Genetic Engineered Food and Safety
Is genetically engineered food safe to eat?
Well, I hope so, since I and you and all of us have been eating it
for centuries. All common foodstuffs have been seriously engineered
since they were discovered. The modern tomato plant, apple tree,
wheat stalk, and corn plant bear only a general resemblance to their
ancestors, as farmers have engineered them to increase their yield,
shelf life, resistance to disease, etc.
It is, however, true that up until recently changes to the genetic
code of foodstuffs could only be made via natural mutation (which
occurs via naturally-occuring ionizing radiation and mutagenic
chemicals), and the food engineer's job was limited to selecting those
changes he wanted to preserve, and those he wanted to weed out. Now
you can induce mutations directly, with intention and forethought, and
avoid much of the waiting around for natural mutation that was
heretofore necessary in plant breeding.
The major risk of engineering food, by any means, breeding it the
old-fashioned way or fiddling directly with its genetic code, is that
a strain with certain highly desirable characteristics can become so
widely adopted that it replaces all others. Then your food ecosystem
loses some of its genetic diversity and hence some of its resilience.
One nasty pest that happens to prey very successfully on the dominant,
popular strain can seriously compromise your entire nation's crop.
To put your question in a different, useful focus, you might ask
yourself this: Suppose, as a plant breeder, I decide to cross corn
with deadly nightshade, wanting to transfer to the corn some of the
nightshade's ability to grow readily without fertilizer. The cross
works (unbelievably) and I have a new hybrid corn that will grow
anywhere. How do I decide whether the corn is safe to eat? Whatever
your answer to this question is, is also the answer to your question
for corn that was engineered by messing with its DNA in a test tube.
Genetically engineered food is definitely safe to eat. The problems people
have with genetically engineering crops isn't due to fears in eating
them-some people are afraid of environmental problems, such as weeds
interbreeding with these crops and becoming resistant to pesticides, or the
monarch butterfly larva being killed by the pollen of genetically engineered
corn. Many of the food products you eat are already genetically engineered
and you don't even realize it.
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Update: June 2012