Based on peer-reviewed evidence, the World Health Organization , the American Medical Association and the British Royal Society , among others, have all concluded that foods containing GM ingredients are as safe as the same foods containing ingredients from crop plants modified by conventional techniques.
Learn how we're advancing the science of Bioformulation. Researchers are using biotechnology to make genetically modified foods that provide real benefits to humans and livestock. For example:. This tomato was engineered to produce higher levels of nutrients called anthocyanins, which have been shown to be protective against a wide variety of human diseases. The Golden Rice Project seeks to bring vitamin-A enriched rice to market to help prevent nearly , cases of childhood blindness and 2 million deaths caused by vitamin-A deficiency in third world countries each year.
Unfortunately, many of these valuable and potentially lifesaving projects are unable to come to market because of public misunderstandings about the potential dangers of GMOs. Contrary to what some believe, GMO crops can actually allow farmers to use less and less toxic pesticides on their fields.
This is because GM crops can be modified to allow more targeted use of herbicides and pesticides, provide more intrinsic pest resistance, and allow GM plants to compete more effectively against encroaching weeds. Climate change and population growth are putting increased pressure on the agricultural industry to feed a hungry world.
Millions of families all over the world are concerned about GMOs in their food because they don't really understand them and because the media sometimes presents them to be something that they aren't. Shrinking our Environmental Footprint.
GMOs enable farmers to be better stewards of the environment, allowing farmers large and small to grow more crops on less land while using fewer pesticides and less water.
In the United States, the adoption of GM crops resulted in pesticide use reduction of Lowering the Price of Food.
Because they require fewer pesticides, land and water, GMOs help keep food production costs down resulting in lower prices for consumers. Mercaris, a market data researcher, found that prices for non-GMO corn averaged 51 cents per bushel higher than GMO corn. By reducing the amount of insecticide used which, in India, is mostly sprayed by hand Bt cotton has also massively reduced insecticide poisoning to farm workers there — to the tune of 2.
And while farmer suicides in India are real, and each one is a tragedy, the link is false. Farmer suicides have been going on long before GMOs, and, if anything, the farmer suicide rate has slightly dropped since the introduction of GM seeds. All of this is to say that GM crops have more impact in poor countries than rich ones. Where other types of inputs, like fertilizers, farm equipment, and pesticides are harder to afford, GM crops have more to offer.
That can help increase food, reduce pressure on deforestation, and lift farmers out of poverty. India came close to approval for a Bt eggplant or Bt brinjal. Studies showed that it was safe, that it could cut pesticide use by half, and that it could nearly double yields by reducing losses to insects. Similar things have happened elsewhere.
The same Bt eggplant was supported by regulators in the Philippines who looked at the data, but then blocked by the court on grounds that reflected not specific concerns, but general, metaphorical, and emotional arguments that Nathanael Johnson describes as dominating the debate. Because if Bt food crops could produce similar size gains in the developing world, that would be a tremendous benefit. Insect losses are a tremendously larger challenge in India and Africa than in the U.
The same arguments that kept Bt eggplant out of the Philippines have also been used, often by western groups, to keep GM crops out of virtually all of Africa, as documented by Robert Paarlberg in his powerful and to some, infuriating book Starved For Science.
I have absolutely no doubt that the opponents of genetically modified foods, and particularly those campaigning against their planting in the developing world, are doing this with the best of intentions.
Most of the perceived ills of genetically modified foods are either illusory or far smaller than believed. And what the data suggests is that the benefits, while modest in the rich world today, might be quite substantial in the future, and are already much larger in the parts of the world where the battle over GMO approval is most actively raging.
GMOs are neither poison nor panacea. We aim to inspire more people to talk about climate change and to believe that meaningful change is not only possible but happening right now. Our in-depth approach to solutions-based journalism takes time and proactive planning, which is why Grist depends on reader support.
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