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What’s All the Buzz About…
H
SUMMER 2012
By Sandi Thompson
ealth and nutrition are all the rage these days, with “food” in particular getting quite a lot of attention. Have you ever heard the acronym “GMO” and wondered – what is GMO, and what’s all the fuss about? Well, first it might be helpful to explain what those letters represent. They stand for “Genetically Modified Organism”… which, in reference to the “food” we eat, sounds a little scary! And it definitely raises the question, why would anyone want to get into the DNA of a plant and actually change it? What Does GMO Mean? There is a lot of controversy surrounding this topic – with both questions and answers still a long ways from being easily understood. Some suggest answers point to scientists hoping to boost available nutrition in crops, while others say seed production companies are trying to make plants hardier, more resistant to insects, fungi, predators, etc. and at the same time, yield bigger crops. In the case of “genetically modified salmon”, the rationale was to keep the fish growing longer to produce a bigger fish. Those all sound good on paper, right? While this is a very technical, controversial, and involved process, we’ll try and explain it in its simplest terms. When you hear that a plant has been genetically modified, it means it has been engineered in a laboratory. Meaning, the actual genetic makeup of the plant has been altered (and tested) for specific desired qualities. Splicing or splitting one or more genes into a plant using genetic engineering techniques accomplishes this. Once the genetically modified plants produce seeds, the seeds are gathered, and the companies producing them apply to field-test those seeds. If field tests are successful, production companies like Monsanto, for example, seek
further regulatory approval for the crop to be mass-produced and sold. If approval is obtained, the next step is to sell the genetically modified seeds to farmers. Like any other product, the seeds are marketed as being superior in some fashion – usually higher yields, requiring less chemicals, or touting some other desirable (usually monetary) benefit. Finally, farmers grow and harvest the crops from the GM seeds. The crop is considered to be “genetically engineered” because the plants contain the inserted gene. Around the World Farmers can only sell their crops in countries where the sale of GMOs are permitted. In the United States, where GMO crops and foods CAN be sold and consumed, there are currently only a handful of counties with bans on GMOs. Some countries embrace GMO technology, including the United States, China, the Philippines, South Africa and Canada. Countries banning GMO products include Japan, New Zealand, several European Union countries - Ireland, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Greece, Bulgaria, Luxembourg and France, to name a
few. An experiment in India lead to large scale bankruptcies and even suicides when cotton farmers failed to realized that the GMO “magic seeds” required double the amount of water. They also did not know seeds could not be saved for the following year, and experienced crop destruction from bollworms – despite assurances from Monsanto that crops would be resistant. These seeds cost Indian farmers up to 1,000 times regular cotton seeds. In the United States most of the corn and soy we consume is genetically modified – upwards of 90% by some estimates. Looking at labels, it’s hard to know if a food contains genetically modified ingredients. However, reading ingredients will quickly show you that almost everything that comes in “a package” contains corn or soy as an ingredient - therefore, if 90% of these two crops have been genetically engineered, it’s a good bet they are in almost all packaged foods we eat. a recent invention Genetic modification has a short and interesting history. It was less than 50 years ago that scientists first discovered DNA could be transferred between different organisms. What was the first genetically modified plant? Tobacco, in 1983. Next (in 1994) the Flavr Savr™ tomato got FDA approval. This tomato was modified to delay ripening after picking. The early 1990s brought about a GMO product to replace rennet in cheese making.
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