According to the US “WIRED” magazine’s report, for a long time our human beings have almost transformed all of the plants and animals that provide us with food with traditional breeding methods. While the practice by using genetic engineering to make gene migration between different living organisms mutual implant makes people doubt about the future.
This, however, is what happened in France two weeks ago: the offspring of lamb that were genetically modified in the aim of expression green fluorescent proteins was pushed into the market. This caused a panic among French people. Actually, in Europe GMO organizations have been completely banned. But there are a lot of genetically modified food crops, such as corn in the United States.
But in fact, biologists have long been carried out transgenic research work in the animal for decades such as increasing the meat production or accelerating the growth rate. So far, no transgenic animal meat was approved to enter the market. US Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would see it as animal drug class, rather than food category. As a result, they must pass extremely harsh tests and it’s costly, which makes it difficult to promote in the market.
Even so, transgenic meat indeed exist and some really sound cool:
Super Hog
In a recently published paper in Nature, Jin-Soo Kim, the molecular biologist Seoul National University has shown a kind of super pig cultivated by transgenic technology. This kind has a higher production of meat than normal ones and the meat taste better. To achieve this, they have turned off a gene that prevents muscles from over growth by a gene editing technology called “TALEN”.
Hypoallergenic Milk
About 2 to 3 percent of new born babies have milk allergy and at least part of the root that cause the allergies in children point to a certain protein. Early in the year of 2012, a cow named “Daisy” has been genetically modified by using a RNA intervention method, thus the certain protein was successfully removed but the milk production wasn’t reduced. This set us a good example. But now it is going through a long and rigorous evaluation process.
So, how far way is transgenic food from us?