LIVING THE LEGACY - INTERVIEWS CONDUCTED BY THE TEAM
Our team interviewed Monsanto Company by email, and quotes from this interview are featured in the website. The team also asked a set of questions (below) to two world leaders in the area of diet and food. The topic of GMOs proved to be very controversial.
QUESTIONS ASKED
1. Do you think that Norman Borlaug’s modified wheat has benefited the world population and its health or will it lead to bigger problems in the long run such as population increase and why do you think that?
2. In general, do you think the health and stability of the third world countries Borlaug worked in has improved, or have those countries become too dependent upon the wheat varieties Borlaug cultivated?
3. Borlaug’s work has produced problems of overpopulation and worries that even the new wheat surplus his plants have produced will not hold us over in the long run. Do you think it will create problems of malnourishment across the globe as the population gets ahead of wheat production?
4. Prior to his death Borlaug emphasized that the world would need to utilize genetically modified foods to feed its growing population. Do you think that this is necessary and what is your position on this topic?
5. What are your feelings concerning genetically modified foods being in the food supply? Do you feel differently about Borlaug’s advancements in wheat, which were made in the field not the lab.
6. Are you aware if GMO foods been known to cause any health problems?
7. If we were to decide not to use GMOs, food production would likely fall dramatically in the long run. Do you think it is ethical to not use GMOs even if it makes food shortages worse?
RESPONSES PROVIDED
Capt. Madeline Michael, Chief Dietitian Officer,
U.S. Public Health Service (Usphs.gov) This is Capt. Michael's personal opinion. She is not speaking on behalf of the U.S. Government or any other group.
1. I do think that there have been tremendous benefits because of his work. With any sort of advance, there are consequences to those advances. So if you look at the benefits of his advances, they have certainly outweighed any sort of negative outcomes. If you look specifically at population increase, I think that many other advances were made over years that also contributed to population increase. I think that there are other ways to curb population growth and looking at the advances that he made in feeding individuals, we certainly would not want to say that we would not want to feed people as a way to control population growth. We know what things we can do to control population growth. We should focus on those things, on something positive that we can do, rather than not feeding people. 2. I do think that the wheat and other crops that he developed have greatly improved the health of people in third world countries and the stability of their governments or regions. However, it is important that they have additional food to supplement their diets. People can’t live on wheat alone. They need to have, for example, a source of fat and protein in their diets because wheat is basically just carbohydrates. So they have to have a varied diet in order to get all of the other nutrients that they need besides the calories from wheat. 3. This is similar to the first question and what we talked about in terms of population growth. There are a lot of things that contribute to population growth and there are more positive ways to control population rather than limiting their food. People have a right to have food, and it shouldn’t be withheld in an attempt to keep the population down. Of course over the long run, increasing calorie intake will improve the nutritional status of a population and that can contribute to fertility rates. Improvements in nutritional status also contribute to improved immune status and that will decrease death rates. So although nutrition is important in improving life-span and fertility – it should not be used as a way to control population. 4. All of this is my personal opinion, and I am not speaking for the US government. The US government is neither opposed to nor supportive of the use of genetically modified foods. However, most of the corn and rice that we use in this country is already genetically modified. So we are already using a lot of GMOs in this country. The US government, their goal is that foods that are out there are safe and nutritionally the same as the preexisting crops. Starvation- whatever concerns you have about GMOs, these people in developing countries are much more likely to die in the short term from starvation or suffer from malnutrition, than have problems in the future from whatever long-term concerns that you may have about GMOs. There is rice that is out there that is called Golden Rice, that is genetically modified to have large amounts of Vitamin A. Vitamin A deficiency causes blindness and even death, but there is still a lot of opposition to the use of this rice. For example in India, where Vitamin A deficiency is a real problem, there is still resistance to the genetically modified rice, even though it would be helpful. When the US sends food aid to other countries, it is often genetically modified crops. There is an interesting article in the New Yorker on India and Vandana Shiva on opposition to GMO’s . 5. Norman Borlaug was the precursor to the work on GMOs. He was the father of the movement, and he laid the groundwork for that work. Fundamentally, it is not that different from what he did. He had to work in the fields, over long periods of time. He took him probably years to do changes that could occur much faster in a laboratory. You can argue whether it is a good thing or a bad thing, but I think that it is a good thing. You have a product that you can test in a lab, but not out in the field. In the lab you are targeting the changes that you want made, specific areas and changes to the genome that are being done in the lab. In the field you are getting large changes and it is less specific. You are changing things in chunks, rather than targeting the specific genes you want. My personal concerns as a dietician are for the potential allergenicity of genetically modified foods, some concerns about toxicity, and the third concern is making sure that nutritional value is the same as the non-modified plant. I think that the regulatory process is in place here in the US to keep track of all three of these concerns about GMO’s. 6. This has been looked at pretty closely and it looks like there are no health problems that have been detected in countries that have genetically modified foods out on the market. People have a lot of concerns about potential health problems and research has been done and is being done, but has not found any correlation. That does not mean that we don’t need to be concerned, but that we need to keep a lookout. Especially for possible allergenic problems, as new GMOs are coming out on the market, it is important to look for possible cross-reactions for allergens. We need to be careful, but I don’t think that products that are out on the market are harmful. 7. I do think that it would be not ethical to not provide food to the hungry and not using GMO foods would likely result in food shortages. We have the technology now to produce food, and to take that away, based on possible concerns for potential future health problems versus starvation or malnutrition in the near term is not ethical. If we decided not to use GMOs it would definitely make the shortages in food supplies much worse. I don’t think that there is enough evidence out there to pull GMOs off the market. I would argue that we should continue to use them, but we should also continue to regulate them. We need to check them carefully for safety. |
Sylvi Listhaug, Norwegian Minister of Food and Agriculture (Government.no)
Ms. Listhaug is speaking on behalf of the Norwegian Government on a controversial subject in Norway, resulting in brief answers.
1. Increased wheat production has contributed to food security and lower prices on food. 2. Increased availability of food in the third world will in general improve health and stability. 3. These claims and questions are complicated, multifaceted and multifactorial, and hence difficult to answer. 4. Norway, and the EEA relevant EU legislation, ensure the safety of all food and feed, including GMO. Several GMOs are currently being considered by the government. 5. See answer to question four. 6. No. 7. Each GMO has to be assessed individually. The technology itself is neither good or bad. |