So, actually, all tomatoes that are different from the ‘mother’ tomato are, technically, GMO.
There are tomatoes that are modified, termed ‘transgenic’, developed to ship and store longer (the Flavor Savr variety, if I’m not mistaken) - back in 1994. It was a flop, and didn’t go anywhere. Other than in Japan just recently, there have been no GMO tomatoes. And, the ones being developed? They are using existing tomato genes. Basically, just short cutting the breeding process. India has been working on a long shelf life tomato for quite some time now, have to go see how that is going. The same thing was done with Golden Rice, which was developed to give high yields of nutrient dense grain under highly stressful conditions, which in turn, reduced child death from malnutrition and starvation in developing countries. Over 90% of the corn grown in the US is GMO; I believe that less than 1% is of the sweet variety, and none goes to market directly.
There are also tons of studies which show zero harm to end consumers from any GMO products. There was the flounder/tomato brouhaha from years ago, where scientist (not farmers) tried to insert the antifreeze gene from a flounder into a tomato, to lengthen the season. Didn’t work, BTW, and was never marketed. Most gene transfers are between varieties of either the host species, or species closely related.
On a related but not super relevant note, Marica Woods wrote a paper quite awhile back worth reading. She is a plant hunter, and wrote about hunting tomato relatives in Chile. You can find it on the USDA website, I think you can just search ‘Tomato Trek Yields Chllean Treasure’.
As for the ‘super chicken’? While the idea that someone like me was poking chickens with needles, identifying and curating DNA, and injecting it back to produce a ‘super layer’, nah son, that’s not happening. Everyone here is chicken mad. SOMEONE would have known about it. I think the original thought of a spontaneous mutation is spot on. If you are horticultuerally inclined, look up the definition of a sport in roses. I grow OGR‘s (old garden roses, before nature and man genetically modified them into the lovely, reblooming hybrid teas, floribundas and grandifloras, and miniatures, climbers, shrubs, et al) and one of those ‘sports’ reverts back to its parent every year.
Where I’m going with all of this, is that as a rancher, I get tired of people blasting GMO’s without actually reading any peer reviewed studies, published in actual scientific journals, using unbiased research, that explains what it is, how it works, what it effects, and where it is. It’s not in your cornflakes. It’s not on your grocer’s vegetable shelf. You, as a consumer, cannot buy GMO corn, soy or wheat seeds for your home garden, and you wouldn’t want to anyway, as those are commercial varieties meant to be grown large scale. While I don’t like the widespread use of glyphosate, the tolerance to being the main GMO use, arguing against GMOs which shortcut the genetically modifying breeding programmes to produce a superfood variety in months instead of decades? Question that argument.
Confirmation bias is not helping anyone to gain actual knowledge.
the eggs are getting bigger less like pullet eggs now and are always hard good shelled and almost always dark yolks.
she has a "hawk face" to. I will get a picture tomorrow
