Engineering What We Eat: The Past, Present, and Future of Genetically Modified Foods

Genetic modification is thousands of years old. That statement, at first glance, may seem absurd, but let’s dig in and define our terms. Genetic modification is “the process of altering the genetic makeup of an organism.” This is a simplification, as things in biology are almost always more complicated than any simple explanation could allow, but genes are in essence the information that is stored in all organisms using a molecule called DNA, which tell the cells of the organism how to do everything required to live, move, produce energy, multiply, grow, fight off diseases, repair itself, and do pretty much everything that the cell needs to do. These genes, by controlling the growth and behavior of every cell, ultimately control how every organism grows, develops, and operates, as well as the traits they will have.

However, the laws of genetic inheritance—that is, the rules of how these genes are passed on—were not formulated in any full way until the work of Gregor Mendel in 1865, whose work was later improved upon by Thomas Hunt Morgan in 1910. And DNA itself, the code of genes, was not discovered until the 1950s. So how can genetic modification be thousands of years old?

Well, one need only look at the difference between the modern fruits and vegetables and those that are undomesticated, to see the difference. If  you compare some of what we eat today with what was originally found in the wild before humans got to them, you may not even recognize them as being similar plants. Or, think about how different some pet dogs are compared to wild wolves. These genetic modifications were the result of many, many years of selective breeding and other indirect techniques for controlling which genes are passed on.

But this is not what most people think about when they think of genetic modification. We tend to think about scientists going in with test tubes and big machines to directly tinker with DNA in order to make a new kind of fruit or grain, or to make beetles grow extra eyes. These kinds of changes, however—usually referred to as genetic engineering—are rather new, and provoke a lot of questions. How do scientists actually change genes of plants and animals? Where are genetically engineered organisms seen today? What risks are there to genetically modifying organisms? And, of course, should we be genetically engineering plants and animals?

There are several basic steps to the modern process of creating a new genetically modified organism (GMO). First, one finds the particular gene for the trait they want to put in an organism; then, they copy that gene and insert it into the DNA of whatever they want to change, usually in the seed or egg; and then, they grow the new plant or animal with the new gene. Recently, this has become easier due to the use of tools like CRISPR-Cas9, which allows scientists to selectively add, remove, or alter genes as desired. CRISPR in recent years has revolutionized gene editing. Compared to previous methods, genes can be changed more easily and precisely than ever before. This has allowed scientists to gain a greater understanding of how different genes contribute to the traits organisms have.

Several methods used to create genetically modified plants are quite fascinating. One way genes are added to plants is by creating little metal particles that are covered in the DNA for the gene. Then, the plant is bombarded with these tiny little particles. The DNA then enters the plant cells, which eventually leads to the plant’s cells taking in the desired gene. The other method is by creating bacteria that hold the gene, which is often much easier to do since bacteria tend to actually absorb DNA from their environment. The bacteria is then introduced to the plant, which takes in the DNA into its own genome. Most often, the result of all of this is actually not a plant that has the desired trait, as the plants that take in the DNA are often already mature and therefore will not change much; but rather, the seeds they produce will then have the desired trait, which can then be grown to maturity with the new trait.

Gene editing is not rare today. There are quite a few crops that are GMOs, from corn and soybeans to papayas and apples. For those who eat meat, there are even some animals that have been genetically modified, such as the salmon. Given the proliferation of GMO food, it is quite natural to ask, is GMO food safe and healthy? The broad answer is yes—genetically engineered food is safe to consume, in the same way that most food is. But it is more complicated than that. Isn’t it always? Genetically engineered food has to pass through a lot of stringent testing and regulation, so almost all GMO food items are known to be safe. In fact, most GMO food has undergone more thorough empirical testing than non-genetically engineered foods.

However, since genetically engineered foods are relatively new, there have been several consequences, found in a couple plants. For example, there have been cases where an individual with a strong allergy to a particular protein had an allergic reaction to a genetically modified food—a gene with instructions to make that protein was implanted into a plant which they ate in order to give it resistance to certain insects. It is also understood that genetic modification can lead to changes in the activation of other genes already in the plant. Thus, it may be possible for a process that might naturally detoxify substances produced by the plant to become inhibited, rendering the food less safe.

With all this said, it is essential to note that, as I said earlier, the approval process for a genetically modified food to get on the market is quite stringent, and the cases of people reacting to GMO foods are few and far between. And to be fair, while these allergy problems certainly do exist with genetically engineered foods, they also exist in foods that are created by traditional methods of selective and crossbreeding. For example, people have bred strands of tomatoes using natural methods in order to make them insect resistant, and ultimately people got ill from eating those tomatoes. So while it certainly is true that GMO foods are subject to these unintended consequences, that is not so much something that is exclusive to GMO foods. Rather, these problems are more so a consequence of the fact that because of developments in genetic engineering, we are able to produce new varieties of crops faster than ever. Thus, problems we perceive from engineering food is less so an inherent problem of genetically modified food, and more so a consequence of the fact that new genetically modified foods are appearing more and more often. If instead some new method of speeding up and controlling crossbreeding had been developed, so that it could be done with the same speed and accuracy of genetic engineering, we would see a very similar situation. This is because despite selective breeding and crossbreeding being more natural methods that have been used for thousands of years, they are subject to the same risks of unintended consequences.

The development of genetically modified foods has had immense influences on both the quality and quantity of food produced. Crops can be engineered to have a variety of desired traits, from higher yield, greater nutritional value and faster growing, to greater climate tolerance, pest/disease resistance, and the ability to grow with fewer fertilizers. As such, these crops are already having an immense impact in a wide variety of situations. For example, in the 1990s, the ringspot virus threatened to eradicate Hawaii’s Papaya farms, but a genetically modified papaya was developed that was resistant to the virus. To combat vitamin A deficiency, a new strand of rice, called golden rice, was developed and provided to low-income countries. The modified rice was a significantly cheaper solution than the previous method of fortifying the rice with additives, as the golden rice was actually sold for the same price as regular non-enhanced rice. In many humanitarian efforts, genetically engineered crops are preferred compared to non-engineered ones, as they can provide a more reliable and cost effective crop for farmers who may have to grow these crops in non-ideal circumstances—be it financial or environmental. So, while it is important to acknowledge that several factors lead to the circumstances of problems like hunger, and simply having better crops is not a comprehensive solution, genetically modified foods are great candidates for contributing to these solutions.

All of this said, the question of genetically engineered foods comes down to ethics. Is it ethical to genetically modify food, to tinker with nature? Is it ethical to feed people food that has been genetically modified? After all, what if 20 or 30 years down the line, we discover that some genetically engineered crop has some unintended consequence? How much risk is too much? I think we all know that these questions don’t have easy answers. But I would like to suggest something to you. Given the best scientific knowledge we have available, the genetically engineered foods we have today are safe. Of course, this assessment is based on just our current knowledge, so we don’t know what we will learn later—but that is the case for everything in this world. That is the fundamental problem with not knowing: you don’t know what you don’t know; that is, we do not know what we will later discover.

So, true, there is always a small possibility that some new discovery will reveal these engineered crops to have some negative consequences. However, as it stands, we have done significant amounts of research into genetically engineered foods. All of our knowledge, which is quite extensive, points to GM crops being safe. There have been very few incidents with GM crops—and as with all new strains of crops (engineered or selectively bred), when the problem was discovered, the strain was taken back and corrected. But the question stands, how would  people benefit from genetically modified crops? How would farmers benefit from increased yields? How would access to greater quantities of more nutritious foods affect struggling communities? How would the environment benefit from less deforestation from smaller areas of farmland being needed to grow the same volumes of crops? How would agriculture as a whole be better prepared for the future of a warming planet if they had better access to crops that were drought resistant and better at dealing with heat?

There are a lot of problems that genetically engineered foods could contribute to solving now, and even in 20 years we have found no problems with genetically modified foods. One could always argue that we will find something in the next 20 years, or the 20 years after that, or in 100 years. Who knows—we may find out in 20 years that strawberries have some negative consequence that was so small we didn’t notice it. So I will leave you with this thought. Which is worse: using a tool we understand to solve a problem while recognizing that we may make a misstep along the way; or not using the tool, and so making it much more difficult to solve the problem because of the fact that we don’t know the future? We will never know the future, so we should do the best we can with the tools we have.