Sustainability

Genetically modified organisms

The biotechnology issue is controversial. To discuss it and to address its problems, the Ethics and Biotechnology Commission was established in 1991 at the European Parliament. One of the issues addressed by the Commission concerns consumer protection in relation to the effects on health of the food created through biotechnology. In some countries (United States, Switzerland, United Kingdom), the sale of some GMOs (or Genetically Modified Organisms) has already been authorised. The most common ones are long-lasting transgenic tomatoes and soy, that is genetically modified to increase its protein value and make it more resistant to pesticides. The European Commission, that specifically addressed this issue in 1995, has deliberated that the labelling of new products must inform the customer of the biotechnology used, so that he can make his choice.
Another important issue addressed by the Commission concerns the unpredictability of the effects that the introduction of genetically modified organisms in the environment may have.
With the development of the biotechnology science, many wonder how this may affect the evolutionary process. Transgenic techniques, as they get into the genetic material of the cell in charge of reproduction, modify it to counteract its negative characteristics or speed up the expression of its positive ones. The final result of these techniques are farm animals and plants that can adapt to environments where they would not normally live. In this way, while natural selection selects the organisms that are fittest to survive in a specific environment, biotechnologies make the selection very artificial and manipulated by man, speeding up the evolutionary changes and interfering with genetic diversity. These issues were also addressed by the 1992 Environment and Development Conference of Rio de Janeiro, during which the need was highlighted to reach an international agreement on “bio-safety” regarding the introduction of genetically manipulated organisms in the environment, that will then cross-breed with natural species and alter them. It is just to reduce these risks and before accurate answers are given on the dangerousness of introducing genetically manipulated organisms in the environment and in ecosystems, that in 1996 the European Bioethics Convention passed regulations that set limits to genetic manipulation and experiments.