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GMO food has its place

I read an interesting article pertaining to GMO (genetically modified organism) food in the Aug.10 issue of Bloomsburg Businessweek.

Editor:

I read an interesting article pertaining to GMO (genetically modified organism) food in the Aug.10 issue of Bloomsburg Businessweek.

According to this article, 75 per cent of the food in our grocery stores contains some GMO.

The cost of our food has been reduced 30 per cent by the use of GMO.

The first GMO food was tomatoes, introduced in l982.

Previous to that tomatoes were hand-picked.

However, the tomatoes at that time were too fragile to be successfully picked by machine so, using GMO, a firmer and blockier tomato (that would not roll off the conveyer belt) was developed.

Contrary to the expectation that this would negativley impact the labour sector, the reduced price of tomatoes led to creation of many more jobs.

It seems safe to assume that all canned tomato products contain GMO tomatoes.

GMO corn yields were doubled with GMO technology, so most corn products such as syrup or starch come from GMO corn.

Practically all sugar beets and soy beans are now GMO.

Other goals of GMO research are the development of rice with a higher protein content and bananas with more Vitamin A.

Africa grows a lot of these foods so this would help combat malnutrition on this continent.

Other projects are the development of a peanut that does not have the allergenic factor and tomatoes that have a better flavour in the winter.

Margie Kaufman

Williams Lake