{"id":194,"date":"2015-07-03T23:30:16","date_gmt":"2015-07-04T03:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/?p=194"},"modified":"2015-07-03T08:42:49","modified_gmt":"2015-07-03T12:42:49","slug":"to-gmo-or-not-to-gmo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/?p=194","title":{"rendered":"To GMO or Not to GMO"},"content":{"rendered":"

There has been a lot of recent buzz centering on the fear that certain segments of the population have about genetically modified organisms or GMOs.\u00a0 These apprehensions are a part of an ever-growing concern that people around the world have in the way that their food is produced and how healthful said food might be.\u00a0 Concerns over GMOs rank up there with the movement to have free range livestock and organically grown foods.\u00a0 So what does all this biological science have to do with a blog on economics you might ask.\u00a0 Well, simply put, everything.<\/p>\n

At its core, economics is the study what goods and services society produces where, when, and how; who produces it; and who consumes it.\u00a0 Sometimes, it even ventures a guess as to why but that question is broached far less often than at first it may appear.\u00a0 Since the production of goods and services happen in the faces of finite resources and perpetual scarcity there is always a downside to every decision.\u00a0 If resources are being spent one way they are not being spent on something else.<\/p>\n

So of course, the decision to embrace GMOs fully, partially, or not at all is, at its core, a decision about how resources will be spent to satisfy on of the most basic human needs \u2013 the need to eat.<\/p>\n

Identifying the particular risks of using GMOs is the province of a host of people, including the biologist, the botanist, the farmer, the food distributor, the politician, and so on.\u00a0 Once the risks have been listed, the weighing of these risks is purely economics and is the province of us all.<\/p>\n

However, it is hard to properly weigh the risks when a twofold set of errors is in play as it seems to be now.\u00a0 The first error is one of emotional rather than rational thinking.\u00a0 The second is the lack of vision is seeing the lost opportunity or unseen costs of choosing one over the other.<\/p>\n

I mention these errors because there is mounting evidence that the developed countries are so mired in a dread of the GMO-monster that they are consigning millions of people in the developing world to avoidable chronic hunger, malnutrition, or death.<\/p>\n

Emotional Thinking<\/h2>\n

The first of these errors, the indulgence in emotional thinking, seems to be gaining ground in many of the modern debates.\u00a0 Within the past decade, there has been a rise in trendy, boutique causes where the passion is profound but the logic is scarce.\u00a0 A familiar example is the movement in certain circles to avoid vaccinating a child due to the fear that the vaccinations cause autism.\u00a0 There isn\u2019t strong evidence to support this conclusion but that doesn\u2019t stop certain people from engaging in emotional attacks against those who honestly disagree with this conclusion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Advertisers and marketers are eager to fan the flames of emotionalism if it helps sell a product and one such case is the recent switch by Chipotle to \u2018non-GMO ingredients\u2019<\/a>. \u00a0Chipotle\u2019s website presents a slick picture<\/p>\n

\"Chipotle_GMO\"<\/a><\/p>\n

with catchy little lead-in phrase (G-M-Over It) and a short paragraph extoling the companies conscientious \u201cFarewell\u201d to GMOs.\u00a0 Following the \u2018Learn More\u2019 link leads to an equally emotion-filled excerpt:<\/p>\n

\nChipotle is on a never-ending journey to source the highest quality ingredients we can find. Over the years, as we have learned more about GMOs, we\u2019ve decided that using them in our food doesn\u2019t align with that vision. Chipotle was the first national restaurant company to disclose the GMO ingredients in our food, and now we are the first to cook only with non-GMO ingredients.<\/p>\n
– Chipotle’s Website<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

But if the reader were to persist in reviewing the reasons why Chipotle is saying \u201cFarewell\u201d to GMOs that reader would find a lot of far less emotionally-laden and circumspect words.\u00a0 Buried in the \u2018fine print\u2019, are phrases like \u201cwe don\u2019t believe the scientific community has reached a consensus\u201d and \u201cwe believe it is prudent to take a cautious approach to GMOs\u201d.\u00a0 Even further in, Chipotle admits that while it is now shunning GMO plants, it has not eliminated GMOs from its supply chain.<\/p>\n

\nBut it is important to note that most animal feed in the U.S. is genetically modified, which means that the meat and dairy served at Chipotle are likely to come from animals given at least some GMO feed.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Chipotle’s website<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

So how much of a \u201cFarewell\u201d can they have made?\u00a0 It seem more likely that this new campaign to eliminate GMOs (or appear to be doing so) is not designed to protect customers from their dangers as much as it is to boost the flagging stock price of company, which has been on a downward trend since February of this year.<\/p>\n

Lost Opportunities to Eat<\/h2>\n

If this emotionalism were simply fueling an advertising campaign to separate consumers from their money, then one might argue that this it is a victimless crime with no real repercussions.\u00a0 But in world with limited resources, there are significant lost opportunity costs.<\/p>\n

One unseen cost is that the use of land, livestock, and crop resources at less than peak efficiency means that less food is being produced than otherwise would be.\u00a0 That would be okay if there were plenty of food \u2013 that is to say the supply of food matched the demand.\u00a0 In that case, there would be no incentive to raise production and no pressure for prices to rise.\u00a0 Such is the long term trend in the US<\/a> (although food prices have been rising recently and it may be that the bottom has been reached) but is not the case in the developing world.<\/p>\n

The Genetic Literacy Project recently published an article by Michael Dzakovich<\/a> that points out fears over GMOs have prevented their use in Africa.<\/p>\n

\nWhile many farmers in industrialized countries have been safely and successfully using genetically engineered crops for almost two decades, adoption in the developing world has been significantly slower, only recently eclipsing the U.S. in terms of total acreage.<\/p>\n
– Michael Dzakovich<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Mr Dzakovich provides a vivid picture of the unseen costs of slow adoption of GMOs when he writes<\/p>\n

\nAt dinner during the conference, a discussion about the debate over genetically GM crops within the United States turned to the situation in Africa, when Erostus Nsubuga, a Ugandan conference delegate, said \u201cPeople are dying of hunger in Uganda. We are willing to use any technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a startling statement and wake up call, challenging our complacency. As Americans continue to quibble about phantom fears related to genetically modified crops, 20,000 people\u2014more than six World Trade Center disasters\u2014die every single day from malnutrition, at least some of whom would be saved if GM crops were legalized.<\/p>\n

– Michael Dzakovich<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Other articles on the Genetic Literacy site suggest that GMOs may help reduce carbon emissions<\/a> and lower toxic pesticide use<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Clearly there are pros and cons in adopting wide-spread use of GMOs and the risks and the benefits need to be carefully considered.\u00a0 But emotional arguments and slick advertising campaigns only serve to further hide and obscure the lost opportunity costs and people may be unnecessarily dying as a result.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There has been a lot of recent buzz centering on the fear that certain segments of the population have about genetically modified organisms or GMOs.\u00a0 These apprehensions are a part… Read more ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=194"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194\/revisions\/197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}