GMOs innovating the food industry

In fact, there are no regulations surrounding the GMOs in foods fed to students at DDHS., mandatory labeling of GMO food products began In 2022. This rule means that any food product intended for human consumption that contains more than 5% GMO ingredients must be labeled as either "Bioengineered" or as "Derived from Bioengineering." However, any foods derived from animals (eggs, meat, milk) along with some oils or sugars do not need to be labeled as genetically modified. 

On the David Douglas School District website, a menu with all the foods served at the high school can be found. It lists the calories per serving and other nutritional information about any given item served in the cafeteria. However, nowhere does it list whether or not the foods have been bioengineered. 

GMOs are incredibly popular with farmers and major corporations for the sheer range of what they can do. They can increase shelf life, increase food production-per-crop, improve flavor and quality, make organisms resistant to disease, viruses, and bacteria, and make crops pest resistant. 

Pests are not only harmful to agriculture because of their surface-level threats (disease, virus, bacteria, crop damage), but also because of the negative effects that pesticides have. Not only do pesticides make people really ill, they kill off entire populations of insects that are vital to ecosystems. They are harmful to almost every animal that encounters them. GMOs alter crops using genes from the pests to make them resistant to pests. This potentially eradicates the usage of pesticides altogether. 

For example, bananas, amongst many other fruits, have been genetically modified to last longer. Bananas typically would last only a few days before becoming rotten and inedible. Thanks to genetic modification, they can last up to multiple weeks. 

“Since GMO foods were introduced, research has shown that they are just as safe as non-GMO foods,” the FDA officially stated.

That statement, among many other statements backed by research, shows that GMOs are in fact safe to eat.
GMOs do pose a threat to biodiversity, however, because of the way that foods are specifically altered to have special traits. All types of food can’t be genetically modified to hold those traits, so typically foods are narrowed down to one ‘“type” that is then genetically modified. 

GMOs aren’t only scientifically genetically edited organisms. GMOs are also created through crossbreeding, which has been an agricultural practice for hundreds of years. As early as 8000 BCE, humans were crossbreeding both plants and animals for desired traits (i.e. domestication of animals and creating more viable crops). 

If a food is organic, that means there are no GMOs. GMO-free foods can often be found in places like Trader Joe's or Whole Foods, but in a regular commercial grocery store (such as Fred Meyer), organic foods may be slightly harder to find. This is because GMO foods are most often cheaper to mass produce than organic.