` GMO Podcast Anastasakis & Romero Are GMOs Safe? Are GMOs Safe?

Anchor: Genetically modified organisms otherwise known as GMOs are a part of everyday life. GMOs can be found in the vast majority of the food at the grocery store.That means you eat them everyday! Relatively little is known about GMOs. We asked experts in their fields, a clinical nutritionist and a food scientist; the essential question of whether or not GMOs are safe. We got two opposing arguments.

Middle: To understand if something is dangerous you must first know what it is. We asked Yvonne Stuchell a well respected food scientist from Archer Daniels Midland Company to describe the process of genetically engineering a plant

Well the process involves really inserting some genes into a plant so that the resulting plants are not sensitive or are immune to, um, whatever in other words if its the herbicide, they are immune to the herbicide. So you insert specific genes so that those plants dont react to that or they can they can, um, chemically change that herbicide so that its no longer going to affect them.

There are several ways to infect a plant with foreign DNA the most common way is to use a virus.

Viruses are really effective at hijacking your cells and inserting genetic material and making copies of themselves. So, they use that outer shell and mechanism to insert the genetic proteins that they want, the genes that they are specifically looking for into a cell. In the end you have to get the genetic material into the cell and hope that that material is incorporated into the genome, the cell.

After a plant is genetically modified, its genes, the blueprints of life are changed. In a plant like the before described Roundup Ready corn or soy the plant now has an immunity to the herbicide Roundup. This is the point in the interviews where we started to notice clear opposing viewpoints.

Clinical nutritionist Christa Orrechio told us that GE plants destroy the lining of your small intestine she described it as a brick wall.

Think of a small intestine wall where we digest our food and use all our foods nutrients like a brick wall. That brick wall has to stay intact and its like genetically modified foods are basically pulling the cocking or the mortar out of the brick wall.

Where as Mrs. Yvonne Stuchell said

There can be some health issues. Uh, especially if somebody has or developed an allergy to a specific crop. So, uh, that's kind of important when people know what kind of allergies they have. Most transgenic, they call them transgenic or mutated crops marketed for humans to eat have not been directly linked to any kind of widespread allergies.

As both clearly have opposing viewpoints neither of them is right or wrong. The problem with GMOs is we just dont know. As of this point, GMOs have only been around for around a decade so there is no conclusive proof or disproof of the safety. Ms. Christa Orrechio described it perfectly.

I think that there is two ways to approach it and it's either you are guilty until proven innocent or innocent until proven guilty and we have a much different stance in America than they do in Europe;

Most GMOs are banned in Europe. As a consumer in our society you are eating GMOs whether you choose to or not. GMOs are estimated to be in 75% of the foods in your supermarket. This statistic alone should terrify everyone. Why is there something in the vast majority of the food we eat that has the potential to be horrendous for our bodies?

End: As of today there are no requirements to label GMOs in most of America. Food companies like monsanto and hershey's have defeated labeling propositions through 10s of millions of dollars funding the effort to defeat GMO labeling laws. This is something both Mrs. Yvonne Stuchell and Ms. Christa Orrechio agree on. We as consumers should know what is in our food so we can make the choice in avoiding or not avoiding GMOs.