Impact of Genetic Modification of Food on global food marketing

Since genetically modified (GM) food has entered the global food market in early mid 1990s and corn, rice, canola oil and soybeans become among the first FDA-approved Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), large companies such as Monsanto, Nestle and PepsiCo experienced cost benefits with these new ingredients and the trend has quickly spread to other sects of the food industry. Genetically modified food can be defined as organisms in which genetic material has been altered by recombinant DNA technology. It sparks controversy among agricultural sectors. Some may advocate that such biotechnology generates a set of potential benefits to producers or consumers with cheaper production costs and food attribute enhancements while others may dispute the possible costs of unintended allergic responses, long-term health and environmental effects, ethical or moral issues. Consumers’ perceptions of these potential benefits and costs shape market responses to the new technologies and eventually determine how widely the technology is adopted. This essay will discuss the issues around genetic modification of food and the impact of them on how food is marketed globally.
Table 1 below shows the PESTLE analysis to examine the external environment for GM food. Politically, GMOs regulations differ in countries, with marked differences between US and EU. Many GM plants including varieties of soya bean, cotton, maize and rice not authorised for use in the EU, have been approved for growing in some major commodity-exporting countries such as Argentina, Brazil, China, USA and India (Food Standards Agency, 2013). While GM traits have significantly reduced the environmental impact associated with insecticide and herbicide use for GM crops, GM crops often manufacture their own pesticides classified by the US Environmental