Non-GMOs: Hoping to Do Better in 2020

2019 was the year of plant-based meat alternatives. Beyond Meat and Impossible Burger led the pack, according to the Non-GMO Project, a nonprofit dedicated to building and protecting a non-GMO (genetically modified organism) food supply.

Action at the state level restricted the use of terms such as meat, burger, and steaks to products harvested from a slaughtered animal.

Monsanto/Bayer is facing thousands of lawsuits over their most popular weed killer, Roundup. The Non-GMO Project says the majority of GMO crops were explicitly developed for tolerance to this herbicide, leading to a 15-fold increase in its use. In 2015, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer concluded that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, was “probably carcinogenic to humans.” So far, juries have overwhelmingly favored the plaintiffs, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency overturned California’s efforts to require warning labels on Roundup. 

The National Bioengineering Food Disclosure Standard debuted in 2019. President Trump directed federal agencies to simplify regulatory pathways for GMOs, meaning that an increasing number of GMO crops and animals will not be subject to scientific review by federal agencies.

GMO mosquitoes released in Brazil successfully bred with native populations, even though they were engineered with a “self-limiting gene [that] prevents offspring of [the] released male insect[s] from surviving to adulthood.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized the farming of GMO AquAdvantage salmon. These fast-growing frankenfish are raised in pens in Indiana and Prince Edward Island. Advocacy groups have raised serious concerns about the threat AquAdvantage fish pose to native salmon populations.

However, the Non-GMO Project remains hopeful. Editor Melissa Waddell says that shoppers, retailers, and brands are shifting public discourse in support of GMO avoidance.