Perspectives on genetically modified crops and food detection:
Genetically modified (GM) crops are a major product of the global food industry. From 1996 to 2014, 357 GM crops were approved and the global value of the GM crop market reached 35% of the global commercial seed market in 2014. However, the rapid growth of the GM crop-based industry has also created controversies in many regions, including the European Union, Egypt, and Taiwan. The effective detection and regulation of GM crops/foods are necessary to reduce the impact of these controversies. As the primary gap in GM crop regulation exists in the application of detection technology to field regulation, efforts should be made to develop an integrated, standardized, and high-throughput GM crop detection system. The development of an integrated GM crop detection system, to be used in combination with a standardized international database, a decision support system, high-throughput DNA analysis, and automated sample processing.
Genetically modified foods: safety, risks, and public concerns:
Libre Baskerville is a classic font with a modern twist. It’s easy to read on screens of every shape and size, and perfect for Genetic modification is a special set of a gene technology that alters the genetic machinery of such living organisms as animals, plants or microorganisms. Combining genes from different organisms is known as recombinant DNA technology and the resulting organism is said to be ‘Genetically modified (GM)’, ‘Genetically engineered’ or ‘Transgenic’. The principal transgenic crops grown commercially in the field are herbicide and insecticide resistant soybeans, corn, cotton, and canola. Other crops grown commercially and/or field-tested are sweet potato resistant to a virus that could destroy most of the African harvest, rice with increased iron and vitamins that may alleviate chronic malnutrition in Asian countries and a variety of plants that are able to survive weather extremes.
GMOs Are Better for the Environment than You’d Think:
Crops are engineered in a number of ways. Often, they are made resistant to an herbicide, so a farmer can spray one on their fields and keep their plots free from weeds without killing the crop itself. Or they can be innately poisonous to its predators, like milkweed is, which reduces the number of pesticides needed to keep a crop safe.
But do these things harm the environment? According to the data: not really. GM crops appear to be just as sustainable and productive as non-GM crops, if not more so.
“Sustainability,” in addition to being a buzzword, is a measure of a local environment’s ability to remain diverse and productive. Studies show that choosing to farm either non-GM or GM crops don’t make much difference when it comes to sustainability. And in both aspects, biodiversity, and productivity, GM agriculture has been performing better than non-GM crops for the last 20 years.
Biodiversity:
Any kind of farming inevitably results in biodiversity loss: the immense diversity of forests and woods is cleared for the monotony and monoculture of the crops we need for our food, feed, fibers, and fuel. And this deforestation and agriculture account for 20-30 percent of all greenhouse gases emissions.
But cultivating GM crops has proven better for biodiversity than the conventional alternative because one way to maintain biodiversity in a local ecosystem is to reduce pesticide use. A GM crop can do this by carrying its own defenses, making pesticides less necessary. For instance, “Bt” corn is engineered to be toxic to predators that would otherwise prey on it. They don’t need as much outside assistance in the form of pesticides sprayed over an entire field.
Another upside to GM crops is that the toxin they carry is specific to their predators, making them less harmful than a spray with collateral effects. That means that primary predators like the European corn borer (nicknamed “the billion-dollar bug” because of its heavy effects on the corn market) can be precisely targeted while leaving other harmless, passer-by insects unaffected. Such genetic engineering is remarkably efficient – according to a 2014 meta-analysis, GM-based farming has required 37 percent fewer pesticides than conventional agriculture.
The biodiversity of a field can also be monitored through the levels of insects living on it. A recent meta-study based on 839 publications released over 20 years reaches the conclusion that, worldwide, GM corn does not affect the majority of insect families. Basically, no ladybugs or butterflies were harmed - at least, not more than they would’ve been through conventional agriculture. The only insects that were affected by the Bt-corn were the European corn borer (the intended target), the Western corn rootworm, and other corn pests.
And, finally, an important aspect of biodiversity is the soil in a given area: one teaspoon of soil contains more living organisms than people in the world and soil microorganisms have a crucial impact on the fertility and the sustainability of agricultural systems. For example, the majority of plant roots establish symbiotic relationships with fungi or bacteria living in the soil that both siphons them nutrients and provides protection against root diseases. Soil microbial communities are not affected by GM crops, which interact with soil microorganisms (worms, insect, fungi, and bacteria) in the same way as non-GM crops.
Productivity
The productivity of GM plants is typically 20 percent higher than that of non-GM ones, making it an appealing way to approach the pressures of the rising global food demand due to population growth. GM crops are also an appealing approach in the face of climate change and pollution
Genetically-Modified Crops Are the Future: Here’s why
This is in response to Viva Kermani’s “honest” write-up about Genetically Modified (GM) crops that betrays half-baked knowledge about agriculture, modern genetics, and almost total ignorance of the art and science of GM crops developed through the gene splicing technology. The article seems to be borrowed from the manifesto of the global anti-GM propaganda machinery that has been in vogue for as long as the GM crops have been around.
Kermani’s contention is that modern-day GM crops are unnatural organisms, and therefore, raises questions about their safety for human and animal consumption. A simple answer to that is that they are safe as determined by all leading regulatory agencies in charge of assessing the safety of food in the United States of America (US), Canada, the European Union, Australia and New Zealand, Japan, South Africa, India, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Egypt, Israel, Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, and the list goes on. Their safety has also been vouched for by leading scientific organizations like the US National Science Academy, the United Kingdom’s Royal Society, Indian Science Academy, Brazilian Science Academy, the Pontifical Academy, and German Science Academy, among others.
Kermani must realize that in the 10,000-year history of the human effort to grow food, people have artificially modified all that was growing wildly to adapt them to their needs. Therefore, there is nothing natural about agriculture. If there is one human activity that is environmentally most devastating, that is agriculture. But, can we live without agriculture? Now, the efforts are underway to undertake climate-smart agriculture, but that requires and demands greater and not lesser intervention from science and technology.
That the agricultural industry has saved more lives than all pharma industries put together can be asserted by a simple fact that the green revolution saved millions from starvation and death in the middle of the last century. GM crops are being cultivated in almost 30 countries for the past 20 years without a single proven instance of any harm to any human or animal being. How much more proof does one need of its safety?
Moreover, GM crops are the most highly regulated agricultural products on this planet. Consumers need not fear GM crops.
Stop Bashing G.M.O. Foods, More Than 100 Nobel Laureates Say:
More than 100 Nobel laureates have a message for Greenpeace: Quit the G.M.O.-bashing.
Genetically modified organisms and foods are a safe way to meet the demands of a ballooning global population, the 109 laureates wrote in a letter posted online and officially unveiled at a news conference in Washington, D.C.
Opponents, they say, are standing in the way of getting nutritious food to those who need it.
“Greenpeace has spearheaded opposition to Golden Rice, which has the potential to reduce or eliminate much of the death and disease caused by a vitamin A deficiency (VAD), which has the greatest impact on the poorest people in Africa and Southeast Asia,” the laureates wrote in the letter.
Proponents of genetically modified foods such as Golden Rice, which contains genes from corn and a bacterium, argue that they are efficient vehicles for needed nutrients. Opponents fear that foods whose genes are manipulated in ways that do not naturally occur might contaminate existing crops. And, they say, the debate distracts from the only guaranteed solution to malnutrition: promoting diverse, healthy diets.
“Corporations are overhyping ‘Golden’ rice to pave the way for global approval of other more profitable genetically engineered crops,” Wilhelmina Pelegrina, a campaigner with Greenpeace Southeast Asia, said in a statement. “This costly experiment has failed to produce results for the last 20 years and diverted attention from methods that already work.”
Richard J. Roberts, one of two winners of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, spearheaded the letter-writing effort to set the record straight.
Monsanto, on Genetically Modified Crops:
Whether they’re growing crops on thousands of acres in Illinois or on a small plot in India, farmers are smart business people who won’t waste time or money on tools that don’t deliver results. When nearly 20 million farmers around the world choose to invest in genetically modified seeds for two decades, it is because farmers are seeing better harvests.
Extensive, third-party studies document the significant benefits farmers have seen using G.M. crops that range from more efficient weed and insect control, to reduced use of insecticides, to reduced erosion and improved soil health, to increased crop yields.
In the United States alone, in the 20 years since the introduction of G.M. crops in 1996, soybean yields have increased by a remarkable 28 percent and corn yields by nearly 32 percent. This is the real story of how farmers are meeting the increasing global demand for food using G.M. seeds.
G.M.O. crops are not a silver bullet, but they are a very important and productive tool for modern and sustainable agriculture. With a global population expected to grow to nearly 10 billion by 2050, farmers need every available tool to produce more food sustainably. G.M.O.s are a vital part of the solution, and the voice of the farmer should be represented.
The Environmentalist Case In Favour Of GMO Food:
Consumers are deeply suspicious of GMO foods--products made from genetically modified agricultural crops. They are told that growing such crops may have adverse health effects. They are warned that the transfer of genes across species amounts to an "unnatural" global experiment in human beings. They are led to believe that GMO cultivation techniques have disastrous environmental effects, due to heavy use of pesticides and insecticides. And they worry about crop biodiversity and about the unintended effects on other species that live in GMO fields.
The societal effects of GMO crops, and especially corn, have attracted enormous public and scientific attention, not least because such crops dominate the food we eat.
GMOs: Trust the Science, Not the Food Fad:
Robert Wager has been a faculty member in the Biology Department at Vancouver Island University for 21 years. His research focuses on GE crop technology with an emphasis on public education.
Consumers go through continual food fads: High-carb, low-carb, Mediterranean diet, Atkins diet, gluten-free – the list is long. The newest is, “non-GMO” labelling.
Despite many studies showing the safety and merits of food made from genetically modified (GM) crops, or the endorsement from over 270 scientific societies and national agencies, a series of negative stories have produced a public unease about these technologies.
Other than it somehow involves DNA, surveys show most people have little idea what is a genetically modified organism (GMO). Not surprisingly, polls also show concern about any food containing DNA (virtually all food).