Flavr Savr Tomato

Tomatoes, soy beans and McDonald’s French fries- what all of these things have in common? They are all some of the most commonly genetically modified foods on the market today. With scientists in the race to invent newer and better everythings, genetically modified organisms, or “GMOs” have become a hot topic of research in just the past 10 years. By using the genetic information from one organism, or the “DNA” and splicing it with the DNA of another, scientists can make food crops grow bigger, stay fresh longer, or even create their own pesticides. In this case however, and often with any case involving genetic modification, the technology has exceeded the practicality of this innovation. Genetically modified foods have no place in everyday agriculture because of the threat they pose to humans, the environment, and the future of traditional agriculture. Plants have been genetically manipulated for thousands of years. Even in the earliest cases of civilized agriculture, people saved seeds of high yielding crops to replant each season (Shannon 1999). Lately, however, with genetic engineering being the hottest and most controversial side of science, many companies such as biotech are now tampering with food crops to get results that the early farmers could have never imagined. This seems to be scientific child’s play in comparison to all of the recent media attention the cloning of sheep and even human cloning has received. Much of this genetic experimentation with the cloning of mammals and similar species can be linked to a high stakes game of chicken, where scientists are trying to do more and more daring things before people actually take the final step and clone a human. Likewise there are no real demands for