GMOs: Are They Harmful Or Not?
Hello guys, we all have heard about GMOs and maybe have seen the labels on Supermarket where ''NON GMO'' is written. There is maybe a misconception (or not?) especially now with the eruption of the trend of ''a healthy and better lifestyle'' and all the GMO products are in decline. Before we judge something i believe we should make our research and then decide whether is good for us or not, but first let's explain what the term GMO means.
GMO Explained
GMO acronym stands for Genetically modified organism and is a process where a microorganism, a plant or animal has it's genes modified using genetic engineering or transgenic technology in order to give them some traits for a number of reasons like: (according to this link)
- Insect-Disease Resistance: That is the number 1 reason for me. I have very little experience in farming but i have witnessed crops being destroyed by diseases in a day. Also in my village we had an issue with a rare uprising of some worms that ate everything! I bet you all have a story like that or have heard in the news or a farmer talking about it!
- More Nutrients: Basically, the whole idea behind it is to make super crops, with enhanced protein,low fats and other nutritious elements.
- Improved Manufacturing Processes: As they can modify the crops they can make them efficient in certain processes. An example is thae corn as a biofuel with the modifications it can save water and electricity from the whole production process.
- Decrease in Food Waste: as some fruits and vegetables may change color like brown,purple and in the eyes of everyone may look like expired and garbage with the modifications the process of changing colors can be take some time more
The 2 ''Schools''
Behind all of this fuss there are to sides of the same coin. One side that supports the GMO and only think that does good and the exact opposite side that believes that GMO harm everything. Both sides have scientists and companies behind them as well as farmers and normal people. We will try to take a deeper look to what their arguments are as objectively as we can but first we need to learn a thing or two about the production, how much is it and where in the world we can buy these products.
GMO Around The World And History
Before we start criticizing everything we need to understand that humanity always modified things from plants to animals and wolves-dogs is a good example. Humanity always chose the best plants and animals with the best traits and tried to breed them and if i wanna take it a step further and i will ''we'' as humanity breed the strongest slaves in order to have always stronger and stronger to do the heavy building jobs we wanted. Below you can check an infographic that can inform you briefly about the history
source
Now let's move on to where GMO products produce,exist and banned.
The top five countries that produce GMO products are (from the top to bottom) USA,Brazil,Argentina,Canada,India and from 2016 GMO products are grown and used in 75 countries and in USA and Canada labels aren't required.
source
On the other hand 64 countries around the world as well as every country in the EU have as a must to write on labels when the products are GMO or NON GMO.
https://gmoanswers.com/sites/default/files/ISAAA_2016-Highlights%20Infographic.pdf
Are Gmos Safe?
i believe there is no way to find the correct answer here but let's see what the 2 sides have brought into table. The supporters say absolutely yes as you may have imagined and justify their arguments using a report by The National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine with 20 experts on a panel talking about the 20 years of GMOs history and reviewing many tests and reports that were made resulting that GMO are totally ok and safe for us and by no means they can cause allergies and cancer.
The Other side supports the exact opposite and as their first argument they support the fact that there countries that completely banned to farm and grow GMO products so that might mean something. Also at 2015 a statement from 300 scientists released that basically says that social media lie that the scientific community has totally approved the GMO products and that much more research is needed cause the results aren't that clear after all.
Finally, there's a ''war'' of myths and facts that both sides take part in using studies and in case you wanna see more deeply the arguments click here for the supporters and here for the people against it
Do These Products Help The Farmers?
Although in some cases GMO products could be beneficial they can create issues to. A good think as i mentioned in the beginning of the post is that the products are more tolerant in diseases,insects,pesticides and that can help in bigger production. A good example is Bangladesh that has huge fields with eggplants that got destroyed by diseases and insects. When the farmers used pesticides to deal with that, they got sick and lose a lot of money to buy them in the progress too, so in 2013 with the introduction of a GMO Eggplant everything went back to normal and increased their crops!
On the other hand and according to the study that busted a lot of myths herbicides use, increased dramatically and a reason behind this is that these crops are engineered to used with glyphosate-based herbicides. The rise of herbicides led to the rise of tolerant weed and crops and farmers have to spray more of this resulting in the exact opposite from what we said earlier, losing money and even destroy their farm's soil.
My Personal View
I really don't think GMO techniques are that bad and i honestly believe if more money were given for research the results would be amazing. Imagine to have more tolerant and nutritious products, even products that people because of some allergy or something couldn't eat but in the future they could. The possibilities are endless but my main issue is the companies behind GMOs products and the N1 company behind is Monsanto a company that in my opinion had brought so much harm into the planet and it's employees. Just a single fact, their Roundup which is a glyphosate-based herbicide is considered toxic!
So the problem once again is not the GMOs products but lies within the companies that try anything for their sake and their greed and don't get me wrong, i don't have issues with generally the companies, only with the ones that try to take advantage of everything. Till now i haven't eaten GMO products ( that at least i know of :P ), i am mostly eating biological products that their taste rocks but in future who knows!
images and gifs 1 2 3 4
Sources
https://gmoanswers.com/where-gmos-are-grown
https://www.nongmoproject.org/gmo-facts/
http://livingnongmo.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/GMO-Myths-and-Truths-edition2.pdf
Being A SteemStem Member
I know English is not your first language, so I'm sure you've made this error without knowing it. Here, you want to say "Insect and Disease Resistance"
Incest is when two people from the same family have sex with one another. (Fathers with daughters / brothers with sisters, etc. It is considered a crime, BTW.) But you've unwittingly implied there might be some immunity to sexually transmitted diseases with the way you've written this presently.
Just thought I'd mention it.
hahaha as a matter of fact, a couple of minutes before i post it i checked it for mistakes like this one, because when i write, i don't stop to check till i finish the whole thing. At that time i was talking with a friend via skype that is on steemit too and told him to check the post before i upload it to see whether he likes it or not :P His response was ''who is gonna read it it's too big'' '' try and make a fatal mistake and check if the actually read it"
And that i did :p At first it was just a mistake but after i re-read my post i decided to let it slide :P ( now i corrected ofc)
you probably be the only one who actually read it all or at least it caught your eye meaning that still you checked it a bit :P
This is a great topic and I like that you presented opinions on both sides.
I live in the US where GMOs run wild, and there’s are many differing opinions on them. Personally I try not to think about it, but I do make an effort to buy organic and also prefer to support local farmers that don’t use GMOs.
Or, I grow my own plants in my garden!
Thanks for sharing.
and that's i think the best option for now. I do the same too, when i can i buy organic and biological products ( as they are more expensive that the usual products) and also some of the products i buy are from local farms or in general small farms around my country. During summer when i go to my village we have our own plants in garden!
Congratulations! This exceptional post has been featured in Episode 7 of The STEEM Engine Express Podcast. Click the link to hear what I had to say, and keep up the good work!
thanks a lot @ethndsmith!
This is a well-researched article, well done!
Just one thing you might have missed.
Plants get their nutrition from the soil. The ground cannot, however, provide bio-available nutrients without a diverse microbiome in it . The microorganisms digest the nutrients and excrete the bio-active forms which crops need.
Herbicides and pesticides disrupt the soils eco-system, which, in turn, de-nutrify the soil. You end up with less nutrient dense crops in the end.
Additionally, the GMO process wil halter the natural diversification of the crops, which is their primary defence against new diseases.
Dr. Hurber has spent much of his career studying this stuff. He looks at agriculture from a very broad and holistic view. Check out one of his interviews.
so again the GMOs idea isn't bad but the execution especially with those companies behind make things worse! Also i checked about 15 minutes of the interview, DR Hurber explains it really well even for people not familiar with everything.
Thanks for your very informative comment!
Yes, it’s a a complex field of study with many nuances. Learning from the experts, like Dr. Herber, who has decades of experience, helps us to formulate a worldly perspective on the matter though.
Thanks for your reply. Keep up the interesting work.
I think good ingredients will suffice in the future, but I think we should develop more and more genetic variation in our bodies if we consider the effects.
thanks for your comment!
In the advent of modern techology and advanced plant genetics, GMO's could really prove to be beneficial. The only time that it didn't or will not is if it not used to health and resistance use ONLY. Incomplete generation of these products for the sole purpose of revenue is what producing negative effects in the market.
exactly my point! thanks for your comment
On this subject matter, I said with Planet Earth. I think humans believing we know better could potentially be short sighted. Just a humble opinion here...
I try not to eat gmo's but that's impossible to do.
if you are from USA then it's true :P
Guilty 👋🏻
haha
A fair analysis. I agree GMO's are not the problem here, runaway capitalism and increased monopoly is the problem. Any random plant in nature can be harmful, neutral or beneficial. Same with GMOs. In addition I just watched a TED talk about how a team tested 1000 for a week - 50,000 meals - and found that for instance ice cream is actually better for some diabetics than rice, and the opposite - for others rice is better. Why? Because individual differences in how we respond to food are much bigger than anyone suspected. So imagine how that will further complicate the picture. :)
it's as you said! Although progress has been made we have still a path to cross understanding better food and nature. The best part is that of the ted talk you mentioned. It shows we are aware of a lot of things yet and in the future each person could have his own dies that can know exactly what products boost his health or the opposite!