[Forbes 30 Sept 2012 by Beth Hoffman] -- Genetically engineered (GE) crops are often discussed as the way to feed the world’s growing populations and to mitigate the affects of climate change. But the spreading of those same genetically engineered traits to weeds is now well documented. Invasive plants become “super weeds” and insects develop resistance to the trait, making them even tougher to fight than they were before the use of GE crops. Researchers in China recently confirmed this. They announced that while the spread of engineered traits to weeds in rice fields is slower than they previously thought, it is also “unavoidable. Using GE rice created to fight pests, for example, causes the number of insects in a field drop. Weeds then don’t have a reason to adopt the trait and the gene takes a longer time to be incorporated into the make up of the invasive plant. But is this good news? If the spread is “unavoidable” – since weeds in rice fields are typically a variety of rice in the first place – does it matter that the genetic mutation is slow? Yes and no. In the world of agriculture, as with popular medicine, the theory is to treat the symptom (in this case insect invasions) and to hope that by the time fix becomes ineffective we have something else figured out to spray, engineer or swallow to re-bandaid the problem. At the moment, large amounts of pesticide are sprayed to accomplish this task in rice fields. And in places like California (the second largest rice growing state in the U.