Genetic Food Modification

There is such a morass of misinformation about Genetic Modification ( GM ) that I’m giving my take on the situation. Firstly I have to say I have no special training to bring. I hope I have a reasonable grasp of the physical sciences but I have never studied biology. I regret this as it would have been very useful at times. In my first undergraduate year I had a choice of either microbiology or metallurgy. I chose metallurgy and regretted it in later jobs.

Before looking at genetic modification specifically there are some things I’ve only started to appreciate over the past twenty years or so. Fundamentally all life on earth is the same. While there are a bewildering number of plants, insects and animals we all use the same basic biochemistry. All cells whether they be in plants or whatever contain a genetic code. This is the famous DNA; the double helix of paired bases . Code is a poor word because it is more like a recipe. The outcome depends partly on the circumstances of growth..

The genetic code of all the food we eat has been modified often over thousands of years. Essentially the process first used was selection. That is a large number of variants are observed and the desirable ones selected and others discarded. Almost all life is genetically varied ( if it isn’t it is known as clone ) and foodstuffs can be bred by simply continuously selecting over perhaps many thousands of generations. This process relies on the inherent genetic variability perhaps assisted by chance mutations. A mutation is a an altered genome by perhaps cosmic rays or other natural event.

This process of breeding can be extended by crossing, that is taking a variety with a desirable characteristic , say a mildew resistant pea and crossing with a high yield pea. In a proportion of the descendants both mildew resistance and high yield will appear. This is a highly simplified description but the essential point is that the daughter will have its genome changed from the parent species by introduction of a new piece of DNA code.

Now this is genetic modification however the term has come to mean genetic change by some engineering process. The overwhelming advantage is that is relatively quick, a few years as opposed to many. The original objection seems to have been based on some spurious work suggesting modified potatoes were bad for you as a food. A vigorous anti GM lobby grew up with the brilliant slogan “Frankenstein Food “ That original work has been shown to be quite false. GM foods are basically closely similar to “ordinary” foods.

Curiously the anti GM claque sees no problem with interbreeding provided it is done the old fashioned way. Another objection to GM in its early form was that it was usually done for the benefit of farmers not consumers. For example maize ( corn ) was modified to be resistant to a particular herbicide. Typically this was done by the herbicide maker to enhance sales of the herbicide. The resulting maize was, from the consumers perspective, identical to non GM maize. Most GM to date is used to benefit the grower not the consumer. The massive scale of this is surprising eg 96% of all soybean in reckoned to be GM.

Although there are GM labelling rules these only apply if more than 0.9% is GM. Given the high usage by growers of GM plants it is highly likely that you have eaten GM food. However the focus of GM is changing to the provision of consumer benefits There are a variety of products designed and in various stages of introduction such as the non browning apple, safer ( lower acrylamide ) potatoes, gluten free wheat ( and hence bread )

Perhaps the most important development is GM modified soybean oil. At present for frying soybean oil is chemically modified by hydrogenation. However this is now seen to be a problem because it produces trans fats which increase the risk of stroke or heart attack. The solution is to produce a GM modified soybean which no longer produces these fats, in fact they become similar to the much  more expensive but much healthier olive oil. This is good news because changing from chemically modified to GM will result in a healthier product.

The really sick part of the anti GM lobby is their opposition to GM modified rice. Golden rice is GM rice changed to add Vitamin A. Deficiency in Vitamin A condemns millions to malnutrition. Anti GM lobbying is making generations of children undernourished when a cost effective ,safe and realistic answer is to hand. This is quite simply immoral.  

It is perhaps hard to see some of the objections to GM. The newer consumer varieties should be clearly labelled. One suggestion for anti GM is the “ yuck” factor based on the feeling that somehow transferring DNA  from one species to another is somehow wrong. ignoring the fact it happens anyway. An example is the monarch butterfly with some wasp DNA in its genome. The human genome contains a lot which we have picked up from other species over the billions of years of evolution.