While the growing of genetically engineered crops in the United States continues to stir debate, some UC scientists believe attention should now be focused on how farmers opposed to the technology and those in favor of it can step back from the controversy and successfully produce and market their crops in the way they personally see fit.

"A debate is being fueled by the perception that there has to be a choice between either organic agriculture or genetic engineering," said Alison Van Eenennaam, a Davis-based UC Cooperative Extension specialist in animal genomics and biotechnology. "This ignores the possibility that different production systems can coexist alongside each other."

Coexistence depends on establishing and implementing practical measures to ensure the integrity of crops destined for different markets.

The first step, according to UC, is providing accurate information to farmers, environmentalists, lawmakers and consumers. Toward that end, Van Eenennaam and others in the UC biotechnology work group have crafted 13 fact sheets, reviewed by scientific experts for accuracy, outlining basic information about the production and safety of genetically engineered crops, foods, animal feed and animals.

The information will help counties and state agencies as they hammer out coexistence plans for organic farmers, farmers producing products for markets that reject genetically engineerd crops, and farmers who consider such crops necessary to compete in the global marketplace.

According to a December report from the Pew Charitable Trust, 34 percent of Americans said they believed genetically modified foods were safe, 29 percent said they were unsafe and 37 percent said they had no opinion. According to one of the UC fact sheets, scientific evidence to date indicates that foods developed using genetic engineering pose no greater risk to consumers than foods produced by traditional methods.

In the Pew study, consumers consistently underestimated their consumption of genetically engineered foods, with 26 percent believing they had eaten such foods and 60 percent believing they had not. In fact, it is likely that all U.S. consumers have eaten foods containing some ingredients derived from such crops.

"Seventy-five percent of processed foods contain genetically modified ingredients -- things like cotton seed oil, soy protein, canola oil and high fructose corn syrup," said Berkeley-based Cooperative Extension biotechnology specialist Peggy Lemaux, author of two of the fact sheets.

Warnert is a public information representative with UC Agriculture and Natural Resources.

GET THE FACTS:

www.ucbiotech.org (click on “Resources” and then “Fact Sheets”)