| Organic Industry to Address GE Contamination |
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| Written by Kiki Hubbard | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Friday, 14 March 2008 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The shortage of U.S. grain has been a recurrent headline lately, yet a portion of this shortage – the organic grain industry – is not a new story. Though part of the organic grain scarcity is attributed to a dearth of producers, part of the problem is the increasing contamination of organic grain by genetically engineered (GE) crops – patented organisms now pervasive in much of the American landscape. This week, organic industry players are meeting in Anaheim, California to discuss testing for transgenic material in organic products and possibly coming up with standards for certification. (Testing is currently not mandatory.) You might recall that the organic movement fought hard to exclude GE organisms from the organic label a decade ago. Now an additional certification is needed to relay that this product is truly organic? In 2007, 73 percent of U.S. corn and 91 percent of soybeans were a GE variety. At the same time, organic crop acreage continues to expand in all 50 states, and certified organic livestock (the consumers of all that organic grain) jumped more than 70 percent between 2000 and 2005.
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