What Jimmy Kimmel can teach us about GMOs
A misleading Consumer Reports piece has put GMOs in the news this week.
One of the many inaccuracies in the Consumer Reports piece is that GMOs are not tested before being used in your food. Of course, that statement couldn’t be further from the truth.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency are mandated to test all GMOs before approval. It is not mandatory that the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) also test GMOs, but all available GMO products have gone through FDA testing for safety.
National Corn Growers Association president Chip Bowling, a Maryland corn farmer, highlighted these important facts in a brief news release that refuted many of the false claims made by Consumer Reports. He also encouraged Consumer Reports to not quit its day job:
“For generations, Americans have trusted Consumer Reports for its independent research,” Bowling said. “We urge the magazine’s editors to publicly correct these errors and, in the future, commit itself to what it does best – help us find the right kitchen appliance.”
Even Jimmy Kimmel entered the GMO discussion this week. He sent a camera crew to a local farmers market to see if people who were against GMOs actually knew what GMOs were.
The results were, predictably, a mix of scary and hilarious.
Agenda-driven and blatantly misleading “studies” like the one released by Consumer Reports this week do nothing to help us move conversations about food safety forward. Years of scientific research and study have shown GMOs to have no ill-effects on human health.
A long time ago, many people thought the Earth was flat. Eventually, science and research prevailed to prove the flat-Earthers wrong. Society was able to move forward without being bogged down by a silly debate about the Earth’s shape.
The same thing needs to happen with GMOs. It’s time to move conversations about food, food safety and farming forward using sound science, not emotional rhetoric. The Jimmy Kimmel GMO video is funny, but it’s also worrisome that so many people feel so strongly about something they choose not to understand.
There’s nothing wrong with being skeptical and asking questions. And people are free to make their own GMO or non-GMO food choices. However, too much of the GMO “debate” revolves around fear and emotions instead of science and research.
That needs to change. A growing, and hungry, world population depends on it.
