The invention of GMF creates many advantages in the world today. Firstly, biotech companies claim that GMF does not only have a better taste, but also have the potential to be richer in terms of its nutrients. The fact that any vitamins or minerals can be added to any food may be extremely useful to improve the human health. For instance, many Asian developing countries, especially the Philippines are encountering the problem of Vitamin A deficiency currently, but with the knowledge we have on genetic modification, a Swedish professor has created the Golden Rice, which contains lots of Vitamin A. The fact that rice is the most important component of Asian diet that people eat almost everyday, rice with rich Vitamin A may effectively help to solve this Vitamin A deficiency. This will indirectly prevent millions of people from going through many other health problems such as night blindness due to the lack of Vitamin A. If genetic modification can add more nutrients to the food, then it can also take nutrients from the food, and to some extent, taking away nutrients can also be extremely beneficial to human health. For example, future potatoes are likely to contain less fat, which will also absorb less oil when being fried, which means that people who like eating French fries will have a lower chance to become obese, which would also prevent hypertension and heart diseases.
In addition to this, crops can be genetically modified to increase yields, as well as reducing the maturation time, which means that the same crop can be harvested more frequently, which would allow farmers to make more profit. Furthermore, crops can be genetically modified to improve their resistance to diseases, pests or herbicide tolerance, which reduces the required input of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, which is extremely economically beneficial for the farmers themselves. For this reason, farmers from the developing nations would be able to afford to buy seeds from the biotech companies annually. In addition to this, GMF would be healthier for the public consumers, because we would no longer be eating chemicals. GM crops also contribute many benefits to the environment. Firstly, the increase of yields would reduce the amount of space required. Moreover, less chemicals being used will also decrease the amount of pollution in the soils or rivers from the chemicals.
Although many people claim that GMF has the potential to solve world hunger, there is in fact no need with the current situation, because according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, the actual food production is one and half times the amount required to feed everyone on earth. Yet, about 14% of the total population is still suffering from hunger. The problem is that the food is being distributed unequally. Countries such as the US would dump their extra food into the sea rather than distributing them to some poor countries in Africa. This is caused due to their ego of controlling the market price of the food. However, in fifty years time, it is predicted that the global population will have reached 9 billion, countries are likely to become more industrialized with little emphasis on the agriculture. As a consequence to this, we are very likely to go through the crisis of food shortage. However, with genetic modification, we can possibly produce even more food, within the least amount of space as possible. In addition to this, humans may eventually use the genetic engineering techniques to develop a type of food, which contains all the necessary nutrients to keep us healthy, while the food has a great variety of range of tastes, in order to satisfy a larger number of consumers.
Scientists have also made a scientific breakthrough by transferring animal genes to plants. A well known example is that scientists have successfully created a frost-resistant tomato plant by transferring the antifreeze gene from a salmon. The result of this indicates that crops, which originally cannot be grown in cold or hot countries can now be grown anywhere, without any restriction due to the difference in the climate. This way, countries no longer need to import fruits or grains from other countries, which means that the food would be a lot cheaper since there is no tax involved, thus it is more economically beneficial for the consumers in the long terms. However, a moral question would be raised here. Since the tomato contains salmon genes, should the tomato considered to be a plant or an animal? Is a vegetarian then allowed to eat these tomatoes? Following the same theory, if we are eating vegetables, which contain human genes, are we considered to be cannibals then? All of these would then depend on how each individual value on the morals and ethics on the GMF.
Just like many other controversial issues, GMF has also many disadvantages, thus it is often being referred as “Frankenfood”. Firstly, even though GMF cuts down the use of pesticides, and instead, the plants are resistant to pests themselves, what is possibly to happen is that new or more vigorous pests and pathogens would be created, due to evolution. Even if this doesn’t happen, the pest resistant genes could lead to the death of many pests, which would then lead to the loss of balance in the food chain, and eventually cause the extinction of some certain species. Other than that, reducing the chemical inputs could also lead to the imbalance the agricultural industry, and affect the distribution of wealth amongst the labourers. Besides this, since the crops are also herbicide resistant, farmers are likely to be using a lot more herbicide to kill the weeds, without having worries on the damage it could have on the crops, and the possible outcome of this is that the weeds would evolve into super-resistant weeds. As a consequence to all these problems, people would then still have to go back to use the traditional herbicides and other chemicals.
Secondly, is twenty one years of research into GMF really adequate? The answer is probably and almost certainly “not enough”, because there is still a lot we don’t know about how genetics function. Due to the lack of experience, long term consequences are still unpredictable. Eating too much GMF is very likely to have serious negative impacts on the human health, perhaps new allergens and diseases would be created, which is only going to cause even more problems for us to deal with in the future. Perhaps eating too much GMF would also alter the human genes. Although many people claim that these are only wild predictions, scientists yet have not proved them wrong either, so they are still possible consequences.
From the environmental perspective, GMF also offers many disadvantages. Results have shown that pollen, from the Bt genes in corns caused a great mortality rate in Monarch Butterflies. Monarch Butterflies consume milkweed plants, and have no harm on the corns, the pollen however is blown by the wind onto milkweed plants in the neighbouring fields, which indirectly kills the Monarch Butterflies. By the time an extremely large number of Monarch Butterflies die, natural predators of the Monarch Butterflies such as birds and frogs would no longer have enough food to survive and thus this break in the food chain could seriously affect the biodiversity. What’s very likely to happen is that once the biodiversity is imbalanced, birds and frogs, which originally relied on Monarch Butterflies for survival, would now have to seek for other resources of foods. In the long terms, these animals might have to migrate to other places to seek for food, or change their life styles according to the environmental constraints. Eventually, those species could evolve into completely different species.
On the contrary of the economical advantages for the farmers, there are economical disadvantages as well. Even though reducing the use of chemicals cuts down the costs, the fact that biotech companies insert self-destruct mechanism into the seeds forces farmers to buy new seeds from the companies every year. In other words, the biotech companies have complete control on the GMF market.
There are about three or four large scale biotech companies, such as Monsanto, Dupont, and Synergun, who are conducting research into GMF. Due to the limited number of biotech companies, they are all extremely rich, because they have total control on the GMF market. Currently, the competition between these companies is extremely high, where they all try to race to develop as many varieties of GMF as possible. Moreover, these companies would not share their experimented results on GMF, which is not what science is all about. Moreover, companies have set copyrights for their genetically modified crops, but we really have to ask an ethical question here, do they really have the rights to manipulate any living species and even have copyrights, just because they know how to genetically modify them? Besides, since people don’t know much about GMF, even if the companies find out that GMF contain side effects, the companies could unite and keep the secrets amongst themselves, and this way, the companies would still be able to make a lot of money.
Different countries have different concerns towards the issue of GMF. By the year 2000, there were already thirteen countries growing genetically engineered crops commercially where 68% of all GM crops were grown by the US, but only 7% grown by Canada, and 1% grown by China. On the contrary, UK, for instance, is one of the countries that are strongly against genetically modified food who does not grow GM crops. Although the first GM tomato paste was successfully sold in the UK in 1996, their scientists were however strongly concerned about this new technology, the UK started to experiment the GM crops to secure the safeties of their consumers.
Countries such as India have an interesting view on GMF. Even though GM crops aren’t grown in India currently, and that GM products are not available in the markets either, the government however is quite interested in GMF research. It seems that India wants to adopt GMF and obsolete the traditional agriculture, because with the poverty, and their exploding population, they do need to find a way to feed everyone while being economically beneficial in the long terms. In this case, since they have trouble feeding the population already, they are not likely to be concerned about the negative consequences.
GMF is certainly an important issue amongst many religions. One of the greatest concerns about GMF is that people have serious ethical objection and believe that genetic modification is playing God, which in their opinions should be forbidden. Looking at this from a neutral point of view, people should not have the rights to ban genetic modification researches, because otherwise it would seriously affect the future development in this area of science. Instead, what people should do is to refuse buying GM products if they are personally against it. However, a lot of this comes down to the labelling of GMF.
Labelling of GMF is also another important issue, which could cause many problems, in terms of health issues, ethical concerns and religious concerns due to the lack of labelling. Yet, there are no mandatory in some countries, such as in the US, thus many people are buying products containing GM ingredients without being aware of it, due to the lack of labelling. Ethically speaking, companies should not be using the technique of “lack of labelling” to make profits for themselves. In a free society, I really think that the consumers should have the rights to know what they are actually buying so that they would at least have the chance to avoid it if it’s totally against their morals. If consumers show their preferences for labelled foods rather than non-labelled foods, the industry will certainly take this into consideration. However, proper labelling would require the farmers to have a clear boarder between GM crops and non-GM crops, during the process of harvesting and transporting. The most likely outcome of this is that the industry would simply add the additional costs to the consumers, which is going to affect the general public.
In my opinion, I really think that genetic modification has a lot of potential in the future, in terms of solving many world problems such as vitamin deficiency. Despite of the many other advantages followed by GMF, I think that the disadvantages would outweigh its advantages. The fact that that the its potential on human health, environmental and ecological problems could be irreparable, I think that it is really important that we don’t risk it at this stage. Ethically speaking, who should be responsible for these negative consequences? The scientists? The farmers? Or the consumers? Generally, I think that genetic modification can be very beneficial to the future development of our world, but due to the fact that we still don’t know much about them, GM products should not be out on the markets just yet. Scientist will need to do some thorough experiments to be certain that GM products have no side effects in the long terms, before we use them again. In addition, ethical issues involved in GMF are also extremely important. If people are to sell GM products, all of them should be clearly labeled, so that people who are against it have the chance to avoid them. Lastly, looking at it from an ethical point of view, I think that people should not be using the technique of genetic engineering to create some biological weapons by altering genes, which could cause some unknown and irreparable destruction on the planet.
Bibliography:
-
A Brief Biotech Timeline. 10/03/05.
-
Amy Haw, Morvarid Madani, Marija Popovic, Josefina Rueter, Claire Yorrick. Ethics of GM Foods. 15/03/05.
-
Biotech Primer. 10/03/05.
-
. Genetically Modified Foods: Harmful or Helpful? 20/03/05.
-
Genetically Modified Food (GMF). 19/03/05. ?
-
Genetically Modified Foods and Organisms. 16/0305.
-
GM Beginnings. 16/03/05.
-
GM History. 16/03/05.
-
GM Science. 16/03/05.
-
How Biotechnology Works.10/03/05.
-
Making Money. 15/03/05.
-
The Benefits of Biotechnology. 21/03/05.
-
What are genetically modified (GM) foods? 19/03/05.
-
Why Biotechnology Matters. 15/03/05.
-
Why Genetically Engineered Food Should Be Labeled. 26/03/05.