Do GM foods contain allergens or toxins?
All GM products are tested for any potential allergens and toxins during the research and assessment phase. The most talked about example of allergens and GM foods, is an American research project that involved putting a gene from a Brazil nut into a soybean to make it more nutritious. Testing during the development phase revealed that people with known allergies to Brazil nuts would have suffered reactions to the GM soy. The work was stopped immediately, and the modified soybean was never marketed. A GM product is allowed to contain the same allergens as its conventional counterpart. For example, the allergens in a conventional peanut may still be present in a GM peanut (if one was ever developed). In the future, gene technology has the potential to remove allergens from foods, for example removing gluten from wheat. 17. Once foods have been modified do we really know what we are eating? Most GM foods have only one modified characteristic, or at most two. Often the modified characteri
