Week 7/Session 7--Environmental  Life Sciences and Industrial Biotechnology

Today’s lesson is a nervious session. It is because I have my individual presentation this week. What I present today is For Food Security, China tries an alternative to industrial Agriculture. This article talks about the methods China used to confront food insecurity problem to ensre food security. I did some research regarding agriculture and its sustainable. And one important issue for tihs session is can diversitified agriculture feed the changing world?  


“When we are able to grow the resources we need, we will finally be on the road to sustainability” I think there is very little chance of that happening with the present level of consumption. If the world continues to consume resources at the same rate as it does now, I doubt the world has enough resources to support the world’s population. Prod said that it can achieve, but need time and efforts.

We started off class with a video on the relation between man and the environment, and how the acts of man now can greatly influence the environment and hence, man in the future. The video portrayed man as parasites and it showed how the pursuit of self interest can potentially destroy the future of mankind. While I feel that describing man as ‘parasites’ may be abit extreme, I do agree that there is an element of truth in it. One clear example of this would be the destruction of the Amazon Rainforest in South America. Despite forests having large amount of resources to start with, man’s continual pursuit of self interest has resulted in the accelerated reduction of resources and even homes for biodiversity.

While this may be seen as some to be beneficial for us as it meets a portion of our current needs, I think it is necessary for us to keep in mind that while we may find it hard to search for alternatives to these resources, our future generations will have it a lot more worse because they start off with a lot less than we had when we did.

There are lots of interesting points about GM food, today also got two presenter who present  feel that GM food. I think food and biotechnology can be the answer to world hunger. However, biotechnology can help to solve world hunger but regulations and checks must be done to ensure that food is safe and that people in poor countries are not simply ‘forced’ to eat food that may fill their hunger temporarily but may bring greater harm to their health in the longer term. Currently, there is a report in America by a scientist who shows that GM food is not as safe as we are thinking. He did a research about GM food, which is to feed 200 mice with GM maize. However, after few month, 80% of these mice got cancer. It is a horrible research and doube the safety of GM food. However, some scientist did not agree with him. I personally think GM food should be labelled, consumers can make their own choice on what they want to consume. And take the responsibility of what they choice. Hence, peopel can have an idea about what they consume. This is consumers' right.

One more interesting point I find in oral presentation is a discussion about the safety about GM vegatable or GM meat. In my personal view I think consumers can accept GM vegatable instead of GM meat. As a consumer, I think there are large number of vegatables are genetic modified. Other people can accept it, I also can eat it. However, consumer cannot accept GM meat. It is because we heard that GM animals are easily sick and die. If we eat them, we will have healthy problem soon. Hence, I still think people cannot make a bias statement that GM food is totally good or bad. It still needs time to improve and complete it.

What I wish we discussed more: The long term implications of biotechnology. I do agree that biotechnology, in this case, in food, can bring many benefits to mankind in the long term. However, problems such as possible religious problems associated with food biotechnology, our still-limited knowledge on genetically engineered food and their potential long term problems still exist and will continue to emerge. How will we be able to identify them and eventually get around them such that we can reap the full benefit of food biotechnology?

Overall, I will give 7.5 for today's session.