What are your opnions of Genetic modification On Plants and animals for the benefits for humans?
Genetic modification has been going on for centuries, maybe even millennia. 300 years ago, farmers started to breed sheep to have bigger limbs for meat and to produce more wool than any wild sheep would have done. They killed off any that didn’t fit their idea of improvement and bred just those that did. Gradually, the animals got bigger and woolier as the genes got selected through special breeding programmes. Then it was tried on cattle so that milk yield went from 2 or 3 pints per cow to 1 or 2 gallons per day. It started in England but was taken up in America and Benjamin Franklin spent a lot of time breeding farm animals to change their genetic structure. He didn’t know what he was doing, because the idea of a gene was unknown, but that’s what was happening. He and the other selective breeders of the day were criticised for “playing god” but thank god they did it – now we have more productive plants and animals. Since then, there’s been selective breeding of plants (corn, vegetabl
