Heh, I remember writing a bunch of position papers for health class about GE foods. Anyway, this is how things stand last I remember: 1.) ~ 60% of foods in the US are GE, or have GE ingredients in them. 2.) The US has no stringent GE regulation in place today 3.) Europe has very strict regulations on any GE produce, and has susequently larger costs. Now to shed some light on the topic, and actually explan what GE foods are I'll make a little summary: From the time man began to farm, he altered the genes of plants. He did this through the process of artificial selection, where he chose the best plants and encouraged them to grow in ways they would not naturally. Corn grew from a tiny 7-seed plant, to our modern cob. Wheat became an easily grown and abundant crop from a weed. In our modern era, we found a more direct and expedient method of doing this; directly changing the DNA of plants and animals. Here, we get a direct split in what Genetic Modification actually is. The first discovered method was that of polypid plants. This means that a plant is forced to grow with double the normal chromosomes. This yields larger fruit, providing a lower cost and income per acre. However, these plants can not reproduce. That means the farmer is dependant on the GE producer year after year, and must buy new seed instead of using that from the harvest. Later on, real genetic modification came to fruition allowing growers to change the properties of plants, without the addition of foreign DNA. Wheat could be made to grow in harsher climates, and allow people to farm previously unacessible land. The only issue that seems prevalent with this sort of modification is the doomsday theory that these new plants will outcompete the current ones, dominate the gene pool and be wiped out by a plague. *shrug* Now, the real point of contention are plants (and animals) which have DNA from other plants and/or animals inserted into theirs. So you get rice with carotine, corn with pig vaceene and a whole menagerie of things you'd be hard pressed to think about. The main problem with such modification is containment. If you have a field of corn in Iowa which produces pig vaceene, you don't want it cross polinating with normal corn and have every American eat the GE product which probably wasn't tested on humans. At the same time, such things as modified rice continue the effort by manufacturers and our government to ensure propper nutrition. (Iodized salt anyone?) That way, you can eat a poorer selection of foods while (hopefuly) staying healthy. As for myself, I don't see much of a problem as long as my steak doesn't begin to glow in the dark, or my cellery turn orange. Oh, and as for Klakla's "men don't eat healthy" thing, I've been eating what I want in the past 6 months, since the family's food shopping has been turned over to me. Guess what? I lost 20 pounds. /flex
