What is so bad about GE food?

Question

What is so bad about GE food?

Answer 1

The question could be whats so good about them that we risk relasesing trans-species plants & animals into the environment.

Especially ones that depend on more intensive environmentally damaging agricultre methods.

they may have better shelf life, more suited for the food processing industry, they may provide more profit for agro-business

but they are unlikely to taste better, or have better nutrients than ones grown locally, organically or with care & understanding

Answer 2

Cross pollination with more natural foods.   A grower of corn in Canada was sued by Monsanto for planting corn with their pantented strain of engineered corn.    The farmer didn't plant it on purpose- pollen had drifted over from another nearby farm and gotten on his corn.   Monsanto has people testing corn throughout the US and Canada to see if any of "their" corn is being planted illegally.  

  GE corn is designed for one environmental zone.   If an area usually gets between 30-40 inches of rain a year and it only gets 10 one season, the crop will fail.   Corn that is of a more random nature genetically will have some plants that do well with little rain, some that do well with average rain and some that do well with much rain.   Some type of crop will be harvestable every year, not just a bumper crop or nothing.

Answer 3

It's hard to put the genie back in the bottle.  History is replete with examples of well-intentioned intervention by man in the doings of nature.  For example, agencies entrusted with wild lands management release a biopredator, and the predator becomes as big or bigger an issue as the original situation.

We have gotten to a bottleneck with the genetics of our food supply.  We rely on so few species overall, and so few variations within those species, that to contaminate the gene pool with modified foods designed to maximize profits is perhaps not the best idea mankind has ever put forth.

Answer 4

Nothing.  In fact there are many benefits to GE food.

People tend to be afraid of new and modern technology.  Things they don't understand scare them.  This isn't any reason to bend to the masses and stop development of new technology.

GM foods have been in the food chain for over 20 years now.

Answer 5

well, where to begin....first off, when they genetically engineer food it changes that entire food chain, if it is engineered to be bug resistant, the bugs change to be even harder to kill. The bugs adapt naturally to the human intervention on the food. If the food is engineered to be more resistant to bacterial or mold infestation, the bacteria and mold that is stronger attacks them without the competition of the weeaker strains, so the stronger bacteria and molds have somewhere to live where they don't have to compete with weaker strains.

This leads to more of hte stronger strains of bacteria and molds. The FDA does not regulate that the GE food must be tested first to make sure it doesn't have negative consequences to humans. therefore, it is very possible that the GE food could lead to higher incidences of cancer, disease, diabetes, overweight. the list of possible consequences to humans is innumberable.

If you consider genetically engineered Recombant Bovine Growth Hormone you will see what I am talking about. r-BGH is given to cows so they produce more milk. That sounds nice and everything, but here is what is does to humans. rBGH increases the level of Insulin like growth hormone in the cows, this transfers into the milk, increasing the consumption of insulin like growth hormone in humans. this growth hormone is the same in cows as humans. in humans it increases the growth of abnormal cells (cancer). So by drinking milk from cows that have been injected with rBGH you are directly increasing your chances of cancer. Also, the rBGH causes the cows udders to get infected because they were not MADE to produce 10% more milk every day. The cows are treated for the infection with anti-biotics. the anti-biotics get into the milk. So not only are you drinking more insulin like growth hormone, but you are also drinking anti-biotics and PUS. yea, PUS, like the c**p that comes out of an infected cut. It is in your milk because of the rBGH.

So, yea, GE is bad. and the FDA does not make GE food be labeled as such. Not only that, but milk without rBGH cannot be labeled as such because the Monsanto company that makes rBGH will not allow it. They have sued several different milk producers for labeling their milk as rBGH free.

Answer 6

Actually, we've always used genetically modified food.  The corn you eat bears no resemblance to "natural" corn.  Different types have been crossbred into a genetically modified version that grows better.  Even if it's "organic".

What's changed is that we now can modify the genes in a laboratory flask instead of by crossbreeding.  "Genetically engineered".  That's a more powerful technique.

Some people worry that it could be too powerful, and that we could mistakenly create a "monster" plant that causes cancer or takes over.

Mostly it's prejudice, but they have created some very different plants this way, so it's not completely stupid,  We do need to be careful about it, and most serious people who do it are.

Avoiding eating genetically engineered food because you think it will harm you is almost certainly unwarranted prejudice.  For the people who make it, worrying that it may have unintended effects in the environment, and dealing with those worries, has some value.

Answer 7

There is really nothing bad about GE food!

The bad thing really is that politically driven organizations make it sound scary.

100% it's chemical composition is just the same as the non-GE counterpart. You eat it, you digest it, and you excrete it the same way that ordinary food is processed.

Actually, without it, many people will die of hunger.

And mutation? NO! It's controlled. Not all crops are GE or genetically engineered. They still plant ordinary crops as baseline. Try reading about BT Corn. If we just plant the ordinary corn, it will be infested with corn borers and there would be great  losses from harvest.

Now, you'll ask the insects, the corn borers, will mutate and become resistant to the engineered crop? Mutation is so random, and these insects could still eat the non-GE corn to preserve the food chain.

It's not scary at all. If this means that the harvest will increase and it would feed many, this is the answer to the world's problem of hunger.

Is there anyone from those anti-GE organizations that has a concrete evidence of someone getting poisoned from eating GE food? They may have one, who ate SPOILED GE food.

I'll tell you that you might have known you already eaten some GE food from restaurants.

Answer 8

Nothing is really wrong with the idea of GE foods, its just people with lots of food like to complain about something that can help feed millions who have no food. It's all political fear fed BS from groups like Greenpeace, etc...