In a small village in Africa, a one year old boy named Kwame is exposed to the bacteria, neisseria meningitidis. Three years earlier, the same agent had infected his sister. The difference is that she developed meningitis. A week later she died. Kwame was protected, because he had received an anti-meningitis vaccine, but he got his vaccine in an unusual way. The bananas that he eats have been modified to express the gene (DNA) for the vaccine protein. (Purves, 351)

Little anecdotes like this would not be possible without biotechnology, in this case, plants that are genetically modified. Advanced discoveries in the field of biotechnology, found in the 1960's and the 1970's, have fueled many changes in agriculture. I work in a warehouse that sells vegetable seeds to farmers all around the world. Many of the customers are organic growers and request seed that has not been treated with chemicals. According to one of my co-workers who has been in the business for almost a decade, D. Chavez says that consumers thrive on organically grown products, thus they prefer their product to grown and developed without toxic chemicals. (Chavez) The only difficulty in modifying plants in a lab is

Federal Register. FDA Standards. New York:

Suslow, Trevor V., and Kent Bradford. "Applications of Biotechnology in Vegetable Breeding, Production, marketing, and Consumption." Vegetable Biotechnology Apr. 1997

Food Biotechnology: Safe, Nutritious, Healthful, Abundant And Tasty Food. 1995. The American Diatetic Association. 27 March 2000

Scientists discover how to transfer pieces of genetic information from one organism to another, allowing the expression of desirable traits in the recipient organism. This is called genetic engineering, one process used in biotechnology. Using the technique of "gene splicing" or "recombinant DNA technology" (rDNA), scientists can add new genetic information to create a new protein which creates new traits - such as resistance to disease and pests.

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)