GM and Globalisation

There has been concern to monitor GM foods, and research has been conducted, but it is our curiousity that keeps people from disregarding the bans. We saw what happend to Dolly, the cloned sheep, with premature ageing. Now cloned human embryos can also go through that process. In the UK there is a briefing from genewatch that highlights new GM plants and crops worldwide. GM foods are widely adopted in North America, but for the rest of the world, there is continued controversy over using them. In Hawaii, there has been a GM papaya resistant to viral disease grown extensively since 1998. Thailand is now trying hard to remove their GM papaya and there are no longer exports to Europe for fear of spreading contamination. China is considering to grow GM rice. Rice takes up one quarter of the agricultural land, so if any disaster were to happen, it would be on a large scale. There is a lot of concern, that with the rise of globalisation, there will be more disruption of native, natural ecosystems, as new plants are introduced. GM foods can provide protection from insects and disease, they can offer longer shelf life (apparently pringles and kraftdinner are GM, as well as a whole list of others). But they can also create problems for the environment, as the ecosystem is displaced, and the GM crop may take over a native species which may eventually become extinct. If there is going to be GM of plants and crops, I think it should be done indoors, in greenhouses, with tightly secured walls, so that we don’t disrupt the natural landscapes. We only have one world…

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