The safety debate about genetically modified crops was settled scientifically some time ago and continues politically.
Reviews by in several countries reached the same conclusion about the crops currently approved.
Treating the political objection as scientific ignorance has been the standard response and has failed reliably.
Most of the objection is not about the molecule at all.
It concerns ownership, since a seed cannot be saved and replanted without a licence.
That is a change in the relationship between a farmer and a harvest that predates any laboratory.
It also concerns , since a small number of firms supply the seed and the it tolerates.
Neither concern is answered by a safety review, and both are legitimate subjects for a farmer to raise.
The record is mixed in a way that both sides describe selectively.
Insect-resistant cotton reduced pesticide use sharply and the reduction as resistance developed.
Herbicide-tolerant crops simplified weed control and produced -resistant weeds within a decade.
Both outcomes were predicted by the people who designed the traits and were ignored in the marketing.
Resistance management requires of unmodified crop and coordination between neighbouring farms.
Where it was enforced, the traits lasted longer; where it was voluntary, they did not.
The newest techniques edit an existing gene rather than inserting one from another organism.
Several regulators have decided that such a plant is not a modified organism at all, which is a defensible legal position.
It also removes the that the previous debate spent twenty years establishing.
A public that discovers this later will be entitled to its suspicion, whatever the safety data say.