Genetically Engineered Crop - Essay Example

Although genetically modified food may be an effective answer to the growing demands of more food products for more people, especially in the poorest areas in the world, where food production is extremely rare, yet there are many dangers that are involved in genetically modified food. Proponents of genetically modified crops believe that this technology can provide an effective solution for the world food crisis. Experts indicate that the food crisis will persist in the world with greater sensitivity in poor countries.

In the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, the dramatic surge in food prices, driven by the globalization of the market economy on the one hand and the mismatch between population growth and low agricultural productivity on the other hand, suggest tomorrow even more catastrophic if nothing is done now to start a real structural development of sustainable agriculture and the economy as a whole. As such, many scientists believe that the solution for poor countries to get out of the food crisis and protect millions of people from starvation is inevitably the adoption of urgent large-scale genetically engineered crops (Council for Biotechnology Information).

They will thus be able to master and apply them to the production of food products to feed the African people and not just the production of crops used for Western industrial economies. However, some scientists provide refutation for this claim. For example, Miguel A. Altieri and Peter Rosset argue that “recent experimental trials have shown that genetically engineered seeds do not increase the yield of crops” (Altieri and Rosset, p. 608). Thus, the strongest point in favor of genetically engineered crops, which is the role this technology can play in confronting food shortage, is challenged by many scientists.

In trying to weigh the dangers of genetically engineered crops, it can be said that this technology is not a totally safe solution for the problem of food shortage. There are numerous studies which show that this technology may have some dangerous impacts on the health of humans. Actually, the lack of adequate testing is one of the reasons why we cannot be sure that the technology of genes extraction can be safe. This lack of enough experiments is extremely dangerous, as it may turn out on the long run that genetically modified food may have detrimental effects on future generations.

Thus, the lack of safety testing is one of the defects of the implementation of genetically modified food approach. Current testing focuses on the growth and development of crops, while there is less emphasis given to testing of the effects on the wider ecology of plants, and the associated effects of this new technology on human beings. Also, we cannot be yet sure of the long term effects of this technology on humans and environment. In addition, another threatening factor in the issue of genetically modified food is that the research about this new technology is currently handled by few huge corporations, whose main aim is to maximize their profits, disregarding the impacts on humans.

As argued by Miguel A. Altieri