GM Food: Arisga Group

Last week’s roundtable discussion has been rather inspiring and intriguing. The topics threw forward was a controversial issue commonly debated. Arisga Group was in favour of the GM Food mainly due to the benefits it can bring to Mankind for future purposes. They talked about feeding the poor with GM Food mainly the Africans and comments from the floor supported this view strongly as the general public sees compassion in feeding the poor with GM Food rather than letting them starve even if GM Food dispute is of a huge concern.


Even as world closes their eyes on the welfare of the poor, the production of GM Food could actually bring about benefits due to its advantages. The world population has topped 6 billion people and is predicted to double in the next 50 years. Ensuring an adequate food supply for this booming population is going to be a major challenge in the years to come. GM foods promise to meet this need in a number of ways namely; pest resistance, herbicide tolerance, disease resistance, cold tolerance, drought tolerance and salinity tolerance


As Arisga group mentioned, the main pursuit of GM Food was on the solving of malnutrition which is a common problem in third world countries where impoverished peoples rely on a single crop such as rice for the main staple of their diet. If rice could be genetically engineered to contain an additional amount of vitamins and minerals, nutrient deficiencies could be alleviated. In recent times, researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Institute for Plant Sciences have created a strain of "golden" rice containing an unusually high content of beta-carotene (vitamin A).


Opponents of genetically modified food often refer to it as "Frankenfood. This further depicts GM Food as something bad and risky to be eaten hence inducing fear in public to accept GM Food as a staple. Not all GM Food products are available in supermarkets yet. However, the prevalence of GM foods in grocery stores and supermarkets is increasing and here is where GM Food labelling has been called into question.


This contentious issue relates to the problem that consumer interest groups are demanding mandatory labelling. People have the right to know what they are eating. However Arisga group also pointed out that if the food production industry is required to label GM foods, factories will need to construct two separate processing streams and monitor the production lines accordingly. Farmers must be able to keep GM crops and non-GM crops from mixing during planting, harvesting and shipping. It is hereby true that industry will pass along these additional costs to consumers in the form of higher prices for GM Food products if these were to happen.


However public uproar on GM Food is mainly due to the dire consequences side effects that these food bring in which research in these particular area has not been found proven it is said that most concerns about GM foods fall into three categories: environmental hazards, human health risks, and economic concerns. These categories are; unintended harm to other organisms, reduced effectiveness of pesticides and human health risks include allergenicity.


Economic concerns are also brought into question as bringing GM food products to market is a lengthy and costly process. Indeed agri-biotech companies wish to ensure a profitable return on their investment yet it is hoped that in a humanitarian gesture as a whole, more companies and non-profits organizations will offer their products at reduced cost to impoverished nations such as Africa.


Many people feel that genetic engineering is the next big thing and that we cannot afford to ignore a technology that has such enormous potential benefits. However, we must proceed with caution to avoid causing unintended harm to human health and the environment as a result of our enthusiasm and support for this powerful new technology.




References:
1.Bioengineered Foods transcripts from the public meetings are available to download (http://www.fda.gov/oc/biotech/default.htm)
2.Genetic engineering towards carotene biosynthesis in endosperm (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Institute for Plant Sciences
3.New rices may help address vitamin A- and iron deficiency, major causes of death in the developing world (Rockefeller Foundation)
4.RICE BIOTECHNOLOGY: Rockefeller to End Network After 15 Years of Success (Science, Vol 286, No 5444, pp 1468-1469, Nov 1999)
5.The U.S. statistics http://www.ers.usda.gov/briefing/biotechnology/.
6.http://www.isaaa.org/publications/briefs/Brief_21.htm
7.Biotechnology Industry Organization at http://www.bio.org/food&ag/1999Acreage.