Just ranting

News like the one I posted below disturb me to no end. I am not a genetic engineer, medical researcher with a specialization in genetically modified organisms (GMO), or a doctor, therefore, I have no clue whether GMOs are bad for your health, and as such, cannot make any claims saying they are. Whenever GMOs are mentioned, the debate seems to get to :Is this harmful for my health if I eat it? And the answer, based on research funded by the companies that produce GMOs is: No, they are perfectly safe to consume.

If you live in the U.S. or Canada, chances are you have already ingested a lot of food that's genetically modified, whether you were aware of it or not. Upwards of 70% of all corn and soy beans produced in these countries are genetically modified. And if you have not noticed, those two ingredients are in everything that we buy, from popcorn to corn-fed-cow-meat aka beef. Corn syrup seems to make its way into everything replacing other forms of sugar. Example: sodas are sweetened with corn syrup, which is probably made with genetically modified corn. But I, like many other people, enjoy my soda and would rather not think about the tiny genes that have been replaced with genes from bacteria, or in the case of the pork, with genes from mice. Everything in moderation is my motto about almost everything in life...

Although I am not qualified to talk about the health consequences, I do feel I am qualified to talk about the ecological consequences, of which I believe there are many. I cannot even begin to talk about it all in one mere blog post, so I'll just ramble instead as usual.

I understand the need to come up with species that are more resistant to environmental factors, so that we can grow more of them with greater ease, to be able to accomodate an ever growing human population. It seems that we have accomplished that goal right now with corn and soy beans, yet somehow world hunger is still a great issue. All that corn that we produce in such volume, I want to see how much of it actually goes to filling the bellies of starving people in the developing world. And why there is such an abundance of corn that we're trying to get rid of it by modifying and putting it into every kind of food we can think of. Let's face it: companies want to make money...I am totally OK with that, I have taken many economy courses and understand how that market works. But for some reason, putting patent on human food seems a bit...I don't know...Unethical?

When you genetically modify foods, and come up with something successful, it's only fair that you get a patent for it...And of course, since it's understandable that companies need to make money to stay in the market, it's also understandable that they would make the seeds "sterile" or put rules on how they can be used i.e. one cannot save and plant the seeds from these plants, they have to be "rebought" after every harvest season. Long gone are the days where farmers, who owned their own land and worked for "themselves", planted their crops, saved their seeds to plant come next planting season, thus profiting from the natural "fertility" mother nature provides for us.

Fiddling with crops in such manner creates a disturbance in the ecological balance. First of all, if a genetically modified crop is not well contained (which I assume is very hard to do in open air fields), bugs will do what they're supposed to do, and carry the pollens from plant to plant, causing 1) a potential patent infringement if the pollenized crop is on someone's property, and 2) a potential spur of modified crops on natural, unowned land. If the modified crop is exceptionally hardy, then chances are it will overtake entire fields over long periods of time, causing loss of "unmodified" species, which are apprently weak and not worthy of our consumption because they happen to be not resistant to the strong chemicals we like to douse them with. (One could say, I believe, that the need for genetically modified food comes from our bad industrial agriculture practices...We try to undo our impact on the environment, and this is the solution...)

Whether we appreciate it or not, there is some kind of balance in nature that is more delicate than meets the eye. Everything tips to one side to accomodate for a "disturbance" that comes from the outside. There is research out there claiming this (GMO) is better for the environment and ecological systems than growing regular crops with industrial agriculture as is, which may as well be the case...The research examining the impacts goes back (and can only go back) about 10 years, because this is relatively a new area of research (and development if you can call it that). 10 years of history...I wonder if that's really enough amount of time to come to a conclusion of any sort, be it on human health or the environment. Kind of reminds me of the margarine craze of my childhood, where butter was shunned from houses because it clogged arteries and made you die young. What could be more brilliant than taking "liquid" oils (which were much better for your health), and "hydrogenate" them and voila! Wonderful butter like fat that is not animal fat, and therefore was healthy...Except now we run from margarine like it's the plague because it contains cancer causing "transfats" and also raises your bad cholestrol much worse than butter does. And butter, it seems, is good for you after all because it contains all those good things, like Omega-3s and vitamin A, etc. It turns out eggs aren't that bad after all, either...So how can we be so quick to judge something that is relatively "young" as healthy and good for the environment, when it has only been around for a decade...It takes much longer than that for any obvious effects to come into daylight, at which point if there seems to be negative consequences, I hope we will have the proper resources to fix it "i.e. unmodified crops?"...If not, we will probably try to engineer our way through that, too...

I just don't understand...Nature works beautifully, there is nothing wrong with it...So why can we not try to make our processes more like it, rather than try to modify it?