Also, since the government has approved these GM foods in Nigeria, the government should also encourage labeling of these GM foods and allow the general public to make the choice of whether to buy it or not.
Even though these companies claim that these foods have some advantages, the associated health risks that come with the foods make them harmful and dangerous, especially with long term exposure. Disclaimer: The medical information provided on here by Dr. Nini Iyizoba is provided as an information resource only. This information does not create any patient-physician relationship and should not be used as a substitute for professional diagnosis and treatment.
Green America's website is sponsored by Green America members and. Help us meet our Matching Gift Challenge! Originally published by the Guardian December 1st, by Nini Iyizoba A little over a year ago, GMO genetically modified organisms or GE genetically engineered foods were approved to be grown in Nigeria and the issue continues to generate debate in many quarters.
GMO Yogurt: How does your favorite brand stack up? Who will stop it? TheGuardian - August 24, Learn about our sponsor. Together we can protect our beautiful planet and all its people. Donate to our Matching Gift Challenge! Let us inspire your inbox! Use your voice for people and planet. Processed foods are likely to contain ingredients from GMO crops, such as corn and soy.
Most crops, however are still non-GMO, including rice, wheat, barley, oats, tomatoes, grapes, beans, etc. For meat eaters the mode of GMO consumption is different. In this case, the labeling issue and potential impacts are complicated even further. I now believe, as a much more experienced scientist, that GMO crops still run far ahead of our understanding of their risks.
In broad outline, the reasons I believe so are quite simple. As a biologist I have become much more appreciative of the complexity of biological organisms and their capacity for benefits and harms, and as a scientist I have become much more humble about the capacity of science to do more than scratch the surface in its understanding of the deep complexity and diversity of the natural world. I have read numerous GMO risk assessment applications. Though these documents are quite long and quite complex, their length is misleading in that they primarily ask trivial questions.
Furthermore, the experiments described within them are often very inadequate and sloppily executed. Scientific controls are often missing, procedures and reagents are badly described, and the results are often ambiguous or uninterpretable. In consequence, the government regulators who examine the data are effectively reliant on the word of the applicants that the research supports whatever the applicant claims.
There are other elementary scientific flaws too; for example, applications routinely ignore or dismiss obvious red flags such as experiments yielding unexpected outcomes. Aside from grave doubts about the quality and integrity of risk assessments, I also have specific science-based concerns over GMOs. These concerns are mostly particular to specific transgenes and traits. Many GMO plants are engineered to contain their own insecticides. These GMOs, which include maize, cotton and soybeans, are called Bt plants.
Bt plants get their name because they incorporate a transgene that makes a protein-based toxin sometimes called the Cry toxin from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis. Their makers believe each of these Bt toxins is insect-specific and safe. However, there are multiple reasons to doubt both safety and specificity.
One concern is that Bacillus thuringiensis is all but indistinguishable from the well known anthrax bacterium Bacillus anthracis. Another reason is that Bt insecticides share structural similarities with ricin. Ricin is a famously dangerous plant toxin, a tiny amount of which was used to assassinate the Bulgarian writer and defector Georgi Markov in [ 1 ].
A third reason for concern is that the mode of action of Bt proteins is not understood Vachon et al ; yet, it is axiomatic in science, that effective risk assessment requires a clear understanding of the mechanism of action of any GMO transgene so that appropriate experiments can be devised to affirm or refute safety. All this is doubly troubling because some Cry proteins are toxic towards isolated human cells Mizuki et al. A second concern follows from GMOs being often resistant to herbicides.
This resistance is an invitation to farmers to spray large quantities of herbicides, and many do. Glyphosate has been in the news recently because the World Health Organisation no longer considers it a relatively harmless chemical, but there are other herbicides applied to GMOs which are easily of equal concern. While Roundup has not tested as toxic to humans and other mammals, the longer it has been on the market, the worse its effects on soil health and long-term plant fecundity appear.
In addition, Roundup Ready plants may not allow necessary micronutrients to be absorbed by animals consuming them and may also play a part in the recent die-off of bees the seriousness of which cannot be overstated.
Aside from the biological concerns, there are also economic ones about which any farmer is certainly well-acquainted. It is not too early to consider that the amber waves of grain in the Midwest might also be at risk of drought or conversely that the risk of crop-harming downpours — another manifestation of climate change — will also negatively affect grain yields.
Figure 3. Groundwater withdrawal rates in It takes roughly 10, years to recharge water Source: National Atlas via Wikipedia. In light of these very sobering conditions, it is clear that agricultural technology should be focusing on increasing the resiliency of our food crops, rather than fine-tuning them to maximize yield in a narrow ecological sweet spot.
When I was researching this article, I looked for examples of companies working on developing GMO strains that were drought-resistant or would otherwise allow crops to be grown in soils with less nitrogen i. I found Monsanto had marketed a drought-resistant corn product, but that this has not had great commercial uptake and its efficacy was questioned by a scientific study.
Arcadia has formed a joint venture with an Argentinian bioengineering firm to produce a drought-resistant soybean seed. NOTE: After writing this article, I was contacted by a representative from Arcadia BioSciences with more information about the company's drought-resistant soybean product. This information convinced me that the conclusion I made above -- tying present market cap to the success of Arcadia's genetically engineered soybean seed -- may be overly hasty.
In fact, Arcadia has not yet received regulatory approval for the product, so has not been able to sell drought-tolerant soybeans in Argentina. As such, the commercial impact of the product is still uncertain.
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