GMO Adoption and Nonmarket Effects

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter reviews the three sets of issues associated with the adoption of genetically modified organisms (GMO), which include environmental safety, food safety, and the indirect impact of the spread of the technology on developing countries. GMO increases the productivity of a crop and reduces soil movement, and hence soil erosion. The primary short-run negative environmental side effect of GMOs designed to resist pests is that nontarget organisms might be affected as well. Three long-run, sustainability concerns associated with GMOs have received the most attention, which include resistance development in target and nontarget populations, the possibility that with enhanced survival traits the plant might become a weed, and flow of the novel genetic material to other species changing local or global ecosystems. Another sustainability concern arises from the use of antibiotic resistance-inducing marker genes. Development of resistance in target species is probably the single most important sustainability concern associated with GMOs engineered to enhance pest management. The antibiotics intended for therapeutic use might be inadvertently inactivated and the genetic material that confers antibiotic resistance might flow to microorganisms in the gut of animals consuming the GMO (genetic flow). Mutations unrelated to the desired modification might be induced; undesirable traits might be introduced along with the desired traits; newly introduced DNA might inactivate a host gene or alter control of its expression; or the introduced gene product or a metabolic product affected by the genetic change may interact with other cellular products.