GMOs VS. the World

Author: Jayce Schwartz

Genetically modified foods (GMOs) are not bad for you! On the contrary, they can even improve human life and help solve the world’s food crisis. GMOs can help improve our food’s nutritional value, decrease food waste, prevent diseases in both humans and plants, be resistant to climate change, and bring many other benefits. GMOs are also being further improved upon through the use of new gene-editing technologies such as CRISPR. However, there is a huge controversy surrounding this type of food. Many groups of people do not think that GMOs have been studied enough and are still a risk. Many critics highlight that GMOs could have a negative impact on the human body, can have a negative environmental impact, reduce biodiversity, and that there are ethical and social concerns in using GMOs. However, there is little scientific evidence to back up these claims. An example of a GMO is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: The left side displays a GMO strawberry and the right side displays an organic strawberry

The FDA advocates the safety of GMOs and states that GMOs can also be modified to improve their nutritional value or undergo biofortification. The first generation of GMOs was focused on farming, but the second generation addressed the lack of nutrients, such as adding vitamins to vegetables. Staple crops are mostly modified, as seen with Golden Rice. Golden Rice is modified to contain beta-carotene, which gets transformed into vitamin A. A picture of Golden rice is shown in Figure 2. This modification can help improve the nutritional value of food and add in vitamins that people are missing due to their circumstances.

Figure 2: An image of Golden Rice next to conventional rice

Another group of second-generation GMOs is being created to help increase consumption and reduce food waste. GMOs can be modified in ways to help increase shelf life or improve sensory characteristics such as taste and aesthetics. These changes can lead to a decrease in food waste and an increase in food consumption. For example, Arctic® Apples has created a non-browning apple, which increases the shelf life of apples and helps prevent food waste. This apple is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Left image shows a normal browning apple and the right shows the non-browning Artic Apple

There are also GMOs being created to prevent diseases in humans and promote health. These crops are known as designer crops. Plenish® has created a high oleic soybean that has zero trans-fat with high monounsaturated fat. An image of these soy beans can be found in Figure 4. The lack of trans fat in the soybean has made this GMO healthier than its organic counterpart and can be seen as a healthier alternative. This type of GMO can help lead to healthier foods and improve overall health.

Figure 4: An image of Plenish Soybean Oil

GMOs are used to improve food security. Weather is extremely unpredictable, and wildlife and insects can have a negative effect on crop growth, causing a decrease in food yield for that year. Large droughts, insects, or even plant diseases can wipe out whole farms, leading to a decrease in food production that can result in mass starvation. GMO crops that are resistant to insects and herbicides, such as genetically modified soybeans, cotton, and maize, have shown increased yields of 20%, 15%, and 7%, respectively [5]. However, new technology is making GMOs an even more appealing solution to food security.

Through the use of gene-editing technology called CRISPR, crops can be genetically modified to become climate and disease-resistant. To learn more about CRISPR check out the video below the paragraph. There are already known case studies investigating CRISPR’s ability to make plants resistant to plant-related viruses, bacteria, and fungi. These types of GMOs are in the early stages of research, but they will likely have a significant impact on the agricultural industry, changing how the world produces food. CRISPR can also be used to turn plants resilient to climate change and disease into consumable food. For example, scientists are trying to make Ammophila arenaria, a grass plant resilient to drought, salt, and the cold, into an edible food source. GMOs don’t have to be improving the food we already eat but can also expand the human diet and allow humans access to more resilient crops that were inedible before.

Video: CRISPR Explained — YouTube

If these benefits are true, then why is there such strong opposition to it? Well, let’s look into the history. GMOs have been around for centuries. Humans have been selectively breeding their food for centuries. However, the GMOs we are familiar with came into fruition during the 1970s. The first genetically modified plant, a tobacco plant, was developed in the 1980s to make the plant more resistant to a common viral infection called Agrobacterium. The first GMO approved for human consumption was the Flavr Savr tomato in 1994, created to stay ripe longer. Then, in the early 2000s, genetically modified foods became more popular in grocery stores nationwide, leading to controversy. People started to question whether GMOs are actually good for you. Researchers responded by conducting studies on GMOs to test their safety on both humans and livestock. 1,783 studies were conducted from 2002 to 2012 [3]. A consensus was then reached by scientists that GMOs pose very little risk to human health. Despite these findings, there is still strong opposition today. A quick summarization chart of the history of GMOs is shown below in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Timeline of GMOs being developed

There are many ways GMOs can help improve the world’s food. They can enhance already domesticated crops such as rice, or even create new foods that were inedible to humans previously. GMOs can improve food security, provide humans with a more nutritious diet, and help prevent food waste. Additionally, the general consensus among scientists is that GMOs are safe. GMOs are a great tool to make our food production more efficient and robust.

Citations:

1. MediLexicon International. (n.d.). Pros and cons of GMO Foods: Health and Environment. Medical News Today. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/324576#identifying-gmo-foods
2. GMOS and Your Health. (n.d.). https://fda.gov/media/135280/download#:~:text=Do%20GMOs%20affect%20your%20health,oils%20that%20contain%20trans%20fats.
3. Bradley, J. (2020, February 25). A brief history of the debate on gmos. ChefsBest. https://www.chefsbest.com/brief-history-gmos-debate/
4. Sara Glass, Jessica Fanzo, Genetic modification technology for nutrition and improving diets: an ethical perspective, Current Opinion in Biotechnology, Volume 44, 2017, Pages 46–51, ISSN 0958–1669, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copbio.2016.11.005.
5. Acker, R. V., Rahman, M. M., & Cici, S. Z. H. (2017, October 26). Pros and cons of GMO crop farming. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Environmental Science. https://oxfordre.com/environmentalscience/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780199389414.001.0001/acrefore-9780199389414-e-217?rskey=rTCqzC
6. Zaidi, S.SeA., Mahas, A., Vanderschuren, H. et al. Engineering crops of the future: CRISPR approaches to develop climate-resilient and disease-resistant plants. Genome Biol 21, 289 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-020-02204-y
7. Zhang, Y., Pribil, M., Palmgren, M. et al. A CRISPR way for accelerating improvement of food crops. Nat Food 1, 200–205 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-020-0051-8
8. This paper has been proof read by chatgpt