Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are still new technology we don't know if it will be helpful or harmful to humanity. GMOs are a pretty controversial topic and people often have very strong opinions about them. Many people believe that GMOs will solve all the world's food problems and others think that they will be the thing that kills us, ok maybe that’s a bit extreme. This paper is going to focus on the cons of GMO use. GMOs have had a spotlight shining on them for the past few years. This spotlight has brought up many questions the first of which is are GMOs harmful to humans.
In some studies from the past few years, Scientists have found that GMOs may have an anti-antibiotic effect. The effect comes from the transfer of genes from a genetically modified plant to the soil or an animal or human gut. The transfer has been marked as unlikely to happen but it doesn’t mean that it can or won't. GMOs also have a few strings that lead back to them causing possible food allergies. Jeffrey Smith, executive director of the Institute for Responsible Technology, wrote about a GMO study where rats were fed GM tomatoes, and after bleeding in their stomach and some died. The effects were experienced fivefold in the offspring of the rats, some of the new effects including lower birth weight and higher mortality rate. Studies show that GMOs have possible links to 22 different diseases. Some seem to have a stronger correlation than others but all have links back to GMOs.
A few of the diseases/disability found include Cancer, Alzheimer’s, and Autism. Kidney/liver damage also seems to be an effect of GMOs. These links should definingly be taken seriously and not just brushed off by the average consumer. So it is clear that GMOs do hold some threat to humans in terms of health, now I'll move on to my second point which is the effects of GMOs on the environment. A major concern of most is that GMOs can attribute to the loss of biodiversity in plants. Losing biodiversity could spell doom for some ecosystems and species of plants.
Losing these certain plants and animals also will affect us substantially, or at least it will harm future generations. Some people have also worried that GMOs will have a toxic effect on the environment, for example, they may harm insects that pollinate the plants like bees and butterflies. If GMOs do affect these animals they could theoretically be wiped out of existence. This would have very far-reaching effects since we basically rely almost solely on these animals to pollinate our plants. Even if GMOs don’t wipe out bees and butterflies the chemicals used might drive the insects away from the plant therefore it doesn’t get pollinated and the plant most likely dies. GMOs also are passively toxic, by that I mean the plant is made to withstand different pesticides/herbicides that would normally be lethal to the plant. So making them able to withstand these chemicals, is basically inviting farmers to dump all of these chemicals onto the land which makes the land a sort of mini desert. This also renders that land unusable for much else and kills off a lot of the microscopic organisms that are good for the environment. Another concern that people have is that could GMOs harm the plants around them.
The main way that GM crops will affect other Crops is through cross-pollination. If a GM crop is growing in a field right next to a field with Non-GM crops it is likely that the pollen from the GM crop has gotten mixed with the Non-GM crop. This can be bad for a number of reasons. One reason is if it has been cross-pollinated then it isn’t truly a Non-GM crop, which leads back to then having a lack of biodiversity. Aside from the effects on health and on the environment GMOs also can harm our economy. Now to preface this GMOs affect smaller family farms compared to much larger corporate farms. GM seeds can be up two 150 dollars more expensive than regular seeds. This makes it harder for smaller farms to get seed compared to the corporate farms that can buy more, and the fact that you need new seed yearly leads me to my next point. GM seeds aren’t renewable, in other words, you have to buy a new bag every year. This leads to it being more expensive in the long run. Also, you have to rely on the companies to keep making and selling the seeds every year.
Having the seeds not be renewable and having them require you to buy new seeds poses another problem and that is that if it does get too expensive to buy and use GM seeds we will be losing a lot of the yield that GM plants give. GM plants although have problems do produce more yield than non-GMO seeds. The last point I would like to make is about the history of GMOs. During the first Bush campaign, GMO products were being pushed heavily. The reason for this is that the U.S. said it would increase US exports and US domination of agriculture. Despite this in the end the exact opposite happened. The US lost billions over trying to sell the products to places that didn’t want the crops like the EU who closed their doors to GM produce like corn and soy. All in all GMO products aren’t the worst thing ever but they definingly have their downside; whether they are the negative effects on health, the damage that they can do to our environment, or the way they affect our economy, the producer, and the consumer. In the future GMOs might become completely safe and have no downside but for the moment you should still be cautious of them.