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If there ever was a company that should have long since received a corporate death ruling, Monsanto is it, just ask the folks in Anniston. Monsanto only stopped producing PCBs there in 1971, but they knew it was a problem in 1938, people are still being affected by PCBs dumped in the creek there and buried under the ground. PCBs are only the tip of Monsanto's evil iceberg, so I sure don't trust them with our food supply.

This is a very narrow answer to your very broad question, but here goes: Some crops -- corn in particular -- have been GMed to produce their own biotoxin called Bt. Bt is fairly selective, targeting only lepidoptera -- butterflies and moths. The intended target is the corn borer, a moth caterpillar.

Here's a site that lists the possible problems with Bt. Warning: it's a scare site, so take all claims with a grain of salt.

Nevertheless, there is one claim it makes that I can speak to. Butterflies and moths that nectar in or near the corn field are alleged to be at risk from Bt. Wiki has a good summary of the issue. As it turns out, the risk is relatively low in this case.* However, issues like this raise our general distrust of GM crops because we fear the law of unintended consequences.


* It should be noted with great displeasure that Bt is also sprayed in areas in order to wipe out the Gypsy moth. In that case, unlike the GM crop case, most butterflies and moths in the sprayed area die.

http://www.connectotel.com/gmfood/

While the famous version of Les Bergers d'Arcadie shows a version that is reversed from this monument, other versions were created. One version came several years before the famous one. This page shows both.

But most interestingly (and cryptically) is this image. I don't know the origin of this engraving, but it is almost exactly the same as as the monument. Down to the swirling clouds, which actually aren't present in the famous version! The only obvious difference is the present of an additional urn on top of the sarcophagus in the monument. I have little doubt that either this engraving was created from the monument, or the monument was created from this engraving.

Can anyone offer anymore insight into this engraving?

I was looking through all these posts to see if anyone had placed a link to a picture of the actual monument, and couldn't find one, so I poked around a bit, and found a photo of the monument here. Just click on the one on the right and you can see a bigger version.

Going beyond the knee-jerk reactions against anything genetically engineered, the key to making these safe is to make sure they can't breed. There was a controversy over engineered trees that make better paper. The researcher noted that making them sterile greatly reduced whatever risk there might be for problems later on.

Man has no clue how to manage species in a way that is consistent with keeping balance in the environment. Every time we try to manipulate something there are unexpected consequences. (Well, okay, not every time. I am aware of two incidences where we successfully introduced a species to control another and it worked as planned. But our track record is 10000:1 against.)

You are clearly unaware that species considered pests, and in particular insects, are commonly controlled through the introduction of sterile individuals to interfere with the breeding of the larger population. Who is to say that if a hundred of these glowfish made sterile were dumped into a creek that it wouldn't cause population problems? What if indigenous females of some species found the glowfish males irresistible and didn't breed with fertile males for several seasons? You NEVER know what will happen when you introduce an animal to a place it's never been. Never.

We have a horrible track record with manipulating nature and have no fundamental understanding of how our changes affect other things. Do a little reading on some of our countless failures, especially in the area of genetic engineering, and maybe you'll begin to understand why the more informed people are concerned. There are ENDLESS examples of our failures and a handful of success stories. Having done a little learning on this topic myself, I fully agree with and support California's ban on these things. They serve no useful purpose other than being eye candy, so I hardly see why anyone would consider the risk worth taking.