Posted on 04/27/2015 4:38:12 AM PDT by Enlightened1
In a first for a major restaurant chain, Chipotle Mexican Grill on Monday will begin serving only food that is free of genetically engineered ingredients.
“This is another step toward the visions we have of changing the way people think about and eat fast food,” said Steve Ells, founder and co-chief executive of Chipotle. “Just because food is served fast doesn’t mean it has to be made with cheap raw ingredients, highly processed with preservatives and fillers and stabilizers and artificial colors and flavors.”
In 2013, Chipotle was the first restaurant chain to indicate which items contained genetically modified organisms, and a small but growing number of restaurants, largely in fine dining, also now label their menus.
Grocers, too, are moving to offer consumers more products free of genetically altered ingredients. The shelves and cases in Whole Foods stores are to be free of products containing such ingredients by 2018, and Walmart is vastly expanding its selection of organic foods, which are free of genetic alteration by law.
Even big food companies are moving to take genetically modified ingredients, or G.M.O.s, out of their products or to label products so that consumers know which are free of them.
Whether other major restaurant chains will follow Chipotle’s lead is uncertain. The increased demand for such products has made them more expensive and difficult to obtain in the amounts that big businesses need.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
You're right, and the Food Luddites are part of that corruption.
Life saving GMO wheat has been ready to go for more than a decade, but has been held back due to Luddite political pressure.
One result can be seen in #24.
Just as Rachel Carlson has been responsible for millions of deaths resulting from her war on DDT, Food Luddites have the deaths of millions on their hands as a result of their war on abundant, low priced food.
I know that Judgment will be meted out someday, but it’s still frustrating.
How can you tell?
This may attract the kind of media attention leadership desires, but it may be short lived. Selling mediocre food in landfill proportions is what drives customer counts not their belief they're saving the environment.
Not exactly. Most EU countries do not allow cultivation of GMO crops. There are five exceptions: Spain, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Romania.
For import, the EU is notorious for ignoring its own regulatory timetables and the findings of the Eurupean Food Safety Agency, which is supposed to be the regulatory watchdog. As a result, the EU Commission has approved most older varieties of GMO's but has not approved a new trait in a couple of years, despite EFSA approval. GMO crops using older traits are imported by the EU, especially oilseeds, but in sectors where the technology is advancing rapidly, the slow walking for approvals amounts to a de facto moratorium. This may take another WTO case to resolve, althought U.S. negotiators are hoping the crack the nut in the T-TIP negotiations.
In the meantime, Europeans pay notoriously high food prices. Many European farmers and the livestock industry would like free access to global markets, but the green advocacy groups continue to wage a scorched earth campaign against free trade. There is another wrinkle as well: the EU has a next-door major grain exporter in Ukraine. GMO's have not been approved for cultivation in the Ukraine. So Ukraine slaps on a non-GMO label, and the EU accepts the paper at face value, despite the fact that an estimated 30% of the corn and over 70% of the soybeans in Ukraine are illegally planted GMO varieties. Not for the first time, the EU is engaged in blatant cheating to erect a non-tariff trade barrier against the U.S.
The largest biotech producers by acres planted are the U.S., Brazil, Argentina, India, and Canada. The U.S. leads in acreage, but the great majority of the famers who use biotech varieties are smallholders in developing countries. China is making major investments in this area and fully intends to be a technology leader. Even India is now moving to field trials on several biotech varieties. The EU is increasingly isolated. The anti-technology crowd is increasingly desperate, and increasingly reckless in its charges, as producers around the world continue to adopt improved technologies.
Genetically modified food didn't exist before 1994? I think I see your problem. The truth is, Norman Borlaug was saving hundreds of millions of people from starvation using GMO's before you were born. And before him, there were others...
Every agricultural product you eat has been genetically modified. Every. Single. One.
To clarify: many European farmers would like access to biotech varieties, and the livestock industry in Europe would like free access to global markets. The green parties dominate the public discussion in Europe, but one should not carelessly assume that Europe is a monolith. If European consumers had a choice, most would quickly learn to appreciate lower prices.
Same again with golden rice. While the leftists argue over the safety of this life saving product, hundreds of thousands, mostly children, go blind or die from vitamin A deficiency every year. There is a special place in hell reserved for these fools.
“Seems like Europe banned GMO stuff years ago. It’s embarrassing that it takes the USA this long to catch up with Europe.”
Peoples opposition to GMO food is rooted in superstition and lack of scientific knowledge.
GMO’s are amazing products that have saved millions from starvation.
I used to farm and raise corn and soybeans. We had to use extremely toxic organophosphate products to control rootworms before GMO technology arrived.
GMO corn has allowed BT (a natural product) to be attached to the corn plant and control these harmful insects.
That’s just one example.
The Bio Techs started to splice the Genetics/DNA of a seeds.
It became mainstream in food in the U.S. starting in 1994.
Everything before that was pesticides, sprayed crops, DDT, etc....
Here you go
http://gmoinside.org/gmo-timeline-a-history-genetically-modified-foods/
There is a difference between GE...genetically engineered and GMO.....genetically modified organisms....right??? GE is where I think the focus should be as I understand it
This will be interesting. I would assume that to meet this goal, Chipotle will be using corn tortillas made from something other than Roundup-ready corn. My father in-law is a midwestern farmer, so I know how rare such corn is. It should add significantly to the price of their food.
You should be singing the praises of these modern methods rather than condemning them. But people fear the things they don't understand.
Here’s the thing about GMO. If the Chinese won’t eat it you know its bad. Good for Chipolte. Now if they will just change their gun free zone policy we will start eating there again.
Hmm. I thought Black Agnes explained the golden rice issue to you. Perhaps it was somebody else. Anyway, I’m pinging her so that she can chime in!
I've never understood how anyone justifies such a horror, but, then again, we deny people access to DDT so millions of people, mostly children, die needlessly from malaria every year.
This may be subjective, but I find the prices for basic food stuffs ridiculously low here in Germany. Eating out and high-end foods may be a different matter (I don't know what your comparisons are exactly), but that's luxury and not necessity.
So they’ve got a blank menu?
Time to short the stock.
Unless they're lying?
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