Chipotle and GMO fear-mongering

Two weeks ago, the restaurant chain Chipotle announced that they would not use any ingredients derived from Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in their food products:

"Chipotle is on a never-ending journey to source the highest quality ingredients we can find. Over the years, as we have learned more about GMOs, we’ve decided that using them in our food doesn’t align with that vision."

In a previous post, I mentioned that there is no evidence that GMO products can harm your health. I described how a controversial paper that claimed that GMOs can cause cancer in rats had to be retracted because of major flaws in the research design, data collection, and interpretation of the results. More importantly, meta-analyses of the scientific literature argue strongly that GMOs do not cause cancer or any other disease.

Brad Plummer at Vox.com weighs in on this issue. He notes that the Chipotle announcement is part of a broader anti-GMO trend:

"Chipotle is hardly alone in trying to appeal to GMO opponents. Whole Foods is promising to label all products with GMO ingredients by 2018. Even Walmart has been trying to appeal to the anti-GMO crowd."

He also provides a succinct summary of the current state of research on GMO foods and health safety:

"To be clear, there's no good evidence that the people who eat at Chipotle will gain any health benefits from this move. Numerous scientific studies have concluded that the GMO foods currently on the market are just as safe to eat as conventional foods (link1, link2, link3). Here's what the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) said in 2012: "The science is quite clear: crop improvement by the modern molecular techniques of biotechnology is safe."

In summary, there is not a shred of reliable evidence that consumption of GMO crops is harmful to your health. Any insinuations that GMOs are toxic to humans or cancer-causing represent pseudoscience and fear-mongering. The question whether GMOs harm the environment is a separate issue that falls under the purview of the EPA.

Finally, I would recommend that the reader who wants to learn more about GMOs look over the card deck compiled by Vox.com. It has a lot of detailed information on the topic including information on studies evaluating health and environmental impacts.

Figure 1. GMO information card deck from Vox.com.