Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
addition, crops have been modified to improve their commercial quality
and nutritional value to make them more desirable to the manufacturers
of processed foods and attractive to consumers.
These remarkable achievements far surpass what can be done by
the traditional agricultural practice of modifying crops through cross-
breeding, a trial-and-error process carried out over generations of exper-
imentation that can be successful only within a very narrow range of
related species. In contrast, the biotechnological approach enables the
splicing of genes from totally unrelated species for the rapid production
of modified crops with traits that could not be imparted by natural pro-
cesses or by the artisans of cross-breeding. Well-known examples involve
the splicing of selected genes from fish into tomatoes to create tomato
crops that withstand frost and the splicing of bacteria genes into corn
and cotton to create versions of these crops that repel and destroy insect
pests.
The ability to incorporate genetic material from unrelated species
into traditional crops makes GM agriculture a disturbing development
to persons whose values and beliefs hew to a religion or tradition that
rejects the unnatural, and to others who have cultural or economic com-
mitments to conventional agriculture. It is also worrisome to many oth-
ers because the long-term consequences of growing and consuming GM
crops are uncertain and could be harmful to ecosystems and their bio-
diversity, lead to inadvertent modification of wild plants and conven-
tional crops, and cause harm to the health of the people and animals that
consume genetically modified (GM) crops and derivative food products.
For these and other reasons, GM agriculture has fueled a global pub-
lic discourse, and the process of developing policies and regulations for
governing GM agriculture has been contentious and has sparked intense
conflicts in many countries.
Another cause of widespread concern is the prospect of biocolonial-
ism. A small group of very large multinational corporations (MNCs)
based in the United States and European chemical industry sectors have
led this new agricultural enterprise and could eventually gain control of
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