Genetically Modified Food - the Potential Risks and Benefits of one Emerging Technology in Food Production and Manufacturing

Discuss the potential risks and benefits of one emerging technology in food production and manufacturing

Genetically modified food or GM for short, are foods manufactured using biotechnology. Genetically modified foods have been modified using gene technologies, which allow producers to precisely alter characteristics of a food crop by introducing genes from another source. This means the selected individual gene/s with specific traits are transferred from one organism to another.

Genetic modification is not only specific to selective breeding, genetic engineering allows genetic material to be transferred between any organism, including between plants and animals. For example, the gene from a fish that lives in very cold seas has been inserted into a strawberry, allowing the fruit to be frost-tolerant.

The Australian food industry has not completely accepted genetically modified foods as a mean of food production, with GM foods being only acceptable in selected potato, corn, cotton, canola and sugar beet ingredients . Although there are pre-market safety assessments the idea of GM food is still under scrutiny with many potential benefits and risks that has lead to their uncertainty in the market place.

Some of these risks include the tendency to provoke allergic reactions as known allergen may be transferred from traditional foods to GM foods. For instance Pioneer Hi-Bred tested a transgenic soybean that expressed a brazil nut protein, however he found that individuals allergic to Brazil nuts were now also allergic to the new GM soybeans .One of the main concerns with GM foods is the evolution of resistance that may build to crops that have been modified. If potentially cross breeding were to occur through GM and non-GM crops, this may result in weeds that were resistant to herbicide which could be detrimental to the environmental safety aspects if stronger or increased use of herbicides were to result.