A diagram showing the process of biolistics:
There are many arguments against and for GM foods. So I am going display both arguments and come to a conclusion on whether GM foods are harmful or not. Here I am going to research the advantages of GM foods.
GM foods pledge to meet the needs of the rapidly increasing population in many ways:
- GM foods provide a good level of pest resistance. Losses of crops from insects can lead to an outcome of terrible financial loss and even starvation in developing countries. Also farmers use tons of chemical pesticides every year; this can be devastating to the surrounding environment. This amount of pesticide used annually could lead to poisoning the water supply. Growing GM foods can deduct the use of pesticides and lower the cost of bringing crops to market.
- Some foods have been genetically modified to be herbicide tolerant as it is more cost effective for farmers than to spray different herbicides in large quantities which will only kill weeds. These new foods also protect the environment from dangers of agricultural waste and run-off.
- Biologists are working to make some plants resistant to diseases. This can save huge crop and financial losses for farmers.
- Unanticipated frost can kill sensitive seedlings. So some plants have been modified and now have an antifreeze gene found in a cold water fish, these plants are now cold tolerant.
- Foods can also be created to be drought tolerant and so that they can withstand high concentrations of salt. This will help farmers are forced to grow crops in formerly unreceptive areas due to the fact that houses are being built on land more and more to suit the needs of the rapidly increasing world population.
- GM foods can also help those in third world country who rely on one single crop such as rice. This crop does not have enough nutrients for people to be living a healthy life. This can be helped by the crop being genetically modified to contain vitamins that people in third world countries lack.
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Some medicines and vaccines need special storage conditions which are not available in countries suffering from poverty. So scientists are working on edible vaccines in tomatoes and potatoes. These will be easier and cheaper to transport, it is also much easier to administer.7
All the advantages listed above show how helpful GM foods actually are. This shows that genetically modified foods have a great potential to help mankind.
In this section I am going to list the disadvantages of GM foods and see the amount of harm they can cause. This section will then help me come to a satisfactory conclusion.
There are fears that GM crops could start to grow more vigorously than other crops and wild plants. It has also been said that GM plants could breed with other plants to produce a new ‘weed’ species which could be herbicide resistant. It has also been suggested that eating GM foods could cause health problems such as the development of harmful anti-biotic resistant microorganisms.8
British scientific researchers found that antibiotic-resistant marker genes are inserted with GM material in foods, which could cause people to become resistant to antibiotic medicines.
The study was conducted at Newcastle University on seven human volunteers who, in the past, had their lower intestine removed and now use colostomy bags. After eating a burger containing GM soy, researchers compared their stools with 12 people with normal stomachs. They found "to their surprise" that "a relatively large proportion of genetically modified DNA survived the passage through the small bowel." None was found in people who had complete stomachs. To see if GM DNA might be transferred via bacteria to the intestine, they also took bacteria from stools in the colostomy bags and cultivated them. In three of the seven samples they found bacteria had taken up the herbicide-resistant gene from the GM food at a very low level.
Michael Antonio, a senior lecturer in molecular genetics at King`s College Medical School, London, said that the work was significant because the researchers demonstrated that you can get GM plant DNA in the gut bacteria, which was previously considered to be not possible. Antonio said the research suggests that antibiotic marker genes could spread around the stomach and compromise antibiotic resistance. If this were to happen, a person could be immune to beneficial antibiotic medicines.9
There are also other ways to preserve foods and give them a better taste amongst other things. This would be to use additives which have passed food safety tests, E numbers. These are allowed for use in the European Union. There is a key where different E numbers stand for certain additives:
- E100 series: colours
- E200 series: preservatives
- E300 series: antioxidants
- E400+ series: emulsifiers, stabilizers and other additives.
An example of preservatives which could be used instead of genetically modified foods are:
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Sulfur dioxide used to stop dried fruit going mouldy.10
Overall there are quite a few disadvantages; with the help of everything I have researched I will come to an appropriate conclusion.
The sources I have used are reliable as the confirm each other and have received their information from known reliable sources such as ‘The Guardian’. So overall I am happy with my research and I think I have come up with a fair and acceptable argument.
Personally at the moment I think GM foods are helpful but have the potential to become harmful because in the research I found that GM plants could grow rapidly and breed with other plants to produce weeds tolerant to herbicide, I also found that in an experiment that was conducted some people became resistant to helpful antibiotics. I think the advantages that GM foods could provide would be extremely helpful to those living in third world countries, due to the fact that GM foods can be modified to contain vitamins they normally wouldn’t so that people in poor countries would be able to receive vital nutrition also they could receive life saving medicines and vaccinations if they were put into GM foods as normally these third world countries would not have facilities to accommodate traditional forms of vaccination.
However, the disadvantages show that GM foods can cause possible harm to those who eat the products. So I think that GM foods have many traits to make them helpful, however, they are harmful to people and these disadvantages need to be eliminated before they can become completely helpful to people.