GMOs have been a hot topic lately, but do consumers really know what they are or even what GMO stands for?
A recent Jimmy Kimmel segment shows most people do not.
Kimmel took to the streets at a local farmers market and asked people about GMOs.
Many people said they avoid GMOs in their diet because they believe they are bad.
Some admitted they didn’t know what a GMO is, while others didn’t know what GMO stood for.
A Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) is an organism whose genome has been altered by the techniques of genetic engineering so its DNA contains one or more genes not normally found there.
GMOs, in the case of food, were created to help speed up natural selection.
Scientists wanted to take the favourable traits of certain foods and make it easier to repeatedly get these desirable traits.
Takuji Tanaka, Associate Professor in the department of food and bioproduct sciences in the college of agriculture and bioresources at the University of Saskatchewan, said GMOs help us produce more food with less labour and increased productivity.
The first GMO to be approved was the Flavr Savr Tomato produced by Calgene, Inc.
This tomato was modified to help ripe tomatoes stay firmer longer and therefore be able to be picked at a ripe state and transported to the stores without softening.
Health Canada now has 126 approved GM and novel foods (foods that have been produced through new processes) listed on their website.
The main ones that are grown in Canada include corn, canola, and soy.
Some other GMOs are cotton, potatoes, papayas, and sugar beets.
That means your corn tortillas, canola oil and soy milk can be considered a GMO or have GM ingredients.
Tanaka said in North America approximately 95 percent of corn is already GMO so we cannot avoid them anymore.
As of right now, Canada does not require labels to indicate whether foods have GM ingredients in them or are GMOs.
Darren Korber,Professor in the department of food and bioproduct sciences in the college of agriculture and bioresources at the University of Saskatchewan, said there are a lot of people lobbying for a system to come into place.
Korber said people want this because then they can make a choice to eat GMOs or not.
“So that you can say that this is a genetically modified product I can decide to choose a non-genetically modified product, if you can find any,” said Korber.
If labeling was to come into play in Canada Korber said the amount of products that are considered GMOs or have GM ingredients might shock people.
But as of right now there is not a need to be shocked by GMOs because there are no studies proving GMOs have negative health effects.
However, just as Kimmel pointed out in his segment, that fear is still deeply rooted in people.
“The real problem here has been sort of this lack of education to people,” said Korber.
An example of lack of education according to Korber is Europe.
Korber said that since people were not educated people rejected the idea of GMOs.
However, Europe is starting to change the way GMOs are seen.
The European Union lifted its strict ban on GMOs as of January 13th, 2015.
The EU will now allow national governments to impose their own restrictions on GMOs.
This may seem like a huge change for GMOs in these countries, but many governments (such as Austria) are strongly against them.
Prior to this change governments could not stop GM crops from being grown on their soil once approved by the EU, but now they can impose national bans.
