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Eyes of Nye - Genetically Modified Foods

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Asbury H Goodman people found does it have to chase their food around all day they could grow it right there where they were it's called farming and ever since then we've been trying to control plants and animals for 3 raisins breakfast lunch and dinner how many cows do you think you'd see if they've never been domesticated by humans ever seen a cow out in the wild fighting for his life you think chickens will one day rise up and take over the world no I don't think so somewhere back in time thousands and thousands of years ago feeding ourselves change from a little walk to lot of science we've been trying to improve that science ever since Heavenly ladies in the United States groceries are filled with genetically modified food take a look at this corn no blemishes not a kernel on a place only in America right well exactly in Europe if a food is genetically modified it has to be labeled as such and why is that is there something to be afraid of unless a good the one that's probably not asked often enough for getting more and more genetically modified food faster and faster what is it or do we need it is it safe well let's have a look do you eat genetically modified food I don't know doing every corn yeah corns on the US now is almost all my money, I just got caught on girls if they can eat it what if I told you we could put a g from a fish been to a tomato and it keeps them from freezing would you eat that tomato do I need situations made of kind of weird but I live if I didn't know I would probably eat it anyway we're stepping Beyond normal boundaries but I guess the food content itself they are eating is probably the same number for TV edible for me if it's good that effect  me as a human my body my system finished bad as **** every living thing change DNA which includes chromosomes and genes genes provide instructions to build a living thing if you change one of the genes you rewrite instructions so instead of Bill Nye the brown eyed guy and get going on with blue eyes some people think that would be a distinct Improvement genetically modified food Say by taking a gene from a fish and putting the tomato or creating a whole new species one that's never existed on Earth before so someone say you clean the monster food  others would say no it's still fruit or vegetable I'm just making my lunch  we're outside of Pullman Washington in wheat fields that we use for breeding breathing weed Rita's been grown in an organized way for probably about 10,000 years and the farmer girls Ten Thousand Years improve the weed a little bit each generation are you trying to make me fat that will grow every year weight has a large Gene that we can work with a lot of wild relatives of weight are available any of those are perennials so they don't die each year and we can make a cross between nice perennial wild relatives and normal or domestic weed annual wage and produce lines that don't die each years so how do we make a hive the first step in making a hybrid or cross is to emasculate and and letra mean by emasculate is to pull out the male parts of the flower ouch and we're taking the male parts out of the wheat flour and turning it into a female so what then do you do dozens or hundreds of plants at a time over a year we do hundreds or thousands of crosses all done by all done by manually go in with tweezers pull out the answers enter this pollen from another plant you have a hybrid seed you grow that and you produce a new variety of what takes takes a season get the hybrid cuz you'll take that seed and plant that out the next year till take a year to get that progeny and it'll take fifteen years or so to get a variety do domesticated we take this wild wheat to be your lawfully wedded hybrid see breeding food crops is a lot like a marriage or a wedding shotgun with cuz the week doesn't have much say in the matter but traditional breeding of food crops takes plenty of human intervention agricultural scientists and tinkering with our food for centuries that's why most of the food you eat cannot be found in nature  so watermelon saito's plums and corn bear little resemblance to their original natural species but now scientists can take it another step they can get rid of this wedding ceremony all together and makes change from species that are hardly related at all so how does that go something old something new something borrowed and something there's something blue here hey kid how about  dinner Yes you heard right it used to be broccoli was always left on the plane that's before I discovered do Santos new broccoli it has all of the vitamin and mineral goodness of regular broccoli but now it's been genetically engineered to taste like cherry a new Cola flavor and it stays fresh in your refrigerator for months because they added Gene of a special mushroom a mushroom that has a vital nutrient mushroom new broccoli all of the goodness who none of the broccoli this is an organically grown papaya a tropical fruit this particular what is infected with the very common ringspot virus then people eat papayas like this all the time this is a papaya that's been genetically modified so that has tiny piece of the DNA from that very same ringspot virus embedded in its DNA its immune or resistive to ringspot infection which one do you want to eat the natural one with lots of ringspot virus DNA or the modified when we just a little bit of that very same DNA classic dilemma of natural versus modified is it good versus evil or is it just another step in the March agricultural progress what exactly do you mean by transgenic transgenic is a term that also means genetically engineered you can take a gene from another organism and put it into this organism going to go right in here so this is rice to Rice you're transferring genes from one rice plant to another run track how is that different from what a conventional rice farmer would do trying to hide does rice. It does is it and it injects DNA into the plant molecular biologist event at taking that bacteria they take the jeans out that this bacteria used to cause disease and they put their genes of interest in the gene of interest can be anything it could be in any organism so then what we would do we throw it to the adult plant stage and we would inoculated and see if it's resistant to the if we make rice that is resistant to a certain naturally occurring bacterium aren't you just going to eventually say in a few decades have new bacteria that are going to attack this different rice this is true of genetic modification everything we eat has been genetically modified so that carries a gene or genes for resistance I think that people should close attention to genetic engineering and although there are some fears and some legitimate risks with certain aspects of genetically engineered food I think the benefits far outweigh the risk especially in third world countries where there is tremendous poverty and disease and malnutrition vitamin A deficiencies very serious disease there is 500000 kildren a year go blind due to their lack of vitamin A and a fact there's something went to two million deaths every single year I'm due to vitamin A deficiency and rice it turns out has part of the pathway the biochemical pathway for producing vitamin A but it lacked three or four jeans so what this group did in Switzerland they took these genes from other organisms daffodil when bacteria can you put those jeans into rise and this allowed right now to make this pro-vitamin eggs welcome to food Forum I'm Chuck Chaplin and our guest is Wayne Hancock president food Association group funded by a number of companies working in this field Hancock that's why the corporations you represent have made such a major investment in altering food at the genetic level to help people Chuck plain and simple we want to help people give her golden rice haven't you yes you seem to work and do every one of your advertisements but because we're proud of it did you know that I half a million children in the third world go blind each year because of vitamin deficiencies if they ate our rights we could save all those children so it's about helping children that's right check one of your companies also put the an Arctic fish into Tomatoes those fish don't freeze you put that Gene in tomatoes and they don't freeze but isn't that kind of creepy fish Gene in a oil it's not creepy when those Tomatoes make it to the third world so the children have something to eat and they can see those Tomatoes you know why because they're not it seems this technology is very dangerous when we run out of food if we don't do this will run out of food who's that one of them away from someone called he's just imagine being a farmer who grows corn that has been genetically cheniere so the insects don't eat it he doesn't have to spray as much pesticide he saves money in his crop is nearly chemical-free we might want to grow that but what about the effect of that crop on its environment it can take years for an organism to have an impact on an ecosystem not exactly the pace of business corporations are developing more specialized more complex strains of species species that may be resistant to more diseases and more incense that all sounds too good to be true is it what exactly is BT What gene was it said named after a bacterium right that's correct when you hear BT Corner the first to the bacteria bacillus thuringiensis which is a common soil back hurry up and it produces A protein that a certain type of insect doesn't like and BT crops have been developed using biotechnology make that single protein and put it into the plant the plants now have a natural built-in protection against these insect pests the insect protected corn there is another technology called herbicide-tolerant crops and these are crops that have had a single Gene inserted into them that allow most props to withstand an application of a herbicide and the value of those crops is that a farmer Canal spray herbicide over the top of those crops and troll all the weeds that compete with that crops kill the weeds but leave the crop healthy and growing so how do we know that these products are that's a real area that's been investigated very very extensively and in fact in the case of something like a herbicide-tolerant soybeans it has been studied by play 31 different regulatory agencies in 17 different countries around the world and all of them have come to the same conclusion that these new crops are as safe as the conventional version of those crops one small Gene to feed a man one giant Feast for mankind least that's idea behind genetically modified food but the questions consumers are asking now is when am I eating genetically modified food answer probably more often than y thank  these fruits and vegetables are organically grown so is this cantaloupe but the list of genetically modified versions of all of these Foods is growing everyday  boost soybean crops today or Jeanette modified and soy derivatives appear in hundreds of food products so you're probably serving genetically modified soy your all family your as well as your kids seem baby food formulas commonly contain soy canola's used in lots of foods like making margarine and cooking oil so it's in dozens and dozens are processed foods especially snacks genetically modified corn shows up on your breakfast table and your cereal and lunch and your soap at dinner then your tacos and even if dessert there are scientists working to genetically modify coffee plants so they only produce decaffeinated beans it wouldn't be the Swiss process of water process RV no process so genetically modified foods are probably here to stay but you won't always know what you're eating just by looking at the label the label may give you a nutritional information how many calories are are in so on but you probably won't see the words genetically modified in the fine print so do you think we should have labeling on genetically engineered Foods it is that you're eating and I think that it's a mistake to limp at all into one category one could actually have a transgenic plant at the dentist the part that you eat so maybe it's transgenic just in the late and don't eat the corn leaf or if transgenic in The Roots because you have root worms that you know for the for the rinse I find it upsetting that when someone one big category and it's all bad in many people's eyes when it affect they don't know what they don't like  if we where would we eat what are we eating it's not so easy to tell when scientist throw words around like hybrid transgenic GMO and genetic engineering they're not always talking about the same thing there are different techniques using different organisms in different parts of the DNA we end up with different kinds of food we want labels where should we start should label show up on all food that's been growing with pesticides on all food that's been hybridized or genetically modified it's worth thinking about because we all of us are the consumers and we can demand but we need to know what we're talking about so please take a moment to buy it's quite a mouthful so your corn fields were burned at one time and somebody came through with a sick or something they might have thought they weren't and I think the person who what is it that said about genetic research in general and that's another lumping together of there's GMOs there's genetics and it all very bad to people who don't know what it is and also help reduce disease what about electric responses look up system dangerous faces satisfy the Sharks on this one sister Sanders are you what happened Richard so what's wrong with new line of food is it going to upset the environmental applecart well nature everything's connected so Farm ecosystems are komplex if we introduce a new species one thing you can count on is that the other species are going to respond modifying organisms is a way of modifying the world  there has what a case that fits been won against nature in terms of breeders breeding and some type of resistance that doesn't break down there's tremendous pressure 10 facts on the plants to adapt technology will need some time for people to get comfortable there are valid concerns being raised but there are some excellent science being done to show that these crops are safe and they're providing some tremendous benefits to large farmers in North America and Europe and to some small bars around the world Corporation so that genetically modified foods the greatest thing if I may since sliced bread right right from genetic modification what I'm saying is there is a tremendous Rush  again just based on all out greed to get these things to my set to recoup their scientific investments in them the problem is they're forcing this technology the problem that don't need technological solutions starvation is a great one we hear that genetically modified crops are going to cure starvation on the planet film answer to Karen starvation is reducing poverty increasing infrastructure and straightening out politics so starvation is a gray example they're the ones that brought it up not me but they should be ashamed for bringing it up because there's one and a half times the amount of on the planet today that we need she look at any advances in any science the main ones came through the the free thought free exchange of ideas things like that Chef issues bother me how can you own a winch plant how can you patent a weed plant how can you take something that's existed for 10,000 years of farmers and approve 10000 years stick a single gene into it and you won't  nearest organic could grown so we take it image of this new technology in this tremendous amount of information we have now from sequencing of multiple Dino's take that information develop Jeanette and tools that can use to generate a new variety that can be grown in an integrated sort of management system using organic techniques should I have been genetically modifying crops for years and we're fine what's the worst that can happen alright try this but say we genetically modify this corn so that insects eat it they die and all the butterflies die okay so there's a whole summer without very many butterflies are these are the rare butterflies that fly at night so the best normally feed on those butterflies can't get enough to eat for a whole summer you don't have nearly as much success at making fat babies so that next summer there aren't really really bad how need the mosquitoes mosquitoes carry a deadly disease see that would be bad that I made the shot but are scenarios like this possible or is this just alarm is tight and we've been farming for 15,000 carefully breeding species at the pace of the seasons but now it's possible to introduce a new species into the Earth's ecosystem never-before-seen overnight and what's the hurry it's not a race where they human race so let's Farm responsible that's require labels on our foods and let's careful testing Foods case-by-case that's the way I see it and I'll see you next time on the pies of 9 we've covered a lot of ground but it's just the tip of the iceberg check out eyes of Nye. 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Eyes of Nye - Genetically Modified Foods

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