Ep. 332: How well do you know GMO foods?

Guest: Nick Saik, host of KNOW - GMO

Everything you eat has been modified.

When it comes to plants, fruits and vegetables, everything you put in your mouth has been modified one way or another. Cross-pollination, hybridization, open pollination, mutagenesis and genetic engineering all change the makeup of food.

These four methods are processes that can produce new strains of food – can. Won’t necessarily, but can. And when they do, they are accepted into the food supply after appropriate testing. These are shot-in-the-dark best guess tries. Some work; most don’t.

Mention genetics and for many, it is an out-of-bounds topic. “Franken-wheat” or “Franken-tomatoes” or corn or papayas from Hawaii. Yes, Hawaii, where three counties tried to enact laws forbidding genetically modified foods but were overruled by the state government and the courts.

The debate, the rules and the process of going into the lab and helping a plant or fruit fight off a virus or bacteria or be drought resistant is so onerous and expensive few companies are willing to invest their time and money.

As Nick Saik, the host of KNOW - GMO says, “It costs, on average, 10 years and a hundred million plus dollars to deregulate a crop.” He goes on to say, “The delay is largely driven by the public fearing these crops.” And these delays and the costs could very well mean we will never be able to grow the food billions of people will need.

The gap between perception and what his research was telling him led Nick to create a video series about GMOs.

We invited Nick Saik to join us for a Conversation That Matters about GMOs and what we need to know about them if we hope to feed the world of 2050.