GMF on my table?

Over the years food has played a vital role in the survival and development of our civilization.  Our ancestors discovered how to secure food by hunting and gathering and they also learnt how to commercialize it, but we have gone far beyond that now. Nowadays scientists can manipulate food through advanced genetic engineering techniques to produce genetically modified food or transgenic food. 

But what is transgenic food? a genetically modified food is any plant, animal, or micro-organism whose genetic material has been altered by adding one or more genes to it in order to improve it in some way.  GMF has been proposed as a potential solution to cover the food needs in the future as the planet’s population continues to grow. This food supply is going to be possible through different ways that are going to improve the quality of food production some of them are: pest resistance, herbicide tolerance, decay tolerance, cold tolerance, salinity tolerance and increased nutrition wherein food is modified to contain additional vitamins and minerals to alleviate nutrient deficiencies in third world countries. 

Nevertheless, environmental organizations, some scientists and public interest groups have all questioned the use of GMF and criticized the agribusiness for trying to exacerbate the effects of an industrial production that don’t favorate the little farmers, besides GMF are accused of producing environmental hazards, human health risks, as they could bring new allergies, food contamination and organic problems. By the other hand, the  GMF sanitary risks in long term are not being evaluated, the biotechnology industry doesn’t’ want to show the possible health problems that this kind of food could bring to our lifes. Another important issue is that agribusiness industries believe that labeling should be voluntary, by the way consumer interest groups are demanding labeling. We can’t denied the GMF benefists, but don’t you think that we as consumers have the right to know what  are we eating? 

Watch this interesting documentary and make your own conclusion