American Worry Growing Over Organic Crops Contaminated With Genetically Engineered Seeds
June 29, 2010 Kyriaki (Sandy) Venetis 
Graphic courtesy of Oregon State University.
In an effort to eat as healthy as possible, many of us have turned to buying an increasing number of products labeled as organic, whether they’re meat, dairy, fruits, vegetables, grains, and so on. The question is: Are we always getting the quality of product that we’re expecting?
“Unsuspecting consumers by the tens of millions are being allowed to purchase and consume unlabeled genetically engineered foods, despite a finding by U.S. Food and Drug Administration scientists that these food could pose serious risks,” according to the Center for Food Safety, a Washington, D.C.-headquartered advocacy group that promotes organic and other forms of sustainable agriculture.
“New genetically engineered crops are being approved by federal agencies despite admissions that they will contaminate native and conventional crops and pose other significant new environmental threats,” adds the CFS.
In February, Consumer Union, the non-profit publisher of Consumer Reports, released the results of a national telephone poll (of 1,015 random adult, comprising 504 men and 511 women that were 18 years of age or older) finding that, “A majority of respondents (58 percent) expressed some level of concern with contamination of organic food crops by genetic engineering.
“Roughly half (53 percent) of respondents said that they buy organic foods, like meat or dairy products.” In the poll, those most likely to buy organics were:
- Women (57 percent).
- Individuals ages 18 to 34 (60 percent).
- Residents of the Western United States (60 percent).
Now some might ask what is the concern about eating products containing genetically engineered genes. Medline Plus, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institute of Health, expresses “concerns that the genes from one food that are inserted into another food may cause an allergic reaction. For instance if peanuts genes are in tomatoes, could someone with a peanut allergy react to the tomatoes?”
