Genetically Modified Food

I am starting the last week of my Writing for the Biotechnology Industry class from North Eastern University out of Boston, MA. Before this class I knew nothing about scientific writing and in my previous five years of college courses in writing had never even used the APA style for references. I in my complete love for writing was extremely excited to learn Scientific writing and thus be able to better market my writing capabilities in the future.

I had no idea that this writing class would open my eyes to a world of science that I honestly did not know even existed. I know I live in a cave. Well, no not really but I do keep my nose to the grind stone and with school, a family of four kids, and either working or searching for work I don't usually watch a lot of television or read the newspapers. I know bad habits for a writer. I must admit this blog is forcing me to find out what is going on in the world around me.

I recently wrote a scientific review article for my Writing for the Biotechnology Industry class and learned so much interesting information that was both scary and exciting. I'm not really sure how I feel yet about finding out that whether I like it or not, I eat genetically modified food probably every day. When I sort it out I'm sure I'll share.

Our professor gave us a list of topics we could choose from for our scientific review articles our really big paper that we had been building up to writing over the last several weeks. I chose to take on "transgenic food and allergies in children". I am a mom with four children and two of them have food allergies so it made sense to me.

You may have heard me mention the title on my Facebook or Twitter as I was working on it or checked it out because of my Writing Updates Blog. The title is

More needs to be Done to Protect Children from Allergenic Transgenic Food

it can be found on my Online Writing Portfolio if you would like to read more. But I'm talking about it today because it could lead people who only read the title to the wrong conclusions. 

Yes, more needs to be done BUT there has never been a diagnosed case of an allergic reaction to a transgenic or Genetically Modified food. The biggest issue that I found was that we do not force the companies that produce genetically modified food to label it at this time. This is a suggestion that was made in several of the scientific articles that I reviewed and one that I carried through into my paper. 

It is the protection from the possibility of potential allergens that labeling will provide. I'm sure producers are afraid that such labeling will keep the population from purchasing their products and instead turning to local growers and farmers markets for their purchases. Which we should be doing anyway but that is another day's rantings. 

So get interested like I have recently in finding out just what it is that you are eating and what is going on in the biotechnology industry there is a lot of really great things out there like the rice that can grow fortified because of biotechnology with all sorts of good for you things in it so that people in developing countries can be healthier. They are using biotechnology to produce foods that used to be allergenic but will someday no longer elicit those reactions. And they have identified what causes hay fever and are working on that issue. 

So read learn and decide for yourself then let me know or just tell me now, what do you think about all this genetically modified food and biotechnology stuff?