Transgenic food

I think that is important to use the term "genetically modified food" instead of transgenic food because of this refers to products developed through biotechnology. In addition, a genetically modified food product does not necessarily contain biologically active DNA, but may contain new proteins derived from the activity of the transgene or new compounds or metabolites derived from the activity of these new proteins.

The genetically modified food has a number of characteristics such as resistance to pets, cold, diseases, tolerance to herbicides and pesticides, etc. All this characteristics are desirable; the problem is that many potentially catastrophic problems can appear such as the increase risk of cancer, food allergies, resistance to antibiotics, more pesticides residues in soil, etc. Is important to known that not only plants can be genetically modified; animals can be modified to make them more resistant or increment desirable attributes such as meat, milk, eggs, taste, etc.

The big problem with this kind of products is that the people unknown what they eat. The Chilean legislation is too weak and I think that the only requirement is that the food present nutritional information and if they have cancerous ingredients. Hence, I have many questions if really today we have sufficient information above transgenic food and if they are commercialized in our country. Today many people are having the opinion that they do not have any contact to genetic manipulated food. But nearly everybody has contact to those goods without knowing. This is a problem of public health and the government should have an active participation because the side effects probably only will be seen in futures generations.

Personally I believe that all food is modified (at least we buy usually), and for this reason I prefer no extremely worry about what I eating or not.