There is also a risk that inserting a gene into a plant may create a new allergen.
The world population is estimated at around 6 million it is predicted that in the next 50 years that the population will double, ensuring adequate food supply for this booming population GM foods has promised to meet this need in a number of ways. Genetically modified foods have the potential to solve many of the world’s hunger and malnutrition problems, and to help protect and preserve the environment by increasing yields and reducing reliance upon chemical pesticides and herbicides.
Environmental activists, religious organisations, public interest groups, professional associations and other government officials have all raised concerns about GM goods the three main categories ;- Environmental hazards, human health risks, and economic concerns.
Some Christians object in principle to genetically modified food, as an unacceptable intervention in God's creation violating barriers in the natural world. Others see the potential for using God's gift of our technical skills, but with strong provisos, on matters of food safety and environmental risk. Christians believe that all of God's creatures are much more than their genes. Ethical problems may arise for certain types of gene, for example animal genes for a vegetarian or pig genes for a Jew or Muslim. GM has huge potential for mankind in medicine, agriculture and food. In food, the real benefits are not the early instances that have been appearing so far, but its longer-term benefit to the world - and especially the developing countries - its potential for developing crops of improved nutritional quality, and crops that will grow under previously inhospitable conditions, thereby contributing to alleviating hunger and malnutrition, while helping to prevent the otherwise inevitable future pressure to encroach on natural resources. Even today, there are 840 million people. 300 million of them in the developing countries and 200 million of them children, who regularly do not receive enough food to alleviate hunger, still less provide adequate nutrition. 24,000 people die of malnutrition-related causes daily (Social issues research centre, of public interest, 24th October 2001, ). That situation will be greatly worsened as a result of the world's escalating population over the coming decades. In decades to come, with the expected substantial increase in the world population, mostly in the poorest, least developed countries, the demand for increased agricultural land and for water will greatly increase. The problem that has huge political and economic dimensions will not be solved by GM alone, or even by science alone -- but will certainly not be solved without the contribution of science, including GM. Food scientists and technologists can support the responsible introduction of GM techniques provided that issues of product safety, environmental concerns, ethics and information are satisfactorily addressed. So that the benefits that this technology can confer become available both to improve the quality of the food supply and to help feed the world's escalating population in the coming decades.
As technology becomes even more advanced then GM will gradually become more accepted into society it will become a natural process in the years to come.
Bibliography.
Waugh. D. 1995 Geography An intergrated approach. 2nd Edition
