Risks, Benefits, and Regulation of GMOs

Robert Vavala Author

05/11/2018 Added

598 Plays

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Instruction and explanation of the risks, benefits, and regulations of genetically-modified organisms

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[00:00:04.810]Farmers, Consumers and GMOs.
[00:00:07.510]We're gonna focus on social dimensions
[00:00:09.770]and better understand consumer acceptance,
[00:00:12.290]and here's our learning targets.
[00:00:14.710]We'll start with how do scientists
[00:00:17.300]study social dimensions of GMOs?
[00:00:20.350]Of course, from our introduction,
[00:00:21.920]we met a social scientist, Carmen Bain,
[00:00:26.200]and we could see that through the careful use
[00:00:30.300]of interviews and surveys, they could gather data
[00:00:34.520]that would give them better insights on social dimensions
[00:00:38.540]and how people are thinking and reacting
[00:00:42.730]to new technologies in agriculture,
[00:00:46.200]such as the use of GMOs in our foods and crops.
[00:00:51.200]So, based on having a general idea
[00:00:54.970]of how social scientists do their work,
[00:00:57.610]now we wanna focus on some of the things
[00:01:00.520]that social scientists have helped us understand
[00:01:04.860]about the social dimensions and how the public reacts
[00:01:08.850]or a segment of the public reacts
[00:01:11.450]to the use of GMOs in our food.
[00:01:14.160]So, we're gonna start with
[00:01:16.610]what the initial consumer oppositions were to GMOs,
[00:01:22.140]and we're gonna take advantage of some of the insights
[00:01:27.020]that Carmen Bain and her co-author shared
[00:01:32.680]in this article in the journal called Sustainability
[00:01:36.350]that gives us some background
[00:01:38.870]on the history of GMOs
[00:01:42.350]and their integration into our food system.
[00:01:46.010]So I've created a couple of timelines,
[00:01:48.480]and these timelines could be based
[00:01:52.123]on some of the historical perspective that Dr. Bain shared,
[00:01:56.910]but it's also a timeline
[00:01:58.865]that kind of coincidentally spans my career as a teacher.
[00:02:03.080]I started my college teaching career in about 1989,
[00:02:07.970]and I'm still going today.
[00:02:10.990]My teaching career overlaps
[00:02:15.050]with the integration of this new technology,
[00:02:19.900]genetic engineering technology,
[00:02:22.200]as a part of our food system.
[00:02:23.630]So I made a timeline with the two main applications
[00:02:27.710]of genetic engineering technology
[00:02:29.470]to develop herbicide resisting crops
[00:02:32.200]and to develop insect resistant crops.
[00:02:36.360]And let's take a look
[00:02:37.740]at the Commercial Transgenic Crop Time Line.
[00:02:41.040]Now, we should remember that prior to the application
[00:02:45.700]of genetic engineering,
[00:02:47.400]the creation of GMOs that were part of our food system,
[00:02:51.480]scientists had already developed
[00:02:55.150]transgenic strategies
[00:02:57.900]to develop microorganisms that could make human proteins.
[00:03:02.120]Humulin or the human insulin protein
[00:03:04.920]was commercialized in 1982.
[00:03:07.860]And like a lot of science,
[00:03:10.540]as the science has developed and improved
[00:03:13.390]and transitions to become a reliable technology,
[00:03:18.380]what tends to happen is consumers become more comfortable
[00:03:23.520]and more accustomed to using that technology.
[00:03:27.350]I think there was a great deal of motivation
[00:03:30.760]when you saw the success
[00:03:32.470]of applying genetic engineering technology
[00:03:34.880]in solving this medical challenge, this medical problem,
[00:03:39.270]that we could use this technology to solve problems
[00:03:42.790]that we encountered in growing crops
[00:03:45.150]that were part of our food system.
[00:03:47.790]In 1995, the very first commercialized
[00:03:52.040]transgenic crops were released,
[00:03:53.810]Roundup Ready soybean, which had a gene from a microorganism
[00:03:57.640]that provided it with resistance to a herbicide,
[00:04:00.880]and Bt corn, in this case BT corn
[00:04:06.160]that would resist an insect called European corn borer,
[00:04:09.590]again because of the cross-species transfer
[00:04:13.470]of a microbial gene, in this case to a corn plant.
[00:04:17.860]Those were both commercialized in 1995.
[00:04:22.010]But prior to that commercialization
[00:04:25.090]when the science and the discovery was proceeding,
[00:04:30.150]there was a lot of speculation
[00:04:34.130]about problems that would occur
[00:04:36.790]if this technology was used in mainstream agriculture.
[00:04:42.640]In the early '90s when I first started teaching
[00:04:45.310]about genetically engineered crops, how they were developed,
[00:04:48.700]and how they might be used in our food system,
[00:04:52.290]along with the science, there was already controversy,
[00:04:55.990]speculation about problems that might occur.
[00:04:59.280]And I recall using a program as a part of my teaching
[00:05:03.780]in my college genetics course
[00:05:05.960]called The Mouse that Laid the Golden Egg
[00:05:07.900]which told the story
[00:05:09.630]of how these products were being developed,
[00:05:12.170]but some of the controversy surrounding the application
[00:05:15.300]of genetic engineering to animals, to plants,
[00:05:19.460]as well as to microorganisms.
[00:05:21.940]At that same time, about 1990,
[00:05:27.384]'91, '92, '93,
[00:05:30.160]the movie Jurassic Park came out,
[00:05:32.250]and of course that was a genetic engineering story,
[00:05:35.020]although extensive science fiction here
[00:05:39.680]with the idea that you could transfer a few genes
[00:05:44.090]that were discovered, left behind
[00:05:46.670]by ancient prehistoric dinosaurs
[00:05:50.170]and you could genetically engineer amphibians
[00:05:54.330]into becoming these
[00:05:58.140]living dinosaurs on the planet.
[00:05:59.920]That was absolutely science fiction,
[00:06:03.290]but it conjured up some uneasiness and some of those ideas
[00:06:08.570]that maybe genetic engineering is different,
[00:06:10.890]maybe it's not a good idea.
[00:06:13.980]Thus in the mid 1990s,
[00:06:17.580]Roundup Ready soybeans, Bt corn
[00:06:21.710]were first grown by farmers in the United States.
[00:06:27.040]But before those products could be released
[00:06:31.150]and available for farmers to use
[00:06:33.840]as a part of mainstream crop production,
[00:06:38.350]the questions of what are the benefits from these products,
[00:06:44.080]versus what are the risks of using these products
[00:06:47.430]had already been addressed.
[00:06:49.550]So, let's take a look
[00:06:52.141]at some of these benefits versus risks questions,
[00:06:57.290]and we'll focus on the risks.
[00:07:00.590]So I'm gonna pose these as questions,
[00:07:04.540]and you can think of these as potential risks or issues
[00:07:09.680]that somebody could state as oppositions
[00:07:14.630]to the integration of GMOs into our food system.
[00:07:18.150]So I'm gonna list those questions here,
[00:07:20.520]and I've placed these questions in different categories.
[00:07:24.670]And when you take a look at the two categories of questions,
[00:07:30.020]those on the left we could put into the category
[00:07:33.230]of being addressed by biologists.
[00:07:36.910]These are biological science questions that biologists have
[00:07:42.080]the technical capabilities of answering.
[00:07:45.920]The questions on the right are just as important,
[00:07:49.560]but these are questions that are more social science issues
[00:07:55.140]and need to be looked at and addressed in a different way.
[00:08:00.960]So, we'll talk a little bit more here next
[00:08:04.950]about how biologists address these questions
[00:08:08.250]of are the plants and animals that have been subjected
[00:08:13.460]to the genetic engineering process safe to grow?
[00:08:17.681]Is the use of these genetically engineered plants
[00:08:22.490]or animals safe for the environment?
[00:08:24.230]And for the consumers in particular,
[00:08:29.250]are they safe to eat?
[00:08:31.860]Social scientists have ways of getting us
[00:08:35.400]to better understand these questions.
[00:08:38.460]For example, some people see genetic engineering
[00:08:43.661]is a more extreme intervention
[00:08:47.440]of genetic changes that we have taken advantage of
[00:08:52.320]in developing our crops or our animals.
[00:08:56.110]Have we exceeded our bounds
[00:08:59.630]in utilizing this process?
[00:09:02.810]Or perhaps the facts that these technologies
[00:09:07.800]have been mostly developed and commercialized
[00:09:11.140]by larger companies might have an impact on business
[00:09:16.160]or might have an impact on consumers' rights
[00:09:20.050]as they're buying the products
[00:09:22.590]of these genetically engineered plants and animals.
[00:09:26.730]And then there's other questions
[00:09:29.240]about cross-species transfer
[00:09:31.940]and the social science implications of that.
[00:09:36.010]Let's take a look at the issues on the left next.
[00:09:41.810]I wanna start with this diagram,
[00:09:43.520]'cause what it does is contrast the scientific process
[00:09:47.410]in developing a genetically engineered crop
[00:09:50.910]for farmers to use, that's on the top,
[00:09:53.180]about nine years to develop that.
[00:09:55.640]Compared to the conventional plant breeding process
[00:10:00.640]to develop a new variety or hybrid for a farmer to grow,
[00:10:03.990]that's about 12 processes.
[00:10:05.700]But the colors here make a difference.
[00:10:10.600]And part of the genetic engineering process takes advantage
[00:10:14.880]of the progress that plant breeders have made.
[00:10:18.360]Where it's different is at the beginning.
[00:10:20.040]It's focused on laboratory procedures, discovering genes,
[00:10:25.300]and working with plants at the cell and tissue level
[00:10:30.270]in a different way
[00:10:32.100]before you're eventually ready to work
[00:10:36.230]with the plant breeders in the field
[00:10:37.960]in evaluating these processes.
[00:10:39.940]The two processes have some similarities,
[00:10:43.110]but they also have some distinct differences
[00:10:47.080]in terms of their use of science and technology.
[00:10:50.000]And it's because of that difference
[00:10:52.190]in genetically engineered crop development
[00:10:54.750]that the regulatory agencies have imposed
[00:10:57.860]much greater regulatory restrictions
[00:11:01.690]on products that use this genetic engineering process.
[00:11:06.070]And there are three main regulatory agencies
[00:11:09.500]that come into play in evaluating the safety
[00:11:14.310]of these genetically engineered products
[00:11:19.360]in the United States.
[00:11:20.870]In addition, there are legal patent issues
[00:11:24.890]that are involved as well.
[00:11:25.890]So, it's a much more highly regulated process
[00:11:29.080]compared to traditional breeding.
[00:11:32.000]And the different agencies answer different questions.
[00:11:34.940]USDA/APHIS helps us understand
[00:11:38.220]is this something that's safe to grow?
[00:11:42.460]The EPA wants to know if it's safe for the environment.
[00:11:45.910]And the FDA wants to know if it's safe for the consumer.
[00:11:49.600]In addition to developing the technology,
[00:11:53.540]you also have to provide information
[00:11:56.730]that allows these regulatory agencies
[00:11:59.350]to answer these questions.
[00:12:01.350]And the goal is to address these questions
[00:12:05.810]and determine if the genetically engineered product
[00:12:08.760]can be deregulated.
[00:12:10.940]Well, what does that mean?
[00:12:12.630]That means it's gonna be grown the same
[00:12:15.010]as a non-genetically engineered crop variety or hybrid.
[00:12:21.190]And therefore, once it meets deregulated status,
[00:12:26.530]it's gonna be a part of our main food production system.
[00:12:31.850]So, getting to that point of deregulation
[00:12:35.880]requires the regulatory agencies to really weigh in
[00:12:39.800]on what are the benefits of these new products
[00:12:43.500]compared to the risks that they pose,
[00:12:46.930]and then make a decision
[00:12:48.940]based on a examination of that balance.
[00:12:52.710]So, the regulatory agencies had developed their strategies,
[00:12:57.650]and those were applied to the very first products
[00:13:01.160]that were developed, Roundup Ready soybeans, Bt corn.
[00:13:04.680]They were grown as non-regulated products.
[00:13:08.690]And the belief was that if these are grown
[00:13:12.050]and no problems are observed, no problems occur,
[00:13:16.520]the controversy surrounding the use
[00:13:19.990]of GMO technology will fade away.
[00:13:23.310]But what we discovered is that in the past 20 years
[00:13:28.190]since these have been incorporated
[00:13:30.990]and have now become mainstream in our food system,
[00:13:35.090]the controversy still persists,
[00:13:38.660]and there's several reasons for that.
[00:13:40.290]So, we'll ask you to come back
[00:13:43.230]and view part two of the social dimensions
[00:13:49.010]part of our learning environment.
[00:13:51.520]And let's take a look at what some of the
[00:13:55.890]events were that occurred
[00:13:58.600]as these new crops were being grown by farmers
[00:14:02.220]that might have contributed to the fact
[00:14:05.090]that we still see controversy today.

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Risks, Benefits, and Regulation of GMOs

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