Freeway -Gene manipulation: vision or madness?

Gene manipulation: vision or madness?

The gene manipulation is a very pressing issue in many aspects. In what can we trust? Many believe that gene manipulation could save the world from starvation. Is that true? The manipulated food is soon a common element in your supermarket. How will you act? Are you going to buy it?

Trying to "improve" organisms, growths and animals, in order to be able to make a better use of them is not a new phenomenon. Most of the growths we cultivate and animals we breed is the result of hundreds and thousands of years of rearing and refining. Very few or none of them have exactly the same qualities that their precursor had when they lived freely out in the nature. Spokesmen of Gene manipulation often claim that they do nothing else but things that people always have done: to refine growths and animals. This is however not the whole truth. The traditional refining means to work with the materials that already exists in an arts gene pool. Nothing new is added. You just work with the qualities that the specific specimen or individuals has got. The gene technology is about “picking” genetic material from one species and put it into another, that normally not could be crossed and propagated. You can for example take DNA from a seal that lives in an arctic climate and transfers it to a cucumber so it will endure frost and chill. These two have naturally absolutely nothing to do with each other.

It can be here any day now, the gene manipulated food, in your supermarket.

In several aspects the genetics is now the most important question within provision politics. Development is very fast and this is a question that can have effects for ever on. In the USA for example 44 % of all sales of soybeans are gene manipulated. Since research is very expensive the pressure from the Gene companies is big.

So this is the existing dilemma:
The technology of gene food can probably give us a quantitative short-term gaining, but we don’t know so much about the quality aspects and the consequences on long term. It’s a common opinion that gene manipulated food could save the world from starvation. But there is always a hitch. We don’t know what will happen if we start eating gene food in the future. What will happen in 5 generations?
What will happen with none manipulated growths and animals? Will they have a chance to survive or will they totally disappear?

Could the gene food save the world from starvation?
Zambia has bought corn in the USA, via the World Food Programme (WFP). USA sent gene manipulated corn, and Zambias government refused to accept it. Together with other African governments they have refused to distribute the corn to the people. They fear that the new corn will form hybrids with the existing species and give a worse, maybe dangerous product.

-We know very little about the effects of genetic manipulation. People in Europe are more suspicious about this than the American people are. Because of that Zambia and also other African governments had refused to distribute the maize. As a result tonnes of maize is now stored in state controlled storages and is not distributed to the people (in Zambia). At the same time people are starving and are in great need of seed in order to be able to get a new crop the next year. Otherwise the farmers’ storages will become entirely empty

Also Mugabe have rejected assistance from the USA that means10 000 tonnes of corn, with the argument that the USA is not have giving any guarantee that the corn is not gene manipulated.

Maybe gene food can stop the starvation in the world but then the big gene companies should be bound to give evidence that the food keeps the same class as regular cultivated food. I think it is correct of these countries to be suspicious but on the other hand people are starving and in immediate need for food. In this situation I don't think the fear for what could happen in the future weighs up the hunger this food would be able to satisfy.

How come that gene manipulated food is sold in industrialized countries? Of course it is the producers’ need of great profits that rule the production of this manipulated food. It is very important that the costumers are informed of the advantages and disadvantages of these products. In the end it is just the costumers’ choices that can make changes.