Current Use Of Gm Foods example essay topic

Next time you sit down to your home cooked dinner, you may want to take a moment to ponder your plate. Your lamp chops, tomatoes, and corn-on the cob may look the same as usual, but it's quite possible that the lamb contains human genes, the tomato has been genetically altered for a longer shelf life and the corn has modified to resist infestations from the corn borer. This may come as a surprise to you now, but it certainly isn't news to the government agencies established to protect our food supply. In recent years there has been much debate over the increasing use of technology in food production. Much of this has come from the sensitive subject of genetically modified food production. Also known as food biotechnology or gene technology, genetic food engineering in its broadest definition is any technique which uses biological methods to alter food crops, animals or micro-organisms.

The aim of this technology being to improve the attributes, safety, quantity, quality and ease of production of our food. Simply put, the claimed benefits of GM food are sensational. We are told that GM food is 100% safe and has been put through thorough testing by the worlds leading scientific bodies. We are also repeatedly told of the numerous benefits that GM products have the ability to display. Leaner pork, vine-ripened tomatoes, potatoes that absorb less fat during cooking and disease resistant sugar cane. Yet despite these safety claims by such groups as the Australian Food and Grocery Council and CSIRO, GM food has not been welcomed by the Australian public.

Australians are very hesitant to allow foods into their supermarkets which have been genetically modified in any way. In fact, the CSIRO has announced that it would not commercialism any GM grain crops for at least five years due to public backlash. The main concern of Australians seems to be that GM food will adversely affect their health. And there are many scientists around the world that agree with this, to the extent that scientific journals have been published, showing research that "brains, livers, hearts and immune system of rats were damaged when exposed to GM foods [widely available GM potatoes]. Random genetic variation occurs naturally in all living things and is how species have come to evolve over many years. According to the Australian Food and Grocery Fact Sheet, Gene technology is simply a more precise method of the crossbreeding practises which farmers have used for thousands of years to improve yield and quality in plants and animals.

Somehow GM advocates keep coming back to this argument in the hope of playing down the significance of GM. Yet it is widely agreed that there is a key difference between traditional methods, such as crossbreeding plants to make a desired coloured flower, and current laboratory gene technology such as inserting fish genes into tomatoes and terminator genes into corn or cotton. Our ecosystem is a complex web linking animals, plants and humans. As soon as one part is altered, sooner or later the others will inadvertently be affected. From increased pesticide pollution to genetic contamination, GE foods spell potential danger for the environment. British researchers have found that Monarch butterflies die when exposed to pollen from crops of GM corn.

The corn had been modified in such a way that a soil bacterium, which is found naturally in small doses and is lethal to insect larvae, was genetically implanted into every cell of the corn plant. The result of this being an insect resistant crop plant. Yet it was only when tests were carried out AFTER 20 million acres of this GE corn had been planted that scientists found the problem. The 20 million acres of crop just happened to be right in the middle of the Monarch butterfly migratory route between Mexico and Canada. Viruses have long been known to acquire, recombine and swap genetic material with ease, and recent research has shown the ability to pick up genes from transgenic crops. Also, generally more work has been done to date on GM plants than on GM animals.

Already in the Australia virus and herbicide resistant plants, which have been genetically programmed to resist certain chemicals and viruses have been planted in vast areas. The issue has been raised a number of times that the extensive planting of these GM crops could very well lead to a new class of "super-weeds" that are resistant to pesticides, thus severely jeopardizing our immense agriculture industry. The genetic engineering technology is very expensive to enter into and is highly monopolised. Over 40% of the world's seed market is owned by 10 agricultural / chemical multinationals. Already the commercialisation effects of these large conglomerates can be seen. Corporations such as Monsanto and DuPont have been investing into biotechnology in such a way that patents have been taken out on native plants which have been used for generations by indigenous people.

The only way these people can then legally get access to these plants is to buy them back from the corporations. Struggling as it is now, poor farmers would become totally dependent on paying the multinationals each year for new crop seeds. One of the most common arguments used by biotech companies is that GM food is necessary to help solve world hunger. However it is widely recognised that world starvation and hunger has more to do with current distribution of wealth and political problems such as wars, than it does with insufficient food production or poor quality food.

If biotech companies were serious about trying to feed the world, they wouldn't be spending millions of dollars researching hugely unpopular campaigns such as the Roundup Ready soybeans and the 'Terminator's eed. The 'Terminator's seeds, which do not reproduce, have been developed to force farmers to purchase new seeds from the company every year, instead of letting the farmer keep their seeds from the previous harvest. Such technology is not about feeding the poor, saving the environment or even benefiting the consumer. It's about corporate profits. The proposed benefits of GM food are great. If scientists can devise ways to help fight diseases and make our daily lives easier all via what we eat, then all the best to them.

Unfortunately the current state of GM food presents more criticism then praise. Rushing to be the first on the market with a new line of GM products is simply foolish. Biotech companies need to further test their methods, particularly in regard to long term effects. The potential benefits of GM food are definitely there, they are just outweighed by the numerous safety concerns that can, and with time will, be fixed.

The current use of GM foods exposes hundreds of millions of people to unknown hazards because of incomplete knowledge about their health effects and improper testing. Therefore they should be withdrawn from the market until more stringent testing and developing policies can be met..