Are GMO’s Good or Bad?

Genetic Engineering and Our Food

Genetic Engineering is one of the most controversial area in Science, Genetic Engineering is use
in many fields, but even though medical applications like GM insulin are widely accepted, the debate
heats up when it comes to food and agriculture. Why is the same thing treated so differently?

Humans have been genetically modifying plants and animals for thousands of years. Maybe a
few of our crops had very good yields. Breeding the plants and animals that had traits beneficial to us is
the smart thing to do. Traits suggest expression of genes, so each generation those genes got more
pronounced. After thousands of years, almost every single plant and animal around us is vastly different
from its pre-domesticated state. If humans have been changing genes for millennia, what makes a so
called “Genetically Modified Organism”, or GMO, different? Selective breeding is basically hoping for
lucky hits. Genetic engineering eliminates this factor. We can choose the traits we want example make
fruit bigger, immune to pests and so on. So, why are people concerned about them?

There are many objections to GMOs such as gene flow, meaning GM crops could mix with
traditional crops and introduce unwanted new characteristics into them. There is a method that might
guarantee complete prevention, but is a big anti-GMO argument by itself. Terminator seeds, the idea is
that they could produce sterile plants, requiring farmers to buy new seeds every year. The very concept
of this, however, caused a public outcry, stopping the technology being put to use. This brings us back to
the unintentional spreading of engineered DNA. There have been cases of GMOs growing where they
were not planted, traces of modified genes found in foreign crops. But GM plants cannot run wild
entirely. Many crops pollinate themselves, and all crops have to be related to mingle. There are also
cultural methods like buffer zones, to keep unintentional crossing at a minimum. But, if it is possible in
principle that a GMO could unintentionally cross with a non-GMO, there is actually a more important
question. Is food that comes from GM crops different to food from non-GM crops? This question has
been a major concern from the very beginning GM plants that are destined to be eaten are checked for
possible dangers, and the results are evaluated by multiple agencies. After more than 30 years and
thousands of studies, the Science is in. Eating GMO plants is no riskier than their non-GMO equivalent.
But what about plants that have been engineered to be toxic? For example, BT crops. A gene borrowed
from the bacterium Bacillus Thuringiensis, lets engineered plants produce a protein that destroys the
digestive system of specific insect pests. The plant makes its own pesticide, insects that eat it die and
that makes sound alarming. Pesticide sprays could be washed off, while the poison in BT crops is inside
the plant. But actually, it is not a big deal, poison is really just a question of different perspectives. What
is harmless to one species might kill another. Coffee, for example, is a poison that kills insects but is
harmless to us or take chocolate, it is dangerous for dogs but a pleasure for humans. BT crops produce a
protein that is tailored to the specific design of the digestive tract of certain insects; it is completely
harmless for us. There is also the opposite approach, plants that are engineered to be resistant to
certain weed killers. This way, farmers can use them widely, killing the other plants competing for
resources without harming the crop. Here, we get to the dark underbelly of GMOs, for the pesticide
industry, they are big business. Over 90% of all cash crops in Us are herbicide resistant, mostly
glyphosate. As a result, the use of glyphosate has increased greatly, that is not only bad, glyphosate is
much less harmful to humans that many other herbicides. Still, this means farmers have a strong
incentive to rely on this one method only, casting more balanced ways of managing weeds aside. That is
one of the most fundamental problems with the GMO debate, much of the criticism of this technology is
actually criticism of modern agriculture and a business practice of the huge corporations that control our
food supply. This criticism is not only valid, it is also important. We need to change agriculture to a more
sustainable model. GMOs as a technology are actually an ally and not a enemy in that fight, helping to
save and protect nature and minimize our impact on the environment.

There are also pros of GMOs like in Bangladesh, eggplant is an important crop for them but
often, whole harvests are destroyed by pests. Farmers had to rely heavily on pesticides, not only was
this very expensive, farmers also frequently got sick. The introduction of a new GM eggplant in 2013
stop this, the same BT protein we talked about before, an effective killer of insects but harmless to
humans, was engineered into them. This reduced insecticide uses on eggplants by more than 80%, the
health of farmers improved, and their income rose dramatically. And sometimes, the GM approach is
the only option, In the 1990s. the papaya industry in Hawaii was under attack from the ringspot virus
which threatened to wipe out Hawaiian papaya. The solution was a papaya genetically modified to be
vaccinated against the virus, without it, the state’s papaya industry would have been collapsed.

All these stories show a very narrow application, 99% of all GMOs we use right now produce
pesticides, or are resistant against them. There is so much more we could do; the scientists are working
on GMOs that could improved are diet. Plants that produce more or different nutrients, like fruit with
higher antioxidant levels that help to fight diseases or rice with additional vitamins. On a larger scale, we
are trying to engineer plants more resilient to climate change, plants that can better adapt to erratic
weather and adverse soil conditions and making them resistant to droughts or floods. GMOs could also
not only reduce agriculture’s impact on the environment, but actively help to protect it. Scientists are
working on crops that can draw nitrogen from the air, like microbes. Nitrogen is a common fertilizer, but
its build-up pollutes the ground water and speeds up climate change. Plants that collect their own
nitrogen could fix two problems at once, the over use of fertilizers in the developed world, as well as the
shortage of it in developing countries. We could even modify plants to become super-effective carbon
collectors, like the American chestnut tree, to mitigate and actually reverse climate change. With the
tools we have today, our imagination is the limit.

All in all, we could grow that food by clearing more and more forests to create fields and
pastures and by using more pesticides. Or, we find a way to do it on the land we have got right now,
with more effective methods like GM crops. The world eats 11 million pounds of food every day, A UN
estimate suggests we will need 70% more by 2050. By intensifying farming instead of expanding it
means GMOs could become the new organic. In a nutshell, GMOs have the potential to not only
drastically change agriculture but to also dampen the effects of our own irresponsible behavior. GMOs
could be our most powerful weapon to save our biosphere

By : Rojo, Arsenio N.

PCBET-01-302A