Sustainable Shopping: GMO or Nah?
GMOs. Some people love em, some people hate em, and a lot of people don't even know what they are. In this post, I'll guide you through what they are, why they can be good and why they can be bad.
What's a GMO?
A GMO is a genetically modified organism (aka a food whose genes have been messed with). Food scientists often mess with plants' genes to make the plants bigger, make them more resistant to diseases, give them more vitamins or alter a million other things.
GMOs are created through "gene splicing," which is supes similar to the Gregor Mendel pea stuff (breeding plants that have the genes you want to get more of those genes) but it cuts out the middleman. Rather than breeding, waiting for the plants to grow, and then breeding again, scientists can just use fancy science to make the plants have the genes they want.
The GMO process is also different from basic plant breeding because traditionally, plants can only be bred with plants of the same species. With GMOs, scientists can modify plants to have the genes of completely unrelated things. For example, fish genes can be spliced into bell peppers through modern genetic engineering but not through traditional breeding.
The future is now and it's cray cray, right? Some people are super excited by this, but others are not so much.
Bottom line: GMOs are like selective breeding, but superfast.
Some Major Pros
GMOs can help curb malnutrition
Scientists can add genes to crops to give them more nutrients, make them drought resistant, or give them higher yields, which can all potentially help areas that are struggling with food insecurity. From Golden Rice to submergible crops, GMOs can help solve food insecurity, which is a major major win.
GMOs aren't the only answer to world hunger, mostly because of the political and economic issues currently surround GMOs. BUT they have helped in some countries and will almost certainly be able to help more in the future.
GMOs can conserve resources
Like I just mentioned, some GM crops can be drought resistant, while others can be resistant to certain disease or can produce higher yields. All these things can help conserve resources.
Clean water and land are necessary for people to survive and these resources running out in some places. GMOs that are drought resistant or produce higher yields can allow farmers to conserve water for drinking or to conserve land for forests or other uses.
GM crops that have built-in pest resistance can help reduce the amount of pesticides needed on crops, which can help keep our land and water clean. For example, Monsanto's Bt corn has been modified to have some genes of a pest-resistant bacteria. Although Monsanto has been HEAVILY criticized for other practices, this Bt corn has enabled farmers to cut back on pesticide use. This is super good considering the sketchy environmental impacts of pesticides.
GMOs are generally considered safe
The vast majority of scientists agree that GMOs are safe. The process of genetic engineering, when it really is just Mendel’s pea stuff sped up, is uber unlikely to harm your health.
Geneticists have been genetically modifying foods for decades, with no documented negative health effects. For example, crossing a corn plant with big kernels and a corn plant with small kernels to get corn with big kernels is not dangerous, whether it's done via traditional breeding or gene splicing.
However, when more complicated gene modifications are made, some people aren't so sure about safety, which I explain more below.
Some Major Cons
Some GMOs might not be safe
Some people think that eating crops with built-in pest resistance or other more complex gene modifications could have long-term health effects that researchers haven't been able to pin down yet.
The logic behind that concern goes like this: because these crops harm insects and weeds, don’t they harm humans too? There is still a heck ton of debate about the answer to this.
Others argue that GMOs are dangerous for people with allergies. This is because taking genes from a nut and adding them to a pepper could give that pepper the same allergic qualities of the peanut, making it supes dangerous for people with peanut allergies. Currently, no GM foods on the market have been proven to cause new allergic reactions, so this fear is mostly hypothetical.
GMOs could contribute to superweeds and super pests
Superweeds are basically weeds that are resistant to all the herbicides we have in our arsenal. This is something we want to avoid like the plague because if we can’t kill or control weeds, they could take over agricultural lands and put our food supply in danger.
The same is true of super insects and other super pests, which can evolve to be immune to pesticides. Since a lot of bugs have a relatively fast reproduction cycle, they can quickly become resistant to new pesticides. This will force farmers to use stronger and stronger pesticides, which could harm the surrounding environment.
GMOs can cause economic chaos
Currently, a few huge companies (namely, Monsanto, Sungenta, Dow Agrosciences, Bayer, BASF, and DuPont) have a total monopoly over GMO creation, distribution and research.
A lot of seeds made by these companies are patented, which means that people need to pay hefty prices to get these seeds. Poor farmers who need these crops most often can’t afford them.
In other cases, farmers can get sued if GM crops end up on their farms through cross pollination, despite the farmer never having bought GM seeds. In other words, if seeds from GM crops end up in a neighboring farm, which didn’t pay to buy GM seeds, Monsanto could potentially sue that farm for using their patented product without paying.