Genetic_Engineering_and_Food_Safety

GeneticEngineering and FoodSafety2012011390 计

21 刘争争

Nowadays the public are focusing more and more attention ongenetically modified foods because they aremore and more closely linked with our daily lives.So what are genetically modified foods? They refer to crop plants which are created for human or animal consumption using the latest molecularbiology techniques.

As we all know, such foods have many advantages including pest resistance, herbicide tolerance, disease resistance, cold tolerance, drought tolerance, salinity tolerance, nutrition, pharmaceuticals and so on.Moreover, supporters believe that because genetic engineering techniqueshave becomesimplified in recent years, the methods can be applied to the large-scale productionof food and drugs badly needed by the rapidlygrowing worldpopulation. On the contrary,these critics believe that genetic engineering of foods touches on several issues involving the right of consumers to know what is in the food they buy, the right of individual countriesto set up standards as they deem fit, the relationship between multinational companies,scientists,

farmers,government regulatorsand so on. So as far as I am concerned, we ought to be especially cautious with the genetically modified foods considering both their merits and demerits before we make decisions whether to buy themfor a person and or whether to import them for a country.

The advantages of genetic engineering exist in many aspects in our lives. Thanks to genetic engineering, more grains have been created to feed the huge population. It can also lead to crops which have lots of excellent characteristics through changing some parts of the DNA of the crops. For instance, some crops can shorten their growing periods. Others can resist many adverse conditions such as coldness, diseases, pests, bad weather etc. It is reported that growing genetically modified foods such asB.t.corn can help eliminate the application of chemical pesticides and reduce the costof bringing a crop to market. Monsanto has created a strain of soybeans genetically modifiedto be not affected by their herbicide product Roundup.A farmer grows these soybeanswhich then only require one application of weed-killer instead of multiple applications,reducing production cost and limiting the dangers of agricultural wasterun-off.Still others are also very different from the normal ones because they can taste better, be more convenient and more nutritious and be stored longer. In addition, supporters believethat genetically modified foods can potentially solvecritical problems of world agriculture,healthand ecology. In that case, the genetic engineering indeed has a great number of excellent advantages.

On the contrary, opposition to the genetically modified foods in many countries even in the USA, where the genetic engineering has been

widely adopted in many fields such as agriculture and medicine, is on the rise because they have concerned many potential dangers of them. To begin with, people are concerned that genetic engineering can alter the nutrients in foods.Foreign genes might alter nutritional value of foods inunpredictable ways by decreasing levelsof some nutrients while increasing levels of others. The changes in food and diet through biotechnology occur at a pace far greater than thescientists’ ability to predict the significance of the changes on pediatric nutrition. Critics therefore suggest that it should be cautious when using genetically modified food products in infant foods. In addition, they even may be potentially poisonous. Genetic modification maybe activates the genes in the food which control the productionof poison. For example, a recent article published in Lancet examined the effects of GM potatoes onthe digestive tract in rats. This study claimed that there were appreciable differencesin the intestines of rats fed GM potatoes and rats fed unmodified potatoes. Yetcritics say that this paper, like the monarch butterfly data, is flawed and does not holdup to scientific scrutiny. Moreover, the gene introduced into the potatoes was asnowdrop flower lectin, a substance known to be toxic to mammals. The scientistswho created this variety of potato chose to use the lectin gene simply to test the methodology,and these potatoes were never intended for human or animal consumption. Last but not least, they are likely to threaten the

biodiversity.Opponents fear thatthe commercialization of transgenic cropswill create a new threat to crop genetic diversity. The potential danger of GM foods cannot be ignored, either though they have solved plenty of issues for us.

I believe that our government has the responsibility tomonitorthe food security for fear of the existence of tragedy. The related departments have to investigate the potential danger of the genetically modified foods and protect the health of our consumers when approving of importing those foods. In addition, we consumers have the rights to know whether the foods are genetically modified. In conclusion, judging from both the advantages and the disadvantages, we must be very cautious when choosing genetically modified foods.