GM foods have been controversial ever since they appeared. No matter from the food safety issues that people worry about, or from the ethical and moral aspects, the praise and criticism of GM food always exist. In today’s society, people’s demand for food is increasing, and food diversity is becoming more and more abundant. So for agricultural production, GM food may be a good thing for them. Because of the application of GM technology, not only can greatly increase crop yields, reduce the impact of pests and diseases on crop quality, but also reduce input costs. This is a very economical thing. But they may have overlooked the ethical level. Recalling the land ethics mentioned earlier, we must follow the laws of natural development and follow that the land and all creatures on the land have equal rights to life and all other equal rights. But is it reasonable to apply GM technology to the land? In other words, when the rights of land are slightly affected, will people choose the benefits of a bumper harvest or respect the land? It is undeniable that we cannot ignore all the benefits brought by GM food. I agree with the author’s point of view that we need to use and develop GM technology responsibly to ensure that the impact of GM is positive most time. A good example is the production of environmentally friendly pigs studied in Canada. Because phosphorus is an important part of pork production, pigs are inseparable from a large amount of phosphorus for breeding and reproduction. Especially pig feed contains a large amount of phosphorus. When pigs excrete, a large amount of phosphorus-containing waste will be discharged into the soil, causing serious soil environmental pollution and causing the problem of soil eutrophication. Therefore, in order to solve difficult environmental problems, the Canadian research team used GM technology and planned to produce environmentally friendly pigs, which not only solved the problem of phosphorus pollution to the environment but also made humans eat healthier. Therefore, I believe that the existence of GM food has a certain degree of rationality. As people’s concepts and awareness continue to increase, gm technology has also improved, and the improvements are more in line with environmental ethics and land ethics. Because technology always serves mankind, mankind has the ability to make the world a better place.
Work cited:
Brad C.Joern, Alan Sutton. 2006. Phosphorus management in pork production. https://porkgateway.org/resource/phosphorus-management-in-pork-production
Gray Comstock. nd. Ethics and Genetically Modified Food. https://philpapers.org/archive/COMEAG
Hi Juniper28,
I find your take on GM technology very interesting. I appreciate how you explore different perspectives on the ethics of using GM technology, including respecting land and nature. I agree that GM technology can be used for the benefit of humans and the rest of nature. Moreover, genetic modification can be quite a natural process that strengthens crops and feeds people, for example through grafting two varieties of a plant together. However, I do have concerns that the environmentally friendly pig example is not as environmentally ethical as it may seem. While reducing phosphorus pollution is a benefit, I think genetically modifying pigs to produce less phosphorus waste leaves the carbon footprint of meat production unaddressed. Also, phosphorus pollution is still a significant problem due to agricultural fertilizers used to raise crops. So, I worry that producing less phosphorus-intensive pork and labelling it as “environmentally friendly” tries to absolve consumers (and producers) of moral responsibility for the overall environmental effects of eating industrially raised meat.
All in all, I enjoyed reading your blog post and it was interesting to learn about the pig example!
-Mary
Hi Juniper28!
I really enjoyed reading your post and the ideas you proposed in favour of Genetically Modified food products. I agree with your stance on the ethics of genetically modified food but I, like some others, may have concerns over the genetic modification of the pigs in the example you described at the end of your post. I think that the intent behind it is good but could there be more ethical concerns using this technology with animals rather than only plants, solely on the fact that most animals have sentience while plants do not? The goal of increasing food security for all people in the world is very important and GM food does have the potential to solve some of these problems but could some of these fixes be considered a technological fix rather than fixing the root problem of our current agricultural practices (monocultures, pesticides/herbicides). I can see some potential opponents to this issue on the grounds of cultural/religious or ethical beliefs just because of the continued use of animals. I agree with you that we should be concerned about the food security of all people and if we can ethically use genetic modification as a tool to achieve this without upsetting people on ethical grounds, then I am fully in support.
– Carter