Genetically modified food is an interesting topic. Do you remember the Star Trek episode “The Trouble with Tribbles”? In that episode, some tribbles get on board a space station where the Federation is storing a bunch of Quadro-Triticale to help some starving planet. In the episode, it is mentioned by Spock that Quadro-Triticale is an improvement over regular Triticale wheat, which was developed by a Canadian scientist named Dr. Zillinsky in the 20th century.
What does this have to do with anything? Well…
1) It’s true: Triticale (a combination of Rye and Wheat) was created in Mexico by a Canadian scientist named Dr. Zillinsky. I went to university with his daughter (Sue) and she will be visiting my family later this summer. Cool, eh?
2) the evil Klingons had further modified the Quadro-Triticale so that it contained a fatal virus! Making this the first TV example I know of involving the dangers of genetically modified food.
Here’s the Wikipedia article on genetically modified food:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_food
The danger of GM crops is that companies are able to do all the evil things companies do to give themselves an advantage and wipe out the competition, such as:
a) getting a patent on the DNA of the plant. Give me a break on this one! They’re patenting certain forms of life!!!!!
b) they can create crops that have barren seeds. No longer can farmers save part of their crop as seeds for the next year (their “seed crop”). Instead, they have to buy new seeds from the company every year!
c) mistakes can happen. Read the Wikipedia article for an example of a genetic error that killed 37 people in the USA.
There is little proof that GM foods are more productive, although it would seem to make sense that they should be — for example, having Corn that has built-in pesticides (yum, yum — it’s right in the grain; hard to wipe off by washing for example). There are examples of GM foods that are modified to contain vaccines for people to improve health (great idea it would seem, but then there’s the fact that bacteria modify themselves even more quickly — making many formerly effective antibiotics ineffective).
Conspiracy theories? All I’ll say is that any time money is involved, people’s morals are one of the first things that get lost. Can use say tainted Chinese milk? Believe me when I say that if people in the USA could get away with it, they’d do it too.
That is my initial position. If you like, I’ll do some research on this because it has been an area of interested ever since “The Trouble with Tribbles” episode…