Gene pool

If you are what you eat, how genetically modifed are you?

By Mary Butler

July 9, 2007

Strolling the supermarket these days can feel like attending a label convention. Every product, it seems, claims to be healthy: “No Trans Fat!” “No Hydrogenated Oil!” “Calcium and Vitamin Enriched!” And one day soon, a new label will appear: “Non-GMO Verified.”

In March, six natural-foods producers (including the national grocery chain Whole Foods) announced that they were seeking certification guaranteeing the absence of genetically modified organisms (GMOs, also known as transgenic foods) in some or all of their products. The idea behind this bold step was to raise awareness of the ubiquity of genetically engineered foods in the American diet.

The Non-GMO Project wants non-GM food to say so.

Genetically modified food sold in the U.S. is not currently required to sport GMO labels. Which means that most Americans are eating GM food, without knowing it, every day.

GMOs exist in such common ingredients as soy lecithin, soy protein, corn syrup, and corn starch, which are found in everything from baby formula to tortilla chips, veggie burgers to muffin mix. Even organic food may not be GM-free; while organic crops are required to be isolated from other crops, it appears they can still become tainted when genetically modified pollen and stray GM seeds blow onto farmers’ land or farm equipment.

Last year, California organic dairy farmer Albert Straus — whose Straus Family Creamery expects to be the first in the nation to verify and label its products GMO-free through the new program — suspected such crop corruption might be taking place. Straus tested the organic corn fed to his cows, and found that about 6 percent of it was contaminated by GMOs.

“I think a major shift is happening. Industry leaders are recognizing that without setting up a system like The Non-GMO Project, organics could be at risk,” says Megan Thompson, the program director for The Non-GMO Project, creator of the non-GMO-verified labeling program. “The time to intervene is now, to ensure there is such a thing as organic.”

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What separates organic and conventional crops from GM plants is pure laboratory science. GM seeds have been altered using “gene technology,” also called “recombinant DNA technology.” The expression of certain traits, or the proteins a plant produces, can be altered through the modification of its genes.

The technology allows selected individual genes to be transferred from one organism into another — including between non-related species. Typically, it is done to make crops more resistant to herbicides, pesticides, and plant diseases caused by insects and viruses.

However, anti-GMO activists worry that the risks may outweigh the benefits. The technology’s effects on human health and the environment have yet to be studied thoroughly, and no one truly knows the long-term consequences of consuming GMOs. At the very least, activists say, consumers should be alerted to the presence of GMOs in their food.

“I think a lot of people, they assume a certain amount of trust in what the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) says is safe,” The Non-GMO Project’s Thompson says.

Taking notice

The Non-GMO Project was born five years ago when customers at The Natural Grocery Company, a small natural-foods grocery store in Berkeley, California, aired their concerns about the GM soy lecithin in products sold there. The customers started a letter-writing campaign, endorsed by 160 natural-foods stores nationwide, urging manufacturers to clearly label products containing GMOs.

In the United States, 89 percent of soybeans grown are genetically modified, according to the USDA.

The problem, Thompson says, was that the manufacturers couldn’t comply with the request even if they wanted to, because they often didn’t know whether a product contained ingredients at risk for GMO contamination.

The Non-GMO Project sought to eliminate that ambiguity. The nonprofit partnered with a testing lab, Genetic ID, and is now in the process of creating a centralized database of ingredients so food producers can track which are meeting non-GMO protocols.

“Now you can trace all the way down the supply chain to make sure there are identity-preservation tactics,” Thompson says. “All the way from the growing of seeds to the manufacturing of a final product: where it’s coming from, how it’s handled, and the risk for contamination.”

The goal, she says, is to provide consumers with the information they need to make accurate choices about what to buy.

In the U.S., widespread planting of genetically engineered crops began in 1996. By 2006, GM crops accounted for 89 percent of the soybeans and 61 percent of the corn grown in the country, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. GM cotton has also been rapidly adopted. So far, efforts to introduce GM wheat have been unsuccessful. But several other GM crops have been FDA-approved for market, including varieties of sugar beets, tomatoes, canola, flax, papaya, alfalfa, squash, and rice. (The FDA lists GM foods submitted for its approval online.)

While GMOs have gained a foothold in the U.S., labeling laws have greatly limited their use in Europe, Japan, and some African nations, which reject international food aid containing them. An anti-GMO food campaign in Europe erupted in 1999 following a controversial study that suggested some strains of genetically modified potatoes might be toxic to laboratory rats. The campaign was among the factors that resulted in strict labeling laws and food regulations in the European Union and beyond.