Monday 28 January 2013

Introduction

GMO, Genetically Modified Organisms, is commonly used to refer to crop plants created for human or animal consumption using the latest molecular biology techniques. These plants have been modified in the laboratory to get new traits such as increased resistance to herbicides or improved nutritional content. GMO, also can be made by Genetic Engineering, where farmers, can create plants with the exact desired trait very rapidly and with great accuracy. For example, plant geneticist can isolate a gene responsible for drought tolerance and insert that gene into a different plant. The new genetically-modified plant will gain drought tolerance as well. And they can keep doing that and that eventually leads to our vegetables today. These are some of the popular GMO traits

  • Pest Resistence
  • Herbicide Tolerance
  • Disease Resistance
  • Cold Tolerance
  • Drought Tolerance
  • Nutrition


GMO, have made a big splash in the news lately as it is helping the farmers grow plants well. It is also helping the vegetable products maintain it's consistency in its harvest. Even though Genetically Modified Organisms have the potential to solve the world's hunger and malnutrition problems there are many challenges ahead for governments especially in the areas of safety testing, regulation, international policy and food labeling. There are many concerns about GMO mostly under the categories of Environmental Hazards, Human Health Risk and Economic Concerns. Because of these concerns about GMO many people are protesting against GMO. For example, European environmental organizations and public interest groups have been actively protesting against GMO for months. And this leads to our research: Do Singaporeans know what is GMO is, and if so, what are their attitude/opinion towards it?

We would like to know if Singapore share the same mindset as of the European Environmental Organizations as stated above. Or they are fine with the GMO Foods. If they really do mind about GMO Foods, from the research, we would know what are the measures to be taken(labeling food products) if the Singaporeans mind GMO products. Hence, in order to find out the attitude and opinions of Singaporeans on GMO, we would like to conduct surveys and interviews on Singaporeans of all ages. And from the results, we can do what is best for the Singaporeans and GMO Products.

1 comment:

  1. This should go under the Introduction Tab. Pls move it.

    ReplyDelete