Food security situation in Pakistan has exacerbated after the devastating climatic changes and natural disasters. Pakistan is ranked at the 11th spot in the list of food insecure countries among 148 nations. The situation in Bangladesh and India is also alarming, but better it is than us as they are at the 20th and 25th spots in the said list.
In this context, crop improvement through conventional breeding is a rational strategy but it would not be sufficient to meet the challenges of increasing food demand due to ever-growing population. Therefore, we have to resort to Genetically-modified (GM) food mechanism through new technologies like Genetic Engineering to strengthen our existing crop improvement system. The desperation to go for GM food has increased manifolds due to the consecutive flash flooding in Pakistan in 2010-11 that has jeopardized the national economy. It is to be noted that number of food insecure people in Pakistan is 77 million, malnourished people 45 million and homeless without food are 17 million people.
Genetically Modified Foods
Genetically-modified foods have the potential to solve many of the world’s hunger and malnutrition problems, and to help protect and preserve the environment by increasing yield and reducing reliance upon chemical pesticides and herbicides. Yet there are many challenges ahead for governments, especially in the areas of safety testing, regulation, international policy and food labeling. Many people feel that genetic engineering is the inevitable wave of the future and that we cannot afford to ignore a technology that has such enormous potential benefits. However, we must proceed with caution to avoid causing unintended harm to human health and the environment as a result of our enthusiasm for this powerful technology. There has been a significant opposition to the idea of GM food in America and Europe who are reverting back to organic farming but the situation is not applicable for Africa, Asia and developing nations as the inhabitants of third world countries are facing food shortage and are dying from hunger. So it is the need of the hour to promote the GM crops in our region to meet the food demand and eliminate hunger. We have to keep in mind the hard facts that the present world’s population is 6.8 billion while the world’s population by 2050 will be 9.4 billion; this will further shoot up the global demand for food. At the start of 2009, under nourished people were as many as 963 million while the hungry and insecure people for food in India alone stood at 220 million.
The term GM foods or GMOs (genetically-modified organisms) is most commonly used to refer to crop plants created for human or animal consumption using latest molecular biology techniques. These plants have been modified in the laboratory to enhance desired traits such as increased resistance to herbicides or improved nutritional content. The enhancement of desired traits has traditionally been undertaken through breeding, but conventional plant breeding methods can be very time consuming and are often not very accurate. On the other hand, can create plants with the exact desired trait very rapidly and with great accuracy. The best known example of this is the use of B.t. genes in corn and other crops. B.t., or Bacillus thuringiensis, is a naturally occurring bacterium that produces crystal proteins that are lethal to insect larvae. B.t. crystal protein genes have been transferred into corn, enabling the corn to produce its own pesticides against insects such as the European corn borer.
The world population has topped 6 billion people and is predicted to double in the next 50 years. Ensuring an adequate food supply for this booming population is going to be a major challenge in the years to come. GM foods promise to meet the need of feeding the hungry population in a variety of ways.
Pest resistance: Crop losses resulting from pests attack can be staggering, leading to devastating financial loss for farmers and starvation in developing countries. Farmers typically use many tons of chemical pesticides annually. Consumers do not wish to eat food that has been treated with pesticides because of potential health hazards, and run-off of agricultural wastes from excessive use of pesticides and fertilisers can poison the water supply and cause harm to the environment.
Herbicide tolerance: Crop plants genetically-engineered to be resistant to one very powerful herbicide could help prevent environmental damage by reducing the amount of herbicides needed. For example, Monsanto has created a strain of soybeans genetically modified to be not affected by their herbicide product roundup. A farmer grows these soybeans which then only require one application of weed-killer instead of multiple applications, reducing production cost and limiting the dangers of agricultural waste run-off.
Disease resistance: There are many viruses, fungi and bacteria that cause plant diseases. Plant biologists are working to create plants with genetically-engineered resistance to these diseases.
Cold tolerance: Unexpected frost can destroy sensitive seedlings. An antifreeze gene from cold water fish has been introduced into plants such as tobacco and potato. With this antifreeze gene, these plants are able to tolerate cold temperatures that normally would kill unmodified seedlings.
Drought tolerance: As the world population grows and more land is utilised for housing instead of food production, farmers will need to grow crops in locations previously unsuited for plant cultivation. Creating plants that can withstand long periods of drought or high salt content in soil and groundwater will help people to grow crops in formerly inhospitable places.
Nutrition Malnutrition: It is common in third world countries where impoverished peoples rely on a single crop such as rice for the main staple of their diet. However, rice does not contain adequate amounts of all necessary nutrients to prevent malnutrition. If rice could be genetically engineered to contain additional vitamins and minerals, nutrient deficiencies could be alleviated. For example, blindness due to vitamin A deficiency is a common problem in third world countries.
Pharmaceuticals: Medicines and vaccines often are costly to produce and sometimes require special storage conditions not readily available in third world countries. Researchers are working to develop edible vaccines in tomatoes and potatoes. These vaccines will be much easier to ship, store and administer than traditional injectable vaccines.
Criticism
Environmental activists, religious organisations, public interest groups, professional associations and other scientists and government officials have all raised concerns about GM foods, and criticised agribusiness for pursuing profit without concern for potential hazards, and the government for failing to exercise adequate regulatory oversight. Most concerns about GM foods fall into three categories: environmental hazards, human health risks, and economic concerns.
The environmentalists say that the genetic engineering of plants and animals is looming as one of the greatest and most intractable environmental challenges of the 21st Century. They think that this novel technology has invaded their grocery stores and kitchen pantries by fundamentally altering some of the most important staple food crops. “By being able to take the genetic material from one organism and insert it into the permanent genetic code of another, biotechnologists have engineered numerous novel creations, such as potatoes with bacteria genes, “super” pigs with human growth genes, fish with cattle growth genes, tomatoes with flounder genes, and thousands of other plants, animals and insects. At an alarming rate, these creations are now being patented and released into the environment”, wrote an NGO at its website on food safety.
Currently, up to 85 per cent of US corn is genetically engineered as are 91 per cent of soybeans and 88 per cent of cotton (cotton seed oil is often used in food products). According to industry, up to 95 per cent of sugar beets are now GE. It has been estimated that upwards of 70 per cent of processed foods on supermarket shelves–from soda to soup, crackers to condiments–contain genetically engineered ingredients.
A number of studies over the past decade have revealed that genetically engineered foods can pose serious risks to humans, domesticated animals, wildlife and the environment. Human health effects can include higher risks of toxicity, allergenicity, antibiotic resistance, immune-suppression and cancer. As for environmental impacts, the use of genetic engineering in agriculture will lead to uncontrolled biological pollution, threatening numerous microbial, plant and animal species with extinction, and the potential contamination of all non-genetically engineered life forms with novel and possibly hazardous genetic material.
Food shortage
The world economy has run into a brick wall. Despite countless warnings in recent years about the need to address a looming hunger crisis in poor countries and a looming energy crisis worldwide, world leaders failed to think ahead. The result is a global food crisis. Wheat, corn and rice prices have more than doubled in the past two years, and oil prices have more than tripled since the start of 2004. These food-price increases combined with soaring energy costs will slow if not stop economic growth in many parts of the world and will even undermine political stability, as evidenced by the protest riots that have erupted in many places of the world. Practical solutions to these growing woes do exist, but we’ll have to start thinking ahead and acting globally. In this perspective, the need to adopt the GM food has increased manifolds just to save the people dying of hunger. We need to produce more food over the next 50 years than has been produced in the past 10,000 years combined. The best way to reach the depth of the debate is that we need to have an advance system of agriculture research that requires a huge budget. We need to have a minimum of two per cent of our Agri GDP earmarked for the research budget but it is unfortunate that we have only 0.2 per cent that is next to nothing.
