2/ It gets worse. 'Non-GMO'? A political fiction, not a scientific classification, meaning simply that 'GMO content' hasn't crossed a particular regulatory threshold - a GMO% in 'non-GMO' bread or oil, say; or the *degree* to which your 'organic' food is genetically engineered.
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It seems important to note that GMO technology is used extensively in the creation of modern vegetable varieties. Indeed, our produce aisles are packed with cell or protoplast fusion hybrids - all passed off as ‘non-GMO’. How is this? Simple enough: the agricultural science complex has declared that the genetically-engineered terminator technology of protoplast fusion ‘doesn’t count’ as genetic engineering. Others disagree with their claim. Yes, cell or protoplast fusion Cytoplastic Male Sterility (CMS) represents a biotechnology revision of a naturally occurring breeding technique used to simplify the hybridization process, but it does NOT occur naturally. Protoplast fusion is a breeding technique under the EC and IFOAM definition of genetic engineering. In practice, plant breeders don’t need a license to use this technique and the seeds originating from it are not labeled as 'GMO'. Seeds made with the use of protoplast fusion aren’t identifiable by farmers, seed savers or consumers.
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When I have courteously raised this issue with conventional scientific plant breeders and salespeople who are alert to the science standing behind CMS hybrids, witnessing their responses has been most illuminating. They squirm. The conventional plant breeding establishment are no fools, nor are the folk who populate it moral idiots. Of course they’re alert to vast public resistance to genetically engineered foods. And whether or not they believe their critics are ignorant fools isn’t the essential point here. Rather, that the agricultural science community clearly recognizes its basic disingenousness with regard to public perception of the fundamental structure and character of the everyday meal-plate. Needs be said, there are, of course, scientific plant breeders who propagate a different set of values along with their varieties. We are most fortunate in that some call Corvallis, OR, home.
Andrew and Nick discuss grassroots agro-biodiversity stewardship: here, the challenge of CMS terminator technology in hybrid Brassicas, a common, genetic engineering technique sanctioned, fwiw, by the US scientific agricultural complex as 'non-GMO'. youtu.be/jfLpXbb1AG8?t=6193
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