Author : Sutat Sriwatanapongse

Summary : The safety of food derived from GMOs has been known as " biosafety", the hot issue at present. The opposition to the use of GMO and its products has fear that it may pose threat to human health and damaging environment. If GMOs are bad for the environment, it is likely to be in the same ways as normal agriculture. As for human health, there is no good evidence that the technology used to create GMOs is damaging in any way. Research on food in the future will gear more toward the use of modern biotechnology linking to genome research. From Human Genome Research, it is anticipated that all genes relating to genetic diseases such as diabetes, Huntington's disease (HD), allergenicity, etc. may be corrected by using the right food or nutraceutical products. The studies have to be linked to plant or animal or microbial genome research in order to learn the function of genes in those organisms. There are known new products such as phosphotidyl serene for memory, red clover for premenstraul and heart disease treatment, soy isoflvones for hear disease and osteoporosis, and grape seed extract/pine bark extracts for cardiovascular disease. Through genome research and the studies of biosynthetic pathways of sugar, starch proteins, amino acids, vitamins and other natural products, there will be many new areas of research and development on food and drugs.