Food guarantee, food security?

Isolation of new/developed organisms, increasing the crop in agricultural products, extending the shelf life of products, developing the nutrients and their components in uncooked products, increasing the resistance against animal and plant diseases are the general target benefits of using GMO. Soybean, corn, rape, cotton and tomatoe are the major products developed by this aim and are grown commercially in different countries on the world.
Beside these advantages, debates are going on in various scientific fields about probability of facing their risks such as possible allergic and toxic effects, their influence on non-target organisms and diffusion of the new genetic structure to natural flora.

Regarding this new technology's risks, many countries are performing a strict controlling system on diffusion of these crops to nature and obligate to add a statement on the label of products which are made of these kind of crops or include them. U.S.A is one of the most important producers of GMO. GMOs produced in this country are investigated from different points by USDA (United States Dept. of Agriculture), FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and EPA (Environmental Protection Agency). For instance, tests performed for the USDA permission are: Origin of the transferred gene, its diffusion potential to nature and effects on non-target organisms. Tests performed for the EPA permission are: Its effects on beneficial and non-target insects, toxicity of the pesticidal component, suitability for human consumption, ecological threats, and possible insect resistance. Tests performed for FDA permission are: Origin of the gene, history of its usage, toxicity, feeding profile, chemical composition, allergic potential and antibiotic resistance.

With the results of these tests GMOs which are detected to have no risk against health take the permission to be produced as food and/or fodder. In USA, there is no obligation of labelling GMOs if they are not distinctly different form their natural Kindred. But foundations can voluntarily indicate this on their product labels if they want. On the contrary, many countries especially European Union members obligate to remark this on the label of all f comestibles which are made of these kind of crops or partially include them.

GMOs which are products of biotechnology, are thought to be a hope for supplying enough comestible (food guarantee) for the increasing world population. On the world, the area used for growing GM cereals is increasing every year. Size of this area increased by 15% between 2002 and 2003 (increase 9 million hectares) and reached to 67.7 million hectares by the year 2003. In 2003, 6 countries were ahead of all GM cereal producing countries and they performed 99% of the world's production. Distribution of this ratio according to countries is as follows: USA 63%, Argentina 21%, Canada 6% , Brasil 4%ve South Africa 1%. In 2003, 55% of the total area used for soybean growing was cultivated with GM soybean. Within these circumstances (considering that 75% of Turkey's soybean import is from USA) it is impossible for Turkey not to get affected from these new technological products. Here, the most important thing is to control entrance and departure of these products through the country, to control their usage in comestibles and to observe the commercial movements of these products. Although there is no commercial production of these crops in our country, there may be problems during the export of foods like cake, biscuit, chocolate which may contain GMO (for example soybean and corn).

 

Last Updated: 07.08.2009