A Civilized World

In order to live in a civilized world people have to find other food sources (Fedoroff, 2001). Scientists mention that genetically engineered crops (GMO’s) are the best solution to this problem. According to this idea, genetic engineering has rapidly improved over the last two decades. There have been several questions raised in people’s mind since the genetically engineered crops got into the market. Most of the people wonder whether these crops are dangerous to our health and environment or not. According to authorities (biotechs, nutrition experts etc.) there are benefits and drawbacks of genetic engineering both to people’s health and the environment.

Firstly, we have to take some precautions to supply the food demand for the next generations. According to the UN’s survey, the world population will be increased up to 10 billion in 50 years (Fedoroff, 2001). This means there will be three billion more people living on the earth. There is enough hunger these days, imagine the hunger rate after three billion more people are added to the world’s population. In order to keep up with this increase in the world population, we have to find other food supplies. Genetic engineering appears to be the best recipe to deal with this issue with the present technology. Also, with the help of GMO’s, we can decrease the hunger rate of the world. In my opinion, genetic engineering can provide us cheaper and more nutritional food without harming the environment.

Secondly, genetically engineered crops cause less harm to the environment than the naturally raised crops. The main target of genetic engineering is to raise insect resistant plants, so genetic engineers add an additional gene to seed DNA to make it more resistant to bugs (Fedoroff, 2001). Farmers would use far less, even no pesticides while raising genetically modified crops. As a result of this, the harm of the pesticides to the environment will be reduced, and more crop yields will be available (Yan and Kerr, 2002). Also, this method will increase the harvest of the farmers and make the farming job more profitable. This means farmers will begin to raise more food and supply the food demand by the middle of this century.

The other advantage of genetically modified crops is their being more nutritious foods. The genetic modification of crop seeds makes these crops healthier and more nutritious. Some important deficiencies of some minerals and vitamins of a certain society due to cultural inheritance can be cured by the use of genetic engineering. For instance, the seeds of maize and rice can be enriched with iron to reduce the iron deficiency of certain customs (Yan and Kerr, 2002). Also, doctors indicate that some particular cancer types can be cured with nutritious tomatoes, which could easily be raised by the use of genetic engineering. There are several other examples to these nutritionally enriched crops to people’s diet and health.

Genetic engineering can