Community gains from genetic engineering
Genetic modification / Genetic Engineering (GM/ GE / GMO) is a technology. The entire basis for evolution is constant genetic modification by nature. With conventional breeding techniques, several hundreds of genes move from one plant / animal to another and the beneficial outcomes are selected.
New technology helps insert a single or a set of genes, which is beneficial and can be done in a much shorter time. Drug and crop developers have used this technology to come up with new drugs, which are more precise and new crops with distinct advantages. The only reason to conduct validated bio-safety procedures is because these genes may be coming from non-food sources and the gene product or protein has no history of safe human use.
The safety of the existing crops can be easily ascertained from the fact that since 10years or more populations in several countries have been consuming them on a day-to-day basis and simultaneously many other countries have not consumed GMOs. When you compare the two populations for their health or disease indices there are no differences to indicate that GM foods are harmful for human or animal health. This data is much more valuable than any planned studies in rats.
Nevertheless, we need to look at the benefits and weigh against the possible risks. Benefits include insect resistance and thereby a reduced use of pesticides, enhanced production or yield by reducing losses due to drought or salinity etc., potential to increase the nutrient content and thus facilitating nutrition security to our people, prolonged shelf life to give more profits to farmers and several others.
Risks are assessed by a structured universally accepted and scientifically validated test protocols, which address safety of the new protein, the potential to cause allergy as well as any unintentional or unintended effects of gene insertion. Equivalence is done by comparing the GM versus the corresponding Non GM plants grown simultaneously under same conditions for all known parameters like colour, size, nutrient and non nutrient composition, toxins or anti nutrients, minerals etc.
If the two are similar, it can be concluded that other than the effect of the inserted gene/ genes no other gene got disturbed in the genome. Safety studies address the issues of safety to humans, animals, insects and environment. Agricultural issues like pollen flow, sustaining biodiversity, effect on non-target insect populations, effect on the soil are also looked into by agriculture scientists as well as agriculture economists in order to ensure that the farmer benefits with this technology.
Most of the concerns on this technology primarily arises out of a lack of understanding of the finer details of the technology. We hope with time the facts will be communicated better than fiction, and the community will enjoy the benefits of modern biotechnology.
B. Sesikeran is Director, National Institute of Nutrition