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What Can We Learn From the First Genetically Engineered Food?

Mon. Oct 14th, 2013 at 4:58pm

Margaret Badore

Living / Green Food

Amidst the debates over GMO labeling laws, it's a good moment to take a look a the first genetically engineered food.

This short film by Retro Report on the Flavr Savr, a genetically engineered tomato from the firm Calgene, revisits a time when genetically engineered food was a less divisive topic.

What's fascinating is that genetic engineering was a kind of selling point for this fruit. In some ways, GMOs are suffering from a massive branding crisis. The efforts of big agrochemical companies like Monsanto to obscure the origins of genetically engineered plants creates a kind of void where we imagine the worst. But for the Flavr Savr, transparency was an advantage and discussions about how the genes of the plant were manipulated also communicated its benefit to the consumer.

Maybe the public won't be convinced that vegetables that produce their own insecticides are healthy. But the argument has been made that biotech companies could benefit from more transparency.

If you're not familiar with Retro Report, it's a nonprofit online video project that takes a long-term look at some of the biggest news headlines. You can watch more Retro Report stories on The New York Times website.

Content provided by Margaret Badore http://www.treehugger.com/

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