Genetically Modified Foods

1. Do developed countries have any need to introduce more GM foods into their markets?
2. Should the methods be perfected purely for countries with a food crisis - due to shortages or land which is too harsh to grow 'normal' crops?
3. Are you happy to buy & consume food which proudly declares on the label that it is genetically modified?

 

1 Do developed countries have any need to introduce more GM foods into their markets? No, they don't need more GM foods in their market.
2 Should the methods be perfected purely for countries with a food crisis - due to shortages or land which is too harsh to grow 'normal' crops? For these kinds of countries sure, but for countries that can grow normal and not GM modified crops should just grow normal ones.
3 Are you happy to buy & consume food which proudly declares on the label that it is genetically modified? Wouldn't even smell it.

 

1. They don't need to. ( Unless they want to keep killing bees )
2. Purely? No. Perfected? Yes.
3. I would prefer not to but am mainly indifferent.

 

1. There isn't a need for genetically modified foods, but it helps us all in the end (money-wise and nutrition-wise). GM food does not necessarily mean changing the taste of a strawberry to an apple. Most of the time, it's done as a sort of 'vaccine' to the fruits/vegetables (BT corn is a good example of this). This increases food supply, which decreases you-know-what. It's also done to add essential vitamins to certain crops which lack them (such as white rice).

2. No, it's everyone's right to have GM food. It shouldn't be exclusive to countries that would benefit the most from it, or 'need' it.

3. Yes. In fact, I may even opt to buy a GM crop over a normal one. There is this belief in society that GM crops are 'unhealthy', but it may actually be that they are more healthy than normal crops. An example is golden rice compared to white rice. Golden rice is a GM food that contains the precursor to vitamin A (unlike white rice). It was made to be grown in areas where there is a shortage of vitamin A in the population's diet (which apparently kills 670,000 children under 5 each year). Here's a link, if you want to read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice

Note that to this day, there is not one documented case of a GM crop harboring negative health effects on a human being.

Just because it's not natural, it doesn't mean it's harmful. Don't get me started on the sweetener, aspartame ('synthetic' sugar, but without the calories). People to this day still believe it can cause cancer.

 

I don't care and even likes about genetically modified food, I just felt it should be tested for the environment and the humans thats all. Some people are too paranoid to do anything benifical to the development of man kind.

 

Nice answers guys, I like to see what others think of this.

 

GM food in the end is a good thing. It is only posed in a negatively light because of ignorance. GM food generally, as Chicken mentions, is modified so that it is stronger against crop diseases, produces a greater yield, and creates healthier food. Humans have been genetically modifying plants and animals since the agricultural revolution that led to civilized society. You take two varieties of plants and cross-breed them to make a new variety that is genetic modification. Those two varieties probably wouldn't have done that if it weren't for human intervention. This fact has been important in our earlier agrarian societal roots. It created new plant varieties that survived better and was easily cultivated as well as bred new animals that would come to age quicker and would be easier to raise.

 

Modified foods have the potential to solve a lot of hunger and nutrition problems. There are many challenges especially in the area of safety testing and food labeling etc. So its necessary to adopt preventions to avoid any harmful effect on human health as well as environment which is a fact of our interest in this powerful technology.

 

II will assume that you are referring GMO's to crops that have been geneticaly altered through means of technologies. Examples such as adding beta-kerotine to rice to make nutrition-rich "golden rice" or splicing the genes of tomatoes of potatoes to created "Pomatos" exist.

Although I have no choice but to eat GM foods because they are what's available most of the time, I'm not too comfortable eating them.
GM foods have been around since maybe the late 1980's or 1970's? They are a relativly new concept. There's no reason not to doubt that these GM foods might have bad effects that we are not aware of, but may show in the near future.
In the 1920's, nicotine was thought to be a healthy drug and smoking was encouraged. It was not until more than 20 years later that we knew about the bad effects of nicotines and doctors stopped prescribing it. Like this, the results on whether GM Foods can harm our healths or not is inconclusive. But like nocotine, there's a chance that it is.

And one thing that we should know is that contrary to popular belief/knowledge, these underdeveloped countries in poverty actually have the best land for raising crops. Most developing countries are located near the equator and studies show that these are the countries with soils with the most nutrition and thus are perfect for growing food. Bad land is not the reason why these countries suffer food shortages. Militias, corrupt governments and the lack of proper skills are.

GM's then were not immediately produced. It's true that the first crops were wild and very different from what we have now, and that they gradually changed in genetics as we continued to cultivate them. But that was a very gradual change. The crops had their time to naturally adapt to their environment.

This is very different from the GM foods we have nowadays. Their genes are modified directly. Splicing technologies that are very new are used to make immediate changes.

Surely, you are aware of the nucleotides A,T, C and G, the building bocks of DNA. GMO's exist in which scientists change the order of some of these sequences just to see what happens. If they see favorable results, a new GMO is born ready to be released to the public.
I don't know about what you guys think, but that doesn't sound too safe.

 

1. Majority of modifications are mostly nutritional, and in the good way. If the country can sufficiently distribute the food and manufacture it properly- I don't see why not.

2. Shortages of land would further imply that importing food would be required- causing the already costly GM foods to be more expensive. They would be better off simply growing wheat- a stable source of food that requires little attention and/or care.

3. I buy organic food mostly because I have the resources to be able to. It's more of a feeling when I see "ORGANIC Milk" rather than "Milk" on the carton. It makes it feel as if I'm eating/drinking something healthy for me. To further elaborate a different fact, it's never labeled as a genetically modified food; it is legally required, however, to label said packaging if it's organic.

Overall question: Approve of GM Foods? For vegetation (Fruits & Vegetables)...Sure. For meats? Unlikely. I don't like the idea that my food is modified through adding chemical reactions within what I'm going to eat. When I think about it, it just feels a bit...Bleh.

 

1) I don't really see a particular NEED per se, but I do believe that if a market for GM foods open, then people should be able to take advantage of that.

2) I don't see why it would be..any place in the world with a functioning market and people willing to purchase the food should have the opportunity to do so.

3) It depends on the actual product itself, but for the most part I don't have any objections to eating foods that are labeled as such.

 

How could changing the way something disease resistance, or it's yield strength be harmful. Creating strong crops that have more yields is what makes the farming business easier. Food costs have already skyrocketed, if you didn't use disease resistant crops and you had a disease sweep through one year then they're going to jump even more.

 

Have you heard of the wheat experiment that almost got away?
There was a GM wheat that would produce consumable alcohol as it decomposed. The "wheat" part of the plant that is used for the breads we eat would be harvested, and the remaining stalks would be gathered for alcohol. This would have made a lot of money.

But before it could be released, the wheat was fed to lab rats. At first, everything was fine but after a couple of weeks, some of the rats started to drop dead.

It turned out that the wheat they ate were producing alcohol inside their bodies.


Are you aware of how GM foods are produced?
Let me give you an example of a GM apple that is currently being tested
Apples have trouble growing in cold weathers, so scientists are trying to produce GM apples that are resilient to low temperatures. They know that the scales of fish help them fight cold waters, so the developers are trying combine apple and fish genes. Once again, how? Through random injections of course and testing of course.

Fish genes in apples? Sounds pretty fishy to me.

 

Now you sir are just being way to paranoid and over dramatic. No one is saying that some GM food aren't dangerous and is completely safe, but you can't deny that GM food is still helping. 80% of today's papaya's are GM, and I know alot of people eat Papaya's. 95% of US soybean is GM and 85% of the world is as well, and they are put into oil and many other things, we aren't dying to soybeans are we?

Just because you can kill someone with a knife doesn't mean all knifes should be banned. I say we acutally try to do something instead of being sooo paranoid, if we are gonna feed over 7 billion people, we can't be stubborn about testing. (Also I think you meant fish tomatoes, and I don't think it have to do with scales)

Still you are right in the part that current developers aren't very professinal, most of their tests are through random injection and a bunch of safely tests, they defiantly need to improve in their labs

 

No, I'm not being paranoid. If I were paranoid, I would be growing my own crops in my home.

And there's more than just papaya and soybeans. You forgot corn.
You've seen it, the giant green corn man. That is GM.

We extract syrup from these corn and these corn syrups are used everywhere . One example is food sweeteners. A lot of sweets we eat and drink are sweetened with corn syrup, since it's so cheap. It even goes into our soda.

We aren't dying of GM soybeans, yet. We don't know the effects it has on our body.

Nicotine was widely used as a disinfectant in the past and was praised for its medical properties in the past for hundreds of years. It has been less than 100 years since it has been fully realized to cause more harm than good.

 

1. I'd say no, unless a great crisis ensues.
2. Not purely for those countries but it definitely makes sense in that application.
3. Not really happy about it, as I wouldn't seek it over other foods, but if it was all that was available or was considerably cheaper than sure.