Kastens Inc., Herndon

Kastens Farms

Farms Executives of Kastens Inc
Owner, Terry Kastens Business classifications
SIC (US 1987) : Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) are a hot, controversial topic in the news and on social media right now. Interest seems to be high with consumers, farmers, and landlords, so we thought the timing was right to put together a paper on this subject. We wouldn’t go so far as to call this a “position statement, ” but rather this paper represents our first efforts in understanding the topic as a whole, as well as putting it in historic context.
I felt very apprehensive when tasked to put this paper together, due to the required legwork it was going to take to get up to speed and fear that whatever got written about this culturally and politically charged topic would irritate some folks. Certainly I have no desire to irritate anyone. Rather, my intent is to provide an unbiased viewpoint that is, hopefully, not slanted due to personal or political beliefs or our desire to maintain farm profitability.
GMO crops have been tested for health and safety for about 20 years now, often including additional safety tests that are beyond those applied to conventionally developed crops. However, much of this testing has been achieved by the companies involved, and there is a lot of employee crossover among the major companies as well as the federal regulatory agencies responsible for oversight. Not surprisingly this creates an environment of mistrust, where concerns over collusion produce less confidence in legitimate scientific findings that come about.
While it is quite difficult to become an expert across the broad depth of scientific fields covered when studying GMO technology, one should be able to synthesize the information that is available to develop a baseline understanding of the topic. If collusion did occur, it would be unlikely that this collusion extended across the table for every study over the past two decades. Consequently, if any research showed significant downsides to the technology, it is reasonable to assume that they would still bubble to the surface, even if the bulk of the research came back with only positive results. In an attempt to identify such artifacts, I tried to spend my time on three different types of websites/information outlets: Pro-GMO sites, Anti-GMO sites, and sites with no apparent bias one way or the other.
This paper constitutes a general summary of thoughts, research, opinions, and concerns identified across the various resources reviewed. Let’s begin by discussing the terminology. According to dictionary.com, the current definition of a GMO is “an organism whose genome has been altered by the techniques of genetic engineering so that its DNA contains one or more genes not normally found there“. We emphasize the phrases “genetic engineering” (GE) and “not normally found there”, as they describe the controversial biological technology and result that comes about. This leads to emotion stirring colloquialisms such as “frankenfoods”, which is used to describe any food product containing at least one GMO-sourced ingredient.
Since farming began thousands of years ago, humans have been modifying their natural environment, including the plants and animals around us. Genetic engineering (GE) techniques are the most recent method used to facilitate such changes, opening up a whole new host of possibilities. As such, a review of the primary plant breeding techniques employed over the years is