When browsing through the eggs section on my recent trip to the grocery store, I got overwhelmed with all the different labels: cage free, fair trade, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) organic, etc. It’s easy to get confused about what all of these terms mean, but one stands out for being the most misunderstood: the non-genetically modified organism (GMO) label.
“All crops are GMO.” “GMOs are unhealthy.” “GMOs are more nutritious.” “GMOs accelerate climate change.” “GMOs will solve climate change.” “GMOs harm farmers.” Despite sounding contradictory, all of these familiar sentiments have some merit. But to clear any misconceptions, it helps to define what GMOs are.
“Genetically modified organism” is a surprisingly vague term on its own. In theory, this might include all organisms people breed (like dogs). In practice, the term strictly describes organisms whose genetic material has been edited via genetic engineering (thus excluding hybrids and clones). The USDA maintains a list of agricultural GMOs in the United States.
The domestication of plants for agriculture started over 11,000 years ago. Using artificial selection, a human driven form of natural selection, humans bred plants with desired traits like increased sizes, resulting in those traits becoming more common over generations. Undomesticated varieties of crops are barely edible, lacking the same flavors or sizes that domesticated varieties have. For example, teosinte, the undomesticated ancestor of corn, has hard, tiny kernels. Nearly all crops today are domesticated.
Domestication manipulates the plant’s genetic material over time, but it is never directly changed. People select desired traits and the genetic material changes as a result of this process. In genetic engineering, the DNA is changed directly, and the desired traits emerge as a result. Without the need to rely on evolutionary processes, genetic engineering produces much faster results than domestication.
Genetic engineering began in the 1970s and GMOs became widespread in agriculture soon after. Most American corn crops have been GMO since 1966 and have a gene introduced to produce a repellant against harmful insects. This toxin is not harmful to humans or beneficial insects like ladybugs, and it reduces the need for spraying insecticides with harmful side effects.
GMOs have also been proposed as a public health solution. Golden rice is a rice strain that contains elevated beta-carotene, which produces vitamin A in the body. In impoverished regions, vitamin A deficiency is a major concern. Although vitamin supplements could also be supplied, golden rice remains a valuable solution, especially since rice is typically a staple food in these regions.
Although seemingly perfect GMO produce can look tempting, in reality GMOs carry hidden costs.
The main health concerns associated with GMOs are their frequent use in ultra processed foods, which have been linked to health problems like diabetes. Although multiple government agencies and the American Cancer Society have shown that GMO ingredients carry no health risks on their own, they do aid in the production of unhealthy foods.
Furthermore, while GMOs pose no health risks on their own, they often encourage the use of unhealthy chemicals. Most GMOs are modified to resist herbicides, allowing farmers to easily kill unwanted plants without killing their crops. However, some herbicides, most famously glyphosate (Roundup), have been linked to human health concerns, a major concern for agricultural workers who often come from historically disadvantaged groups such as immigrant populations. Glyphosate-resistant GMO crops enable the use of this toxic herbicide. This method of weed management is also temporary, as weeds end up developing herbicide resistance too. Herbicides also require fossil fuels in manufacturing, releasing greenhouse gases and therefore contributing to climate change.
GMOs are also commonly used as livestock feed. The main components of livestock feed, corn and soy, are primarily grown as GMOs. Growing livestock feed crops as GMOs helps produce the vast quantity of feed needed to support livestock operations, but these operations end up causing massive amounts of environmental pollution and emitting tons of greenhouse gases. As a result, GMOs are a major contributing factor to climate change and inequality. The associated slaughterhouses also have a high rate of injury among workers and offer low wages, further highlighting environmental justice concerns in industrial agriculture. These concerns are often overlooked but illustrate how social and environmental harms can perpetuate each other.
However, if priorities around GMOs are shifted, they could provide a climate change solution. In a world of increasing drought, GMOs engineered for drought tolerance, which are already being developed, may prevent widespread famine. GMOs also produce higher yields per acre than non GMOs, reducing land use. Agricultural land captures less carbon than most naturally occurring ecosystems, so reducing agricultural land use may increase ecosystem carbon storage. There are also methods for storing more carbon in agricultural lands, so land use reduction is not the only solution.
Unfortunately, the loss of small farms is a hidden cost of land use reduction. Since the 1950s, median farm size has increased despite a reduction in land use. This means small farmers are losing land to larger farmers, a major concern for their livelihoods. This trend is known as agricultural consolidation.
GMOs accelerate consolidation because of how GMO seeds are purchased and used. Seeds are produced by major agricultural corporations such as Bayer (formerly Monsanto). In addition to the cost of seeds, GMOs come with additional licensing costs (permission to use GMOs) since GMOs are considered the corporation’s intellectual property. This also means saving GMO seeds is considered intellectual property theft, forcing farmers to buy new seeds each year. With most GMOs being herbicide resistant, farmers are also expected to purchase the company’s herbicides. Using genetically modified seeds results in the highest yields and profits, but they are also expensive to get started. This barrier of entry makes it hard for small farms to compete with larger ones.
Genetically modified genes can also travel via pollen or seeds, introducing these genes onto other farms. If they escape onto an organic farm, this farm may lose organic certification, which requires non-GMO crops. Organic farms rely on the premium cost of organic food to stay in business, so this can end the economic viability of that farm. If GMOs show up on a farm not licensed to use them, even accidentally, lawsuits may result since this is also considered intellectual property theft. Bayer has already done this numerous times to small farmers, further cementing the socioeconomic harms GMOs may pose.
Unfortunately, while GMOs have the potential to solve many problems, they are currently being used to increase profits for agricultural corporations, even if that means harming the environment or small farmers. The problem is not GMOs themselves, it’s that they are being used to reinforce the broken system that is consolidated industrial agriculture. Although this trend is grim, large non-GMO farms also contribute to many of these same problems. Non-GMO labeling does not mean food is healthier, nor is it a signal to buy an item. Instead, all labels are signals to do more research on how that product makes its way to the store.
