The Technograph

There is much speculation about the technologies that make the production of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) more viable. GMOs are largely misunderstood, however. They have actually been in existence in some capacity since crops were first domesticated. But it is admittedly hard to ignore the unnatural aspects of the genetic modification of anything, including the food we eat.

Crop sciences professor Emerson D. Nafziger provides insight into genetic modification of crops on his frequently asked questions website, via the StratSoy website developed by the College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences. He explains that all of the crop cultivars that we use today “were bred to be more productive, more pest resistant, or produce better or different quality of product than did previous cultivars,” through the modification of genes that were “from within the same species, or at least the same genus.”

Now, new advancements have allowed the development of commercially-available herbicide-resistant soybean and insect-resistant cotton and maize cultivars that utilize non-traditional breeding techniques. Nafziger defines a GMO crop as “any genetic plant type that has had a gene or genes from a different species transferred into its genetic material using accepted techniques of genetic engineering.” Beyond food, safflower, a thistle-like plant, has been shown to produce human insulin more inexpensively and manageably than previous methods of insulin extraction from animals. Genes for certain vaccines have even been transferred successfully into crops, meaning that merely eating a banana could inoculate a person against diseases. Possibilities such as these exemplify how experimentation outside of a gene’s species is valuable.

The technology that allows scientists to break down the “natural” barriers of interbreeding genetically-similar organisms has brought about many questions. What would a corn plant with an animal or even a human gene produce? What would a bacterial gene do when placed into an animal? What could the unintended consequences be? Professor Nafziger poses the possibilities of “allergic reactions to environmental disasters based on unanticipated changes in aggressiveness of disease organisms” and the ethical concerns associated with interspecies gene transfers: “if a human gene is transferred into a corn plant, does eating the grain from such a plant constitute cannibalism?”

It is important to recognize, however, that there has been no documented case of a person’s or animal’s genome being affected by eating a GM crop. This is due to the fact that “genetic material eaten as food is generally denatured and inactivated, and thus cannot reach the cells of the animal to become part of, or alter, the genome.” So, while genetic modification is indeed unnatural, its prospective applications are beneficial, even if it may result in a new form of cannibalism.

Tagged with: corn, cannibal, gmo, genetics, nafziger