The Perils of Genetic Engineering

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Posted by: nantha, on 9/18/2007, in category "Tari Hi-Tech Horticulture Farm (Organic certified)"
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Location: Thanjavur, Tamilnadu, India

Abstract: Today, more than 100 plant species have been modified by gene splicing for improved sources of food, fiber, or ornamentation. More than 50 new crop varieties have cleared all federal regulatory requirements and stand approved for commercial retail.

If the decision to exploit genetic engineering for agricultural improvement was left to scientists, the cultivation of GM crops would probably be far more widespread and diverse than it is today. But science does not occur in a vacuum. Political forces reflecting the pendulum of public opinion have a strong bearing on the direction and timetable of scientific progress. The early comment that, "the uses of biotechnology are only limited by the human imagination" was used within the context of its seemingly boundless benefit to humanity. In actuality, human imagination has limited biotechnology. That food crops created by genetic engineering are unnatural to the extreme of threatening human health and the delicate balance of the environment is a perception held by a segment of our society. Whether or not these fears are rationale is irrelevant, because their mere existence has hampered the growth of genetic engineering in agriculture. As with many new technologies, the question of acceptance by society will be answered through a distillation of the benefits to be derived for the risks that must be taken.

Both transgenic and conventional plant breeding strive to increase yield, improve quality, and reduce production cost. However, the two breeding strategies differ enormously in the manner in which the end is achieved. For many, it is the process of genetic engineering and not the final product that is most disconcerting. Removing the element of compatible sexual crosses from breeding and reducing it to the splicing of genes in the laboratory seems highly unnatural, constituting extreme human intervention. True, only transgenic breeding allows genes from exotic sources to be brought together in unique combinations. This has been criticized for the possibility of creating new and unpredictable food-borne allergies and toxicities. But the conclusions drawn by the American Medical Association, Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources and National Research Council, and Institute of Food Technologists, among other organizations, agree that GM food poses no greater threat to human health than conventional food.

Consider the tomato breeder seeking to transfer disease resistance from a wild species to the cultivated species. The traditional approach would be to cross the wild species with the domesticated species producing an offspring having inherited half of its genes from one parent and half from the other. In an effort to filter out the undesirable traits contributed by the wild species, the breeder would repeatedly cross the offspring with the cultivated species. However, this process is imperfect, so the new commercial tomato variety would possess the resistance gene and other contaminating genes from the wild species. Now, in the transgenic approach, the resistance gene alone would be snipped from the DNA of the wild species and transferred to the cultivated variety. Here, the risk of altering the food constituents is greater with the conventionally bred variety than the GM variety. For this reason, a likely backlash of the genetic engineering controversy will be stricter regulation of food crops bred by conventional means. As a matter of fact, GM food is federally regulated and adequate safeguards for quality assurance are in place. There is no logical reason to believe that a GM food product would be any more threatening to human health or any more difficult to evaluate for safety than say, for example, a new drug.

Another safety concern with GM food crops revolves around the unintended consequences associated with introduced genes escaping GM crop plants to other species. Science cannot predict with absolute certainty the non-targeted effects of GM crops on the environment, but it can determine which native species could acquire an escaped gene by cross-pollination. More importantly, science is now beginning to appreciate that genetic exchange among unrelated organisms occurs in nature. Therefore, it can be argued that moving genes between unrelated species by transgenic breeding only accelerates this natural evolutionary process.

In order for GM food to reach mainstream society, a greater emphasis must be placed on trait improvements that will benefit the consumer. Most of the genetic engineering accomplishments with crop plants have involved input traits, such as herbicide tolerance and disease and insect resistance. Farmers have embraced the new biotechnology with open arms, because GM crops have reduced their workload or increased profit. But what incentives exist for the consumer to choose GM over non-GM produce in the marketplace? The Agbiotech giants now realize this and are redirecting research towards output traits offering greater consumer appeal, as for example, improved shelf life, appearance, color, flavor, nutrition, hypoallergenicity, etc.