GM Foods

Genetically Modified Foods

The average person eats nearly 1500 pounds of corn a year either by itself or indirectly. It’s what the cows, chickens, and pigs eat, it’s what is in anything containing high fructose corn syrup, and it’s in ethanol, or grain alcohol, that we drink every weekend. There simply isn’t a way to get around it, almost everything we eat is made up somehow of corn. At 1500 pounds a year, with 304,059,724 people living in The United States, we as a nation consume roughly 456,089,586,000 pounds of corn a year. With the help of genetically modified food, we are able to provide for this large amount of people to eat what they do everyday. Genetically modified foods are a necessity to our lives in that they offer us benefits that are astronomical.

There are two popular methods of genetic modification, cisgenesis, where genes are transferred from one organism to another similar one, and transgenesis, where a gene can be taken from anything and put into whatever we want. The idea is to find a gene that can produce a desired result, and insert it into the organism to make it better and more efficient. The extraction of a gene is also possible in that they can remove it so that it no longer hinders the organism’s productivity (Kang).

People have various opinions on whether GM foods are safe for humans, morally just, or even unfair to other food producing industries. There are claims that GM foods are against God in that we shouldn’t alter God’s creation. Others say that we are becoming guinea pigs in an experiment and that we really don’t know what we are eating because there hasn’t been proper testing on GM foods (Hall). There are also people that fear of a monopoly in the food industry that could drastically change the prices in the foods that are modified. The largest company that produces GM foods is called Monsanto, which can account for 91 percent and 97 percent of the world’s share in GM soybean and maize respectively. The fear is that a company like this will dominate the market and have complete control over food prices (O’Brien).

Although there is much skepticism on food that has been altered genetically, the benefits most certainly outweigh any negative claims. Many plants that get genetically modified, like corn and soybean, are altered so that they are more resistive to pests and prosper in conditions that they wouldn’t normally. This is such a great advantage in that not only is crop growth no longer weather dependent, but it doesn’t take environmentally harmful chemicals to keep them growing unharmed. The genes of animals, like salmon, can even be modified for rapid growth. These two examples alone are reasons that would tremendously help with the poverty issues around the world.

Bibliography

Hall, Angela. “Suzuki warns against hastily accepting GMO’s.” The Leader-Post (Canada), 26 April 2005.

Kang, JX. “Why the Omega-3 Should go to the Market.” Nature Biotechnology Print.

O’Brien, Robyn. “The Monopoly of the Food Supply: Price Inflammation and One Corporation’s Allergy to Labels.” 07 May 2008. Web. 30 Jan 2010. http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_12154.cfm.

Weintraub, Arlene. “Salmon That Grow Up Fast.” BusinessWeek (2006). Web. 31 Jan 2010. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_03/b3967111.html.