Can Americans avoid eating food produced from genetically engineered crops?
Although the currently grown GE crops and the foods made from them are as safe as their conventional counterparts, some people want to avoid eating foods made with such crops. That is not easy to do in the United States because food manufacturers are not required to label whether their products have any ingredients that were genetically engineered. Thus, it is impossible to know whether most products do or do not contain a genetically engineered ingredient. Some manufacturers have voluntarily labeled that their products do not contain any genetically engineered ingredients, but no government or third-party verification system exists to ensure the accuracy of those label claims. In addition, many of those voluntary label claims are misleading, since they falsely imply that the food made without GE ingredients is somehow safer than or superior to the same product made with GE ingredients. If one wants to avoid GE crops, the best way to do that is to buy “organic.” If a product is certifi
