what is gm food? – GM Food Zone

Question: what is gm food?
- Keywords:
  basics
Asked by anon-22966 to Andy, Cathie, Jules, Les, Ricarda on 24 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by wisemanboy12345, meg123.
- Cathie Martin answered on 24 Jun 2012:
  
  GM food is food, either animal or plant, derived from organisms that have been genetically modified. Genetic modification involves the transfer of selected DNA encoding proteins or RNA that will silence specific genes, into a new host organism. Often, but not always, the DNA comes from different organisms to the new host (either a crop plant or a farm animal). The new DNA is integrated stably into the new host organism, and so behaves like any other gene in that organisms genome. The DNA transferred confers beneficial effects on the crop or farm animal. Traditionally these traits have been producer traits for crop improvement – for example herbivore/insect resistance and herbicide resistance. These traits have benefits for farmers including lower expenditure on herbicides, reduced weeding requirements, and more sustainable no-till agriculture for herbicide resistance, lower inputs and higher yields for herbivore resistance.
  Crops are now being developed with consumer advantages – for example non-browning apples, nutritionally enhanced tomatoes, omega-3 PUFA enriched brassicas. Eventually these may be bundled with producer traits to ensure products that are attractive toi grow as well as to consume.
- Les Firbank answered on 24 Jun 2012:
  
  As Cathie says, GM food includes at least one ingredient that comes from a plant that has a genetically modified gene. The food itself might not contain the gene. depending on which plant parts are used. In Europre, all GM foods have to pass tests for safety for people and the environment; very few have done so, and no British supermarket stocks them.
- Julian Little answered on 25 Jun 2012:
  
  Both Cathie and Les are right of course. Worth mentioning that different countries or regions have different views on what constitutes GM food vs GM crops. So, for example, the EU insists on labelling of food that contains ingredients FROM GM plants as GM even if the ingredient itself is not genetically modified. So if we are talking about soya animal feed – this does contain some GM proteins – and a bag of such feed is clearly labelled as GM. However, a bottle of vegetable oil from either a non-GM or GM oilseed rape plant contains ONLY fatty acids which are not genetically modified; in the EU, however, since if came from a GM crop, it must be labelled as such
- Andy Stirling answered on 25 Jun 2012:
  
  Genetically modified food is food in which the plants or animals we eat, have had their genetic make-up deliberately altered in particular ways. The precise techniques and implications vary. I will focus on just one of these, in order to illustrate one reason, why there are so many questions particularly about GM. This hinges precisely on the present question: ‘what is GM?’
  
  We often hear claims, that the implications of GM are exactly the same as for other breeding techniques – all of which can lead to problems. There is some truth in this. But there is a significant common factor that distinguishes GM techniques from other ways of breeding particular kinds of plants and animals. This is important, because it shows the frequent claim that ‘GM is the same’, to be false.
  
  This feature is, that – alongside other more uncertain effects – GM can involve the insertion of a particular gene into a variety of otherwise very different foodstuffs. Other techniques augment more ‘natural’ breeding processes in various ways, as these operate within particular species. For instance, conventional plant breeding often uses radiation to mutate the genes of the particular plants being bred. This can cause it’s own difficulties. What is distinctive in GM, however, is that the genes that are inserted can be taken from what could be radically different kinds of plant or animal.
  
  It is this crucial feature that makes GM different in potentially significant ways from other kinds of breeding technique. As I mentioned, all these have their pros and cons and uncertainties. But only in GM, is it possible for a particular gene to be introduced into a wide diversity of different foods, taken from a radically different form of life. This affects the ease with which ordinary people can manage possible unpleasant surprises.
  
  Take a common example of ordinary foods that can lead to problems for many people. These include avocados or peanuts or kiwi fruits. Each of these causes sometimes quite serious problems for some people, who develop potentially dangerous sensitivities or allergies. Present regulatory techniques are not good enough to screen out all the possible sources of problems. The normal way to manage these adverse effects then – and for society to learn from them – is for the people who are affected simply to avoid the foods that they discover to be problematic for them.
  
  The key difference of GM mentioned above, makes it different from other breeding techniques in undermining this routine strategy. This is because, GM means that the same problematic gene could be present in a variety of very different foods (not just avocados, or peanuts, or kiwi fruit). So any problem cannot any longer be so easily avoided. This is so, even if food is clearly labelled as GM, because it will typically not be clear to an ordinary person, what the particular modified genes are in each case.
  
  There are many other issues around GM that we are discussing here. Some – like the concentration of economic power that GM can cause – might be thought more important. But I mention this particular issue here in answering this basic question, simply to illustrate one kind of unique challenge that is posed by GM, as distinct from other ways of producing food. And I also raise this point here, because it is quite common to hear denial of these kinds of fundamental issues around GM foods.

Question: what is gm food?

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