WTF, GMOs . You crazy.
AquaAdvantage Salmon
Currently under review by the FDA, these fish have “the potential to grow to market size in half the time of conventional salmon,” according to AquaBounty Technologies, and “are identical to other Atlantic salmon.” Sounds like a win-win business model. But environmentalists say these farmed fish can escape their enclosures, and are concerned that with mega-salmon in the wild, natural salmon populations will decline even faster than they already are. As for the humans eating them, Food & Water Watch notes in its “FrankenFish” report, “Long-term studies have yet to be conducted to assess human health risks associated with eating transgenic fish.”
AquaBounty
Purple Tomatoes
The darker color is meant to give tomatoes a pigment known as anthocyanin, an antioxidant found in fruits like blueberries that may help fight cancer. “With these purple tomatoes you can get the same compounds that are present in blueberries and cranberries that give them their health benefits,” says Professor Cathie Martin, one of the developers at the John Innes Centre in the U.K. “But you can apply them to foods that people actually eat in significant amounts and are reasonably affordable.”
A new study out of Sweden, however, shows antioxidants in large doses can actually be harmful to people with certain kinds of cancer. And critics of GMOs say we don't need blomatoes: “Nature has already designed all the right foods we need to 'fight cancer,'” Michele Simon, founder of EatDrinkPolitics.com, told BuzzFeed. “We just need the junk food industry to stop promoting all the wrong foods that cause it.”
Enviropigs
What do you do when you have too much toxic pig poop around? Genetically modify your pigs so they make cleaner poop, duh.
Typical pig feed in the U.S. and Canada consists of corn and other cereal grains, which, as even humans know, aren't easy to digest. The phosphorous in these grains is a particular problem, as it comes out the other end in the form of phosphorous-laden pig poop, which can make its way into nearby water supplies. Farmers, therefore, supplement pig feed with an enzyme called phytase to help the pigs digest and absorb the phosphorous. But the added phytase doesn't do a particularly good job and the toxic poo is still a problem. Enter Canadian Enviropigs, which are engineered to make phytase themselves, making their poop a whole lot cleaner.
It's worth noting that wild pigs, which aren't raised on cereal grains, don't need phytase to digest their food. “The problem isn't with the pigs,” said Cathy Holtslander of Beyond Factory Farming. “The problem of hog operations polluting the water has to do with the whole industrialization scale that has been developed to raise hogs.”
(Consumer resistance to the Enviropig led the University of Guelph to halt the project.)
© ANDREW WALLACE/Toronto Star Staff/ZUMAPRESS.com
Non-Browning Apples
Unveiled by Okanagan Specialty Fruits (OSF) in January, non-browning versions of Golden Delicious and Granny Smith apples are being grown in test plots in New York and Washington while they await USDA approval.
These GMO apples may not pose a safety concern, according to Wendy Brannen of the U.S. Apple Association, but the organization is worried about what this will do to the image of regular apples. “As an industry, one of the concerns from the beginning has been, what will the consumer perception of this be? Will confusion over this product somehow detract from all of the wonderful, wholesome, healthy apples that are out there?” she said. “It really necessary? Browning is a naturally occurring process.”
But the Apple 2.0 will eliminate the need for sliced apple producers to treat the fruit with antioxidants to keep them looking fresh. And that could translate into a cost savings of 30%, according to Neal Carter, president of OSF.
Okanagan Specialty Fruits Inc.
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