In recent years, the ways of artificial selection got diversified. People now can mutate the genes of plants directly through radiation and recombinant technology. The former one is done by exposing plants under radiations. After that, the plants can gain unexpected mutations. Even though most of these mutations are harmful to plants, some of them are beneficial in the ways like increasing yields or making them disease resistant. Then, these mutated plants will be crossed with the standard varieties to create improved food (Stevens 101). The recombinant technology works through picking out specific gene from one plant and “pasting” it into another plant. In this way, we are able to pick one useful gene from one plant and insert it into another plant.

The reason why this topic becomes so controversial is the ethical debate behind it. On one hand, people like this technology since it can increase the food production by getting higher yields and allowing crops to grow in a harsher environment. On the other hand, the wide use of genetically mutated plants might cause environmental harms in ways like increasing population and reducing biodiversity. The division between the benefits of this technology and how it is ethically wrong to harm the environment is why the topic of genetically mutated food is ethically debatable.

Genetically mutated crops enable higher yields. We can see this concept proven in many cases in the article of this week. For example, the Rockefeller Foundation set up programs in Mexico to help the Mexicans develop more productive wheat species (Stevens 99). After numerous crossbreeding, they managed to produce wheat varieties that both respond well to fertilizers and are disease resistant (Stevens 99). In order to conquer the issue of falling wheat due to the heavy grains, they crossbred the wheat variety with Japanese Dwarf wheat, whose steam is thicker (Stevens 99). With the implementation of this wheat species, the country was able to produce 6 times more wheat than it had in 1944, which gave the country the ability to import its grain (Stevens 99). Similar examples also happened in Philippines and in India, which high-yield varieties combined with better irrigation system and infrastructures help to solve the local food shortages and gave the countries the ability to export its food (Stevens 99).

With great gains comes with great cost. The benefits of genetically modified food can bring environmental damages in several ways. The two most obvious damages are resource depletion due to overpopulation and reduced biodiversity. For the first case, imagine this scenario: when there is more food, there will be more people, and with more people, there will be the demand with more food. This cycle will not stop without population control (Stevens 100). If there are more people on the planet than the planet can sustain, the human race can die out after the resource of the planet is depleted. The second damage emerges when farmers use chemicals such as herbicide and pesticide. These chemicals will kill the other plants and animals but left the crops behind (Stevens 100). In addition to this, farmers tend to grow crops of higher selling price, which also disrupts the local biodiversity by stopping plant rotations (Stevens 100). Both of the above practices will lower the local biodiversity, which will make the ecosystem more vulnerable to sudden changes. Similar issue happened during the potato famine in Ireland in 19^th Century Europe when farmers only grew one type of potato, and when this potato died out due to disease, they had nothing to eat.

Knowing how helpful and how harmful this technology at the same time this concept is exactly why is ethically complicated. However, it’s not likely that we will have ways to solve the dilemma easily. Frankly speaking, the best thing we can do right now is to follow trend of the era and make adjustment when needed in order to enjoy the benefit of genetically modified food without incurring too much harms for the environment.

Work Cited Page

“Risk, Regulation, and Our Food.” Biotechnology and Society: an Introduction, by Hallam Stevens, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 2016, pp. 97–115.