What’s wrong with GMOs? A lot.
May 19, 2022When GMOs were commercialized in the 1990s, few people knew about these novel organisms entering the food supply. Their development, testing and deployment had occurred with a startling lack of transparency. However, as early GMOs and their derivatives made their way into more and more common food products, folks in the natural foods sector started… » Read more
What Is A GMO?
May 12, 2022When GMOs first came on the market in the 1990s, the general public didn’t know much about them. Thankfully, we’ve come a long way since then. Through the advocacy of activist organizations, including the Non-GMO Project, familiarity with the term GMO is nearly universal.* We love to see awareness of the GMO issue grow (in… » Read more
Can a Lab-based Food System Save the World?
May 6, 2022This spring we’re exploring biotech’s biggest and greenwashiest claims in our series Are GMOs really going to save the world? In our final piece of our three-part series, we examine the prospect of a global lab-based food system. Could synthetic biology be the key to producing food in a changing climate, or just a lot… » Read more
How useful are GMOs on a warming planet? Middling.
April 21, 2022This spring we’re exploring biotech’s biggest and greenwashiest claims in our series Are GMOs really going to save the world? This is the second piece in the series. Don’t forget to check out Part One of the series, Genetically Engineered Golden Rice: Real Hope or Misplaced Hype? and Part Three, Can a Lab-based Food System… » Read more
What Could a Non-GMO Food System Look Like?
April 14, 2022The term “non-GMO food system” is, on its own, a little vague. It identifies most clearly what it is not. Genetic modification is used to engineer a specific trait in an organism to achieve a particular outcome, such as crops that are tolerant to herbicide applications. But the practice fails to take into account the… » Read more
How Big Ag Accidentally Inspired Earth Day (And the Non-GMO Project)
April 7, 2022“Nature has introduced great variety into the landscape, but man has displayed a passion for simplifying it.” — Rachel Carson, Silent Spring The first Earth Day celebration, held on April 22, 1970, is commonly credited as the birth of the modern environmental movement. More than 50 years later, Earth Day is the largest secular celebration… » Read more
Who Ate All the Frankenfish? (Hint: It Might Have Been You!)
March 30, 2022The world’s first genetically modified animal approved for human consumption was the AquaAdvantage salmon, a GMO with added genetic material from a Chinook salmon and the eel-like ocean pout. Throughout 2017 and 2018, Canadian consumers became the first people to eat the fast-growing frankenfish — but they didn’t know it. Despite consistent polling that most… » Read more
U.S. Becomes 65th Country to Label GMOs — But Whose Laws Are the Best?
March 24, 2022On January 1, 2022, the bioengineered (BE) food labeling law came into full effect. This policy makes the United States the 65th country with a mandatory GMO labeling policy. Nations that enact clear and meaningful GMO labeling are responding to overwhelming public desire for it. In poll after poll, shoppers demand clear and consistent labeling…. » Read more
Going Plant-Based to Save the Planet? Better Look For the Butterfly, Too
March 17, 2022Plant-based foods are having a renaissance. While staples such as veggie burgers and soy milk have been around for decades, we’re witnessing a tsunami of innovative products that can romance the taste buds of vegans and omnivores, vegetarians and flexitarians. Recent converts to the plant-based craze credit two reasons for their choice: They want to… » Read more
Will Biotech “POP” Organic Corn’s Best Defense Against GMO Pollen?
March 8, 2022This blog was originally published on December 9, 2021. It has been updated in celebration of “Popcorn Lover’s Day.” For many of us, movies and popcorn go hand-in-hand. To have one without the other is only half the fun! While we sit in a dark theater, we give little thought to the fact that… » Read more
