Something you may not know about me:  I own a non-dairy yogurt company called Almond Yoga.  We sell our yogurt locally at the Whole Foods among other stores.  Several months ago I attended a meeting for food producers that sell their products at Whole Foods.  This was organized to educate us all about their new GMO labelling initiatives that are coming into play in several years.  They are asking all of their producers to apply for GMO-free certification.  I learned some things at this conference that were a surprise to me but made total sense when I thought about them.

100% organic and Certified Organic products in the USA and Canada should technically be GMO-free because they are not allowed to contain GMO ingredients EXCEPT corn starch and soy lecithin. Those ingredients are red flags on packages for my family and I as we know it is pretty impossible for them to be non-GMO at this point.  Pretty big loophole if you ask me!  There are other loopholes as well around the uses of antibiotics in fruits and vegetables.

Certified GMO-free products are also tested for genetically modified ingredients from seed to final product whereas certified organic products are not tested for GMO constituents per se.  There can be contamination (non-GMO and GMO seeds mixed together) from suppliers and contamination from wind blowing seeds from farm to farm.  This just makes me sad.  If there is one thing I care more about than what I put in my body it is human rights; other people’s well being.  I don’t like the idea of a persons’ seeds or livelihood being cross-pollinated by GMOs.

As organic products become more mainstream the certification boards will continue to come under more and more pressure by certain seed companies to allow some GMO products under the organic umbrella. The more these companies have to lose the more they will pressure anyone who stands in their way in order to find ways to profit from the organic market. This is why you and I have to hold fast to our standards and step forward even when people do not understand us because if we do not set the standards for the food that we eat nobody will.  We must not give up even when the information makes it harder to choose.