Genetic Engineering Pushback Against GMO Foods

Demand for food free of genetically modified organisms is growing fast and nowhere stronger than in British Columbia.

North American retail sales of Non-GMO Project verified foods have grown more than 300 per cent in three years, from $1.3 billion in 2011 to $5 billion today.

Products that display both an organic and non-GMO certification are out-selling their competitors five to one at Whole Foods Markets, company spokesman Joe Kennedy recently told a conference organized by the B.C. Food Processors Association.

The market share for organic groceries in B.C. is already double that of the rest of Canada, according to the Canada Organic Trade Association. Its 2013 market report found that two thirds of British Columbians buy organic foods each week and more than half of those surveyed said they want to avoid GMOs in their food.

A recent Ipsos Reid poll of 1,200 Canadians conducted for BioAccess Commercialization Centre, a non-profit organization that supports the natural foods industry, suggests that British Columbians are more likely to look for a non-GMO label than other Canadians.

But the Ipsos Reid survey also found widespread confusion about which crops, fruit and vegetables are likely to be the product of genetic engineering.

More than 60 per cent of respondents identified strawberries as a product of genetic engineering, but there are no commercially grown GE strawberries. Only 42 per cent identified tofu as a GMO product, despite the fact that more than 90 per cent of soybeans grown in North America are genetically engineered.

So many shoppers are convinced that perfect, red hothouse tomatoes are the result of genetic engineering that B.C.-based grower Houweling's Tomatoes obtained Non-GMO Project verification. There are no GE tomatoes on store shelves in Canada.

Explaining GMOs Genetically engineered or GE lifeforms - popularly known as genetically modified organisms or GMOs - are created when the genetic code of an organism is altered to express a desirable trait or when code containing undesirable traits is silenced or removed. Much of the opposition to genetic engineering of foods is focused on the practice of inserting genetic code from one organism into another, which cannot occur under natural circumstances. At its heart, genetic engineering is a short cut that scientists devised to speed up the work of selective breeding of plants into more useful and productive forms and to resist threats from the environment. Such selective breeding has been going on for most of human history and nearly every food crop grown today has been genetically modified through this older process.

What could have been a public relations coup for biotechnology with the promise to provide the world more nutritious, less expensive food using fewer resources has become a nasty fight driven by dislike of corporate power and fears of uncontrolled environmental and health effects. Companies such as Monsanto, Syngenta, Dupont and Bayer CropScience, which dominate the biotechnology landscape with billions of dollars in sales, are fighting allegations that they are using intellectual property law to monopolize the world's seeds and by extension the world's food supply.

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Genetic Engineering Pushback Against GMO Foods