Okay then, Let’s Feed Africa

As we mentioned in our first post that, the people who are criticizing modern biotechnology are mostly people who are better off in life and more affluent. These people aren’t hungry for God sake; let’s start thinking about the hungry kid in Africa who doesn’t know where or when his next meal is going to come.

I’m glad that Swaziland is already holding debates on issues of biotechnology and food security; unfortunately debates do not get food on the table do they. There are people who are standing in the way, ‘copy cats.’ When a few in the first world started protesting against biotechnology, some in the mother land thought it was smart enough for them to do the same… Really?

Before we look at what biotechnology promises to do let’s look at these key facts:

• ·         Today, there are more than 826 million undernourished people in the developing world. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimate that 13 % of the world's population lacks access to adequate amounts of food.

• ·         The World Health Organization estimates that malnutrition causes more than half of all childhood deaths in the developing world. Each year, 10 % of all children die from starvation. Two out of five children in the developing world experience stunted growth and one in three is underweight.
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• ·         According to the Worldwatch Institute, 60 % of all new-borns in India would be in intensive care if they had been born in California.

Through gene manipulation, scientists have been able to alter many of the staple food crops that developing nations depend on, such as cassava, rice, maize and potatoes, to make them more resistant to disease, more nutritional and more productive. With the help of bioengineered seeds that "vaccinate" crops with their own herbicides and pesticides, crop losses to disease and insects can be minimized and farmers can produce more plentiful harvests. Also, crops can be grown on previously un-plantable lands using no-till farming, a type of farming that does not require heavy-duty farm machinery to till the soil but relies on the herbicides within the plant to destroy unwanted weeds.

Biotech researchers have already developed and are field-testing rice enhanced with beta-carotene, a precursor to vitamin A, which is important because rice is a primary diet staple in the developing world. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization recently stated: "The potential to create rice with enhanced micronutrient content illustrates one way in which genetic engineering can contribute to reducing malnutrition. Vitamin A deficiency, which is widespread in the developing world, can lead to morbidity and blindness and contribute to child mortality." Similarly, researchers at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center are developing high protein and vitamin enhanced cassava, the primary source of food calories in tropical regions of the developing world.

The world has or will soon have the agricultural technology available to feed the 8.3 billion people anticipated in the next quarter of a century. The more pertinent question today is whether farmers and ranchers will be permitted to use that technology. Extremists in the environmental movement, largely from rich nations and/or the privileged strata of society in poor nations, seem to be doing everything they can to stop scientific progress in its tracks. It is sad that some scientists, many of whom should or do know better, have also jumped on the extremist environmental bandwagon in search of research funds.

Why should we let the so called ‘environmentalists stand in the way of progress. We are at a point where the world will soon be able to produce enough food for us all. This indeed is a turning point for many societies. Let us for a moment forget about the ‘spoilt brats’ making noise because their tummies are full and think about the hungry kid in Africa.

The Truth about the Truth

One obvious good about the whole GMO (transgenics) debate is that it’s gotten people more informed about what they are eating. More and more countries are putting in place legislations that are forcing food producers to label their food products.

This means as consumers we are getting more and more educated about the food we eat, which will ultimately lead to us eat more healthier food. And by health we are not only referring to non-GMO food, but all food choices that will enrich our bodies. Governments should hasten up the process of putting in place such legislation, so that we can all know what exactly we are eating. Who knows maybe we may find that almost all the food we eat contains ‘transgenics’.

Cereals, snack bars, snack boxes, cookies, processed lunch meats, and crackers all contain large amounts of ingredients that might contain transgenics. 85% of the food that we eat may already containing ingredients from transgenics. We have been consuming these foods for decades now, but there aren’t any side effects that can be reliably attached to consumption of such food. To be exact, no one can safely say that they have been avoiding genetically engineered food and had success in that. They can not also claim to say that they are much healthier than the rest of us who have been proudly consuming GE food. So what there to really point out about the danger of GE food? Simply NOTHING.

Despite the European public's overwhelming distrust of GM foods, the European Union, as part of its Europe 2020 initiative, did spend a decade (and hundreds of millions of Euro) investigating the safety and efficiency of GMO products and found they posed no threat to its citizens' health. This includes the direct consumption of GM plants as well as their use in processed foods and as a livestock feed. "To date," Dr. Steven Novella, a neurologist at Yale University, told Mother Jones, "the reviews conclude pretty universally that there's just no health risk."

What people are afraid of is that reliance on GE food may have not so desirable consequences on the so called ‘organic’ food market. Then there are those hippies who afraid of change. Well only change is constant. Bio-technology is the way and the future for the agriculture industry, it is time we consumers play our part, stop fighting the inevitable, and persuade our governments to invest more in bio-technology research and how it can be improved.

Instead of focusing all this energy on trying to go against progress, we should be looking at critical issues such as food shortages, unhealthy eating, and malnutrition. We should be lobbying governments to provide more food for the poor, and it’s only through transgenics that we can seriously and practically solve the problems we are facing now.

In the end, as Novella argues, GM "is not the panacea, nor is it a menace; it's just one more tool that has to be used intelligently." Just as nuclear technology can be used to both power countries and obliterate cities, genetic modification can be immeasurably valuable (or detrimental) to society, depending on how we use it. So how shall we use this powerful technology we have?

  

May I have a Genetically Modified Pizza Please!

What’s this whole buzz about bio-technology? I mean, we have been doing it for thousands of years, from cheese to traditional brew, and we’ve been enjoying the benefits.  So what are the anti-GMO activists afraid of, that we are finally going to be able to feed 8.5 billion mouths?

 There have been well accepted methods which have been practiced with little intervention. These include natural fermentation, selection and controlled breeding (Conventional breeding), tissue culture; artificial insemination; molecular marker technology; embryo transfer. All these have been practiced since time immemorial, with very little side effects if any at all. We are now at a stage where manipulation of the organism at cellular level to get a new variant. Technology has come a long way to answering the question of food security.

GMOs promise the world higher crop yields. Bio-technology allows for farmers to produce crops that are more resistant to severe climatic conditions, pests, invasive plants and diseases. Crop variants can potentially produce more than organic alternatives. This all make the farmers to produce more at lower cost. Decrease in food prices due to lower costs and higher yield. As people in poor countries spend over half of their income on food alone, lower food prices mean an automatic reduction of poverty. We will finally be able to feed the hungry children of Africa.

One observation that caught my attention on the web recently about the critics of GMCs was that, most of them are actually people who are better of in life. They are more affluent and free from want, which is why they can afford to spend better part of their days protesting against their governments for trying to come up with practical solution to the food crisis. Don’t get me wrong I don’t have anything against freedom of expression or freedom of association. I just think that those spoilt brats shouldn’t get in the way of poor African kids and their next meal.

What we need are some real and practical solutions to food shortage not people who are going to stand in the way of progress. Lord Taverne, former English MP and Minister, said that organisations like Greenpeace do more harm than good despite their "not rational" opposition to genetically modified foods. It is an enormous success story. There are now 148 million hectares on which genetically modified crops are cultivated in 29 countries. 'There are now 15 million farmers in the world who grow genetically modified crops and over 14 million of them are small-scale farmers.'

There are some genuine concerns though!

Some people object to GM technology because it can be used to create unnatural organisms. For example, a plant can be modified with genes from another species of plant, or even an animal. Another concern is that genes used to modify crops could escape into wild plants, creating "superweeds" that are highly resistant to pests, or alter plants in other ways that might cause damage to the environment. Some worry that GM crops themselves might prove to be harmful to either wildlife or the people who eat the crops. Some groups worry that genes escaping from the crops could pollinate non-GM crops that are being grown organically. This could ruin business for farmers whose livelihoods are based on organic produce, and reduce consumer choice rather than increase it.

From my point of view the pros far outweigh the cons. With the cost of living escalating every day, biotechnology can ensure that we pay less and less for more and more food. Question is are you ready to eat a genetically engineered pizza?