Should Food Companies Test Hybrid Fruits & Veggies?

Are hybrid fruits & vegetables (which are available at most major grocery stores) safe to eat? It’s a rhetorical question: there’s no reason to suspect hybrids are dangerous. The blog entry below points out that while critics of genetically modified foods complain that GM foods have not been subjected to long-term human safety testing, the same is true for every hybrid food crop (and, we could add, every other food crop). No one seems to be telling every farmer everywhere to conduct thorough testing on their crops. Should they? >>>

LINK: Are Hybrid Fruits & Vegetables Safe? (by Chris MacDonald for The Food Ethics Blog)

…when a scientist creates a new kind of apple by, say, deleting the gene known to code for some particular trait (say, its flesh browning when exposed to air), it has to go through a scientific assessment before it can be sold. But hybridize two apple varieties — or cross an apple with a plum — any number of genes get scrambled, and no scientific or regulatory scrutiny is required at all. ….

What do you think?

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