Should We Be Avoiding Genetically-Modified (GM) Foods?!
Answers:
There's no evidence that they are bad for your health. Some more legitimate concerns have been brought up relating to their environmental stability but as of yet there's no health risk.
Personally, I would like to see them better regulated. New GE foods should probably be analyzed for safety more closely.
Then again, the same risks occur with natural foods. Many of the foods we eat today are asexual clones of natural foods (bananas or apples, for example) precisely because the natural versions vary so drastically in taste, appearance AND chemical and genetic makeup. There is a naturally occurring variety of potato, for example, that will poison you if eaten. This isn't something that is engineered, it's simply the byproduct of allowing a food product to have sex, so to speak.
Yes, if you can. Not only for the possible health implications, but also to boycott the agri-business interests that are trying to modify the biosphere so they can control the world's food supply. That is an insanely bad and dangerous idea.
It is well established, and not debated, that these GM strains aggressively cross-pollinate with natural strains and nature's versions of these foods are rapidly becoming extinct as a result! It is contaminating the entire genetic makeup of the biosphere and Monsanto admits this.
This is the intention. Now, Monsanto can go to independent farmers that don't use their products, and SUE THEM if they find one of their GM strains among the crops. But how are you going to keep your crops pure when the entire ecosystem is being infiltrated by GMO?
Here's another thing to think about. When you have the entire global food supply being grown from a small handful of proprietary seed strains, what happens when a virus or pest emerges that those strains are not equipped to deal with? You end up with a global food blight of catastrophic magnitude. With NATURAL crops, there is redundancy, there are many different strains with different defenses and weaknesses so that no single threat can ever eliminate all of the food supply. That's how nature designed it to work. Is Monsanto smarter than nature? Even if they were, can we really trust their motives?
We should be putting pressure on the government and FDA to stop working for Monsanto and start working for the people again.
It is not certain whether they are safe to eat, because proper studies have NOT been conducted. So it is flat out WRONG to say "bottom line, it's safe to eat." You don't know that!
There are plenty of reasonable suspicions as to why it may be unsafe to consume GM foods, but since almost all the research on the topic is being conducted by Monsanto's own people, I wouldn't hold my breath for negative findings to be published.
The underlying problem is that we have an FDA that takes Monsanto's word on everything without even considering the work of independent researchers.
Ethically yes.
There is no way of knowing what the long term impact from these plants will be on our ecosystem. The practice of bringing human made modifications to plants , which in some cases go quite far , should really be avoided. Plants that are made to be sterile do find a way to reproduce if sufficient numbers exist .. Nature is like that. So , if they aren't economically viable , they wont be produced any more. So don't buy products that contain them.
(do understand that some very close to home brands for sweets and other things you wouldn't think about at first , use GM foods as ingredients . The big problem isn't Giant GM tomatoes in the produce section .)
Health wise no.
Mostly GM crops are just as safe to eat as their non GM counterpart .. that being said they are usually bred for quantity which doesn't insure a nice taste by itself. Bottom line , they are safe to eat.
Fds, if you were in your supermarket, would you be able to tell the difference? We all could be having GM foods and not know it. I have reasons for putting my answer this way, this was a discussion topic at one of our industry seminars.
Yes
Yes
Yes!!