What is the big deal with genetically modified (GM) foods?

Question

With changing climate awaiting us, and world food supplies at risk, aren't drought resistant, pest resistant crops exactly what we need? Yes, yes, I know, they aren't proven safe. But what would be the relationship between genetic modification to increase production, and safety to the consumer. Isn't it like saying "crops produced using agricultural equipment that runs on hydrogen fuel aren't proven safe". I'm wondering if it is just political hype causes us to shoot ourselves in the foot. This is not an opinion, it's a question. I am listening..

Answer 1

I am a molecular biologist so have created my share of subcloned genes to look for novel protein function and I worry. Not about altering food but about the specific modifications chosen, they seem very short sighted.
We have some 40 altered crops in the US expressing either HT herbicide tolerance or Bt for insect resistance. HT allows farmers to use a glyphosphate herbicide on the crop plant but only kill the weeds. Putting a Bt protein in the plant lets the plant fight the specific insect that eats it.
Large scale use will quickly breed insects Bt resistant and weeds glyphosphate resistant. Glyphosphate, as commonly formulated with POEA, is not as safe in long term studies as the original short term studies implied. It kills off earthworm, nitrogen fixing bacteria and other soil fauna. We rely on earthworms to aerate soil as well as fertilize it with their castings. They are the primary soil predator of bacteria like E. coli. Nitrogen fixing bacteris are the soils primary means of getting fertilized. Doesn't it defeat the purpose of growing more food if we have to modify the plant to survive the herbicide we use to kill the weed. Then in tandem destroy the beneficial soil inhabitants that maintain the soil and prevent E.coli outbreaks?
Wouldn't it make more sense to screen the wild ancestral plants for genes to enhance the plants own disease resistance we bred out because it tasted bad. We could add nutritive value from these related plants or factor in drought tolerance. We could add to our crop diversity by returning to the parental plants for forms new to agriculture.
Lateral transfer of genetic material occurs in the microbial world constantly and may be as old as cellular life. Maize has transposons, bacteria have plasmids, virus' are little more than mobile genetic elements ready to move any and all DNA. It is the natural mobility of genes that lets us create transgenic plants at all. Their changes are random so there is no pre-selection for benefit, neutrality, or harm from the change. The outcome of mutation is random and we have survived without being aware of it. The difference is the scale. When a mutation happens naturally it is a few organisms that slowly breed into a larger population. When we do it we put out entire populations all at once. This could place selective pressure in ways we do not yet know are interrelated.

Answer 2

In my mind, the biggest problem with GM foods/crops is that we can't control where that pollen goes, so we can't control or even begin to foresee what the consequences might be. As a biology teacher, I am well aware of the benefits science has provided for the human species, but sometimes I think that we are a bit like the toddler who has started to walk but doesn't yet have enough sense to handle themselves. So they hurry when they should slow down, fall down and clonk their heads on the furniture, run down the stairs or into the street. We learn how to do something and then we rush to use it before we have really had time to consider the effects. Even then, we can't possible know the longterm effects of anything until a long time has passed. So we end up doing a big experiment on the only world we have to live in. Not sure what the answer is, but I do think it is a worrisome dilemma.

Edit:
And as a response to the first answerer above me, I must be one of the liberal crackpots because I firmly believe that global warming is a serious issue with impacts that are not just impending ... the impacts are upon us.

Barbara Kingsolver, a biologist and prominent author, wrote an essay about GM foods, citing the problems of monocultures and loss of genetic diversity. If we agree that the world is in constant change (has been and will be), then we can see that diversity within a species is the necessary ingredient for being able to cope with these changes. It's definitely worth reading. Here's a link to the full text: http://www.organicconsumers.org/gefood/SmallWonders.cfm

Answer 3

Then we should go back to the genetic stocks of 10,000BC. Because all foods we eat are genetically modified from originals. Be it the old fashioned method of cross pollination? Or, DNA modification. Personally? If Asian children may benefit from GM rice containing vitamin A they don't get in normal rice? Their primary food. Saving them from blindness? God Speed I say. In the end Leftism's fight against GM and expansion of our food stocks will result in Soylent Green, Blue, Red and Yellow. for the masses. While the elite still enjoy prime old fashioned farm raised edibles. Alcohol to wash the soylent down will be readily available.

Answer 4

Greetings. thing with genetically altered foods is that some of them have proved to be indigestible and to cross pollenate with non-genetically altered crops, this is a problem with corn. when the pollen from a genetically altered corn plant fertilizes a non-genetically altered plant the corn it produces is genetically altered. it is a mutant. and what in the world would agricultural machines that run on hydrogen have to do with genetically engineered food? Besides there not being any of course. With the safety. is it better to eat a food that may alter your genetic makeup and make all your offspring into mutants then it is to simply stop breeding so many new humans? Many of the products that have come out, like the big deal on sugar substitutes and butter substitutes that have finally been discovered to cause cancer and other disorders, have not been proven safe before being fostered onto the population as the saving grace of science. Almost all of them have proven to be false in their presumptions of what they actually do to the human body. Even if the GM foods prove to be good and not long term harmful, that will not really help humanity. we are running out of natural resources, out of safe drinking water and out of room to continue to expand our increasing populations world wide. the GM foods would at best, even if they are a howling success, be only a small postponment of the inevitable. We have a world population that doubles in size every 50 years. we have a limited amount of land suitable for growing food crops. we have a limited amount of potable drinking water that we are busily contaminating with chemicals used to grow food crops with. We are using land suitable for growing food to build houses on to house more people. is a much bigger problem then simply a quick genetic fix that tries to fool mother nature by altering the genetic code of our food plants and animals.

Answer 5

It's the same liberal crackpots who believe the global warming nonsense that are afraid of scientifically improved food.

They say the corn given to the Pilgrims by the Indians wouldn't be recognizable today. It's been modified and improved so many times in 400 years, it's now far superior.

Man has been genetically modifying food for thousands of years. It's just that now, he's found a shortcut.

Answer 6

when people say, "it's not proven safe" what they mean is that we don't know what the consequences will be. Maybe it weakens our immune system or maybe it produces health effects we cannot predict. This could happen years down the road. But.... As world food supplies are under pressure due to water scarcity we may embrace GM foods...

Answer 7

They are the best!
I am eating grapes with no seeds right now. They are great.

Answer 8

I thought to cut shot it. But later i thought it would be better to give you the entire article... Here is the link below. Thats a good Question...... Happy Halloween Dude .............. Bye. ......................... Genetically Modified Food Products
Monday 22 February 1999

Summary: There are heated debates going on around the world at the moment about genetically modified food products. Rae Fry looks at what's happening here in Australia.


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Norman Swan: Welcome to the program. Today on The Health Report, what it takes to live to be 100. You too could have a photograph taken of you with six generations of your family.

What is it that centenarians have in common, apart from good genes? It's psychological, and you'll find out more soon.

And, the food that may or may not get you that far. Last week in Britain, there was an uproar engineered by the environmental lobby over what are called genetically modified foods. Over the weekend our papers were full of the issue as well. No-one's sure how much genetically modified foods are in the shops, modified for all sorts of reasons, including more protein, more efficient growth, or being weedkiller resistant, so chemical companies can sell higher volumes of their herbicides.

Well as we speak, a radical new approach is under way to help make decisions about what reaches our supermarket aisles. Ordinary people are coming together to hear the scientific evidence for and against genetically engineered foods, and make up their own minds in what's called a consensus conference. Should these foods continue to be sold, and if so, who should decide, and how ought they be controlled?

The Health Report's Rae Fry has been following this fascinating community experiment.

Rae Fry: Last week the Australian New Zealand Food Authority gave health and safety approval for the first two genetically modified food products under a new set of Australian rules for testing. But you might be surprised to find out that in fact both those foods are already on supermarket shelves, and have been for some time. Even if you're a diligent reader of packets and cans, you could be forgiven for failing to notice, since at the moment there's no requirement that genetically altered foods be labelled as such.

Right now the debate's starting to hot up. Last December, in spite of opposition from the food industry, the Council of Health Ministers decided that compulsory labelling would be introduced. And during this year, the whole regulatory framework for genetically modified foods is being overhauled.

But what are these foods that are lurking, complete with manipulated DNA, under our very noses?

Carole Renouf, from the Australian Consumers' Association.

Carole Renouf: To the best of our knowledge, the genetically modified foods that are currently present on the Australian market, (I should describe them more as ingredients rather than foods) they would be the genetically modified soy, which has come in imported from the US, and there is also genetically modified cotton, which is actually grown in Australia; and the oil, the cottonseed oil from that cotton goes into products like margarine for example.

Rae Fry: The Consumers' Association has been lobbying for labelling for a long time. But if we can't even notice the difference between genetically modified soybeans that have been tweaked so that they can tolerate weedkiller, and their conventional counterparts, then what's the big deal?

After all, biotechnologists say they're only doing what plant breeders have been doing for centuries, but with quicker and cleaner technology, and with the potential to make plants produce extra vitamins, or even vaccines against disease.

But some critics, including Dr John Coveney, a nutritionist from the Department of Public Health at Flinders University, say that mixing and matching DNA sequences from plants and animals could have unpredictable consequences.

John Coveney: There are some risks. For example one particular soybean was produced using a gene spliced into it from Brazil nut. Now the idea was that the gene would improve the nutritional value of the soybean. It turned out that during human volunteer testing, a number of people showed allergenic reactions to that particular product. We have to proceed with total caution.

Rae Fry: The food industry says they are being cautions, and the fact that the Brazil nut allergen was picked up well before that soybean went to market shows that testing is adequate. Surveys have shown that Australian consumers are not particularly concerned about genetically modified foods. But it could be that we're just not aware how far the technology has already gone. And even if we were, how would we be able to decide whether or not it's a good thing, particularly in terms of predicting long-term consequences, not just the immediate effects, like allergies.

John Coveney: I think one of the main concerns that people have is that they feel that the issue is being driven by profit-takers in the form of large multinational companies. And I think that it's very important that regulatory authorities take a firm step in the regulation of these foods, in order to restore confidence in the way our food supply is being regulated.

Secondly, people need to be given the choice about whether they would like to choose genetically modified foods or their more traditional components. Lastly, we need a much larger public health debate about the possible consequences of these foods as they enter the food supply, and that's why I'm very, very excited about the People's Consensus Conference, because I think that's a very positive way forward.

Rae Fry: So what is this Consensus Conference exactly, and how much of a difference is it likely to make?

The whole thing has been organised by an interesting coalition, representing scientific, environmental and consumer groups, and they don't all share the same opinions. The citizen panel is made up of 14 people from all over Australia, picked more or less at random, who had no previous knowledge of the issue. They've already been through an intensive briefing process, but their identities are being kept secret so that they can't be harassed by those who may wish to influence the outcome. And then from the 10th to the 12th March, in the Senate Chamber of Old Parliament House in Canberra, they'll be debating some thorny questions, such as:

What are the health and environmental risks of genetically modified foods;

How much risk is acceptable;

And is it ethical to own and manipulate living things?

Carole Renouf is one of the conference organisers.

Carole Renouf: The citizens hear expertise or evidence from the speakers from conflicting points of view, and then retire and try and resolve that in some way, and come up with a report that gives their conclusions.

Rae Fry: The question of what effect their report will have is a moot point, says Carole Renouf, since no government bodies have made any promises to act on the panel's findings. But from a political point of view, the voice of the people will be hard to ignore, and she hopes that the process will at least get decision makers thinking about how to incorporate citizens' opinions into difficult areas of science and technology policy.

Carole Renouf: You see, the very fact that people, stakeholders, say, 'Well we must educate the community properly', to me indicates that they are not approaching it from the right point of view because that is a top-down, let's-open-up-their-brains-and-pour-it-in type of approach. Whereas you really need I think in terms of dispelling ignorance, anxiety, fear, you start from the bottom up, and that's what the Consensus Conference tries to do.

Rae Fry: If it's a success, the Consensus Conference could be used for citizen participation in a whole range of issues. In countries like Denmark, it's an established part of political life. Whether or not it takes off in Australia, like genetically modified foods, remains to be seen. We'll be keeping you up to date throughout the process, so listen in.

Norman Swan: Rae Fry. And if you'd like to be in the audience for the proceedings as the panel hears its evidence in Canberra from 10th to 12th March, you can be. Just call The Australian Museum, on 02/9320 6114. And they've got a website which is www.austmus.gov.au (go to the 'What's New' section).
Guests:

Dr. John Coveney
Senior Lecturer in Primary Health Care
Dept. of Public Health
Flinders University,
Adelaide
e-mail: [e-mail]

Carole Renouf
Senior Policy Officer
Australian Consumers' Association
57 Carrington Road
Marrickville NSW 2204
e-mail: [e-mail]
Fax: 02 - 9577-3377

More information:
The Lab - Waiter, there's a gene in my food...
http://www.abc.net.au/science


First Australian Consensus Conference
http://www.austmus.gov.au