1. You're right about the GMO danios - and I wasn't specific enough - there aren't any GMO animals that the public is going to run into. There are quite a few that are used for research purposes.
2. Round Up Ready crops are a very small portion of GMO crops, and making any sort of statement on GMOs based on RoundUp is nothing but a red herring. GMO is a technology - and being scared of that technology for completely ancillary reasons is a bit strange - Round Up is about the safest herbicide we have today - and Round Up Ready crops have drastically reduced herbicide usage - as Round Up has completely replaced Atrazine in Corn production - and that's a good thing, as Atrazine breaks down much slower and is more hazardous.
People need to realize that there's no possible world where we're able to feed everyone and not use pesticides - the goal should be to find and use the safest ones - and RoundUp is the safest herbicide we have at this point.
GMO is more commonly being used now to move virus and bacterial resistance between different varieties of a single plant - moving plum pox resistance to multiple varieties - fighting ringspot virus in papayas, moving fireblight resistance in apple varieties - these all lead to less pesticide use, and healthier food. Virus resistance in bananas is another project - we're about to lose the current commercial banana strain - just as we lost the last one in the 90s.
There's Golden Rice - which turns on beta-carotene synthesis, and will prevent Vitamin-A deficiency caused blindness in large chunks of the world (if eco-terrorists stop burning down the fields). There's the Arctic Apple project, which is removing some of the enzymes that make apples brown and rot - leading to healthier, better storing apples. There's the SuperBanana, which deals with the same Vitamin A issue, but in different parts of the world.
There's an absolute ton of good things going on in the industry - but nobody wants to hear about it, and nobody wants to report it - because it doesn't get the ratings that "Frankenfoods are killing you" does.
The idea that Monsanto and Dupont are polluting the scientific studies of GMOs is just unbridled conspiracy theory - as I've said before - we have feeding trials consisting of BILLIONS (with a B) of animals at this point. We have controlled studies with millions of human beings, and these things have been on the open marked for decades - and there is not a single verifiable example of anyone having any sort of reaction, or health effect from eating GMO foods. There's been more independent study of GMOs than any drug, vaccine, or consumer product on the market.
GMO foods are tested for allergens - conventional bred foods are not. GMO foods are tested to make sure there are no new protiens - conventional bred foods are not. GMO foods are held to drastically higher safety standards than conventional bred foods.
It's pretty easy to go through the last 30+ years of agriculture and find conventionally bred foods killing people - potato strains that had really high solanine levels but still made it to market. Look at the Lenape potato - it made fantastic potato chips ... and killed people. It was selectively bred for sugar content.
There was a conventionally bred strain of celery in the 70s that gave people who ate it debilitating rashes. There was conventionally bred strain of carrots full of dangerous levels of psoralens that made people sick. There have been several conventionally bred squash that put people in hospitals.
You can't find these with GMO foods - because they actually get tested before they get to market.
