“The number of people who have taken a position against GMOs is greater than ever,” says Jeffrey Smith, the author of Genetic Roulette, who has been crisscrossing the United States speaking about the dangers of GMOs since 2003. “Their commi
tment to that position is greater than ever, and I would say that millions of people, in my judgment, are actively seeking to reduce the amount of GMOs that they eat.”
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Why the protest against GMOs? Unlike food that has been grown from seeds that have been handed down through generations, genetically modified foods are created in a laboratory. Genetic engineers artificially insert genes from bacteria, viruses, animals, or humans into the DNA of a food crop or animal to create an organism that would never occur in nature.
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The FDA’s own scientists actually warned that these never-before-seen foods could create new toxins and new allergens and needed to be more thoroughly tested, but their concerns were largely ignored. Instead, the US government took the official position that GM foods were “substantially equivalent” to conventional foods and didn’t require safety testing or labeling-
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The most important thing to know about GM foods is that they benefit only the chemical companies that produce them, says Kimbrell. “[The biotech companies] have yet to produce anything that benefits the consumer. There’s no better taste, no better nutrition, no lower price. That’s the dirty little secret that’s hardly ever reported. That’s why those companies don’t want GM foods labeled. They don’t want the consumer to be able to have the choice to say, ‘I want the same price, less risky version.’”
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Smith has estimated that if as little as 5 percent of the population starts consciously avoiding genetically modified foods, it can create a tipping point—a moment when major food companies realize that using GMOs is a liability and start pulling such ingredients from their products. Many recent signs—the amount of Internet traffic, attention by social media sites, coverage by mainstream media, and the increase in sales of non-GMO products—”all suggest that we’re on the doorstep of that tipping point,” says Smith.
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