Yes We Need Gmo's

Yes we need GMO's

Food is a very important part of our lives. It provides sustenance for our bodies and it helps our immune system grow to fight disease, but there is a growing problem that needs the attention of the entire world. As the world's population continues to grow exponentially, the need to increase the world's food production has become a problem for every country on the planet. Science has come up with a solution to help with this problem. They genetically alter the seeds that we use to grow our food to produce a seed that is more resistant to certain diseases and eventually will increase crop yields exponentially. While this lofty goal is admirable, the companies that produce these seeds have not been able to produce the high yields as of yet, but that doesn't say they won't. While there does seem to be major public concerns that the GMO's aren't safe to eat, there isn't any strong data out there that states that the food is unsafe for human consumption. Without that knowledge I believe we need to continue working towards solving the world's food problems by using the technology we have to find more ways to grow our food. It could come to pass that we won't be able feed the world without it.

GMO's first arrived in 1982 when some scientist's genetically created a modified plant using an antibiotic-resistant tobacco plant to make it. From the online encyclopedia Wikipedia follows the history of GMO's by writing:

"The first field trials of genetically engineered plants occurred in France and the USA in 1986, when tobacco plants were engineered to be resistant to herbicides. In 1987, Plant Genetic Systems (Ghent, Belgium), founded by Marc Van Montagu and Jeff Schell, was the first company to develop genetically engineered (tobacco) plants with insect tolerance by expressing genes encoding for insecticidal proteins from Bacillus Thuringiensis (Bt). The People's Republic of China was the first country to allow commercialized transgenic plants, introducing a virus-resistant tobacco in 1992. The first genetically modified crop approved for sale in the U.S., in 1994, was the FlavrSavr tomato, which had a longer shelf life. In 1994, the European Union approved tobacco engineered to be resistant to the herbicide bromoxynil, making it the first commercially genetically engineered crop marketed in Europe. In 1995, Bt Potato was approved safe by the Environmental Protection Agency, making it the first pesticide producing crop to be approved in the USA. The following transgenic crops also received marketing approval in the US in 1995: canola with modified oil composition (Calgene), Bacillus Thuringiensis (Bt) corn/maize (Ciba-Geigy), cotton resistant to the herbicide bromoxynil (Calgene), Bt cotton (Monsanto), soybeans resistant to the herbicide glyphosate (Monsanto), virus-resistant squash (Asgrow), and additional delayed ripening tomatoes (DNAP, Zeneca/Peto, and Monsanto). As of mid-1996, a total of 35 approvals had been granted to commercially grow 8 transgenic crops and one flower crop of carnations, with 8 different traits in 6 countries plus the EU. In 2000, with the production of golden rice, scientists genetically modified food to increase its nutrient value for the first time." ("History of genetic engineering")

The companies that were on the forefront of this technology were trying to come up with ways to increase output by creating seeds that were resistant to certain herbicides so the farmers could use them without the fear of those herbicides destroying their crops. The seeds are more resistant to insects and drought as well. There are several cases that GMO's may have proved to be a huge boom to the food industry.

In 1994 the FlavrSavr tomato was approved for sale in the U.S. by the F.D.A. The FlavrSavr tomato was the first GMO crop to be sold in the supermarkets of the United States. It started out as a temporary sales success, but became a commercial flop. The FlavrSavr tomato shows how difficult it can be to bring GMO products to the public. It tried to withstand objections about its safety as a food source with little or no scientific proof that influenced its outcome, and how important public opinion is in determining its commercial success. Prior to the development of this product, tomatoes were picked green and treated with ethylene which gives a ripe tomato color but doesn't give out the full flavor of a vine-ripened tomato. In the journal California Agriculture authors G. Bruening and J. M. Lyons points out "In May 1994, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, responding to a Calgene petition, approved the introduction of kanamycin-resistance gene constructions needed to create the PG-antisense tomato lines. Kanamycin-resistant organisms in human and animal guts and in soil were determined to be so common and abundant that they would overcome any potential influence of the corresponding genes in engineered crop plants. Allergic reactions to the kanamycin-resistance protein were also determined to be highly unlikely. Data submitted by Calgene, including animal feeding studies, showed the PG-antisense tomato to be indistinguishable in almost every way from traditional tomatoes." (Bruening, and Lyons 6) Instead of getting a tomato that was hard as a rock and had absolutely no flavor, the resulting tomatoes were just as good as a tomato picked directly from the vine. I remember eating those tomatoes in California and they definitely tasted better than most of the others in the supermarket. They weren't as good as a fresh picked tomato right out of the garden, but it was better than what was available at the time. I was a Tugboat Captain at the time and the fact that they lasted longer and tasted better than the usual tomato in the produce section at that time of year was very important to me and my crew. Sadly, the product didn't last long even though the demand for it was very high and remained high, due to its high production and distribution costs.

During the same period that FlavrSavr was being developed in the U.S. another company was introducing a tomato paste under license in the United Kingdom. Authors E. Bruening and J.M. Lyons add:

"In 1996, Zeneca, under license, introduced in the United Kingdom paste from PG-antisense tomatoes grown and processed in California, in collaboration with the grocery chains Sainsbury's and Safeway. More than 1.8 million cans, clearly labeled as derived from genetically engineered tomatoes, were sold from 1996 through early 1999. Reduced processing costs allowed a 20% lower price. The paste from genetically engineered tomatoes initially out-sold conventional tomato paste at many locations, but sales of this product