On September 12, 2022, President Biden issued an “Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe, and Secure American Bioeconomy.” While much of the Executive Order stresses health, medicine, energy and biological data, there are specific sections that apply to agriculture and food.
Earlier this month, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it had released additional science-based information about GMOs on its “Feed Your Mind” website. Now FDA has added new fact sheets, infographics, videos, and instruction guides specifically tailored to consumers, health educators, and registered dietitians/registered dietitian nutritionists.
After writing about the new US requirement to disclose bioengineered foods and ingredients, I spent some time at my local grocery stores checking out how different manufacturers are making their disclosures. Armed with my cell phone (for the digital disclosures), I visited my local Giant (owned by Ahold) and Wegmans stores.
Starting January 1, 2022, USDA regulations specify how foods sold in the United States that are bioengineered or contain bioengineered ingredients must disclose that information to consumers.
Most foods must now disclose if they contain DNA from a GMO (a genetically modified—aka “bioengineered”—organism). Those foods are safe to eat, say the National Academy of Sciences and the Food and Drug Administration. But the disclosure rules are confusing...and full of loopholes. Here's a look at what the rules cover, which kinds of foods may be GMO, the loopholes, and our bottom line.
A new report from the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest finds that the impacts of GE crops on pesticide use must be considered on a case-by-case basis: crop-by-crop and pesticide-by-pesticide, with particular attention to substitution effects and their implications for the net toxicity of pesticides applied to each crop for each use.
Representatives of conservation and consumer non-governmental organizations unveiled six principles for responsible governance of gene editing in agriculture and the environment in an article published today in the July edition of Nature Biotechnology. The authors noted that gene editing and other biotechnologies have the potential to address urgent food security, environmental, and human health dilemmas, yet these technologies also raise potential for societal concerns, environmental and health risks, and conflicts with cultural and spiritual values.
In response to FDA's request for information on the labeling of (future) food products derived from cell-cultured seafood, CSPI submitted this comment on March 8, 2021.
In CSPI's view, when cell-cultured seafood products are ready for their food safety assessment at FDA, the agency, with stakeholder input, should identify material differences from traditional products and then make consumers aware of those differences on the product label. The comment lays out several potential material differences that would be of interest to consumers.
