Probably not. The methods used to get the desired phenotype are obviously not something that was happening before humans, but the desired phenotypes are pretty much always analogous to something that could have happened without human intervention (resistance to some environmental condition, different nutritional content, etc.), but didn’t because they don’t improve fitness in nature. Genetic engineering is pretty damn impressive, but it’s not magic—drought resistance and increased vitamin A content and those sorts of things have an opportunity cost to the plant (not spending energy on things that would increase the plant’s chances of reproduction in nature), meaning they’re probably going to be less fit than their wild counterpart without human intervention, so those genes are very unlikely to be expressed more in nature. And, if it is something that improves fitness in nature, it was most likely going to happen sooner or later anyway. (That could still be bad, but I’ll wait until I hear specifics before I worry about it.)
One good reason to fear GMOs is that they could promote monoculture to some extent (compared to not using GMOs but still using modern industrial farming), which introduces a big risk of famines, though monoculture was already pretty much the norm before GMOs came around so focusing on GMOs probably isn’t a good way to reduce the risks associated with monoculture. Or, at least as far as I know, though I admit I haven’t studied this very much. That’s my current impression, and I don’t predict I’ll turn out to be wrong.
Probably not. The methods used to get the desired phenotype are obviously not something that was happening before humans, but the desired phenotypes are pretty much always analogous to something that could have happened without human intervention (resistance to some environmental condition, different nutritional content, etc.), but didn’t because they don’t improve fitness in nature. Genetic engineering is pretty damn impressive, but it’s not magic—drought resistance and increased vitamin A content and those sorts of things have an opportunity cost to the plant (not spending energy on things that would increase the plant’s chances of reproduction in nature), meaning they’re probably going to be less fit than their wild counterpart without human intervention, so those genes are very unlikely to be expressed more in nature. And, if it is something that improves fitness in nature, it was most likely going to happen sooner or later anyway. (That could still be bad, but I’ll wait until I hear specifics before I worry about it.)
One good reason to fear GMOs is that they could promote monoculture to some extent (compared to not using GMOs but still using modern industrial farming), which introduces a big risk of famines, though monoculture was already pretty much the norm before GMOs came around so focusing on GMOs probably isn’t a good way to reduce the risks associated with monoculture. Or, at least as far as I know, though I admit I haven’t studied this very much. That’s my current impression, and I don’t predict I’ll turn out to be wrong.