Page 4, Section 2: Transgenic Plants and Crops

SITE No.2 - http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/T/TransgenicPlants.html

This site, while having little-to-no design, is actually incredibly factual.

The scientific content on transgenic plants – a still up-and-coming field of genetics – is rated pretty highly in my eyes. The page uses many scientific words, but most of them have links to a page which explains the meaning to you. Before, I had no idea what recombinant DNA was, but now I do. It goes into many areas of transgenic plants, such as what the common genes implanted are, and explains transgenic engineering well.

The detail this site delves into is pretty handy. It uses a lot of scientific words, such as somatic and germline cells, plasmids, vectors and recombinant DNA, but it is easy to read if you take your time through it and click on the links explaining the words which are scientific that you do not quite understand. The website discusses transgenic plants in high detail, like I explain, but it also has a nice level of accessibility to it. You can click on links to explain words you don’t know, you can look up a certain section of what you want to know about transgenic plants (for example, if you wanted to know about the increased nutritional value), or you can – quite easily – just read the whole article on transgenic plants without too much trouble.

The credibility of the site is supposedly incredibly high. Most of the information has been adapted from “Biology published in 1994 by Wm. C. Brown,” but has been slightly adapted to opportunities provided by an online text. This book was/is apparently used at a university level, which must mean the text is accurate, precise and highly informative.

This website is seemingly quite unbiased. It merely provides the pure, hard facts so you are able to read them. The information is accurate, doesn’t seem to sway one way or another in terms of the implications of transgenic plants and is a nice, easy, afternoon read available online.

Scientific Content: 8/10

Detail of Content: 9/10

Accessibility: 7/10

Bias: 9/10 (Higher is better.)

Total: 8/10 (average, rounded down.)

Page 1. Genetically Modified Foods?

Genetic modification is possible nowadays thanks to biotechnological advancements. The genetic material may be altered with methods that aren’t natural – this is what is known as genetic engineering. Traditional breeding can generally produce the same results, but it takes much longer. However, transferring a gene to a non-related species is impossible without genetic modification. The practice is not new – it has been around for centuries through careful, selected breeding. In theory, genetic engineering allows genetic material to be transferred between organism, like flora and fauna. A common misconception is that organic foods are the same as GM food – this is not the case. The hardest thing about genetically modifying foods is locating the genes for important traits – increased levels of insect resistance or the desired nutrient boost is incredibly difficult to look for and identify.

Several foods have been modified to make them more resistant to insects and viruses that endure herbicides. This includes:
• Maize
• Soybean
• Oilseed rape (canola)
• Chicory
• Squash
• Potato

Genetically modified foods are currently unavailable in Australia. Genetically modified ingredients, however, are present in some Aussie food such as soy flour in bread that may have come from imported GM soybeans.

Genetic engineering can be used to increase nutrients (vitamins, minerals) in food crops. Known as ‘nutritional enhancement’, it is at a relatively advanced stage compared to other genetic engineering branches. Things such as iron and Vitamin A deficiency will be a thing of a past, and the theoretical removal of proteins in nuts will supposedly lower allergy rates.

There are several benefits to GM foods – lower overall costs per nutritional value, better quality food, higher nutritional values and yields, longer shelf life, it would be possible to implement vaccines into certain foods and they would require less chemical attention, ergo they are better for the environment.

Akin to the benefits of GM food and crops, there are definite downsides to it. There are authorities that ‘mark’ GM foods on a criterion that includes but is not limited to, the foods toxicity, and their tendency to provoke an allergic reaction, the stability of the inserted gene, any levels of nutritional deficiencies and any other unintended effects due to gene insertion. This is all compared to the original product, and the GM food will only go on sale if it proves to be safe. This is the principal of “substantial equivalence”.