When GMOs are planted in the environment do they “escape” human control and become invasive?
The hypothetical risk that GMO crops could somehow escape human control and spread invasively in the natural environment has never been demonstrated, and is fundamentally implausible. GMO crops share an important trait with non-GMO agricultural plants: they are all domesticated species, not wild species, meaning they have lost their ability to survive and compete well in the wild without support from human hands. They have been developed to thrive only when given intensive human care (soil preparation, fertilization, irrigation, weeding, pest control, etc.). Thus, similar to non-GMO crop plants, these GMO crops will tend to die out if left alone within a wild ecosystem. It is not domesticated agricultural crops (GMO or otherwise) that tend to become invasive species in rural ecosystems; instead the greatest threats of “bioinvasion” tend to come from wild “exotic” species introduced into a new ecosystem where there are no natural biological controls for that species.
