The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

Speakers at a discussion in the city yesterday called for building up a social movement against the genetically modified (GM) foods, which they said pose serious threat to human health.

Alliance of Food Sovereignty Campaign (AFSC) organised the discussion at National Press Club in the city.

GM foods are foodstuffs produced from genetically modified organisms (GMO) that have had their genome altered through genetic engineering. GM Foods have been available since the 1990s. The most common modified foods are derived from plants: soybean, corn, canola and cotton seed oil and wheat. The process of producing a GMO used for GM Foods may involve taking DNA from one organism, modifying it in a laboratory, and then inserting it into the target organism's genome to produce new and useful traits or phenotypes. Such GMOs are generally referred to as transgenics. Other methods of producing a GMO include increasing or decreasing the number of copies of a gene already present in the target organism, silencing or removing a particular gene or modifying the position of a gene within the genome.

Consumer rights groups, such as the Organic Consumers Association, and Greenpeace emphasise the long term health risks which GM could pose, or that the risks of GM have not yet been adequately investigated.

With AFSC president ATM Zakir Hossain in the chair, the discussion was participated by BELA's programme director Syeda Rezwana Hasan, Commerce Ministry's deputy director Sharifa Khan, Pavel Perth, AM Badrul Hasan, Mahfuzullah, and Sharif Khan, among others.