Originally published 11 March 2003
Last summer, I bought a prepackaged chocolate cake in a European supermarket. The wrapper proclaimed prominently: NO GM INGREDIENTS. GM, of course, stands for “genetically modified.”
Then I turned the package over and read the ingredients. I recognized flour, salt, and water. The rest were a long list of artificial flavors, colorings, stabilizers, and preservatives that read like the shelf list of a chemistry lab. Yum!
I’m not suggesting that all those chemicals with unrecognizable names might be harmful to my health. But then again, there is no evidence that GM foods are harmful either. The uproar of popular feeling that has turned Europe into an essentially GM-free zone is based more upon emotion than hard fact.
Environmental organizations like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth have whipped up a political frenzy against genetically engineered food, demonizing big agribusinesses, such as Monsanto, for releasing monsters upon the world. The protesters with their “Frankenfoods” placards surely mean well. One only wishes they were able to cite in their favor something more than vague possibilities of disaster.
Americans, meanwhile, are barely aware of the controversy. Why the difference between Europe and the United States? I suspect the reason is this: Europeans love their food and traditionally buy it fresh off the shelves every day; Americans go to market once a week and are used to eating processed junk that’s laced with God-knows-what. For many Europeans, GM foods are one more element of American cultural imperialism.
So, what’s a reasonable person to do? Are GM foods safe? Do they harm the environment, as the protesters say? Or might they help the environment by increasing yields and making farmers less dependent upon pesticides and artificial fertilizers?
I’ve tried to follow the controversy as best I can in the popular press and the scientific journals. My default position is: Leave the food alone. But so far I’ve seen no evidence that anyone has been harmed by eating GM products. Nor is there much evidence of harm to the environment, either.
Which is not to say that caution is unnecessary. I’d like to believe that the US Food and Drug Administration and Department of Agriculture are looking out for our best interests, and that the Environmental Protection Agency has an eye on the environment. I know of no case that would indicate we have not been well served by the relevant government agencies. Genetic scientists are about as likely to complain about “bureaucratic constraints” on research as are the opponents of biotechnology to complain that the agencies allow any field research at all.
Here’s an example of the kind of research that’s necessary:
Environmentalists have often raised the specter of “artificial” genes escaping from GM crops into the wild, creating “superweeds” — a not-inconceivable possibility that deserves attention.
Neal Stewart and his colleagues at the University of Tennessee have recently completed a first experiment. They crossed a GM crop plant (oilseed rape) with a wild relative, then released the modified weed plant into the environment — thus deliberately contriving the “superweed” scenario. The result: The modified weed was less vigorous in the wild than the unmodified variety.
Definitive? Of course not. The jury is still out, and lots more research is necessary. In the meantime, careful regulation of GM agriculture and experimentation with GM plants is essential. So far, however, none of the doomsday predictions have come to pass.
My guess is that a generation from now, when the initial thrill of tinkering with genes has passed, GM plants optimized for specific environments will be commonplace, not as a replacement for traditional methods of plant breeding, but as a supplement.
The world’s population will continue to rise for at least another half-century. Feeding those additional billions of people while preserving the environment will require every ounce of creativity we can muster. Closing avenues of possibility based on knee-jerk emotion is a sure recipe for disaster.
