Turkish Journal of Agriculture: Food Science and Technology (Dec 2019)

Effects of Feeding Genetically Modified Crops to Domestic Animals: A Review

  • Muhammad Zeeshan Akram,
  • Sema Yaman,
  • Hassan Jalal,
  • Sibel Canoğulları Doğan,
  • Sana Shahid,
  • Basit Shaukat Ali

DOI
https://doi.org/10.24925/turjaf.v7isp1.110-118.2773
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 7, no. sp1
pp. 110 – 118

Abstract

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Genetically modified (GM) crops are being planted at large scale worldwide. In most of the countries, GM crops are processed into livestock feed. The land is used for cultivation of GM plants has been increased in recent years; in 2012 GM plants were grown on over 170 million hectares in 28 countries by 17.3 million farmers and extended to 185.1 million hectors in 2016 worldwide. GM plants have been used as feed for animals and the number of studies has proved their safety for animal and public health. This paper reviews the possible effects of GM crops on livestock, poultry, and aquatic animals by reviewing different type of studies, in which parameters such as performance, reproductive and health assessment were investigated. The most of peer-reviewed papers evaluating the effects of feeding animals with transgenic crops were based on GM plants with improved agronomic traits i.e. herbicide-tolerant plants and pets-tolerant plants; however, in some cases GM plants with boosted nutritional properties assessed. In most experiments, either Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) maize, Roundup Ready (RR) soybean or both fed to animals. Measurable differences in various parameters were mostly observed in Bt maize and soybean fed separately or simultaneously to animals. In this review, scientific studies showing the effects of the use of GM products in the nutrition of domestic animals on performance, health and reproductive parameters are investigated.

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