There are mounting evidences supporting GM foods are safe

There are mounting evidences supporting GM foods are safe. In 2013, Nicolia et al. published a study which systematically reviewed a total of 1783 scientific papers on the safety of GM crops published from 2002 to October 2012. This report concluded that there is no evidence showing the use of GM crops has posed significant hazards to the environment and human [8]. Verma discussed some common public concerns over GM foods such as risks to health, spread of transgene and negative impacts on ecosystem, concluding that many of these concerns are hypothetical and not substantiated by scientific grounds [9]. Bawa et al. reviewed a number of safety assessment reports on common commercial GM crops such as tomato, soybean and maize. The authors noted a few findings indicated that there are differences in terms of protein production and morphological observations between animals fed with GM varieties and animals fed with conventional varieties, but pointed out that in these studies the methodology was not properly designed or the data could not sufficiently support the finding that transgenic cyclobenzaprine hydrochloride are more toxic than the conventional species [10]. On the other hand, focusing on long-term rat feeding studies of GM crops that are no less than 90 days of duration, Zdziarski et al. reviewed 21 published articles investigating the effects of GM crops containing one or more of three common foreign traits on the gastrointestinal tract of rats. The authors found that many of these studies did not provide sufficient details of their methodology, results or any definition of toxicity or signs of pathology, and concluded that all these studies are significantly inadequate or flawed to demonstrate the toxicity and safety of the tested GM crops for human and animal consumption [11]. Nonetheless, the above reviewers concurred that case-by-case, rigorous and detailed scientific studies assessing the risks of GM foods to human and animals are essential to provide objective scientific information for consumers to thoroughly understand GM foods and to minimize the adverse impacts from GM foods. United States and China are two large markets of GM foods. In 2014, the U.S. grew the largest area of GM crops, followed by Brazil and Argentina [4]. GM soybean, maize and cotton are extensively adopted, respectively accounting for 94%, 93% and 96% of the total crops area in 2014 [4]. China is the biggest grain consumer, taking up one-third of the global soybean production. The country ranked the sixth in terms of the cultivation area of GM crops in 2014 [4]. It was estimated that nearly 95% of all imported maize and over 90% of the imported soybean of China are genetically modified [4]. Legislation and regulation for GM organisms and foods in the U.S. and China are on the horizon. Recently in July 2015, the U.S. government announced its plan to revise its 30-year-old regulatory system over GM crops and some other biotechnology products [12]. While in China, the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) intends to strengthen research on the technology of agricultural GMOs as well as the safety assessment, regulation and management of agricultural GMOs [13].
Genetic engineering and food Defined by the World Health Organization (WHO), genetically modified (GM) or genetically engineered (GE) foods are foods derived from organisms in which genetic material has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination [3]. Transgenic organisms are usually created by inserting a foreign gene into the genome or cells of an organism using virus, gene gun or direct injection into the nucleus. Technologies such as intragenesis and cisgenesis are available to transfer a gene from the same or close species [14]. It is also possible to modify genetic sequences without inserting foreign materials into the organism for example using the Clustered Regularly-Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) system.