Genetic engineering, the process of splicing together DNA from different organisms to create a preferred type of plant or animal, is a relatively new development in agriculture. The first successful experiment was achieved in 1973, and the first patent on a genetically engineered life form (which produced a strain of oil-eating bacterium) was approved by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1980. Despite its recent emergence, however, genetic engineering – particularly in the area of agriculture - has proliferated swiftly. Few Americans can now avoid genetically altered food altogether, as it’s estimated that modified ingredients are present in about two-thirds of the foods in American supermarkets.

Supporters of genetic engineering have argued that this application of science allows farmers to grow crops more efficiently and to save money on pesticides and fertilizers. Fewer chemicals, they say, will be beneficial for the environment and reduce health risks for farm workers. Some enthusiasts of genetic modification even propose a kind of Utopian future, wherein the whole world’s population will be assured a safe and healthy food supply. The new technology purportedly promises not only a greater abundance of food, but also higher nutritional content within it.

Opponents of genetic engineering make the claim that scientists are tampering with matters that they know too little about and essentially committing a crime against nature. It’s impossible, they maintain, for people to foresee the possible consequences that genetic engineering could wreak on the environment and on the health of human beings. Also, many fear that GM food could strengthen the dominance that major corporations already have over the agricultural industry.

This debate reached one of its most visible peaks in January 2000, when Greenpeace activists demonstrated outside the Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal, Canada. They objected to farmers’ use of corn that had been genetically modified to resist corn borers – pests that were costing farmers up to a billion dollars a year in ruined crops. No one denied that the genetic change had benefited the corn plants. But how would it impact upon the rest of the environment? For example, might not the toxin that’d been introduced into the corn to kill borers also be carried in the plants’ pollen and kill off desirable insects – i.e., ones that weren’t pests?

Studies variously supported both sides of the argument, and thus proved inconclusive. However, the protest cut to the heart of the genetic engineering controversy by demonstrating how unprepared both the scientists and their opponents were to gauge the long-term effects of introducing changes into living beings. Perhaps, like most forms of technological innovation, genetic engineering will come to display both its benefits and obvious drawbacks – many of which will not be so apparent until mankind has pursued the experiment for some time.