Are GMOs Good or Bad? Genetic Engineering & Our Food

In a Nutshell Animations

Are GMOs bad for your health? Or is this fear unfounded?

Transcript

00:00GMOs are one of the most controversial areas of science.

00:05Genetic engineering is used in many fields,

00:08but even though medical applications like GM insulin are widely accepted,

00:12the debate heats up when it comes to food and agriculture.

00:16Why is that? Why is the same thing treated so differently?

00:20Let's try to get to the bottom of this and explore the facts,

00:24the fears, and the future of GMOs.

00:31Humans have been genetically modifying plants and animals for thousands of years.

00:37Maybe a few of your crops had very good yields,

00:40maybe one of your wolves was especially loyal.

00:43So you did the smart thing and bred the plants and animals that had traits beneficial to you.

00:48Traits are just an expression of genes.

00:51So with each generation, those genes got more pronounced.

00:56After thousands of years, almost every single plant and animal around us

01:00is vastly different from its pre-domesticated state.

01:04If humans have been changing genes for millennia,

01:06what makes a so-called genetically modified organism, or GMO, different?

01:11Selective breeding is basically hoping for lucky hits.

01:15Genetic engineering eliminates this factor.

01:18We can choose the traits we want,

01:20make fruit grow bigger,

01:22immune to pests, and so on.

01:24So why are people concerned about them?

01:31Let's start with one of the most common objections to GMOs.

01:35Gene flow, meaning GM crops could mix with traditional crops

01:38and introduce unwanted new characteristics into them.

01:42There is a method that might guarantee complete prevention,

01:45but is a big anti-GMO argument by itself.

01:49Terminator seeds.

01:51The idea is that they could produce sterile plants,

01:54requiring farmers to buy new seeds every year.

01:57The very concept of this, however, caused a public outcry,

02:01stopping the technology being put to use.

02:04This brings us back to the unintentional spreading of engineered DNA.

02:09There have been cases of GMOs growing where they weren't planted,

02:13and traces of modified genes found in foreign crops.

02:17But GM plants can't run wild entirely.

02:20Many crops pollinate themselves, and all crops have to be related to mingle.

02:24There are also cultural methods like buffer zones

02:26to keep unintentional crossing at a minimum.

02:29But if it's possible in principle that a GMO could unintentionally cross with a non-GMO,

02:34there's actually a more important question.

02:37Is food that comes from GM crops different to food from non-GM crops?

02:42This question has been a major concern from the very beginning.

02:47GM plants that are destined to be eaten are checked for possible dangers,

02:51and the results are evaluated by multiple agencies.

02:54After more than 30 years and thousands of studies, the science is in.

02:58Eating GMO plants is no more risky than their non-GMO equivalent.

03:03But don't just take our word for it.

03:05Sources for this and other claims are in the video description.

03:08But what about plants that have been engineered to be toxic?

03:12For example, BT crops.

03:14A gene borrowed from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis

03:17lets engineered plants produce a protein

03:19that destroys the digestive system of specific insect pests.

03:23The plant makes its own pesticide.

03:26Insects that eat it die.

03:29That sounds alarming.

03:31Pesticide sprays can be washed off,

03:33while the poison in BT crops is inside the plant.

03:37But actually, it's not a big deal.

03:39Poison is really just a question of different perspectives.

03:43What's harmless to one species might kill another.

03:46Coffee, for example, is a poison that kills insects but is harmless to us.

03:50Or take chocolate.

03:52It's dangerous for dogs, but a pleasure for humans.

03:55BT crops produce a protein that is tailored to the specific design

03:59of the digestive tract of certain insects.

04:01It's completely harmless for us.

04:04There's also the opposite approach.

04:06Plants that are engineered to be resistant to certain weed killers.

04:10This way, farmers can use them widely,

04:12killing the other plants competing for resources without harming the crop.

04:16Here we get to the dark underbelly of GMOs.

04:20For the pesticide industry, they are big business.

04:23Over 90% of all cash crops in the US are herbicide-resistant,

04:27mostly to glyphosate.

04:29As a result, the use of glyphosate has increased greatly.

04:33That isn't only bad.

04:34Glyphosate is much less harmful to humans than many other herbicides.

04:38Still, this means farmers have a strong incentive

04:41to rely on this one method only,

04:43casting more balanced ways of managing weeds aside.

04:46That's one of the most fundamental problems with the GMO debate.

04:50Much of the criticism of this technology

04:52is actually criticism of modern agriculture

04:55and the business practice of the huge corporations

04:57that control our food supply.

04:59This criticism is not only valid, it's also important.

05:03We need to change agriculture to a more sustainable model.

05:07GMOs as a technology are actually an ally and not an enemy in that fight,

05:11helping to save and protect nature

05:13and minimize our impact on the environment.

05:21Let's look at some positive examples.

05:23Eggplant is an important crop in Bangladesh,

05:26but often whole harvests are destroyed by pests.

05:29Farmers had to rely heavily on pesticides.

05:32Not only was this very expensive,

05:34farmers also frequently got sick.

05:37The introduction of a new GM eggplant in 2013 stopped this.

05:41The same BT protein we talked about before,

05:44an effective killer of insects but harmless to humans,

05:47was engineered into them.

05:49This reduced insecticide use on eggplants by more than 80%.

05:53The health of farmers improved and their income rose dramatically.

05:57And sometimes, a GM approach is the only option.

06:00In the 1990s, the papaya industry in Hawaii

06:03was under attack from the ring spot virus,

06:05which threatened to wipe out Hawaiian papaya.

06:08The solution was a papaya genetically modified

06:11to be vaccinated against the virus.

06:13Without it, the state's papaya industry would have collapsed.

06:21All these stories show a very narrow application.

06:2499% of all GMOs we use right now

06:27produce pesticides or are resistant against them.

06:31There is so much more we could do.

06:34Scientists are working on GMOs that could improve our diet.

06:38Plants that produce more or different nutrients,

06:41like fruit with higher antioxidant levels

06:43that help to fight diseases,

06:45or rice with additional vitamins.

06:47On a larger scale, we're trying to engineer plants

06:49that are more resilient to climate change.

06:52Plants that can better adapt to erratic weather

06:54and adverse soil conditions,

06:56making them resistant to droughts or floods.

06:59GMOs could also not only reduce

07:01agriculture's impact on the environment,

07:03but actively help to protect it.

07:05Scientists are working on crops

07:07that can draw nitrogen from the air like microbes.

07:10Nitrogen is a common fertilizer,

07:12but its buildup pollutes the groundwater

07:14and speeds up climate change.

07:17Plants that collect their own nitrogen

07:19could fix two problems at once.

07:21The overuse of fertilizers in the developed world,

07:24as well as the shortage of it in developing countries.

07:27We could even modify plants to become

07:29super effective carbon collectors

07:31like the American chestnut tree,

07:33to mitigate and actually reverse climate change.

07:36With the tools we have today,

07:38our imagination is the limit.

07:44The world eats 11 million pounds of food every day.

07:48A UN estimate suggests we'll need 70% more by 2050.

07:53We could grow that food by clearing more and more forests

07:56to create fields and pastures,

07:58and by using more pesticides.

08:00Or we find a way to do it on the land we've got right now,

08:03with more effective methods like GM crops.

08:06Intensifying farming instead of expanding it

08:08means GMOs could become the new organic.

08:12In a nutshell, GMOs have the potential

08:14to not only drastically change agriculture,

08:17but to also dampen the effects

08:19of our own irresponsible behavior.

08:21GMOs could be our most powerful weapon

08:24to save our biosphere.

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