The New Straits Times, March 19, 2000
By Prof. Dzulkifli Abdul Razak
MARCH 15 was World Consumer Rights Day. This year the emphasis is on genetically-modified (GM) food, a controversial issue and which the consumer is generally uninformed about.
It is a complex issue, with far-reaching implications, beyond the question of food production and consumption alone.
What is GM food? As the name indicates, it is one in which the genetic make- up of a food is altered. This means its basic constituents, the DNA of which generic materials are made up, are changed.
Biological profiles of living things are defined by how individual DNAs are arranged to give rise to various gene sets.
For example, a rambutan is a rambutan and not a durian because of its unique DNA arrangements. Although durians too have similar DNAs, they are distinctively arranged in contrast to rambutans.
A genetic engineer could use DNA material from various plant and animal sources to create a GM food product which is not so readily discernable from its natural (unmodified) counterpart.
For example, soya beans genetically modified, look and taste the same as the original to the lay consumer. Unfortunately, there is no label to indicate which is which.
The overwhelming argument for venturing into GM food is, of course, the assumption that the world has not enough food with increasing population and less land for food cultivation. Hence, GM food is positioned as a panacea to avert a global food crisis.
It is claimed that GM food can be made more resistant to pests and adverse climatic conditions, thus producing higher yields. It can also be stored longer and requires little use of pesticides.
But such reasons may not be as palatable when it comes to consuming GM food products. This is because genetic modification often alters the very innate character of nature, as intended biologically.
Fundamentally, the nature of GM food is different from the unmodified version and this can lead to many real problems.
One problem is that if we tamper with nature, it has a way of hitting back, as clearly illustrated environmentally, with devastating calamities.
Likewise, tampered food may pose risks of biological "calamities", at least in the long run.
The ultimate question is: do we know enough of the risks we are exposing ourselves to? It is too soon to endorse GM food without it being subjected to closer scrutiny.
Going by the experience of producing pharmaceuticals from natural sources, one will notice that there will be adverse effects - ranging from mild to fatal. These is primarily due to the molecular manipulation carried out (to render it more potent as medicines) on naturally-occurring substrates. Such side-effects are now recognised as inherent in all modern medicines.
Similarly, GM food drawn from natural, unmodified sources will have potential risks. Unlike pharmaceutical products, there is no equivalent stringent tests on GM food to confirm that it is safe.
Drug tragedies - like that of thalidomide - should be revisited as it has taught the world the painful lesson of introducing something without impeccable documentation of test results and labelling requirements. Just because GM food is non-pharmaceutical, there is no reason why this parallel cannot be promulgated and implemented.
On a societal level, for an agro-based nation like Malaysia, there is ample room to sense a sinister plot in the offing. After all, our farmers have been "developing" their food crops over generations and are being assisted by scientific research to better production.
They have increased the yield of rubber, oil palm, cocoa - just to name a few. Why should we allow large companies to usurp them as potential starting materials to be genetically modified? More so since the resultant food crops will be turned into patented commercial products that we, in turn, will have to buy at exorbitant prices?
More sinister still is the availability of the so-called "terminator genes" technology. Such technology, when applied to seeds of food crops, will cause the subsequent seeds produced by the plant to self-destruct. This means no one can re-plant from the seed, except to buy more of the modified seeds. The implication here is enormous: the nation can be placed under the thumb of companies that "own" the seeds.
There are companies producing both GM foods and pesticides. What is interesting is that the GM food can be made specifically resistant to a particular pesticide, while other herbs remain vulnerable to it. In other words, these other herbs can be indiscriminately destroyed by this one pesticide while protecting the GM variety. This will gradually make the land more toxic and less biodiversified.
The controversy surrounding GM food is much more than meets the eye. Although in the short-term there is a legitimate health concern, it may not stop there. It could result in environmental hazards, economic domination and, ultimately, political upheaval.
Beginning with the magnanimous aim to solve the world's food crisis, the control of food production and sources of seeds can unsuspectingly pass into the hands of a few conglomerates. Then, food may become even more inaccessible (like the biogenetically-produced pharmaceuticals today), resulting in a greater danger of starvation - ironic, since the aim of GM food is to wipe out hunger.
Until all these ramifications are seriously pondered and acted upon the floodgates to GM food should remain closed to Malaysian consumers.
