Is your food non-GMO?
That’s one of the first questions a farmers market customer or potential
CSA member is likely to ask. For farms like ours, based on organic principles,
the answer is easy - no GMOs. But the
reasons we avoid GMOs and the reasons people are concerned enough about them to
ask are more complex.
GMOs, genetically modified organisms, have become a very big factor
in American industrial farming, and their continued use sparks vigorous debate. In the scientific community, as well as among
the public, there seems to be very little middle ground. GMOs are perceived as either a grave
danger to the environment and sustainable agriculture, or a gratefully-received
solution to the challenge of feeding everyone on the planet.
Hunger is a very real issue in our world, and the growing global
population continues to put more and more pressure on our resources. That we
must create strategies for future adequate food production is crucial. It
has always been so. From the very
beginnings of civilization, one of the principle concerns of a society, surely
the primary task of a society, has been to ensure a steady supply of food.
There were many strategies – migrating to areas with better resources,
domesticating animals for food and work, and learning to cultivate desirable
food plants. People have always bent
their minds and their backs to the challenges of finding, growing, storing and
improving food.
Today, we are even more compelled to find ways to increase food
production. It might even be considered an ethical imperative that
agricultural experts should constantly seek ways to improve disease and pest
resistance, increase tolerance to extremes of climate, and extend growing
seasons. If our society is able to develop the expertise and the
technology to solve these problems, why question their use? Why be
worried about GMO foods?
GMOs are created by fundamentally altering the DNA of an animal or
plant, thus engineering a radical and almost immediate development of specific
desired traits, traits which help the organism compete and flourish.
Setting aside the issue of whether or not we should be tinkering with one
of the most intimate parts of any organism, its genes, there are other ethical considerations
at stake.
Surprisingly, the least debated aspect of the issue is whether GMO foods can be safe and nutritious for humans to eat. Many medical and scientific groups, including the American Medical Association, the World Health Organization, and the Union for Concerned Scientists have concluded that the safety risks to ingesting GMO food seem minimal. But all also acknowledge that there are a great many unknowns about the impact of GMOs in our food system. The real debate centers on those unknowns.
Consumers are concerned about transparency in food production and the proper labeling of food containing GMOs. Scientists fear the side effects of altering plants so that they are toxic to insect pests. How might beneficial insects be affected, and in what ways might the altered genetic material travel up the food chain? Many experts also fear that engineered genes may wind up being transferred to other food crops or to native plants, causing unintended and problematic modifications. Some of the biggest GMO news stories of the past five years concern the inadvertent emergence of plants containing engineered genes among nearby traditional non-GMO crops.
This brings up the hottest topic in the GMO debate - the ownership
of engineered genes. GMO seeds and the
engineered genes themselves are patented and forever owned by the agritech corporations
which develop them. High tech GMO seeds come with a higher price tag than conventional seeds. And farmers who plant these patented GMO seeds must sign a contract promising that they will not save and
reuse any seeds, an economical practice farmers have always depended upon. How can smaller farms hope to compete when big
agribusiness controls the market? How
can the smaller economies of developing nations hope to achieve food security when
the monopoly which controls global agriculture, fiercely protecting its intellectual
properties as well as its profit margins, determines who will have access to its
products and how its technologies are to be implemented?
Consider this: almost 70% of the world’s seed development and sales
is controlled by only ten companies. All
are actively invested in creating and promoting GMOs. In the U.S., the biotech giants Monsanto, Cargill,
and DuPont lead the pack, with Monsanto alone accounting for nearly 25% of the
global seed market. In 2013, about half
of U.S. cropland, 169 million acres, was planted in GMO crops, and forty
percent of those crops were engineered in Monsanto’s laboratories. If we are looking to GMO technology to improve
global food supplies, then we have put our faith in a handful of private
corporate entities and their shareholders. It is pretty clear who is controlling our food
supply.
Try these links to learn various points of view about GMOs and the future of our food supply:
http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-system/genetic-engineering/risks-of-genetic-engineering.html
http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-system/genetic-engineering/risks-of-genetic-engineering.html
