Lesson 3: Genetically Modified Organisms

Learning Outcomes

 Students will know the current role transgenic varieties play in the principal field
crops of Iowa and Wisconsin.
 Students will become familiar with the major arguments for and against the use of
transgenic crop varieties.
 Students will be introduced to some of the politics of science.
Engage
Instruction. Instructions: On the space provided, write TRUE if the statement is correct or
False, if it is not.
____________1. The terms “genetically modified” and “genetically engineered” mean
different things.
____________2. In the genetic modification process, biotech scientists often use viruses
and bacteria to invade cells of plants and insert foreign genes.
____________3. Corn and soya bean products are the most common GM food products
in the market.
____________4. There is no benefit with regard to genetically modified (GM) food.
____________5. Both genetic modification and traditional breeding involve the alteration
of genetic make-up of living organism to produce the desired traits.

Explore
Instruction: Search the internet for edible products that make use of GMOs as ingredients.
Choose a particular GMO and research on it. On a piece of paper, paste a photo of your
chosen GMO and answer the question.
Question. How does the use of a GMO ingredient in the product reduce the drawbacks
of the same product that use a non-GMO ingredient?

Explain
Introduction.
Agriculture began at various places around the world around 10,000 years ago.
Throughout the past 10,000 years an important feature of agriculture has been crop
selection or breeding. Most of this selection has been in the hands of individual farmers,
each of whom had slightly different ideas of what traits he or she wanted, and each of
whom was looking to suit the particular needs of his or her farm. Farmers traded some
seeds and bought some in times of shortage or to gain new varieties, but most of the time
they saved their own from the previous year’s crop. This process resulted in an incredibly
wide range of crop varieties in traditional agriculture.
Crop selection and breeding remains an important part of agriculture, but during the last
century how it is done has changed markedly. Now it is researchers at universities, special
research stations, and for-profit seed production businesses who do the crop selection
and breeding that supplies seed for most of the world’s staple crops (for a description of
the seed industry in the US see http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aib786/). This new
system for crop breeding has produced and disseminated some extremely high-yielding
crop varieties. It has also taken much seed selection and production out of the control of
individual farmers and has vastly reduced the genetic diversity of key crops both in the
US and around the world.
Also during the past century new techniques for modifying crops have been developed.
The techniques that have attracted the most attention and the most controversy allow
technicians to take specific genes from one organism and put them into another organism.
Definition of Terms:
1. Biotechnology refers to “any technique that uses living organisms (or parts of
organisms) to make or modify products, to improve plants or animals, or to develop
microorganisms for specific uses.” (Definition from the Office of Technology
Assessment, as quoted in Jack Kloppenburg. 1988, First the Seed) Strictly
speaking, traditional plant breeding and use of naturally-occurring microorganisms
for fermentation are forms of biotechnology. However, in common usage the term
generally applies to the new technologies of the past few decades, and in particular
to the creation of transgenic organisms. These two different usages can create
confusion.
2. Gene transfer or genetic engineering is the process of taking a selected gene from
one organism and inserting it into another. Unlike traditional forms of crop
breeding, genetic engineering allows the transfer of genes across species and
even kingdom boundaries.
3. Transgenic, genetically engineered, GE, genetically modified organisms, GMOs,
and bioengineered are all terms that refer to organisms or crops that have been
created by the insertion of a specific gene from another organism through gene
transfer.

CURRENT USE OF GMOS IN COMMERCIAL AGRICULTURE

Genetically engineered soybeans were first made available to farmers in 1996. As the
graph (Figure 1) below shows, farmers in the US quickly adopted GE soybeans, corn,
and cotton.
The major GE crops currently in use have been modified in two different ways:
1. Herbicide-tolerant (Ht) crops are engineered so they remain healthy when exposed
to a specific herbicide – in most cases glyphosate (Roundup). Roundup-ready
soybeans are the main GE crop in Iowa and Wisconsin.
2. Bt crops are engineered to produce a variety of the bacterium Bt throughout the
plant. Bt stands for Bacillus thuringensis. It occurs naturally in the soil and on plants
and can produce a protein that is toxic to specific groups of insects. The Bt corn
currently in use in Wisconsin and Iowa is toxic to the European Corn Borer, an
occasional pest in this region.

WHAT BENEFITS DO GE CROPS PROVIDE?

Proponents of GE technology have made sweeping claims about the benefits these crops
can offer. Let us begin by looking at the crops currently in use in our states: herbicide-
tolerant soybeans, Bt corn, and herbicide-tolerant corn.
Benefits to consumers
These crops do not offer any direct benefits to consumers. Proponents of these crops
claim they are substantially equivalent to non-engineered varieties, meaning essentially
they are no better and no worse in nutritional quality. Production costs for GE crops are
roughly the same as those for conventional crops, and so consumer food prices have not
been affected.
Benefits to farmers
Convenience. Farmers can use one product instead of having to decide among a wide
variety of herbicides, each effective on different types of weeds, and with different impacts
on the crop. Also, farmers can apply the herbicide at any time without worrying about
damage to the growing crop. With Bt crops farmers do not have to monitor pest levels
and decide if and when to apply pesticides, and they don’t even have to spray. The
pesticide is automatically produced by the plant.
Effectiveness. Several weeds have begun to develop resistance to the types of herbicides
commonly used in soybean production before the introduction of GE varieties. Glyphosate
(Roundup) had few resistance problems in the 1990s. However, with the heavy reliance
on this product, resistance is starting to emerge.

Benefits to Business
Producers of GE seed expect significant profits from both the seed and from linked
herbicide sales. Whether GE ventures will prove profitable in the long term is not yet clear.

WHAT ARE THE COSTS OF GE CROPS?

Risks for Consumers
Basically, the risks GE corn and soybeans may pose for human health are unknown.
Because these crops are deemed to be substantially equivalent to conventional crops,
their manufacturers have not had to conduct the types of studies that would be required
to approve new pesticides, drugs, or food additives. GE seed producers have voluntarily
done some review of their products, but the studies have not been made public in full.
Americans have been consuming GE crops since 1995, and no human health problems
have been documented from these products.
Many substances now known to harm human health (e.g. tobacco, pesticides, heavy
metals) take years to show ill effects – and don’t harm all people exposed. Because GE
foods are not labeled or tracked in the food system, it will be nearly impossible to trace
long-term health effects back to them in the way public health researchers have done for
tobacco and pesticides.
GE products are not all the same. Small differences in how they are made may change
the risks they pose. For example, in a study by Cornell University, the pollen from some
varieties of Bt corn was found to kill Monarch butterflies, while the pollen from other Bt
varieties did not appear to harm the butterflies that ate it.
Costs to the environment
As with risks for consumers, there is relatively little concrete information on what the
impacts of GE crops are on the environment. The following concerns are based in part
on experiences with agricultural pesticides:
Impacts on non-target organisms. Crops that have built-in pesticides such as Bt may
affect organisms other than the pest, including natural predators of the pest species. For
example, pollen from some Bt corn varieties is toxic to Monarch butterflies. Follow-up
research indicates that in field conditions pollen concentrations on milkweed leaves (the
Monarch’s sole food source) are not typically high enough to harm them. However,
possible impacts on a wide range of other organisms have not been studied, though one
study raises some concerns. The use of Bt as an insecticide that is sprayed onto plants
has been studied. Bt sprays are generally deemed environmentally preferable to standard
synthetic pesticides, partially because they have relatively low toxicity for mammals and
birds and partially because they break down quickly. However the Bt in GE crops is
present in far higher amounts and because it is tied up in plant residue it is much more
persistent than sprayed-on Bt.
Degradation of original crop genotypes. The behavior of GE organisms in the environment
over the long term is not yet known. There is some concern that GE traits may be highly
competitive with other genotypes, possibly crowding out valuable natural genes.
Researchers have found GE genes in corn grown in Oaxaca, Mexico, the center of origin
for this crop. Because this region remains the world repository for most of corn’s genetic
diversity, production of GE corn was banned in Mexico.
Increased pesticide use?
The numbers of acres treated with herbicides does not change with the adoption of GE
crops. What changes is the type of herbicide used. Glyphosate (commercially know as
Roundup, the main herbicide used with herbicide-resistant GE crops) is effective at
moderate rates, meaning a switch to Glyphosate may result in a decrease or increase in
total pounds of active ingredient applied, depending on what product was used before.
Due to the development of pest resistance, any reductions in pesticide use are likely to
be only temporary. A few farmers are already beginning to find some weed resistance to
glyphosate, and are mixing it with other pesticides. Some agro-ecologists fear that the
long-term result of GE crops may be the loss of glyphosate and Bt as effective, relatively
benign pest management tools. GE crop types developed to date fit into the monoculture-
pesticides framework rather than the Integrated Pest Management-systems framework.
Statistics on pesticide use only monitor pesticides applied externally and ignore the
pesticides generated by the GE plants themselves.
Overall, there has probably been no reduction in pesticide use due to the adoption of GE
crops in Iowa and Wisconsin. Virtually all corn and soybean acres continue to be treated
with herbicides, and corn was rarely treated for European Corn Borer before the
introduction of Bt varieties. (Bt varieties have reduced pesticide use on cotton in parts of
the US, China, and Africa. Whether these reductions will last is another question.)
Costs to farmers
Loss of international markets. Consumers in the European Union and Japan, two of the
major export markets for Midwestern corn and soybeans, do not want GE products. The
US is fighting import restrictions on these products through institutions regulating
international trade, but their success has been mixed to date.
Problems for organic producers. Organic standards prohibit the use of GE products
because of the many unknowns about their long-term ecological and health impacts.
Unfortunately, since corn (and canola) are wind-pollinated and pollen can travel at least
a kilometer under certain conditions, it is very difficult to keep the crop free of GE
contamination. Organic farmers can take a variety of steps to reduce the chance of GE
contamination of their crop.
Loss of ability to save seed. Virtually all the corn planted in the US is hybrid. Hybrid corn
has high yields, but the seed does not produce the desirable characteristics of the parent
plants, so farmers buy new corn seed every year from specialized seed companies, and
have done so for decades. However, soybean varieties are not hybrid, so farmers can
save part of their crop from one year to use as seed the next. But they are not allowed to
do so with GE seed. A number of farmers have had to pay large penalties for deliberately
or inadvertently planting saved GE seed.
Costs to business
Organic grain handlers and exporters have incurred additional costs for testing shipments
for GMOs. In a few cases entire shipments of organic grains have been rejected due to
GE contamination, leading to financial losses for organic farmers and handlers
To sum it all up, the only clear benefit from GE crops in the Midwest to date is the
increased convenience of weed management for some farmers using herbicide-tolerant
soybeans. The only clear cost to date has been to organic farmers and processors, whose
work has become more difficult, expensive, and fraught with an extra layer of uncertainty,
and to those farmers who have paid substantial penalties for allegedly planting saved GE
seed. The other costs and benefits are uncertain, speculative, or a matter of debate.
Elaborate
Instruction: Follow what is asked below.
Nowadays, scientists are developing processes through which they could manipulate or
change the genetic make-up of a plant or an animal even outside of reproduction. This
process is called genetic engineering. Today, it is carried out to improve species, create
new species, or increase the number of a species. In genetic engineering, a piece or
pieces of DNA are taken from an organism and then inserted or introduced into the DNA
of another organism. The aim is to get a desired trait or characteristic of the source
organism. The resulting organism is then referred to as a genetically modified organism
(GMO)
Application:
Identify five foods, five pharmaceutical and five agricultural products with GMOs that are
available in the market/supermarkets. Make a list of the substances that were used to
make the products. Identify the GMOs that were used and find out their uses. Evaluate
the benefits and the risks of the GMOs in these products. Write in the list the genetic
disorders that can be triggered once exposed to the substances. If the GMOs pose risks
to the health of the consumers, make a recommendation that must convince the BFAD
commissioner to ban the products or conduct a thorough study about the harmful effects
of these products to the consumers. Use the table below for your data.

Product Name of Substances Genetic Recommendation/s

classification Product present in disorders that
Product can be acquired

FOOD

Pharmaceutical

Agricultural

Evaluate
Instruction: Answer accordingly.
1. What is your reflection about GMOs?
2. What are the effects of GMOs on human health?
3. Briefly discuss the basic mechanism of genetic engineering. Support your answer
with illustrations.