Which is safer to eat: street foods or those crops with genetically-modified organisms (GMOs)?
Local authorities, international organizations and consumer associations are not only aware of the socioeconomic importance of street foods but also of their associated risks. “With the increasing pace of globalization and tourism,” the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said in a statement, “the safety of street food has become one of the major concerns of public health, and a focus for governments and scientists to raise public awareness.”
A study conducted by the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) a couple of years back discovered that most of the samples taken from the street foods sold in four urban centers – in Davao, Cagayan de Oro, Laguna and University of the Philippines Diliman campus in Quezon City – did not pass quality standards.
It must be recalled that the 1990 cholera outbreak in Metro Manila was caused by “pansit” (rice noodles) and mussel soup bought from street vendors. The outbreak of hepatitis A in Masangkay Street in Sta. Cruz, Manila in 1993 was attributed to eating “bola-bola” (fish balls) sold by street vendors.
Microbiological findings indicated the presence of coliforms such as Escherichia coli, Enterobacterae aerogenes, and E. cloacae in both barbecued and deep-fried animal by-products. This means that the bacteria load of the selected food samples was rather high, ranging from 240 to 2,400 per gram of food.
Now, Dr. Vivencio R. Mamaril, the officer-in-charge of the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) claims those foods that contain genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) are safer to eat than those being sold in the streets.
The reason: transgenic crops undergo stricter tests and environmental assessments and could be much safer and more nutritious than street food consumed daily everywhere. Unlike street food items that are not regulated, GM crops have been subjected to extensive testing under a biosafety framework regarded as one of the strictest in the world.
This made him wonder why those anti-GM campaigners have been blasting away at GM crops but keeping silent on the safety concerns for street food. It may be because, he surmised, street food items are so common that no one bothers to ask if they are safe and nutritious for hundreds of thousands of pupils and students who consume them daily in spite of threats of microbial contamination.
“We may not all be so assiduous in guarding our rights in this situation, but what about on the food we eat? Are we always concerned with the safety of the food we consume? Is food quality in terms of safety our parameter in choosing what we eat? Do we read labels or are we more concerned with the price of the product we buy? These are the many questions that most consumer behavior researchers undertake,” Dr. Mamaril asked.
“Take for example, why are there so many street food being sold in front of schools and many other busy places? Is the selling of street foods regulated to guard the safety of consumers? The answer maybe is no. And why is this so? It could be because the types of food sold are those known to be commonly consumed. Examples are animals’ innards that are processed as fried, smoked or are skewered, eggs wrapped in flour, fish balls, chicken balls, squid balls, taho, and many others. The food quality concern in these kinds of foods could be microbial,” he said.
Now on the other side of the coin. As for GM products, food safety is a real concern. “Under our existing rules and regulations on GM crops, food safety is one the major concerns before such crops are given a biosafety permit. Other biosafety concerns are animal feeds and environmental safety,” Dr. Mamaril pointed out.
Not too many know it but we are already eating foods that are processed from GM crops. “Our hotdogs may contain protein concentrates that came from soya beans which were genetically engineered to become resistant from glyphosate pesticides,” he said. “The same kind of soya bean is used to prepare taho, tofu, and other soya-based food products.”
Meanwhile, a consumer advocacy group in United Kingdom said that genetically modified soya can be found in bread, biscuits, baby milk, baby foods, breakfast cereals, margarine, soups, pasta, pizza instant meals, meat products, flours, sweets, ice creams, crisps, chocolate, soy sauce, veggie-burgers, tofu, soya milk, and pet foods.
GM crops are products of biotechnology. Bio is derived from the Greek word bios, which means life. Technology is the making, modification, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems, methods of organization, in order to solve a problem, improve a preexisting solution to a problem, achieve a goal, handle an applied input/output relation or perform a specific function.
The methodology for making GM foods sounds indeed like science fiction. Scientists working in laboratories take genes from one organism – a plant, animal, bacterium or virus – and splice them to the genes of another organism (a food crop or animal) to produce genetically altered offspring that will reproduce for agricultural purposes.
“It’s now possible to do stuff that only writers could imagine before and build up completely new life forms. The argument that we need genetically-modified food to feed the world is complete bull,” said Greenpeace International, an activist group, said in a statement.
But Ismail Serageldin, during his time as vice-president of World Bank, had foreseen biotechnology of playing a crucial part of agriculture in the 21st century. “All possible tools that can help promote sustainable agriculture for food security must be marshaled,” he stressed, “and biotechnology, safely developed, could be a tremendous help.”
Through biotechnology, more crops can be grown on the planet. “At current rates of population growth, conventional techniques may soon be insufficient if farming is to keep pace with the scale of increases required in the 21st century,” wrote Victor Villalobos in an article which appeared in Ceres, a FAO publication.
“We have the technology to meet the need of the future. What we don’t have yet is the will power, the regulatory system to allow use of the technology that we need,” commented Dr. Wayne Parrot, a crop science expert from the University of Georgia, who recently visited the country.
Now, if you are given a choice, will you eat GM foods or not? One sage puts his answer this way: “A man who has enough food has several problems. A man without food has only one problem.” Or as Horace puts it: “Only a stomach that rarely feels hungry scorns common things.”
