Genetically modified food is still with us, and the next generation of modifications could be with us soon in our shopping aisles.

Targeted foods are salad dressings, granola bars made with soyabean oil that has been genetically modified to be good for your heart. It’s a different technology to the controversial genetically modified foods; faster breeding that promises to boost nutrition, make crops hardier and fruits and vegetables last longer.

Gene editing is one of the breakthroughs needed to boost food production to feed billions more people and adapt to the changing climate.

Will we accept gene editing any more than we accepted genetic modification?

The University of Minnesota has said it is a good thing as it improves our health and many other benefits such as; wheat with triple the amount of fibre, mushrooms that don’t go brown, higher yielding tomatoes, drought tolerant corn, rice that doesn’t absorb pollution, dairy cows that don’t have to undergo painful dehorning, pigs immune to viruses, oranges  resistant to the disease that is currently sweeping through Florida and fungus resistant bananas.

It sounds very good but there may be an additional environmentalprice to pay. It’s all done by editing genes and changing dna.

Farmers have long genetically modified crops and animals in order to get the best traits,but generations of cross breeding have made them  more fragile.

Editing would breed a new super generation of animals, fruit and vegetables.