The great GMO debate

At present, FDA has “voluntary consultation” where GMOs are involved. In 1992, the agency ruled that it didn’t consider GMOs to be food additives and for that reason foods made with GMO ingredients received FDA’s GRAS (generally regarded as safe) status.

As a result CSPI is not in favor of mandatory labeling, Jaffe says. “If a food isn’t safe, the answer isn’t to label it,” he explains. “If it’s not safe, get FDA to ban it. Now, some consumers do want a right to know, and I think that’s a valid concern. But there are a lot of ways to get information and promote transparency that would be less [intrusive] than government-imposed labels.”

But Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University and a longtime food critic, disagrees. Nestle is in favor of “a strong federal law” mandating labeling and thinks the biotech industry should have embraced the idea years ago.

“There was opposition when GM foods were first approved by the FDA, but only from small groups,” she explains. “The biotech industry made a fatal error when it insisted that its foods not be labeled. If the industry had gotten behind the approach of Calgene, which made a GM tomato and labeled it with pride, I think the opposition would have dissipated. People who didn’t want to buy GM foods wouldn’t have to, and everyone else could see that they didn’t drop dead on the spot from eating them.”

The foodservice community

Many operators say they have at least a layman’s understanding of genetic engineering and privately have some opinions on its value. However, there appears to be a wait-and-see attitude within the foodservice community, either because there are other, more pressing issues to deal with or because it is not something their customers are asking about.

“We are aware of it and we know it could potentially have an impact on our operations, but there is so much we don’t know about it,” says Zia Ahmed, director of dining services at The Ohio State University, in Columbus. “It’s hard to predict what’s going to happen. It is definitely on students’ minds, but we still don’t have any significant consensus. There are conflicting reports from both sides.”

That doesn’t mean directors don’t have opinions—sometimes strong ones. Thomas Cooley, R.D., director of dining experience at Inglis House, in Philadelphia, says he is “for” genetic engineering, but “against the three Ms: monopolization, monoculture and Monsanto.”

“What I know so far is most of the GMOs have been designed by corporations so they can patent the seeds,” Cooley suggests. “That is not necessarily keeping the [farming] tradition alive. One of the things farmers have always done is collect seeds from the hardiest plants from one year to plant next year. When you put yourself in the hands of the big seed companies you lose that tradition of collecting your own seed.”

In Cooley’s view, genetically modifying plants simply to make them resistant to bug and weed killers actually thwarts evolution. “What the seed companies are doing is encouraging you to douse your fields with herbicides, with pesticides, because your plants are resistant.

That’s not helping the plant, say, grow a better root system so that weeds can’t invade.”