A U.S. government agency responsible for ensuring that foods derived from new plant varieties are safe to eat. FDA also has legal authority for food labeling. An organism produced from genetic engineering techniques that allow the transfer of inherited characteristics from one organism to another. Bacteria, fungi, viruses, plants, insects, fish, and mammals are some examples of genetic material that have been artificially changed or altered in order to change some physical property or capability. In the United States, under guidelines issued by Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, genetic engineering is defined as the genetic modification of organisms by recombinant DNA techniques.
Definitions used in Europe tend to be broader.
The sum of the genetic material in the chromosomes of a particular organism. Herbicide-tolerant Crops Crops developed to survive certain herbicides. These crops previously would have been destroyed along with targeted weeds, but now can be used by farmers as an effective weed control. Such techniques involve transferring a DNA segment from one organism and inserting it into the DNA of another, possibly unrelated, organism. Transgenic Plants Plants that result from the insertion of genetic material from another organism, generally through recombinant DNA techniques, to make the plant exhibit a desired trait.