Feed Your Mind is our new education initiative to help consumers better understand genetically engineered foods, commonly called GMOs or genetically modified organisms.
GMO foods have been available to consumers since the early 1990s. Since then, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have worked to ensure that GMOs are safe for people, animals, and the environment.
Despite there being a wide range of foods—GMO and non-GMO—available to consumers, there is some confusion around what GMOs are and how they are used in our food supply.
To help increase consumer understanding of GMOs, in 2017, Congress provided funding for an Agricultural Biotechnology Education and Outreach Initiative, which calls upon FDA to work with EPA and USDA to share science-based educational information about GMOs, beginning with answers to some basic GMO questions.
What makes it a GMO?
A GMO (genetically modified organism) is a plant, animal, or microorganism that has had its genetic material (DNA) changed using technology that generally involves the specific modification of DNA, including the transfer of specific DNA from one organism to another. Scientists often refer to this process as genetic engineering.
Learn more about Types of Genetic Modification Methods for Crops.
Is it called GMO or something else?
"GMO” has become the common term consumers and popular media use to describe foods that have been created through genetic engineering. This term is not generally used to refer to plants or animals developed with selective breeding, like the common garden strawberries available today that were created from a cross between a species native to North America and a species native to South America. While “genetic engineering” is the term typically used by scientists, you will start seeing the “bioengineered” label on some of the foods we eat in the United States because of the new National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard.
Did you know?
Bioengineered food is the term that Congress used to describe certain types of GMOs when they passed the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard. The Standard defines bioengineered foods as those that contain detectable genetic material that has been modified through certain lab techniques and cannot be created through conventional breeding or found in nature.
What GMO crops are out there?
Only a few types of GMO crops are grown in the United States, but some of these GMOs make up a large percentage of the crop grown (e.g., soybeans, corn, sugar beets, canola, and cotton).
In 2020, GMO soybeans made up 94% of all soybeans planted, GMO cotton made up 96% of all cotton planted, and 92% of corn planted was GMO corn.
Why do we have GMOs?
Humans have used traditional ways to modify crops and animals to suit their needs and tastes for more than 10,000 years. Cross-breeding, selective breeding, and mutation breeding are examples of traditional ways to make these changes. These breeding methods often involve mixing all of the genes from two different sources. They are used to create common crops like modern corn varieties and seedless watermelon.
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