Saturday, May 9, 2015

Pamela Ronald: The case for engineering our food | Talk Video | TED.com

I am getting very tired of reading about the seemingly overall hatred of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) in our food supply.  The GMO opponents seem to be reacting with irrational fear and emotion with very little or no scientific rationale for their actions.  I was impressed by this TED video which presents some arguments FOR the use of GMO:

Pamela Ronald: The case for engineering our food | Talk Video | TED.com

I do want our food supply to be safe.  I also believe in good labeling, so we know what we are eating.  However I think it is unreasonable to consider all foods which have some sort of genetic modification to be dangerous or "frankenfoods."

I can certainly believe that it could be possible that some genetic modification to a food source could make the food dangerous to eat.  However, I have not yet heard of any that have been produced that are truly dangerous to all humans.  Yes, there are anecdotal reports that some people have had allergic reactions or problems with some GMO food.  However we find many more people have problems with existing foods that are generally accepted as safe.  How many people are now finding they have problems with Gluten?  With peanut allergy?  With Lactose?  Since everyone is different, it is just as likely that some will have reactions to slightly different foods.

I can understand the fear of change.  There is good reason to say that if our food is OK now, why take chances on changing it?  It is relatively easy to determine if animals or people get sick immediately after eating a food.  But what about the effects of eating a particular food over periods of years or decades?  Could the modified food have an effect on our babies?  Could it contribute to dementia in old age?   These are very difficult to test for.  The best we can do is make short-term safety tests based upon reasonable scientific processes.

Even foods which have been considered safe for centuries, are now being questioned.  The latest findings that eating beef, pork, lamb and fish eggs causes an increase in the probability of mutations in our body's cells to cause cancer is a good example.  These findings seem relatively unequivocal. (See my previous Blog post)  However the anti-GMO crowd appears to be more afraid of the unknown than what seems to be known and proven.

I also understand the potential problems that GMO food crops could introduce to the environment.  Pollen or nectar from a GMO plant designed to resist pests or diseases could kill or injure other beneficial pests.  The genes from the GMO food crop could become transferred to other similar native species and cause harm to the environment in many different ways.  What that means to me is that the world needs a global database of all organisms and we need to keep track of all modifications made to them, whether through "natural breeding" or genetic manipulation.  I believe with the power of the internet and the huge databases that are currently being used and built, we are getting close to that.  Then, we do need to have some sort of process to record and approve of all new food products as they are developed, and before they are unleashed and released to the world's food supply.  The problem now is that so many of these modifications are done "in secret" to protect patents, or unpatentable technologies that the public doesn't have full knowledge of what is happening to their food supply.  

No comments:

Post a Comment