GM Food -Plants

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GM Food-Plants

• A first look

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What is GM Food?

• GM food stands for Genetically Modified Food
• Organisms are made up of cells containing genes,
  the hereditary material which is DNA
  (deoxyribonucleic acid) in nature
• GM food is food with genes modified. Genes can be
  transplanted by taking out useful pieces of DNA
  from one organism and merging them with the DNA
  in another organism.

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Common GM Food
Maize
Tomato
Cabbage
Pasta
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Why produce GM food?

• To improve the quality of food
• To improve food production to feed the world
• To strengthen the resistance against herb and
  pests
• To cope better with climatic changes
• To minimize the cost of production
• To minimize loss during transport and storage

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Herbicide Resistance

• Herbicides, like glyphosate and glufosinate, are
  used to eliminate weeds to maintain nutrient
  content in the soil but they decrease the yield.
• Scientists insert the herbicide resistance genes
  via agrobacterium into food plants so that they
  will not be affected by the herbicide.
• This reduces the excessive use of herbicide.

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Pest resistance

• Scientists insert the toxin producing gene from
  Bacillus thuringienus, a kind of soil bacterium,
  into maize.
• Destructive insects will be killed when eating
  the crop.
• The loss due to destructive insects is greatly
  reduced.

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Is GM food harmful?

• Will it affect our health?
• Will it affect the eco-system?
• Will it have harmful side-effects?
• Will it reduce consumer choices?

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Will GM food incur Health Problems?

• Will we suffer from toxins produced?
• Will we inherit the toxin-producing genes?
• Will it cause allergic reactions?

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Will GM food incur Health Problems?

• GM food is consumed as DNA molecules.
• As human body has been coping perfectly well with
  foreign DNA for millions years. No harm is proved
  at this moment.

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Harmful to eco-system?

• Will it affect the growth of other plants?
• Will living things lose their living environment?
• Will it create strange species?

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Any side-effects?

• Will genes used to modify crops jump the species
  barrier?
• Can the possible DNA mutation be controlled?

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Religion and choice?

• What happens if vegetarians eat food which is
  genetically engineered with an animal gene?
• Will it repel choice of food?

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Solutions

• Add labels to the packages
• Improve genetic modification technology
• Food tests

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The End
For further reference, please go to our
website http//library.thinkquest.org/C004033