More information on genetically modified foods!

Genetically modified foods have been the talk of millions of people all over the world and this is a good sign as people have realized the disadvantages of genetically modified foods and its effect on the human body.

This topic has created a stir world wide and the FDA ( food1112 and drug administration) had held 3 open meetings in Washington, Chicago and Oakland to seek public opinion and consider establishing a new procedure for government approval for genetically modified foods.

You may wonder what are genetically modified foods? And whether you can give your children foods that have been modified to taste better, look prettier and last longer due to genetic tweaking!

You aren’t the only one.

If you are hearing these words for the first time and why such a hue and cry is being raised on this topic. Genetically modified foods refer to crop plants that are created by humans for human or animal intake using molecular biology techniques. Some plants are genetically modified in the lab because some traits such are resistance to herbicides can be achieved.. the nutritional content of these foods is also increased in the lab by using genetics and certain procedures.

The improvement or enrichment of certain factors is generally undertaken through breeding, but since the procedure is time consuming genetic engineering has come into the picture. Genetic engineering is accurate and rapid in giving results. With the help of genetic engineering genes of one plant can be transferred to another plant and genes from non-plant organisms can also be used. If a plant shows resistance to a certain pesticide the gene of this plant is inserted into another plant which too gets this resistance.

There are advantages as well as disadvantages of genetically modified foods, but let us first and foremost study its advantages.

Since the world population is growing at an unbelievable rate ensuring adequate food to the whole population is a cumbersome task. But GM( genetically modified) foods will come to our rescue by creating pest resistance crops. Nearly half of the crops produced worldwide are lost due to pesticides. Crops can be made herbicide tolerant as farmers do spray a lot of herbicides to destroy weeds and destroy 25% of their crops due to this..

With the help of genetic modification crops can be made drought resistant, cold tolerant and crops can be made nutritious by genetically engineering  the crops to contain added nutrients.
But the disadvantages are that economic concerns will arise as the genetically modified food market is costly and the common farmer will not be able to procure the plants or seeds which is a major concern. People have developed life threatening allergies because of genetically modified foods and health officials are concerned about the ill effects of GM foods and its affects on the human health.