What IS a Genetically Modified Organism?

It’s highly likely you ate a food that contained an ingredient that came from a genetically modified organism (GMO) today. A genetically modified organism can be any organism, plant or animal that has had its DNA altered in some way. The most traditional example of a GMO is the practice of plant grafting. A farmer grafts two plants if he wants the characteristics of one plant to be displayed in the other. To graft, he fuses two plants together which causes the two halves to swap genes with each other and pick up some of the traits of the other. This can be useful if, for example, a farmer was able to pass on the frost resistant quality of a hearty plant to a more delicate and frost- susceptible plant.

GMOs have many uses, they are used in biological and medical research, production of pharmaceutical drugs, experimental medicine (e.g. gene therapy) and in agriculture; the branch of GMO research and development that usually receives the most attention. A GMO plant has had genes from other plants or organisms artificially nestled into its DNA so it is able to exhibit characteristics it was not able to exhibit before.

One example of a GM plant is golden rice, so called because of its color. Golden rice was developed in Switzerland at the turn of the twenty-first century and is designed to produce a precursor of vitamin A called beta-carotene. Vitamin A is normally found in yellow/orange foods like carrots and sweet potatoes and it is essential for proper vision. Unfortunately too many children in developing countries are not able to get enough vitamin A in their diets and suffer blindness as a result. Since many people in countries where there is a dietary deficiency in vitamin A rely on rice as a staple food, researchers concluded that rice was a perfect vector for vitamin A and Golden rice was born.

However not all GM foods have such idyllic beginnings. Most GM foods are patent-protected. This is a huge controversy, as large corporations, one in particular, are patenting seeds which many people view as a patent on life. These large corporations make their seeds very enticing by selling corresponding pesticides that kill all field growth except the intended crops because they have been engineered to resist the effects of the pesticide. To keep these farmers coming back for more year after year, the genetically modified crops are infertile meaning that the seeds it produces naturally cannot be grown the following year, forcing the farmer to buy new seeds every planting season.

More controversy evolves when these plants are used as ingredients in…well almost everything. Proponents claim that GM foods are cheaper and  therefore have the potential to feed the world. Opponents claim that we have a right to eat foods that have not had their start in a laboratory. This debate is raging, become informed and vote with your fork.