GM Pros And Cons

Are you finding you need several science degrees to have an informed opinion these days? I have started googling the pros and cons of several issues and, on the GM debate, found www.citizenshipfoundation.org.uk, an award-wining UK website.

The Foundation’s Summary Of Main Arguments

For GM Crops

• Crops can be engineered to be pest/disease resistant and so reduce or eliminate the need to use pesticides or herbicides. This reduction in chemicals can benefit the environment and wildlife
• GM foods could be made healthier than conventional foods by, for example, modifying them to include extra vitamins and nutrients
• Since the wide scale consumption of food from GM crops began some seven years ago there have been no substantiated cases of harm to human health
• Crops could be modified to reduce or eliminate allergic affects, e.g. by removing the allergic properties from nuts or altered so they have medicinal benefits, e.g. contain vaccines for specific diseases
• Crops could be modified to enable them to survive and grow in unfavourable conditions and withstand drought or floods. This could be particularly beneficial to farmers in the developing world
• Crops can be created that give higher yields and better quality food. This is particularly important to help meet the demand for food by an expanding world population

Against GM Crops

• The creation of pest or herbicide resistant GM crops could result in “superbugs” or “superweeds” that evolve to be resistant to the chemicals or toxins developed in conjunction with GM crops
• The growing of GM crops could result in cross-pollination between GM crops and non-GM and organic crops thereby contaminating them
• Because it is a new technology, there is a need to adopt the precautionary principle. The long term impacts on human health, food safety or the environment cannot be accurately predicted
• It is too risky to allow the commercial growing of GM crops at this stage
  GM crops which have additional proteins or altered genetic composition could result in toxic and allergic reactions in certain people
• GM crops will result in increased dependency on transnational biotech corporations to supply seed and chemicals, the result being monocultures. This will prove particularly costly and damaging to small scale farmers in the developing world who rely on saving seed from year to year and often plant a diversity of crops
• GM is not the key to food security and GM crop developments to date have largely benefited northern countries and markets, not small scale farmers in the developing world. Food security lies in the more equal distribution of food, access to land and money by the poor

UK Citizens’ Juries

Two separate ‘citizens juries’ that met in Hertfordshire and Tyneside sought to provide concerned citizens with information to help them develop arguments to influence those with power over their lives.

Witnesses were selected to provide a range of views, with no single perspective or policy option being over-represented.

Both juries called for:

• A halt to the sale of GM foods currently available and to the proposed commercial growing of GM crops, a conclusion based on the lack of evidence of benefit and the precautionary principle
• Long-term research into the real risks of damage to the environment and the potential for harm
• An end to blanket assertions that GM crops are necessary to feed the starving in the Third World, given the complex social and economic factors that lie behind such hunger

Further information is available from the GM Jury website.

A HUGE Reading List On The Issue

Curt Rosengren – a blogger who is not a big fan of the idea of GM, but who admits his is ‘more of a knee-jerk opinion than a well-informed view’ – gives an amazing reading list…if you have a few hours!

GM Crops: The arguments pro and con

The Risks and Benefits of Genetically Modified Crops: A Multidisciplinary Perspective

Genetic engineering: The controversy

BBC: Food under the microscope

Genetically modified food: Pros and cons

Pros and cons of genetic engineering

The pros and cons of GM food

GM Products: Benefits and Controversies

Weighing Pros and Cons of Genetically Modified Crops in Africa

Pros, cons of modified food

The pros and cons of GE food

Pro-GM

GM benefits outweigh risks

Study finds benefits in GM crops

A report on genetically engineered crops

Monsanto video gallery

The Alliance for Better Foods

The benefits of GM crops

Anti-GM

Who benefits from GM crops?

Genetically engineered food

Genetically engineered (GE) food – safety problems

Bio-technology myths

Statements on the dangers of GM by scientists

Debunking the myths of genetic engineering in food crops

The risks of genetic engineering

Myths spread by the pro-GM, anti-organic movement