GM Products: Benefits and Controversies

Benefits

• Crops

o Enhanced taste and quality
o Reduced maturation time
o Increased nutrients, yields, and stress tolerance
o Improved resistance to disease, pests, and herbicides
o New products and growing techniques

• Animals

o Increased resistance, productivity, hardiness, and feed efficiency
o Better yields of meat, eggs, and milk
o Improved animal health and diagnostic methods

• Environment

o "Friendly" bioherbicides and bioinsecticides
o Conservation of soil, water, and energy
o Bioprocessing for forestry products
o Better natural waste management
o More efficient processing

• Society

o Increased food security for growing populations

Controversies

• Safety

o Potential human health impacts, including allergens, transfer of antibiotic resistance markers, unknown effects
o Potential environmental impacts, including: unintended transfer of transgenes through cross-pollination, unknown effects on other organisms (e.g., soil microbes), and loss of flora and fauna biodiversity

• Access and Intellectual Property

o Domination of world food production by a few companies
o Increasing dependence on industrialized nations by developing countries
o Biopiracy, or foreign exploitation of natural resources

• Ethics

o Violation of natural organisms' intrinsic values
o Tampering with nature by mixing genes among species
o Objections to consuming animal genes in plants and vice versa
o Stress for animal

• Labeling

o Not mandatory in some countries (e.g., United States)
o Mixing GM crops with non-GM products confounds labeling attempts

• Society

o New advances may be skewed to interests of rich countries

Directly taken from http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/gmfood.shtml