Genetically ModifiedFood: Ethical IssuesPaul B Thompson, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA

The use of recombinant DNA technology to transform

agricultural plants and animals has been the subject of

ethical controversy for the last quarter century. The

argument favouring these technologies hinges on their

role in lowering costs of farm production, as well as

potential benefits to farmers. Arguments against cite a

long litany of problems. Environmental and food safety

risk debates touch upon both the nature and likelihood of

potential hazards, and also the overall philosophy that

should guide the assessment and management of these

risks. In addition, critics of the technology have argued

that risk assessments have neglected two categories of

hazard entirely: impact on animals and socio-economic

impacts, especially on organic and smallholder farms. The

latter issue makes the use of genetic engineering into a

key episode in a more comprehensive debate over the

future of agricultural production. In addition, ethical

debates have taken up the extension of intellectual

property rights to genes and their impact on the use,

production and control of seeds. Labelling and consumer

choice has also been debated. Finally, some authors have

extended arguments over the possible unnatural char-

acter of genetic engineering from their more con-

ventional medical setting to the domain of food.

Introduction

Genetically modified foods raise ethical issues that arelinked by happenstance as well as logic. Some reflect con-troversies in agricultural practise and policy that have littleto do with the use of recombinant deoxyribonucleic acid

(rDNA) technologies as such. They are united largely bythe emergence of a social movement dedicated to opposingthe use of these technologies in agriculture and food pro-duction. The movement has gained momentum andeffectiveness in part because of the way that it bringsotherwise disparate interests together in pursuit of a cause.The literature on these issues is both large and relativelyunstructured. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of authorshave contributed, yet there are no seminal articles and verylittle cross-citation.As such, a survey of issues is necessarilyselective and potentially contentious. Issues may be use-fully categorised into those addressing risks associatedwithproduction or consumption of genetically modified foods,issues that concern rights, power, and matters of con-ceptual or intrinsic propriety. There are also issues forwhich classification itself is ethically contentious. See also:Bioethics – Overview

Main Article

Defining and adopting terminology for even discussing thedebate over genetically engineered food is itself problem-atic and sometimes contentious. The title of this article is‘Genetically modified food’. At this writing, in excess of95% of the global acreage of genetically modified cropsgrown worldwide are planted in soya, maize and cotton.Cotton is not a food, hence to focus on geneticallymodifiedfoods would be to exclude discussion of issues in countriessuch as India, where planting of genetically modified cot-ton has been the subject of extended debate and the targetof Vandana Shiva, who is arguably agricultural bio-technology’s most internationally visible target. What ismore, much of the maize and soya grown are for animalfeeds. Hence, although food for human consumption hasindeed been affected by genetic engineering, the agri-cultural impact of genetic engineering is far more extensivein nonfood uses.There is also contention over use of the phrase ‘genet-

ically modified’. Well before the suite of rDNA tools forinserting codons and regulatory sequences into plant and

Advanced article

Article Contents

. Introduction

. Main Article

. Risk Issues: Environment and Food Safety

. Risk Issues: Animal Ethics and Economic Harms

. Philosophy of Food and Consumer Choice

. Philosophy of Food and Producer Rights

. Conclusion: Future Issues

Online posting date: 15th August 2012

eLS subject area: Bioethics & Philosophy

How to cite:Thompson, Paul B (August 2012) Genetically Modified Food: EthicalIssues. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: Chichester.

DOI: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0024153

eLS & 2012, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. www.els.net 1

animal genomes emerged in the 1980s, plant breeders wereusing techniques such as mutation breeding, wide crosses,cell culture and embryo rescue. In ensemble these techni-ques have resulted in numerous foods bearing combin-ations of genes that had not and could not have occurred inthe absence of human intervention. Some plant breedershave put forward the common garden strawberry, createdin the nineteenth century, as a prominent example(Hokanson andMaas, 2010), while thousands of food cropvarieties have been developed using radiation and chem-ically induced mutation (Maluszynski, 2006). Thus virtu-ally all foods currently consumed in the Western Worldcould qualify as genetically modified or as a GeneticallyModified Organism (GMO). See also: Genetically Modi-fied Plants; History of Scientific Agriculture: Crop Plants

Indeed, the specific techniques for modification havecontinued to multiply, and now include marker-assistedbreeding (the use of genetic markers to assist traditionalplant breeders) as well as the use of rDNA tools forinserting genes drawn from the gene pool of the speciesbeing modified (or cisgenic modification). Crops developedusing genomic markers do not appear to spark any resist-ance (Buttel, 2005), and cisgenic crops are also viewed asacceptable by consumers who reject genetically modifiedfoods (Mielby and Lassen, 2009). Yet, environmental andfood safety risks associated with these transformationtechnologies are comparable to those of transgenic crops(NRC, 2003). It is thus unclear that there are biologicallyunambiguous criteria for defining genetically modifiedcrops and unlikely that any proposed criteria would mapwell onto the viewpoints that give rise to ethical contro-versy. Definition is thus itself a philosophically contestabletopic, and one that can take on ethical significance when itappears that one’s choice of terminology is intended tomanipulate public opinion.

Risk Issues: Environment and FoodSafety

Like all products of plant or animal breeding, geneticallymodified foods can be associatedwith environmental, foodsafety and social hazards. In the literature of critics,environmental risks from genetic modification are mostprominently associated with biodiversity and gene flow.The United Nations Convention on Biodiversity containslanguage that effectively defines known genetic sequencesintroduced through tools of plant or animal transforma-tion as pollutants (Strauss et al., 2009), hence some ethicalcritiques equate the detection of transgenes beyond theboundary of fields cultivated in GM crops with proof ofenvironmental harm (Westra, 1998, 2011). Risk-basedapproaches have developed more nuanced conceptual-isations of harm, seeing the movement of transgenes as apossible cause of impact on the composition of species in awild or cultivated ecosystem (Chandler and Dunwell,2008). All forms of agriculture involve intentional

disruption of natural ecosystems, hence this risk-basedapproach must include some rationale for interpretingdisruptions associated with transgenics as a special type ofenvironmental impact (Thompson, 2003). The potentialfor widespread transport of transgenes and the potentialirreversibility of these impacts have been put forward aspossible rationales (Andow and Zwahlen, 2005). See also:Agricultural Production; Convention on BiologicalDiversityOther types of environmental hazards are specific to the

crop being modified or to the particular type of modifi-cation. To date, the vast majority of plantings by acreageare in either herbicide-resistant crops orBt crops (e.g. cropsthat produce theBacilus thuriengensis toxin, which is lethalto Lepidoptera). The first ethical question arises in con-nectionwith the harm that is alleged to ensue.Opponents ofGM technology leveled severe warnings that glyphosate-tolerant crops would increase the use of this relativelybenign herbicide to control weeds, creating an opportunityfor the emergence of resistance among pest species (e.g.‘superweeds’) (Rissler and Mellon, 1996). This would, inturn, lead to the use of more toxic chemicals for weedcontrol, a scenario that appears to be materialising at thistime (Owen, 2011). Bt can kill beneficial moths and but-terflies, and an early furor was created when a simple studyof its toxicity to the charismatic Monarch butterfly waspublished inNature (Losey et al., 1999). Thus, for these twoapplications of genetic engineering, the hazards includeboth harm to nonhumans as well as toxicity and economiccosts associated with the loss of glyphosate as a weed-management tool. See also: Environmental Impact ofGenetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)However, a risk assessment perspective on such hazards

also requires first an estimate of the probability that thisharm will materialise, and second the application of adecision principle for determining the acceptability of therisk. As noted, predicted economic harms from herbicidetolerant crops are materialising, and may be followed bypollution as farmers switch to other chemicals. In the caseof toxicity to Monarch butterflies, subsequent risk-ori-ented studies found it quite unlikely that Monarch larvaewould be exposed to sufficient amounts of the Bt toxinto affect wild populations (Stanley-Horn et al., 2001).Nevertheless, there is a potential for insect resistance toBt,an eventuality that would pose significant costs for organicfarmers who are the largest users of naturally produced Bttoxins. However, such harms are the indirect result ofgenetic technology. They might have occurred from over-use of these chemicals even in the absence of geneticallyengineered crops.As such, it is open to debate as towhetherGM technology should be held morally responsible for theoccurrence of these harms, even when they are the pre-dicted result of a particular genetic modification. Subtlejudgments in the construction of risk comparisons canresult in surprisingly contradictory assessments of wherethe responsibility lies (Thompson, 2003).It is the development and justification of a decision

principle that provides themost obvious intervention point

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in the process of risk analysis for ethics. Both environ-mental and food safety risks have been the subject ofintense debates as to which principle should be used.Manyscientists and industry voices have advocated some form ofrisk-benefit comparison (Trewavas, 1999; Miller andConko, 2003; Morris, 2011). This approach relies on thelogic behind the Kaldor-Hicks criterion used in welfareeconomics and benefit–cost analysis: risks are acceptablewhen the expected value of benefits is greater than theexpected value attributable to risk. The EnvironmentalProtection Agency of the United States is mandated to usesuch an approach when evaluating pesticides (including Btcrops) by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenti-cide Act (FIFRA). See also: Bioethics: UtilitarianismHowever, principles for risk-based food-safety decision-

making in all industrialised nationsutilise themore stringentde minimus standard: only substances having negligible risk(generally taken to mean hazards having a probability ofoccurrence below 1/1025) are acceptable. The difficulties ininterpreting this principle for the purposes of evaluatinggenetically modified food are epistemological, rather thanethical. Many foods are known to contain both naturaltoxins and mutagens at relatively low levels. Ordinary plantbreeding can both introduce new toxins and mutagens, aswell as altering the level at which they occur. Indeed,ordinary breeding can turn plants known to be toxic in theirnonedible parts (such as the green parts of a potato plant)into truly dangerous substances. Nonetheless, it is difficultandcostly toperformextensive toxicological studies (suchasmight be required for a new drug) on products of ordinaryplant breeding. Thus for new agricultural plants, the pro-cedure has been for breeders to test the general chemicalprofile of the plant against long established panel data forplants of the same species, and sometimes to perform crudefeeding studies (e.g. feeding the plant to animals) that wouldbe sufficient to identify truly exceptional differences intoxicity. After considerable debate, food safety expertsdetermined to use the same procedure for geneticallyengineered foods, except when the genetic engineeringintroduced a protein or substance not previously found in afood. In this case, the novel substance would be subjected totesting comparable to thatofnewdrugs (Kuiper et al., 2001).This approach, which came to be known as ‘substantial

equivalence’, has been important in debates over the pre-cautionary principle. Epistemic and ethical critiques ofsubstantial equivalence stress the unique hazards of rDNAmethods for insertion of nucleotide sequences, and thecausal pathways leading to their realisation that areunlikely to be identified using the method of substantialequivalence (Millstone et al., 1999; Millstone, 2009). Sev-eral authors have suggested that the precautionary prin-ciple, which states that regulators should err on the side ofcaution when hazards are uncertain, might be substitutedas an alternative approach (Myhr and Traavik, 2002;Cranor, 2003). However, others have argued that the pre-cautionary principle is too sweeping to be useful in evalu-ating agricultural technologies, all of which have uncertainrisks (van den Belt, 2003; Sandin, 2006; Comstock, 2012).

Risk Issues: Animal Ethics andEconomic HarmsRisk assessments undertaken by regulatory agencies arealso faulted for omitting important hazards. In the case offood animal biotechnology, which is commonly taken toinclude both genetic engineering and adult-cell cloning, riskto the animals that are the subject of this technology arecited. Bernard Rollin noted the potential for adverse effectson genetically engineered animals in one of the first paperson ethical issues of genetic engineering in the food andagricultural context (Rollin, 1985). His view, developed atlength inTheFrankenstein Syndrome, is that while scientistsshould take pains to insure that modified animals do notsuffer as a result, there are no issues associated with geneticmodification as such. Indeed, Rollin argues that scientistsare obligated to undertake modifications such as renderinganimals insensate on the grounds that this would relievesuffering (Rollin, 1995). See also: Bioethics of Cloning;History of Scientific Agriculture: AnimalsRollin’s view has sparked numerous criticisms, many

citing ‘the integrity of the animal,’ as a rationale againstgenetic engineering (Bovenkirk et al., 2001; seeOrtiz (2004)for a review). AutumnFiester has cited the idea of integrityand Rollin’s scenario in arguing that all use of geneticengineering on animals requires compelling moral argu-ments for their justification (Fiester, 2008). Clare Palmerhas argued that although they have intuitive appeal,integrity critiques fall prey to the nonidentity problem(Palmer, 2011). It is worth noting that these issues wouldappear to apply equally to animals developed for food andfor biomedical research. See also: Transgenic AnimalsThe other omitted hazard is economic dislocation. New

agricultural technologies typically increase on-farm prod-uctivity. Farmproductivity canbemeasuredbiologically interms of energy value of outputs compared to energyinputs, or economically as the ratio of economic valuederived from farm produce over the cost of inputs.Although small farmers in the developing world desper-ately need to improve both biological and economicproductivity in order to achieve sustainable livelihoods(Mazoyer andRoudart, 2006), the basic economics of farmproduction ensure that technologically based improve-ments in farm productivity will be accompanied by bank-ruptcy, failure and concentration of production amonglarger and better capitalised farms (Cochrane, 1993). Thusall productivity enhancing technologies, including genet-ically modified crops and animals, are subject to a deepmoral antinomy. Although they lower the cost of food forpoor urban consumers, they alsoworsen the lives and causethe displacement of poor farmers, who are estimated tocompose approximately half of the global populationcurrently living in extreme poverty (less than one Euro perday). Relatively better-off farmers also bear the risk ofeconomic displacement, and resistance to geneticallymodified crops and animals among farmers and farmadvocacy groups (such as the ETCGroup and Food First)is often based on the ground that whatever environmental,

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health or economic benefits geneticallymodified foodsmayhave for consumers, the current risk-based approach topolicy-making ignores the socio-economic hazards of dis-placement borne by an already economically marginalisedgroup (Levidow and Carr, 1997; Busch, 2011, pp. 281–283).

Philosophy of Food and ConsumerChoice

The omission of economic hazards from risk-basedapproaches to the evaluation of genetically modified foodscan be seen as a symptom of a larger philosophical trend.The food system (including farm producers, input sup-pliers, commodity processors, manufacturers, distributersand retailers) is increasingly being seen as just anothersector in the industrial economy. On this view, crop andanimal farming is simply one component in a technologicalplatform that should be evaluated strictly in terms of itsproductive capabilities, on the one hand, and its potentialfor imposing risk or harm on third parties, on the other. Analternative philosophy would see food and farming asbearing crucial moral relationships to culture and identity(Thompson, 2010).From the perspective that the agrifood system is just one

sector among others in an industrial economy, a broadlyconsequentialist ethicwould suggest evaluating it in light ofcurrent productive capacity and projected demand. In fact,both agricultural scientists and an increasing number offood ethicists have taken exactly this perspective. Theyargue that the overriding ethical justification for agri-cultural biotechnology resides in the role that it can beexpected to play in meeting projected demand for farmcommodities, especially in light of expected populationgrowth (Paarlberg, 2008; Castle et al., 2012). This argu-ment implies a compelling moral benefit that overridesharm suffered as a result of economic displacement, andthat provides the prima facie rationale for accepting otherrisks that might be associated with new agricultural tech-nologies. This view of the agrifood system is compatiblewith the emphasis on risk and risk analysis discussedabove,though it provides no support for the omission of socio-economic hazards so typical of many risk-basedapproaches.Michiel Korthals has opposed this perspective by

emphasising the connection between the production andconsumption of food, on the one hand, and links betweendiet and culture that have long been recognised inanthropology. While acknowledging that addressing glo-bal hunger is a compellingmoral issue, he argues that over-emphasis on the technological capability of the agrifoodsystem has effectively excluded such obviously relevantconsiderations from policy debates over the future of food,including debates involving genetic engineering (Korthals,2012). Attention to Korthals’ concern with recognitionbecomes a direct concern for those who have argued that

consumers have a right to know whether the foods theyeat have been genetically engineered (Thompson, 2002;Weirich, 2008).

Philosophy of Food and ProducerRights

Although the debate over labels has focused on an allegedconsumer right, other debates have focused on the rights ofproducers, especially those small and economically mar-ginal producers who are most likely to be harmed by theadvent of productivity-oriented biotechnology. In thisdebate, critics of the companies introducing geneticallyengineered crops and animals assert that claims about theneed to address global hunger to the contrary, profits arethe sole driver for this new technology. Advocates of thisview (including Shiva and Devinder Sharma, anotherprominent Indian critic) go on asserting a somewhatMarxist position on the entire phenomenon of agriculturalbiotechnology, irrespective ofwhether it is developed in thepublic sector or by for-profit firms (Newell, 2007).The presumption that this technology is primarily a case

study in the power politics of capitalist accumulation liesjust behind some of the more celebrated episodes in thehistory of genetically engineered foods. The concern overso-called Terminator seeds, seeds that would set a singlecrop but that would not be fertile for re-planting, waslargely seen as a usurpation of farmer rights (Herring,2007). However, contrary to some claims in the literature,Terminator seeds have never been released in the market-place. Many commercially produced seeds are poor can-didates for seed saving, and it is likely that some of thiscritique is misplaced as an attack on biotechnology, how-ever valid it may be in reference to the rising importance ofcapital. What is more, seed markets in many parts of thedeveloping world are rife with counterfeiting and fraud(such as dilution with seed of inferior quality), so it isunclear that many farmers who believe they have pur-chased genetically engineered seed from major multi-nationals have actually done so (Smyth et al., 2004).Another episode involved the rejection ofUS food aid by

several African countries in 2002. Some analysts see thiscomplex event as evidence of a power-play by bio-technology companies and the US government to forcegenetically engineered seeds into nations that had hithertorejected them. Support for this perspective can be derivedfrom the fact that leaders expressed concern that theirfarmers would lose access to European markets wheregenetically engineered foods are not accepted. On the otherside, biotechnology advocates such as Robert Paarlbergcite the case as exhibit A in their claim that developingcountries are being denied access to a potentially usefultechnology (Paarlberg, 2008).In fact,many authors focus on inequalities in power. The

theme of power provides a way to pull some of the above-mentioned concerns together in a thematicway, and also to

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incorporate more specific ethical issues into a broad cri-tique of genetic technology’s impact on governance insti-tutions for the food system (Krimsky, 1995; Levidow andMarris, 2001;Millstone and vanZwanenberg, 2003). HughLacey has offered one of the more extended developmentsof this theme. He argues that agricultural biotechnologyexpresses a desire for control that has united science withoppressive political regimes for at least 200 years (Lacey,2005). Somewhat more subtle treatments of the powertheme emphasise the way that certain argument forms tendto be persuasive with the circles of power, perhaps becausethey provide quick rhetorical strategies for dismissingconcerns that would be expressed by less-powerful andeconomically marginalised actors (Burkhardt, 2001; Scott,2011).Amore abstract version of these same questions arises in

the extensive debate over revisions to patent law that haveoccurred to accommodate biotechnology, and the sub-sequent entry that intellectual property rights have madeinto international trade negotiations. Some critiques mir-ror arguments on ‘life patents’ that are familiar in bioethics(Warner, 2001), whereas others stress the above notedeffect of agricultural technology on poor farmers (Kin-derlerer andAdcock, 2005). Kristen Shrader-Frechette hasargued that current renderings of patent protection forgenetically engineered crops fail the test of ‘as much and asgood as’ articulated in JohnLocke’s seminal 1691 theory ofproperty (Shrader-Frechette, 2006). Concerns about theimpact of patents are also oft noted in the writings ofagricultural scientists, though arguments are seldomdevelopedor analysed.See also: Biotechnology IntellectualProperty – Bioethical Issues; Patenting Plants and PlantProductsFinally, there is a literature in the ethics of genetically

engineered food that parallels well-known debates overgenetic technology as it might be applied to the humanspecies, either for medical or enhancement purposes. Theidea that genetic engineering is unnatural was advancedprominently in 2000 through the Reith Lecture by HisRoyal Highness the Prince of Wales (Prince of Wales,2000). In the same year, British philosopherMaryMidgleyargued that the common ‘yuk’ response felt by many onhearing about genetically modified food deserves philo-sophical respect. First, emotion is a fundamental com-ponent of morality, on Midgley’s view, and as such,emotional reactions should be treated with the greatestseriousness. Second, the idea of moving genes among spe-cies upsets the categories we use to think andmake sense ofourworld. In the domain of food,where life-saving benefitsare not at stake as they are inmedicine, there is every reasonto regard the feelings of security and stability of our worldsas a persuasive reason to oppose biotechnology (Midgley,2000).However, a far greater number of philosophers have

argued against the view that concerns about the unnaturalcharacter of genetically engineered food can serve as thebasis of a compelling ethical argument. The issuewas takenup in one of the earliest books to address the topic by

Michael Reiss and Roger Straughn (1996), and was pre-sumed to be themain philosophical objection to geneticallyengineered food inGregory Pence’sDesigner Food:MutantHarvest or Breadbasket for the World? (Pence, 2001). Themost enduring treatment of this theme is probably MarkSagoff’s treatment in a series of closely related articlesdiscussing biotechnology and the concept of the natural.Sagoff reviews John Stuart Mill’s four senses in whichsomething can be said to be natural or unnatural. He findsthat the only sense inwhich geneticallymodified food couldqualify isMill’s fourth sense, a sense inwhich the ‘nature’ ofsomething is unabashedly understood to be based in aes-thetic attitudes and cultural values. Sagoff defends theimportance of such values as they relate to food, but alsoargues that they should not be taken to have moral orpolitical force (Sagoff, 2003).Midgley’s and Sagoff’s analyses link with arguments on

labelling. If individuals have even aesthetic or culturalreasons to avoid genetically modified foods, then by ana-logy to principles that permit labels for people wishing topractise kosher or hallal dietary rules, policies should atleast not discriminate against those doing so. In the UnitedStates, however, the burdens placed on those who claimthat products do not contain genetically modified ingre-dients were initially quite onerous. These burdens in partexplain why there was overwhelming support for dis-allowing genetically modified ingredients in foods labelledas organic (Jackson, 2000; Thompson, 2002). More recentwork on this theme has addressed the question of whethersuch arguments entail that both genetically modified andnongenetically modified foods must be available to con-sumers in order to satisfy the ethical requirements of freechoice (Hansen, 2004; Siipi and Uusitallo, 2011).

Conclusion: Future Issues

The topics reviewed above have remained stable over atwenty-five year history of debate over the applications ofrDNA technology in food and agriculture. The methodsfor transformation of plant and animal genomes havecontinued to expand, however. As applications of genomicsciencemove into an era of synthetic biology, the questionsabout risk will undoubtedly continue. However, one newissue may be that these technologies expand the uses thatcan be put to land-based production systems. These mayboth present opportunity and new pressure on smallfarmers, and may have profound effects on the global foodsystem. Synthetic biology for biofuel production, forexample, may become a more economically profitable usefor arable lands than food production. The ethical impli-cations include not only a ‘food vs. fuel’ trade-off, but alsothe potential for greater instability in poor farmers’ land-tenure in developing countries (Thompson, 2012).In short the era of ethical debate over genetic engineering

in the food system may be far from over. Conceptualisingthe issues as being narrowly tied to food consumption willalmost certainly prove to be misleading.

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Altieri M (2004) Genetic Engineering in Agriculture: The Myths

Environmental Risks and Alternatives, 2nd edn. San Francisco:

Food First Books.

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and Profit: Social, Economic and Ethical Consequences of the

New Biotechnologies. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

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Agricultural Biotechnology. Dordrecht, NL: Springer.

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of Transgenic Crops. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

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Supply. London: Zed Books.

Thompson PB (2007) Food Biotechnology in Ethical Perpective,

2nd edn. Dordrecht, NL: Springer.

Thompson RP (2011) Agro-Technology: A Philosophical Intro-

duction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Weasel L (2009) Food Fray: Inside the Controversy over Genetic-

ally Modified Food. New York: Amacom.

Genetically Modified Food: Ethical Issues

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