Tag: GMO

The National Milk Producers Federation's "Peel Back the Label" campaign aims to combat "deceptive food labeling" from dairy brands like Dean Foods and Dannon — which have touted Non-GMO Project certification, according to a report in Food Navigator. The Non-GMO Project claims that retailers carrying products featuring its seal of approval report "the fastest dollar growth trend in their stores this year," with annual sales exceeding $19.2 billion. So it's not surprising that food companies turning out dairy-based products want to get on that bandwagon. At the same time, some of these companies say they support conventional farming methods, including the use of GMO feed. In the Food Navigator article, a Dean Foods spokesman called the new NMPF campaign "disappointing." "We encourag...

More than one-third of Americans do not know that foods with no genetically modified ingredients contain genes, according to the new nationally representative Food Literacy and Engagement Poll we recently conducted at Michigan State University. For the record, all foods contain genes, and so do all people. The full survey revealed that much of the U.S. public remains disengaged or misinformed about food. These findings are problematic because food shapes our lives on a personal level, while consumer choices and agricultural practices set the course for our collective future in a number of ways, from food production impacts to public health. Informing food discussions The Food Literacy and Engagement Poll, which we plan to conduct annually, is part of Food@MSU, a new initiative bas...

Center for Food Safety (CFS) filed a federal lawsuit Sunday against the Trump administration for its failure to comply with the 2016 federal law on the labeling of genetically engineered (GE) food. Sec. of Agriculture Sonny Perdue and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are charged with implementing the new labeling rules, and part of that process is a study on "electronic and digital disclosures" (like QR codes) for GE foods, as opposed to on-package text. That study was required to be finished by July 2017, with an opportunity for public participation, but USDA never completed the study or published it for public comment. The federal GE food law requires USDA to establish federal standards for labeling by July 2018. The withheld study will inform the agency's ultimate decisio...

A debate has raged around the potential risks and benefits of genetically modified (GM) foods for the last 20 years. Friends of the Earth says that although food from 12 GM crops has been approved for sale in the EU, most UK supermarkets and food manufacturers have removed GM ingredients from their produce. The arguments for GM Most existing genetically modified crops have been developed to improve yield through resistance to plant pests or increased tolerance to herbicides. Professor Jonathan Jones, a senior scientist at The Sainsbury Laboratory and an expert on how plants resist disease, was featured on the Panorama program. “Producing enough food is hard, and currently there's a lot of control of disease and pests by spraying agrochemicals,” he said. “GM opponents have...

The CSOs including Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), Save Nigeria, Climate, Transformation and Energy Remediation Society (Climatters) and Women Environmental Programme (WEP) urged the National Assembly to outrightly ban the GMOs, stopped their field trails and transborder movement and ensure the labeling of the GM products if it has not been totally recalled The Director of HOMEF Nnimmo Bassey and Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour who led the protest said that the activities of the GMOs are being curtailed in the United States, European and other countries and wondered why Nigeria is embracing what has been confirmed to be detrimental to Nigerians' health. Chairman, Senate Committee on Ecology and Climate Change Senator Bukar Abba Ibr...

Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University and two other Chinese colleges will carry out the survey, said Jin Jianbin, a professor at Tsinghua’s School of Journalism and Communication. The poll, sponsored by the government, will be carried out in tandem with a campaign on social media to broadcast basic knowledge on GMO technology, which is widely misunderstood in the country, Jin said. China is the world’s fourth-largest grower of GMO cotton and the top importer of soybeans, most of which are genetically modified and used for cooking oil and animal feed for pigs and chickens. But public concern over food safety issues and skepticism about the effects of consuming GMO foods have made the government reluctant to introduce the technology for staple crops. A 2012 trial of so-called Golde...