In China, the GMF has is widely used in our daily life and it’s also being hotly debated. Some experts and citizens hold the view that we should ban the use of it because it may be harmful for our body, while others argue that we should support the use of it because it’s benefits overweighs the problems it might bring. At first, the government left the issue untouched. But after the severe opposition, they found some scientists to speak about the GMF. And after people know more about the GMF’s pros and cons, situations changes a lot.
According to People's Daily, China only produces 15% percent of soybeans it consumes every year. And the rest of 85% is imported from other countries, which are all genetic modified soybeans basically. Not only for the soybeans, but also people consume a large scaled of GMF everyday. But with the huge consume of GMF in China, Chinese government did not come up with satisfactory rules in the field. The only regulation is called Regulations on the safety administration of agricultural genetically modified organisms. And it is known to have many loopholes. It says that the GMF should be labeled, but it did not provide a certain way for the GMF companies to label their products. So they could use misleading labels. And even with the regulations, government does not have real restrictions toward GMF. So people would never know weather the food is natural or genetically modified. And government did not try to provide any information of GMF.
And because of the government’s lack of control on GMF, many citizens worried about the food they eat everyday. Are they GMF? Are they harmful? And an increasingly amount of people began to aware that the food they eat everyday would be GMF. Based on limited information people would get on the restricted Internet, people found that GMF could do harm to people. Worries spread.
And then, people began to seek out the truth of GMF from experts. And the experts in most cases were on citizens’ side. They critic the governments lack of control on it. And publishes many articles to reveal the truth of GMF to people-the possible damage it could do to human and its unknown safety. They suggests that people who had GMF from one company, 37 of them died after 3 months, 1500 people partly paralyzed, 5000 of them feel a reduction of sexual activity. (Mayeno,A.N. 1994.) And some other risks are known and even not predictable.
Then, people got more worried and the issue of GMF has become a topic everywhere. Seeing the articles saying that they are unsafe. Many citizens begin to refuse GMF. But since there is no clear label to distinguish GMF in the supermarket from other natural products, they tend to go to local farms more often than going to a supermarket to buy their food ingredients. But the amount of food that served in the local farm definitely would not meet the huge demand of food people need. In this case, with the rush, the food from local farms increases crazily. Then, some of people returned to their prior choice and went to the supermarket because of the unbelievable price of food in local farms. The dissatisfaction of Chinese government becomes severe after the circle. More and more citizens criticize the government’s ignorance of GMF and people’s opposition. Then, when the dissatisfaction reaches to a certain point, government finally got some scientists to announce the issue GMF officially.
During the 4th Chinese food safety forum, those scientists announce officially that there is no direct toxicity in GMF and there is no evidence showing that people would be allergic to them. And one of those scientists claims that the DNA in GMF would be degraded into nucleotide, which would be digested quickly and would not be harmful. And according to an officer in Sino American biotechnology Working Group, USA citizens could get GMF from nearly 70% of the food they eat daily, which is astonishing. Even with that high mount use of the GMF, there is still no severe case happens