The Pros And Cons Of GMO Science

In 1798, Thomas R. Malthus predicted that there would be a shortage of the world’s food supply due to the fast growth of the world’s population. Up until the Green Revolution, which occurred between 1940 and the late 1960s, there were fears that Malthus’ prediction would come true. The Green Revolution brought about a remarkable increase in the world’s food supply, easing fears of great human sufferings had there been a huge shortage. However, the fears of having a shortage of food supply have concerned many once again due to the alarming rate at which the world’s population is increasing today. The world’s population only took twelve years to grow from six to seven billion between 1999 to 2011 compared to the thirty-three years that it took

The first ever GM food was produced in 1982, the antibiotic resistant tobacco plant, which was made to be resistant to herbicides. The first genetically modified crop approved for sale in the U.S was the FlavrSavr tomato in 1994, which was created for a longer shelf life (Bruening & Lyons, 2000). As the examples have shown, the original purpose of extending GMO science to food was to increase the profits of companies producing those crops. The herbicides-resistant tobacco was created to increase the yield of tobacco plants and the FlavrSavr tomatoes had a longer shelf life which meant an increase in the sale of the tomatoes. There were huge protests that went on against GM food precisely due to this reason. Environmental activists, especially, were up against GM food because many of the food were genetically modified to benefit the producers rather than consumers. Some might argue that all these changed when the Golden Rice (GR) was created in 1999 by Professor Peter Beyer and Ingo Potrykus. The agenda of the Golden Rice experiment was to find a way to introduce beta-carotene into rice because many children living in very poor conditions severely lacked Vitamin A in their diet, causing them to go blind and even caused deaths. By having beta-carotene in rice, it allowed the poor to have access to Vitamin A without having to spend money to buy fruits or other crops that contained Vitamin A. According to Peter Pringle in his book Food Inc. in 2003, although the initial purpose of having GR was of a good cause, GR eventually turned into a money-making tool for big companies as well. The experiment had infringed seventy patents that are owned by thirty-two different companies. The majority of the ownership of GR hence belonged to private companies and when this was revealed, criticisms towards it