If you look at the nutrition information on a package of muffins or a box of cereal you’re likely to see things such as soybean oil and milled corn. More likely than not, those ingredients are made from genetically modified crops. But for the foreseeable future, you won’t see store shelves stocked with bread made from GM wheat. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Matt Sepic reports:
Transcript
If you look at the nutrition information on a package of muffins or a box of cereal you’re likely to see things such as soybean oil and milled corn. More likely than not, those ingredients are made from genetically modified crops. But for the foreseeable future, you won’t see store shelves stocked with bread made from G-M wheat. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Matt Sepic reports:
Corn and canola plants that resist insects, and soybeans that resist herbicides are big business for St. Louis-based Monsanto, but the company recently stopped seeking government approval for Roundup-ready wheat, delaying the 5 million dollar program indefinitely. Monsanto claims it’s because farmers aren’t planting as much wheat these days.
But University of Illinois agribusiness professor Peter Goldsmith says the company is responding to consumer fears about genetically modified products, especially wheat.
“There’s obviously a lot of culture and religion and history associated with bread. And I think food manufacturing gave a very clear unified signal back to Monsanto that said we really don’t want to get consumers concerned about whether the bread they’re eating is commingled GM with non-GM wheat.
A Monsanto spokesman says the company wants to focus on its other biotech products. Those are already a major part of the American diet.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Matt Sepic.