Are you afraid of transgenics?

Producing food is not easy



Probably many of you have seen this yellow triangle with this T inside, well, it is a product made with some transgenic ingredient (probably corn or soy).

Have you heard anyone say anything about these foods? Did they good things or bad things about them? Better yet, have they told you why these plants are transgenic?

To return to the subject, as it is in the heading of this text, to produce food is not easy and is expensive, there are diseases that attack the plants in the field, pest insects that cause enormous damages, there are also the invading weeds and many other factors they play against. Believe me, there is a lot that hinders the production of food. Many of the transgenic plants have artificially inserted genes that give them tolerance to diseases, reduce the attack of insect pests and make these plants tolerant to herbicides. Why tolerant to herbicides?

Think of the extraordinarily simple scenario, there are 2 plants, one I want because it produces food and the other is invasive, but they are very similar. How the herbicide will kill only the invader and will not kill the plant that produces food?

Of course there are many agronomic ways to solve this problem, but often these methodologies are laborious and expensive. Ideally, the plant that interests me would not die with the herbicide and the invader would die. Then they solved this problem by introducing a gene in that plant that produces the food that leaves it tolerant to the herbicide (simplified explanation).

What usually happens is that the metabolic region of action of these "transgenic genes" has nothing to do with the products that are consumed in the final stage by us or animals.

In Brazil, a company to produce a transgenic plant and distribute it in the market goes through several regulatory agencies and the time for the liberation of these transgenic cultivars takes about 10 years, after several studies and publications.

I did not want to go into too much biochemical detail, honestly, I do not want a post too boring, but someone who is interested in more details is just to contact me or ...

for more information, please take a look at the link bellow ...
https://www.embrapa.br/tema-transgenicos/perguntas-e-respostas

A big hug!

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