My Wife Detests GMOs But She's A Great Patronist

Npong shopping vegetables inside Tamale Central Market. Display are GMO tomatoes, pepper. 

Here i am in a crowded market. It’s just stopped raining and business as usual has resummed with people pushing pass each other, stopping by vendors of assorted items a market can offer. There are no rules of engagement here. The best shopper here is one with bargaining power, and that depicts a rare african market, a case in Tamale central market.

The market looked dangerously constructed, the walking lanes are narrow. Trucker pushers and owners worsened the situatuion as they force their ways through these narrow lanes, carelessly pushing shoppers side by side and some instances block the lane to offload their carriage.

I was not sure of what my wife meant when she stressed “buy fresh and good looking peper, tomatoes, okra, and salt? Do we have fresh and good looking salt too? I asked.

“Be sure not to also buy chemically induced vegetables for me, you know i am careful of my family’s health”, she commanded.

My wife is among millions of people in the world who habor bad feelings about genetically modified foods (GMOs). But she would not object to cakes, cholates made from genetically modified wheat as gift, fresh and good looking vegetables who genes have been modified to improve their desired traits such as good looking, nutritional content, it’s durabitity among other things.

Scientists are currently battling to correct the notion that GMOs are dangerous to health. According to Professor Wayne Powell from the university of Aberystwyth, the modification of plants in the laboratory is to enhance their desired traits such as increased resistance to herbicides, pesticides, drought or improved their nutritional content and that nothing dangerous about the use of GMOs has been scientifically established. Prof. Powell was addressing seasoned journalists in Ghana who took part in in workshop on initiating dialogue on plants breeding, genetics and bioscience for farming organised by Bioscience for Farming in Africa (B4FA) for some selected sceince reporters held in Accra.

Npong and friend Mohammed Nurudeen doing some veg buying

He explained that, GM technology was developed after the second war II to help boost agriculture to meet global food supply. GM process involves the transfer of genes responsible for desired traits of plants such as drought and insects tolerance, or high nutritional content into a different plant. 

The best known example of this is the use of Bacillus thuringiensis (B.t. genes) used in corn and other crops.

He also disapproved negative comments associated to GM products and that GMOs are to ensure regular food supply to the increasing population by controlling pests, crops diseases and improving their nutritional content for the wellbeing of both humans and animals.

My wife has been a great patronist of GMO products at the sametime she detests it. She would not reject genetically modified wheat cholate, biscuit, neither would she buy bad looking vegetable from the market. Her attitude towards GMO s stem from protests and rumours making round alleging the dangers associated to GMOs. Ironically, my wife would also not go anywhere without her GSM cell phone which scienctists say are dangerous than the consumption of GMOs.