Janis

=Focus Question: Should companies have to label their food as genetically modified or not?= The problem is is that food companies are hiding the genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in their food. Most people do not know what is in their food, which is not good, because GEs (genetically engineered) food can have some health risks.

Introduction:
Let's say you are shopping at the supermarket for corn. You do not know that the delicious, healthy-looking corn may be a liability to your health, nor do you know that it has been soaked in pesticides or may have been //bred to be an actual pesticide.// These big companies are hiding the fact that our food is not all-natural, or even remotely natural at all. Companies like those have been trying to keep consumers from knowing they are eating genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. The problem with companies hiding the fact some of are food are GE (genetically engineered) is that they may pose some health and environmental risks, or that people may not want to eat a chicken that has been pumped full of growth hormones and fed genetically engineered corn and only genetically engineered corn. Would you want to buy that food after knowing that? We have the right to know if our food will make us sick or not. There are numerous health and environmental risks in GE food, and as humans, we have the right to know them.



GMO Health Risks
We need to know what our food can do to us (or already did), and people have tried. Scientists have been pointing out the risks of GE food since they were introduced, but every time they have been silenced or fired. Why would that information need to be kept in the dark? Maybe it's because there are so many health risks in GMOs, people wouldn't dare buy it if they knew; about 65 health risks have been found so far. For example, when consumed, Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) does its own DNA splicing with your own gut bacteria, activating the apparently "inert" pesticide inside your digestive system. Also, people may say that GMOs use less pesticides, but actually they may use more; weeds can grow resistant to the pesticides, leading farmers to spray even more on the plants. Herbicide tolerant GE crops have created weed resistance, causing pesticide use to increase by 70 million pounds between 1996 and 2003. Pesticides can do numerous things to your body, such as causing different cancers, interfere with hormone function, cause neurological difficulties, cause low weight and birth defects, and interfere with child development and learning ability. You might as well drink some poison. GMOs actually have a history of medical problems: in the 1980s, L-Tryptophan (an amino acid) killed 100 Americans and caused sickness and disability in another 5,000-10,000 people. The cause, as was found out later, was certain to be the genetic engineering. Also, cows treated with BGH, bovine growth hormone, had (and have) a 79% increase in udder infections, and in 1989 Wall Street Journal cited that 20% of the milk market had illegal antibiotics in it. GE food doesn't just cause disease though, it can help speed it; GE food contains antibiotic resistance marker genes that bacteria can become resistant to, therefore breaking down the wall that keeps disease out. They also have the risk of crating new allergies; for example, if a nut gene is inserted into other, widely consumed food, the result may be a severe allergic reaction. When soy was introduced to the UK, soy allergies went up 50%. No sane person would ever agree to eat something that would do that. We might die, or become disabled, or otherwise ruin our health. We should have the right to know the health risks- and this will improve our society by making us more healthy and knowledgeable about food.

Genetically Modified Potato Plants

GE Experiments
If we had the right to know what our food would do to us, would it be ethical to lie to the consumers just so they would buy your product? In the testing to ensure GE foods were safe, scientists fed GE foods to rats and mice and recorded the changes. The results were shocking. For example, rat babies whose mothers were fed GE soy were considerably smaller than the rats whose mothers did not eat soy. Mice fed GE peas got allergies to the peas. Also, using an advanced mouse test, it was found the peas could be deadly. More than half the offspring of mother rats fed GM soy died within three weeks. Male rats and mice fed GM (genetically modified) soy got mutated sperm cells. Overall, the test results were horrible; the results of the animals fed GE food was the animals had stunted growth, impaired immune systems, bleeding stomachs, abnormal/potentially precancerous cell growth in the intestines, impaired blood cell development, misshaped cell structures in the liver, pancreas, and testicles, altered gene expression and cell metabolism, liver and kidney lesions, partially atrophied livers, inflamed kidneys, less developed organs, reduced digestive enzymes, higher blood sugar, inflamed lung tissue, increased death rates and higher offspring mortality. When a group of scientists (most likely illegally) tested GMOs on children, it was found that the children showed signs of pleiotropy, which occurs when a single gene influences multiple phenotypic (A phenotype is any observable characteristic of an organism: such as its morphology, development, biochemical or physiological properties, behavior, and products of behavior, such as a bird's nest) traits. Pleiotropy is not good, obviously. A perfect example of pleiotropy is the disease PKU, or phenylketonuria. PKU can cause mental retardation and reduced skin and hair pigmentation. All these effects prove we need to know the risks of GMOs, so we can tell how to buy food that won't make us horribly sick.



Environmental Risks
When you buy your corn, do you think about how cheap it is or the risk that it has on the environment? Genetic pollution is defined as "the undesirable and uncontrolled gene flow into wild populations". It is associated with the gene flow of a GE or a GMO to a non-GE or GMO. Gene pollution cannot be cleaned up once it has started, because GMOs can't be recalled once released into the wild. For example, GE plants can cross-pollinate with weeds and become super-weeds. These weeds will choke our ecological system and override all other nature. Then birds, insects, and other pollinators may pollinate other flowers with the GE pollen, therefore carrying on the gene. There is no way found to isolate and separate the mutated plants in its environment. Therefore, gene flow can be a terror to our environment. If a GE plant somehow escapes into the wild, the GE plant and the original plant may have to compete for space. The GE plant, being bred to be hardier, will usually win and begin to control the area. Also, Monsanto Terminator Technology has created a seed modified so when the crop is produced, the seeds are sterile, forcing farmers to buy more seeds to plant for the next season. Not only do GE seeds produce less crops, but some farmers may be unable to keep buying more and more seeds- especially when they aren't selling as much as they were before. So why should companies release this information? If you are an ethical eater, religious eater, or vegan, you may not want to eat something that can choke out the environment around you. It will make our community happier, and also, we have the right to know information that might interfere with our religion- (For example, companies may slip a non-kosher food into a food that is kosher.) which is why we deserve the right to know the health and environmental impacts in GMOs. Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/32800629@N07/3061822169

Conclusion
There are many, many risks in eating GMOs, and yet up to 85% of the food in the grocery store is genetically engineered. There are everyday people eating those foods without any clue of what they could do to your body. As I said before, as citizens of the U.S.A, we have the right to know if our food will make us sick or is environmentally irresponsible. What we need is //clear// labeling on any GE food saying that the food is (if it is) genetically engineered, its health concerns, and its environmental impact. This is what consumers want; recent polls indicate that 95% of the public want labeling of genetically-modified foods, and nearly 50% said they wouldn't eat seafood if they knew it was genetically engineered. What can you do? Boycott companies selling genetically modified food and buy organic (It's not that expensive. Siobhan Phillips bought organic for a month using only food stamps. ). Write letters to the company demanding they release the health and environmental concerns. This isn't about your health; it's about the health of the future of America itself.



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