Risks of Transgenic Plant in Human Health and Environment

Genetic engineering is a powerful tool to overcome the existing restriction in pyramiding good traits in organisms. Steady on increase in area under the cultivating of transgenic plants in last two decades shows that transgenic crops are now as an unseparatable part of modern agriculture. However, despite of good acceptance of this technology, there were some groups that raised concerns about human health and environment. Despite of healthy consumption of Genetically Modified Plants (GMPs) for the last two decades, there are still some concerns about their use as human food. Basically, opponents of GMPs can be divided into three groups; general people, scientist and people with illegitimate objectives. The concerns of the first group of people rose from malinformation shared with them in this subject which can be affected by both of two other group's opinions. The third group requires an ethical discussion which is out of the scope of this paper. So, in this paper focuses will be made on the concerns that have been expressed by scientists. Their main concerns are the harmful effects of GMOs on human health and environment. Although this disagreements as an assumption made the detailed analysis of this plant before release, but fortunately there was no evidence from harmful effects of this crops on human health and environment. On the other hand it must be mentioned that plants improved using classical breeding are not subjecting to this kind of premarketing safety assessments.