To genetically modify food or any organism is a bad idea at this time.

I'm a programme designer/developer, and my experiences in my field have many parallels to that of the natural world and what we are doing with it. I know the perils of modifying a piece of a programme that I don't fully understand. For instance, if I were to modify a section of code without looking at how that change can affect other sections that also depend on it, it can destabilise the programme, making it crash or have unexpected behaviour, and it gets worse when you are in a web of different applications that rely on each other, causing a cascading domino effect. This is because it is not possible to know what else depends on the code that is being modified.

Don't believe me? Look at a computer system. Think of the hardware as the raw materials (rocks, water, air) and the limiting factors as to how things can interact (burning, melting, other chemical reactions). Now let's take some programmes (plants and animals) and make them run on the hardware.

Tell me, how many of you have gotten a computer and at the beginning it was running great, not a problem at all? Then you add programmes to your system and it starts to slow down, destabilise, and even crash. Why? The reason has to do with how the programmes interact with each other. One programme modifies something that another is relying on, which can cause undefined random behaviour.

The result in a computer? A lost document, hours of work lost and, in the extreme case, a loss of a job, grade or contract. In a food web, which is much more complex than the computer example, this can cause one species to change its behaviour, which in turn can cause rippling effects in other species' behaviour. The result in a food web? Possible extinction, disease and/or famine.

We do not have enough experience in programming a simple ecosystem (our own computer) without having problems; and that is just localised to our desktop. What, makes us think that we can do this on a significantly larger scale without repercussions?

How can governments just ignore this fact? Ignorance? Kickbacks? Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours syndrome?

*Please* talk to your local government representative and let them know that you don't want your environment to end up like your computer.