"If we are what we eat, with all the genetically modified and imitation foods we now eat, what the heck are we?" - anonymous
If you want to judge genetically modified food, you should first know what genetic modification means.
Basically, you can see GM (I'll use ‘GM' because it's short for Genetic Modification) as a way to ‘improve' plants and animals. By making adjustments in the DNA, the plant or animal gets, for instance, a higher quality or a higher resistance to diseases and/or parasites.
What researchers in the biotechnology do, can be explained quite easily. They take genes (genes are holding information, which is for example used to build cells, but also holds information about genetic traits) from one type of plant or organism and ‘insert' them into another type of plant (or organism).
You can see GM as this : Plant A has for instance a weakness to cold. Now, farmers don't really like that and researchers have decided to make sure that the plant will have a higher resistance to cold. They look for a plant, or organism (think of microbes) and take out specific information (that specific information is the reason for organism B's resistance to cold) from it's DNA. Then, they place that piece of information inside the DNA of plant A. That way, plant A will be more endurable to cold weather (just like organism B).
Now, there are a few reasons to vote ‘for' GM. Let's make a list of them :
- Plants will have a (higher) resistance against diseases
- Plants will have a (higher) resistance against cold
- Plants can produce bigger fruits and vegetables (of a higher quality)
- Animals will grow bigger (and faster) due to GM and their flesh and 'products' will have a higher quality
- ‘New' organisms can be ‘created'
The fact that plants have a higher resistance to cold means that in the near future we could say goodbye to the greenhouses (that wouldn't be such a bad thing, now would it? The light that comes from the greenhouses causes the sky to turn ‘yellow', so when night falls, it won't be dark at all. This is not a problem for people, but what about the animals?).
If you look at a ‘normal' potato plant, not every potato that can be harvested from it has a ‘high' quality. This means that the vegetables need to be sorted on quality. A-quality, which is the best quality, is more expensive than the other qualities. But, now GM came along, scientists can make sure that (almost) every fruit or vegetable, that can be harvested from a plant, will have a high quality. As a result, the high quality vegetables are less expensive. The same goes for mass production, which can be made possible by GM.
But what about the downsides of GM? Let me also list them for you :
- GM crops can cause allergic reactions.
- GM research costs a lot of money
- GM causes loss of nutritional value
- Antibiotics lose their efficiency
- (new) Viruses and pests can evolve, this can have big consequences
- GM can be seen as ‘messing with nature', people might oppose to that
- GM crops can cause harm to animals
- You don't know what you're eating because most of the times food manufacturers are not able to tell you if their food contains something that is genetically modified
- Other crops can be ‘contaminated' by the GM crops if pollen from the GM crops are blown to a field with 'normal' crops
- The environment takes damage from GM
- GM is expensive, this means that some country's won't be able to afford it.
- Mass production of crops will be bad for small farmers. Because, GM crops are rather cheap, people will be eager to buy GM food. The food industry will be dominated by big companies.
(many thanks to Yahoo.com)
We all know that GM has not been around for a very long time. This means that we – still – don't know much about it. A lot of health hazards can occur, without us even knowing.
And what about the long-term effects? We might be able to know, no predict, what GM food can do to an individual for a short period of time. But what happens after twenty years? Thirty, or even forty? There is no-one who can answer that question because there is no-one who thought of testing GM on a long term. Maybe they did, but it would cost a lot of money and take a lot of time. Most governments don't think it's necessary to spend a lot of time and money on research if they think it's safe. Why not? Because they are all driven by money.
"Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible." – Phil Angel, the director of corporate communications at Monsanto
So in this world, this society, it seems that money is more important than the lives of thousands of humans and animals.
"Genetic engineering is like performing heart surgery with a shovel. Scientists do not yet understand living systems completely enough to perform DNA surgery without creating mutations which could be harmful to the environment and our health. They are experimenting with very delicate, yet powerful forces of nature, without full knowledge of the repercussions.''- Mark Schoofs (I believe)
Not only should we ‘fear' for what happens in the (near) future - due to the absence of information - the resistance to antibiotics and of course the possible side effects. But we should also fear for the impact it could, and will, have on our environment. Our food will contain more and more pesticides, like safe-foods.org says, due to GM, crops are able to create their own pesticides. And the most, frustrating, thing is possibly the fact that once the genes are inserted into the crops or animals, and those are being ‘released' into our environment, there is no way to contain the genes. Recalling them would be simply impossible. So, if they made a mistake, we're doomed to live with it.
Personally, I'm against Genetic Modification. Not only because we have no clue what will happen in the near future, but also because I believe we have no right to ‘mess' with nature. Who are we to think we can make our food ‘better' and control it, if we can't even control ourselves? Hunger for power, money and the fact that we think we are the smartest animals on this planet (we may call ourselves human and think we stand above the other living creatures, but we're still animals) are the reasons why GM was introduced in the first place. There is nothing wrong with the way our food was before.
If only we would use GM to make sure everyone on this planet would have something to eat, maybe then I would think of accepting it (however, the downsides of GM makes it impossible to accept it, since I wouldn't want other people to die because of it). But that's not happening.
We're all part of it, whether we want it or not and there are only three options we have left. We should either go back to where we started and grow our own, biological, crops and keep our own cows and chickens in the backyard. We could also just close our eyes to this and forget about it, not accepting the fact that this is happening right now. Or, we could unite and stand up against this. It's your choice…
"If it is left to me, I would certainly not eat it. We are putting new things into food which have not been eaten before. The effects on the immune system are not easily predictable and I challenge anyone who will say that the effects are predictable." - Professor Arpad Pustzai, world-leading nutritional science expert.
Hey Melissa,
Thanks for telling me about your review !
I read the review and will give my opinion about it .
A very nice detailed review with some good arguments.
However I don't agree with some of the downsides you mention,
· GM crops can cause allergic reactions.
-Unmodified food can give allergic reactions to does this mean its bad?
· GM research costs a lot of money
-The research also provides people work like other jobs and therefore they earn money to make a living . School costs a lot of money to ;) is that bad ? That's where we start learning things like GM to.
· (new) Viruses and pests can evolve, this can have big consequences
-If they have better resistance doesn't that mean its harder for them to evolve than in the normal plants/animals?
· GM can be seen as ‘messing with nature', people might oppose to that
-You can see it as messing with nature but were already messing with nature in many other ways think about , zoo's , non GM farms ,etc those animals don't live the way they used to before man created it .
- About the effect in the future : We never know what's going to happen something bad might come out of it, but something worse might come out if we don't.
However if all this GM stuff is only about food crisis. A better solution to me would seem to give poor countries information on how to produce food and stop buying from these overpriced foods from our own countries and buy it from the poor countries so that they have more chance to become successive countries to .
And maybe if all us humans would die due to this, is that really so bad? The life on earth might go back to a balanced stage if you think about nature GM might be they key to success again!
-Unmodified food can give allergic reactions to does this mean its bad?
You are right about that, people do get allergic reactions from food that has not been Genetically modified. But, the thing is, GM foods are known to increase the risk of allergic reactions. Let's take America for instance. Only 6 percent of the American children and 2 percent of the American adults are allergic to food. The cases of people who are (really) allergic to types of food are rising, due to GM.
-The research also provides people work like other jobs and therefore they earn money to make a living . School costs a lot of money to ;) is that bad ? That's where we start learning things like GM to.
There are others ways to ‘create' jobs. Besides, if you take a look around on the net, you'll find dozens of businesses who are desperately searching for new employees.
-If they have better resistance doesn't that mean its harder for them to evolve than in the normal plants/animals?
No. Pests and Viruses only evolve due to the higher resistance. I can explain it very simple. Let's say for instance you have a crop, a normal crop who grows on a random field. Now, that crop only has a small resistance against a certain type of virus. You can see that ‘resistance' as a wall. So think of a low wall around the crop. When that type of virus strikes, it's very easy to ‘jump over' that wall. Next to that crop is a GM crop. This crop has a higher resistance to that type of virus, so the wall is (obviously) higher. When the virus tries to jump over the wall, he won't succeed.
Now, what would you do if you can't get over a wall? Of course, get a ladder. That's exactly what the virus is doing. Of course in real life it won't get a ladder, and there is not a real wall around the crop, but the idea is the same. The virus is forced to evolve.
-You can see it as messing with nature but were already messing with nature in many other ways think about , zoo's , non GM farms ,etc those animals don't live the way they used to before man created it .
I never said I agree with zoo's, etc. This review is about GM, not about those things.
(You are right, and I agree, but it's quite off the point, you see?)
- About the effect in the future : We never know what's going to happen something bad might come out of it, but something worse might come out if we don't.
That's not true. We might not know everything, but… the scientists who created GM knew about various side effects, like for instance the allergic reactions. But once again, money is involved.
The thing is, actually, that lots of people who die from starvation, live in a country in which food isn't a problem at all. Most of those people are poor farmers, who are underpayed. People who pay them and others who have money are keeping the food to themselves.
That is a way.. however, maybe it's not us who will suffer, but our children and/or their children will. Do you want that? Do you want the people from the future looking back, blaming us? Our generation?
There is more that I would like to say about this, about your statements. However, I will say those on msn because I just feel that there is more going on.