The Precautionary Principle with Application to GMOs

For those who enjoy a bit of doom and gloom statistics, here is a link to the white paper by Taleb, et. al. describing the statistical risk involved in widespread use of GMO foods. This is pretty much the reasoning we follow in choosing not to feed our animals GMO grain. It’s also why, although we tend to prefer heirloom varieties, we don’t think you’re a horrible person if you buy, say, GMO tomatoes or something like that.

This argument against GMO foods is not the standard anti-GMO argument that we often hear from sensational media outlets or self-interested manufacturers of non-GMO foods; for one thing, this argument is entirely indifferent to whether GMO foods are healthy or not. In addition, the paper makes it clear that a lot of the applications of “the precautionary principle” that we see raised in shock media are spurious. It’s an interesting read.

We made a couple videos a while back explaining why we don’t use GMO feed: