Frankenfoods → Superweeds

I can't remember where I read it, and now I can't find a link, but somewhere I think some researcher was putting cockroach genes into potatoes, for some reason. Right, like when you want a potato chip you want to bite into cockroach bits?

The thing is, frankenfoods are not good for anybody, and the industry that's backing them is not doing so for pure motives, such as feeding people. This article about the emergence of superweeds as a result of planting GM crops is just one example of the bad things that happen. There's lots more. But the bottom line is that the GM industry is mostly interested in trying to acquire patents on much of what farmers grow. Sort of a leaf from the tech industry book, where some companies have much or in certain cases all their assets in squiffy patents: their main business activity consisting of patent litigation. Which is sort of a metaphor for where our society is today. We don't want to invent things, or make things, or improve things – collectively, the main idea seems to be to take stuff from people who're weaker than you...