Genetically Modified Food

I would now like to take this time to refute the arguments brought forth by my opponent and introduce my contentions. As my opponent has the majority of the BOP as GM foods are already prevalent, I will only provided one contention (and I don’t have too much time on the clock left). GM foods have not been proven safe to eat. All of the “results” and “dangers” shown by my opponent are the effects of GM foods on are small rodents. However, small rodents are very different from humans. Oranges are potentially fatal to mice and will cause adverse reactions. [1] Thus, we should not eat oranges because a mouse ate it and died. This is ridiculous. 60% of the food you eat is GM [2], has anybody died from eating this food? Of course not. Furthermore, according to the same source GM foods are the most heavily tested food products out there: GM foods are screened for nutritional value, any possible allergens, any potential toxins, and anything else that may potentially harm humans before they are shipped off to stores around the globe. In the 1990s, a Brazilian Company tried to insert the gene of Brazilian nuts into soy beans to increase the protein. However, the nuts were a known allergen. Testing showed that these nut gene could cause a human reaction if a human ingested the soy bean, so the project was dropped [2]. This clearly shows how through human testing and careful screening GM foods cannot and will not ever harm humans. GM foods don’t solve world hunger because there is not a shortage of food in this world. It is that some people have no access to food or have financial issues where they don’t have food. World hunger and not having access to food or having a financial issue where they can’t obtain food is synonymous with each other. They are essentially one and the same. GM foods solve this issue. For example, people can’t access fish because the water’s are too cold and the fish die. An anti-freeze gene found in fish can be inserted into other fish, allowing them to live at lower temperatures, thus providing people with food. [3] GM crops have been developed to survive in drought like conditions AND can be irrigated with seawater, not fresh. [4] This revolutionary crop could potentially bring foods to thousands of people suffering from a drought. Instead of all your crops dying, now you have crops that still survive. Thus, GM foods do solve world hunger. Genetically modified crops can easily contaminate other crops. It also increases pesticide use. I invite my opponent to explain his point on GM crops “contaminating” other crops, as I don’t understand how a change in the genetic code of a crop leads to a plague affecting corn. My opponent has also failed to explain how GM crops increase pesticide usage. Without evidence or explanation my opponent has essentially made a random assertion without any base in fact. Thus, these points are voided until my opponent can provide evidence and explain what he means. I will now move on to my constructive case, having refuted all of my opponent’s points. C1: GM Foods lead to larger yields Get this, inserting a growth hormone from Pacific Chinook salmon leads to other fish growing to market size in 16 – 18 months instead of 3 years. [5] What does this mean? More salmon. What does that mean? More food. GM crops and GM livestock all lead to larger yields, tastier yields, and more food. More food is of course beneficial to our society as there are people everywhere who need food. Food is a universal need. My opponent is in favour of lengthening fish growth times to 3 years, reducing the sizes of apples and other fruits, and cutting our yield in half minimum. GM foods as I have shown are not detrimental to society in the slightest and are in fact extremely beneficial. Thus, they shouldn’t be abolished. I have proven my BOP, showing how GM foods need to stay. I have refuted my opponent’s arguments and thus it is a clear vote PRO. . http://pet-mice.com... . http://science.nationalgeographic.com... . http://en.wikipedia.org... . http://nocamels.com... . http://en.wikipedia.org...