are biotech foods safe to eat课文
Jan. 29, 2001 -- Ever check the ingredients label of your potato chips? How about the side of your cornflakes box? Chances are your food was partially created in a petri dish before it landed in your pantry, and you don't know it.
Labels that distinguish genetically modified foods from others aren't required by the FDA unless the modification significantly changes their nutritional content or produces a likely allergen. And although this system may become mandatory soon, the FDA now operates a voluntary premarket consultation program for developers of biotech food products. The federal agency says that to date, every biotech food product sold in the U.S. has gone through this process.
As a result, genetically engineered food is everywhere. It can be found in your pancake mix, bacon bits, French fries, and soy sauce, to name a few. But is it any better or wor than what you've always eaten?"There is no difference nutritionally," says Susan Pitman, RD, a registered dietitian and director of health communication programs for the Internation
al Food Information Council. "But [with biotechnology], the potential for benefits is there. We may not have some of the real products on the market yet, but there is definitely promi."
Not everyone is enthusiastic at the prospect of more biotech foods, particularly if that fact is not made clear on labels. "The American public is not well informed that genetic engineering is taking place and is in their food products," says Joph Mendelson, legal director of the Center for 家长开放日活动方案>邀请函格式模板Food Safety. "As that profile rais, more people are saying, 'How is this happening without us knowing it? Why are we not given the option to know what is in our food?'"
Responding to what it said was "considerable public support" for a mandatory process, the FDA on Jan. 17 propod a new rule to require reviews for all biotech food products before they can be sold. The rule would require a manufacturer to notify the FDA at least 120 days in advance of marketing a food or animal feed developed through biotechnology, and to provide information showing that it was as safe as a similar, nonengineered product.
消息英语信手拈来的近义词
已亥杂诗的意思The agency also issued a draft of guidelines for manufacturers who voluntarily wish to label their food products as being made with or without bioengineered ingredients.
孙楠个人资料年龄Whether through biotechnology or crossbreeding, farmers have been tinkering for centuries with ways to produce higher yields and better crops. Modern genetic engineering, however, allows scientists to be more preci with their work. Rather than moving thousands of genes in hopes of producing a desired trait, lected genes are taken from one source and inrted into another. Or, as in the ca of the first genetically engineered whole food ever government-approved for commercial sale -- Calgene Inc.'s "Flavr Savr" tomato - a ripening gene was removed and reinrted backward to slow the softening process.
Through such techniques, scientists also have developed herbicide-resistant soybeans and corn that can kill the bugs that eat it. Inct-protected apples, dia-resistant bananas, and brui-free potatoes are on the horizon, the industry says.
In general, biotech supporters say the new technologies allow farmers to u fewer pestic
ides, possibly benefiting the environment. Biotech also shows potential for increasing the nutritional value of some foods and for developing crops that can treat or prevent dia."Biotechnology offers the promi to positively affect human health in a number of different ways," says Steve Taylor, PhD, professor and head of the department of food science and technology at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. "You could e products with enhanced vitamin content. ... You could also take allergens out of products. It hasn't happened, but it is theoretically possible. There are a wide number of nutritional benefits that could accrue from agricultural biotechnology."
Therein lies part of the problem. So far, critics say, most biotech-enhanced crops have been created by chemical companies intent primarily on tailoring eds so they will grow only with the companies' own pesticides and herbicides. And tho who oppo what they call "Frankenfood" say the industry is looly regulated. They point to incidents in which biotech corn that was meant for animal feed found its way into taco shells, and stalks banned from Europe wound up in tortilla chips there.
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Biotech opponents are specifically concerned that consumers unwittingly may be eating foods that cau allergic reactions. They also worry that genes from modified crops may be pasd along to other plants that are natural relatives, possibly resulting in "superweeds."
Saying it wanted to avoid consumer confusion, Tyson Foods became one of the first U.S. companies to reject a genetically engineered product: chicken feed. Other companies such as Frito-Lay have vowed to keep their products free of genetically engineered ingredients.
Becau the technologies are fairly new, there are many unknowns. For example, there are conflicting studies on whether a product called Bt corn -- genetically engineered with a bacterial toxin to kill corn pests -- could harm monarch butterflies, through corn pollen blowing onto the plants they eat. Last year, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report stating that although there is no evidence that genetically engineered food is dangerous to eat, more long-term studies are needed. And the Environmental Protectio
深圳富源学校n Agency says it cannot determine whether some corn varieties could be potential allergens.
