Nope, they ban GMOs. And nothing ridiculous about it either.
Even if fears are wrong, GMOs are used to create bottom of the barrel, mass market consumption food.
They are for crops to be yield faster, fend against diseases etc, become bigger, and general give cheaper mass quantities -- that is, meant for the same kind of producers that pile in pesticides, hormones, etc, and create stuff to look big and shiny (sometimes due to added food colouring) on supermarket shelves -- not exactly known for their carefully produced fruits and vegetables.
Rooting for GMOs is like cheering because one eats fast food, or smokes cigarettes, just because there's food science involved in making them more addictive...
In terms of your fast food analogy: the study of molecular gastronomy could be used for making addictive food but can also be used to make breakthroughs in high end cuisine.
There's no reason why GMO can't be used to make good produce even better.
That's the red herring argument, analogous to "think of the children" when it comes to privacy.
Invariably, such better yields are not done out of some corporate goodness of heart to save people from malnutricion. The companies would rather pocket the profits from lower production costs and sell the produce at the same price or close...
In fact the savings from more resistant fruits and vegetables, are offset a lot from high prices to sell seeds, and exclusive rights to GMO seeds.
The same way drugs that cost little to produce (research and approval process included -- when the company has already recouperated and brings in mucho dinero from them) are still not allowed to be sold near cost in Africa and other such place, despite the potential to save millions of people, because profits.
i.e: let's get them to accept our generous "free" (as in beer) GMO and lax their GMO laws/attitudes, so that we can control farming with our licensed seeds.
Potrykus has enabled golden rice to be distributed free to subsistence farmers.[51] Free licenses for developing countries were granted quickly due to the positive publicity that golden rice received, particularly in Time magazine in July 2000.[52] Monsanto Company was one of the first companies to grant free licences.[53]
The cutoff between humanitarian and commercial use was set at US$10,000. Therefore, as long as a farmer or subsequent user of golden rice genetics does not make more than $10,000 per year, no royalties need to be paid. In addition, farmers are permitted to keep and replant seed.[54]
