Post a response to the following question: Your response in the discussion board should be at least 200 words. When you respond to another student please use at least three complete, sentences with punctuation and grammar. Please make sure your responses are appropriate.

“Genetically Modified Foods” or GMO’s have become a controversial topic over the last decade or so, due to health, legal and cultural ideologies. They have both advocates and proponents on both sides of the issue. Please do some research and come to your own conclusions, then answer the question…Where do you stand?

In addition to your response, give a thoughtful response to two of your classmates answers.

Reply to classmate #1 Alison

Genetically Modified Foods

There is much controversy surrounding genetically modified foods (GMOs). On one side they say that we are able to increase crop yields, because viruses and pests that can infect plants can be stopped though genetic engineering. For example, in the 1990’s Hawaii’s papaya population was facing disaster because of a ring spot virus, and without genetic engineering to the papaya’s, Hawaii’s papaya population would have collapsed. There are many other examples of the same types of genetic engineering in foods helping to allow us to keep crops from dying off, which we can really afford with a world population as large as we have. However, on the other side, many people are against genetically engineered foods, especially those engineered with pesticides, because they worry that the plants aren’t a natural food source anymore and contain harmful things like carcinogens because of the genetic engineering. Another fear against GMO foods is that antibiotic resistance, toxicity, and allergenicity being transferred over to humans. For example, using allergenic vitro testing, scientists have found Cod proteins in GMO potatoes, which would obviously be bad news for someone with a fish allergy. Changing the protein structures in vegetables can cause them to start containing other proteins than their own that certain people are allergic to, which could be very dangerous. In my personal opinion, I think that sometimes genetically engineering foods cannot be avoided, with modern issues we need modern solutions, and we have a world of people to feed, and can’t afford huge populations of crops to die from diseases or pests. However, I do think that genetically modifying food can be taken out of hand, and needs to be heavily watched, because we don’t want situations where we are modifying our food so much that now a potato is showing that it has fish proteins in it during lab testing. I think it’s important for this type of thing to be heavily regulated to make sure we aren’t doing more harm than good (Bawa & Anilakumar 2012).

Works Cited:

Bawa, A S, and K R Anilakumar. “Genetically Modified Foods: Safety, Risks and Public Concerns-a Review.” Journal of Food Science and Technology, Springer India, 19 Dec. 2012, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3791249/.

And reply to classmate #2 Stephanie

GMO’s

From the research that I conducted, I can tell that genetically modifying our foods was initially with all of good intentions. The purpose of genetically modifying our foods was to help maintain our foods for our rapidly increasing population. The foods were supposed to be tolerant to the herbicides and pesticides that were being used and mostly resistant to all types of weather changes and climates. However, the debate continues over whether this is a good or a bad thing. In my opinion, I think it is almost necessary for our population growth, however I’m not fond of the idea of putting chemicals on the foods we eat. Our foods are already extremely processed and can be overwhelming high in fats and sugars. To be frank, the term “genetically modified” anything sounds a bit frightening. It could be easy for someone that is uneducated on the subject to be alarmed by this term.

I’m not really sure where I stand with this. I understand the original concept and I believe we need something like this in place of what its original intentions were supposed to be, however I am a little uneasy about chemicals in my foods. I’m curious to see where this goes in the future and what will happen as our population continues to grow and as the weather continues to become more drastic.