Genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, are organisms whose genetic material has been altered. Some of the most familiar genetically modified crops are things like corn and soybeans modified to be able to withstand being sprayed by herbicides. And basically, since their introduction, GMOs have been extremely unpopular.
For years, environmental groups and the public pushed back against GMOs over concerns they might harm both people and the environment.
Vermont has played an outsized role in the debate over labeling genetically modified foods. In 2014, Vermont became the first state in the nation to require companies to label packaged foods if they contain ingredients derived from genetically modified plants. That law was quickly preempted by a federal law shortly after it took effect in 2016. Proponents of GMO labeling argued the federal law was weaker than Vermont's. Still, it basically forced the world's biggest food companies to label for GMOs.
More from NPR News: How Little Vermont Got Big Food Companies To Label GMOs
But what if all this concern over GMOs is misplaced? What if we need them? Those are some of the questions put forward in a new article, "Learning to Love G.M.O.s," published in the New York Times Magazine.
VPR’s Henry Epp spoke with contributing writer Jennifer Kahn about her reporting. Their interview below has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Henry Epp: So, it's been about three decades since GMOs entered our consciousness. Why have they been so unpopular?
Jennifer Kahn: Well, I would say there's a couple of reasons. One: As you said in your introduction, it's really the way they were introduced.
The company that is most associated with them is Monsanto, and they came out with this herbicide-resistant soybean so they could plant it. And the entire goal really of that was so they could sell more of their trademark herbicide RoundUp. So, this was something that maybe, possibly benefited farmers a little. It certainly didn't benefit the consumer. And it really benefited Monsanto, which made a ton of money off of it.
To some degree fairly, GMOs got tarred by this. They got associated with really, just profit-driven big agriculture interests.
And then there was also a lot of concern about the health and safety of GMOs, especially early on — have those concerns actually come to pass?
You know, honestly, for the most part, not. I actually think it was something that … at the start of this, I think we knew much less about what the environmental or health effects might be. And so, I think people were understandably worried; they understandably wanted a lot more testing.
I guess the environmental effects are complicated because you have — if you have a place like Monsanto, that is, you know, encouraging in effect the spraying of this particular herbicide — that actually can cause environmental problems.
The flipside is: We now have a series of crops that are made with this; they're Bt, they're called. It's made with a little gene from a bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis, and that just makes them resist pests. And so that, actually, has really reduced the spraying of pesticides a lot, or made them much narrower. So that instead of targeting all the insects, you can just target this one kind of category of caterpillar. So, the environmental effects are kind of a little complicated.
The health effects — so far … there haven't been any. So, it's one of those things that I think people still feel very uneasy [about]. And I will say that I shared a little bit of this going in. You kind of think, "Well, are we sure we understand the genetics?"
But at least so far, we haven't seen anything.
Let's talk about purple tomatoes — which you cover in your article — because they're a good example of something that could turn some of the GMO rhetoric on its head, in large part because they offer something that's beneficial to consumers. So, what are the potential health benefits of these purple tomatoes?
Yeah, the purple tomatoes are kind of wonderful. They're made by this delightful — you know, I'm not sure she'd love me to call her this — but this delightful little old lady in Norfolk, England. And they are very high in anthocyanins. And then there's another variety that's also high in flavanols.
These are both antioxidants. They're found naturally in things like blueberries and kale.
And so, you know, when she tested these tomatoes and fed them — not even [in] extraordinary amounts, just ordinary, a little fraction of the diet to, you know — to mice — these were cancer prone mice, and they lived 30% longer. It was really an extraordinary result.
And so of course, again, this is mice, we don't know if it'll translate to people. But given that a lot of us try to eat healthfully and kind of eat blueberries and eat salmon and do all the things that are right, this is very appealing.
The title of your piece is ‘Learning to love G.M.O.s.’ So how do we, or could we, learn to love GMOs and why?
Yeah, and I'll say first, I actually didn't choose the title and I don't love it because the article, I didn't actually mean it to be, you know, urging anyone to embrace GMOs. It's more that I wanted us to think about it with a bit more nuance.
... As you said, if we embrace GMOs a little bit and learn to love them, there's a number of things we can do.
You know, one argument for it traditionally has been — or in the recent years has been — that climate change is coming. And so, you know, one of the things that contributes to climate change is actually deforestation [for] agriculture. And so, what we don't want, as the population on the planet increases, is to have to devote more land space to agriculture.
We need agriculture to become more efficient. So that's one argument for GMOs.
Finally, you mentioned that you went into this having some wariness of GMOs. After this reporting, do you still have any concerns about this technology, and about the effects of GMOs?
Well, you know, what's funny is, like I think almost everyone, I have kind of a gut-level thing — that if I think if I'm in the store, and I'm looking at your rows of apples, and I see four that say organic, and one that says in big letters "genetically modified," there's some gut level piece of me that thinks, "Oh, I want the organic one." It feels more natural. It feels more ... something.
But I think having reported this, it actually has changed my mind. Because one of the things I learned was that during just traditional crossbreeding — when you crossbreed, you know, to get a new tomato or a new apple — boy, we are changing the genetics in ways we don't even understand. We are dragging like large, large numbers of genes over from one thing to another, and we're not even testing those to see whether it has changed the nutritional value or anything else.
And the other thing is: I think something that many people don't understand — because it's kind of technical and complicated — which is that an individual gene, it's almost just like a single line in a recipe. And so, it might say, "Add a quarter teaspoon salt," and if you move that one thing from one recipe to another, it's not like that one step is the problem. You know, it can be, if it's a dangerous thing, if it says, "Add two gallons of poison," that's a problem. But by itself, that one line? You know, it's just a single gene.
I think that's one of the counterintuitive things about genetics, and you know, it's really hard to hold on to.
Have questions, comments or tips? Send us a message or get in touch with reporter Henry Epp @TheHenryEpp.
