for their worldwide propaganda and fund raising campaigns in opposition, as GMOs would have failed in the marketplace. Farmers do not re-purchase seeds that do not deliver value. In claiming that GMOs are a failure Greenpeace asks us to believe farmers are ignorant and incapable of making rational decisions about their own welfare.


• Greenpeace also presents a false choice between organic or agro-ecological approaches they prefer, and the use of seeds improved through biotechnology. The fact is that biotech improved seeds can easily be grown with the approaches Greenpeace favors. Further, the use of biotech insect resistant crops on a substantial fraction of the world's agricultural lands has already led to very large decreases in the use of synthetic chemical pesticide sprays, more than organic farming methods have delivered on the limited area they've been grown in their entire history. Further, through improved yields, biotechnology tools help save more wildlands from being turned over to food production, and biotechnology tools are enabling the broad-based adoption of practices like conservation tillage helping to save topsoil and improve water quality at rates significantly higher than anything being produced using the organic methods Greenpeace alternatively promotes.