Hybrid Fruit Will Kill Us All
“For 50 years, the Zaiger family has been striving for a perfect piece of fruit: juicy like a plum, but not as messy. Sweeter, too, with a cherry snap. The Zaigers own Zaiger’s Inc. Genetics in Modesto, Calif., one of country’s few commercial fruit breeders specializing in hybrid fruits. Next month, they will decide whether to grant any of the farmers who tasted their pluerry, named for its mix of plum and cherry, at a sampling last week the exclusive rights to grow the new fruit and sell it to supermarkets across the country. Hybrid fruit is a potentially lucrative, and delicious, market. Fruit growers are motivated by the lure of inventing a product that commands premium prices, from 50 cents to $1 or more per pound than conventional fruit. The breeders are also aiming for fruit that will have a longer harvest period to be available to shoppers longer.”
— The Wall Street Journal reports on the latest developments in the world of produce miscegenation. I am alarmed by this! I have thoughts that can only be expressed in verse form! Heed my terrible warning before we cannot turn back! Etc.
Please Don’t Make The Fruits Do Sex To Each Other
The freakish fruits that Science spawns —
The pros we know, but not the cons
What laws of nature might we breach
By blending apricot and peach?
Or still more fearsome, contemplate
An apple grafted to a date
It makes one sit with mouth agape
To ponder kiwi mixed with grape
And furthermore, the silly names
They use as mutant freak fruit frames:
How is the mind supposed to grapple
With “blawberry” or “boysenapple”?
And given how man likes to tinker
It doesn’t take the greatest thinker
To realize how all this ends:
With blends of blends of blends of blends
The “pluots” and the “peacharines”
Will mate with the “bananabeans”
The offspring will quite soon combine
With something called the “pomepine”
And finally all fruit will meld
Into a beast that can’t be felled
Let’s stop before it gets too late
And we’re what ends up on the plate