Genetic Engineering in Agriculture

Thank you for your acceptance. I too look forward to this debate. Con and I's first point is the concern of safety in GE foods. Con states that he will demonstrate GMO's to be detrimental to human health, however GMO is a broad term for a process with many applications, not too mention many methods of implanting modification. If we are to discuss safety of GMO's we have to look at each one individually as they are not all modified to confer the same traits. When considering GMO's there is a process each must undergo before going to market known as substantial equivalence which to the means: A food or food product that has the same intended use and characteristics as an earlier food or food product that has already passed the FDAs safety inspections, or has different characteristics but data demonstrate that the new food or food additive is as safe as the previous food or food product and does not raise different issues of safety. No additional safety inspections are required for new foods or food products that are deemed substantially equivalent.(Source: http://www.csa.com..., http://www.fda.gov...) While many problems may arise in genetic engineering they are problems contained in a lab where kinks can be worked out while keeping the plants from contaminating like species. Even after these tests the USDA requires farmers growing GMO's to buy a permit unless they meet six requirements: 1) the plant can not be a noxious weed; 2) the genetic material implanted is compatible with the plant's own genome; 3) the function of the introduced gene is known and does not cause plant disease; 4) the GM plant is not toxic to non-target organisms; 5) the introduced gene will not cause the creation of new plant viruses; and 6) the GM plant cannot contain genetic material from animal or human pathogens (Source: http://www.aphis.usda.gov... ). Under these inspections I believe most any concern on impact should be well covered, however there is no such thing as an absolutely safe product. Further, the same scientific organizations who are trusted on their consensus of global warming are commonly not trusted when they also claim that GM foods available are also safe. (Source: http://gmopundit.blogspot.com...) This is not to say that I don't think that safety testing standards could not improve, as it surely well as our knowledge and technology advances. The second issue con presents I will need a little more clarification on as I'm not entirely sure exactly what is meant by "...scientific-political practices that are not promoting our civil liberties." Con then makes a great point in his third part, one I couldn't agree with more. We waste a lot of food in this country. As someone with thirteen years in restaurant service I have seen it first hand. This concern is exactly what makes GMO's exciting to me, forget the bigger crop, con's right we're generally throwing it out. But why are we throwing it out? It's not because it's still good and we don't want it, but because it expired before we found the time to eat it. This concern has not gone unnoticed and the National Institution of Plant Genome Research stepped up in 2010 to do something about it. By suppressing two enzymes in the tomato researchers were able to triple its shelf life, the conventional lasting an average of 15 days while the modified tomato was good for 45 days. (source: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com...) The implication of this is that we could have higher yielding crops, meaning less area is needed for agriculture, as well as food that doesn't spoil as quickly means that grocers will sell more of the produce they bring in, since it will not go bad before it's sold. Con's fourth concern, that modification will lead to the evolution of new diseases, however much the opposite is occurring in the world; we are modifying plants to be resistant to new diseases. A real world example of this is the Hawaiian papaya, which was nearly wiped (94% drop in production) out in the 1960's due to a disease called Ringspot virus. In 1998 papaya was engineered to confer resistance to the virus and could be used by the organic farmers as protection to their non modified papaya. (Source:http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com..., http://hawaiitribune-herald.com...) The last concern I will address here is whether or not plants can be modified to combat global warming. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley and Oak Ridge National Laboratories have been working on modifying trees to do just that. By altering their metabolic pathway the hope is that more CO2 will be sent to the roots, ultimately trapping it in the soil. Farmers also use less fuel since less pesticides are used, as well as a decrease in fertilizer's, and plants with improved nitrous fixation keep nitrous oxide from forming, which has 296 times the impact of CO2 on global warming and lasts much longer in the atmosphere, as well as impacting rivers, lakes and oceans. Technology will continue to lessen the impacts on the environment, but just like safety there's likely never going to be a completely environmentally friendly method of farming. (Source:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov..., http://www.eurekalert.org..., http://www.europabio.org..., http://www.epa.gov...)