Gmo Under Scrutiny Rachel Ehrenberg Summary

As discussed in the article “GMOs Under Scrutiny” by Rachel Ehrenberg, there are numerous controversial methods being used in today’s world, one of them being growing genetically modified crops. Originating in the 1990s, GMOs came into practice for many different purposes and they have had several different effects. The whole idea of genetically modifying crops was to, one, make growing crops easier by giving them a built-in pesticide or the ability to stay fresh longer, two, to make growing certain minor ingredients, that are otherwise too difficult to obtain, cheaply and quickly, and, three, to help boost the nutritional value of certain foods to attempt to combat malnutrition. The effects that GMOs have had are: they have given many farmers larger yields of their crops than they’ve had before, they’ve contributed to less pesticide use, but more herbicide use, and, most of all they’ve caused much controversy among people.
One of the biggest arguments regarding GMOs is
For example, to support the side that GMOs don’t harm the environment page 26 says “They [GMOs] help minimize mechanical weed removal, which means less soil erosion, more carbon stored in the soil and fewer carbon emissions from tilling equipment making trips across fields…” This excerpt shows how herbicide-tolerant GMOs help to keep the atmosphere cleaner by removing the need to use tilling equipment. On the other hand, to support the idea that GMOs could harm the environment page 27 says “The potential environmental effect of an escaped GM Atlantic salmon, the first GM animal to garner regulatory approval, are a little harder to predict...There are biological precautionary measures...But error rates in the sterilization process are inevitable and roughly 1 percent will probably be able to breed successfully.” The results of an accidental release of GM animals could potentially be catastrophic on the