Genetically Modified Foods

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Genetically Modified Foods

With an ever-growing population and the problems of world hunger, there has been a high demand for an increased food supply and a better food supply. Technology has been called upon to meet this challenge. The advent of genetically engineered foods, sometimes called transgenic crops or genetically modified foods, is not a new concept, but the controversy over it is. Can these "frankenfoods" be harmful to humans? What are their effects on the environment? The following paper will focus on such questions as well as providing a better understanding of what genetically modified foods are and how they should be regulated.

What are genetically modified foods?

Although traditional plant breeding has been around for ages, the development of recombinant DNA techniques have offered a wide range of valuable genes and methods of inserting them into the plant genomes. Two major advances in molecular biology have resulted in new plant breeding technology:

"The construction of genetic maps saturated with DNA markers, and the subsequent design of relatively simple PCR-based assays to facilitate the selection of desired alleles at closely linked loci and the resulting development of plant lines with desired combinations of traits;

The cloning and DNA sequencing of specific genes, the reassembly of specific DNA fragments into functional chimeric genes, and the transfer of such genes to single plant cells from which complete plants can be regenerated via cell and tissue culture."

(Conner et. al, 1999)

It is the second method of breeding that has come into the most light recently and offers the opportunity to develop a wide variety of new crop cultivars. Transgenic plants are usually made up of a gene...

... middle of paper ...

...ally engineered crops. Current Opinion in Biotechnology. Vol. 10, 1999. Pp. 298-302.

OCDE (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). Consensus document on general information concerning the genes and their enzymes that confer tolerance to glyphosphate herbicide.1999.

http://www.oecd.org/ehs/ehsmono/#BIO

Snow, Allison and Pedro Moran Palma. Commercialization of transgenic plants: potential ecological risks. BioScience. Vol. 47, Feb. 1997. Pp. 86-96.

Steinbrecher, Ricarda A. From green to gene evolution: the environmental risks of genetically engineered crops. The Ecologist. Vol. 26, Nov./Dec., 1996. Pp. 273-281.

14. Traynor, Patricia and James H. Westwood, Eds. Proceedings of a workshop on: ecological effects of pest resistance genes in managed ecosystems (Jan. 31-Feb. 3, 1999). Information Systems for Biotechnology. http://www.isb.vt.edu

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