MOTION #60: THIS HOUSE WOULD BAN
THE DEVELOPMENT OF GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISMS
In the last decade,
the development of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) has emerged as a highly
controversial topic. This is a difficult topic because a basic grasp on the scientific
issues is necessary to take the debate beyond the level of media headlines.
Here is a very brief summary of some of the key concepts: Deoxyribonucleic Acid
(DNA) DNA, the complex molecule that genes are composed of, is frequently
likened to a computer program - an information-bearing code. One of the things
that the DNA in genes codes for is the production of proteins - chemicals that
regulate many of the processes that occur inside cells.
Genetic Modification
will typically do one of two things: either add new sections of DNA to the
genes of a particular plant or animal to code for new proteins, or remove
stretches of DNA so that a particular protein is not produced. A section of DNA
coding for one particular protein is called a gene. There are an enormous
number of changes that can be made to organisms with genetic modification.
These range from the introduction of fish genes into plants to lead to better
frost resistance, to modifications leading to rice plants producing more
vitamin A. The 'Terminator' Gene is one of the most controversial additions
since it is a stretch of DNA that renders the seeds produced by the plant
infertile; this makes the plant unable to reproduce (and is used by seed
companies to force farmers to buy new supplies of the seed each year.
In the past varieties
of crops and their seeds have not been owned by anyone and have not been
patented. There is an increasing trend for biotechnology companies to patent GM
crop varieties and thus own the exclusive right to produce and sell their
seeds. This means that farmers in developing (and developed) countries will
become dependent on these multinational seed-producing firms who will be able
to charge high prices for patented varieties. The leader in GMO patenting (and
profiting out of it) is the company Monsanto. Farmers explain that many times,
they have to pay fees to Monsanto, as the company believes they have planted (2nd
generation) soybeans in violation of the company’s patent – not paying for
them.
Currently, the EU has
a strict regulation on genetically modified crops, as of July 2011, a type of
maize called MON 810 is the only GM food cultivated commercially in the EU, the
EU Commission proposed that the EU should decide on approvals or bans on
environmental or health grounds for any crop with genetic modifications.
Currently legislation
in the US allows the cultivation and also distribution of GMO as food. The
official position of the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) is that GMOs are no
different from other natural organisms and therefore do not need special
labeling or treatment. So in the US, status quo is that GMO used for food are
not labeled and are in no way a threat to health.
In 2001 the EU has decided to pass the so-called 'safeguard clause' (Art.
23 Dir. 2001/18/EC), which allows member states to prohibit the use and/or sale
of the GM products on its territory. In 2011 6 countries within the EU apply
this clause: Austria, France, Greece, Hungary, Germany and Luxembourg. Within
the whole EU, food and feed must carry a label which refers to the presence of
GMOs, commercialization of GMO corps have to approved by EU bodies. The
requirements for labeling, do not apply to food/feed which contains, consists
of, or is produced from GMOs in a proportion no higher than 0.9 % (for example:
imported food from the US).
Pros
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Cons
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Genetically modified food is too new and little
researched to be allowed for public use. There are two
problems associated with scientifically testing the impact of genetically
modifying food. The first is that 'Peer review' (the checking of scientific
test results by fellow scientists) is often made impossible by the
unwillingness of biotechnology companies to give up their results for review.
Furthermore, government agencies are often unwilling to
stop GM foodstuffs reaching the shelf because of the clout that the companies
have with their government. So in regards to research, there have not yet
been unbiased findings showing that GMO crops are safe.
It is true, that in the US, there have been no adverse
consequences from over 500 field releases in the United States. U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA) evaluated in 1993 data on genetically
modified organisms regarding safety claims. The Union of Concerned Scientists
(UCS) believes that the USDA evaluation was too small scale, to actually
asses the risks. Also many reports also failed to mention or even measure any
environmental risks connected with GM food commercialisation.
Also, there are a number of dangers associated with the
food itself, even without scientific evaluations. For example, the addition
of nut proteins to soybeans caused those with nut allergies to go into shock
upon eating the soybeans. Although this was detected in testing, sooner or
later a transferred gene will cause risk to human health because the
scientists did not conceive it could be a problem. This will become a greater
problem as more modifications are introduced. There are also possible dangers
associated with the scientific technique itself by which the DNA is modified,
an example is the spread of antibiotic resistance.
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This debate should be decided on the basis of hard
facts, not woolly assertions and environmental sentiment. Until scientific
tests show there to be some real risk of harm from farming and eating GM food
there is no case for a ban or a moratorium.
Not only is genetically modification well understood
but extensive testing is applied to every new GM foodstuff before it is
placed on the market.
The European Food Safety Authority explains that tests
of GMOs include a comparative assessment between the GMO and its non-GMO
counterpart and there is a case by case evaluation of every single GMO
entering the market – however, because products are so different there is no
“by the book” procedure for testing.
Researcher Nina Fedoroff from the Penn State University
explains: “Genetically modified foods are as safe to eat as foods made from
plants modified by more traditional methods of plant breeding. In fact, they
are very probably safer, simply because they undergo testing that has never
been required for food plants modified either by traditional breeding
techniques or by mutagenesis, both of which can alter a plant's chemical
composition.”
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Genetically modified food is a danger to eco-systems. GM foods also present a danger to the environment. The
use of these crops is causing fewer strains to be planted. In a traditional
ecosystem based on 100 varieties of rice, a disease wiping out one strain is
not too much of a problem. However, if just two strains are planted (as now
occurs) and one is wiped out the result is catastrophic. In addition,
removing certain varieties of crops causes organisms, which feed on these
crops, to be wiped out as well, such as the butterfly population decimated by
a recent Monsanto field trial. This supports the concerns that GM plants or
transgenes can escape into the environment and that the impacts of
broad-spectrum herbicides used with the herbicide tolerant GM crops on the
countryside ecosystems have consequences. One of the impacts was that the
Bacillus Thuringiensis toxin was produced by Bt crops (GMOs) on no-target
species (butterflies), which lead to them dying.
Another concern is also that pollen produced from GM
crops can be blown into neighboring fields where it fertilizes unmodified
crops. This process (cross-pollination) pollutes the natural gene pool. This
in turn makes labeling impossible which reduces consumer choice. This can be
prevented with the terminator gene. However, use of this is immoral for
reasons outlined below. Furthermore, not all companies have access to the
terminator technology.
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The fears about GM
food have been nothing more than a media spin. The media have created a story
about nothing due to headlines such as 'Frankenfood'. Simply because people
are scared they assert that there are not enough testing of the benefits of
GM foods.
The proposition is
mainly falling into a media trap because at the moment all reasonable
precautions are being taken for ensured safety. There is no reason why many
different strains of GM crops cannot be produced and planted - where this is
not happening at present, it should be.
However, the need
for many different strains is not an argument against some or all of those
being GM. Adding or removing genes from natural varieties does not make the
rest of their DNA identical. Furthermore, there is no concrete scientific
evidence of what harm is done by the spreading of GM pollen.
All these effects are considered when a genetically
modified crop is to be approved for agricultural use, if a product would
cause any of the above mentioned effects, it would not be approved.
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GMOs would create too much dependency on biotechnology
companies. The legislative framework and
historical behavior governing and guiding the operation of big business is
geared towards maximizing shareholder returns. This propensity has been
demonstrated time and again and might suggest that the GM companies are not
modifying the food in the interests of better health, but of better profit.
This is reinforced by the nature of many of the GM modifications, including
terminator seeds (infertile seed requiring a re-purchase of seed stock each
season), various forms of pest and herbicide resistance potentially leading
to pests (and weeds) resistant to the current crop of chemical defenses. One
of the more disturbing manifestations of this is the licensing of genes that
are naturally occurring and suing those who dare to grow them, even if they
are there because of cross contamination by wind-blown seeds or some other mechanism.
One has only to look at the history of corporations under North American and
similar corporations’ law to see the effect of this pressure to perform on
behalf of the shareholder. The pollution of water supplies, the continued
sale of tobacco, dioxins, asbestos, and the list goes on. Most of those
anti-social examples are done with the full knowledge of the corporation
involved.
The example of potato farmers in the US illustrates big
company dependence: "By ''opening and using this product,'' it is stated,
that farmers only have the license to grow these potatoes for a single
generation. The problem is that the genes remain the intellectual property of
Monsanto, protected under numerous United States patents (Nos. 5,196,525,
5,164,316, 5,322,938 and 5,352,605), under these patents, people are not
allowed to save even crop for next year, because with this they would break
Federal law of intellectual property.
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The immoral behavior
of some people towards this technology is not a reason to ban it unless it
can be shown that more harm than good is caused. This research is important
to deal with global climate change which is reducing the landmass of the
earth that can grow food, whilst the global population is rising.
Regulation may be better than outright banning, as we
do with many aspects of business. For example gene patenting and the
discovery of new genes is an area very similar to genetically modified foods.
In the US gene patenting is allowed and when the company Myriad Genetics
found the gene BRCA1 and BRCA (connected with breast cancer) and made too
many restrictions on the use of it (so it hurt people in general), the court
stepped in and allowed others to use it, gave them more rights over the
“patented product”. With this we see, that there can always be regulation of
products if a company attempts to profit out of the misery of others. The
same can be done with GMOs. If the company is demanding too high prices,
preventing farmers from doing their work, the courts and legal system can
always step in. Just because one company acts unethically, this does not mean
that all must. There is a market for ethical consumerism, so the actions of a
few corporations are not a reason to ban GMOs entirely.
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GM food will do nothing to help solve the problems in
developing countries. The problem there is not one of food production but of
an inability to distribute the food (due to wars, for example), the growing
and selling of cash crops rather than staple crops to pay off the national
debt and desertification leading to completely infertile land. Bob Watson,
the chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
(Defra), has stated that GM technology is oversold. The problem is not that
there is not enough food, but that the food that is available is not being
distributed. “Today the amount of food available per capita has never been
higher, how costs are still low, and yet still around 900m people go to bed
hungry every night”. Instead of money
being invested into genetic modification, what should be looked at is which
areas allow food to go to waste and which areas need food, and then a
redistribution needs to occur. Better transport and roads is where money
should be invested. Not with potentially hazardous GM crops.
In addition, the terminator gene prevents the farmer
from re-growing the same crop year after year and instead must buy it
annually from the producer. Abolishing the terminator gene leads to the other
problem of cross-pollination and companies demanding reparations for the “re-use”
of their crops.
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Genetically modified
organisms can solve the problem of food supply in the developing world. The possible benefits from GM food are enormous.
Modifications which render plants less vulnerable from pests lead to less
pesticide use, which is better for the environment. Other modifications lead
to higher crop yield, which leads to lower food prices for all. However, This
technology really comes into its own in developing countries. Here where
water is at a shortage, modifications (which lead crops to needing less
water), are of vital importance. The World Health Organization predicts that
vitamin A deficiency, with the use of GMOs, could be wiped out rapidly in the
modern world. The scientists developed the strain of rice, called “golden rice”,
which produces more beta-carotene and this way produces 20 times more
vitamins than other strains, creating a cure for childhood blindness in
developing countries.
The fact that it has not is illustrative of the lack of
political and economic will to solve these problems. GM food provides a
solution that does not rely on charity from Western governments. As the world
population increases and the environment deteriorates further this technology
will become not just useful but necessary.
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Genetic modification is unnatural. There is a
fundamental difference between modification via selective breeding and
genetic engineering techniques. The former occurs over thousands of years and
so the genes are changed much more gradually. Genetic modification will supposedly
deliver much but we have not had the time to assess the long-term
consequences. A recent study by the
Soil Association actually proves that many of the promises companies gave
were false. GM crops did not increase yield. Another example is a frost-resistant
cotton plant that ended up not ripening. GMOs do not reliably produce the
benefits desired because we do not know the long term effects of utilizing
them. Given the risks, we should seek to ban them.
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Genetically modified food is no different from any
other scientific advance, thus should be legal to use. Genetic modification is entirely natural. The process
of crop cultivation by selective breeding, which has been performed by
farmers for thousands of years, leads to exactly the same kind of changes in
DNA as modern modification techniques do. Current techniques are just faster
and more selective. In fact, given two strands of DNA, created from the same
original strand, one by selective breeding and one by modern modification
techniques it is impossible to tell which is which. The changes caused by
selective breeding have been just as radical as current modifications. Wheat,
for example, was cultivated, through selective breeding, from an almost
no-yield rice-type crop into the super-crop it is today.
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Genetically modified
organisms will prevent starvation due to global climate changes. The temperature of the earth is rising, and the rate of
increase is itself increasing. As this continues, foods that grow now will
not be acclimatized to the hotter conditions. Evolution takes many years and
we simply do not have the time to starve while we wait for this to occur.
Whilst there may be a vast supply of food now, we need to look to the future
and how our current crops will withstand our changing environment. We can
improve our food supply for the future if we invest in GM crops now. These
crops can be made specifically to deal with the hotter conditions.
Moreover, Rodomiro
Ortiz, director of resource mobilization at the International Maize and Wheat
Improvement Centre in Mexico, is currently conducting trials with GM crops to
get them to grow is drought conditions. This has already in 2007 been
implemented by Monsanto in South Africa and has shown that genetically
modified maize can be grown in South Africa and so prevent starvation.
In other countries, this would also mean that foods
could be cultured where organic foods would not be able to. This would mean
those in third world countries could grow their own crops on their low
nutrient content soil. This has the additional benefit of not impacting on
the environment as no transport would be needed to take the food to the
places where it is needed; this would have to occur with organic foods grown
in areas of good soil and weather conditions.
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