Demand for food free of genetically modified organisms is growing fast and nowhere stronger than in British Columbia.

North American retail sales of Non-GMO Project verified foods have grown more than 300 per cent in three years, from $1.3 billion in 2011 to $5 billion today.

Products that display both an organic and non-GMO certification are out-selling their competitors five to one at Whole Foods Markets, company spokesman Joe Kennedy recently told a conference organized by the B.C. Food Processors Association.

The market share for organic groceries in B.C. is already double that of the rest of Canada, according to the Canada Organic Trade Association. Its 2013 market report found that two thirds of British Columbians buy organic foods each week and more than half of those surveyed said they want to avoid GMOs in their food.

A recent Ipsos Reid poll of 1,200 Canadians conducted for BioAccess Commercialization Centre, a non-profit organization that supports the natural foods industry, suggests that British Columbians are more likely to look for a non-GMO label than other Canadians.

But the Ipsos Reid survey also found widespread confusion about which crops, fruit and vegetables are likely to be the product of genetic engineering.

More than 60 per cent of respondents identified strawberries as a product of genetic engineering, but there are no commercially grown GE strawberries. Only 42 per cent identified tofu as a GMO product, despite the fact that more than 90 per cent of soybeans grown in North America are genetically engineered.

So many shoppers are convinced that perfect, red hothouse tomatoes are the result of genetic engineering that B.C.-based grower Houweling's Tomatoes obtained Non-GMO Project verification. There are no GE tomatoes on store shelves in Canada.

Explaining GMOs Genetically engineered or GE lifeforms - popularly known as genetically modified organisms or GMOs - are created when the genetic code of an organism is altered to express a desirable trait or when code containing undesirable traits is silenced or removed. Much of the opposition to genetic engineering of foods is focused on the practice of inserting genetic code from one organism into another, which cannot occur under natural circumstances. At its heart, genetic engineering is a short cut that scientists devised to speed up the work of selective breeding of plants into more useful and productive forms and to resist threats from the environment. Such selective breeding has been going on for most of human history and nearly every food crop grown today has been genetically modified through this older process.

What could have been a public relations coup for biotechnology with the promise to provide the world more nutritious, less expensive food using fewer resources has become a nasty fight driven by dislike of corporate power and fears of uncontrolled environmental and health effects. Companies such as Monsanto, Syngenta, Dupont and Bayer CropScience, which dominate the biotechnology landscape with billions of dollars in sales, are fighting allegations that they are using intellectual property law to monopolize the world's seeds and by extension the world's food supply.

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Genetic Engineering Pushback Against GMO Foods

What are GMOs?

Genetically modified organisms - or more precisely genetically engineered organisms - are created when the genetic code of a life form is altered in a way that is not possible by natural processes. Genetic code may be removed, silenced or replaced by genetic code from another organism to promote the expression of desirable traits such as resistance to pests, or eliminate undesirable traits, such as susceptibility to disease. One of the first widely used GE crops was created by fusing a gene derived from a bacteria into the DNA of soybeans, making them resistant to the herbicide Roundup.

Bt corn was made resistant to insects by inserting a gene from a naturally occurring soil bacterium that produces a protein toxic to insect larvae, but harmless to mammals. A spray version of Bt toxin has been in use for more than 50 years. New technologies allow scientists to rewrite specic sections of genetic code without introducing outside genetic material, a technique recently used with success on monkeys.

Are certified organic and Non-GMO Project-verified foods GMO-free?

No. In the real world, pollen drifts, supply chains are shared and a low-level presence of GMOs in much of our food is a fact of life. This is why the Canadian government does not allow products to be labelled "GE free" or "GMO free."

But certified foods almost certainly contain less GE material than foods that do not carry certifi-cation. Products certified as organic may not be grown from GE seed nor can they contain ingredients derived from GMOs. However, organic certification is process-based, meaning that growers and processors must adhere to certain practices, which may not include testing for the low-level presence of GMOs. Detectable residue from GMOs does not necessarily constitute a violation of certification standards. Non-GMO Project verification does require testing for ingredients such as corn or soy, which have widely grown GE versions. Supply chain segregation, traceability and quality controls are employed to reduce risk that GMOs are present in the final product. The Non-GMO Project uses an "action threshold" of 0.9 per cent GMO. At or below is OK, above is not. The European Union employs the same threshold for food imports.

Are farmers starting to abandon GE crops?

Maybe, maybe not. It seems as if every anti-GMO activist has heard of farmers turning away from GE crops. So far, acreage numbers and biotech companies' balance sheets suggest otherwise. In 2012, more than 97 per cent of canola grown in Canada was GE, according to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications. Global acreage under biotech crops rose six per cent, reaching a record 170 million acres in 2012, 52 per cent of that in the developing world. Global GE acreage increases in 2012 over the previous year include canola (+5%), maize (+4%), cotton (+7%) and soybeans (+8%).

Where are the GMOs hiding?

In plain sight. A handful of genetically engineered foods are in plain sight. Many thousands of ready-to-eat and processed foods contain ingredients such as oil, sugar, starch and protein made from the main GE commodity crops: corn, soy, sugar beets, canola and cottonseed. None of the genetically engineered whole foods or foods containing ingredients derived from GE commodity crops is required to be labelled in the United States or Canada.

Read more here:
What are GMOs and why are they here?