{"id":3657,"date":"2020-04-04T00:55:43","date_gmt":"2020-04-04T00:55:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ambassadors.ucsiuniversity.edu.my\/?p=3657"},"modified":"2020-04-04T00:55:43","modified_gmt":"2020-04-04T00:55:43","slug":"should-gmo-food-be-sold-in-markets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ambassadors.ucsiuniversity.edu.my\/index.php\/2020\/04\/04\/should-gmo-food-be-sold-in-markets\/","title":{"rendered":"Should GMO Food Be Sold in Markets?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Over two years now that I have been studying and reading journals about genetically modified foods, I definitely have gained some insights. Of course, some of the researchers strongly oppose this idea of genetically modifying food products – which on the side note, has been established decades ago –\u00a0while, some researchers see it from a different point of view, that is, this GMO can generate substantial benefits for producers as well as consumers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For those of you who are wondering what GMOs really mean, GMOs is an abbreviation for Genetically Modified Organisms, known as living organisms – be it plants, animals or bacteria – into which foreign genes have been inserted. These foreign genes can be obtained from various sources. Upon the insertion of foreign gene into a particular living organism, it is expected to change the characteristics of the recipient organism genetically or some may even be changed morphologically. Let\u2019s take Golden Rice as an example. From the name \u201cGolden Rice\u201d, first thing that pops in mind would be gold-colored rice, which is definitely odd as rice as we Asians are quite familiar with, is usually white in color. So, how and why \u201cGolden Rice\u201d odds out from the normal rice normal?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Source : Royal Society
Figure 1 shows the difference between our conventional rice grains and Golden Rice. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The\nidea of inventing Golden Rice was definitely smart, and life-saving for the\npeople who are living in the third-world countries where food supplies are\nconstantly limited, thus death rates are relatively higher due to malnutrition\nissues, which in this case, deficiency of vitamin A (VAD). The World Health\nOrganization estimates that about 250 million preschool children are affected\nby VAD and about 2.7 million children die because of the deficiency. VAD can\nhave numerous negative health effects such as dryness of the eye that can lead\nto blindness if untreated; reduced immune system response, and an increase in\nthe severity and mortality risk of infections. VAD is one of the main causes of\npreventable blindness of young children from developing countries. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other than that,\u00a0the Golden Rice Project was established in hopes to provide sufficient foods for people in the third-world countries. Conventional rice takes a longer time to get harvested and supply the people with food, whilst, genetically modified crop usually grow in a larger quantity in a shorter period of time. This is the upside of genetically modified organisms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Global mortality (millions)<\/th>2010<\/th>2014<\/th>2016\/2017<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
Vitamin A deficiency<\/td>1.9\u20132.8<\/td>1.4\u20132.1<\/td>1.3\u20131.9 (2016)<\/td><\/tr>
HIV\/AIDS<\/td>1.8<\/td>1.2<\/td>0.94 (2017)<\/td><\/tr>
Tuberculosis (TB)<\/td>1.4<\/td>1.1<\/td>1.6 (2017)<\/td><\/tr>
Malaria<\/td>0.7<\/td>0.6<\/td>0.45 (2016)<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Table 1 <\/strong> shows the annual mortality from different public health diseases (VAD deaths exclude significant maternal mortality).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the contrary, albeit that genetic engineering came around in the early 1970s, there is still a lot of debate going on about its ethical issues and social responsibilities issues. In reality, nothing is ever too perfect in the world. Some opponents pointed out a lot of downside of inventing more genetically modified organisms – GM crops are potentially toxic, might cause allergic reactions, disrupting the integrity of the plant kingdom by changing the genetics of the plants etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Genetically modified foods possess\na significant amounts of DNA and RNA, consumed in the range of 0.1\u20131.0 g\/day. Thus,\nthere is a slight possibility that the protein produced by the transgenic may\nbe toxic as the transgene coded for a toxin will subsequently absorbed systemically\nby the host. GMOs causes allergic reaction amongst the consumers as well. Concern surrounding this idea relates to two factors is that,\nthe possibility that genes from known allergens may be inserted into crops not\ntypically associated with allergenicity and the possibility of creating new,\nunknown allergens by either inserting novel genes into crops or changing the\nexpression of endogenous proteins. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of these possibilities that may harm human\nhealth has made some of us feeling doubtful about the nutritional value of the\nfood in the market. These GMOs are usually seemed as \u201cunnatural food\u201d. The fact\nthat it has been genetically modified, changes within the genome are unexpected\nand this makes consumers question about its food safety. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Albeit all of that, GM crops are tightly regulated by several\ngovernment bodies. The European Food Safety Authority and each individual\nmember state takes serious considerations upon the requirements for a full risk\nassessment of GM plants. In the USA, the Food and Drug Agency, the\nEnvironmental Protection Agency and the US Department of Agriculture, Animal\nand Plant Health Inspection Service are all involved in the regulatory process\nfor GM crop approval. Consequently, GM plants undergo extensive safety\ntesting prior to commercialization. This precautionary step was taken by\nthe authorities is mandatory and also to convince the people about the food\nsafety of GMOs instead of emphasizing too much on the downside of GMOs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Source : Business Insider
Figure 2 <\/strong>shows the Non-GMO labelling on a box of milk.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over two years now that I have been studying and reading journals about genetically modified foods, I definitely have gained some insights. Of course, some…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ambassadors.ucsiuniversity.edu.my\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3657"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ambassadors.ucsiuniversity.edu.my\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ambassadors.ucsiuniversity.edu.my\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ambassadors.ucsiuniversity.edu.my\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/87"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ambassadors.ucsiuniversity.edu.my\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3657"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ambassadors.ucsiuniversity.edu.my\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3898,"href":"https:\/\/ambassadors.ucsiuniversity.edu.my\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3657\/revisions\/3898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ambassadors.ucsiuniversity.edu.my\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ambassadors.ucsiuniversity.edu.my\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ambassadors.ucsiuniversity.edu.my\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}