Are bioengineered foods safe to eat?
A. Yes, they are as safe as any other food we eat. That is, bioengineered food and non-bioengineered food are equally safe. In fact, bioengineered food may be safer. Traditional breeding techniques are often imprecise because they shuffle thousands of genes in the offspring, causing them to have some of the characteristics of each parent plant. With the tools developed from biotechnology, a gene can be inserted into a plant to give it a specific new characteristic instead of mixing all the genes from two plants and seeing what comes out. Bioengineering allows scientists to move genes (and therefore desirable traits) in ways not before possible, and with greater ease and precision.
A. Yes, they are as safe as any other food we eat. That is, bioengineered food and non-bioengineered food are equally safe. In fact, bioengineered food may be safer. Traditional breeding techniques are often imprecise because they shuffle thousands of genes in the offspring, causing them to have some of the characteristics of each parent plant. With the tools developed from biotechnology, a gene can be inserted into a plant to give it a specific new characteristic instead of mixing all the genes from two plants and seeing what comes out. Bioengineering allows scientists to move genes (and therefore desirable traits) in ways not before possible, and with greater ease and precision.
