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Feeding a Hungry World: The debates of Genetically Engineered Crops
Introduction
With the earth’s growing population, the need for supplementary supply of food is an issue throughout the world, but more specifically in many developing countries. Food shortages pose the greatest threat to human life, development and health. Poverty and related food shortages leave more than 840 million people in the world malnourished; 153 million of these are children. With the increase in science and development came a new way to the production of food: Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). However, parallel to this new scientific revolution came about heated debates and ethical factors.
History of GM Foods and Biotechnology
The start of GMOs and genetic modification resulted at the beginning of the Green Revolution, which was the outcome of an intensive plant breeding program relying on applied science. Genetically modified organisms are organisms which have their genetic material (DNA) altered in a way that does not occur naturally. The process, known as “genetic engineering” or “gene technology”, allows selected individual genes to be transferred from one organism into another.
Current Consumption of GMOs
About 99 percent of GM crop production is located in a concentrated group of three agricultural exporting countries: United States, Argentina and Canada. Over the past two decades, we have grown accustomed to GMO products, oftentimes not realizing that we consume these engineered by-products each day. Of all the processed foods that are genetically engineered, 68 percent include soybeans, 75 percent include cotton crops, 26 percent include corn, and 54 percent include canola (read the full article here). Common genetically engineered ingredients found within processed foods include: corn flour, corn oil, corn syrup, soybean oil, soy flour, canola oil, sugar beet, sweeteners (fructose, dextrose, glucose), and cottonseed oil.
Farmers and Engineered Crops
Since the introduction of genetically engineered crops in the early 1990s, many farmers have hailed it as a solution to the problem of agriculture that are currently faced, giving way to increased crop production and reducing crop losses from diseases, pests, weed and drought. This ultimately increases the crop yield and farmer income.
However, the introduction of Monsanto’s “terminator gene” in the late 1990s created a whole new problem that farmers must face. This new Terminator gene in seeds was designed explicitly to “terminate” itself after only one year of yield. By the introduction of a “terminator gene” within seeds places an economic burden on the farmer, forcing the farmer to continue purchasing the seeds at each planting season.
Does this create a market for the farmer, especially those living in developing countries, allowing them to produce enough yields for meet the demand? Or do the patents on the seeds ultimately cause farmers to rely on purchasing the seeds, never permitting farmers to own their own food?
Environment and Engineered Crops
GM crops can be designed so as to tolerate environmental challenges, such as drought or saline soil, benefiting small-scale farm families. They are also shown to have less of a need to use pesticides and herbicides for their production, use less water, and produce more crops while using less land, ultimately reducing the amount of world-wide land degradation caused by the agricultural sector.
Do these benefits far outweigh the risks, or are we headed in for unknown, unpredictable dangers and possibly greater environmental degradation?
Your Seeds Mixed with Mine
The issue of copyright and product protection is important in any scientific discovery, especially with GMO seeds that have the potential to cross-contaminate or pollinate with surrounding crops. How can one reduce the chance of GMOs being planted within neighbouring crops either from the blowing of the wind or from the pollination process of bees?
This property battle can be seen in the Monsanto Canada Inc. versus Percy Schmeiser legal dispute earlier this decade. In 2004, a legal dispute between Monsanto Inc., a company that develops varieties of crops that are resistant to glyphosate, a main ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup brand of herbicide, and Percy Schmeiser, a canola breeder and owner in Bruno, Saskatchewan, has developed a wave of debates regarding GMOs not only in Canada but throughout the world. This issue, which had started in 1998 after Schmeiser discovered that 90% of a section of his canola field were resistant to the herbicide Roundup, led to the dispute over legal and environmental issues. In his defence, Schmeiser claimed that, aside from not acquiring or purchasing Monsanto’s product, the Monsanto Roundup Ready Canola crops had found way on his crops due to possible gene flow from pollinating bees, birds or other insects, or through the passing tractor trailers carrying Monsanto harvest. While the Supreme Court ruled in favour of Monsanto, Schmeiser had won a partial victory: no payment to Monsanto for damages or legal bills, and increased awareness of GMOs throughout the world.
Does genetic engineering open doors to new cases like this in the future? No law, no treaty and no patent can prevent the possible cross-contamination or gene flow that can arise from nature, thus trespassing onto unwanted private property.
Allergy Concerns
Due to the reduced GM food labelling procedures within the U.S. and Canada, adverse allergic reactions and effects can result from this increased genetic modification and alteration of food. Incorporating the genes from one species into the genes of another species will result in unknown reactions that can ultimately affect a person. About one third of Canadian and U.S. elementary school children have some sort of food allergy, which includes common allergies to peanut, shellfish, fish, milk, egg, wheat, and soy. Incorporating different genes into those genes of food can increase the rate and severity of these food allergies, especially among children.
However, not only have crops and vegetation been altered to fit our needs: animals and fish have too been “improved”. Growth hormones have been produced from genetically engineered bacteria that are being injected into animals to grow low-fat pork and beef, enhance the plumpness of poultry, and increase milk production in cattle.
Does this open the door to possible new allergies in the future, increasing adverse allergic reactions and effects that can result from this increased genetic modification and alteration of food? Or will science find a solution to these problems?
Conclusion
While the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in Article 3, states: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person" it questions the extent that this right is enforced when it is regarding corporate profit and conventional politics, thus further confirming the lack of human rights enforcement within a capitalist society. The consumers’ right to know and right to security is replaced by corporate profit rights and free trade agreements.
Or will genetically engineered foods provide sufficient supply of food throughout the world, allowing developing nations to feed their own and depend less upon food aid from the west? Science and technology have increased our life expectancy, allowing us to continue to move forward and live longer. Many new technologies do carry a risk, and often times that risk cannot be seen in the short run.
Should we think for the future generations and accept genetically engineered foods into our daily meals, or should we learn from history and disregard GMOs, such as the Mad Cow disease incident that occurred in 1996 which offers a chilling warning of the unpredictable dangers that are associated with the tampering of nature and biology
We need GM foods to survive
We need GM foods to survive because our population growth far exceeds the amount of food we can produce naturally. The fact that we are very wasteful (in developed countries) with our food also contributes to the need of GM foods. Sad.
You want me to put my signature in here? I don't think so!
Mad Cow Disease is caused by
Mad Cow Disease is caused by a prion, a malformed and invasive protein that invades the cow's brain and turns it into a sponge full of holes, and is fatal in the end (and this is basically the gist of it, to avoid medical mumbo-jumbo).
In human beings, the disease is called Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease. It is also fatal.
Currently there are potential suggestions from various camps and approaches about how to deal with it. I've even read research proposals that marijuana can help combat it - but I have serious doubts about that.
So instead of curing it, people need to focus on preventing it. I think the only thing that can be done is to prevent it from happening in the first place.
It's been heavily implicated that Mad Cow (and then the human Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease) happened because cows were forced to cannibalize one another in Britain and elsewhere.
Since animals raised for consumption are largely factory-farmed, with thousands of them one on top of another, their wellbeing is expendable, and like in a factory, every penny-pinching, money-saving option is taken and implemented. When sick, old or weak cows died, they were ground up and fed back to the healthy ones because it would have been a waste of profit and meat in the eyes of the factory-farm leadership. Cows are herbivores, and by forcing them to not only become carnivores but to cannibalize one another, things went horribly wrong. These invasive animal proteins called prions formed. When the sick cows were slaughtered and sold on the market, humans ate them and some got the human version of Mad Cow, Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease.
Currently there are laws that limit or prohibit people from forcing cows to cannibalize, but they are not upheld worldwide. Remember the 180 million pound beef recall earlier this year from the California slaughterhouse? Similar violations - with sick cows being "recycled" and with sick cows being ground up for meat anyway.
Now what is sick is that he recall news came in too late and most of the meat has been consumed, primarily bought by the American school system. I can guarantee you that there are thousands of people implicated in this mess just sitting around praying right now that nothing happens.
And in America, there is still a common practice to take animal waste and re-feed it to other animals. Chicken feces from chicken farms is expensive to dispose of, in particular because there's tons and tons of it. To walk around disposal costs and rules, chicken feces, waste, feathers and other crud is swept up and used to bulk up the food that is fed to cows and pigs. Meanwhile, cow and pig feces is used interchangeably to feed one another as well. This is disgusting and a serious issue.
While the FDA is still tiptoeing around changing these rules, there is massive concern. Right now, there are people fighting avidly to have these loopholes in the law amended, like the Consumer Union. Their stance is,
"Consumers Union criticizes the FDA, however, for failing to ban the feeding of all mammalian material to food animals. Hansen says, “FDA needs to go further to protect public health. It is still perfectly legal under these new rules to feed cows to pigs and chickens, and chicken and pig material to cows. Swine have been shown to be capable on contracting mad cow disease in a laboratory setting. We are worried that swine could be silent carriers of the disease. FDA should extend its rules to ban all risky refeeding practices.”"
http://www.consumersunion.org/pub/core_food_safety/000775.html
Not everyone that eats the meat of a sick cow, pig, whatever will get sick - in fact, it's been shown that 10-15% of infections are passed down genetically. There are infections that can be spread by blood transfusions. Currently people that lived for 5 years or more in European countries that had a serious problem with Mad Cow disease in the 80's and 90's are not allowed to give blood. And yet potentially risky food is still on the market today.
So the only cure right now is prevention, period.
RE: Mad Cow Disease
I thank you for commenting on my post and raising this very sad and disturbing issue, while all completely true. And yet while we do sit here and think about how sad or disguisting it is, there is nothing that is being done about it. I wonder how long before something so horrible or irreversibly wrong happens until politicians and others will stop this.
Which, I would like to relate, is very similar to GMOs. We see how the tampering of food does indeed go horribly wrong, and is very much a danger to human health. We do not know what effect GMOs will have on us. Food is so corrupt now that I believe is all about the profit of the companies than their concerns over public health.