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Essay on Genetically Modifying Food

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Genetically Modifying Food Genetically modifying food is becoming a highly controversial issue these days. Some scientists believe that Genetic Modified Food (GMF) can benefit the community in a great variety of ways, while others believe that it can do a great harm to the environment and human health. In addition, GMF raises many issues in regards to religions, ethics, law and many others. More importantly, what we should be concerned is whether having the ability to genetically modify species gives us the right to do so. Before we go on any further, it is extremely crucial for us to fully understand what exactly genetically …show more content…

Furthermore, one common example is that people have used selective breeding to develop a strain of low-cholesterol chickens. In other words, selective breeding can be used to develop desirable trait of any living species.

Genetic modification is the expansion of the traditional selective breeding, which allows scientists to insert specific beneficial genes into plants or animals, without any unwanted genes. Genetic modification is a much more precise method, which saves a lot of effort of having to go through the process of trial and error. The history of genetic modification is only as short as a few decades, because scientists only made a huge breakthrough in their understanding of genetics in the 1960s. It wasn’t until the 1980s that the scientists finally discovered the method to transfer DNA from one organism to another, which is called “genetic engineering”. The first genetically modified plant, a tobacco plant, which was resistant to the antibiotic kanamycin, was only created in 1983 by a biotech company called Monsanto. Moreover, the first GMF that appeared on the market was as late as 1994, so do we really know enough about the long term consequences of eating GMF?

Genetic modification in simple words is to alter the DNA of organisms, either by altering an existing DNA or by transferring DNA from one organism to another. In brief description, chromosomes

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