This glib dismissal will become harder as new engineered crops start to offer benefits to nutrition and health:
Scientists have genetically engineered fruit and vegetables capable of providing most of a day’s nutrients in a single meal.
Heading towards the market are potatoes with 33% more protein content, modified tomatoes that could be capable of protecting against cancer and peanuts without the chemicals that cause deadly nut allergies.
Cassava has been packed with new genes that help the plant accumulate extra iron and zinc from the soil, and synthesise vitamins E and A.
No doubt some of the claims made for the health benefits of these particular crops are exaggerated, but the point is that there's nothing in biology to stop crops from being engineered to boost nutrient content or reduce unwanted molecules (like the proteins that cause allergic reactions), and there are considerable commercial incentives to do so. That makes it inevitable that solid, reliable products like these will be hitting the market soon.Consumers are fickle creatures: if genetic engineering visibly allows them to get better food (preferably at a lower price) the scare-mongering of anti-GM activists will start to sound less convincing. So long as agri-biotech firms are careful enough about safety to avoid any serious health panics, it won't be long before the hardcore anti-GM movement - which has enjoyed dominance in the UK for far too long - has the rug pulled out from underneath it.
(Image from here.)
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5 comments:
I totally agree with you that it's becoming extremely hard to argue against genetically modified foods. A time like now when the world is struggling to find a solution to the current food crisis, this will become even harder. I don't resent a debate on GMOs that is grounded in science. Such is a very healthy debate and should be encouraged. If you want to gauge the popularity of genetically modified foods, just look at the number of farmers who are growing GM crops since their commercialization a decade ago. The number has been increasing year in year out.
Sorry guys,
Monsanto criticism is well documented.
This is an excellent documentary:
http://wideeyecinema.com/?p=105
And the "anti GM movement" in the UK - you mean the NPO "GM watch", who TRASHED Monsanto in the UK press?
The anti-GM movement goes well beyond criticism of Monsanto (which I agree is not unjustified): there is a sense that GM in and of itself is bad, scary and dangerous. This simply isn't true - there are specific cases of scary GM, but there are many other cases where the potential benefits unambiguously outweigh the potential risks. It will be difficult for the anti-GM crowd to sustain its over-the-top rhetoric once these benefits become clear to consumers.
Is it really so much to ask that GM foods simply be LABELED as such? I'm all for Progress! and Science!, but consumers have a right to know what they're eating. If GM food really isn't that big of a deal, then the labeling of it will be overlooked by the consumer much like other foods' calorie counts. The fact that companies are so very resistant to the idea of making this information available to the consumer at all is a very telling one.
I completely agree with you, asparagirl - in fact, I'd argue that GM foods should be labelled with details about which gene was inserted and under which promoter (or at least there should be a URL where consumers can access these details easily). The lack of transparency of the GM industry is the source of a great deal of suspicion from the public, and this needs to be addressed for the industry to move forward.
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