GMOs: Hint, they can be good

A post from my Facebook.com from back earlier in the year.

 

Nice bit of self-plagiarisation here!

I find that I cannot bring myself to support Avaaz's latest petition campaign. http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_frankenfish_r/?fp

Don't get me wrong, I think they are doing good work and I have signed into several of their petitions in the past few months . Let me explain why I feel that Avaaz are wrong here, and that this petition is misguided.

Their piece reads like a sensationalist article from the Daily Mail. Most of their main points can easily be countered and refuted and I will try and show that the truth is actually the opposite to what they claim. I will now go through their summary point-by-point.

"The US is about to treat the world to the first genetically modified meat: a mutant salmon that could wipe out wild salmon populations and threaten human health ". By using the word mutant Avaaz are overstating the genetic difference between their fish and normal Atlantic salmon, which already have a range of genetic mutations in their natural population, like us humans. In the GM fish, one gene is replaced with that of a Chinook salmon. The GM fish are no more mutated than any other individual non-GM fish could be from the norm. The GM fish would be farmed intensely and it is clear from the Aquabounty website that the GM fish will be housed in inland farms, with containment, ensuring that they cannot escape into the non-GM population. And even if they did, any undermining of non-GM salmon numbers would take many years. Saying the GM fish could threaten human health is mere speculation. Little convincing evidence has so far been presented to my knowledge to demonstrate this in other GM foods.

"The new fake salmon grows twice as fast as real salmon, and not even scientists know its long-term health effects. Yet it’s about to be declared safe for us to eat, based on studies paid for by the company that created the GMO creature!" Its long term health effects cannot yet be known, as this technology is relatively new and studies need time to complete. As for the studies being paid for by the industry, although I accept this is not entirely desirable, it is common practice in fields like drug regulation and approval. Why would national governments pay for studies into food safety for new technology brought in by a company, until that said company had paid for preliminary studies of its own to demonstrate safety?

"A growing coalition of consumers, environmentalists, and fishermen is calling on the government to trash this fishy deal." Well har har. Big surprise that fishermen are concerned by this. Environmentalists should look more carefully before jumping on the bandwagon.

Avaaz's letter to be sent to the FDA once the petition meets its target, fares little better:
"To Margaret A. Hamburg Commissioner US Food and Drug Administration:
As global consumers, we ask you not to approve AquaBounty’s transgenic salmon for human consumption. Genetically modified fish pose a real threat to natural marine species and the long-term effects of consuming transgenic meat have not been sufficiently researched. Worse, FDA's approval of transgenic salmon could open the floodgates for genetically modified animals worldwide. We ask that you reject its approval."

Let's see if it is really GM species that pose a threat to "natural" species. For many years, a process of artificial selection (the only real alternative to genetic modification) has been used by farmers to selectively breed desirable traits into their animals. This is at the expense of other less favoured animals, who cannot continue their line, and is basically "playing God" just as much as genetically modifying species in a test tube. Artificial selection may a be less direct way of modifying our animals' traits, but if this was done on humans it would be called eugenics. The difference is, I think, just as subtle as we see in the trolley dilemma:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

and that of the Fat Man involving direct intervention - but I don't think we should let our emotions rule the day here, just evidence. My issue with artificial selection is that it is forced onto whole populations of animals, whereas GM creatures are created in isolation from existing stocks. I submit that artificial selection is actually less moral than genetically modification, as it has real-world ramifications on animal heritage.

As for the floodgates being opened to many more GM animals, this is once again exaggeration - once the technology slowly becomes more widely used and understood, it would be taken up by more biotech companies and the result would likely be more of a trickle than a flood of species.

Finally, Avaaz and the supporters of this petition don't seem to realise that things can't continue as they are. With the rising world population, food resources are set to become more scarce in the future, unless technology can make up for the shortfalls. Increasingly unpredictable weather patterns affecting crop and farm yields, add to this problem. Individual citizens do not have the same issues as governments in securing future food stocks, but this does not mean attempting to do so it is not a worthwhile goal. As so many people, organisations and governments around the world have refused to participate in sustainability talks or contemplate the action required to combat population growth, the rise (or "spectre", as Avaaz might put it) of GM foods is fairly predictable.

If our families continue to grow, we will need new technologies to secure more food for them. Conversely, if the world population was more stable we may not need to contemplate GM foods. You can't have it both ways, is I think a lesson that needs to be learned.

In summary I will not be signing this petition, and I advise everyone else to think and look closely at the overall issue before doing so.