My wife came home with a bag of Pita chips. This particular brand had “Non-GMO Certified” on both the front a back labels.

This label is pure marketing. Why?

There is only one product in the entire list of ingredients that could potentially come from a GM plant, canola oil. Of course, the process of generating the canola oil removes all DNA and proteins, resulting in a product that is indistinguishable from canola oil from a non-GMO plant. Further, the list specifically states that the pita chips could use canola OR sunflower oil (which doesn’t even come from a GMO-plant).

This particular product is non-GMO in the same way that a cranberry is non-GMO. Because no one had ever invented a GMO cranberry. The same with all the products listed… none of them have ever had GMO versions created.

We will not stand by idly as attempts are made to systematically genetically modify Africa’s staple foods and in the process gain a massive positive public relations coup by claiming to have conquered health problems at the unnecessary risk to Africans.

The usual complaints about GMOs are not relevant to the GMO vitamin A enriched banana. The new gene is taken from a wild banana species, and so is not a transgene from a distant species. The GMO is being developed by the Ugandan government, NARO, the Bill & Melissa Gates Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). This is a humanitarian project. There is no issue of corporate ownership or patents. The new cultivar has nothing to do with pesticides or farming practice.

There is, in fact, no legitimate reason to protest this banana except that it is being developed using technology that falls within the broad and somewhat arbitrary definition of genetically modified. I doubt they would be protesting the feeding trials, or this approach to vitamin A deficiency, if the cultivar were developed through mutation farming.