Genetically modified food and food safety: what do those who love to eat think?

I stumbled onto the topic of "genetic modification" by accident. As someone who loves to eat, enjoys cooking, and has a super allergy-prone constitution, I have always kept up with reading all kinds of food-related books. At first it was mainly essays about fine dining, cookbooks and nutrition; later I gradually added topics like food processing, food chemistry, environmental science and livestock farming... and so on. Gradually, one same theme kept appearing in the books I read: "the harm of human influence on food and the environment."

What is more interesting is that different authors from different countries almost all touch on the issue of genetic modification. Having never paid special attention to "genetic modification," I began to wonder: if the issue of genetic modification is as serious as foreign authors say, then why has the Taiwanese media, which loves to make mountains out of molehills, not specifically conveyed these important messages? Or are these authors just being overly alarmist, and the matter is not serious at all?

After a period of gathering materials and reading, the more I understood about "genetic modification," the more uneasy I felt about what I knew.

Below are several important takeaways I organized from the materials I read:

1. Genetically modified crops and traditional agricultural breeding improvement are completely different.

2. Different materials all show that there is not enough evidence to prove that GM foods are harmless to the human body. This is especially true for the nutritional value and allergen effects that I care about most.

3. Many experiments have found that animals will not instinctively want to eat genetically modified crops.

4. Genetically modified crops will have irreversible effects on the natural ecology. This includes superweeds and the contamination of the genes of other plants in nature.

Michael Specter, an author for The New York Times, has a video on TED Talk. He supports genetic modification, and at the same time raises an interesting question to challenge opponents of genetic modification: Is people's rejection of genetic modification merely out of fear?

Thinking carefully about this question, yes, I admit that I am afraid. I am not afraid of science, because pursuing a more convenient and healthier life is the starting point of much scientific research.

But I am afraid of the blind ambition to conquer all things, which makes people lose their awe for nature and life, and then, while believing they are making the world better, brings even more unexpected disasters. And these disasters may become a huge liability for our descendants. It is impossible for us not to pursue progress because of fear, but can we, because of the pursuit of progress, take possible fear into account as a cost that needs careful assessment? When we say "the probability of this happening is very low," we should also think about "what should we do if this happens?"

While researching the issue of genetic modification, I looked up a lot of information online, including many documentaries and photos. That true and naked information shocked me greatly. So-called fine food, it turns out, cannot be judged only by the few minutes it appears on the dining table. We should rewind and look at how these foods came to be: salmon artificially farmed in the sea are fed antibiotics and pigments that add color to prevent parasites, cows are injected with growth hormones to increase milk production, or cattle are fed only corn, which they would not eat by nature, causing many diseases to develop and then be treated with medication. Those foods that were originally supposed to bring us deliciousness and nutrition have become business and a source of huge profits for many companies. But who pays the price for these profits? While consuming, we can play three roles to exercise the public function of supervising producers and retailers.