The case for GM food

One example is new vegetable oils that contain omega 3 fatty acids, which will become available in cotton seed, soybean and canola vegetable oils in the near future. Omega 3 is the name given to certain essential fatty nutrients such as docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). There is a substantial body of scientific research that demonstrates these oils can improve health. Ocean microbes are the current important primary source of these oils, and these reach the human diet through fish and fish oils.

The next Australian GM food to reach the market place could well be a cottonseed oil with omega 3 DHA in it. The health-promoting characteristics of such an oil would be very attractive as it would promise less heart disease, less rheumatism, protection against Alzheimer’s disease, and augmented intelligence in children.

The availability of vegetable oils containing DHA could help to relieve threatened ocean fish stocks from the ecological pressure of intensive ocean fishing. In such a situation, hypothetical undefined long-term risks of the GM crop would seem less important to many consumers.

This article has attempted to illustrate the risks and benefits of GM foods with examples for which we have factual knowledge. This allows an evidence based discussion of the likely positive and negative consequences of the wider use or the food in question to be explored based on actual risks.

Most safety concerns about GM foods come from focusing on unintended damage to human health from eating the new food and avoids discussion of the unintended harm from preventing its use. New technologies can even have unanticipated beneficial consequences.

Alertness to these unexpected benefits of innovation opens up new avenues for improving human welfare. Bias against allowing actual human welfare benefits from novel technology because of excessive precaution has the opposite effect. Examples include unnecessary delays in the delivery of Golden Rice to farmers, and the recent rejection of US maize shipments of food aid during a 2002 food crisis in sub-Saharan Africa, based on arguments about the GM content in the food.

It is to avoid such situations that the health benefits of crop innovation, scientific research and biotechnology in general need to be repeatedly spelt out to the wider community.