A sweeping new study of genetically engineered crops released last week found no evidence they are unsafe for human consumption. They don’t cause diabetes, cancer, obesity or food allergies, and are safe for livestock as well, researchers for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine concluded.
A sweeping new study of genetically engineered crops released last week found no evidence they are unsafe for human consumption. They don’t cause diabetes, cancer, obesity or food allergies, and are safe for livestock as well, researchers for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine concluded.
That should offer some relief to Americans, since an estimated 70 percent of packaged food contains some genetically modified organisms. The findings from the venerable National Academies also should put a damper on the growing efforts to force foodmakers to slap labels on food containing GMOs.
The study is not the first to conclude bioengineered food is not harmful, and probably won’t be the last. But don’t expect the debate over so-called Frankenfood to end. As with climate change, there will always be some people won’t be persuaded by the new scientific data.
There’s a primal fear that informs so much of the rhetoric: that messing with nature is sure to have dire consequences. Look what happened when we split the atom! Yet, humans have been tinkering with the genetic structure of plants — through cross-breeding and hybridization — for as long as we have been planting them, without catastrophe.
Critics are right that the genetic engineering of food crops needs continued scrutiny. As monoculture — huge crops of just one plant — has replaced crop diversity during the past century, it has fed an unhealthy dependence on insecticides and herbicides. Indeed, most of the crop bioengineering in the past two decades has been designed to develop strains that resist insecticides and herbicides so that growers can use more of them without hurting the crops themselves.
But overuse of herbicides such as glyphosate has led to herbicide-resistant weeds. In response, stronger herbicides are developed, as are crops that can withstand them, and then, more resistance. It’s a vicious and unsustainable cycle.
There’s plenty to worry about when it comes to relying on technology rather than sustainable farming methods. But it won’t be a healthy debate until we separate the wheat from the chaff.
— Los Angeles Times