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Genetically Modified Foods Good or Bad?: Essay

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What if people could create an organism that was stronger than it was previously? More resistance to diseases, poisons, and that could thrive in a hostile environment? That is what scientist are creating with GMOs (Genetically Modified Organism) but mostly with plants that farmers produce for food such as corn or soybeans. Scientist can create modified organism when they pick an organism (such as corn) and then have certain changes introduced into their DNA using genetic engineering. It is different from breeding because instead of getting random genes, scientists are putting the desired gene directly into the plants’ DNA. Genetically modified foods are a controversial topic throughout most of the country but most Americans would be …show more content…

In in an interview done by Live Science Anne Yonkers said "We should be using the precautionary principle with GMOs, and assume that GMOs have to be demonstrated to be good rather than assume that they are good.” (Yonkers 5), modified crops accelerated the evolution in weeds at an incredible rate making them develop resistance faster. A common weed called Palmer that grows near soybeans evolved to be resistance to glyphosate an active ingredient in many weed killers such as Roundup. Do to how resistance this strain is it has spread to more than seventy-six countries and that is just the palmer weed; twenty-four other glyphosate resistant weeds have appeared in eight-teen different countries as well. Some farmers lose more than half their yield and while forcing others to go bankrupt cause of the massive money loss. With malnutrition being a very real problem can modified food be a possible solution?
In many undeveloped countries that do not have varied sources of food, malnutrition is major issue for them. A solution would be modified foods scientist engineered to include more vitamins and/or minerals meaning that the country would be able to use the rice to combat malnutrition. An example of this would be rice that scientist modified to give vitamin A; deficiency in this particular vitamin can lead to poor eyesight and sometimes even blindness. Even so, with the way plants breed with one another has been very

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