Ghanas GMO debates: beyond the sticking points (3)

Feature Article of Monday, 17 February 2014

Columnist: Agorsor, Yafetto, Otwe, Galyuon

Israel D. K. Agorsor, Levi Yafetto, Emmanuel P. Otwe and Isaac K. A. Galyuon This is the concluding part of the articles Ghanas GMO debates: beyond the sticking points (1) & (2)

6. Interfering in Nature As we indicated in the first part of this article, one of the moral arguments against GMOs is that the processes leading to them, that is, genetic engineering techniques, amount to gross interference in nature and the natural order. Here, we present scientific arguments that say that this may not be restricted to GMOs alone, as humankind has always interfered in nature, at times in ways unimaginable, all in an effort to make life better.

You may be surprised to hear that many of the food crops we eat today are not their original selves. They are products of years of conscious and systematic manipulation of nature, if you will call it that, representing a marked departure from what they were in the beginning of time. Humankind has always attempted to improve natural resources to meet the demands of a growing population in a changing climate. That is to say that conventional breeding itself relies on the transfer of genes, albeit via crosses. from one crop species to a related species in order to be able to develop new varieties.

Conventional plant breeding has its own problems. Unlike genetic engineering, conventional breeding in transferring a gene which conditions a specific trait also transfers a number of other genes on the same chromosome along with it. This means that the conventional breeder very often is not only transferring a specific trait to his elite cultivated variety (cultivar), but also other traits that may be undesirable. For example, two varieties of conventionally-bred potatoes, Lenape and Magnum Bonum, and conventionally-bred celery developed to be pest-resistant had to be withdrawn from the market after it was realized that the conventional breeding processes accidentally led to increased levels of naturally occurring toxins in them.

The foregoing explains why some scientists argue that the assumption that conventionally-bred crops are necessarily safer than GM crops is overly simplistic, especially when conventionally-bred crops are not subjected to the kind of pre-marketing safety analysis done for GM crops.

Then, we present another interference in nature: mutation breeding. Mutation breeding is a crop breeding technique where breeders subject seeds to doses of radiation and gene-altering chemicals in order to produce novel plant varieties. This technique has been in use since the dawn of the nuclear age in the 1950s, and has seen an escalated use in the last few years. The Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture programme of the United Nations reportedly received about 40 requests for radiation services from a number of countries across the world in 2013. Many of the multinational seed companies chided for promoting GMOs, like BASF and Monsanto, have all reportedly used this technique in developing new crop varieties, all without regulation.

In Ghana, the Biotechnology and Nuclear Agriculture Research Institute (BNARI) of the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission, and research programmes in some of the nations universities, the University of Cape Coast for example, have been experimenting mutation breeding techniques for some time now.

In a 2004 report, the US National Academy of Sciences remarked that placing GM crops under tight regulations, while approving products of mutation breeding without any regulation, cannot be justified by science. Mutagenesis, the technique underpinning mutation breeding, has the capacity to rearrange or delete hundreds of genes randomly. It makes use of tools such as gamma radiation, which give rise to mutations (i.e., changes in an organisms genetic make-up) that sometimes are beneficial or hazardous to the organism. If you have ever had an X-ray image of any part of your body taken, then you have been exposed to radiation. And it is precisely because of the possibility of this process introducing mutations into your genetic make-up you are advised against taking X-ray images very frequently.

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Ghanas GMO debates: beyond the sticking points (3)