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Genetically Modified Foods

Submitted by Serena Mason on July 22, 2010

Genetically modified foods, also known as GM foods have been a controversial topic with European environmental organizations as well as public interest groups. These groups have been protesting against genetically modified food cons.

What are genetically modified foods? The term GM food is for crop plants that have been created with state-of-the-art molecular biology techniques. These plants are for human consumption. These genetically engineered food products are modified in laboratories to improve certain traits that might make them nutritionally richer and resistant to herbicides.

Enhancement of characteristics of plants can be done through breeding, but that is a time consuming method, and thus, genetic engineering can create plants with all the desired qualities much quickly. These plants are created with greater accuracy than in breeding.

Benefits of Genetic Modified Food: Ensuring that the booming human population has enough food over the years is a major challenge. Through GM foods, scientists are trying find ways to grow food that will be hardier than regular crops and resistant to certain adverse conditions.

Pest resistance: since a lot of crops are lost because of pests, which lead to starvation in people and financial loss for formers.

To prevent pests from destroying crops, farmers use a lot of pesticides. But people do not want to eat foods with pesticides. So, this is where GM foods come in. some foods like B.t.

corn do not need pesticides and this also reduces the cost of growing the crop.

Herbicide tolerance: Herbicides are often used by farmers to kill weeds. This is not only expensive, but also a time-consuming process. Genetically modified crop plants do not need herbicide tolerant and this means that the crop would need lesser amount of herbicides.

Disease resistance: Many types of bacteria, fungi, and viruses can cause plant diseases.

Biologists who are working on genetically modified plants that will be disease resistant. This way plants won’t get destroyed due to disease.

Drought tolerance/salinity tolerance: GM foods include crops that can withstand high salt content in the soil or long periods of drought. This way, farmers can grow crops in inhospitable places too.

Nutrition: Malnutrition is a common problem in many countries. Poor people often rely on a single crop for most of their nutrition requirements. So, through genetic engineering, scientists are trying to make crops more nutritious, so that people are able to get nourishment through one kind of food.

Pharmaceuticals: Certain vaccines are being induced in GM foods, so that people are able to get their medical needs through foods.