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| Safe | 33% | 76 votes | Total: 231 votes | |
| Danger | 67% | 155 votes |
Safe
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Add to FavoritesWe have been genetically modifying food items since the invention of agriculture. American sweet corn (more properly known as maize) is the result of hybridization between related grasses and a primordial crop raised by the Maya and Aztecs called teosinte.
Likewise, the variety of onions that we eat are the result of hybridization, and the variety of peppers that we eat. No chicken that you find in the super market is even remotely close to the chickens raised even at the dawn of the 20th century in terms of size and nutritional value.
We now have the ability to use the techniques of molecular biology to transfer traits from various animals and plants to others; in some cases, as in Rhode Island Reds, this has allowed farmers to make disease resistant chickens. When applied to crops, the chief beneficiary is the grower. Most gene modded crops are gene modded so that the crop is resistant to blights and repellent to insect driven pests; this is phase one genetic modification.
Other aspects of genetic modification, so called phase two genetic modification, reduces the amount of water or nutrients a plant needs to grow to make its crop. In particular, as fertilizer requires a lot of energy to create and transport, this helps reduce the environmental impact of modern farming, and makes it possible to grow wheat and amaranth in areas of the world where overfarming has turned the soil into dust.
It is estimated that the genetic hybridization and genetic modification of crops starting in the late '70s has saved over a billion lives. I can recall when famines in India and China were something you'd see news items about every three to seven years. Now, famines happen in Africa not because we can't grow the food, but because we can't get it to the people in question.
Now, there are concerns about genetically modified plants. For one, the same process that allows plants to hybridize means that any plant with airborne pollen and germination (such as most grasses) can hybridize with plants nearby, passing on their traits. This has resulted in some issues with food allergies, though food allergies (in particular nut allergies) look to be caused as much by oversantization of children in toddlerhood as it is to anything else.
There is also the religious and cultural issue - if you use genes from pigs to improve the hardihood of goats, is the meat and milk from those goats something that Muslims or those who keep Kosher should eat?
However, all in all, a billion people are alive now that would have starved earlier, had we not gone down this path - with enough food, and enough prosperity, we may well be able to do for the rest of the world what's happening in India and China now.
Learn more about this author, Ken Burnside.
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Danger
Although one may say that GM food are beneficial to consumers in many other ways. however we should be aware of the danger of such technology.
GM crops can also cause allergies in consumers. A gene for an allergenic trait has been transferred unintentionally from the Brazil nut into genetically engineered soybeans while intending to improve soybean nutritional quality for animal feed use. Such allergies skyrocketed by 50% in the UK, coinciding with the introduction of GM soy imports from the U.S. GM foods may unintentionally introduce a new allergen and cause an allergic reaction in susceptible individuals.
Also GM food poses a potential hazard to human health as the bacteria in out guts could pick up antibiotic-resistanc e genes found in GM food. If this transfer happens, it could exacerbate the already worrisome spread of disease-causing bacteria that have proved able to withstand our antibiotics.
Furtherm ore until now, there are unknown effects of GM crops on human health. There is a growing concern that introducing foreign genes into food plants may have an unexpected and negative impact on human health. Although GM food has been claimed to be safe for human consumption, but we cannot deny the possibility that there may be side effects that science and current tests cannot predict. An experiments shows that rats' ability to digest was decreased after eating GM corn.
GM crops may also cause unintended harm to other organisms. Caterpillars of monarch butterflies responded adversely and died after consuming milkweed leaves heavily dusted with pollen from BT corn. This shows that there may be unforeseen effects of toxin on organisms that are not pests.
Learn more about this author, Celestine Lim.
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