Posted on 04/15/2005 9:14:42 AM PDT by kingattax
TRENTON, N.J. - Can animal genes be jammed into plants? Would tomatoes with catfish genes taste fishy? Have you ever eaten a genetically modified food?
The answers are: yes, no and almost definitely. But according to a survey, most Americans couldn't answer correctly even though they've been eating genetically modified foods — unlabeled — for nearly a decade.
"It's just not on the radar screen," said William Hallman, associate director of the Food Biotechnology Program at the Rutgers Food Policy Institute, which conducted the survey.
Today, roughly 75 percent of U.S. processed foods — boxed cereals, other grain products, frozen dinners, cooking oils and more — contain some genetically modified, or GM, ingredients, said Stephanie Childs of the Grocery Manufacturers of America.
Despite dire warnings about "Frankenfoods," there have been no reports of illness from these products of biotechnology. Critics note there's no system for reporting allergies or other reactions to GM foods.
Nearly every product with a corn or soy ingredient, and some containing canola or cottonseed oil, has a GM element, according to the grocery manufacturers group.
In the Rutgers survey, fewer than half the people interviewed were aware GM foods are sold in supermarkets. At the same time, more than half wrongly believed supermarket chicken has been genetically modified.
So far, nonprocessed meat, poultry, fish and dairy products, and fruits and vegetables (both fresh and frozen) are not genetically modified.
Genetically modified food first hit supermarkets in 1994, with the highly promoted Flavr Savr tomato, altered to give it a longer shelf life and better flavor. It flopped, in part because of disappointing taste, and disappeared in 1997, Childs said.
By 1995, farmers in several countries had planted millions of acres of GM corn and soybeans, and processed products containing them were in grocery stores.
Genetic modification of crops involves transferring genes from a plant or animal into a plant. Nearly all GM changes so far are to boost yields and deter insects and viruses, cutting the use of pesticides, thus making farming more productive and affordable.
More than 80 percent of the soy and 40 percent of the corn raised in this country is a GM variety. Global plantings of biotech crops — mostly corn and soybeans and much of it for animal feed — grew to about 200 million acres last year, two-thirds of it in the United States.
Experts say within several years there will be GM foods with nutrition improvements: cooking oils with less transfat, tastier potatoes and peanuts that don't trigger allergies.
Lisa Lorenzen, a liaison to the biotech industry at Iowa State University, said most Americans haven't worried about GM foods because they trust the regulatory system. She said many Europeans oppose GM foods because they don't trust governments that wrongly insisted for years that the beef supply, tainted by mad cow disease, was safe.
I had some Geneti-Flakes this morning for breakfast. Cross-bred with cows to secrete their own milk. Very convenient.
lol
All food is genetically modified. Humans have genetically modified the species that they have domesticated, both plant and animal, for thousands of years.
Now we can just do it more efficiently.
--similar to what it takes to get me to eat corn--run it through a pig and make ham or pork roast----
Remember when Luther Burbank was "a good thing"?
Until there is something other than F.U.D. (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) to discourage the consumption of genetically modified food, I'll continue to eat my Spaghetti-O's, thank you.
Let me turn on my web cam . . . 
naw,.....EU's France would never do that to America....
/sarcasm
Have you ever had a boysenberry? That's a genetically modified food, done over 100 years ago. Sure is yummy.
Is corn the same corn as the Indians ate? Is our wheat the same as was first eaten by a human being? Are the steers, chickens, lettuce, tomatoes, cabbage et. al. the same as were eaten even 300 years ago?
Or a navel orange (which is seedless)
Have you ever had a boysenberry?
=======
No thanks! I'll stick with girlsenberries !!!
Don't wanna be accused of being a homoferry !!! ;-))
Psycho Chicken What the cluck?
Buk buk buk buk Buk buk buk buk buk buk
Better run run run run away
Colonel Sanders wants to cook his goose
But Psycho Chicke's still on the loose
they caught him down in Ohio
cut off his head and put him the the oven
they put him in a box right next to a roll
put cole slaw near his feet
and someone took him home
ate him for lunch and he tasted real fine
but the guy who ate him just lost his mind!
. . . and I just found his uncooked head in my Chili. Yikes! Time to sue !!! ;-))
That is the whole reason I eat at Taco Bell. Yum.
No they don't serve dogs thats the OTHER resturant.........
;-)
lol
We need to modify some pigs re: chewing the cud, split hoof, etc., in order to make them 'clean' for observant Jews, and make a mint on kosher bacon & ham.
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