Foods safe?

soils and tolerate temperature extremes. I continue to be distressed by the resistance to “Golden Rice”, a crop genetically engineered to supply more vitamin A than spinach that could prevent irreversible blindness and more than a million deaths a year.

Nonetheless, gene modification scientists are focusing increasingly on building health benefits into widely used foods. In addition to pink pineapples containing the tomato-based antioxidant lycopene, tomatoes are being engineered to contain the antioxidant-rich purple pigment from blueberries.

And people in developing countries, faced with famine and malnutrition, are likely to benefit from attempts to improve the protein content of food crops, as well as the number of vitamins and minerals they provide.

This is not to say that everything done in the name of genetic engineering has a clean bill of health. Controversy abounds over the use of genetically modified seeds that produce crops like soya beans, maize, canola, lucerne, cotton and sorghum that are resistant to a widely used herbicide, glyphosate, the health effects of which are still unclear.

In the latest development, resistance to a second weed killer, 2,4-D, has been combined with glyphosate resistance. Although the combination product, called Enlist Duo, was approved in

2014 by the Environmental Protection Agency, 2,4-D has been linked to an increase in non-hodgkin’s lymphoma and a number of neurological disorders, researchers reported in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

The bottom line: Consumers concerned about the growing use of GMOS in the foods they depend on might consider taking a more nuanced approach than blanket opposition. Rather than wholesale rejection, take some time to learn about how genetic engineering works, and the benefits it can offer now and in the future as climate change takes an ever greater toll on food supplies. Consider supporting efforts that result in safe products that represent improvements over the original and focusing opposition on those that are less desirable. – The New York Times