Nowadays we live in a world that is constantly changing and advancing due to countless beneficial inventions of technological advancements. Scientists always discover and implement new ways to help society and our future generation through enhanced food products. Genetically engineered food which also called genetically modified organisms has become an immensely controversial topic throughout the world. Numerous people do not even know what GMOs are. According to the World Health Organization(2014), GMOs are foods derived from organisms, plants or animals, whose DNA has been converted by genetic engineering. Although a number of people never consume GM crops, I believe that they will eat them after knowing their benefits which are high nutrition, environmental benefits, and more vaccines.
First of all, high nutrition contents are the major pros of GMO. Daniel Norero(2018) indicated that several people suffer from vitamin A deficiency which caused symptoms ranging from blindness to xerophthalmia. Therefore, vitamin A deficiency leads totally to 5000 cases of permanent blindness, nearly millions of cases of xerophthalmia, and over 2 million death annually (Norero,2018). As a result of these death numbers, Ingo Potrykus, a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and Peter Beyer, a professor at the University of Freiburg, collaborated and created golden rice to address the problem of vitamin A deficiency ( Baranski,2013). The International Rice Research Institute proclaimed that golden rice has been genetically modified to contain beta-carotene, provitemin A in order to save people’s lives. U.S president Bill Clinton stated that “If we could get more of this golden rice, which is a genetically modified strain of rice, especially rich in vitamin A, out to the developing world, it could save 40000 lives a day, people that are malnourished and dying “.
Second, GM crops can lead to environmental benefits such as less usage of pesticides or viruses resistance. The foods we eat daily are sprayed regularly with pesticide before landing on our table, and we never consider the side effects of them on our lives. The WHO estimated’ three million cases of pesticide poisoning occur every year, resulting in as excess of 250000 death’. Thankfully, GMOs reduce the usage of pesticide during farming and this is a great movement for the betterment of the food supply. Moreover, USDA(2019) indicated that insect resistant crops contain a gene from the dirt bacterium, Bacillus Thuringiensis, which creates a protein toxic to explicit bugs, securing insects’ life. Therefore, virus resistance makes plants less susceptible to diseases caused by viruses. A good example of virus resistance is papaya. In 1940, papaya fields had been suffering from the papaya ringspot virus in Hawaii, and it reached almost all the papayas’ field (Held,2016). Consequently, Elizabeth Held (2016) said’ the production fell 50 percent between 1993 and 2006”. Dennis Gonsalves, a scientist at Cornell University, with his colleagues improved the rainbow papaya which is aimed to be immune to the effects of the virus ( Yoon,1999).
Last but not least, genetically engineered foods are beneficial for producing some vaccines. People may soon be getting vaccinated for disease like hepatitis B and cholera by simply taking a bit of banana. Specialists have effectively built a few plants including banana, potato, lettuce, carrot, tobacco to create HBV immunization. However, they found the banana is the most ideal product for hepatitis B and cholera.(Hemming,2007). Charles Arntzen, a plant biotechnologist at Arizona State University, produced an edible vaccine by engineering a banana to make a protein from the bacterium that causes cholera. After the banana is gathered and made into chips, it would be conveyed to creating nations who do not have get access to the advanced immunizations (Mestel,2010). Additionally, the WHO (2019) declared that nearly 800000 individuals died in 2015 worldwide owing to hepatitis B, an infectious virus that afflicts the liver. Fortunately, when people eat a bite of GM banana, which is full of virus proteins, their immune systems build up antibodies to fight these diseases.
To conclude, high nutrition, environmental benefits, and more vaccines are the most widely recognized benefits of genetically engineered food. I believe that consumers will change their minds after learning about these benefits, and they will start consuming GM crops without hesitation. Frankly, there is not any evidence showing the harm effects of GMOs on our health. Thus, they are completely safe to consume (Haspel,2016). In my point of view, the production of GM crops will continue rising in the next few years and will be set on the shelves of our markets.
