BLOG: It’s just ‘natural’

I recently caught wind of a movement by the food industry’s lobbying arm that has petitioned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to rule that food companies can officially label their genetically modified organism-contaminated products as "natural" or even "all natural."

Just so you know, most food companies are already doing this. Even though the FDA says the word natural means "nothing artificial or synthetic . . . has been included in, or has been added to, a food that would not normally be expected to be in the food." But now the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), representing more than 300 food manufacturers and trade groups, wants the FDA to guarantee food companies the right to continue printing this misleading information on its labels.

So far the FDA has not replied to the question of whether or not food companies are lying to customers when they say their products are natural even when they contain genetically engineered ingredients. But in July 2013, the courts asked the FDA to weigh in. This might be due to several lawsuits from consumers furious that food companies have been allowed to hide GMOs in popular natural brands.

I’ve already posted several blogs about the GMO issue, but the problem isn’t going away any time soon. You might have heard recently that Cheerios has decided to not use GMO-corn or sugar any more in that product. However, that is only in the original Cheerios product and not the other Cheerios products (there are 10 Cheerio products in total). Well, I guess any small victory is good these days!

Additionally, one of the original studies that looked at the effects of GMOs on the development of tumors in rats has been pulled from the original journal that published it. The editor of the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology has said that the study results were inconclusive and the article would be retracted. The contention is that the number and strain of rats used in the study was questionable. My question is: Why didn’t they figure this out before publishing the paper?

Needless to say, things are still heating up in the GMO world!