With the world's population continuing to rise every day, there is an issue to provide enough food for human survival. GMOs provide an answer to this dilemma. GMOs stand for Genetically Modified Organisms. So, what is a Genetically Modified Organism? Or rather, how do you make a Genetically Modified Organism? GMOs are produced through genetic engineering, the process of transferring specific genes from one organism and adding it to another organism. Today, more than 70 percent of all American foods are GMOs.
Well, this sounds like a bunch of science mumbo-jumbo. What are the advantages of GMOs? GMOs affect every aspect of our food consumption and, in turn, our wallets. They allow farmers to plant more crops closer together, to increase the production of their land, shorten the growing season, and increase the overall plant size. This super food means that farmers can produce more food faster and more efficiently, and we therefore can buy it cheaper. The same concept applies to the meat industry.
Animals are modified so that they mature at an extremely fast rate and to grow over three times larger. So, the animals are ready for slaughter in a much shorter time and provide three times the meat. GMOs have also had positive benefits for world malnutrition. Scientists modified rice, known as Golden Rice, with pro-vitamin A to combat malnutrition in Asia that caused impaired immune systems, disease and eventual death. Sweet potatoes were modified with Vitamin A to combat deficiencies that cause blindness and eventual death and to eliminate viruses that had previously destroyed acres of crops in Africa.
However, do GMOs cause more harm than good? GMO food actually causes the food to lose nutritional value. Plants are modified, grown in fertilizer, and showered with pesticides. Because of this, plants do not need to produce their natural chemicals. As well as natural chemicals, plants will not produce natural vitamins because everything is provided in the fertilizer. Most meat today is modified, fed on a corn diet, and pumped with steroids and antibiotics. Corn is not a natural diet for most animals, and with the steroids to speed development, the animals are not typically healthy.
In turn, unhealthy animals produce less nutritional meat. What are the long-term effects of eating GMOs? GMO foods have been found to mutate unpredictably, changing the plant's entire genetic make-up, to cause animal death during testing of GMOs, and livestock death after consumption of GMO feed. Most importantly, GMOs remove the biodiversity from our food system. GMO plants are all identically the same; therefore, if a corn blight were to rampage it would affect ALL of the corn, causing our entire food system to collapse.
GMOs play an important role in our lives, because they toy with the very survival of our lives. Though they have shown to be beneficial, at what costs are these benefits? What kind of genetic monsters have we created?-Ellery Ruther
Longwood University Student
German and Biology Major
