Genetically modified foods: 6 thinking hats Essay

1. Genetically modified foods or GM foods is to refer to crop plants created for human or animal consumption/ intake. GM foods are foods produced from organisms inserted into their DNA altering, and allowing genetic changes to be made, affecting their natural balance to give the desired affect –enhancing desired traits an e. g. being to increase the resistance to herbicides or to increase or improve nutritional content-. With the use of modern technology it is also possible to allow selected individual genes to be transferred from one organism to another, it also works between non- related species. Modern biotechnology† or â€Å"gene technology†, sometimes also â€Å"recombinant DNA technology† or â€Å"genetic engineering† allows all this to happen an e. g. of being the growth and harvest of crop plants. 2. GM foods are everywhere in shops, supermarkets etc. In Australia, currently only two GM foods are produced with it being canola and cotton, but many GM foods such as soybeans, corn, rice, peas, sugarbeet, rice, sugarcane and dairy productsare imported from different countries all around the world. The label for the products are on the label at the back of it, showing all the ingredients including the GM substance an example being shown below but not all foods have the GM food labelling on them. 3. GM foods such as food made at bakeries, restaurants and takeaways, potatoes and tomatoes have no GM labelling on it, this due to the fact that if labelled it is to imply a warning about health effects causing the consumers to not want to buy the product and with some arguments of consumers deserving to know what’s in their foods the process is not as easy as it sounds having it to require many of several complex technical issues –the cost of paper and ink to print the label, having to go through a long process of having the approval from authorities and such- . Another reason is that The GM foods are not that significant and won’t really affect the person’s health so it is seen that it is not needed to label them for there would be a very large decrease of income if it were labelled. Nancy Ho 91 1 Genetically modified corn NEXT TO A NORMAL ONE ->