GMOs: Savior or potential danger?

GMOs are organisms that use genetically engineered technology to improve the productivity and quality of existing organisms, and are currently being used in a variety of applications around the world. However, the safety of GMO foods and their environmental impact are still hotly debated.

 

GMO: Genetically Modified Organism. When you translate the English acronym, you can see what we mean. A GMO is a genetically modified organism (DNA), which is an organism that has had some components inserted into the genes of an existing organism, or some genes removed, to increase its productivity and quality of goods compared to the original organism. Genetic engineering is literally the art of manipulating an organism’s genes to modify its existing properties, so the history of GMOs parallels the development of DNA. From Watson and Crick’s identification of the structure of DNA in 1953, to the development of the technology to selectively cut specific sections of DNA in 1971, and finally, for the first time in 1973, it was possible to reattach a cut section of DNA to other DNA. This led to the mass production of insulin, which helped cure diabetes, and from this point on, various GMO foods such as rice, corn, and potatoes were produced and distributed around the world. In the United States, the world’s largest producer and exporter of grains, 70 million hectares of GMO grains were planted in 2013, and more than 93% of corn and 99% of soybeans were GMO. As a result, more than 80% of American food contains GMOs. As you can see, GMOs have already infiltrated many aspects of our lives. However, GMOs are also highly controversial.
The main issue that opponents of GMOs emphasize is safety. As the name suggests, GMOs are foods that have been genetically modified to maximize productivity and quality. The field of genetic modification is still very new. The technology has only been around for a few years, and it’s only been commercialized in the last 20 to 30 years, so anti-GMO advocates argue that the safety of GMO foods hasn’t been fully tested. They claim that GMO foods can harm people’s health, citing experiments on animals that have developed diseases and tumors after eating GMO foods. Furthermore, opponents claim that GMO creatures could disrupt the natural world. They worry that GMOs could disrupt the current natural ecosystem, just as invasive species like bullfrogs and loggerhead turtles have disrupted the Korean ecosystem. They also accuse companies such as Monsanto and DuPont Pioneer, the leading GMO marketers, of selling GMO foods to make money, not for causes such as ending food shortages. Opponents of GMO foods claim that consumers and farmers are being misled by these companies by hiding all the harmful effects of GMOs and emphasizing their benefits.
I agree with the naysayers. Their claims are not outrageous, and they have a point. Of course, they are right that GMO foods are dangerous, and the commercial interests of companies like Monsanto and DuPont Pioneer are behind their global distribution. But I think there are many more net benefits of GMOs than downsides.
The way companies develop GMO crops is pretty straightforward. They pick a crop of their choice, and then manipulate the DNA of the food seed. This is usually done by manipulating the DNA sequence of the seed so that the traits the company wants are expressed when the seed is grown. These traits are different, but they all have a common goal: to increase the productivity of food.
One of the most common ways to increase the productivity of food is to make it more fruitful. You can increase the amount of crops produced per unit area by having more fruit on the same size flower, or by increasing the size of the fruit. In China, super rice has become very popular. Super rice produces more than twice as many rice grains as regular rice, resulting in more than twice the yield per unit area compared to regular rice. There is also super corn, which was once famous in Korea as the work of Dr. Soon-Kwon Kim. Super corn is more than twice the size of regular corn, and it was a crop that helped alleviate food shortages when Korea was poor.
Conventional farming involves a lot of chemicals, including numerous pesticides, insecticides, herbicides, and fertilizers. This is because without these chemicals, the crops wouldn’t be able to grow as much as they do. However, most of the fertilizers used in modern agriculture are chemically produced. The repeated use of these chemical fertilizers eventually dries up the nutrients in the area and degrades the land. In addition to this, pesticides and herbicides spread incorrectly can lead to land degradation and the development of pests and weeds that are resistant to them. People use stronger and stronger pesticides and herbicides, and the process repeats itself, eventually creating weeds and pests that are resistant to all kinds of pesticides and insecticides.
The second benefit of manipulating GMOs is that we can work to make organisms more resistant to their external environment. For example, we can inject certain genes into plants to make them more resistant to pests and weeds. This would reduce the need for pesticides, insecticides, and herbicides. GMOs can be prevented from spreading into natural ecosystems as long as the area is closely monitored. Pests and weeds, on the other hand, can spread faster than GMOs, making it harder to prevent their spread. Furthermore, if the genes of an organism can be modified to grow healthily without fertilizers, it would eliminate the need to use fertilizers to grow that organism, thus preventing land degradation.
Chemical fertilizers also have the potential to be harmful to humans, as they are made using chemical methods. When questioned, people will say that they have been thoroughly tested for safety and there have been no problems so far. This is actually the logic that GMO proponents use whenever GMO opponents raise the issue of safety. In other words, we’ve already been using new substances created by modern science that don’t exist in nature, and they haven’t caused any problems so far. Of course, this chemical fertilizer isn’t a perfect example of GMO foods, but there is a connection.
The world’s population is currently experiencing an unprecedented explosion, and with it comes the issue of food shortages. By 2050, the population is expected to reach 9 billion people, up from 7 billion today. Even now, 800 million people are food insecure and hungry, and as China and India’s economies grow, their 2.6 billion people will consume more meat, creating a shortage of grains. Furthermore, urbanization and development is occurring around the world, which means that land for crops is disappearing. So, while food shortages are a problem today, they are expected to be even worse in the future. We may be able to solve this problem through GMO organisms. GMO crops are highly productive for the aforementioned reasons, allowing us to produce high quality and large amounts of food in a small area at a low price.
During this process, of course, the companies that develop GMOs will make huge profits. But it’s not just for their own benefit. In the first place, it will benefit the farmers who produce crops using GMO seeds. But it will also benefit people in poorer regions who are starving for food. Currently, Indonesia, the largest rice importer in Southeast Asia, has tentatively agreed to produce GMO grains and is enacting legislation to combat food shortages in the country. This is not only true for Indonesia, but also for African countries suffering from food shortages, as well as some Eastern European countries. We need to focus not on the profits of GMO seed companies as GMO crops spread around the world, but on the benefits to farmers who are currently suffering from unprofitable crops, hungry people who are starving for food, and our future children who will suffer from food shortages.
The most basic benefit of genetic modification is that it allows us to increase the productivity of agricultural products. But nowadays, we can go further and use genetic modification to harvest crops with different functions. Cancer is the number one cause of death in South Korea. Nowadays, genetic modification is not only used to increase productivity, but also to create foods that contain substances with anti-cancer properties. In fact, rice containing isoflavones, which are said to have anti-cancer effects, has been developed, and tomatoes containing large amounts of resveratrol, an anti-cancer substance that was previously only produced in small amounts in grapes, peanuts, and pine trees, have been newly developed through genetic engineering. In addition, rice with more than twice the amount of anthocyanins, an antioxidant that slows aging, than blueberries, and “sweet rice,” a modified rice with a high content of gamma-oryzanol, which is said to lower cholesterol and whiten the skin, are on the market. The more such functional crops are developed, the more satisfied consumers will be. It will also help transform agriculture into a high-value-added industry and save the lives of dying farmers.
GMO crops can be used in many other fields besides food. One of the most prominent is bioenergy. In the modern world, oil resources are becoming increasingly scarce. Therefore, there is a global call to develop alternatives to petroleum energy, and bioenergy is one of the most prominent alternatives. Bioenergy is energy that can be obtained from biomass (biological organisms), and there are three main types: bioethanol, biodiesel, and biogas (methane gas). Bioethanol is a fuel made by fermenting sugars from grains such as corn, sugar cane, and potatoes or plants such as trees, biodiesel is a fuel obtained by extracting vegetable oils such as soybean oil, palm oil, and cooking oil, and biogas is a fuel obtained by fermenting food waste and animal waste. In this case, using GMO crops, which are more productive than conventional crops, to power bioenergy will make bioenergy more affordable. In this case, the safety of GMO crops would not be a concern, and it would be a cheap way to prepare for future energy depletion.
The safety of GMO crops is one of the most emphasized points by opponents of GMOs and one of the most debated issues when discussing the pros and cons of GMOs. But there’s a flaw in their argument: they don’t have hard evidence. GMO crops have been distributed globally for 20 to 30 years now. In that time, no adverse effects from any GMO crops have been found in humans. Thirty years is a long time to go from one generation to the next. It’s also enough time for the effects of a particular food to show up when consumed consistently. However, there are currently no cases of harm from GMO crops in the world. The animal studies cited by GMO opponents tend to be on mice and frogs, which have a different anatomy than humans, and they also tend to emphasize the results of a small subset of the population, without precise control of variables. The companies that produce GMO crop seeds also conduct more than 75 studies on GMOs, including toxicity, allergies, and environmental effects, and it takes an average of more than $136 million and 13 years to bring a single GMO crop to market.
As you can see from the above article, I am in favor of GMO crops as they are currently distributed. Furthermore, I think it’s an area that should continue to be developed. Of course, the safety concerns, the commercial viability of some companies, and the disruption of the ecosystem are all issues that should be taken seriously by GMO opponents. But I don’t think the benefits of GMOs outweigh the concerns they raise. We can solve many problems simultaneously through the development of GMO crops, including feeding the world, alternative energy for the future, and cures for diseases like cancer. The problems that the naysayers point out can be solved through other means while still promoting GMO policies. Therefore, I am in favor of GMO crops.