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Gm Foods Transcendentalism

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“Eat your vegetables, they're good for you”, The words a kid never wants to hear. People scan food packages for whole grains and fibers, avoid sugar, and don’t even think about buying something with trans fats. Just when people thought they knew how to eat healthy, there's another problem: Genetically Modified Organisms. Some opponents would have you believe these ingredients are the dietary curse of the decade. How concerned should people really be though? This is one of the most debated questions around the world. Many environmental organizations protest against genetic engineering, but numerous companies continue to use it in food production. The issue of Genetically Modified foods has been investigated by many different scientists for many …show more content…

In 1845, Thoreau moved to Walden Pond to live freely and be simple. He became self-reliant and wrote a book that has become a center for literature learning. During his two year stay at Walden, he grew the majority of the food he ate. He grew beans, a few rows of peas, corn, turnips, and potatoes. From this experience he learned that “a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength”. Thoreau really just wanted to become a part of nature. Based on references in Thoreau’s works, it appears that he would be anti-GMO. One example would be “Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized”. A Second example would be, that Thoreau even wrote a whole chapter in his book Walden about his bean …show more content…

The 1980’s marked the scientific breakthrough that specific pieces of DNA could be taken from one organism to another. This became the basis of the genetic modification process. In 1983, a tobacco plant resistant to anti-biotics was created, becoming the first transgenic plant. It then took another decade before the first genetically-altered crop was commercially introduced. This was the famous delayed-ripening "Flavr-savr" tomato approved by the FDA on May 18, 1994. The tomato was fed to mice in laboratory test who, normally relishing tomatoes, refused to eat these lab-creations and had to be force-fed. Several of the mice developed stomach lesions and seven of the forty mice died within two weeks. Without any more safety testing the tomato was approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration for commercialization. However, it ended up as a production and commercial failure, and was ultimately abandoned in 1996(Lacey). Secret documents were made public from a lawsuit that showed the scientific consensus at the agency was that genetically modified foods were inherently dangerous and might create hard-to-detect allergies, toxins, new diseases and nutritional problems. They urged their superiors to require strict, long-term tests, but the White House under George H. W.

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