Is Genetically Modified Food Necessary for our world to Survive? | Teen Ink

Is Genetically Modified Food Necessary for our world to Survive?

January 24, 2011
By Occultkitty BRONZE, Wareham, Other
Occultkitty BRONZE, Wareham, Other
3 articles 1 photo 3 comments

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To make more money and to help with the world food shortage, many farmers have resorted to growing crops which have been genetically enhanced in a laboratory so that they grow bigger.

Many people believe that genetically modifying food is a bad idea, the has been some evidence to suggest that eating it can weaken your immune system, make you immune to antibiotics or even change your genes. In 1998 a test was carried out on rats to see what would happen if they were fed exclusively on genetically modified potatoes (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/12/newsid_2541000/2541001.stm) the rats internal organs had been altered and a gene responsible for producing a plant toxin called lectin had been transferred from the potatoes to the rats.

GM food may also be a risk to the environment, when the genetically modified plants are grown in a field surrounded by normal plants, the modified genes could be passed on to the other plants.
If we discover that GM food is too dangerous to eat it will be almost impossible to completely destroy the modified genes as they will inhabit every plant in the country to some degree.

Food is becoming harder to grow due to odd changes in the weather, this means that there is less food to go around and it is more expensive to buy. People in poorer countries are struggling to afford it, one in six countries face food shortages.
Lots of farmers are beginning to resort to growing gm food as has better pest resistance, can tolerate colder conditions, fights of weeds, has better nutritional value and grows bigger. Unfortunately, due to the potential risks of eating gm food, people who grow it are currently making a loss; nobody wants to buy food that might make them ill (http://geneticallymodifiedfoods.co.uk/farmers-gm-food-issues.html).

I don’t think that genetically modified food will help wit the world food shortage.
It is a good idea, and once the few problems that people have with it everyone will be growing gm food and wondering how we ever lived without it, sadly I do not believe that much of this food will be fairly distributed; the poor countries will still not get any.
I think that the food will still be expensive even if there is more to sell.

Even if scientists manage to make gm food completely safe to eat; nobody would believe them; everyone would continue to avoid buying it, especially Greenpeace extremists who would rather die than eat anything that is even slightly inorganic. It will be very hard to convince people of the benefits of gm food after all of the bad media it has had.


The author's comments:
I wrote this last year when I discovered the Greenpeace website. I was very interested in this subject so I decided to write my own views on it.

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This article has 1 comment.


JuliaSayrie said...
on Aug. 31 2011 at 10:56 pm
I like the article, very informative.  But quite a few typos, errors.