The purpose of this post is to provide you with a clear and easy-to-understand explanation of GMOs. Why learn about GMOs? Of all topics in science, opinions regarding GMOs have the greatest disparity between what scientists believe, and what the lay public believes. In a 2016 Pew poll, 88% of scientists believed GMOs were safe to eat, while only 38% of the general public thought so.
This disparity is mainly due to a lack of understanding. The more one opposes GMOs the less one understands GMOs. Many of my colleagues can’t give me a basic definition of a GMO. Can you? Write down your definition, read through the post, and see how you did.
Learning about GMOs will also teach you fundamental concepts about food and biology. You will learn the history of food, the history of agriculture, and how foods are tested for safety. You will learn how life is dependent on genetic variation, how life evolves, and how life interacts with other life in ecosystems.
Food is an emotionally loaded topic
What complicates learning about GMOs is that food, for some people, is an emotionally loaded topic. In our hierarchy of needs as animals, "What is safe to eat?", is as primal, and as critical a question, as it gets. Two of our six primary emotions, disgust and fear, are hard-wired to protect us from unsafe things like: putrid meat and feces. It's easy to see how these emotions can be triggered by GMOs: big companies and big science messing with our food for profit, and sacrificing safety for higher yield and shelf-life.
However, it's also important to understand that other for-profit industries, like the "wellness" and organic food industries, thrive from these emotions. They profit greatly from propagating the message that modern food is "unnatural" and riddled with "toxins". Consumers will pay premium prices for "natural” foods and “detoxes”. In fact, consumers are so easily triggered they’ll pay premium prices for food with nonsensical labels, like "gluten-free" orange juice, or "non-GMO" salt.
Please keep this in mind when you learn about GMOs…
The history of the tomato
To teach you about GMOs let me begin by asking some questions about the tomato…
Q: What part of the world do tomatoes come from?
A: Although it's tempting to think Italy, this is the wrong answer. Tomatoes are actually native to the region around Peru. They were only brought to Europe after Columbus. The ancient or "wild" tomato is pictured below. You will notice it is small and purple, with a thick skin. It yielded very little calories, and tasted horrible.
However, well before it was introduced to Europe, and well before GMO technology, ancient Peruvians were able to breed it into the tomato pictured below.
Which leads to the next question...
Q: How did they do this?
A: Starting around 10,000 year ago, they began to plant fields with hundreds of wild tomatoes. Occasionally, one of them would be bigger, or juicier, or more pest resistant than the rest. They would take the seeds from that tomato and plant them the next season. And so on, and so on, until they bread the big tasty calorie-yielding tomato we know today. This process is called plant breeding. Which leads to the next question...
Q: How does plant breeding work? How does the occasional tomato in the field become different from the other tomatoes around it?
A: Genetic mutation. Genetic mutations happen ALL the time in nature. The entire genetic code is copied every time a cell divides. On average a single error is made. Not bad, but considering the billions of replications, in the billions of organisms, that's a lot of genetic mutation and variation. Those new breeds in the field often have thousands of genetic changes.
Natural selection of mutations (evolution)
These random mutations are actually essential to nature and life on earth. They're the driving force behind evolution and how organisms adapt. Some mutations are bad for survival, some are good for survival, and some do nothing. The mutations good for survival are passed on. They are “selected" by nature. In deed, all life on earth is just one long chain of mutations.
Artificial selection of mutations (breeding)
Breeding also takes advantage of mutations; however, instead of selection by nature, selection is by the desires of the farmer or breeder. Hence, the term, "artificial selection".
Beginning 10,000 years ago, farmers across the world began selecting and breeding all sorts of wild plants and wild animals. This is the "agricultural revolution". Today, every food you purchase at the market (including the tomato) is a product of breeding. They are genetic modifications of the wild organism.
Q: Does this include the products at my organic food market?
A: Yes. Unless labelled "wild" ("wild" rice, "wild" mushrooms, "wild" blueberries, "wild" caught salmon, etc.), everything at an organic food market is genetically modified. For example, cabbage, broccoli, kale, and cauliflower are all genetic mutations from a single wild plant, the wild mustard plant (see below). Even "Ancient grains" like Quinoa, are domesticated versions of their wild type.
The definition of a "GMO"
At this point, you may be admitting confusion about the definition of a GMO. If almost every product at your organic food market is genetically modified including those labeled as a NON-GMO... What is a GMO?
A: A GMO is a genetically modified organism that is modified using the techniques of genetic engineering. If the organism was genetically modified using ANY other technique, it's NOT a GMO. The products of plant breeding… are not considered GMOs. The products of hybridization, the mixing of genes from different species (eg. Pluot - a plum mixed with an apricot)… are not considered GMOs. And even the products of mutation breeding, exposing plant seeds to chemicals, enzymes, and radiation to accelerate mutations… are not considered GMOs. Only genetic modification through genetic engineering are considered GMOs.
Q: So what is genetic engineering?
A: Genetic engineering is a set of techniques discovered in the 1970's that uses enzymes found in nature that allow us to directly edit (cut and paste) specific genes.
A simple example of a GMO is Golden Rice. In parts of the world where rice is the main source of food, vitamin A deficiency is common and causes about 500,000 cases of childhood blindness per year. Golden rice is white rice with the gene for vitamin A spiced in; hence, it's golden color (see picture below).
Q: What about the US? How many genetically engineered crops are directly consumed by Americans?
A: Almost none. There are only ten genetically engineered crops in the US. However, the top four (sugar beet, canola, soybean, and corn) are not consumed directly. Instead, they're used for animal feed or processed to make raw ingredients like sugar and oil for packaged foods.
That's it! So when you see a "NON-GMO" label on a tomato product (see below), it’s a perfect example of nonsensical food labelling. There are NO genetically engineered tomatoes. It can only be interpreted as an attempt to generate fear, make their product appear better, and increase prices.
What is special about genetic engineering?
Why do we only warn consumers about genetic modifications from genetic engineering? Shouldn't this tomato sauce product warn consumers about the 10,000 years of genetic modification from breeding, mutation breeding, and hybrids?
Q: Is there something about genetic engineering that's inherently more dangerous than the other techniques?
A: No. On the contrary, genetic engineering is far more targeted. It affects far fewer genes, and the genes that are affected are known and can be tested. Breeding and hybrids, on the other hand, introduces changes to thousands of unknown genes. (For a direct comparison of the different genetic modification techniques see the chart below).
Q: Have GMO crops been specifically tested for safety?
A: Yes. Despite this double standard GMO crops are subjected to safety testing. This includes testing for allergenicity, animal toxicology, and nutritional content. To date, every GMO crop has been determined to be as safe as its non-GMO counterpart. Consensus statements can be found from over 280 scientific agencies around the world.
Testing the other techniques for safety
Q: Did the ancient Peruvian farmers test their genetically modified tomatoes for safety? Did they make sure those tomatoes didn't cause cancer at age 60?
A: No. Obviously not. Our ancient ancestors were very limited in what they could test for. If a food made them ill or caused death directly after consumption, they could determine it was poisonous. However, they couldn't determine if it caused cancer at age 60. Linking long term consumption of foods with disease is extremely difficult without the techniques of modern epidemiology; and even WITH modern epidemiology we still can't agree what foods are healthy and what foods are not. Furthermore, the goal of our ancestors was to make it past their first birthday, or make it past the "hunger season". If a genetically modified food would kill them at 60, but yield more crop, more calories, and feed more people throughout the year, relatively speaking, it was a winner.
Now, for the most critical question of this post...
Q: What about the "wild" tomato? Did the ancient Peruvian farmers test them for safety?
A: No. As above, our ancient ancestors could only determine if something was poisonous, not long-term effects. There was no reason to assume that the "wild" variety was safe simply because it came from "nature". In fact, there's no reason to assume ANY plant or animal is safe simply because it comes from "nature". To make this assumption is a logical fallacy called, "the appeal to nature" - what is natural is good for you. It's both anthropocentric and biblical to think that nature is "designed" for the benefit of humans. In reality, the opposite is true. Natural selection shapes plants and animals for their OWN benefit and survival. Let me ask you another question to demonstrate this point...
Q: Why do certain plants produce neurotoxins (like opium, cocaine, nicotine, and THC) that serve no direct function for the plant?
A: They are all insecticides. Plants are unable to run away from their greatest predator, animals. So they wage chemical warfare and synthesize neurotoxic drugs for the sole purpose to prevent being eaten. Plants are not our friends. We just try to pick the ones that don't kill us.
The false dichotomy
Now that you understand:
What a GMO is - a food genetically modified using genetic engineering.
That genetic engineering does not appear to be any more dangerous than the other forms of genetic modification.
That almost all food is a product of genetic modification of one kind or another.
That the safety of "wild" strains of food can't be assumed just because they come from nature.
It should be clear that the "GMO vs. NON-GMO" dichotomy, and the "natural vs. unnatural" dichotomy, are false dichotomies. They oversimplify food forcing it into black or white boxes that don’t exist, and create double standards that don’t make biological sense.
The next time you see the "NON-GMO" label, ask yourself the following question...
Q: Does this label actually provide useful information for my overall quest for health, or is it just marketing to generate fear and charge higher prices?
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