Genetically Engineered Foods

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Genetically Engineered Foods Food is the esscence of life and without it, life would fail to exist; however, the wrong nature of food can lead to the same fatal outcome. Foods that are genetically engineered are based on the premise that foods are made better for humans in many different ways (Eschholz and Rosa 537). Using the latest technology, scientists are able to create crops that are more productive to feed the ever growing population or by introducing new traits into already existing foods to make them overall better; it is easy to see why many people would think that this new technology is just another improvement in everyday lives. When modifying the food, scientists take a gene from one species and insert it into a new species to enhance desired traits such as resistance to herbicides or to provide more nutritional results. This way of improving foods has been taking place traditionally by just crossing two plants together and hoping that the new traits are taken without any negative ones (543). Since this is time consuming and not as accurate, scientists now just introduce the new genes, or traits, through the plants’ DNA. Genetically Engineered foods, although meant to be helpful, pose many problems by causing environmental hazards, human health risks, and economic concerns. To begin with, one of the problems with engineered foods is that they can become hazardous to the surrounding environment. This unintended harm to other organisms is caused by many factors. An issue that results from introducing “herbicide-resistant” crops is that farmers are allowed to spray as much herbicide as they want with no worry of killing their own crop. These excess chemicals are introduced into the environment in unnecessary amounts and end up killing many organisms within the area. Also, weeds meant to be killed by the herbicide can acquire the new gene

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