[tadd]

Just like so much else in life, chemical exposure is something best moderated. Take Phthalates. Pretty darn benign. The MSDS could almost say 'drink me'...but the stuff is everywhere cause its used as a plasticizer in just about everything. So even though its literally 'non-toxic' you are exposed to SO much of it, you actually get exposure levels that are toxic.

I see the same behaviour with the round up chemicals. We use so much of it, exposure is something to be concerned about. So take the extra effort and wash your produce. Almost all AG applications are aqueous solvent based for application. So wash your fruits. A tiny bit of surfactant (dish detergent) gets you to like five nines clean. Regular dish detergent is ok diluted way down, but there are 'produce washes' that are just SDS (sodium dodecylsulfate... whats in most shampoos) thatleaves out the perfumes and dyes so you dont have to use ten gallons of water to get the soap off.

As for GMO, its just amino acids. There are 21 of them. Your body has all the enzymes it needs to tear the stuff apart and recycle them. So using the enzyme from the alantic flounder to give cold weather hardiness to a tomato isnt going to harm you from the transplanted enzyme itself...and thats what the Monsanto gene does. Allows the plant to chew up the glycophosphate weed killer.

Nobody has any product that incorporates artifical amino acids. That will be interesting when it arrives...Or the addition of genes specifically for expression of a chemical... like adding a gene to have a bananna make insulin.

My big issue with GMO is the lockdown on the IP. IMHO, you should NOT be allowed to patent a gene sequence you found in nature and use elsewhere. Now if you go and figure out the folding to make an active pocket, string together (read build) an enzyme from that pile of 21 amino acids that makes chemical X, and then code a gene so that the ribosome can make that enzyme... that you do get to patent!