Answer: Advantages: better crop yield, healthier plants and animals, and more appealing food. Disadvantages: potential health issues, lower quality of life for animals, ecological disruption.
Explanation:
(This answer includes and focuses on the process of artificial selection as genetic modification)
Advantages
Better crop yield: genetic modification is commonly used in agriculture to select plants with better yields, allowing future plant generations to grow more and produce more.
Healthier plants and animals: plants and animals can be bred or otherwise modified to increase their disease resistance or to eliminate health issues found in earlier generations.
More appealing food: farmers can breed the plants with the best-tasting fruits to create an overall more appealing fruit. Scientists have also used direct genetic modification through genome editing to create new types of apples and other fruits.
Disadvantages
Potential health issues: most easily understood with dog breeds, which have been artificially selected and bred to have specific characteristics. This leads to some breeds being more susceptible to various health issues, namely respiratory disruption in those with flattened faces.
Lower quality of life for animals: seen in poultry farming, where chickens and other birds have been modified to be as big as possible. While this does provide a higher meat yield, it also causes the birds to live for an extremely short amount of time, most of which is spent being unable to move.
Ecological disruption: in the attempt to prevent insects from feeding on plants through genetic modification, the insect populations can be harmed by a lack of food sources. This can lead to other disruptions up the food chain, that, while typically minor, could eventually have larger consequences.
