Greatest Concerns About GMO Foods Are Not GMOs
Everyone from Chipotle to Food Babe is opposed to genetically modified ingredients, and some states are seeing progress in passing GMO labeling laws. But the emphasis on GMOs is misguided because most of the people who worry about them are not really GMOs .
“GMO” is a buzzword for genetically modified crops in which the DNA of a plant has been altered in the laboratory, usually by inserting a gene from a different species. Technically, there are other types of genetically modified organisms (living things), but GMO animals are not used in our food, and GMO bacteria are widespread, but not in doubt .
There are serious problems with our food system and the way it is based on industrial agriculture. Subsidies support high-sugar and processed foods while low-income people struggle to get healthy, organic food. In the meantime, essential farmland is being converted into residential buildings, huge amounts of pesticides and fertilizers are released into the environment, and corporate giants such as Monsanto have too much power.
Passing around infographics about which GMO-containing foods are boycotted, or putting tons of effort into passing GMO labeling laws, is not going to do anything to solve these problems . They will simply make it easier for already privileged people to buy food they like, which can be just as bad for their health and the environment as the food they avoid. That’s why.
GMOs don’t always mean more pesticides
Problem : GMOs introduce too many pesticides into our food and the environment.
Truth: Pesticides include herbicides (weed killers), insecticides (insect poisons), and any other chemicals that farmers use to destroy things that could damage their plants. Some pesticides are approved for use on certified organic crops and some are not.
What does GMO have to do with it? In fact, these are two different things that opponents of GMOs sometimes confuse. One type of GMO plant increases pesticide use, while another popular type decreases pesticide use.
Herbicide-resistant plants can withstand spraying from some weed killers. The genetically modified “Roundup Ready” corn and soybean plants were developed by industrial giant Monsanto, which (don’t be surprised) is the manufacturer of the RoundUp herbicide chemically known as glyphosate . Farmers can buy seeds and herbicide and then spray their entire field knowing that the weeds will die but the specially engineered corn or soybeans will not. Glyphosate was popular even before GMOs, but now there is an added incentive for farmers to use it.
Bad news: Thanks to these plants, farmers are now spraying massive amounts of herbicides . Good news: at least this is one of the less toxic herbicides. This leads to several reasons: the weeds become resistant to glyphosate , so farmers have to use more of it. In an effort to tackle this problem, companies are developing new GMO plants that are resistant to other herbicides , so the cycle of over-spraying and creating resistant weeds is likely to continue.
So is this bad news? Mostly yes, but in terms of the environment, not health. More glyphosate is used, but it is not found in our food in unsafe quantities. A famous study claiming that corn treated with glyphosate caused cancer turned out to be scandalously bad science, and the article was retracted by the journal that published it.
However, there is another type of GMO plant: crops that produce their own insecticides. They are called Bt crops because they produce the same natural toxin as the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis . Like glyphosate, it was a popular pesticide long before the advent of GMOs. You can buy both at your local garden center: Bt comes in the form of bacterial spores that you spray onto plants, and is great when caterpillars eat the leaves of plants like cabbage. The bacteria produce a toxin that kills the insects that eat it, but even in large quantities, the toxin is considered harmless to humans. Mother Earth News calls it “one of the safest natural pesticides you can use.” He was praised by the same people who grow their own organic kale – until scientists used genetic engineering to put the toxin recipe into plants. Now you will find people claiming that Bt toxin is dangerous to humans (it is not ) and confusing it with glyphosate.
Not only is Bt toxin safe for humans, its use means farmers spray less insecticide in general, which is a benefit to the environment and the health of agricultural workers, and also contributes to consumer safety (since there were no high levels of pesticides in food. Start with) …
So are GMOs increasing pesticide use? Yes and no, depending on what kind of GMO you are talking about. You cannot group them together and say that they are good or bad as a group.
What you can do : We discussed pesticides in food in our Dirty Dozen fruits and vegetables article . Honestly, if you live in the US and are worried about pesticides in your personal food, the simplest tactic is to just stop worrying. Pesticides are not any – any conventionally grown food in dangerous quantities: The Dirty Dozen is actually very clean. In the meantime, buying organic food means that there will still be pesticides in your food – only others. And we have no data on whether they are being used at dangerous levels or not.
If you want farmers to reduce pesticide use altogether, start supporting small, ideally local farms that tell in advance what types of pesticides they use, when and why. Many large companies and industrial farms have met the USDA Certified Organic label requirement for their products, so look for signs of a commitment to sustainability rather than just looking for an organic label.
GMOs are unnatural, but so are non-GMO plants
Problem : we shouldn’t interfere with plant DNA. This is unnatural and can have unintended consequences.
The Facts : We’ve been tinkering with plant DNA ever since humans grew plants. Archaeologists know that Native Americans grew the skinny weed theosinte into the plump corn plants we eat today . And 8000 years before we figured out how to insert bacterial genes into plant DNA, bacteria inserted those genes themselves ; Today’s sweet potatoes are their handiwork.
Therefore, the question is not whether we should bind to plant DNA, but how to do it.
Think of your DNA as an encyclopedia of cookbooks, and recipes tell your cells how to create a human. Plants have a different set of recipes, so they turn into plants and not people. If you want a bigger or tastier plant, you need to find a way to change some of these recipes.
Genetic engineering, in the sense in which we talk about GMOs, means that scientists take a recipe – a gene – from one cookbook and insert it into another. In the case of the Bt corn and soybeans discussed above, they took the toxin gene from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis and inserted it into the soybean or corn plant. In the case of the new Arctic Apple, the gene was cut from one apple variety and inserted into another. (Once the cut and paste is complete, you can breed or graft the plants in any traditional way. They do not need to bioengine every single seed.) Genetic engineering is very accurate in terms of the gene you are inserting. but there is no way to control where in the plant’s DNA it ends up. If it gets caught in the middle of another gene, it can ruin the plant’s ability to make that recipe. This is why many tests and screenings need to be done before a plant leaves the laboratory to ensure that it is still functioning as a plant and that there are no side effects. Sounds risky? Compare this to other ways we interfere with plant DNA.
- Mutational propagation involves irradiating plants or their seeds , essentially random vandalism in an attempt to create a mutant super-plant. It’s a technique straight out of 1950s comics, and it really works. (Most plants die, of course, but the lucky few gain superpowers such as larger or tastier fruits.) This is how we got the Rio Red and Star Ruby grapefruits . If you are worried about mutant Franken plants with unknown changes in their DNA, these plants should be your concern. This method is becoming more common as GMOs are losing popularity in some countries. The extensive testing and regulations applicable to GMOs do not apply to these plants.
- Hybrids are more common, but still weird. When you breed two different plants together, the offspring sometimes exhibit interesting traits that they may not always pass on to their offspring. Some are even sterile, such as seedless watermelons and other natural wonders that people sometimes mistake for GMOs. They are not. Again, you can find many examples at your local garden store : any package of seeds obtained by hybridization should state this on the label. If you want to grow a hybrid plant year after year, you need to keep buying hybrid seeds. The seed company produces them by crossing two parents every season, like a dog breeder who keeps Labradors and Poodles to meet the demand for Labradoodles. This is why farmers often bought new seeds every year, even before the advent of GMOs.
- Backcrossing is also used as an alternative to GMOs. Here you find a gene that you would like to introduce into your crop, but it belongs to a different species, and sometimes to a different, closely related species. For example, in a project in Cornell, breeders crossed a butternut squash with a powdery mildew-resistant wild marrow. The resulting hybrid was disease resistant but tasted awful, so over the years they crossed the offspring of this hybrid with nutmeg, keeping those that tasted like nutmeg but still disease resistant, and they did it all. again. year. This is a laborious process , and far more likely than GMOs to end up with unintended genes in the final product, as you start by pouring in thousands of genes instead of just inserting one.
In short, if you are worried about unnatural DNA manipulation or the possibility of unintentional mutations, GMOs are just one of many methods that could possibly cause a mysterious mutation. (To be clear, we do not know of any major problems that would arise with any of these methods; this is more hypothetical.) This handy diagram from Grist outlines the problems related to various plant breeding methods, GMOs, and more. (Grist has some excellent, unbiased reports on GMOs. For starters, here’s the article that accompanied this diagram.)
What you can do : It’s almost impossible to avoid genetically modified plants. If you are very self-motivated, you can decide which methods you favor by finding the names of these plant varieties and looking for them when shopping for food or garden plants.
For most people, however, this shouldn’t be a problem: just a quick glance at the bizarre reality of how your food is (and has been historically) made. If mutation breeding or backcrossing honestly bother you, you might consider starting an effort to get labeled. But since GMOs are not particularly unnatural than these other methods, and since none of them are objectionable at all (in my opinion), I will go here and eat my Rio Red grapefruit.
Corporations control everything – GMOs and stuff
Concern : Monsanto, a producer of GMO crops, is an absolute evil.
The Facts : Agreed: Monsanto and similar companies are harmful to agriculture. To be clear, this isn’t just Monsanto: we have to remember that Dow and Bayer , among others, use the same one-two punch to sell GMO seeds along with their brand of pesticides. Large companies use market leverage and patent law to get farmers to do what they want. But here’s the thing: Big companies control agriculture for non-GMO reasons, so fighting GMOs won’t actually reduce their control over agriculture.
I really don’t like that these companies own so much American agriculture. But genetically modified crops appeared only in the 1990s , and we had industrial agriculture long before that. Banning or using GMOs is just a rearrangement of sun loungers.
The medical, environmental and economic problems of industrial agriculture are deeply rooted and cannot be addressed by one or two labeling laws. Large farms that grow maize or soybeans in monoculture, with an emphasis on eradicating native plants (also known as “weeds”), reduce biodiversity (eg milkweed, which monarch butterflies need to reproduce). Nutrient cycles in the environment have been disrupted: instead of manure providing fertilizer for the plants on the same farm, we have feedlots where lagoons of animal waste pose health and environmental hazards , and farmers hundreds of miles away covering their fields with synthetic material. fertilizers that drain into nearby bodies of water, destroying ecosystems and killing fish .
Who will win in this scenario? Of course, pesticide manufacturers (with or without GMOs). Breeders (similar). Fertilizer producers. Since the US government subsidizes corn and soybeans, farmers can sell these crops for less than they spent on growing them, which means consumers get cheap food (assuming they are made from corn and soybeans, which are most processed). food products). Processed food companies benefit. The whole system is a wash-out for the farmers (they will do just fine with or without GMOs, and many can barely make ends meet anyway). Consumers like you and me? We get cheap food (hooray!), But this is the least healthy kind of food (ooh!) Not because GMOs are unhealthy – they are not healthy, but because what you can make from corn syrup, cornstarch, soybean oil and soy … protein is unhealthy food .
Nathanael Johnson, concluding his six-month report on genetically modified foods, lays out the real future that awaits us if we somehow ban GMOs:
In the future, non-GMO farming looks much the same. Without insect-resistant crops, farmers spray more broad-spectrum insecticides, which cause some collateral damage to surrounding food webs. Without herbicide-resistant crops, farmers spray less glyphosate, which slows down the spread of glyphosate-resistant weeds and possibly leads to healthier soil biota. Farmers are also more likely to cultivate their fields, which kills soil biota and releases much more greenhouse gases. Banning GMOs did not transform agriculture because GM seeds have never been the backbone of the traditional food system: farmers have always been fine without it. Consumers are no longer worried about the small potential health threat associated with GMOs, but they are exposed to new risks: GMOs were neither the first nor the last agricultural innovations, and each of these technologies carries potential dangers. Perhaps crop production will expand the use of mutagenesis and epigenetic manipulation. We no longer have biotech patents, but we still have traditional seed patents. Life goes on.
In other words, GMOs have always been a red herring .
In fact, there are many examples of GMO plants being used for other purposes, such as vitamin A – rich rice and protein-rich potatoes, to combat malnutrition in vulnerable parts of the world. If we are fighting overindustrialization of agriculture, GMOs are the wrong battleground.
What you can do : It’s not easy. Politically, here’s a crazy idea : what if we paid farmers to care for the environment (protect watersheds, preserve native plants) instead of subsidizing every bushel of corn they grow? What if we have expanded opportunities for low-income people to buy healthier foods of local production, such as the program ” Double Dollar”, in which the benefits of the program SNAP buy at a farmers market twice as much at the grocery store?
Back home, decisions become clearer, but (without system support) sometimes more costly or difficult. As we mentioned above, buying from local farms is a tactic that works here too. You may need to change your repertoire of favorite recipes and learn to love dishes that take advantage of local and seasonal produce. (But don’t worry – there are more available than you think, even in temperate climates.) Consider a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) subscription for a steady supply of local food that supports your friendly neighborhood farmer. (Because you pay in advance, you reduce her financial risk at the start of the season.) Sometimes you can work multiple shifts on the farm in exchange for free or discounted produce.
If you have garden space or even a few containers, growing your own is a great way to cut down on food. (Be sure to also look around for community gardens .) There is a learning curve, but gardening can open your eyes to how food is actually produced and the real problem farmers are struggling with: you find yourself dealing with weeds. , insect pests and fertilizer problems.
I grow my own garden and here’s my full disclosure: it’s 99% organic. I usually live with lower yields instead of spraying weed killers or insecticides, and fertilize with compost or “natural” substances like blood and bone meal (most of which, I understand, probably comes from animals raised in factories ). I don’t bother looking for organic seeds, although I prefer the non-hybrid heirloom varieties. This year I spray my apple trees for the first time with a synthetic pesticide because last year insects destroyed all my apples. What if there were GMO garden plants available that gave me more food with less labor or less pesticides? I would probably do everything for them.
Photos: MDGLillehammer , CIAT , Steven Depolo , Die Grünen Kärnten .
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