Bio Technology

We have used biotechnology to manufacture food products for more than 8,000 years. Bread,
alcoholic beverages, vinegar, cheese and yogurt,
and many other foods owe their existence to enzymes found in various microorganisms. Today’s biotechnology will continue to affect the food industry by providing new products, lowering costs and improving the microbial processes
on which food producers have long relied.


Many of these impacts will improve the quality, nutritional value and safety of the crop plants and animal products that are the basis of the food industry. In addition, biotechnology
offers many ways to improve the processing of those raw materials into final products: natural flavors and colors; new production aids, such as enzymes and emulsifiers; improved starter cultures; more waste treatment options; “greener” manufacturing processes; more
options for assessing food safety during the process; and even biodegradable plastic wrap that kills bacteria.

HEALTH AND NUTRITION BENEFIT:

1).A variety of healthier cooking oils derived from biotechnology are already on the market. Using biotechnology, plant scientists have decreased the total amount of saturated fatty acids in certain vegetable oils. They have also increased the conversion of linoleic acid to the fatty acid found mainly in fish that is associated with lowering cholesterol levels.

2).Another nutritional concern related to edible oils is the negative health effects produced when vegetable oils are hydrogenated to increase their heat stability for cooking or
to solidify oils used in making margarine. The hydrogenation Bprocess results in the formation of trans-fatty acids.

3).Biotechnology companies have given soybean oil these same properties, not through hydrogenation, but by using biotechnology to increase the amount of the naturally occurring
fatty acid, stearic acid.

4).Animal scientists are also using biotechnology to create healthier meat products, such as beef with lower fat content and pigs with a higher meat-to-fat ratio.

5).Other health and nutritional benefits of crops improved through biotechnology include increased nutritional value of crops, especially those that are food staples in developing countries. Scientists at Nehru University in New Delhi used a gene found in the South American plant amaranth to increase the protein content of potatoes by 30 percent. These transgenic potatoes also contain large amounts of essential amino acids not found in unmodified potatoes. Other examples include golden rice and canola oil, both of which are high in vitamin A. The golden rice developers further improved rice with two other genes that increase the amount and digestibility of iron.

6).Biotechnology also promises to improve the health benefits of functional foods. Functional foods are foods containing significant levels of biologically active components that impart health benefits beyond our basic needs for sufficient calories, essential amino acids, vitamins and minerals. Familiar examples of functional foods include compounds in garlic and onions that lower cholesterol and improve the immune response; antioxidants found in
green tea; and the glucosinolates in broccoli and cabbage that stimulate anticancer enzymes.

We are using biotechnology to increase the production of these compounds in functional foods. For example, researchers at Purdue University and the U.S. Department
of Agriculture, created a tomato variety that contains three times as much of the antioxidant lycopene as the unmodified variety. Lycopene consumption is associated with a lower risk of prostate and breast cancer and decreased blood levels of “bad cholesterol.” Other USDA researchers are using biotechnology to increase the amount of ellagic acid, a cancer protective agent, in strawberries.

PRODUCT QUALITY:

We are also using biotechnology to change the characteristics of the raw material inputs so that they are more attractive to consumers and more amenable to processing.

Biotechnology researchers are increasing the shelf life of fresh fruits and vegetables; improving the crispness of carrots, peppers and celery; creating seedless varieties of grapes and melons; extending the seasonal geographic availability of tomatoes, strawberries and raspberries; improving the flavor of tomatoes, lettuce, peppers, peas and potatoes; and creating
caffeine-free coffee and tea.

Japanese scientists have now identified the enzyme that produces the chemical that makes us cry when we slice an onion. Knowing the identity of the enzyme is the first step in finding a way to block the gene to create “tearless” onions.

Much of the work on improving how well crops endure food processing involves changing the ratio of water to starch. Potatoes with higher starch content are healthier because they
absorb less oil when they are fried, for example. Another important benefit is that starchier potatoes require less energy to process and therefore cost less to handle. Many tomato
processors now use tomatoes derived from a biotechnology technique, somaclonal variant selection. The new tomatoes, used in soup, ketchup and tomato paste, contain 30 percent
less water and are processed with greater efficiency. A 1⁄2 percent increase in the solid content is worth $35 million to the U.S. processed-tomato industry.

Another food processing sector that will benefit economically from better quality raw materials is the dairy products industry. Scientists in New Zealand have now used biotechnology to increase the amount of the protein casein, which is essential to cheese making, in milk by 13 percent.

Biotechnology also allows the economically viable production of valuable, naturally occurring compounds that cannot be manufactured by other means. For example, commercial-
scale production of the natural and highly marketable sweetener known as fructans has long eluded food-processing engineers. Fructans, which are short chains of the sugar
molecule fructose, taste like sugar but have no calories. Scientists found a gene that converts 90 percent of the sugar found in beets to fructans. Because 40 percent of the transgenic beet dry weight is fructans, this crop can serve as a manufacturing facility for fructans.

What is Animal Bio-Technology??

Animals are helping to advance biotechnology, and biotechnology
is improving animal health in return. Combining
animals and biotechnology can lead to progress in
four areas:

• Improved animal health.
• Enhancements to animal products.
• Environmental and conservation benefits.
• Advances in human health.

• Disease surveillance and food safety: Using DNA to trace meat and animals through the food chain.

• Enhanced breeding and selection: Developing animals with desirable traits such as greater muscle mass or
  milk or egg production.

• Improved animal production efficiency: Creating management systems based on genetic potential.

• Enhanced end product quality and consistency: Certifying branded meat (such as Angus beef) to meetconsumer demand.

• Cloning accelerates the birth of the best possible stock and provides farmers with certainty of the genetic makeup of a particular animal.

• Cloning reproduces the strongest, healthiest animals,thus optimizing animal well-being and minimizing the need for veterinary intervention.

• Cloning can be used to protect endangered species. For example, in China, panda cells are kept on reserve as insurance against extinction.

• Increased nutritional value.
• Quality assurance.
• Higher efficiency production.
• Stronger disease resistance.
• Improved animal welfare—less disease and longer lifespan.

1). Farmers and plant breeders have relied for centuries
on crossbreeding, hybridization and other genetic
modification techniques to improve the yield and quality
of food and fiber crops and to provide crops with built-in protection against insect pests, disease-causing organisms and harsh environmental conditions. Stone Age farmers selected plants with the best characteristics and saved their seeds for the next year’s crops. By selectively sowing seeds from plants with preferred characteristics, the earliest agriculturists performed genetic modification to convert wild plants into domesticated crops long before the science of genetics was understood.


2). As our knowledge of plant genetics improved, we purposefully crossbred plants with desirable traits (or lacking undesirable characteristics) to produce offspring that combine the best traits of both parents. In today’s world, virtually every crop plant grown commercially for food or fiber is a product of crossbreeding, hybridization or both. Unfortunately, these processes are often costly, time consuming, inefficient and subject to significant practical limitations. For example, producing corn with higher yields or natural resistance to certain insects takes dozens of generations of traditional crossbreeding, if it is possible at all.

3). The tools of biotechnology allow plant breeders to select single genes that produce desired traits and move them from one plant to another. The process is far more precise
and selective than traditional breeding in which thousands of genes of unknown function are moved into our crops. Biotechnology also removes the technical obstacles to moving genetic traits between plants and other organisms.

4). This opens up a world of genetic traits to benefit food production. We can, for example, take a bacterium gene that yields a protein toxic to a disease-causing fungus and transfer it to a plant. The plant then produces the protein and is protected from the disease without the help
of externally applied fungicides.


IMPROVING CROP PRODUCTION

The crop production and protection traits agricultural scientists are incorporating with biotechnology are the same traits they have incorporated through decades of
crossbreeding and other genetic modification techniques: increased yields; resistance to diseases caused by bacteria, fungi and viruses; the ability to withstand harsh environmental
conditions such as freezes and droughts; and resistance to pests such as insects, weeds and nematodes.

Natural Protection for Plants

Just as biotechnology allows us to make better use of the natural therapeutic compounds our bodies produce, it also provides us with more opportunities to partner with
nature in plant agriculture.

Through science, we have discovered that plants, like animals, have built-in defense systems against insects and diseases, and we are searching for environmentally benign chemicals that trigger these natural defense mechanisms so plants can better protect themselves.

Biotechnology will also open up new avenues for working with nature by providing new biopesticides, such as microorganisms and fatty acid compounds, that are toxic
to targeted crop pests but do not harm humans, animals, fish, birds or beneficial insects. Because biopesticides act in unique ways, they can control pest populations that
have developed resistance to conventional pesticides.

A biopesticide farmers (including organic farmers) have used since the 1930s is the microorganism Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt, which occurs naturally in soil. Several of the proteins the Bt bacterium produces are lethal to certain insects, such as the European corn borer, a prevalent pest that costs the United States $1.2 billion in crop damage each year. Bt bacteria used as a biopesticidal spray can eliminate target insects without relying on
chemically based pesticides. Using the flexibility provided by biotechnology, we can
transplant the genetic information that makes the Bt bacterium lethal to certain insects (but not to humans, animals or other insects) into plants on which that insect feeds. The plant that once was a food source for the insect now kills it, lessening the need to spray crops with chemical pesticides to control infestations.

Increasing Yields

In addition to increasing crop productivity by using built-in protection against diseases, pests, environmental stresses and weeds to minimize losses, scientists use biotechnology
to improve crop yields directly. Researchers at Japan’s National Institute of Agrobiological Resources added maize photosynthesis genes to rice to increase its efficiency at
converting sunlight to plant starch and increased yields by 30 percent. Other scientists are altering plant metabolism by blocking gene action in order to shunt nutrients to
certain plant parts. Yields increase as starch accumulates in potato tubers and not leaves, or as oil-seed crops, such as canola, allocate most fatty acids to the seeds.

Biotechnology also allows scientists to develop crops that are better at accessing the micronutrients they need. Mexican scientists have genetically modified plants to secrete
citric acid, a naturally occurring compound, from their roots. In response to the slight increase in acidity, minerals bound to soil particles, such as calcium, phosphorous and potassium, are released and made available to the plant.

Nitrogen is the critical limiting element for plant growth and, step-by-step, researchers from many scientific disciplines are teasing apart the details of the symbiotic relationship
that allows nitrogen-fixing bacteria to capture atmospheric nitrogen and provide it to the plants that harbor them in root nodules.

• Plant geneticists in Hungary and England have identified the plant gene and protein that enable the plant to
  establish a relationship with nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the surrounding soil.

• Microbial geneticists at the University of Queensland have identified the bacterial gene that stimulates root
  nodule formation.

• Collaboration among molecular biologists in the European Union, United States and Canada yielded the
  complete genome sequence of one of the nitrogen-fixing bacteria species.

• Protein chemists have documented the precise structure of the bacterial enzyme that converts atmospheric
  nitrogen into a form the plant can use.
  

• In the context of the Statement, an ethical principle expresses an agreed value that guides actions to achieve the best possible ethical outcome in a given set of circumstances.

• Ethical principles place one’s own actions in a broader context: collectively, ethical
  principles provide a common analytical framework to consider the value of things
  other than one’s own interests. For example, the value of persons other than
  ourselves who demand respect, irrespective of out attitude towards them or how
  they figure in our own preferred actions.

• It is possible to find ethical principles described in other documents and publicationsthat have a different focus and, in the wider study of ethics, ethical principles that follow a specific philosophical approach. In this Statement, the ethical principles consider human interests and relate to the specific human activity.

• As individuals view the Statement, there may be disagreement about the meaning and weight that should be given to a particular principle on its own or relative to another. The Statement highlights fundamental ethical principles that should be taken into consideration by any person involved in biotechnology activities in order to guide those activities and to assess if those activities are ethical.

• We take what we know about living organisms and how they function and apply
  biotechnology to make new products, to alter properties of existing products
  and to develop new industrial processes.

• Biotechnology as it has been practiced for centuries has provided the world with —
  • beer and wine through the use of yeasts for alcohol fermentation
  • cheese through the use of cultures for cheese production; and
  • improved characteristics of plants through planned breeding.

• Modern industries that use biotechnology include:
  • human and animal healthcare to produce pharmaceuticals, diagnostics tests
  and enhance and control fertility
  • plant and animal breeders seeking improved characteristics for production
  • pollution control, land bio-remediation, water treatment, minerals extraction
  and processing, species conservation and pest management
  • food and beverage processors using starters, enzymes, and fermentation in
  the production of foodstuffs
  • industries involved in the further processing of agricultural products,
  bio-processing and generation of industrial enzymes; and
  • energy production using biofuels.

• Today, a common meaning of biotechnology has developed that includes specific
  scientific methodologies: gene technology, cloning, genomics, proteomics, DNA
  sequencing, transgenics, bio-remediation amongst others.

• Some of the techniques employed in modern biotechnology rely on an understanding
  of how living organisms function at the cellular level. The cells of all living things
  contain DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), the chemical basis for the genetic code
  common to all living organisms. The DNA in all genes contains the instructions
  (code) for proteins that are produced during an organism’s life. These proteins then
  impact the features and functions of that organism.

• A more recent use of biotechnology is genetic engineering and genetic modification.
  These terms, used interchangeably or collectively described as gene technology,
  describe a set of scientific tools for manipulating genes; genes can be copied, added
  to, deleted from or altered and then transferred between organisms giving the
  recipient organism a new and desired feature. Researchers using gene technology
  have a greater ability to direct features and functions of organisms than would have
  been possible by other means, such as traditional breeding.