I was asked to do an interview with a 5th grader from the Greenville, SC school district about GMOs. This is a great discussion, as many people aren’t knowledgable about what they actually are, and it’s a big buzzword in health & wellness at the moment. So, take a look below, listen to the audio clip and see if you’re “smarter than a 5th grader!”
First I explained to Tommy what GMOs were.
GMO means genetically modified organism. A lot of people say that they are against GMOs but they don’t really understand it. Most of the foods that we eat, especially in the fruit and vegetable category are GMOs. For example, most people eat yellow corn. Corn didn’t start out being yellow – it was multicolored. Through cross-breeding and selective breeding, we made it all yellow. They did that on purpose. That is the original GMO. Same goes with tangerines, or nectarines, or anything that is seedless. Seedless grapes or watermelon. All of that was done through selective breeding which is GMO. Even a mule is a cross between a donkey and a horse, but people don’t object to that.
What people are opposed to now is the high tech GMO where DNA is actually spliced and a gene from a crop is inserted into another crop to give it special properties or remove special properties. This is what people are complaining about, but it’s a small part of GMO. Most of it is just selective breeding. I testified before Congress in early December and even they didn’t know the difference. Mendel was the original scientist who initially discovered selective breeding.
Then I answered questions that Tommy put together:
1. What are the benefits of genetically modifying a food?
Companies that use GMO like Monsanto and Dupont, which are very large companies say that they are doing it in order to make the food safer or more durable in order to make the food less expensive, and more available for everyone. For example they will alter a gene to make it resistant to insects, or even drought-resistant. They want to make the crops more hearty and cheaper.
2. What happens to the genetic strands that are removed from a food?
They are taking out some DNA from one plant and putting it in another plant, and simply discard whatever they don’t need.
3. What is the process it takes to genetically modify a food?
Selective breeding: They take a food, for example, corn and selectively breed the ones that have the traits that they want together and do it over and over again until they get rid of the traits that they didn’t want, and just keep the traits that they want.
Gene or DNA splicing: They’ll take a crop, break it down with an electron microscope and figure out which gene does what things to certain plants. They’ll take that gene from one plant and move it to another plant. They do this in a petree dish in a laboratory. Then they cultivate the seeds and grow the desired type of crop.
4. How can we solve this problem? Like allergic reactions?
Right now, there is no clinical proof that any genetically modified crop has ever harmed a human. They had one study that showed that the wheat that we grow that has something in it called glyodin – when people eat wheat/gluten, the people that eat the gluten will tend to eat more food. But there’s no clinical proof yet that GMOs are harmful to anyone. If people have allergic reaction, for example my wife is gluten intolerant – I don’t think that has anything to do with the food being genetically modified, it’s just that her body doesn’t react well to wheat products.
In my research, I found that they make some plants resistant to weed killer. Farmers are able to spray around the plants to kill the weeds, yet not the plants. Unfortunately this means that the chemicals from the weed killer go into the soil and water sources and in turn our bodies. This is bad because those chemicals are carcinogenic, meaning they cause cancer. But that’s not from the GMO – that’s simply a bi-product of it because they can spray more of the weed killer around it. So at this point, there’s no problem. Until they have proof that GMOs are actually hurting people, I don’t think they will stop doing it. I think it’s important to have proper labeling for people that really don’t want to eat them, but at this point in time it’s helping feed people. There is no scientific proof that it hurts humans.
5. What can the removed genetic strands do to another organism?
The things that they’re removing are to make the plants that they are adding it to stronger or more desirable to consumers. Or so that it doesn’t need as much water for a place with many droughts like California or Africa. Or so that weed killers or insects don’t bother it, etc. Different plants have different natural defenses, and so in the laboratory they are trying to take those traits and attribute it to others. They also do things like shorten the life cycle so it can grow quicker or bigger, to produce more food.
6. Can they cause a mutation?
They haven’t found it at the moment. Or if it does, they don’t let it out of the laboratory. They are concerned that “super weeds” will be formed that will be resistant to weed killer or more difficult to remove. That would be considered a mutation. It’s possible that it could happen, but at the moment there aren’t any.
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