Advantages and disadvantages of GM foods

Advantages

people tend to disregard the positives of genetically modified foods and the importance of GM foods in today's fast paced life style. Some of the many advantages of having GM foods are

• Herbicide tolerance: Farmers will often spray large quantities of different herbicides to destroy weeds which is time-consuming and expensive process that requires care so that the herbicide doesn't harm the crop plant or the environment. Crop plants genetically-engineered to be resistant to one very powerful herbicide could help prevent environmental damage by reducing the amount of herbicides needed.

• Nutrition: crops can be genetically engineered to have higher content of important nutrients. In third world countries where malnutrition is common and peoples rely on a single crop such as rice for their staple diet which does not contain adequate amounts of all the necessary nutrients to so to prevent malnutrition, genetically engineering the rice to contain additional vitamins and minerals will prevent malnutrition.

• Drought tolerance/salinity tolerance: As the world population grows and more land is utilised for housing instead of food production, farmers will need to grow crops in locations previously unsuited for plant cultivation. Creating plants that can withstand long periods of drought or high salt content in soil and groundwater will help people to grow crops in places which were once unable to be inhabitable.

Disadvantages

however there are some criticisms (disadvantages) towards using GM foods.

• reduces effectiveness of pesticides: Some worry that insects will develop resistance towards pesticides.

• Cross pollination: another concern is cross pollination causing weeds to become resistant to herbicides and pesticides. plants engineered for herbicide tolerance and weeds will cross-breed, resulting in the transfer of the herbicide resistance genes from the crops into the weeds. These "superweeds" would then be herbicide tolerant as well.

•  another issue with cross pollination is introduced genes may cross over into non-modified crops planted next to GM crops. The possibility of interbreeding will cause farmers with unmodified crops to not be able to say that their crops are organic.

Bibliography
http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/gmfood/overview.php