According to Discover magazine it’s been almost 20 years since the first genetically modified (GM) foods were approved for commercialization and yet only a handful of crops, including soybeans, corn and cotton are readily available to the public. While the developed world has the luxury of debating the ethics of GM food, recent crises in Africa have drawn attention to the use of GM food as emergency food aid, and in other countries millions of hungry people wait anxiously for field trials to be approved.
The World Health Organization (WHO) states that all GM crops available today have one of three basic traits: resistance to insects; resistance to viruses; or tolerance towards certain herbicides. Future GM food research will target “plants with improved disease or drought resistance, crops with increased nutrient levels, fish species with enhanced growth characteristics and plants or animals producing pharmaceutically important proteins such as vaccines.”
There are a number of crops in development today that could help feed the world’s poor. One of the most promising staple crops is rice, and researchers in Asia are currently working on GM rice strains that can variously: offer higher amounts of Vitamin A; tolerate drought; overcome flooding by lengthening their stems above water level; or tolerate salt water (which affects millions of acres of rice in places like Bangladesh.) Vitamin enhanced corn, and iron and beta-carotene rich bananas are also being studied. More: [discovermagazine]
Need help deciding whether you are for, or against, GM food? Check out: Frankenfood, the WHO, and Action.
