Monsanto Case Study
The most infamous GMO based company is Monsanto. For those who haven’t seen Food Inc. Monsanto is a company that specializes in GMOs and their applications and the patents that insure lots of money. Monsanto forces farmers into their agreements of use and if they should deny and end up using Monsanto’s patented seeds they find themselves with an excessive lawsuit so unreasonable it is impossible for the farmers to have any other option but agree to their terms. Yves Bertheau and John Davison wrote a case study called Genetically Modified and non-Genetically Modified Food Supply Chains examines the interaction between these seeds, “the simulation model presented...permits an analysis of mechanisms for detecting adventitious transfer of GM material
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Some of the reasons include subjecting their consumers to crops that have not been fully tested. The Institute for Responsible Technology has published a study on the effects of GMO fed rats. “1.8 Farmers report pigs and cows became sterile from GM corn 1. More than 20 farmers in North America report that pigs fed GM corn varieties had low conception rates, false pregnancies or gave birth to bags of water. 2. Both male and female pigs became sterile. 3. Some farmers also report sterility among cows.”(Web) Although human trials have yet to exist, the possibility of sterility is a scary consequence for a food. Another reported health problem was internal organ damage, “4.1 GM proteins may be misfolded or have added molecules 1. Proteins expressed in a GM plant may be processed differently than in the donor organism. 2. Those changes, which could include misfolding or molecular attachments, can be harmful in many unpredicted ways. 3. Current studies do not adequately test for these changes”(Web). In chemistry, there are hundreds of thousands of compounds such as proteins and amino acids, and every single compound has a very specific blueprint of molecules laid out to plug into the human body in specific ways. When this exact blueprint is not followed, it can lead to failure of proper digestion and absorption of these nutrients. A GMO can have a replica blueprint but if the nutrient is off by a single bond, it can mimic its original molecules structure but have the inability to properly plug into the digestive systems. Although there are immeasurable possibilities for mutation in these organic-based compounds, there are also a large amount of advantages to GMOs. Both sides to the GMO story are told by Jon Entine on Forbes.com, “Although there have been more than 2,000 studies documenting that biotechnology does not pose an unusual threat to human health and genetically modified foods are as safe or
Some of the reasons include subjecting their consumers to crops that have not been fully tested. The Institute for Responsible Technology has published a study on the effects of GMO fed rats. “1.8 Farmers report pigs and cows became sterile from GM corn 1. More than 20 farmers in North America report that pigs fed GM corn varieties had low conception rates, false pregnancies or gave birth to bags of water. 2. Both male and female pigs became sterile. 3. Some farmers also report sterility among cows.”(Web) Although human trials have yet to exist, the possibility of sterility is a scary consequence for a food. Another reported health problem was internal organ damage, “4.1 GM proteins may be misfolded or have added molecules 1. Proteins expressed in a GM plant may be processed differently than in the donor organism. 2. Those changes, which could include misfolding or molecular attachments, can be harmful in many unpredicted ways. 3. Current studies do not adequately test for these changes”(Web). In chemistry, there are hundreds of thousands of compounds such as proteins and amino acids, and every single compound has a very specific blueprint of molecules laid out to plug into the human body in specific ways. When this exact blueprint is not followed, it can lead to failure of proper digestion and absorption of these nutrients. A GMO can have a replica blueprint but if the nutrient is off by a single bond, it can mimic its original molecules structure but have the inability to properly plug into the digestive systems. Although there are immeasurable possibilities for mutation in these organic-based compounds, there are also a large amount of advantages to GMOs. Both sides to the GMO story are told by Jon Entine on Forbes.com, “Although there have been more than 2,000 studies documenting that biotechnology does not pose an unusual threat to human health and genetically modified foods are as safe or