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Mexico, Say it Ain’t So!
So, evidently, Mexico is going to allow the legal introduction of genetically-modified corn into its borders. Mexico is the birthplace of corn, and contains even today contains more than 200 native corn species. Granted that the Mexican government has stated that this will be a test project for study, Mexico has reversed course on its outright ban of GM corn. This may be too much of a concession already.
What is the problem with this development, you ask? Well, let us begin with safety. To my mind, there is nothing wrong with the idea of genetically-modified crops, in principle. In practice, however, it must be demonstrated that the introdction of transgenes foreign crops does not render these crops unsafe or less safe to eat. To this point, this has not been done. In fact, the U.S. government - the USDA and the FDA under the Bush Administration, the Clinton Administration and the second Bush Administration - have largely abdicated their role of rigorous testing of these foods, and have in fact lessened regulatory restrictions in an effort to increase (or at least not decrease) foreign trade and promote the biotechnology industry. Furthermore, it has been detemined that the genes from GM crops tend to cross over into the progeny of native species, so if it turns out that the GM foods are in fact unhealthy in and of themselves, this will affect the fitness for human consumption of many other crops. As an example, genes from GM corn has already been found in number of non-modified species, some of which were a great distance from the original trans-genic crops. Check this out. Not only do we have to wonder if the process of introducing a transgene in a food species results in unhealthy characteristics of that food plan, but there is the uncertainty of whether there are undesirable sideeffects produced by resultant transgene. The only way to settle this question is rigorous laboratory testing, which should be done before the crop is placed outdoors in a field.
Also, there is the problem of biodiversity: With genetic drift that occurs among plant species, there is the risk that GM crops will dominte those of native species. This would result in fewer and fewer food species in the world and fewer options if the GM crops proved to be problematic for some reason (suceptibility to some strain of infection or infestation for which older, native species have evolved a more robust protection, is but one example). We already have much evidence for what happens when we as humans selectively overbreed food species for certain traits (usually uniformity, and scalability) without regard to traits that are being lost: The most commonly grown turkey in this country, the one kind that more than 90% of us eat on Thanksgving, can no longer fly, or even reproduce on its own without human effort, due to human breeding for selective traits; The vast majority of the corn that we produce in this country - in Iowa and much of the Midwest - is genetically modified and grown for uniformity, selected for dense use of land, and resistance to pesticides - is completely unpalatable to humans. The corn we crow cannot even be used for food. It is grown as a comidity crop, and must be processed before we can eat it, and is processed into components of most of the food that eat (corn, in one form or another, is nearly ubiquitous in food products). We grow fewer and fewer crops in this country, and therefore or food comes from fewer and fewer sources, making them more susceptible to natural disturbances and politcal ones (the amount of our foood that we import is steadily increasing). The resiliency of our food supply is at risk. We do not want to allow genetic modification of crops to tempt us to breed food crops for indidual traits, with the sole purpose or commodification in mind.
The pantenting of food: GM crops also have the potential to allow large agri-businesses the potential to actually patent food. More than 90% of the soybeans and corn grown in this country are genetically-modified, and most of the world’s GM crops are owned by one company, Monsanto. The ability for one or even a handful of companies to own and/or patent the rights to food crops is a very dangerous position, indeed. I urge you to check out the documentary, The World According to Monsanto.
Until and unless these problem areas are adequately addressed, I will vehemently resist the increasing encroachment of GM crops.
p.s. I originally meant for this post to be much more consice and to-the-point, but it has ended up as a bit of a rant. (So many of the issues related to food safety and health and agricultural policy are inter-related. I promise the next one will be more on topic.
