The Environmental Impact of Genetic Engineering

The environmental impacts of genetic engineering are often disputed but there is one thing that can not be challenged, genetically engineered plants, pesticides, and herbicides have had an adverse affect on the environment. Often new pesticides are introduced into the market without the proper testing. Genetically engineered pesticides such as DDT resulted in thinning the shells of eagles and ospreys (ucsusa.org). There is no question that there are adverse affects to genetically modified plants, organisms, and pesticides but to the positives outweigh the negatives? This is the question that is currently under intense debate. Too many people jumped on the genetic engineering bandwagon as many saw it as the saviour to the food shortage that was going to plague the world as the population increases. However, too many genetically modified plants and organisms were pushed into the market before we realized the consequences. This created some disastrous consequences. Only recently there was a genetically modified organism that was approved by the USEPA. The organism was intended to produce alcohol from plant debris (online.sfsu.edu).  However, instead of the organism producing its desired effect, the end result would have been disastrous as the engineered bacterium produced far too much alcohol per gram soil and would have killed off all terrestrial plants (online.sfsu.edu). While fortunately this bacterium was never widely used, this is an example of how severe the effects of genetic engineering can be on the environment. Widespread crop failure is another risk posed by genetic engineering as genetically engineered plants have the same genetic structure; therefore, if a disease hits genetically modified plants then it more likely that the entire crop will get killed off (safe-food.org). New or worse viruses in plants is another consequence of genetic engineering. When virus-tolerant crops are produced these crops end up creating new and worse viruses through recombination and transcapsidation (ucsusa.org). It is clear that more research is needed in order to determine the exact environmental effects of gentically engineered organisms.