Genetically Modified (GM) foods are really nothing new.
Excerpted from source:
AgBioWorld
Genetically Modified Foods Are Nothing New
Our food has long been "unnatural," and it's a good thing. So why all the fuss about modern genetic practices?
By Channapatna S. Prakash and Gregory Conko
October 06, 2003
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How natural are our crops?
All crops are unnatural. Not only are they vastly different from their wild ancestors, but most also had their origin and domestication far from where they are now grown. For instance, the US is the world's leading producer of corn and soy, yet these crops are native to Mexico and China, respectively. Wheat, grown throughout Western Europe, was domesticated in Mesopotamia. The world's largest traded commodity, coffee, had a humble origin in Ethiopia. But now, most coffee is produced in Latin America and Asia.
Florida oranges have their roots in India, while sugarcane arose in Papua New Guinea. Food crops that today are so integral to the culture or diet in the Old World, such as the potato in Europe, chili pepper in India, cassava in Africa and sweet potato in Japan, were introduced from South America. For that matter, every crop in North America other than the blueberry, Jerusalem artichoke, sunflower and squash is borrowed from somewhere else.
All our crops, domesticated long ago, have more recently been improved for human use. Rapeseed, grown in Asia for centuries, naturally contains two dangerous chemicals that make it more amenable for use as a lubricant than a cooking oil. But in the 1960s, Canadian scientists used conventional breeding techniques to eliminate the genes responsible for producing those toxic and smelly chemicals. They named their creation canola (short for Canadian oil), a popular but completely new crop now grown widely in North America and Europe.
In the most fundamental sense, all plant and animal breeding involves, and always has involved, this kind of intentional genetic modification—adding useful new genes and shedding old deleterious ones. And though critics of today's most advanced breeding method, recombinant DNA, believe it is somehow unique, there have always been Cassandras to claim that the latest technology was unnatural, different from its predecessors and inherently dangerous. As early as 1906, Luther Burbank noted that, "We have recently advanced our knowledge of genetics to the point where we can manipulate life in a way never intended by nature. We must proceed with the utmost caution in the application of this new found knowledge," a cautionary note one might just as easily hear today regarding recombinant DNA—modern genetic modification.
But just as Burbank was wrong to claim that there was some special danger in the knowledge that permitted broader sexual crosses, so are today's skeptics wrong to believe that modern genetic modification poses some inherently greater risk. It is not genetic modification per se that generates risk. Recombinant DNA modified, conventionally modified and unmodified plants could all prove to be invasive, harmful to biodiversity or harmful to eat. Rather, risk arises from the characteristics of individual organisms, as well as how and where they are used. Thus, an understanding of the historical context of genetic modification in agriculture may help us to better appreciate the potential role of recombinant DNA technology, and quell public anxieties about its use.
Even though it is guided by human hands, hybridization may seem perfectly natural when it simply assimilates desirable traits from several varieties of the same species into elite cultivars. But when desired characteristics are unavailable in cultivated plants, hybridization can be used to borrow liberally from wild and sometimes quite distant relatives. Domesticated tomato plants are commonly bred with wild tomatoes of a different species to introduce improved resistance to pathogens, nematodes and fungi. Successive generations then have to be carefully back-crossed into the commercial cultivars to eliminate any unwanted traits accidentally transferred from the wild varieties, such as glyco-alkaloid toxins common in the wild species.
When crop and wild varieties do not readily mate, various tricks can be employed to produce so-called "wide crosses" between two plants that are otherwise sexually incompatible. Still, the embryos created by wide crosses usually die prior to maturation, so they must be "rescued" and cultured in a laboratory. Even then, the rescued embryos typically produce sterile offspring. They can only be made fertile again by using mutagenic chemicals that cause the plants to produce a duplicate set of chromosomes. The plant triticale, an artificial hybrid of wheat and rye, is one such example of a wide-cross hybrid made possible solely by the existence of embryo rescue and chromosome doubling techniques. Triticale is now grown on more than three million acres worldwide, and dozens of other wide-cross hybrids are also common.
Finally, when a desired trait cannot be found within the existing gene pool, breeders can create new variants by intentionally mutating plants with x-ray or gamma radiation, with mutagenic chemicals or simply by culturing clumps of cells in a petri dish. A relatively new mutant wheat variety has been produced with chemical mutation to be resistant to the BASF herbicide ClearField. Mutation breeding has been in common use since the 1950s, and more than 2,250 known mutant varieties have been bred in at least 50 countries, including France, Germany, Italy, the UK and the US.
It is important to note that these sophisticated and unnatural breeding techniques are considered "conventional," and go almost totally unregulated. Yet, despite the massive genetic changes and potential for harm, consumers and anti-technology activists are largely unaware of their existence and evince no concern.
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