Sometime ago Bohol officials under the prodding of some Non Government Organizations promised to bar the introduction of a farm product, the BtTalong endorsed by no less than the Department of Agriculture. The reason is that the talong is a genetically modified organism or GMO. The arguments against the BtTalong and GOMs are many. Among those are fears of contacting cancers in the digestive tract, allergies and poisoning of the soil. All these are all unfounded and unproven.
Sometime in 1901 Japanese biologist Shigetane Ishiwatari studied the deaths, which threatened the silkworm industry. He discovered the cause, a viral infection of silkworms, an unnamed virus. It was on 1911 when this virus was rediscovered by Ernst Berliner and named it after the German province of Thuringia, Bacillus thuringiensis, Bt, was effective against certain types of insects, particularly Lepidoptera, Coleoptera and Diptera, butterflies moths and some related species.
By 1920 European farmers started to use Bt as insecticide and in 1938 France introduced BT as insect sprays and in 1950 t was exported to the United States. However Bt sprays easily degraded under sunlight or washed out by rains. Its popularity was replaced by readily available and effective synthetic insecticides. When insects acquired immunity to the synthetics, governments returned to research in organic insecticides, which targeted only specific types of insects and do not affect the environment. Bt, which satisfied the conditions, was again in use.
Advancement in molecular engineering made it possible to introduce the Bt gene, which genetically assembled the toxic crystals into the plant. The first genetically engineered corn crop, which killed stem and fruit borer larvae and caterpillars of butterfly and moths but do not harm beetles, flies, bees and other insects was registered with the US Protection Agency in 1995. Monsanto a large US chemical company developed the BtCorn labeled MONS810. In 2001 Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture, Searca, said 13 countries had already adopted genetically modified crops. This time a Monsanto subsidiary using the same technology developed the BtTalong.
The food that we eat contains natural toxins, however, most of them do not affect humans, either they are too insignificant to matter or cannot affect the humans systems at all. For example the toxin in the BtCorn or BtTalong, the delta-endotoxoprotein may kill butterfly and moth larvae but not humans. Though they are toxins, poisons, we do not have receptors to those kinds of toxins.
Ever since man had domesticated grass for grain and animals for meat, genetic modification had been in progress. Seed and stock selection, saving only those, which are prolific, fast growing, early maturing and adaptable to adverse local conditions for propagation. Due to Darwinian selection, farm produce today are very much different genetically from the original stock. To further help species improvement Gregor Mendel introduced Mendelian genetics as basis for hybridization, which was used to breed out the unfavorable characteristics as well as retain the desirable ones in specie. But those are slow processes. Some are trial and error.
Atomic research produced mutation another form of genetic modification through radiation. Genetic engineering, which allows genome mapping and rearrangement or restructuring of genes in the laboratory, shortened the process of producing new GMOs. Today no one is free from using GMO products. The rice in market is GMOs developed by either International Rice Research Institute of UP Los Baños or Philippine Rice Institute in Muños, Nueva Ecija. The chicken in market is usually the broiler type GMO, which can be marketable 45 days after hatching. The hamburger comes from genetically improved cattle the pork from genetically improved swine. Who then is afraid of the GMO BtTalong? |
