Mexico considers genetically-modified food
Controversy is brewing in Mexico over a new law for reviewing the use of genetically-modified foods. Genetically-modified foods, or GM foods, are plants that scientists have altered in the lab. Scientists will take a gene from one plant—say, a gene that helps the plant fight disease—and give it to another plant that can be raised for food, such as corn.
GM crops can produce more food to feed the world's people. But there are risks. Genes are complicated things—no one knows how changing one gene will alter the plant. And once the GM plant is out in the field, it may affect other plants and animals.
Because of these concerns, Mexico has banned GM foods. The new law creates a procedure for reviewing GM proposals. Proponents think this will be a great boon for Mexico's poor and hungry. But opponents worry about the lasting effects of toying with nature.
What do you think? Do the benefits of GM food outweigh the risks?
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wooh hoo somebody is cranky about this topic
Most crops and livestock are genetically modified -- in the sense that thousands of years of selective breeding has resulted in plants and animals raised on farms that are vastly different from their ancestors in the wild.
I think Mexico should adapt GM foods because it will feed it poor.
But GM food could be dangerous. There just hasn't been tons of testing done by independant reputable sources. I'm sorry, I don't trust Monsanto, Cargil, ADM, to find out if it is safe, considering these companies stand to make billions if GM foods are rolled out around the world.
In many cases GM foods are purposefully sterilized. That way the farmers have to buy new seed from the seed company each year. One of my biggest fears is some strain of corn that's sterile mixing with crops all over the world and rendering them all sterile. All of a sudden we get a huge collapse in the ecosystem and lots of poor people would be hurting then. It sounds ridiculous, but so does the idea that these big profit driven companies know all the impacts of this kind of ecosystem change.
I am not totallly anti GM foods. I guess we just needs lots more funding for independent review and testing before this stuff goes on the market. Even, then governments need the ability to protect the needs of their people above the needs of mega-corp. X,Y, or Z.
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bryan kennedy
Science Buzz Site Admin
Eww. This was really gross. I didnt like this article.
well if you think its gross your really dumb. GM foods are in a lot of the products you eat. in your lifetime you will have eaten over 100 GM foods. so if you disagree you should stop eating anything so you won't get grossed out.
I was born in mexico and I dont think that GM foods are safe,corporations are in the business of making billons they dont care about safety.Plus loosing natural genetic varieties is bad just remember the migration of irish people to the us after the only variety of potatos got diseased.The one who said that all foods are geneticament modified for thousand of years is wrong because none of them have a bacteria gene in them like most of GM foods today.
I stand by my previous statement--virtually all foods have been genetically modified. For thousands of years, this was done through selective breeding. A farmer would mate a large bull with a large cow in hopes of them producing equally large offspring. Over hundreds of generations, this would produce a new breed of large-bodied cows. Or high-yield milk cows. Or whatever.
The same with plants. Wild maize (American corn) was a grass with a small seed pod. Over thousands of years, American Indian farmers selectively pollinated and raised the plants with the largest seeds, leading eventually to enormous corn cob we know today--a food which never existed in the wild.
All of these are examples of genetic modification, through selective breeding.
Gerardo is correct, however, in noting that only recently have scientists been able to take a specific gene out of one organism and splice it into the DNA of another. This form of genetic modification is indeed new.
kk this is so stupid...it dosent tell me the companies that produce this food...
there're just a lot of risks associated with GM food that Mexico shouldn't take...
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