American Consumers Will Soon Be Eating CRISPR Gene-edited Conscious™ Salad Greens

Via Wired (emphasis added):

A gene-editing startup wants to help you eat healthier salads. This month, North Carolina–based Pairwise is rolling out a new type of mustard greens engineered to be less bitter than the original plant. The vegetable is the first Crispr-edited food to hit the US market.

This is already off to a manipulative start. The “startup” Pairwise, which conjures an image of young entrepreneurial idealists operating out of their garage, has raked in hundreds of millions of dollars over the last several years through numerous fundraising initiatives. It’s big business.

Mustard greens are packed with vitamins and minerals but have a strong peppery flavor when eaten raw. To make them more palatable, they’re usually cooked. Pairwise wanted to retain the health benefits of mustard greens but make them tastier to the average shopper, so scientists at the company used the DNA-editing tool Crispr to remove a gene responsible for their pungency. The company hopes consumers will opt for its greens over less nutritious ones like iceberg and butter lettuce.

Consider the deep professed concern that biomedical engineers have for their citizens: they just, deep down inside, want everyone to be healthy and happy.

None of this is about a megalomaniacal coup over nature for the sake of social control and profits. The best way, clearly, to retain the health benefits of food is to chop up its DNA. That’s called The Science™.

Then consider the friendly moniker of the company’s first product: Conscious™ Greens. How the company can trademark the word “Conscious” is a story for another day, but look at the implication: the consumers who spend extravagantly to buy experimental, genetically modified vegetables are “conscious.” They’re enlightened and modern, unlike the rube who insists on eating genetically intact ones.

It strikes similar notes to the prophetic 2006 film Idiocracy and the issue the lobotomized citizens of tomorrow have with drinking water “from the toilet” instead of the flavored sugar-water they have been conditioned through advertising to mindlessly consume.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/benbartee/2023/06/18/american-consumers-will-soon-be-eating-crispr-gene-edited-conscious-salad-greens-n1704297