Genetically Modified Foods

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Recommended: Ethical dilemmas with gmo

Since the essay specifications read “GM Food: What it means to us”, I talked to a couple of my classmates on what they knew (or cared) about genetically modified food. Brinjals seemed to be the one constant, with other responses ranging from “creations of Satan” to “they put fish stuff in tomatoes”. I must admit here that my knowledge of genetically modified food was also pretty challenged until I wrote this essay. The only information I had on GM food was what I had garnered from a couple of debates on their ethicality.

The heated opinions on GM food seem to grow more radical by the day, with each side bringing in some rather extreme arguments. While scientists continue to argue that the GM food currently on the market is equally safe and more nutritional as regular food, opponents raise a host of environmental, health and economic concerns. India has an interesting relationship with genetically engineered food, one which I hope to bring out during the course of this essay.

Genetically modified foodstuffs are those whose DNA has been altered slightly to give them certain characteristics that they would not normally possess. So how is this different from traditional selective breeding? We were doing the same thing a hundred years ago when we chose to grow plants with bigger fruits or longer stems. What’s changed now is -
(a) the time it takes to “choose” the characters you want to keep, and
(b) the ability to combine characteristics from unrelated species (like introducing fish DNA into strawberries, thus allowing them to be frost-tolerant).

GM food has several advantages:
(a) We are now able to develop better quality crops with much higher nutritional yields than regular crops. For example, carrots are being grown with m...

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...is how it will be with GM food. Although it faces strong opposition right now, advances in the technology, as well as clearer safety and regulation norms might just ensure that GM food will be the future of food safety across the world.

What we must remember is that GM food is a new field that could potentially change the way we live. Are we being rational when we worry that all the risks associated with these foods have yet to be assessed? Or are we quite literally biting the hand that feeds us when we criticise GM foods?

Works Cited

http://www.epw.in/commentary/labelling-genetically-modified-foods-india.html http://digitaljournal.com/article/341069 http://www.cseindia.org/node/4388 http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Genetically_modified_foods http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/10/avoiding-gm-food-organic-soil-association

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