GM Food

      For a My Living Environment class I was asked to create this post and to have it answer the following questions.

1.) What is food biotechnology?
2.) What are genetically engineered foods?
3.) What are the potential benefits of genetically engineered foods overall?
4.) What are the potential risks of genetically engineered foods overall?

After reading over these questions I did some research, and soon found the answers.

1) Modern biotechnology refers to several scientific techniques used to create  desired traits in organisms through altering it genetics. In the case of Food biotechnology  is the use of these techniques to produce food, particularly crops with improved attributes.

 2) Genetically Engineered foods are foods with altered DNA so as to produce a food which is better suited for production.

3) Potential benefits of Genetically Engineered Food include

                                                Less seeds for a larger crop, no need for pesticides, increased resistance to herbicides, resistance to disease and temperature, and the ability to grow in previously useless land ex. salt laden areas.

4) The Cons of Genetically Engineered Food can include

                                                Potential diseases to Animals and people, the Creation of super bugs and super diseases which could completely wipe out the GM (Genetically Mutated) crop, and some GM crops have been noted to carry allergens an example is Starlink corn.

or even worse our food could become this...

Recourses

This information was provided by http://www.foodinsight.org/Resources/Detail.aspx?topic=Background_on_Food_Biotechnology

and

http://library.thinkquest.org/TQ0312650/food.htm