conventional breeding is genetic modification
It is genetic modification...but hardly in the same way. Plant breeding is a lot slower, but a lot safer.
When you look into the technique, which usually involves using a viral agent to splice in genes, you wonder if perhaps the genes can get out?
I've noted in the other thread about this issue: GM genes have been found in the Mexican land-race maize.
I think it was the Roundup-Ready genes... the thing with the glyphosate-resistance genes, is that if they get into a weed, well, then we can't kill said weed with glyphosate anymore...and the Mexican corn lives in close proximity to cornlike plants (excuse me, maize)
In addition:
If we had widespread crop problems with our current maize lines in the US, well, we'd want to have access to uncontaminated Mexican land-race maize.
That's where we'd go to find replacements...
There's a worry with GM foods and people with food allergies.
If you're not allergic to foods, then GM's not likely to be a consumption worry unless you're adding a toxin to the plant...but some of what GM does IS add toxin-producing abilities.
Another worry with GM? being TOO successful with a crop plant-and creating a weed...
Kudzu is an edible vine-all parts...and it was introduced in the southern US from Japan for erosion control and cattle fodder.
Well, in the southern US it was discovered to do this:
(say hi to the poster child of invasive non-native plants)
Grows about a foot a day. Very little can stop it. Cannot even be killed with fire...it will come back from the pods years later. My wife won't let me plant it and make the trailer we're living in look like the above picture. I am disappoint.
( People in Georgia should be eating more kudzu-it's a nitrogen-fixing plant, and the root's an excellent complex carbohydrate...but I digress.)
So we could make a GM crop that gets rambunctious and takes over like kudzu, disrupting both the natural habitat and our crops.