The Living World 6th Edition by George Johnson, Jonathan Losos,William Ober,Claire Garrison

Exercise 6

Much of the technology for producing GM foods is owned by multinational corporations, which seek to maintain intellectual ownership of their creations. As one example, Monsanto Corporation requires farmers to sign contracts for glyphosate-tolerant soybeans that prevent the farmers from saving seed for replanting the next year. The company has aggressively brought suit against violators. On the one hand, companies need to be able to profit from their products, and the development costs of GM foods are enormous. Without potential profit, future GM crops will not be developed. On the other hand, in many highly populated regions of the world, people who face famine when their crops fail simply cannot afford to pay the price of seeds every year. How would you want to see this challenging issue handled