Chipotle's Anti-GMO Stance

Chipotle, a national restaurant chain, announced this week that its ingredients are now GMO-free.  I respect a business taking a stance and sticking to it.   We have seen these emotional headline grabbing stories before.  Chick-Fil-A made the news in a big way not too long ago for taking a controversial stance that quickly put people on opposites sides.  The beauty is many of us live in a place where we can chose to accept a corporation's stance and buy their product or boycott them altogether.

However, I do want to ask whether people (and companies) are jumping on the anti-GMO bandwagon because it is the hip thing.   Or do people (and companies) truly understand the issue at large before making their decision.  Chipotle is going GMO free in many ways, but it is not 100% GMO free like the the headlines and hype make you believe.  The truth is that almost all of the live stock in the US is fed with GMO feed.   Chipolte will be using pasture fed beef, but according to a CNN article its pork and chicken are still from animals that eat GMO feed.  It also still serves soft drinks and sodas have high fructose corn syrup that come from GMO corn.

If you do chose to eat at Chipotle because the food is great tasting then by all means go enjoy that burrito.  If you chose to go to Chipotle because they are against GMOs then I challenge you to take a moment and examine the issue from all sides before blindly jumping on the anti-GMO bandwagon.  There are numerous scientific articles that show that GMO food is safe. Trust me in saying that any GMO product released goes through years of safety testing.  The American Association for the Advancement of Science published a statement in 2012 that sums up the safety of GMOs.

A few highlights from the AAAS statement:

"Indeed, the science is quite clear: crop improvement by the modern molecular techniques of biotechnology is safe. Rather, these initiatives are driven by a variety of factors, ranging from the persistent perception that such foods are somehow “unnatural” and potentially dangerous to the desire to gain competitive advantage by legislating attachment of a label meant to alarm. "

"The EU, for example, has invested more than €300 million in research on the biosafety of GMOs. Its recent report states: “The main conclusion to be drawn from the efforts of more than 130 research projects, covering a period of more than 25 years of research and involving more than 500 independent research groups, is that biotechnology, and in particular GMOs, are not per se more risky than e.g. conventional plant breeding technologies.” The World Health Organization, the American Medical Association, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the British Royal Society, and every other respected organization that has examined the evidence has come to the same conclusion: consuming foods containing ingredients derived from GM crops is no riskier than consuming the same foods containing ingredients from crop plants modified by conventional plant improvement techniques."

It is easy to succumb to hype and make up our minds on an issue through emotion.   I would argue that we don't truly know the truth of an issue until we take the time to read both sides and then make our decision through logic.

References:
http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/26/investing/chipotle-gmo-free/
http://www.aaas.org/
AAAS GM statement