What's the aim of genetically modifying of foods/organisms?

Question

On news, articles etc. experts talking about **Genetically Modified Foods and Organisms** often mentions about their disadvantages like, - their potential to harm human health - allergies may become more intense, new allergy types may develop - possible damages to the environmentSo I wonder, what's the aim of genetically modifying of foods/organisms? In other words, what are advantages of that?

Answer 1

Hello!

This is a really important question to talk about because of the prevalence and importance of modified foods.

From a larger standpoint, genetically modifying food is done in order to increase an important aspect of the food. It could be it's resistance to certain chemicals (an example of this are the Round Up Ready crops, these are resistant to the herbicide Round Up), increased vitamin production (golden rice is a GMO product that increases certain vitamin production in the crop), crops that spoil slower (the Artic Apple is a newly approved apple that browns much slower, or simply to increase the speed in which the food reaches harvestable levels (there are GMO Salmon that grow much faster than normal salmon).

All of these are great advantages, where we can more quickly grow crops that can be healthier than their non-modified variants.

There are arguments made for the disadvantages of them such as allergens. However, often times we do not know if the alterations will result in an allergen if the protein has not been used previously in crops. There are many GMO modifications (such as the golden rice) that we know will not have allergic differences than normal rice because the changes are swapping genes that are already present in human diets.