If GMOs are So Safe and Nutritious, Why Aren’t Big Food Companies Labeling Them?

GMOs are the controversial subject of the day. Consumers are pushing for more organic products with labeling bills in California and Washington, but these bills failed because of the all mighty dollar. The Grocery Manufacturers Association spent “tens of millions of dollars” on propaganda to dissuade consumers from buying organic and local for the same reason: expense, more expensive food from more expensive labels. Why can’t consumers get a straight answer as to what’s in their food? If the FDA is right, saying GMOs are “safe” and “the same and as nutritious as conventional foods,” why, then, do Big Food companies don’t label their products as such? In this article, we’ll take a look at Big Food’s rationale for the question of labeling GMOs.

We’ll define Big Food just as PLoS Medicine does: “the multinational food and beverage industry with huge and concentrated market power.” Profits more often than not come before the consumer for Big Food corporations, and so, if labels do really cost more money for the companies, then they won’t label their food. The bottom lines for these self-interested companies are high quantity and high profits, and however they go about getting those two things are their business and their business alone. These companies often manifest their destinies by cutting corners and reclaiming the last frontier: your dinner plate. Regulations don’t often seem like laws to them, but instead pose as mere guidelines that can be rewritten or reconfigured if necessary, for a price. Ethics plays no role in their game, and even if it did, they can skew the science in studies by paying off scientists and lobbyists. Their sphere of influence has infiltrated the government, and it doesn’t stop there.

Big Food’s attempt to simultaneously make money and appear ethical backfired: the side effects of their great invention of GMO crops to solve world hunger made people sicker than they would be without food. GMOs, or genetically modified organisms, are “plants or animals that have been genetically engineered with DNA from bacteria, viruses or other plants and animals. These experimental combinations of genes from different species cannot occur in nature or in traditional crossbreeding.” Essentially, GMO crops are drought-resistant and near disease-resistant to produce high yields and have been enhanced with vitamins and/or minerals. But, the superior crop is not superior for the body or the environment. That fact doesn’t stop Big Food from keeping with their GMO crops, though. The quest to make it bigger and better has not stopped yet, and the labeling initiatives have only scared them a little. Labeling could expose the truth about these foods to so many, because people are more apt to look up labeling terms if they’re there in clear daylight.

Even though Big Food does not seem to be scared, you should be, because GMO crops have a slew of negative affects latched onto them: they unintentionally harm insects, reduce the potency of insecticides, and infiltrate a mechanism of evolution, gene transfer, with their herbicide tolerant genes, creating “superweeds” that are also herbicide tolerant. Ingesting GMOs has been linked to negative effects in humans as well. The introduction of new genes to crops has possibly resulted or correlates to the rise in nut allergies in U.K. and American children. There are many unknown consequences of these crops, and snowdrop flower lectin has been introduced to the potato genome despite it being toxic to mammals.

Bottom line: Big Food does not have a personal investment in you, but small, organic farmers do. Choose wisely with your wallet to Support companies that actually care about your health and the environment, and learn how to grow your own food.

 Image source: Women’s Lifestyle Magazine / Creative Commons