Since there’s no hard rule each person can have their own criteria, which will probably lead to a bureaucratic nightmare where lobbying groups for different foods and ingredients will argue as to why their product should or should not qualify as a GMO. Australia and New Zealand extend their labeling criteria to foods that are designed to be different from their non-GMO counterparts, such as high oleic soy or the Innate potato: these must be labeled as genetically engineered.īut that’s my personal opinion, and it probably would not meet the demands of most GMO-labeling proponents. So if the very thing that make a crop a GMO cannot be detected in a food product, then it shouldn’t be labeled. The difference between a GMO and a non-GMO crop is the DNA for the gene that has been added and the protein(s) that it produces. Personally, I like Australia and New Zealand’s criteria. However, according to, the USDA’s organic label isn’t stringent enough because there are a handful of exemptions, so the organization embraces the Non-GMO Verified seal. Here’s an example: as you may know, the USDA’s organic label excludes GMOs and is often used by those who wish to avoid GMOs in their diet. Certifiers will try to sell consumers on the purity of their criteria and benefits of their definition of a GMO. But the immediate consequence of a labeling bill that does not meet everyone’s requirements is the fact that the number of labels and verification-criteria will explode. They will argue that any form of labeling is better than none. Some may argue that it’s better that we just start somewhere. In Colorado, Vermont, and California, alcoholic beverages were exempt, but I could find no such exemption in the bill from Connecticut. Colorado’s proposed (and failed) bill stated that chewing gum was exempt from labeling. Perhaps GMOs have more GMOiness in California so the state can’t handle as much of it. In Vermont, the labeling bill states that you don’t need to label if the amount of GM material makes up less than 0.9% of the total weight of processed food, but in California‘s proposed (and failed) bill the cutoff was set at 0.5%. The definition even changes from one state to the next. But Australia and New Zealand labeling standards define a GM-ingredient as one that contains novel DNA or protein, so sugar from GM-beet would be exempt from labeling. To obtain Non-GMO Project certification, this is resolved by looking at the supply chain (see bullet 2.6.1.1.4). As such, it cannot be distinguished from sugar derived from non-GM beet. There’s no protein and no DNA in what we buy at the store. What about sugar that is derived from a GM-beet? As Dr Kevin Folta outlines in this graphic, sugar is sugar. Sucrose from any source tastes just as sweet
Ben & Jerry’s website explains their criteria for GMOs by stating “if you eat a corn chip containing GMO corn, it doesn’t make you a genetically modified human.” However, Ben & Jerry’s, an ice cream company and one of the first large organizations to declare that it was going GMO-free and supports labeling, sources its milk from cows fed GM-grain. The Food Babe used the same criteria in her campaign against “Monsanto Milk” in Starbucks beverages. The USDA’s Organic label also adheres to these standards. GMO Inside, one of the organizations leading efforts to label, also abides by this definition. But the term “GMO” as used in the current debate doesn’t have a clear definition.įor example, is milk derived from a cow that is fed GM-grain a GMO? According to the Non-GMO Project, an organization that certifies ingredients as non-GMO, milk from a cow fed GM-grain cannot be certified as non-GMO. From a molecular biology perspective, a transgenic animal or crop is one where a gene from an unrelated species is added to another.
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There’s no single definition on what is or is not a GMO, so companies and legislators get to decide how to define it.
I use the word “choose”, because that’s what it boils down to. In writing and researching GMO labeling bills proposed in different states and nations as well as looking into companies that have decided to take the non-GMO plunge, the one factor that stands out more than any other is what each of these entities choose to define as “GMO”.
A perhaps more interesting story is that the USDA stated that they would start providing a verification program for companies whose products are non-GMO. Over the past few months, there have been several big stories on the labeling of GMOs: Chipotle, a chain of restaurants popular in the United States declared that they were going to eliminate GMOs from their menu.