Humanity has eaten more than 80,000 edible plants throughout its evolution and more than 3,000 varying crops on a consistent basis. Yet, today, the human race relies on just eight crops to provide more than 75% of the world’s food because seed and herbicide/pesticide manufacturers (supported by the United States, the Vatican, and corporations such as Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta, and Bayer) encourage the development of genetic engineering (Sarich, 2014b). This support seems to be working. Currently, up to 92% of U.S. corn, 94% of soybeans, and 94% of cotton (including cottonseed oil used in food products) are genetically engineered (Center for Food Safety, 2015a). But is genetic engineering of food crops and plants safe or is it a dangerous technology?
Genetically engineering plants has been done since the 1980s and it has been controversial since it began. The process can be applied in animals, bacteria, or other organisms as well. Genetic manipulation has been carried out for thousands of years in a less formal way by breeding plants and animals to have specific traits, but the process has been limited to naturally occurring variations (Phillips, 2008). For example, roses have been bred to have specific aromas or no smell at all, and dogs have been bred to have certain types of fur (such as poodles) or height (such as Great Danes) (U. S. National Library of Medicine, 2014).
The use (and ingestion) of genetically engineered or modified foods, animals, or ingredients is a highly controversial subject and has been since it was first introduced. Genetically engineered (“GE”) or genetically modified (“GM”) foods (often called “Frankenfoods” by opponents) are those foods with foreign genes (genes from other species) inserted into their genetic codes. These foods or animals are also called bioengineered foods, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), or genetically modified foods (GMFs). The term “GMO” is the term used most commonly by the general public and health care providers to refer to the overall category of these foods and products.
Genetic engineering was first developed in 1973. By breeding mice to have particular mutations, researchers have been able to explore how certain diseases (such as diabetes and cystic fibrosis) behave. However, the process of altering genes remains inexact and laborious. Engineering a single mutation in a mouse took two years and altered genes often ended up in random locations, or in widely varying numbers with confounding results (J. Kahn, 2015).
The first genetically engineered food was a tomato named Flavr Savr. Created in 1994 by the biotech company Calgene, the GE tomato’s characteristic was delayed natural rotting. This characteristic allowed farmers to ripen the GE tomatoes in the field before harvesting them, rather than picking them while they were still green and pushing the ripening process by spraying them with ethylene gas (the normal ripening process for tomato farmers). The Flavr Savr tomato ultimately failed as a product, not because it was genetically engineered but because, despite its name, it had no flavor. Monsanto bought Calgene in 1995 and discontinued the revolutionary tomato (Barber, 2014).
Later on, the commercialization of GM crops resistant to the herbicide glyphosate (Monsanto’s Roundup® Ready crops) revolutionized agricultural weed management. Prior to this technology, weed control required a high level of skill and knowledge to carry out without harming crops. Farmers had to carefully select from a range of herbicide ingredients and then manage the timing of when those herbicidal ingredients were applied. All this was done while also using nonchemical control practices. When glyphosate was introduced, it was toxic to a large number of weed and crop species, it was flexible and simple to use, and its use was adopted at unprecedented rates. However, unintended problems began to appear—a dramatic rise in the number and extent of weed species resistant to glyphosate and a decline in the effectiveness of it as a weed management tool (Mortensen, 2012).
Today, the market for genetically engineered products is worth almost $2 billion and that number is expected to double by 2020 (K. Kahn, 2015).