Genetically Modified Foods: Overview

Introduction

Genetically modified food, or bioengineered food, is food in which, at some point during the production process, molecules and proteins have been chemically altered. This may be done to give the food more nutrients, a better appearance, a longer shelf life, or for some other reason. Genetically modified grain is often fed to livestock used for meat and dairy products. Much of the produce sold in the United States is grown from genetically modified seeds.

Farming has relied on selective growth and selective breeding for thousands of years; farmers gather and sow seeds from plants that display desirable characteristics, such as resistance to certain fungi or bacteria. Over a period of several years, a farmer could create an ideal strain of a particular plant through a sort of artificial natural selection, forcing the plant to evolve in the most beneficial way to the farmer. Similarly, if certain cows produce leaner meat than others, those cows can be bred together to reliably produce lean beef.

With advances in humanity's understanding of DNA and genetics, it has become possible to speed this process by inserting and removing specific genes from plants and animals. Once a gene carrying a specific favorable characteristic is identified, it can theoretically be inserted into any other organism to elicit that characteristic. Thus, genetic engineering has produced herbicide-resistant soybeans and insecticidal corn. The consensus has been that there is no limit to the alterations and improvements that can be made to foods.

Despite strong consensus among the scientific community about the safety of GM foods, the public has remained wary. Some companies have elected to label their food products as “GMO-free,” but since these labels are not official or certified by any government agency, they are not as reliable as the voluntary but government-regulated Certified Organic label, which designates products that are free of GMOs. The United States began requiring food labels to state the presence of bioengineered ingredients in the late 2010s. Nonetheless, the debate over labeling and its effects on public perception and sales continues—as does the long-running debate over whether GM foods should be promoted, both in the US and globally, to address pressing nutritional and environmental concerns or whether their risks are too great.

Understanding the Discussion

Certified Organic: A label applied to food that meets certain regulations regarding renewable, ecologically based production methods, including the absence of growth hormones, most pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, and any GMOs. To receive the organic label, a product must be inspected by the USDA to ensure that specific practices are followed during its production, cultivation, storage, and transportation. Organizations that sell less than five thousand dollars' worth of organic products each year are exempt from certification by the USDA.

Food additive: According to the FDA, any substance added to food during production, processing, treatment, packaging, transportation, or storage which affects any of the characteristics of the food. Direct additives are usually used to maintain product consistency, improve or retain nutritional value, prevent spoilage, improve color or appearance, or control other factors such as acidity. Indirect additives are those that may get into food in trace amounts due to packaging or transportation.

Food and Drug Administration (FDA): A regulatory agency of the US government that controls food, dietary supplements, drugs, cosmetics, medical devices, radiation-emitting devices, biologics, and blood products. The stated purpose of the FDA is to protect American citizens from potentially harmful products in these categories.

Gene editing: Also sometimes called genomic editing, the splicing, deletion, or other manipulation of genetic material within a single organism.

Genetic modification: A process that results in an intentional change in an organism's genetic makeup, typically through technological means such as transgenic engineering or gene editing.

Transgenic engineering: The transfer of genes from an organism of one species into an organism of a different species.

Generally recognized as safe (GRAS): An FDA designation referring to a food additive for which experts have attested to its safety, usually because of their longstanding common use or scientific vetting prior to 1958. GRAS substances are not regulated as food additives by the FDA or USDA but are monitored: their GRAS status may be revoked in light of new evidence regarding their safety.

United States Department of Agriculture (USDA): A cabinet-level department in the US government that develops and enforces policy related to farming, agriculture, and food. The major concern of the USDA is to maintain and promote the country's agricultural industry by helping farmers sell and distribute their products.

History

The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic (FD&C) Act of 1938 established the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and authorized it to regulate food and food ingredients and to establish certain requirements for food labeling and packaging. Twenty years later, the act was amended in order to broaden the FDA's authority to include regulation of food additives; some additives had already been approved by the USDA and were automatically approved by the FDA as well.

In 1977, scientists discovered that a soil microbe, Agrobacterium tumefaciens, could inject foreign genes into plants, and the potential for modifying and improving plant crops was immediately recognized. Early experiments with the soil bacterium produced plants that were resistant to insects and herbicides. Most of the genetic modification since then has involved plants. But some animals have had their genes manipulated in similar ways, including cows that produce casein-enriched milk for ease in making cheese, mice that contain healthy fish oils, faster-growing salmon, and pigs augmented with spinach genes to produce low-fat bacon or modified to aid consumers with alpha-gal syndrome.

In the early 1990s, the government recognized that GM food warranted consideration and possible regulation. Former vice president Dan Quayle headed a regulatory review committee that dealt with genetically modified food. The committee ruled that GM food had “substantial equivalence” with unaltered food and therefore did not need to be regulated by the FDA. Opponents of the decision claimed that because the food is changed and augmented, the genetic modifications should be treated as food additives and therefore be monitored and regulated by the FDA. In 1992, the FDA required GM crop foods to adhere to the same safety standards as their conventionally grown counterparts.

The first genetically modified tomato appeared on US grocery store shelves in 1994. Supporters of GM food immediately claimed that the process can increase flavor and nutrition and reduce cost by removing the guesswork from food production. Opponents claimed that genetic engineering has not been sufficiently studied and could be unsafe. Like the rationale used in protests over the use of antibiotics, many people feel that creating insect-proof plants will just create stronger, more resistant insects. The question of biodiversity is also critical when discussing GM foods, though there is evidence showing that GM crops both reduce and increase biodiversity.

In February 1999, biochemist Arpad Pustzai at the Rowett Research Institute in Scotland and his colleagues found that some strains of GM potatoes were toxic to rats. Despite being criticized by other scientists, the study prompted a public backlash against GM food in Europe. Eventually, Europe began to impose strict regulations on the cultivation and importation of GM food.

By contrast, the United States quickly became a leader in GM crop planting. According to data from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), in 1999, just over 20 percent of American cropland was devoted to GM crops, such as corn, cotton, and soybeans; by 2009, that percentage had risen to nearly 50 percent and the most common types of GM crops had grown to include canola, sugarbeets, and alfalfa as well.

At the same time, however, concerns arose over GM contamination of non-GM crops. In August 2006, the USDA announced that pollen from genetically modified rice had contaminated crops in Arkansas, prompting Japan and the European Union to ban imports of US long-grain rice. Pollen drift of this sort has been a problem for several years, particularly with so-called pharma crops, which are developed for potential use in pharmaceuticals. Seed contamination, often caused by something as simple as spilled GM seed in a truck getting mixed in with normal seeds before being planted, can also cause crop contamination. A 2006 survey of 45 organic farms in Spain found that approximately 25 percent of their crops had been contaminated with pollen from GM crops.

GM contamination poses problems for organic farmers, who would lose their certification if their crops were discovered to be contaminated. Even though GM crops are not regulated, organic crops are, and to be certified organic by the USDA, crops must be completely free of genetic modifications. There is a large market for organic products in the United States for just this reason. European countries often refuse crops that are not free of genetic modification, due to strict regulatory practices.

Many advocates for GM crops claim that preventing contamination is a simple matter of planting buffer crops, or other plants that form a barrier between the organic crops and potential sources of contamination, but often this solution is not feasible for small farms. Others have proposed using the principles of genetic modification to solve the problem, by sterilizing GM plants so that they could not produce pollen or viable seeds.

In June 2010, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of Monsanto Co., which had been ordered by a lower court to stop selling pesticide-resistant alfalfa seeds before the culmination of an environmental study. The seeds had been criticized by opponents who believe they might contaminate unmodified alfalfa fields.

Public sentiment regarding GM foods has also shifted over time. The Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology, undertaken between 2001 and 2007, found that most Americans did not feel strongly one way or the other about GM foods, suggesting that the majority of Americans were unaware of and unconcerned about GM foods. By the mid-2010s, however, support for mandatory labeling of GM foods had become widespread. Critics of GMOs claimed that consumers could not choose whether to accept or reject the alleged benefits of GM food because they were not informed about which foods had been genetically modified. A joint Associated Press–GfK poll conducted in 2014 found that 66 percent of Americans supported requiring GM food to be labeled and 24 percent expressed no preference. The following year, a poll by the Mellman Group found that 89 percent of respondents supported mandatory labeling, with 77 percent of those respondents “strongly” favoring mandatory labeling. However, a sizable majority (88 percent) of American Association for the Advancement of Science members believed that GM food does not differ significantly from other food and that it is safe to eat. US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials contended that it poses no significant risk to consumers.

In July 2015, the House of Representatives passed the Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act, which would have created a voluntary federal program for companies to certify their products as GMO-free and prevented states such as Maine, Connecticut, and Vermont from enforcing their own laws requiring GMO labeling. Its proponents argued that mandatory labels would send a misleading message that GMOs are dangerous. However, once the bill reached the Senate, it stalled in committee.

In July 2016, Congress passed an amendment to the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946, which was signed into law by President Barack Obama. The law established a national standard for defining “bioengineered food,” subject to refinement by the secretary of agriculture, and required manufacturers to label foods that meet that standard. However, it also gave companies significant leeway with regard to what form that label should take: manufacturers could choose a simple text label, standard icon, scannable quick-response (QR) code linked to an information website, or toll-free phone number to call. Opponents of GMO labeling objected to the law, claiming that it perpetuates misguided fears about GMO foods and that the measures necessary to comply with it would likely lead to increases in food costs, while supporters objected to the perceived laxity of the labeling requirement.

After passage of the 2016 GMO food labeling law, the USDA was tasked with developing the national standard for labeling bioengineered foods, called the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard (NBFDS). In May 2018, the USDA published an incomplete draft of the NBFDS and opened it to public review and input through July 3, 2018. The USDA was particularly interested in public feedback on how to label ingredients that are used in forms that are processed to the extent that they do not contain detectable amounts of genetic material. The USDA also had yet to decide on contamination thresholds for labeling non-GMO foods that may inadvertently or unavoidably contain a percentage of bioengineered foods. While manufacturers began relabeling products by 2020, the NBFDS, which required manufacturers by law to use NBFDS labels, went into effect on January 1, 2022.

The change was lauded by supporters for standardizing the way GMOs were labeled across the country. However, critics argued that the new labeling system allowed manufacturers to hide the use of genetically engineered ingredients. In 2020, the nonprofit advocacy group Center for Food Safety sued the USDA about the final regulations of the NBFDS, stating that the regulations were prohibitive and discriminatory. Among their reasoning, the Center for Food Safety claimed that the use of QR codes to provide label information was discriminatory against those who struggled to use technology. Although the court sided with the Center for Food Safety regarding QR codes in its 2022 ruling, it did not strike the USDA decision to allow them. The nonprofit subsequently appealed in federal district court, where it also argued against the lesser-known term “bioengineered” for the labeling rather than the better-known acronym “GMO” and the labeling exception for so-called highly refined products.

The ultimate outcome of such labeling on consumer behavior has yet to be determined. Marketing research from the early 2020s suggests that mandatory labeling of GM foods, and especially public awareness due to legislative efforts to enact such labels, was associated with lower consumer demand and increased willingness to pay for alternatives. Still other research pointed to growing public acceptance of gene editing technology as compared to genetic engineering.

Genetically Modified Foods Today

In 2023, the FDA approved a GMO purple tomato that produces anthocyanins thanks to snapdragon flower pigments. That tomato joined other approved bioengineered produce including potatoes, papayas, summer squash, apples, pink pineapples, and eggplants. The move also paved the way for the first direct-to-consumer GM seed sales in the US beginning in early 2024, bringing the debate over GM cultivation into home gardens.

Proponents note that farmers have benefited enormously from GM food technology, seeing an increase in farm income by US$261.3 billion worldwide from 1996 to 2020, according to a 2022 Biotechnology in Agriculture and the Food Chain study. Supporters also tout GM foods' potential to reduce carbon emissions, deforestation, soil tillage, pesticide use, and vulnerability to infectious diseases while increasing yields and improving food security for a growing world population. Critics, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), continue to question the health safety and environmental implications of bioengineered foods, particularly pesticide-resistant GM crops.These essays and any opinions, information or representations contained therein are the creation of the particular author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of EBSCO Information Services.

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