New Researches in Biotechnology - Facultatea de Biotehnologii ...

Proceeding of the 4 rd International Symposium“NEW RESEARCH IN BIOTECHNOLOGY” USAMV Bucharest, Romania, 2011Bioterra University BucharestGENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODPOPESCU DANAbstract. The variety of foods consumed by humans has changed greatly over the centuries, alteringthe balance of nutrients in the diet. Nutritional changes may have a more profound impact on thehealth of the population. Traditional plant breeding techniques of intra and inter-species crossingand mutation are designed to create genetic variation upon which selection of the most desiredgenotype is the expected outcome. All plant breeding procedures can produce unexpected effects.Generally consumers consider that traditional foods (that have often been eaten for thousands ofyears) are safe. When new foods are developed by natural methods, some of the existingcharacteristics of foods can be altered, either in a positive or a negative way. The purpose of thisresearch was to establish the opinion of future food engineers (final year students) concerning thegenetically modified organisms, so I asked them to complete a questionnaire of seven questions. Theresearch conclusion was that more than 75% of them don’t consider that the genetically modifiedorganisms use is safe for consumption. However most of them don’t really know what geneticallymodified organisms are so their opinion is not endorsed but is revealing for the lack of publicinformation in this field.Keywords: genetically modified, food, safety.1. INTRODUCTIONFor more than ten years, genetically modified crops are cultivated worldwide fortheir increased yield, smaller production costs, higher quality, etc. In our country there arelegally cultivated only 5 varieties of genetically modified corn according to the RomanianOfficial Varieties of Crop Plants Register, 2011 edition, while the genetically modifiedsoybean production was stopped in 2007. Worldwide genetically modified soybean is themost cultivated crop, probably because of the market demand. Soybean products are foundin a wide range on the Romanian market, whether is raw or as an ingredient. Romanianannual loss is almost 1 billion euro because it’s not cultivating genetically modifiedsoybean, the national production potential being about two million tons, has declared in apress conference, the Minister of Agriculture Valeriu Tabără.”Romanian annual import ofsoybean from Brazil, U.S.A. and another countries is about 500 000 tons, and it is allproduced only through biotechnology. We are currently attempting to get the approval forgenetically modified soybean cultivating starting 2012 because the economic loss issignificant. Among all genetically modified crops cultivated worldwide, only four rule themarket: soybean, cotton, corn and rape. Regarding the cultivated surface, soybean is morespread. In 2009 more than three quarters (77%) from the 90 million hectares cultivated withsoybean worldwide were genetically modified, while for cotton, almost half (49%) from the33 million hectares were genetically modified. More than one quarter (26%) from the158million hectares cultivated worldwide with corn were genetically modified and 21% of the31 million hectares of rape cultivated worldwide were genetically modified (James, 2009).This study aims to identify the products than contain genetically modified soybean.77