How is the traditional cross-breeding of plants different from what Monsanto is engaged in?
Cummins: Traditional cross-breeding of plants and animals can only occur in species and varieties that are closely related. In nature, you are never going to have a pig mate with a human being and produce an offspring. And you are never going to have a flounder fish with an antifreeze gene spliced in it. You are never going to have a tomato with its ripening gene reversed. You will never find these things in nature. Only the mad scientists in lab coats can cross-breed outside of nature’s laws. Genetic engineering is a radical new creation whereby scientists can take anything in nature and splice it into anything else. They can put human genes into animals and plants, they can take soil microorganisms and splice them into animals. They can literally create new human beings, new plants and new animals. And they are beginning to do this. This has nothing to do with traditional cross-breeding techniques. This is totally new, radical, bizarre — and dangerous. Multinational Monitor: What is
