Success and Challenges Facing Genetically Modified Foods

Global food production faces several challenges such as climate change, population growth, and competition for arable lands. Healthy foods should be produced with reduced environmental impact and with input from non-renewable resources, genetically engineered (GE) products could be important tools in this scenario, but their release into the environment and use as food and feed has raised concerns, especially in the European Union (EU) where a more stringent regulatory framework has been adopted compared to other countries. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) favor the use of genetic engineering over genetic modification as the more precise term; the former defines genetic modification to include genetic engineering or other more traditional methods. Genetically modified foods or genetically engineered foods, are foods produced from organisms that have had changes introduced into their DNA using the methods of genetic engineering as opposed to traditional cross breeding.