GMOs: Harmful or Beneficial?
- Tho Nguyen
- Jun 2, 2020
- 3 min read
Updated: Jul 1, 2020
By: Tho Nguyen, Chief Blog Editor
The next time you sit down to eat at the dinner table, you should keep in mind that most of the savory dishes and gourmet plates are genetically engineered.
Those roast potatoes with rosemary and garlic? The grilled corn, browned and charred to perfection? Even that glass of frothy milk? There is a good chance that all of these foods are GMOs.
Well, what is a GMO? GMO is an acronym meaning Genetically Modified Organism. GMOs are created in labs, where a scientist inserts a gene into the nucleus of a cell. Genes are comprised of DNA, a clear, stringy substance that determines how a living organism will look and function. When a scientist is genetically modifying an organism, they create a small, controlled change in its DNA. Picture credit:
GMOs were created to be a more efficient and environmentally-friendly alternative to traditional plants. Farmers face three main obstacles when planting: insects, weeds, and weather. Conventional methods of killing pests, like spraying pesticides, are expensive and kill beneficial organisms. Pesticides are also known to contaminate both soil and groundwater, reducing soil fertility. Scientists engineered GMOs to be pest-resistant - a clever solution to these problems. A new variety of GMO corn produces a bacteria which makes it toxic to certain pests but completely harmless to insects like ladybugs and butterflies. Thus, there is less need for pesticides.
Weeds also pose a problem, as they must be killed with herbicide. GMO plants have been developed to tolerate herbicide, making weed control less expensive and reducing the risk of soil erosion.
GMOs are not just useful for agricultural purposes - they have also played a role in revolutionizing medicine. Insulin is one of the most important proteins the body creates, and when the body is unable to make enough of it, there can be drastic consequences. When insulin was first made in 1922, it was extracted from pig and cow pancreases. As the supply of available pancreases declined, fear of insulin shortages grew. However, recombinant DNA
technology opened up new opportunities to replicate insulin. In 1982, the FDA approved the selling of insulin in pharmacies. As of 2015, six million Americans use insulin made in labs.
To some, GMOs may seem like a foreign concept. Many may shun them, out of fear of the unknown. Some may even claim that GMOs are toxic, promote monocultures (when one type of crop is grown in a field at a time), and are drenched in pesticides. However, these arguments have been made without sufficient evidence to support them. The National Academy of Sciences, along with numerous other health associations worldwide, agrees that GMOs are as safe as plants created from conventional breeding methods. In the two decades they have been on shelves, there has been no recorded evidence of any health issues linked to consumption of GMOs.
In addition, monocultures are not unique to GMO crops alone. Monocultures are commonplace in both traditional crops and GMO crops. They can lead to crop-resistant pests, so all farmers are advised to rotate their crops yearly.
Photo credit: https://beependent.wordpress.com/disease/
Finally, GMOs are not drenched in pesticides - some types of GMOs were specifically created to reduce the need for them. Without pesticides, crop yield would be much lower, which could cause fluctuations in grocery store prices. Pesticides help farmers provide a continuous and reliable crop supply. The EPA enforces strict limits on the use of pesticides, and because they are costly, there is no reason to use more than necessary.
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