My opinion

Looking at my previous posts, this is what I believe:

• GM foods can have many useful properties, like being resistant to pesticides. Things like this would probably help the environment. They could help money concerns, because if a certain plant was disease resistant, this would help farmers creat a bigger profit.
• However, all the risks that could be involved have not yet been discovered. Some could harm human health, or possibly be fatel for people with allergies.

In this viewpoint, GM foods could be useful in some aspects, however certain features may have to be reviewed and corrected to ensure they are safe to eat. So GM foods are good, as long as they don't have any potential risks.

Benefits of GM foods

The world population has topped 6 billion people and is predicted to double in the next 50 years. Ensuring an adequate food supply for this booming population is going to be a major challenge in the years to come. GM foods promise to meet this need in a number of ways:

• Pest resistance: Crop losses from insect pests can be staggering, resulting in financial loss for farmers and starvation in developing countries. Farmers typically use many tons of chemical pesticides annually, however consumers do not wish to eat food that has been treated with pesticides because of potential health hazards. Growing GM foods like corn can help eliminate the need for pesticides and reduce the cost of bringing a crop to market.


• Herbicide tolerance: For some crops, it isn't cost-effective to remove weeds by physical means such as tilling, so farmers will often spray large quantities of different herbicides to destroy weeds, a process that requires care so that the herbicide doesn't harm the crop plant or the environment. Crop plants genetically modified to be resistant to a very powerful herbicide could help prevent environmental damage by reducing the amount of herbicides needed.


• Disease resitance: There are many viruses, fungi and bacteria that cause plant diseases. Plant biologists are working to create plants with genetically-engineered resistance to these diseases.


• Cold tolerence: Unexpected frost can destroy sensitive seedlings. An antifreeze gene from cold water fish has been introduced into plants like potato. With this antifreeze gene, these plants are able to tolerate cold temperatures that normally would kill unmodified seedlings


• Drought tolerence: As the world population grows and more land is utilized for housing instead of food production, farmers will need to grow crops in locations previously unsuited for plant growth. Creating plants that can withstand long periods of drought or high salt content in soil and groundwater will help people to grow crops in formerly inhospitable places.

People argue that GM foods are better for the environment. By using genetically modifyed crops that are resistant to attack by pests or disease, farmers do not have to apply large amounts of pesticides to the surrounding environment. Developing crops that are resistant to particular herbicides and pesticides may reduce the amount of pesticides used in food production and the pesticide levels in the environment.

References: http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/gmfood/overview.php

Concerns regarding GM food

European environmental organizations and public interest groups have been actively protesting against GM foods for months. Environmental activists, religious organizations, public interest groups, professional associations and other scientists and government officials have all raised concerns about GM foods, and criticized businesses for pursuing profit without any concern for potential hazards.

Most concerns about GM foods fall into three categories: Environmental Hazards, Human Health risks, and Economic Concerns.

Environmental Hazards:

• Unintended harm to other organisms: Last year a laboratory study was published showing that pollen from GM corn caused high mortality rates in monarch butterfly caterpillars. Monarch caterpillars consume milkweed plants, not corn, but the fear is that if pollen from GM corn is blown by the wind onto milkweed plants in neighboring fields, the caterpillars could eat the pollen and die. Although the study was not conducted under natural field conditions, the results seemed to support this viewpoint.


• Reduced effects of pesticides: Just as some populations of mosquitoes developed resistance to the now-banned pesticide DDT, many people are concerned that insects will become resistant to GM crops sprayed with pesticides.


• Gene transfer to non - target species: Another concern is that crop plants created for herbicide tolerance and weeds will cross-breed, resulting in the transfer of the herbicide resistance genes from the crops into the weeds. These "superweeds" would then be herbicide tolerant as well.
  

However, there are solutions to these problems. Genes are exchanged between plants via pollen. Two ways to ensure that non-target species will not receive introduced genes from GM plants are to create GM plants that do not produce pollen, or to modify the GM plant so that the pollen does not contain the introduced gene. Cross-pollination would not occur, and if harmless insects such as monarch caterpillars were to eat pollen from GM plants, the caterpillars would survive.

Another possible solution is to create 'buffer zones' around fields of GM crops. For example, non-GM corn would be planted to surround a field of GM corn, and the non-GM corn would not be harvested. Beneficial or harmless insects would have a refuge in the non-GM corn, and insect pests could be allowed to destroy the non-GM corn and would not develop resistance to the pesticides. Also, gene transfer to weeds and other crops would not occur because the wind-blown pollen would not travel beyond the buffer zone.

Human health risks:

• Allergenicity: Many children in Europe have developed life-threatening allergies to peanuts and other foods. There is a possibility that introducing a gene into a plant may create a new allergen or cause an allergic reaction in certain individuals. A proposal to incorporate a gene from Brazil nuts into soybeans was abandoned because of the fear of causing unexpected allergic reactions. If ideas like this eventually go ahead, labeling of GM foods and food products will acquire new importance.



• Unknown effects 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. A recent article examined the effects of GM potatoes on the digestive tract in rats. This study claimed that there were appreciable differences in the intestines of rats fed GM potatoes and rats fed unmodified potatoes. Yet critics say that this paper, like the monarch butterfly data, is flawed. Also, the gene introduced into the potatoes was a snowdrop flower lectin, a substance known to be toxic to mammals.

On the whole, with the exception of possible allergies, scientists believe that GM foods do not present a risk to human health.

Economic concerns:

On the whole, with the exception of possible allergenicity, scientists believe that GM foods do not present a risk to human health. Yet consumers are worried that patenting these new plant varieties will raise the price of seeds so high, that small farmers and third world countries will not be able to afford seeds for GM crops, thus widening the gap between the wealthy and the poor.

Patent enforcement may also be difficult. One way to combat possible patent infringement is to introduce a "suicide gene" into GM plants. These plants would be viable for only one growing season and would produce sterile seeds that do not germinate. Farmers would need to buy a fresh supply of seeds each year. However, this would be financially disastrous for farmers in third world countries who cannot afford to buy seed each year.

The safety of GM foods is still being debated, as it is impossible to predict all of the potential effects on human health and the environment. Some public health experts, however, advise caution and believe that ‘we are only at the "scientific starting line", we simply don’t know whether GM foods are safe’.

References: http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/gmfood/overview.php

Why are GM foods grown?

Genetic modification can be used in a number of ways in food production. These range from modifying the raw ingredients, to using genetic modification during processing. When genetic modification is used as a part of the production process, the GM material does not end up in the food on our plates. This is similar to other processing techniques, so, for example, when a food processor is used no part of the processor ends up in the meal.

These are the different ways that genetic modification can be used in food production:

1. GM food: A crop, such as a fruit or vegetable can be genetically modified.

2. GM ingredients: Food that comes from a GM crop, such as maize, can be processed, for example into flour, and the GM DNA is still present in the food and can be identified.

3. ‘GM-derived’ ingredients: Food can come from a GM crop but the DNA can be processed out of the final product – this is called 'GM-derived'. An example of this is soy oil, which is made from GM soya beans. The processing breaks up the DNA so that it can no longer be identified in the final oil because it has been broken down into small fragments. Therefore, soy oil from GM soya beans cannot be distinguished from soy oil from conventional beans.

4. GM processing aid: A GM organism can also be used to make a product without GM material being present in the ingredients or in the final product. In this case the GM organism is a 'processing aid'. One example is hard cheese production. An enzyme called chymosin is the active ingredient of rennet, which is used to curdle milk. Traditionally, rennet has been taken from calves’ stomachs, but the demand for cheese is greater than the number of calves available and the enzyme does not always produce consistent batches of cheese. Today, the gene responsible for producing chymosin is inserted in bacteria, so the bacteria make the enzyme instead of using traditional rennet. Only the bacteria are genetically modified, not the chymosin, and so the cheese has no GM content because the bacteria are not part of the cheese.

5. GM ingredients in animal feed: GM crops, such as maize, are also used to feed animals that are later eaten, such as chickens. There are also animal products, such as eggs and milk, which come from animals fed on GM crops. Functioning GM DNA is not, however, in the meat that we eat or these animal products.

References: http://www.eatwell.gov.uk/healthissues/factsbehindissues/gmfood/

What are GM foods?

GM stands for genetically modified food which have been artificially changed by scientists in a laboratory.
In the past, plants have been improved by breeding them with other, better plants - a natural process which takes years. But with GM foods, it's done quickly and artificially.


GM food involves altering a plant, animal or micro-organism's genes or inserting one from another organism. Genes carry the instructions for all the characteristics that an organism inherits. They are made up of DNA.


One example is a tomato. Tomatoes are used in a lot of foods, but they rot quickly and don't always taste nice. So GM tomatoes have been created which last longer, look redder and taste better. It has inherited these qualities.

Typical GM foods and their properties are:

• Soybeans - Resistant to herbicides
• Sugar Cane - Resistant to certain pesticides
• Sweetcorn - Produces its own insecticide (a toxin to insects, so insect attacks are less likely)
• Corn - Resistant to pesticides